Description
Book SynopsisDystopic imagery has figured prominently in modern depictions of the urban landscape. The city is often portrayed as a terrifying world of darkness, crisis, and catastrophe. This book traces the history of the modern city through its critical representations in art, cinema, print journalism, literature, sociology, and architecture.
Trade Review"Noir Urbanisms deserves to be widely read and debated. In describing why inequalities or disasters have occurred, this becomes a lesson for the architects and urban designers master-planning cities of the future."--Esme Fieldhouse, Blueprint Magazine
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Imaging the Modern City, Darkly by Gyan Prakash 1 MODERNISM AND URBAN DYSTOPIA Chapter 1: The Phantasm of the Apocalypse: Metropolis and Weimar Modernity by Anton Kaes 17 Chapter 2: Sounds Like Hell: Beyond Dystopian Noise by James Donald 31 Chapter 3: Tlatelolco: Mexico City's Urban Dystopia by Ruben Gallo 53 THE AESTHETICS OF THE DARK CITY Chapter 4: A Regional Geography of Film Noir:Urban Dystopias On- and Offscreen by Mark Shiel 75 Chapter 5: Oh No, There Goes Tokyo: Recreational Apocalypse and the City in Postwar Japanese Popular Culture by William M. Tsutsui 104 Chapter 6: Postsocialist Urban Dystopia? by Li Zhang 127 Chapter 7: Friction, Collision, and the Grotesque: The Dystopic Fragments of Bombay Cinema by Ranjani Mazumdar 150 IMAGING URBAN CRISIS Chapter 8: Topographies of Distress: Tokyo, c. 1930 by David R. Ambaras 187 Chapter 9: Living in Dystopia: Past, Present, and Future in Contemporary African Cities by Jennifer Robinson 218 Chapter 10: Imaging Urban Breakdown: Delhi in the 1990s Ravi Sundaram by 241 Contributors 261 Index 265
