Imagining New York City Literature, Urbanism, and the Visual Arts, 1890-1940

Using examples from architecture, film, literature, and the visual arts, this wide-ranging book examines the significance of New York City in the urban imaginary between 1890 and 1940. In particular, Imagining New York City considers how and why certain city spaces-such as the skyline, the sidewalk, the slum, and the subway-have come to emblematize key aspects of the modern urban condition. In so doing, Christoph Lindner also considers the ways in which cultural developments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries set the stage for more recent responses to a variety of urban challenges facing the city, such as post-disaster recovery, the renewal of urban infrastructure, and the remaking of public space.

Christoph Lindner writes about cities, visual culture, creative practices, and globalization. He is Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam and founding Director of the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis. His previous publications include Paris-Amsterdam Underground: Essays on Cultural Resistance, Subversion, and Diversion; Globalization, Violence, and the Visual Culture of Cities; Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale; Urban Space and Cityscapes: Perspectives from Modern and Contemporary Culture; Fictions of Commodity Culture: From the Victorian to the Postmodern; The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader.