Reading the City: Episodes in Parisian d

At least from the early moments of the European enlightenment the tension between the vision of an ideal functioning city and the reality of cities growing beyond easy surveillance at any level from the political to the experiential might be said to have led to a new epoch in the very consciousness of the urban. The idea of the legible city emerged even as the very possibility of obtaining the vantage point for such comprehensive seemed more and more elusive. The seminar will offer a meander through the landscape of this tension juxtaposing theoretical and technical literature from the discourse on the planned city that emerged in the mid-18th century – we might say in the aftermath of the dismantling under Louis XIV of the city’s walls that defined its limits and form – and which led to the formation of the modern profession of urban planning in the final years of the 19th century with the rise of a new urban literature. In the novel in particular, the urban setting became ever more a frame, a presence, and even a character and protagonist, for instance in Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris.  Our aim will to be read across a rising professional literature and a growing presence of the city in literature.  It is hoped that seminar participants themselves will develop a great agility in “reading” architectural and urban space.