Alan Blum explores the symbolic and imaginative nature of the city as a vital part of everyday life in modern civilization. He introduces the city as a community that must struggle to maintain its collective identity against typical problems - problems that threaten to fragment the city's sense of itself. Blum's distinctive form of theoretical inquiry pushes the reader to move beyond conventional ways of thinking about familiar urban issues in answering such fundamental questions as: How does a city exist? How do its inhabitants define their relationship to it? Who is entitled to speak for...

A series of rich case studies examine a range of topics, including neighbourhood gentrification, subway busking, yard sales, electronic waste, and language, refining the touchstone principle of circulation for the study of urban culture, both materially and theoretically. Contributors employ a variety of disciplinary approaches to create a richly varied picture of the multiple trajectories and effects of movement in the city. An engaging work that considers city planning, urban culture, and social behaviour, Circulation and the City adds a new dimension that revitalizes the ways we have...

A series of rich case studies examine a range of topics, including neighbourhood gentrification, subway busking, yard sales, electronic waste, and language, refining the touchstone principle of circulation for the study of urban culture, both materially and theoretically. Contributors employ a variety of disciplinary approaches to create a richly varied picture of the multiple trajectories and effects of movement in the city. An engaging work that considers city planning, urban culture, and social behaviour, Circulation and the City adds a new dimension that revitalizes the ways we have...