In the City---A Narrative About Urban Dreams

Author: Shu Kewen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-02-12
Features: The ideal of a city utopia always requires abandoning the social masses and memory, looking ahead to reorganized spaces and design environments based on a vague vision of the future. Yet, the true value of life comes from relationships among people, including deceased relatives and neighbors, as they are an integral part of life. Therefore, the value of life not only stems from imagination about the future but also from the intricate connections accumulated day by day with the environment in the daily routines of life, death, and illness. All these form the essential source of emotional fulfillment and harmonious security for individuals. A good city should respond to these aspects. A new city provides its inhabitants with a fresh set of life principles and a new understanding of humanity, compressing and distorting judgments about past lives in the face of prevailing urban ideals. How do people in the city reorganize their emotional content and reconstruct their life experiences outside the logic of their daily lives? This book describes the evolving urban form through specific localized changes during the process of reconstruction.