This interview documents a conversation between two scholars of space and comics. Benjamin Fraser asks Dominic Davies about his recently published book, titled Urban Comics. Conversation ranges from the author's experience connecting the medium of comics and graphic novels with various themes from the geographical and social sciences. Readers are introduced to the general arguments of the book, which are supported with specific quotations from selected chapters. A range of aesthetic and political concerns are discussed, as are various comics creators and their projects.
{"title":"Infrastructure and intervention on the comics page: An interview with Dominic Davies about his book Urban Comics (2019)","authors":"Benjamin Fraser","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00058_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00058_7","url":null,"abstract":"This interview documents a conversation between two scholars of space and comics. Benjamin Fraser asks Dominic Davies about his recently published book, titled Urban Comics. Conversation ranges from the author's experience connecting the medium of comics and graphic novels with various themes from the geographical and social sciences. Readers are introduced to the general arguments of the book, which are supported with specific quotations from selected chapters. A range of aesthetic and political concerns are discussed, as are various comics creators and their projects.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48631436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The urban scenery that dominated Cairo since the nineteenth century was a spatial superimposition of tradition and modernity, represented in the social and architectural composition of the city. The cinematic medium in Egypt attempted to visualize such overlap through a vivid depiction of spatial transformations occurring within the micro and macro urban levels revealing hidden aspects of social order and organizational behaviour. This article sheds light on Egyptian filmmaker Hassan Al-Imam’s Cairo Trilogy films, based on the critically acclaimed novels by Nobel Prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz, where the story takes place in the heart of early twentieth-century Cairo spanning from 1917 to 1944. The films’ physical features illustrate the morphology of time and urban space constituting to the socio-spatial narratives of the local setting, a theoretical framework adopted by the authors named cine-spatial representation. Through the examination of such connection within the settings across the three films, the article reveals the influence of non-physical elements on the physicality of architectural and urban space, creating a visual narrative from social collectivism to individualist fragmentation.
{"title":"The architectural features of socio-spatial transformation in Hassan Al-Imam’s Cairo Trilogy","authors":"Sameh El-Feki, Taher Abdel Ghani","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00055_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00055_1","url":null,"abstract":"The urban scenery that dominated Cairo since the nineteenth century was a spatial superimposition of tradition and modernity, represented in the social and architectural composition of the city. The cinematic medium in Egypt attempted to visualize such overlap through a vivid depiction of spatial transformations occurring within the micro and macro urban levels revealing hidden aspects of social order and organizational behaviour. This article sheds light on Egyptian filmmaker Hassan Al-Imam’s Cairo Trilogy films, based on the critically acclaimed novels by Nobel Prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz, where the story takes place in the heart of early twentieth-century Cairo spanning from 1917 to 1944. The films’ physical features illustrate the morphology of time and urban space constituting to the socio-spatial narratives of the local setting, a theoretical framework adopted by the authors named cine-spatial representation. Through the examination of such connection within the settings across the three films, the article reveals the influence of non-physical elements on the physicality of architectural and urban space, creating a visual narrative from social collectivism to individualist fragmentation.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47203100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Saigon is an urban area that has undergone many political and historical upheavals. This study focuses on aesthetic qualities in an examination of The Lover by Jean-Jacques Annaud and Bar Girls by Le Hoang, which together contrast the image of Saigon during two different periods. I argue that Annaud presents the image of a colonial Saigon from a perspective grounded in nostalgia and memories, utilizing the techniques of museum aesthetics to juxtapose western and eastern spaces. Meanwhile, Le Hoang highlights the contemporary city of Saigon, reflecting in his film the qualities of an everyday aesthetics.
{"title":"From museum aesthetics to everyday aesthetics: Narratives about Saigon in The Lover by Jean-Jacques Annaud and Bar Girls by Le Hoang","authors":"Thi Nhu Trang Nguyen","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00053_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00053_1","url":null,"abstract":"Saigon is an urban area that has undergone many political and historical upheavals. This study focuses on aesthetic qualities in an examination of The Lover by Jean-Jacques Annaud and Bar Girls by Le Hoang, which together contrast the image of Saigon during two different periods. I argue that Annaud presents the image of a colonial Saigon from a perspective grounded in nostalgia and memories, utilizing the techniques of museum aesthetics to juxtapose western and eastern spaces. Meanwhile, Le Hoang highlights the contemporary city of Saigon, reflecting in his film the qualities of an everyday aesthetics.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44456753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This short-form article reviews three texts by women comics artists published with publishing house Sexto Piso. María Luque’s graphic novel, titled Casa transparente (‘Transparent house’) (2017), won the first Premio Novela Gráfica Ciudades Iberoamericanas (Ibero-American Cities Graphic Novel Prize) and captures her travels to Bariloche, Rosario, Buenos Aires, Cusco and Mexico City. The volume Las ciudades que somos (‘The cities we are’) (2018), authored by Chicks on Comics, won the second Premio Novela Gráfica Ciudades Iberoamericanas (Ibero-American Cities Graphic Novel Prize). It contains comics in Spanish by an international collective of seven creators from Argentina, Colombia, Holland, Latvia and Singapore (Bas, Caro Chinaski, Clara Lagos, Delius, Power Paola, Weng Pixin and Zane Zlemeša). The third text discussed is Power Paola’s graphic novel Virus tropical (2018), a Künstlerroman or autobiographical portrait of the artist covering her adolescence and family connections to both Ecuador and Colombia.
