Series Title | Journal of Contemporary European Studies |
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Series Details | Vol.25, No.4, December 2017 |
Publication Date | December 2017 |
ISSN | 1478-2804 |
Content Type | Journal | Series | Blog |
The mainstream imagination of the European city is commonly based around a cultural topography of the ‘centre’: the urban ‘core’ in which power, history and collective social life is performed. These identities are most readily articulated through the stereotypical itineraries of the tourist, and perpetuated in the monikers of Paris as the city of lights and love, Berlin as a city of war and walls and Milan as the city of fashion and food. While these clichés have their roots in the material histories of each city, they become potential tools in the era of neoliberal marketing for the instrumentalisation of the past. This packaging of the past potentially neglects the experience of those who do not conveniently fit the promotional image of the city. But, in its complexity and mobility urban space defies clichés, and as such has continuously been the site of tensions between governmental and planning ideals of coherence, order and continuity on the one hand, and the realities of the city as a complex assemblage of subjectivities, societies and environments in flux on the other. The three cities - Berlin, Milan and Paris - discussed in this special issue each provide different contexts for the exploration of this complex, multilayered fabric of urban life. As the articles gathered here demonstrate, the question of what it means to live, and what life means in the contemporary European city is often most fiercely debated, contested and decided at the edges of the neoliberal hegemonic centre. Articles in this special issue: |
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Source Link | http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjea20 |
Countries / Regions | Europe |
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