The Invisible City: Exploring the Third Something of Urban Life
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.146647Keywords:
Calvino, Perec, Wenders, Wittgenstein, Complexity, Chess GameAbstract
With this article I intend to contribute to the debate about how to study urban life. Firstly, I argue for the relevance of invisible and silent aspects of cities and inbetween sutures, which I understand to mean a third ’something’ beyond forms and flows. Secondly, I explore several examples and draw on arguments from Wittgenstein and Lefebvre to frame this hypothesis. Thirdly, I use the chess game as a metaphor to illustrate the multiplicity and unpredictability of engagements of urban life. Finnally, I propose to approach cities in an open-ended and ordinary way, paying attention to dialectically interconnected processes and the particular conditions of possibility for knowledge.
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