{"title":"Las ciudades que somos (‘The cities we are’): A review of three Latin American comics by women creators","authors":"Benjamin Fraser","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00059_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00059_1","url":null,"abstract":"This short-form article reviews three texts by women comics artists published with publishing house Sexto Piso. María Luque’s graphic novel, titled Casa transparente (‘Transparent house’) (2017), won the first Premio Novela Gráfica Ciudades Iberoamericanas (Ibero-American Cities Graphic Novel Prize) and captures her travels to Bariloche, Rosario, Buenos Aires, Cusco and Mexico City. The volume Las ciudades que somos (‘The cities we are’) (2018), authored by Chicks on Comics, won the second Premio Novela Gráfica Ciudades Iberoamericanas (Ibero-American Cities Graphic Novel Prize). It contains comics in Spanish by an international collective of seven creators from Argentina, Colombia, Holland, Latvia and Singapore (Bas, Caro Chinaski, Clara Lagos, Delius, Power Paola, Weng Pixin and Zane Zlemeša). The third text discussed is Power Paola’s graphic novel Virus tropical (2018), a Künstlerroman or autobiographical portrait of the artist covering her adolescence and family connections to both Ecuador and Colombia.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44811579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Altgeld Gardens is one of Chicago’s last remaining family public housing developments after the city’s large-scale conversion of public housing into mixed-income communities. Located at the far southern edge of the city, the community today is an island of poverty, disconnected from city services, jobs, amenities and even grocery stores. In this article, I draw on architectural plans and historic housing authority documents to demonstrate that Altgeld’s current condition is a far cry from how planners envisioned the community: as nothing short of a utopian housing development capable of supporting workers and their families and indeed, inculcating an ideal, modern citizen that would justify public investment in housing for the poor. Altgeld was, centrally, envisioned as a city for children, a kind of paradise where young, low-income Chicago families could overcome poverty and model respectability. Throughout, I draw upon theories of utopian communities to argue that geographic and social isolation was the precondition for planners’ utopian imaginations, but that isolation has also, ironically, only exacerbated Altgeld’s problems over the decades. Altgeld thus offers an instructive case study, illustrating both the modernist hopes embedded in early public housing plans and their limitations. Unlike its whiter, more affluent suburban counterparts, Altgeld is a case study in what happens when communities are isolated by policy, rather than by choice.
{"title":"A city within itself: Altgeld Gardens and public housing’s utopia","authors":"Madeleine Hamlin","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00047_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00047_1","url":null,"abstract":"Altgeld Gardens is one of Chicago’s last remaining family public housing developments after the city’s large-scale conversion of public housing into mixed-income communities. Located at the far southern edge of the city, the community today is an island of poverty, disconnected\u0000 from city services, jobs, amenities and even grocery stores. In this article, I draw on architectural plans and historic housing authority documents to demonstrate that Altgeld’s current condition is a far cry from how planners envisioned the community: as nothing short of a utopian\u0000 housing development capable of supporting workers and their families and indeed, inculcating an ideal, modern citizen that would justify public investment in housing for the poor. Altgeld was, centrally, envisioned as a city for children, a kind of paradise where young, low-income Chicago\u0000 families could overcome poverty and model respectability. Throughout, I draw upon theories of utopian communities to argue that geographic and social isolation was the precondition for planners’ utopian imaginations, but that isolation has also, ironically, only exacerbated Altgeld’s\u0000 problems over the decades. Altgeld thus offers an instructive case study, illustrating both the modernist hopes embedded in early public housing plans and their limitations. Unlike its whiter, more affluent suburban counterparts, Altgeld is a case study in what happens when communities are\u0000 isolated by policy, rather than by choice.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48556165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article provides a close reading of a book entitled A Little Bit of Beijing published in 2013, which has been well received by the Chinese public. The book presents detailed and meticulous architectural style diagrams, comic strips and panoramic drawings of three urban districts in Beijing. These visualizations provide evocative depictions of the buildings along with their interior spaces in these urban areas, calling for more attention to the role of ‘ordinary’ buildings of small shops in understanding these urban neighbourhoods. In this article, I analyse this book project with a focus on its visualizations through two dimensions: understanding the urban conditions that shape and are visualized by these visualizations and understanding the visualizations as a form of mapping. For the first dimension, I argue that the urban conditions underpinning, and depicted by, A Little Bit of Beijing resonate with the notion of ‘messy urbanism’. For the second dimension, I contend that A Little Bit of Beijing constitutes a form of slow mapping. Viewed from these two dimensions, these visualizations show subversive possibilities in addressing urban transformation issues in China as well as questioning the more conventional ways of mapping urban spaces.
