ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyzes the encounters and the contestations they bring along in urban places: it offers analytic insights into contemporary cities, into places in which social order, identities, and exclusions are constantly brought into being, maintained, and transformed. Encounters are produced in contests about the meanings and about the concrete structure of places. Representations of places are everywhere, in maps, photos, novels, advertising, talks, metaphors, or souvenirs, ordering these places and ascribing specific meanings to them. Thinking of a specific place means thinking of the place in specific images such as modern, dangerous, friendly, dynamic, exotic, or lively. Encountering urban places is also encountering their concrete materiality. Encountering an urban place, one feels the materiality and atmosphere with all the senses and potentials of one's own body, with one's corporality.
