"Invisible Cities" and the Urban Imagination

355 Pages·2022·7.92 MB·English

by  Benjamin Linder

LITERARY URBAN STUDIES
Invisible Cities and the
Urban Imagination
Edited by Benjamin Linder
Literary Urban Studies
Series Editors
Lieven Ameel
Comparative Literature
Tampere University
Tampere, Finland
Patricia García
University of Alcalá
Madrid, Spain
Eric Prieto
Department of French and Italian
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Markku Salmela
English Language, Literature & Translation
Tampere University
Tampere, Finland
The Literary Urban Studies Series has a thematic focus on literary media-
tions and representations of urban conditions. Its specific interest is in
developing interdisciplinary methodological approaches to the study of
literary cities. Echoing the Russian formalist interest in literaturnost or
literariness, Literary Urban Studies will emphasize the “citiness” of its
study object—the elements that are specific to the city and the urban con-
dition—and an awareness of what this brings to the source material and
what it implies in terms of methodological avenues of inquiry. The series’
focus allows for the inclusion of perspectives from related fields such as
urban history, urban planning, and cultural geography. The series sets no
restrictions on period, genre, medium, language, or region of the source
material. Interdisciplinary in approach and global in range, the series
actively commissions and solicits works that can speak to an international
and cross-disciplinary audience.
Editorial board:
Ulrike Zitzlsperger, University of Exeter, UK
Peta Mitchell, University of Queensland, Australia
Marc Brosseau, University of Ottawa, Canada
Andrew Thacker, De Montfort University, UK
Patrice Nganang, Stony Brook University, USA
Bart Keunen, University of Ghent, Belgium
Benjamin Linder
Editor
Invisible Cities and the
Urban Imagination
Editor
Benjamin Linder
International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS)
Leiden University
Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN 2523-7888 ISSN 2523-7896 (electronic)
Literary Urban Studies
ISBN 978-3-031-13047-2 ISBN 978-3-031-13048-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13048-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Praise for Invisible Cities and the Urban
Imagination
“Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is a miraculously fascinating work, a postmodern
tour-de-force that fires the imagination of the reader and, with each re-reading,
discloses new spaces and new ways of seeing. This collection of essays does justice
to Calvino’s masterpiece, as its contributors widely explore the novel’s seemingly
infinite territories, combining theoretical sophistication with close readings. The
result is a fascinating study of both Calvino and the urban imagination that will be
welcome by all who find themselves enchanted in cities.”
—Robert T. Tally Jr., Professor of English, Texas State University, USA
“Built environment professionals and researchers, social scientists, and literary
enthusiasts and scholars will appreciate this excellent interdisciplinary engagement
with Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the concreteness and elusiveness of urban life, and
the order and disorder of cities.”
—Vinit Mukhija, Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA Luskin
School of Public Affairs
“A lively, fresh, and wide-ranging encounter with Calvino’s wonderful Invisible
Cities. A great read that brings the thinking, writing, and imagination of Calvino’s
book into new conversations with urban theory and politics, revealing its power to
illuminate urban life and to inform creative writing and pedagogy.”
—Colin McFarlane, Professor of Urban Geography, Durham University
C
ontents
1 Introduction: Invisible Cities and the Urban Imagination 1
Benjamin Linder
Part I Cities & Theory 27
2 Invisible Cities: Learning to Recognize Urban Society 29
Mark Purcell
3 How to Map the Invisible 39
Mario Vrbančić
4 Invisible Cities and the Work of Storying the Future 49
Rachel Prentice
5 Paris, Latour, and Calvino 59
Daniel Little
6 Queer Cities, Bodies & Desire: Reading Nicole Brossard
Alongside Italo Calvino 69
Lianne Moyes
7 On the Epistemic Ruins of Existence 83
Luisa Cortesi
vii
viii CONTENTS
Part II Cities & Cities 95
8 “The Void not Filled with Words”: The Role of Venice in
Invisible Cities 97
Sophia Psarra
9 A Tale of Two Ethnographers: Urban Anthropologists
Read Invisible Cities 117
Emanuela Guano and Cristina Moretti
10 Fifty Years of Soul City: Lessons of a Black Utopia 131
Isabel Elson
11 Tirana Visible and Invisible 151
Matthew Rosen and Smoki Musaraj
12 The Lost City: The Pathos of Arab Jerusalem 165
Arpan Roy and Carlos Diz
13 “Submerging the City in Its Own Past”: Tracing
Glasgow’s Architectures of Inhabitation 175
Ursula Lang
14 Poetics of the Invisible, Poetics of Rubble 185
Irene Brunotti
15 Encountering Urban Mutualities and Indeterminacy
with a Dar es Salaam Taxi Driver 199
James Ellison
16 Reconstructing Memory and Desire in Bhaktapur, Nepal 209
Vanicka Arora
17 The Weight of the City: The Burden and Opportunities
of Urban Villages 225
Irna Nurlina Masron and Emily Soh
CONTENTS ix
18 Don’t Nuisance the Relented City: Community Barriers
and Urban “Keepers” in Haedo, Buenos Aires 239
María Florencia Blanco Esmoris
Part III Cities & Practice 249
19 The Architect and Invisible Cities 251
Nicola Fucigna
20 Visible Cities: Calvino in Performance 265
Kyle Gillette
21 The Pedagogy of Storytelling in Invisible Cities 279
Scott Palmer
22 Invisible Smart Cities 293
Regev Nathansohn
23 Peripheral Visions of Empire: Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo
(Homage to Calvino) 303
Jeremy F. Walton
24 Imagining São Paulo with Invisible Cities 319
Derek Pardue
25 Desires and Fears in the Invisible Eternal City 329
Ana Ivasiuc
26 Nyctopolis, the City of Darkness 337
Nick Dunn
27 Epilogue: A Comparative Palimpsest of Urban
Plenitude and Difference 349
Ato Quayson
Index 357
n C
otes on ontributors
Vanicka Arora is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Culture and
Society, Western Sydney University. She has been examining ongoing
reconstruction of built heritage in Bhaktapur, Nepal following the 2015
Gorkha Earthquake.
María  Florencia  Blanco  Esmoris is a researcher at the Centro de
Investigaciones Sociales (CIS-CONICET/IDES) interested in urban and
housing studies. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from EIDAES-
UNSAM (Argentina), where she also serves as an assistant professor.
Irene Brunotti is Lecturer in Swahili Language and Studies at University
of Leipzig. She is interested in literature, popular culture, digital publics,
urban practices, and materialities (words, dreams, desires, affect, memory,
bodies, matter).
Luisa Cortesi is Assistant Professor of Water, Disasters, and Environ-
mental Justice at the International Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), the
Netherlands. Her research weaves in the social sciences with the natural
ones, with strands from the philosophy of knowledge and semiotics. She
also founded and leads the Water Justice and Adaptation Lab.
Carlos Diz is an anthropologist interested in cities. He is a lecturer at the
University of A Coruña and member of the Societies in Motion
Research Team (ESOMI).
Nick Dunn is Professor of Urban Design and Executive Director of
ImaginationLancaster, the design and architecture research lab at Lancaster
University, UK.
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