Learning from Invisible Cities: The Interplay and Dialogue of Order and Disorder
Vinit Mukhija
Additional contact information
Vinit Mukhija: Department of Urban Planning, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, 3250 Public Affairs Building, Box 951656, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656, USA
Environment and Planning A, 2015, vol. 47, issue 4, 801-815
Abstract:
Just over forty years ago, Italo Calvino's masterpiece Invisible Cities was published in English. In the book, through a series of prose poems, Marco Polo describes the cities he has explored to Kublai Khan. Invisible Cities has been noticeably influential in urban studies. This paper examines the well-known playfulness, fabulism, randomness, and disorder as well as the often less acknowledged structure and order in this classic. It suggests that the conventional interpretation of Invisible Cities in urban studies literature underappreciates the complementary importance of structure and order in this novel. Based on my reading of Invisible Cities and Calvino's work, I speculatively call for emphasis on the interplay and dialogue of order and disorder in the design of cities.
Keywords: Italo Calvino; urban design; synergy; literary appreciation; flame and crystal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a130117p (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:47:y:2015:i:4:p:801-815
DOI: 10.1068/a130117p
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().