Imaginary Cities: A Tour of Dream Cities, Nightmare Cities, and Everywhere in Between
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.10 (719 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B06X9WPKBF |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 493 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-05-01 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Amazon Customer said Five Stars. Amazing!
It’s neither a history of grand plans nor a literary exploration of the utopian impulse, but rather something different, hybrid, idiosyncratic. It’s a magpie’s book, full of characters and incidents and ideas drawn from cities real and imagined around the globe and throughout history. It is as if the city itself, its inescapable gritty reality and elbow-to-elbow nature, demands we call into being some alternative, yearned-for better place. This book is about those cities. Thomas More’s allegorical island shares space with Soviet mega-planning; Marco Polo links up with James Joyce’s meticulously imagined Dublin; the medieval land of Cockaigne meets the hopeful future of Star Trek. For as long as humans have gathered in cities, those cities have had their shining—or shadowy—counterparts. After reading it, you’ll walk the streets of your city—real or imagined—with fresh eyes. . Imaginary cities, potential cities, future cities, perfect cities. With Darran Anderson as our guide, we find common themes and recurring dreams, tied to the seemingly ineluctable problems of our actual cities, of poverty and exclusion and waste and destruction. And tha
"A compendium of fantasy cities that takes its cue from Marco Polo via Italo Calvino’s InvisibleCities, this remarkable survey reveals the influence that the metropolis of the mind has had on the real thing."