Re-Presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the Twenty-First Century Metropolis / Edition 1

by Anthony D. King

Overview

Representations of the city have typically focused on urban dichotomies such as renewal or decline, poverty or prosperity, and politics or culture. These simplistic portrayals leave many fundamental questions unanswered. What constitutes a city? What images and discourses are used to construct it? What makes city dwellers succeed or fail?
Discussing recent visual, architectural and spatial transformations in New York and other major world cities in relation to the themes of ethnicity, capital, and culture, Re- Presenting the City moves between interpretative representations of the newly emerging metropolis and the theoretical and methodological questions raised by the task of representation itself. Contributors from an wide range of backgrounds—urban planning, philosophy, sociology, folklore studies, cultural studies and architecture—reflect on the construction of both the real and the unreal city, the images, metaphors and discourses through which the contemporary city is represented, and the texts which both mediate our experience of, as well as contribute to producing, the city of the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814746790
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	02/01/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Anthony D. King is Professor of Art History and Sociology at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He has published widely in urban, architectural, and cultural studies and is editor of Culture, Globalization and the World-System.

Table of Contents

Preface.- Acknowledgements.- Introduction: Cities, Texts and Paradigms; A.D. King.- PART 1: ETHNICITY, CAPITAL AND CULTURE: REPRESENTATIONS OF NEW YORK CITY.- Rebuilding the Global City: Economy, Ethnicity and Space; S. Sassen.- Space and Symbols in an Age of Decline; S. Zukin.- Return to the Future: Puerto Rican Vernacular Architecture in New York City; J. Sciorra.- After Tompkins Square Park; Degentrification and the Revanchist City; N. Smith.- PART 2: ETHNICITY, CAPITAL AND CULTURE: WRITING THE CITY IN AFRICA AND SOUTH ASIA.- Bypassing New York in Representing Eko: Production of Space in a Nigerian City; N. Nzegwu.- Exploring Colombo: The Relevance of a Knowledge of New York; N. Perera.- Mombasa: Three Stages Towards Globalization; A. Mazrui.- PART 3: URBAN CON-TEXTS: READING AND WRITING THE CITY.- The City Which is Not one; J. Tagg.- Analytic Borderlands: Race, Gender, and Representation in the New City; S. Sassen.- Silent Itineraries: Making Places in Architectural History; G. Crysler.- A Guide to Urban Representation and What to Do About It: Alternative Traditions of Urban Theory; R. Shields.- Me(trope)olis: Or Hayden White Among the Urbanists; J.S. Duncan.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

The collection serves as a useful introduction...but is also a quite brilliant example of the very same variety and richness found in its subject...King himself is one of the few scholars who can move easily within and between the different disciplines of urban planning, architecture, art history, geography, sociology, political science and philosophy.' - Development and Change

'This is not a book which is about definitive answers to urban questions. It is more about opening up debates and agendas, of drawing upon different images and ways of viewing the city...it is a book which encourages engagement and debate.' - Housing Studies

Editorial Reviews

Diversity is the underlying thesis to these essays, written in response to a symposium of the same name as the book held at State University of New York in 1992. The scholars take a look at world cities in relation to a growing ethnic cultural economy which is reinventing the scope and vision of New York, Colombo, and Mombasa. But the focus here is really on New York and how the city defies simple interpretation or limitations. In this respect, these deconstructionist studies are faithful to the city that doesn't sleep. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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