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This book investigates the iconic architectural cultural spaces of the contemporary cityscape as engines of regeneration. Promising much to their fading locales, these spaces locate culture in the space where production once ruled in order to revitalise post-industrial urban provinces. With close attention to four sites across the UK, Urban Constellations engages with the work of Walter Benjamin and Jean Baudrillard, to read these spaces and in so doing, offer a critical intervention into the theory and experience of contemporary cityscapes. Developing the notion of surface ethnography as a methodological approach to examining the form of cultural experience produced by urban cultural spaces, the author sheds light on the manner in which they transform cultural spectatorship, express wider political and ecological concerns and offer differing views to the ’native’ and the ’tourist’ in the construction of local history. The book also examines the decline of the idea that iconic projects can drive regeneration, in the failures and delays that can beset such undertakings. Offering a rich examination of the legacy of urban change in its most recent formulation - that of cultural regeneration - this book reveals the fragile potential of the spaces produced by contemporary ’dream houses’ and as such, will be of interest to scholars of cultural studies, sociology and social theory, urban studies, cultural geography and architecture.
Cities are an unprecedented focus of attention: over half the world now lives in them, culture and politics are shaped by them, and they are also focal points for new relationships between nature, technology and the human body. This essay collection brings together a range of cutting-edge international scholarship on cities, urbanisation and urban culture. The format of the collection is a series of small essays in the spirit of Benjamin, Kracauer and other innovative forms of writing and observation. The collection explores themes such as new forms of political mobilisation, the effects of economic instability, the political ecology of urban nature and the presence of collective memory. Cultural aspects of urban change are also considered including the work of artists, film makers and others, who have sought to critically engage with processes of urban change. The global scope of the collection includes essays in Berlin, Chicago and London, as well as less extensivily studied citites such as Chennai, Jakarta and Lagos.
Did you know that stars are seasonal? That Orion is one of the brightest constellations? That a single day on Venus is longer than an entire year on Venus? Space has captivated mankind since the beginning of time. Fifty years ago, Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon and since then our knowledge of astronomy has continued to expand. With so many mysteries yet to be solved, science journalist Abigail Beall takes readers on an astonishing journey though the landscape of space. In The Art of Urban Astronomy, you will be guided through the seasons and learn about the brightest stars and constellations, the myths and legends of astronomy and how to identify star clusters and galaxies with just your eyes or a pair of binoculars. For urban dwellers wrapped up in the rush and bustle of the city, it can be calming and truly valuable to take the time simply to stop, look and reconnect with nature. Packed full of seasonal star charts, constellation charts and fascinating facts, this is the perfect guide for those who have looked up at the night sky and don't know where to begin. After reading this book, you'll never look up in the same way again.
"Queer Constellations investigates the dreams and catastrophes of recent urban history viewed through new queer narratives of inner-city life. The "gay village," "gay mecca," ""gai Paris," the "lesbian flaneur," the "lesbian boheme"--these and other urban phantasmagoria feature paradoxically in this volume as figures of revolutionary utopia and commodity spectacle, as fossilized archetypes of social transformation and ruins of haunting cultural potential. Dianne Chisholm introduces readers to new practices of walking, seeing, citing, and remembering the city in works by Neil Bartlett, Samuel Delany, Robert Gluck, Alan Hollinghurst, Gary Indiana, Eileen Myles, Sarah Schulman, Edmund White, and David Wojnarowicz. Reading these authors with reference to the history, sociology, geography, and philosophy of space, particularly to the everyday avant-garde production and practice of urban space, Chisholm reveals how--and how effectively--queer narrative documentary resembles and reassembles Walter Benjamin's constellations of Paris, "capital of the nineteenth century." Considering experimental queer writing in critical conjunction with Benjamin's city writing, the book shows how a queer perspective on inner-city reality exposes contradictions otherwise obscured by mythic narratives of progress. If Benjamin regards the Paris arcade as a microcosm of high capitalism, wherein the (un)making of industrial society is perceived retrospectively, in contemporary queer narrative we see the sexually charged and commodity-entranced space of the gay bathhouse as a microcosm of late capitalism and as an exemplary site for excavating the contradictions of mass sex. In Chisholm's book we discover how,looking back on the ruins of queer mecca, queer authors return to Benjamin to advance his "dialectics of seeing"; how they cruise the paradoxes of market capital, blasting a queer era out of the homogeneous course of history.
The newly revised Globalizing Cities Reader reflects how the geographies of theory have recently shifted away from the western vantage points from which much of the classic work in this field was developed. The expanded volume continues to make available many of the original and foundational works that underpin the research field, while expanding coverage to familiarize students with new theoretical and epistemological positions as well as emerging research foci and horizons. It contains 38 new chapters, including key writings on globalizing cities from leading thinkers such as John Friedmann, Michael Peter Smith, Saskia Sassen, Peter Taylor, Manuel Castells, Anthony King, Jennifer Robinson, Ananya Roy, and Fulong Wu. The new Reader reflects the fact that world and global city studies have evolved in exciting and wide-ranging ways, and the very notion of a distinct "global" class of cities has recently been called into question. The sections examine the foundations of the field and processes of urban restructuring and global city formation. A large number of new entries focus on the emerging urban worlds of Asia, Latin America and Africa, including Beijing, Bogota, Cairo, Cape Town, Delhi, Istanbul, Medellin, Mumbai, Phnom Penh, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai. The book also presents cases off the conventional map of global cities research, such as smaller cities and less known urban regions that are undergoing processes of globalization. The book is a key resource for students and scholars alike who seek an accessible compendium of the intellectual foundations of global urban studies as well as an overview of the emergent patterns of early 21st century urbanization and associated sociopolitical contestation around the world.
Summer romance meets a passion for the environment in this timeless young adult novel. When Julia’s mother announces that she might be selling the family’s campground to a real estate developer, Julia is crushed. How could she stand to leave her childhood home? Then Julia finds an unlikely ally — the developer’s son, Nick — who wants to help her family raise the money they need to keep the campground running. Can Julia trust him to conspire against his own father? And could she ever trust him with her heart? This tender story reminds readers of summer’s possibilities … and how sometimes love is written in the stars.
"Describes various constellations, including the myths surrounding them and how to locate them in the night sky"--Provided by publisher.
A practical guide to viewing the universe.
Drawing on diverse theoretical perspectives on conviviality, this book considers the ways in which Latin America, a continent marked by deep inequalities, has managed to afford, create, sustain, and contest forms of living together with difference across time and space. Interdisciplinary in approach and presenting studies from various nations across the continent – from the medieval period to the present day – it considers the ways in which Latin America might contribute to our understanding of the relationship between inequality, difference, diversity, and sociability. As such, it will appeal to scholars of history, sociology, geography, anthropology, development studies, postcolonial and social theory with interests in Latin American studies, and in the contingencies and contradictions of living together in profoundly unequal societies.