Urban Mindscapes of Europe

by Godela Weiss-Sussex (Contributor), Franco Bianchini (editor)

Urban mindscapes are structures of thinking about a city, built on conceptualisations of the city’s physical landscape as well as on its image as transported through cultural representation, memory and imagination. This book pursues three main strands of inquiry in its exploration of these ‘landscapes of the mind’ in a European context. The first strand concerns the theory and methodology of researching urban mindscapes and urban ‘imaginaries’. The second strand investigates some of the representations, symbols and collective images that feed into our understanding of European cities. It discusses representations of the city in literature, film, television and other cultural forms, which, in James Donald’s phrase, constitute ‘archives of urban images’. The third and last section of the volume concentrates on the relationship between the collective mindscapes of cities, urban policy and the practice of city marketing. Contents Authors in this volume Franco Introduction. European Urban Concepts, Cultural Representations and Policy Applications Methodology and Concept Formation Rolf The Gestalt of the Urban Imaginary Jude Researching the Urban Resisting the Erasure of Places Betty ‘An Avenue that Looks Like Me’: Re-presenting the Modern Cityscape Giandomenico Urban Mindscapes Reflected in Shop Windows Nicolas Encountering the On ‘Not Taking Yourself With You’ Cultural Representation of the City Neal Strange Belfast Gothic Keith ‘Seeing the Future’: Urban Dystopia in Wells and Lang Barry Strangers (to) Cityscapes and Mindscapes in 1980s European Cinema Hugh O' Once in TV’s Royal Television Coverage of Royal Media Events Matthew Cartoons and the Comic Exposure of the European City of Culture Levente POLYÁ Drifting Semantic Changes of the Bridge Metaphor in Twentieth-Century Budapest Stuart Reconstructing the Ancient Imagining the Athenian Polis Applications of the Concept of Urban Mindscapes Klaus The Myth of the Imagined and the Staged City Godela Berlin Literature and its Use in the Marketing of the ‘New Berlin’ Doris Sites and the Urban Museum in a Changing Urban Structure Lia Identity by Invocation or by Design? How Planning is Conjuring up a New Identity for Malmö Paul BROOKES, interviewed by Franco Confessions of a Place Marketer

300 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 2006