Unlearning the City: Infrastructure in a New Optical Field
Swati Chattopadhyay
Abstract
Cities are more than concrete and steel infrastructure. But modern urban theory does not have the language to describe and debate the vital component of urban life that is lived on the streets of cities and towns. This book presents a nuanced argument for a new vocabulary of the city, proposing a way of analyzing the materiality of the urban that captures the ever-changing element of human experience. Urban life is intrinsically messy and usually refuses to conform to the rigid views laid down in much of urban studies theory. The book looks at urban life in India with a fresh perspective that ... More
Cities are more than concrete and steel infrastructure. But modern urban theory does not have the language to describe and debate the vital component of urban life that is lived on the streets of cities and towns. This book presents a nuanced argument for a new vocabulary of the city, proposing a way of analyzing the materiality of the urban that captures the ever-changing element of human experience. Urban life is intrinsically messy and usually refuses to conform to the rigid views laid down in much of urban studies theory. The book looks at urban life in India with a fresh perspective that incorporates the everyday and the unstructured. As the first to apply the theories of subalternity for an understanding of urban history, the book provides an in-depth study of vehicular art, street cricket, political wall writing, and religious festivities that links the visual and spatial attributes of these popular cultural forms with the imagination and practices of the city. She contends that these practices have a direct impact on the configuration and knowledge of public space, and the political potential of the people inhabiting cities.
Keywords:
cities,
modern urban theory,
urban life,
urban studies theory,
India,
vehicular art,
street cricket,
political wall writing,
religious festivities
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780816679317 |
| Published to Minnesota Scholarship Online: August 2015 |
DOI:10.5749/minnesota/9780816679317.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Swati Chattopadhyay, author
Associate Professor, Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara
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