Description
Book SynopsisAn interdisciplinary collection exploring how creative practices broadly conceived to encompass urban design, museums, graffiti, film, music, literature, architecture, and performance art, continually reconstruct the urban scene in Latin America.
Trade Review“Professor Biron, and the international colleagues whose work she has collected in
City/Art, admirably aid in the effort to move
nortamericanos' view of Latin America from the trivial to the substantial.” - Michael R. Mosher,
Leonardo“This is a fascinating, if rather fragmented, book. This fragmentedness is intentional, and is due in part to the multidisciplinary, open-ended
orientation of the collection. . . . [T]he book challenges us to approach and understand the complexity of ‘Latin American’ cities in new, productive, and
inspiring ways.” - Kristin Norget,
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute“
City/Art includes ten provocative chapters spanning a variety of topics
within the urban cultural studies field. From architecture and city planning
to more ephemeral artistic manifestations embodied in graffiti, film,
fiction and everyday life, the distinguished scholars assembled here provide
a thoughtful assessment of what is otherwise a vast, nearly incomprehensible,
hyper-dynamic subject.” - Andrew Grant Wood,
The Latin Americanist“An insightful and suggestive collection of approaches to creative practices that produce and are produced by Latin American cities.
City/Art offers a multidisciplinary collage of ways of studying and interrogating meaningful imaginaries of some of the most vibrant, amicable, violent, passionate, unequal, sensual, and intriguing cities in the contemporary world.”—
Daniel Mato, Universidad Central de Venezuela
“Urban planning in the world's most chaotic megacities? Flamboyant creativity in the planet's slums? The breathless pace of change in Latin America has left us both fascinated and confused.
City/Art creates an exciting space for real interdisciplinary dialogue between culture studies and urban planning scholars on the new challenges to urban life in some of the world's largest cities, and helps us in the urgent task of rethinking the cultural with respect to the social and political spaces in which it is imbedded.”—
Debra A. Castillo, author of
Re-dreaming America: Toward a Bilingual Understanding of American Literature“
City/Art includes ten provocative chapters spanning a variety of topics within the urban cultural studies field. From architecture and city planning to more ephemeral artistic manifestations embodied in graffiti, film, fiction and everyday life, the distinguished scholars assembled here provide a thoughtful assessment of what is otherwise a vast, nearly incomprehensible, hyper-dynamic subject.” -- Andrew Grant Wood * The Latin Americanist *
“Professor Biron, and the international colleagues whose work she has collected in
City/Art, admirably aid in the effort to move
nortamericanos' view of Latin America from the trivial to the substantial.” -- Michael R. Mosher * Leonardo Reviews *
“This is a fascinating, if rather fragmented, book. This fragmentedness is intentional, and is due in part to the multidisciplinary, open-ended orientation of the collection. . . . [T]he book challenges us to approach and understand the complexity of ‘Latin American’ cities in new, productive, and inspiring ways.” -- Kristin Norget * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: City/Art: Setting the Scene / Rebecca E. Biron 1
Part 1. Urban Designs
What is a City? / Néstor García Canclini 37
Buenos Aires is (Latin) America, Too / Adrián Gorelik 61
The Spirit of Brasília: Modernity as Experiment and Risk / James Holston 85
Part 2. Street Signs
City, Art, Politics / Nelly Richard 115
The Writing on the Wall: Urban Cultural Studies and the Power of the Aesthetics / Marcy Schwartz 127
Miami Remake / José Quiroga 145
The Jew in the City: Buenos Aires in Jewish Fiction / Amy Kaminsky 165
Part 3. Traffic
On Maps and Malls / Hugo Achugar 185
Culture-Based Urban Development in Rio de Janeiro / George Yúdice 211
Latin American Megacities: The New Urban Formlessness / Nelson Brissac Peixoto 233
Bibliography 251
Contributors 267
Index 271
