The City Cultures Reader

Routledge Urban Reader Series

by Malcolm Miles (Editor), Iain Borden (Editor), Tim Hall (Editor)

Cities are both products of culture, and sites where culture is made and received. By presenting the very best of classic and contemporary writing on the culture of cities, The City Cultures Reader provides an accessible overview of the diverse material on the interface between cities and culture. The extensively revised and updated second edition now features fifty generous writings (of which thirty-eight are new) organised into ten parts which explore themes such what is a city?; what is culture?; symbolic economies; the culture industry; culture and technologies; everyday lives; contesting identity; boundaries and transgressions; utopias and dystopias; and possible urban futures. Designed to aid student understanding, this new edition now features extensive introductory sections that define both the city and culture. Part introductions outline the major themes, whilst introductions to the individual writings explain their interest and significance to wider debates. Annotated further reading is also provided at the end of each part.

556 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Malcolm Miles is a writer and researcher on critical theory, art and urbanism. His writing spans the arts, humanities and social sciences, with a focus on the Frankfurt School as well as modern and contemporary art and architecture. His book on Herbert Marcuse (2011) investigates Marcuse’s aesthetic theory and links Marcuse’s critiques of specific areas of literature to more recent visual art practices. His book on eco-aesthetics (2014) reconsiders aesthetics as a branch of philosophy, setting this beside green political and social perspectives since the 1960s and a diverse range of contemporary art. Cities and Literature (2019) thematically examines key social theories, e.g. from Georg Simmel, and cultural theories, e.g. from Raymond Williams, in context of selected areas of modern and contemporary English literature, with reference additionally to elements of French, German, Russian, Portuguese, and African post-colonial literatures (read in English). It is in the Routledge series Critical Introductions to Urbanism, designed for 2nd and 3rd -year undergraduates in the social sciences and humanities, which he co-edits with John Rennie Short (Geography, University of Maryland). To date he has authored nine books and contributed to refereed journals including the Journal of Cultural Politics, Third Text, Architecture and Culture, The Journal of Architecture, Space and Culture, and Parallax.