Memory and the City

This handbook for urban research offers a critical introduction to the methodological instruments available to scholars working on urban memory from different areas of expertise. Architects, urban scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians reflect on the strategies that can be adopted to analyze the presence of the past in contemporary cities and territories. Each chapter of the book is dedicated to the close analysis of a specific research tool, assessing its potential and shortcomings and testing it within the context of a given case study. The focus on concrete situations observed "in action" reflects an interest for the pragmatic aspect of research-making and for the back-and-forth movements between the intellectual design of an investigation and the feedback coming from its empirical outcomes. The introduction offers a panorama of present discussions on urban memory studies, paying special attention to the plurality of disciplinary perspectives and interdisciplinary connections that are at work in the field.