Introduction
Arundhati Virmani
Part I Aesthetic perceptions of urban environments: A long-term perspective
Chapter 1. Pulchritudo civitatis: Aesthetic gazes on cities in communal Italy (12th-14th century)
Paulo Pirillo
Chapter 2. London, Paris, Rome…: Travellers’ experiences of early modern European cities
Jean Boutier
Chapter 3. Cities destroyed, cities rebuilt: sightseeing after a cataclysm (London, 1666; Lisbon, 1755)
Gábor Gelléri
Chapter 4. The vertical city in science fiction: Urban utopia or social nightmare?
Alain Musset
Part II Urban everyday aesthetics as a common good
Chapter 5. Whose river is it anyway?: River as commons, river as neighbour – The Yamuna in Delhi
Surajit Sarkar
Chapter 6. Negotiating advertising aesthetics in early twentieth-century Shanghai
Cécile Armand
Chapter 7. A plea for do(ing) the right thing. An ordinary dog day in Bed-Stuy
Anthony Pecqueux
Chapter 8. Experiencing the urban through the prism of fiction and cinema in postcolonial India
Arundhati Virmani
Part III Aesthetic inequalities, a challenge for urban grammar
Chapter 9. From aesthetic assets to sensitive public policies: for an ethic of the affective city
Laurent Mathey and Rémi Baudouï
Chapter 10. Battling aesthetic inequalities in contemporary cities: afterthoughts of an Indian architect
Gaurav Raj Sharma
Chapter 11. The aesthetics of slum? Exploring the lived and the imagined narratives of Dharavi (Mumbai)
Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky and Min Tang
Chapter 12. Changing the metropolitan face in India
Interview with Giulia Ambrogi
Afterword: Inhabiting a city is not a planned activity
Jean-Marc Besse
Biography
Arundhati Virmani (EHESS, Marseilles, France) is a specialist in colonial and contemporary Indian history.
