ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter gives an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to locate the concept of 'the city' within traditions of geographic and social thought, exploring its varying usages and meanings. It attempts to provide an overview of some of the most useful cognitive maps that help us make sense of the 'turbulent vitality'. It is possible to make distinctions between the urban and the rural on diverse criteria. However, some commentators have suggested the distinction between rural and urban spaces is becoming irrelevant – or at least less relevant – to the extent that concepts such as 'the urban' and 'the rural' are no longer useful for making sense of societies characterised by high levels of geographic and social mobility. Some years earlier, the geographer Nigel Thrift had proclaimed an urban impasse, manifest in the loss of the urban as both a subject and object of study.
