Giovanna Sonda, Claudio Coletta, and Francesco Gabbi (eds.): Urban plots, organizing cities

Abstract

This book brings together a collection of papers on the organization of cities in stories, materials, objects, and discourses. By combining narrative analysis, network theory, and semantic readings, the book wants to approach the city through the lens of ‘‘narratology,’’ which by the editors is claimed as a missing link between the study of cities and organizations. A central notion used to frame its thematic structure is the ‘‘plot,’’ which, due to its polysemantic connotations, comes to refer to a geographical site as well as to a narrative device, supplying the story with a chronological structure. In their introduction, the editors state the book aims to counteract media discourses on urban space and ‘‘re-territorialize’’ the city through new practices and narratives. It aims to move from a cognitive approach to an ‘‘embodied reading’’ of the policies, signs, artifacts, and practices which organize the city’s spaces. In this sense, the book takes its cues from the discursive turn of the 1990s which linked urban studies to the fields of narrative and discourse analysis, the work of Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre on the politics of space, and the Latourian and Deleuzian theories on space and architecture. The editors want to cross bridges and head into new fields and territories. Not surprisingly, the book is a mixed bag. It contains an eclectic selection of topics and approaches, ranging from material structures and architectures to the hyperreal world of transnational literature and the Internet. Most chapters share a commitment to the idea of language and discourse, showing how stories and images mediate our experience and use of urban space. For example, in their chapter on the signage system of the underground railways in Paris, Jerome Denis and David Pontille critique the principle of ‘‘graphical accountability,’’ which allows travelers to move through the system smoothly but also keeps them from consciously interacting with its spaces. Public space is transformed from a collective body politic into a set of individual trajectories, ‘‘where dwelling together counts less than successfully navigating side by side’’ (p. 22). Images are also central in Barbara Gruning’s chapter on the memory and identity of East German cities. By