ABSTRACT
Thinking about cities ought to be willing to travel widely, tracking the diverse circulations that shape cities and thinking across both similarities and differ ences amongst cities, in search o f understanding the many ways of urban life. (Robinson, 2006:169)
This quote from Jennifer Robinson’s Ordinary Cities aptly sums up our goal in this book. While it is true that the tools for describing and understanding the urban phenomenon have multiplied and diversified over time, it is the object itself - the city - that has become infinitely complex. This work, how ever, attempts to give the city a name - or rather, names - and to reformulate the urban question: what is a city? What is an ordinary city, a city ‘without qualities’ that, nevertheless, is habitable by the fact that it is inhabited? What city cannot be reduced to the order imposed by paranoid authorities, nor aban doned to chaos, to the absurd or to civil war? What is a city in a world plagued by uncertainty, a city where it is a pleasure to stroll aimlessly, to lose oneself (at least a bit) along the way? And, conversely, what is not a city? What can't it be, regardless of its geographic location?
