Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review...in City Living, Kukla presents the reader with an illuminating theoretical and social analysis of urban spaces and how they are constituted through both the material and social environment of those spaces as well as the activities of those who live in them... Kukla's City Living is a theoretically robust and socially-engaged work of philosophy. The synthesis of key concepts from a variety of disciplines (evolutionary biology, cognitive science, urban geography, and philosophy) makes it a contribution ripe with wide-ranging and deep insights. I recommend anyone interested in urban geography and the philosophies of architecture, embodiment, feminism, and mind to read this work. * AC Review of Books *
City Living is an ambitious book that engages the reader through a phenomenological account of how people living amongst, engaging with, and navigating each other shape urban spaces, and how all that lively embodied and emplaced activity turns around to shape them. We inhabit spaces but those spaces inhabit us. Kukla's analysis gracefully weaves theories of territory and place-making, confronts the challenges of urban gentrification to deliver vital lessons about identity and disruption, all the while taking the reader on philosophical passages through Washington D.C., Berlin, and Johannesburg to face the social-spatial dynamics of how 'city dwellers make and are made by territories.' The journey concludes with an innovative view of what the 'right to the city' means. For Kukla, the expression of this aspirational right goes beyond claims to housing by extending to the right to live one's life and to shape the cities that shape us. * Ronald R. Sundstrom, University of San Francisco *
Table of ContentsPreface Guide for Readers Chapter 1: Inhabiting Space Chapter 2: Urban Space and City Living Chapter 3: Living with Gentrification Chapter 4: Introduction to Repurposed Cities Chapter 5: The Repurposed City of Berlin Chapter 6: The Repurposed City of Johannesburg
