Cities Interrupted: Visual Culture and Urban Space

Cities Interrupted brings together researchers in architecture, geography, urban planning, photography and art to explore some of the ways that visual culture responds to, intervenes in, decelerates and critiques global conditions of urban speed and mobility.

Through examples in cities such as Amsterdam, Beijing, Doha, London, New York and Paris, this book discusses diverse instances of “interruption” of globalizing forces. These include: how unruly bodies interrupt cityscapes; how street art seeks to push back against the homogenization of urban space and the flattening of cultural difference; how installation art and performance may undermine or conversely reinforce the totalizing visions of architecture and urban planning; and how post-industrial urban ruins are revived in order to decelerate the global flows that produce them.

The first chapter introduces the framework for the discussions in the following chapters. It defines interruption as a wide range of temporal interventions, which are often unpredictable and are brought about by a vast range of agents.

The book is divided into three parts: “Crisis and Ruin”, “Resistance and Renewal”, and “Bodies and Space”. Chapters in each part contain examples of interruption, including urban ruins, food trucks, scale models, the High Line park in New York, art installations, digital visualizations, pop-up shops, and photography works.

Together, these chapters point to the subtle ways in which interruption repeatedly calls attention to the public/private dichotomy of city life.

Book note prepared by Lina María Rosales