Book cover for The Urban Texts

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By adapting Freud's notion of "floating attention" to urban systems, Mario Gandelsonas applies a process of visual drift to the plan of Chicago. He uses mechanical eye of the computer in a "de-layering" process to read the plan of the city and to discover the system of urban notions that are specific to the American grid. Gandelsonas explores the spatial relationships between physical and abstract realities in the Chicago River area, the One-Mile Grid and its subdivisions. By highlighting the anomalies and idiosyncrasies of the grid, the moments where its regularity falters, he establishes a narrative of Chicago's urban text. In separate essays Catherine Ingraham, Joan Copiec and John Whiteman explore the philosophical psychoanalytic, and urbanistic dimension of this provocative analysis.
  • ISBN10 026257084X
  • ISBN13 9780262570848
  • Publish Date 27 August 1991
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 10 October 1996
  • Publish Country US
  • Publisher MIT Press Ltd
  • Imprint MIT Press
  • Format Paperback (US Trade)
  • Pages 96
  • Language English