ABSTRACT

The urban model continues to be tainted by millennia of negative connotations, and urbanists have not as of yet sufficiently addressed how this historical legacy affects urban theory and praxis. Widely held facile and incorrect myths about cities and urban living continue mostly unchallenged. The ubiquity of urban dystopias and other forms of negative depictions of cities in popular culture should be a motive of preoccupation for urbanists seeking to maintain the dignity of their profession and maximise the positive potential of their work. In trying to re-establish essential facts about what cities are and what they represent both factually and symbolically, one can envision an urban theory and praxis that is unconstrained by conscious and subconscious limitations, thus contributing towards the fulfilment of the potential of urbanism to positively affect modern life.