First published in 1997, Imagining Cities gives students access to the most exciting recent work on the city from within sociology, cultural studies and cultural geography. Contributions are grouped around four major themes:
The theoretical imagination
Ethnic diversity and the politics of difference
Memory and nostalgia
The city as narrative
The book considers the interplay of past and present, imagined and substantive, and links present and future in examining the idea of the virtual city. Here, the world of cyberspace not only recasts views of space and communication, but has a profound impact on the sociological imagination itself.
Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Imagining Cities Part I: Theorising Cities 1. Six Discourses on the Postmetropolis 2. Imagining the Real-Time City: Telecommunications, Urban Paradigms and the Future of Cities 3. Chaotic Places or Complex Places? Cities in a Post-Industrial Era Part II: Racial/Spatial Imaginaries 4. Out of the Melting Pot Into the Fire Next Time: Imagining the East End as City, Body, Text 5. White Governmentality: Urbanism, Nationalism, Racism 6. Migrant Spaces and Settlers’ Time: Forming and De-Forming an Inner City Part III: Nostalgia/Memory 7. Looking Backward, Nostalgia and the City 8. Authenticity and Suburbia 9. ‘Proper Little Mesters’: Nostalgia and Protest Masculinity and De-Industrialised Sheffield Part IV: Narrating Cityscapes 10. This, Here, Now: Imagining the Modern City 11. (Re)Placing the City: Cultural Relocation and the City as Centre 12. Anglicising the American Dream: Tragedy, Farce and the ‘Postmodern’ City Part V: Virtual Cities 13. Cyberpunk as Social Theory: William Gibson and the Sociological Imagination 14. Cities, Subjectivity and Cyberspace Bibliography Index
Sallie Westwood, John M Williams
