Introduction: Invisible Cities and the Urban Imagination

Abstract

Fifty years have passed since the original publication of Italo Calvino’s magisterial book Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili). Despite its brevity, the work’s themes and poetics are expansive, challenging traditional conventions of genre and academic discipline. Much has been written about the book as a piece of literature, but Invisible Cities has long been a favorite among social scientists and planners as well. This collection serves as both appreciation and critical engagement, tribute and extension. To commemorate the 50th anniversary, the essays in this volume grapple with the theoretical, pedagogical, and political legacies of Invisible Cities. The chapters, by and large, approach the novel not only as a novel but as a work of urban theory, a work of evocative ethnography, a work of place-writing. Fifty years on, what can Calvino’s dreamlike book offer to scholars and practitioners interested in actually existing urban life? This chapter examines Calvino and his work before introducing the scope of the volume and the the chapters that follow.