ABSTRACT

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.

part I|54 pages

Theorising Cities

chapter 2|19 pages

Imagining the Real-Time City *

Telecommunications, urban paradigms and the future of cities

chapter 3|21 pages

Chaotic Places or Complex Places?

Cities in a post-industrial era

part II|54 pages

Racial/Spatial Imaginaries

chapter 4|15 pages

Out of the Melting Pot Into the Fire Next Time

Imagining the East End as city, body, text

chapter 5|18 pages

White Governmentality *

Urbanism, nationalism, racism

chapter 6|21 pages

Migrant Spaces and Settlers’ Time

Forming and de-forming an inner city

part III|54 pages

Nostalgia/Memory

chapter 7|15 pages

Looking Backward

Nostalgia and the city

chapter 8|12 pages

Authenticity and Suburbia *

chapter 9|27 pages

‘Proper Little Mesters’

Nostalgia and protest masculinity in de – industrialised Sheffield

part IV|54 pages

Narrating Cityscapes

chapter 10|23 pages

This, Here, Now

Imagining the modern city

chapter 11|17 pages

(RE)Placing The City

Cultural relocation and the city as centre

chapter 12|14 pages

Anglicising the American Dream

Tragedy, farce and the ‘postmodern’ city

part V|28 pages

Virtual Cities

chapter 13|16 pages

Cyberpunk as Social Theory 1

William Gibson and the sociological imagination