ABSTRACT

'Spatial images', wrote the German cultural theorist, Siegfried Kracauer, 'are the dreams of society. Wherever the hieroglyphics of any spatial image are deciphered, there the basis of social reality presents itself.' But how exactly are these spatial images to be deciphered? 
Hieroglyphics of Space addresses this question with a series of insightful essays on some of the great metropolitan centres of the world. From political interpretations to gendered analyses, from methods of mapping to filmic representations, and from studies in consumption to economic surveys, the volume offers a range of strategies for reading and experiencing the modern metropolis.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

part |2 pages

Part I The legible metropolis

chapter 1|16 pages

The metropolis as text: Otto Wagner and Vienna’s ‘Second Renaissance’ D AV I D FRISBY

Otto Wagner and Vienna’s ‘Second Renaissance’ The metropolis as text

chapter 2|12 pages

Cognitive mapping

New York vs Philadelphia

part |2 pages

Part II The political metropolis

chapter 4|11 pages

Resurrecting an imperial past: strategies of self-representation and ‘masquerade’ in fascist Rome (1934–1938) ANNA N O TA R O

Strategies of self-representation and ‘masquerade’ in fascist Rome (1934–1938)

chapter 5|10 pages

Airbrushed Moscow: the cathedral of Christ the Saviour N ATA SHA CHIBIRE VA

The cathedral of Christ the Saviour

chapter 6|12 pages

Erasing the traces: the ‘denazification’ of post-revolutionary Berlin and Bucharest

The ‘denazification’ of post- revolutionary Berlin and Bucharest

chapter 7|9 pages

Erasing the traces: the ‘denazification’ of post-apartheid Johannesburg and Pretoria

The ‘denazification’ of post- apartheid Johannesburg and Pretoria

part |2 pages

Part III The gendered metropolis

chapter 8|22 pages

The pursuit of pleasure: London rambling

London rambling Prologue: spatial stories

chapter 9|12 pages

Gay Paris

Trace and ruin

part |2 pages

Part IV The representational metropolis

part |2 pages

Part V The filmic metropolis

chapter 15|19 pages

Playtime

‘Tativille’ and Paris

chapter 16|9 pages

Blade Runner

‘Ridleyville’ and Los Angeles

part |2 pages

Part VI The economic metropolis

chapter 17|13 pages

French bidonvilles around 1960’s Paris

Urbanism and individual initiatives

chapter 18|11 pages

Pl(a)ys of marginality

Transmigrants in Paris

chapter 19|10 pages

The capsular city

chapter 20|8 pages

Media-polis/media-city

Extra-territoriality