Phenomenologies of the City

Book excerpt: This book brings architecture and urbanism into dialogue with phenomenology. The contributors are architects and scholars of urbanism with backgrounds in literature, history, religious studies, and art history. Rather than developing a single theoretical statement, the book addresses architecture’s relationship with the city in a wide range of historical and contemporary contexts. The chapters trace hidden genealogies, and explore the ruptures as much as the persistence of recurrent cultural motifs. Together, these interconnected phenomenologies of the city raise simple but fundamental questions: What is the city for, how is it ordered, and how can it be understood?