Imagine A Metropolis: Rotterdam's Creative Class, 1970-2000

摘要

Patricia van Ulzen's Imagine a Metropolis is not only an extensive account of the development of Rotterdam over the course of 30 years, but is also an analysis of the relation between image and physical development of a city. The book's main argument, introduced in Chapter 1, is that the representation of a city is "... much less the result of that city's development than a key factor itself in that development" (p. 33). Thus, the question is not whether Rotterdam is, or should be, a metropolis; instead, it is whether people, particularly policy makers and those in the creative scene, imagine it to be a metropolis, and to what extent they base their actions on this belief.