Spatializing the Musicking Of an Expressive Urban Imagination: A Trans-Cultural Evaluation of the Early-Modern Rock Music of Bengal

The technological reproduction of the imaginary has always reflected a polarization in urban consciousness, considering the city as the urban ‘body’—which retains a space for contemporary imaginations. Rock music of the American 60s radiates exactly such urban consciousness by constantly experimenting with lyrics, sounds, images and celebrations, which continually harmonize with the changing industrial and technocratic city structures. This paper explores a progressive cultural synthesis between the American and the early-modern rock music of Bengal. The city of Kolkata in West Bengal has always been repleted with a vibrant ‘representational space’ with a high rate of western-music consumption since the late 1970s, thus reflecting western urban ethos into the Indian urban imagination through modern Bengali rock music. Lefebvre (1974) suggests that the potential for genuine social change is possible only through the city as practised rather than the city as planned; on this note, this paper analyzes how the Indian urban imagination negotiated with the everyday urban experience of distant musical and cultural behaviours through ‘musicking’ by producing a musically reflective space where thought, feelings and different moods are crafted and performed. Further, how, in the age of technical reproduction, rock music produces a ‘counter-space’ by projecting urban ethos, which acts as an exegetic tool for the symptomatic reading of any expressive culture, and makes the city claim its spatial identity.

VISUALIZING THE CITY IN ROOFTOPPING PHOTOGRAPHY

The article examines the representation of the city in rooftopping photography. Methodologically, the research is based on A. Lefebvre’s concept of social space, and also M. de Certeau’s concept of spatial practices as agents of its production. The principal notions in this analytical framework employed in the article are the urban imaginary and the gaze in constructivist understanding, which not only reflects, but also forms the object of vision. Rooftopping photography is considered in the context of the history of the view of the city from above, which has become an important factor in the urban imagination. The expansion of rooftopping photography into the public space and the presentation of cities is associated with the development of new communication and optical representation technologies in the 2010s. The analysis of the rooftoppers’ visualizing of the city carried out in semantic, aesthetic and rhetorical aspects revealed its substantive and aesthetic qualities. Rooftoppers photos capture the moment when a person faces the city as a whole. The city converges with natural and landscape objects. In the night panoramas that make up the bulk of roofer photography, the city is represented as a space of energy flows. In rhetorical terms, in contrast to the metonymy of a promenade, roofer photography is metaphorical. In general, it is concluded that the subject of rooftopper photography is not so much the identity of the city as its universal urban beginning embodied in the centers of the world’s megalopolises. Following D. Nye and his interpreters, the aesthetic mode of the city in roofer visuality is interpreted as urban version of the sublime.

On the Embodiment of Chinese Classical Thought in Whitman's Urban Ecological Poetics——Taking the Riverbank of the Ferry Crossing Last Winter as an Example

Whitman believes that people in cities should establish a harmonious relationship between humans and nature. In his urban imagination, humans are a common link in the entire ecosystem. As a part of heaven and earth, everything is one. Through dialogue with nature, Whitman explored that man and nature should be equal and harmonious. Whitman embodies the unique urban ecological poetics in his essay the Riverbank of the Ferry Crossing Last Winter, which contains Chinese classical thought of harmony between man and nature.

Engaging with global urban governance in the midst of a crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis offers a chance for urban scholars to play an even more explicit role in shaping ‘global urban governance’. Recognizing this international political realm, and the fundamental role that information exchange plays within it, urban studies can help drive a more progressive and inclusive global urban imagination.

Adding new narratives to the urban imagination: An introduction to ‘New directions of urban studies in China’

Rapid urban development in China provides rich cases for urban research. Current urban studies in China are heavily influenced by an urban imagination embedded in the West. Using the cases of land management and environmental governance, social transformation and the spatial and regional dimensions of urbanisation, this article attempts to rethink some surprising findings from empirical research in Chinese cities and to contribute to theoretical understandings of urbanisation beyond contextual particularities. Following the narrative of ‘planning centrality, market instruments’ in China, this article highlights the political logic behind managing growth and environmental governance, social differentiation produced by interwoven state and market forces and new geographies of Chinese cities beyond the economic-centred imagination.

Welcome to fear city: crime film, crisis and the urban imagination

O livro Welcome to fear city: crime film, crisis and the urban imagination apresenta uma análise histórica e estética de filmes policiais de locação produzidos na década de 1970 nos Estados Unidos da América. Ao discorrer sobre crises urbanas do período, refletidas em novas paisagens arquitetônicas, destaques da imprensa e movimentos sociopolíticos, Nathan Holmes argumenta que os filmes de crime, em sua diversidade, tocaram os espaços públicos de maneira contundente, inclusive contrastando a vivacidade e desordem dos centros urbanos com a gradativa homogeneização suburbana.