Tracing Modernity


Book Description

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.




Circulation and Urbanization


Book Description

Circulation and Urbanization is a foundational investigation into the history of the urban. Moving beyond both canonical and empirical portrayals, the book approaches the urban through a genealogy of circulation – a concept central to Western political thought and its modes of spatial planning. Locating architectural knowledge in a wider network of political history, legal theory, geography, sociology and critical theory, and drawing on maritime, territorial and colonial histories, Adams contends that the urban arose in the nineteenth century as an anonymous, parallel project of the emergent liberal nation state. More than a reflection of this state form or the product of the capitalist relations it fostered, the urban is instead a primary instrument for both: at once means and ends. Combining analytical precision with interdisciplinary insights, this book offers an astonishing new set of propositions for revisiting a familiar, yet increasingly urgent, topic. It is a vital resource for all students and scholars of architecture and urban studies. This book is part of the Society and Space series, which explores the fascinating relationship between the spatial and the social. These stimulating, provocative books draw on a range of theories to examine key cultural and political issues of our times, including technology, globalisation and migration.










Barcelona's Vocation of Modernity


Book Description

Since the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Barcelona has striven to sustain an image of modernity that distinguishes itself within Spain. Barcelona's Vocation of Modernity traces the development of that image through texts that foreground key social and historical issues. It begins with Barcelona's "coming of age" in the 1888 Universal Exposition and focuses on the first major narrative work of modern Catalan literature, La febre d'or. Positing an inextricable link between literature and modernity, Resina establishes a literary framework for the evolution of the image of Barcelona's modernity through the 1980s, when the consciousness of modernity took on an ironic circularity. Because the city is an aggregation of knowledge, Resina draws from sociology, urban studies, sociolinguistics, history, psychoanalysis, and literary history to produce a complex account of Barcelona's self-reflection through culture. The last chapter offers a glimpse into the "post-historical" city, where temporality has been sacrificed to the spatialization associated with the seductions of the spectacle.




Into the Great Wide Open


Book Description

Into the Great Wide Open is a book about a search for a form of practice in architecture. Practice here is understood both as a critical reflection of a status quo and its history, as well as forms of (active) intervention through designing and planning. The book is a fragmentary snapshot of an on going, constantly developing and altering process to find a place in the production and reflection of our built environment, and implicitly disputes the question: “What is to be done?”




After-Images of the City


Book Description

Criticism on the textual and iconographic construction of the city is extensive, yet the problem of historical change in representations of "the urban" has received little attention. Believing traditional accounts are limited by their reflection of a specific historical moment, Joan Ramon Resina and Dieter Ingenschay focus, by contrast, on transition. In essays written for this volume, scholars of literary and visual studies, the history of architecture, cultural theory, and urban geography explore the ways perceptual or conceptual paradigms of the city supersede or replace others, while at the same time retaining the "after-image" of what went before. The writers touch on a wide variety of issues related to contemporary urban cultures as they journey through cities including New York, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Tijuana, Berlin, and London. Drawing on the work of Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Camilo José Cela, Honoré de Balzac, and Alfred Stieglitz, their approach is broadly cultural rather than technical. After-Images of the City takes into account the intrinsic instability of the image and reveals that representations of the modern metropolis cannot be fixed in time and history.




Manifestoes and Transformations in the Early Modernist City


Book Description

The industrialization of the nineteenth-century European city facilitated developing conceptions of the model city, and allowed for large scale urban transformations. The urban discourse in the latter half of the nineteenth century was consequently dominated by a dialectic exchange between the ideal and the practical, a debate played out in the formation of the modern metropolis. Manifestoes and Transformations is the first work to deal with urban utopias and their relationship with actual urban interventions. Bringing together a carefully chosen, wide-ranging team of experts, the book provides a broad, contextual exploration of the ideas and urban practices which are the foundations of our conception of the contemporary city. As such, it is a valuable resource for students interested in the formation of the modernist city.




Exhibitions and the Development of Modern Planning Culture


Book Description

The evolution of city planning theory and practice in the first half of the twentieth century was captured and driven by a range of exhibitionary practices in a variety of settings globally, from international expos to local public halls. The agendas of the promoters varied, but exhibitions generally drew their social legitimacy from their status as ’appropriate educative agencies of citizenship’. Bringing together a range of international case studies, this volume explores the highly visual genre of public planning exhibitions worldwide. In doing so, it provides a unique lens on the development of modern urban planning and design from the late 19th century to the present day. Focussing mainly on the first half of the 20th century, it looks in particular at historic exhibitions which sought to transform urban society’s understanding of the possibilities of planning as a force for social betterment. The visuality of presentation, contemporary reactions, and outcomes for the planning profession and the community are explored to make for a unique, innovative and attractive approach to the history of planning ideas. The five major themes are the visual representation of ideas and ideologies; institutions and individuals involved; the broader context of display; and the impacts and implications for the development planning culture. With contributors including Karl Fischer, John Gold, Carola Hein, Peter Larkham, Javier Monclus, and Mark Tewdwr-Jones, the dominant intellectual paradigm further unifying the collection is planning history.