Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book proposes a rich imaginative reflection on the relationship with the urban environment by exploring hypothetical urban schemes, imagined by science fiction. It analyses the impact of luminous advertisements on the visual perceptions of the cityscape, from a case study of Shanghai, caught between competition amongst international communities and the defensive reactions of the Chinese authorities in the 1930s. The book discusses Indian postcolonial literary works and cinema from the late 1950s onwards that reveal fresh understandings of how new arrivals – whether rural migrants or foreign tourists – appropriated urban places or objects. It argues for the recognition of aesthetic inequalities in urban living as an essential element that is largely neglected in the current debates on inequalities, when the search for well-being in effect calls for a reduction of inequalities.