{"title":"Mapping the urban conditions in the digital age, one building at a time: A case of A Little Bit of Beijing","authors":"Wen Lin","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00049_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00049_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides a close reading of a book entitled A Little Bit of Beijing published in 2013, which has been well received by the Chinese public. The book presents detailed and meticulous architectural style diagrams, comic strips and panoramic drawings of three urban districts\u0000 in Beijing. These visualizations provide evocative depictions of the buildings along with their interior spaces in these urban areas, calling for more attention to the role of ‘ordinary’ buildings of small shops in understanding these urban neighbourhoods. In this article, I analyse\u0000 this book project with a focus on its visualizations through two dimensions: understanding the urban conditions that shape and are visualized by these visualizations and understanding the visualizations as a form of mapping. For the first dimension, I argue that the urban conditions underpinning,\u0000 and depicted by, A Little Bit of Beijing resonate with the notion of ‘messy urbanism’. For the second dimension, I contend that A Little Bit of Beijing constitutes a form of slow mapping. Viewed from these two dimensions, these visualizations show subversive possibilities\u0000 in addressing urban transformation issues in China as well as questioning the more conventional ways of mapping urban spaces.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47177390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kerry Tribe’s recent film on the Los Angeles River, Exquisite Corpse (2016), blurs the lines between genres. With aspects of documentary and experimental filmmaking, it captures interactions among human and non-human life, ecological systems and machines along the river. This article develops a post-anthropocentric aesthetics from the film by drawing on Sianne Ngai’s book, Our Aesthetic Categories (2012), and Rosi Braidotti’s (2013) work on post-anthropocentrism. Bringing these resources together leads to three productive transformations of Ngai’s categories: the commodity aesthetic of cuteness becomes the differential aesthetic of interaction; the performative aesthetic of zaniness becomes the functional aesthetic of activity; and the discursive aesthetic of information becomes the peri-discursive aesthetic of sensation. The article concludes by arguing that these three aesthetic categories are well suited for describing how the contemporary built environment and the complexity of life within it might be perceived and assessed and, following Jacques Rancière, affirms these categories’ role in building a politics that is attuned to such complexities.
{"title":"Towards a post-anthropocentric aesthetics: Kerry Tribe’s Exquisite Corpse","authors":"Keith Harris","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00051_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00051_1","url":null,"abstract":"Kerry Tribe’s recent film on the Los Angeles River, Exquisite Corpse (2016), blurs the lines between genres. With aspects of documentary and experimental filmmaking, it captures interactions among human and non-human life, ecological systems and machines along the river.\u0000 This article develops a post-anthropocentric aesthetics from the film by drawing on Sianne Ngai’s book, Our Aesthetic Categories (2012), and Rosi Braidotti’s (2013) work on post-anthropocentrism. Bringing these resources together leads to three productive transformations\u0000 of Ngai’s categories: the commodity aesthetic of cuteness becomes the differential aesthetic of interaction; the performative aesthetic of zaniness becomes the functional aesthetic of activity; and the discursive aesthetic of information becomes the peri-discursive aesthetic of sensation.\u0000 The article concludes by arguing that these three aesthetic categories are well suited for describing how the contemporary built environment and the complexity of life within it might be perceived and assessed and, following Jacques Rancière, affirms these categories’ role in\u0000 building a politics that is attuned to such complexities.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42498216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since 2013, the cultural‐historical project Rolé Carioca has encouraged residents of Rio de Janeiro to reconnect with their city. Focusing on the project’s walking tours, this article examines how Rolé Carioca navigates a neo-liberal context to encourage residents of Rio to return to the street from the fortified enclaves to which they have retreated for business, leisure and housing and to visit long-denigrated areas of the city, such as its suburbs. This article elucidates the infrastructures Rolé Carioca uses to transform areas of Rio into sites of leisure for its walking tour participants. It argues that the project pursues its aims by encouraging participants to engage with their city in ways akin to, but subtly different from the flâneurs of the nineteenth century. It also probes the history and paradoxes of the means by which Rolé Carioca seeks to reconnect those who attend its events with Rio.
