This book demonstrates how city literature addresses questions of possibility. In city literature, ideas of possibility emerge primarily through two perspectives: texts may focus on what is possible for cities, and they may present the urban environment as a site of possibility for individuals or communities. The volume combines reflections on urban possibility from a range of geographical and cultural contexts—in addition to the English-speaking world, individual chapters analyse possible cities and possible urban lives in Turkey, Israel, Finland, Germany, Russia and Sweden. Moreover, by engaging with issues such as city planning, mass housing, gentrification, informal settlements and translocal identities, the book shows imaginative literature at work outlining what possibility means in cities.

This book demonstrates how city literature addresses questions of possibility. In city literature, ideas of possibility emerge primarily through two perspectives: texts may focus on what is possible for cities, and they may present the urban environment as a site of possibility for individuals or communities. The volume combines reflections on urban possibility from a range of geographical and cultural contexts-in addition to the English-speaking world, individual chapters analyse possible cities and possible urban lives in Turkey, Israel, Finland, Germany, Russia and Sweden. Moreover, by engaging with issues such as city planning, mass housing, gentrification, informal settlements and translocal identities, the book shows imaginative literature at work outlining what possibility means in cities.

We live in a time of rising anti-immigrant fervour and attacks on multiculturalism. As Stuart Hall argued over twenty years ago, the capacity to live with difference is the pressing issue of our time. This is true perhaps now more than ever. This collection takes a critical look at the ‘conviviality turn’ in our understanding of coexistence and urban multiculture. Drawing on case studies out of the UK, Europe, Australia and Canada, contributors to this collection explore the practices and dispositions of everyday people who negotiate a ‘shared life’ in their culturally diverse neighbourhoods and communities, and the complexities and ambivalences that make up ‘living together’. Chapters focus on spaces of encounter, navigations of friendship and humour across difference, and the networks of hope and care that exist alongside experiences of racism. A theme of the book is that we live neither in a world where convivial multiculture has been accomplished nor one where it has been lost: it is, as it must be, a work in progress. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies.

Discusses the problems faced in the cities during the Industrial Revoultion, including over-crowding, poor working conditions, and low wages.

′The Emancipatory City is a wonderful addition to a growing literature on the public culture of the city. In these spaces, tolerance and intolerance, difference and indifference, transgressions, resistances, and playful spontaneity erupt to give texture to urban life. The book broadens our gaze and deepens our understanding of how cities enable people to express themselves and be free′ - Robert A Beauregard, New School University, New York Who are cities for? What kinds of societies might they most democratically embody? And, how can cities be emancipatory sites? The ambivalent status of urban space in terms of emancipation, democratisation, justice and citizenship is central to recent work in urban geography, `new′ cultural geography, critical geography and postmodern planning, as well as literature on urban social justice, public space and the politics of identity. Seeking alternative and progressive visions of the emancipatory city through an exploration of the tensions and possibilities between the freedoms and constraints offered by the city, the authors of The Emancipatory City? build on this wealth of current perspectives to present an critical analysis of urban experience.

Claes Oldenburg’s commitment to familiar objects has shaped accounts of his career, but his associations with Pop art and postwar consumerism have overshadowed another crucial aspect of his work. In this revealing reassessment, Katherine Smith traces Oldenburg’s profound responses to shifting urban conditions, framing his enduring relationship with the city as a critical perspective and conceiving his art as urban theory. Smith argues that Oldenburg adapted lessons of context, gleaned from New York’s changing cityscape in the late 1950s, to large-scale objects and architectural plans. By examining disparate projects from New York to Los Angeles, she situates Oldenburg’s innovations in local geographies and national debates. In doing so, Smith illuminates patterns of urbanization through the important contributions of one of the leading artists in the United States.

Astana, the capital city of the post-Soviet Kazakhstan, has often been admired for the design and planning of its futuristic cityscape. This anthropological study of the development of the city focuses on every-day practices, official ideologies and representations alongside the memories and dreams of the city’s longstanding residents and recent migrants. Critically examining a range of approaches to place and space in anthropology, geography and other disciplines, the book argues for an understanding of space as inextricably material-and-imaginary, and unceasingly dynamic – allowing for a plurality of incompatible pasts and futures materialized in spatial form.