Seeking your suggestions What’s your favourite book on cities? I’m particularly interested in scholarly books that compare cities or use a connected histories approach (architectural/urban history/art/social history). Any historical period and region of the world is welcome, thank you! - ThreadSky

laurafg.bsky.social • 31 days ago

Seeking your suggestions

What’s your favourite book on cities? I’m particularly interested in scholarly books that compare cities or use a connected histories approach (architectural/urban history/art/social history).

Any historical period and region of the world is welcome, thank you!

Comments

dvmcrae.bsky.social•31 days ago

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo15233177.html

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

Wonderful, thank you!

arjm5184.bsky.social•30 days ago

Capital by Rana Das Gupta about Delhi and for something very different, “Up in the old hotel” by Joesph Mitchell on mid century Manhattan.

laurafg.bsky.social•30 days ago

Thank you!

nconstantinidou.bsky.social•31 days ago

The Early Modern City 1450-1750 (A History of Urban Society in Europe) by Christopher R. Friedrichs is quite good!

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you so much!

hopesteffen.bsky.social•31 days ago

One that I haven't finished reading, but which I found very useful is 'Urbanization in Viking Age and Medieval Denmark – From Landing Place to Town' by Maria Corsi. This is perhaps more pre-city than city, but provides a very useful perspective.

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you so much!

mtoiv.bsky.social•31 days ago

Cities in Motion by Su Lin Lewis!

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you so much, great book!

tim-waterman.co.uk•30 days ago

Michael Sorkin's Twenty Minutes in Manhattan and Matthew Beaumont's Night Walking

tim-waterman.co.uk•30 days ago

And Carolyn Steel Hungry City and Spiro Kostof's The City Shaped and The City Assembled

tim-waterman.co.uk•30 days ago

And Matt Houlbrook's Queer London

laurafg.bsky.social•30 days ago

Thank you!

kbgraubart.bsky.social•31 days ago

It's blatant self-promotion, but my Republics of Difference connects Sevilla and Lima by looking at the ways that minority populations used the cities. Social and legal history, and a little GIS for fun.

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you so much, Karen! I’m reading it now and loving it. I may write sometime in the future about Peruvian things.

kbgraubart.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you for this, Laura! Excited to see what you are working on.

marcseg.bsky.social•31 days ago

More Econ that culture The 100 mile city by Deyan Sudjic looks at comparative cities. Mike Davis city of quartz is my favorite place to start with cultural history focus

christinekooi.bsky.social•31 days ago

Imperial Cities and the Reformation, by Bernd Moeller.

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you so much!

orelb.bsky.social•31 days ago

I am a fan of Joseph ben Prestel, Emotional Cities: Debates on Urban Change in Berlin and Cairo, 1860-1910

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you so much!

bootowl.bsky.social•31 days ago

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

lowriowen.bsky.social•31 days ago

City of Djins by William Dalrymple.

hoooaw.bsky.social•31 days ago

Not quite the sort of scholarly you’re looking for perhaps, but:
Jan Morris’s Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

I love Jan Morris. I will add this one to my list. I’m seeking to expand the scholarship I’ve read (monographs especially) that compares cities because I am starting to rewrite my current book draft. But reading literature beyond academia helps enormously (and it’s such a pleasure!).

hoooaw.bsky.social•31 days ago

Delighted it’s new for you – you have a treat in store. Afterwards, you could try her Hav as a similar city memoir but fictional

amyfuller.bsky.social•31 days ago

Barbara Mundy - The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the life of Mexico City

rhetorician.bsky.social•31 days ago

Michael Pye Antwerp: The glory years

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you so much!

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

One of my favourite books, Amy! I have read everything Barbara has published. I also love Susan Webster’s work on Quito and Seville.

amyfuller.bsky.social•31 days ago

Barbara is AMAZING

luciejones83.bsky.social•31 days ago

I cant decide on one and neither of these are comparative but I think there both great books by two of my favourite scholars; Lynda Nead Victorian Babylon (art, space, infrastructure) and Rendell’s The Pursuit of Pleasure (architecture/ space)

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you so much!

celinecamps.bsky.social•31 days ago

This might not be what you're looking for, but I really loved Pamela Long's "Engineering the Eternal City" (focused on late Sixteenth-Century Rome). Just so good &, as always with Long's work, very accessible!
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo27817717.html

laurafg.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you! I also enjoyed this book

rheinze.bsky.social•30 days ago

Garth Myers, African Cities.
From a more interdisciplinary and artistic approach, by several editors and a catalogue to an exhibition: Afropolis

rheinze.bsky.social•30 days ago

Also Mike Davis‘ work, City of Quartz and, for all its faults, Planet of Slums

rheinze.bsky.social•30 days ago

Ooh maybe on the edges of „scholarly“ but Darren Anderson’s „Imaginary Cities“ and the one by Umberto Eco!

laurafg.bsky.social•30 days ago

Wonderful, thank you!

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