The Spirit of Cities
21st Feb 2012; 13:00
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In an increasingly “flat” world, does it make sense to think of today’s huge, diverse and pluralistic cities as representing different political and cultural values? Cities shape the lives of billions of people, and yet they have been overshadowed in contemporary political thought by nation states, identity groups and concepts like justice and freedom.In their new book 'The Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in a Global Age' leading social scientists Avner de Shalit and Daniel Bell revive the classical idea that a city expresses its own unique ethos or values, and argue that cultivating the “spirit of cities” is the best antidote to the homogenising tendencies of globalisation and can help curb the excesses of nationalism.
Speaker: Avner de-Shalit, Professor of Democracy and Human Rights, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and co-author, with Daniel A. Bell, of 'The Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in a Global Age' (Princeton University Press, 2012).
Chair: Dr Fran Tonkiss, Reader in Sociology, and Director of the Cities Programme, LSE
See what people said on Twitter: #RSAcities
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