The hospitalities of cities: Between the agora and the fortress

Abstract

Abstract This article calls attention to the inherent complexities of analysing and understanding the hospitalities of cities. Drawing on an urban sociological view of the city it proposes a metaphor – the agora and the fortress – as two extreme opposites, to identify levels, places and forms it can comprise. Utilizing the ‘dynamic model of hospitality’ as an analytical framework, it explores and exemplifies several host–guest relationships from a city government perspective and their dynamic interactions with higher levels of agency. These interactions are discussed in the context of cosmopolitanism, urbanism and public policy. The article concludes that the hospitalities of cities involve a variety of human phenomena that cannot be defined without ambiguity, but which are essential to our understanding of the flourishing and growth of cities, and their hospitalities. Future research should therefore include many lines of enquiry and research that no one single discipline can pursue.