Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Urban Choreography: Central Melbourne 1985– edited by Kim Dovey, Rob Adams, and Ronald Jones

by
October 2018, no. 405

Urban Choreography: Central Melbourne 1985– edited by Kim Dovey, Rob Adams, and Ronald Jones

Melbourne University Press, $44.99 pb, 319 pp, 9780522871661

Urban Choreography: Central Melbourne 1985– edited by Kim Dovey, Rob Adams, and Ronald Jones

by
October 2018, no. 405

In her influential 1961 text The Death and Life of Great American Cities, American-Canadian urban activist Jane Jacobs famously characterised the complex order of a successful city as ‘an intricate ballet’. The ‘dance’ of a thriving city sidewalk, says Jacobs, bucks trends of uniformity and repetition in favour of improvisation, movement, and change.

It should come as no surprise, then, that a book named Urban Choreography draws heavily on Jacobs’s work. In their introduction, co-editors Kim Dovey and Ronald Jones shed further light on their choice of title: ‘A city is not a static object but an assemblage of interconnections between people and place. … Urban choreography is the practice of shepherding, of seeking to ensure that synergy and harmony prevail over chaos, but it is not micromanagement of the form or the life of a city.’’

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.