"Invisible Cities" and the Urban Imagination: (Literary Urban Studies)

In 1972, Italo Calvino published Invisible Cities, a literary book that masterfully combines philosophy and poetry, rigid structure and free play, theoretical insight and glittering prose. The text is an extended meditation on urban life, and it continues to resonate not only among literary scholars, but among social scientists, architects, and urban planners as well. To commemorate the 50^th anniversary of Invisible Cities, this collection of essays serves as both an appreciation and a critical engagement. Drawing from a wide array of disciplinary perspectives and geographical contexts, this volume grapples with the theoretical, pedagogical, and political legacies of Calvino’s work. Each chapter approaches Invisible Cities not only as a novel but as a work of evocative ethnography, place-writing, and urban theory. Fifty years on, what can Calvino’s dreamlike text offer to scholars and practitioners interested in actually existing urban life?

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Invisible Cities and the Urban Imagination.- Part I Cities & Theory.- 2. Invisible Cities: Learning to Recognize Urban Society.- 3. How to Map the Invisible.- 4. Invisible Cities and the Work of Storying the Future.- 5. Paris, Latour, and Calvino.- 6. Queer Cities, Bodies & Desire: Reading Nicole Brossard alongside Italo Calvino.- 7. On the Epistemic Ruins of Existence.- Part II Cities & Cities.- 8. “The Void not Filled with Words": The Role of Venice in Invisible Cities.- 9. A Tale of Two Ethnographers: Urban Anthropologists Read Invisible Cities.- 10. Fifty Years of Soul City: Lessons of a Black Utopia.- 11. Tirana Visible and Invisible.- 12. The Lost City: The Pathos of Arab Jerusalem.- 13. “Submerging the City in Its Own Past”: Tracing Glasgow’s Architectures of Inhabitation.- 14. Poetics of the Invisible, Poetics of Rubble.- 15. Encountering Urban Mutualities and Indeterminacy with a Dar es Salaam Taxi Driver.- 16. Reconstructing Memory and Desire in Bhaktapur, Nepal.- 17. The Weight of the City: The Burden and Opportunities of Urban Villages.- 18. Don’t Nuisance the Relented City: Community Barriers and Urban “Keepers” in the Haedo, Buenos Aires.- Part III Cities & Practice.- 19. The Architect and Invisible Cities.- 20. Visible Cities: Calvino in Performance.- 21. The Pedagogy of Storytelling in Invisible Cities.- 22. Invisible Smart Cities.- 23. Peripheral Visions of Empire: Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo (Homage to Calvino).- 24. Imagining São Paulo with Invisible Cities.- 25. Desires and Fears in the Invisible Eternal City.- 26. Nyctopolis, the City of Darkness.- 27. Epilogue: A Comparative Palimpsest of Urban Plenitude and Difference.

About the Author :

Benjamin Linder is Assistant Editor at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands.