Abstract

This book offers a collection of essays that shed light on the urban situation from a variety of scholarly angles. Chapter themes range from examinations of the city through the lens of literature, exploring how literature can be employed to frame the urban experience, to historically informed investigations of the challenges prompted by urbanization along the East Coast of China. Other chapters deal with the experience of the local and the global in the urban context or with the fact that for one and the same city various maps can be drawn to visualize and depict different features. Such maps may range, for example, from dynamic and digital visual representations that mirror real-time data traffic or sound to maps that highlight buildings and infrastructure in a city that originated in distinct historical epochs. The role of cinematic and computerized animations for challenging the existing dominant architectural paradigms is discussed in another chapter. Two contributions further deal with the development and growth pattern of urban agglomerations and one chapter discusses the proliferation of large shopping centers that offer more than just a conventional shopping experience. Finally, two chapters deal with the instrumentalization of monitoring and fortification for promoting the perception of heightened safety and security in the city.