Performing the City

Abstract

Cities are live performances. How people behave in the streets, in the parks, in the outdoor markets, in stadiums, and inside buildings gives cities their unique character, ambience, and tone. It is not only what physical spaces and structures signify about urban organization, hierarchies, and aesthetic invention but the imaginative behavior that people perform in and around those structures that is also important for understanding cities. The interdisciplinary field of performance studies can be instrumental in analyzing how cities are produced and performed precisely because the field and its methodological diversity bridges social, political, theatrical, and architectural forms of thought.