Epilogue: Bridged Cities (A Calvino-esque Tale)

Abstract

The concise epilogue is offered as an inadequate tribute and as a companion vignette to those included in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Here, the city of Alif is one of many “Bridged Cities” in whose creation, rise and fall can be seen metaphorically the ontological primacy of urban totality. In the end, if Digital Citiesare the future of the urban geo-humanities, they do not signal a break with previous investigations into the cultures of cities, but instead articulate a collective project in which the contradictory insufficiencies and potentialities of previous disciplinary work on the urban phenomenon still persist.