Re-Thinking the City

Vincent Kaufmann, Jessica Faith Strelec

• Publisher: PPUR
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9782940222476
• eBook ISBN: 9782889149643
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Conditions for travel have changed and are still changing the world – a world experiencing what John Urry, among others, calls the 'mobility turn'. Since World War II we have been moving faster and going further – a fact that has profoundly changed our way of experiencing both the world and ourselves. The explosion of low-cost travel options has likewise had an important impact on the economy, lending to the globalization of markets and transformations in modes of production. Thus is it no longer possible to think of nation-states as autonomous vis-à-vis one another, nor of cities or regions as homogenous spaces delimited by clear-cut borders. In short, societies, like Western cities, are redefining themselves through mobility. What does this mean for the city, for its governability and governance? The goal of this book is to assess the urban implications of the mobility turn. It will likewise explore the modern urban phenomenon from the point of view of the mobility capacities of its players, i.e., their motility. In this same vein it asks that the reader consider the idea of a city or region as the product of an arrangement of a specific set of motilities.

Table of contents

• Table of contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Rethinking urban theory
• 2 Defining mobility
• 3 Describing the city based on mobility
• 4 The individual motilities that make the city
• 5 The collective motilities that make the city
• 6 Artifacts and motility
• 7 The city as a potential host: ten facts regarding the mobility of cities and its governance
• Bibliography
• Index