{"title":"Fear, funding and fans: Rolé Carioca’s walking tours and infrastructures of flânerie","authors":"Victoria Adams","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00052_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00052_1","url":null,"abstract":"Since 2013, the cultural‐historical project Rolé Carioca has encouraged residents of Rio de Janeiro to reconnect with their city. Focusing on the project’s walking tours, this article examines how Rolé Carioca navigates a neo-liberal context to encourage residents\u0000 of Rio to return to the street from the fortified enclaves to which they have retreated for business, leisure and housing and to visit long-denigrated areas of the city, such as its suburbs. This article elucidates the infrastructures Rolé Carioca uses to transform areas of Rio into\u0000 sites of leisure for its walking tour participants. It argues that the project pursues its aims by encouraging participants to engage with their city in ways akin to, but subtly different from the flâneurs of the nineteenth century. It also probes the history and paradoxes of\u0000 the means by which Rolé Carioca seeks to reconnect those who attend its events with Rio.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43834634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While the concept of transparency generally has positive connotations, as it suggests an attempt at honesty and the eradication of corruption, Ray Loriga explores its darker side in his 2017 novel Rendición. In his novel, a transparent domed city with buildings constructed entirely of glass is intended to be a utopian refuge in a country plagued by war and scarcity of resources; however, this self-sufficient city is hardly ideal, as transparency encourages citizens to constantly watch one another, engage in self-monitoring and suppress individuality. An analysis of the transparent structures in Ray Loriga’s novel Rendición facilitates a discussion about what transparency means on the internet, especially social media, and ways that utopian aspirations of transparency may sometimes have unintended consequences. This analysis is also informed by a survey of metaphorical appropriations of transparency in the cultural imaginary, with more of an emphasis on urban architecture and literature.
{"title":"The sinister side of transparency in architecture and social media in Ray Loriga’s Rendición (Surrender) (2017)","authors":"Diana Q. Palardy","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00046_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00046_1","url":null,"abstract":"While the concept of transparency generally has positive connotations, as it suggests an attempt at honesty and the eradication of corruption, Ray Loriga explores its darker side in his 2017 novel Rendición. In his novel, a transparent domed city with buildings constructed\u0000 entirely of glass is intended to be a utopian refuge in a country plagued by war and scarcity of resources; however, this self-sufficient city is hardly ideal, as transparency encourages citizens to constantly watch one another, engage in self-monitoring and suppress individuality. An analysis\u0000 of the transparent structures in Ray Loriga’s novel Rendición facilitates a discussion about what transparency means on the internet, especially social media, and ways that utopian aspirations of transparency may sometimes have unintended consequences. This analysis is\u0000 also informed by a survey of metaphorical appropriations of transparency in the cultural imaginary, with more of an emphasis on urban architecture and literature.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42034786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Edith Wharton consistently uses ‘metropolis’ as her crowning label of urban modernity. Throughout her body of work, she applies the word to two cities: Paris and New York, which is reflective of a broader trend in humanistic representations of the modern metropolis and urban modernity. In her 1920 novel The Age of Innocence, Wharton identifies and writes New York metropolitanism, laying the foundation for the later widespread representation of New York as the capital of the twentieth century, as Paris has been the emblematic capital of the nineteenth century. Her work connects our present urban modernity to the urban modernization projects of the nineteenth century, while The Age of Innocence, in particular, narrates the myriad forms the modern metropolis has taken over the last century, ranging from metropolitan geographical expansion, to the centre of culture, the centre of fashion (commercial and artistic) and the technological metropolis. Wharton’s The Age of Innocence is a compelling example of how the modern metropolis was used historically to represent the height of modern urbanity. It provides an exemplary case study of the concept as it became a part of the modern urban lexicon.
{"title":"New York metropolitan: Urban modernity in The Age of Innocence","authors":"Sophia Basaldua-Sun","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00048_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00048_1","url":null,"abstract":"Edith Wharton consistently uses ‘metropolis’ as her crowning label of urban modernity. Throughout her body of work, she applies the word to two cities: Paris and New York, which is reflective of a broader trend in humanistic representations of the modern metropolis and urban\u0000 modernity. In her 1920 novel The Age of Innocence, Wharton identifies and writes New York metropolitanism, laying the foundation for the later widespread representation of New York as the capital of the twentieth century, as Paris has been the emblematic capital of the nineteenth century.\u0000 Her work connects our present urban modernity to the urban modernization projects of the nineteenth century, while The Age of Innocence, in particular, narrates the myriad forms the modern metropolis has taken over the last century, ranging from metropolitan geographical expansion,\u0000 to the centre of culture, the centre of fashion (commercial and artistic) and the technological metropolis. Wharton’s The Age of Innocence is a compelling example of how the modern metropolis was used historically to represent the height of modern urbanity. It provides an exemplary\u0000 case study of the concept as it became a part of the modern urban lexicon.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49070483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}