ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a precise manifestation of the perception and representation of urban place, one that is particularly relevant for architects and urban designers. It looks into literary descriptions of protagonists fully immersed in the city, in which their experience of architecture and the urban environment is sensed through the body. The chapter explores how this interaction impacts upon their consciousness and actions. It addresses passages that describe an active perception of the urban environment, instances when the city appears in cityfuls. The chapter focuses on novels whose narrative draws heavily upon the cartographical and topographic realities of the places they describe; Dublin through James Joyce's Ulysses; Mexico City through Gonzalo Celorio's And Let the Earth Tremble at its Centers; and Tokyo through Haruki Murakami's After Dark. In a similar manner Gonzalo Celorio's literary depiction of downtown Mexico City in the late 1990s offers an active perception of the urban environment through the main character's adventures in the city's streets.
