Fragments of the city : making and remaking urban worlds / Colin McFarlane.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McFarlane, Colin, 1979- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cities and towns.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (329 pages)

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021]

Summary:

Cities are becoming increasingly fragmented materially, socially, and spatially. From broken toilets and everyday things, to art and forms of writing, fragments are signatures of urban worlds and provocations for change. In Fragments of the City, Colin McFarlane examines such fragments, what they are and how they come to matter in the experience, politics, and expression of cities. How does the city appear when we look at it through its fragments? For those living on the economic margins, the city is often experienced as a set of fragments. Much of what low-income residents deal with on a daily basis is fragments of stuff, made and remade with and through urban density, social infrastructure, and political practice. In this book, McFarlane explores infrastructure in Mumbai, Kampala, and Cape Town; artistic montages in Los Angeles and Dakar; refugee struggles in Berlin; and the repurposing of fragments in Hong Kong and New York. Fragments surface as material things, as forms of knowledge, as writing strategies. They are used in efforts to politicize the city and in urban writing to capture life and change in the world's major cities. Fragments of the City surveys the role of fragments in how urban worlds are understood, revealed, written, and changed.

Contents:

Cover

Fragments of the City

Title

Copyright

Contents

List of Figures

Prologue

Reading Fragments

PURSUING FRAGMENTS

Routes

On the Margins

An Urban World

PULLING TOGETHER, FALLING APART

Materializing the City

Urban Life Support

Volumetric Urbanism

Fragmenting Cities

Social Infrastructure

Care and Consolidation

KNOWING FRAGMENTS

In the Relation

Presence-Absence

The Gap

Knowledge Fragments

WRITING IN FRAGMENTS

Montaging Urban Modernity

Without Closure

Points of Departure

Fragments and Possibility

POLITICAL FRAMINGS

Attending to Fragments

Maintaining

In-Between

Generative Translation

Reformation

Junk Art

Relocating

Surveying Wholes

Political Becoming

Occupation

Being Present

Provisioning

Value

Exhibiting Stories

WALKING CITIES

Encountering the City

Intersecting Writings

Routes and Their Limits

Remnants

Space and Time

IN COMPLETION

An Exploded View

Experimenting

Connective Devices

Excursions

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780520382251

0520382250

OCLC:

1266907455