North American Urban Fiction

Abstract

Cities are material spaces as much as they are made up of ideas, dreams, and stories. They come into being not only through architectural design but also through the myths and stories that circulate in a specific culture and that constitute a specific nation. If we regard space not as primordial or naturally given but as being produced in social practices (Lefèbvre 1991), cities turn into vibrant and perpetually changing realms where the social imaginary of a culture and its orders of civilization are constantly being negotiated. Urban spaces are particular spaces with their own forms and rules of spatiality but they focalize and intensify the sociocultural processes and values that are virulent elsewhere in a culture (Rosenthal 2011, 11–48). Cities are neither isolated nor self-evident places; they are embedded in the history of space and of spatiality in the respective national culture. Nations define themselves against other nations not only through geographic borders, history, and politics but also through the specific ways they have found to classify and represent spaces.