This book explores the hybridity of urban identities in multiple dimensions and at multiple scales, how they form as catalysts and mechanisms for urban transitions, and how they develop as city branding strategies and urban regeneration methods. Due to rapid globalisation, the notion of identity has become scarcer, more fragile, and inarguably more important. Given the significance of place and displacement for contemporary everyday life, and the continuous advancement of technologies, identifying relations and values that define humans and their environments in various ways has become crucial. Divided into seven chapters, this book provides extensive coverage of ‘urban identity’, an often-overlooked topic in the fields of urbanism, urban geography, and urban design. It approaches the topic from a novel dual perspective, by exploring cities with tangible commonalities and shared strategies for refining their identities, and by highlighting cities and urban environments characterised by multiple identities. Based on a decade of research in this field, the book provides a multi-disciplinary perspective on urban identity. In addition to comprehensive information for students, it offers a key reference guide for urbanists, urban designers and geographers, architectural and urban practitioners, decision-makers, and governing bodies involved in urban development strategies.

Cities commonly have well-known identities—New York as ‘The Big Apple’, Hong Kong as ‘The Pearl of the Orient’, and Beirut as ‘The Paris of the East’ are such examples. This book explores the nature of city identities, their composite characteristics, and how they have been shaped. It argues that they certainly draw on the influence of a city’s present day circumstances: the goods and services it provides, how it is governed, its culture, its look and feel, and the customs of its people. However, an identity may also be shaped by a city’s past, and its economic, social and physical inheritance, which is especially true where cities have historically been involved in colonialism. Indeed, in a globalised world, no city anywhere is immune to the import of practices from cities elsewhere, conveyed by commercial and political power, but also by fashion.

Cities are both real and imaginary places whose identity is dependent on their distinctive heritage: a network of historically transmitted cultural resources. The essays in this volume, which originate from a lecture series at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London, explore the complex and multi-layered identities of European cities. Themes that run through the essays include: nostalgia for a grander past; location between Eastern and Western ideologies, religions and cultures; and the fluidity and palimpsest quality of city identity. Not only does the book provide different thematic angles and a variety of approaches to the investigation of city identity, it also emphasizes the importance of diverse cultural components. The essays presented here discuss cultural forms as various as music, architecture, literature, journalism, philosophy, television, film, myths, urban planning and the naming of streets.

Every city has its unique and valuable identity, this identity is revealed through its physical and visual form, it is seen through the eyes of its residents and users. The city develops over time, and its identity evolves with it. Reflecting the rapid and constant changes the city is subjected to, Architecture and Arts, is the embodiment of the cultural, historical, and economical characteristics of the city. This conference was dedicated to the investigation of the different new approaches developed in Architecture and Contemporary arts. It has focused on the basis of urban life and identities. This volume provides discussions on the examples and tendencies in dealing with urban identities as well as the transformation of cities and urban cultures mentioned in terms of their form, identity, and their current art. Contemporary art, when subjected to experiments, continues to be produced in various directions, to be consumed and to put forward new ideas. Art continuously renews itself, from new materials to different means of communication, from interactive works to computer games, from new approaches to perceptional paradigms and problems of city and nature of the millennium. This is an Open Access ebook, and can be found on www.taylorfrancis.com.

As a continuation of ‘Identity of Cities and City of Identities’, this book covers the arguments around the memory-experience-cognition nexus concerning palimpsests and urban places. As cities experience transitional phases of growth, development, decline, and decay, the author urges considering the notion of urban memory in place-making strategies and design decision-making processes. These explorations would add value to primary fields of architecture, architectural history, cognitive science, human geography, and urbanism. Divided into eight chapters, this book puts together a comprehensive knowledge of urban memory in city transitions. By studying urban memory, the author delves into conceptions of mental mapping, knowledge of environments, cognition of places, and the perceptual dimension of urbanism. Undoubtedly, urban memory plays a significant part in the future movements of humanistic urbanism. Given the significances of scale, pace, and mode of city transitions globally, we should remember who are the ultimate users of those living environments. Therefore, in this book, the author debates two contradictions of ‘memory of place vs. place of memory’, and ‘significance of place vs. place of significance’. Each of these is believed to be a paradox of its own, indicating places are significant through the systematic networks of cities, memories are meaningful through the neural information processing, and place memories are the essence of urban identities. The book's ultimate goal is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the space-time frame of place in making memorable places. Through the comprehensive explorations of many global examples, we can evaluate the significance of place in mind more carefully. This is narrated based on the recognition of nostalgia in cities, socio-temporal qualities in places, and the network of processes in our minds. In return, the aim is to provide new knowledge to make memorable cities, enhance social experiences, and capture and value the significance of place in mind.

This book covers a broad range of topics relating to architecture and urban design, such as the conservation of cities’ culture and identity through design and planning processes, various ideologies and approaches to achieving more sustainable cities while retaining their identities, and strategies to help cities advertise themselves on the global market. Every city has its own unique identity, which is revealed through its physical and visual form. It is seen through the eyes of its inhabitants and visitors, and is where their collective memories are shaped. In turn, these factors affect tourism, education, culture & economic prosperity, in addition to other aspects, making a city’s identity one of its main assets. Cities’ identities are constructed and developed over time and are constantly evolving physically, culturally and sociologically. This book explains how architecture and the arts can embody the historical, cultural and economic characteristics of the city. It also demonstrates how cities’ memories play a vital role in preserving their physical and nonphysical heritage. Furthermore, it examines the transformation of cities and urban cultures, and investigates the various new approaches developed in contemporary arts and architecture. Given its scope, the book is a valuable resource for a variety of readers, including students, educators, researchers and practitioners in the fields of city planning, urban design, architecture and the arts.

A lively and personal book that returns the city to political thought Cities shape the lives and outlooks of billions of people, yet they have been overshadowed in contemporary political thought by nation-states, identity groups, and concepts like justice and freedom. The Spirit of Cities revives the classical idea that a city expresses its own distinctive ethos or values. In the ancient world, Athens was synonymous with democracy and Sparta represented military discipline. In this original and engaging book, Daniel Bell and Avner de-Shalit explore how this classical idea can be applied to today's cities, and they explain why philosophy and the social sciences need to rediscover the spirit of cities. Bell and de-Shalit look at nine modern cities and the prevailing ethos that distinguishes each one. The cities are Jerusalem (religion), Montreal (language), Singapore (nation building), Hong Kong (materialism), Beijing (political power), Oxford (learning), Berlin (tolerance and intolerance), Paris (romance), and New York (ambition). Bell and de-Shalit draw upon the richly varied histories of each city, as well as novels, poems, biographies, tourist guides, architectural landmarks, and the authors' own personal reflections and insights. They show how the ethos of each city is expressed in political, cultural, and economic life, and also how pride in a city's ethos can oppose the homogenizing tendencies of globalization and curb the excesses of nationalism. The Spirit of Cities is unreservedly impressionistic. Combining strolling and storytelling with cutting-edge theory, the book encourages debate and opens up new avenues of inquiry in philosophy and the social sciences. It is a must-read for lovers of cities everywhere. In a new preface, Bell and de-Shalit further develop their idea of "civicism," the pride city dwellers feel for their city and its ethos over that of others.