Urban Mindscapes of Europe (European Studies 23) (European Studies: An Interdisciplinary Series in European Culture, History and Politics)

Urban mindscapes are structures of thinking about a city, built on conceptualisations of the city’s physical landscape as well as on its image as transported through cultural representation, memory and imagination. This book pursues three main strands of inquiry in its exploration of these ‘landscapes of the mind’ in a European context. The first strand concerns the theory and methodology of researching urban mindscapes and urban ‘imaginaries’. The second strand investigates some of the representations, symbols and collective images that feed into our understanding of European cities. It discusses representations of the city in literature, film, television and other cultural forms, which, in James Donald’s phrase, constitute ‘archives of urban images’. The third and last section of the volume concentrates on the relationship between the collective mindscapes of cities, urban policy and the practice of city marketing. Contents Authors in this volume Franco BIANCHINI: Introduction. European Urban Mindscapes: Concepts, Cultural Representations and Policy Applications Methodology and Concept Formation Rolf LINDNER: The Gestalt of the Urban Imaginary Jude BLOOMFIELD: Researching the Urban Imaginary: Resisting the Erasure of Places Betty NIGIANNI: ‘An Avenue that Looks Like Me’: Re-presenting the Modern Cityscape Giandomenico AMENDOLA: Urban Mindscapes Reflected in Shop Windows Nicolas WHYBROW: Encountering the City: On ‘Not Taking Yourself With You’ Cultural Representation of the City Neal ALEXANDER: Strange City: Belfast Gothic Keith WILLIAMS: ‘Seeing the Future’: Urban Dystopia in Wells and Lang Barry LANGFORD: Strangers (to) Themselves: Cityscapes and Mindscapes in 1980s European Cinema Hugh O'DONNELL: Once in TV’s Royal City: Television Coverage of Royal Media Events Matthew REASON: Cartoons and the Comic Exposure of the European City of Culture Levente POLYÁK: Drifting Bridges: Semantic Changes of the Bridge Metaphor in Twentieth-Century Budapest Stuart PRICE: Reconstructing the Ancient City: Imagining the Athenian PolisApplications of the Concept of Urban Mindscapes Klaus SIEBENHAAR: The Myth of Berlin: the Imagined and the Staged City Godela WEISS-SUSSEX: Berlin Literature and its Use in the Marketing of the ‘New Berlin’ Doris TESKE: Sites and Sights: the Urban Museum in a Changing Urban Structure Lia GHILARDI: Identity by Invocation or by Design? How Planning is Conjuring up a New Identity for Malmö Paul BROOKES, interviewed by Franco BIANCHINI: Confessions of a Place Marketer