Literatures of Urban Possibility

Preface
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
1 The Possible in Literature and Urban Life: Clearing the Field
	A Two-Pronged Approach
	Past, Present, Future
	The Possible in Literature
	Possible Cities
	Possible Urban Lives
	Outline of Chapters
		Possible Cities
		Possible Urban Lives
	Works Cited
2 The Possibilities of Urban Informality: Two Views from Istanbul
	Towards a New Language of Urban Possibility: Representing Urban Informality
	Literature, Transduction, and the Larger Discursive Field of Urban Informality
	Two Contrasting Visions of Istanbul’s gecekondu Neighbourhoods
	A Strangeness in My Mind
	Berji Kristin
	The Successive Battles of the Squatter Settlement in Berji Kristin
	Representational Politics
	From Pamuk to Protopia: Some Concluding Extrapolations on Urban Possibility
	Works Cited
Part I Possible Cities
3 Rising Towers, Rising Tides: Competing Visions of the Helsinki Waterfront in Planning and Fiction
	Children of Nineveh: Speculation and End-Times at the Waterfront
	The Helsinki Waterfront as Symbolic Landscape
	Near-Future Helsinki in Contemporary Dystopias
	Future Urban Possibility and the Healer
	Works Cited
4 From Utopia to Retrotopia: The Cosmopolitan City in the Aftermath of Modernity
	Works Cited
5 Donald Barthelme’s Impossible Cities
	Conceptualising Barthelme’s City
	Possibilities in the Fragmentary City
	Alternative Possibilities
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
6 ‘Cartographic Ecstasy’: Mapping, Provinciality and Possible Spaces in Dmitrii Danilov’s City Prose
	Introduction
	Background
	Danilov’s Provincial City and the ‘Provincial Myth’ in Russian Literature
	Literary Cartography: Place Names
	Literary Cartography: Maps
	Omnipresent Soviet Space
	Conclusions
	Works Cited
Part II Possible Urban Lives
7 Possibilities of Translocal Mapping in Tendai Huchu’s The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Mathematician
	Maps, Literature and Possibility
	Possible Mappings in The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Mathematician
	Streets and Landmarks Mapping
	Detail and Possibility in Local Knowledge Mapping
	Authorial Pictorial Mapping and Possible Translocal Futures
	Maps on Book Covers
	Conclusion
	Works Cited
8 Tipping Points: Gentrification and Urban Possibility
	Introduction
	Gentrification Research
	Ralf Rothmann’s Fire Doesn’t Burn (2009)
	Jan Peter Bremer’s der Amerikanische Investor (2011)
	Aljoscha Brell’s Kress (2015)
	Conclusion: Gentrification and Urban Possibility
	Works Cited
9 Concrete Possibilities: The High-Rise Suburb in Swedish Children’s and Young Adult Literature
	The Million Programme
	A New Genre
	Concrete Dystopia
	Everyday Resistance
	The Right to the City
	The Power of the Imagination
	Dandelions
	Works Cited
10 ‘Double Vision’: Viennese Refugees in New York and Back Home Again
	Works Cited
11 Utopian Thinking and the (Im)Possible UK Council Estate: The Birmingham Region in Literature, Image and Experience
	Introduction
	Historical and Regional Setting
	Other of the City or Its Essence? Lynsey Hanley and the Estate
	Weaving a Web Around Lion Farm: Robert Clayton and Jonathan Meades
	The Walker-Analyst and His Problems
	Conclusion: Shedding the Estate Skin
	Works Cited
12 Afterword: Urban Possibilities in Times of Crisis
	I
	II
	III
	IV
	V
	Works Cited
Index