VIRTUAL Lisbon Livable Cities

Abstract

Writing in Current Affairs about Jeremiah Moss’ Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul (2017), Nathan J. Robinson outlines two opposing visions for the ideal city. The first “progressive” vision imagines the city as “a hub of growth and innovation, clean, well-run, high-tech, and business-friendly.” Its primary figure is the entrepreneur. The second “timeless” vision imagines the city as “a place of mystery and confusion, a bewildering kaleidoscope of cultures and classes. It is a refuge for outcasts, an eclectic jumble of immigrants, bohemians, and eccentrics … home to cheap diners, fruit stands, grumpy cabbies, and crumbling brownstones.” The respective figure is the romantic. Drawing on literature and film from Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives (1998), set in 1970s Mexico City, to John Wilson’s How To with John Wilson (2020-2023), set in contemporary New York, this paper will argue that while the former “entrepreneurial” vision has won out in the historical development of cities—”flattening” them the world around—these creative works model a more livable “romantic” vision of the city based in the use of public space, random encounters, and community. These works are motivated by the positive potential of the city described in the liberating ideas of psychogeography brought forth by the Situationists of France between 1957 and 1972, who formulated creative methods for authentic interactions with cities they saw as becoming increasingly consumeristic and capitalistic. Beneath the habituating spectacles famously described by Guy Debord are cities teeming with life.