The urban spaces we inhabit today have been moulded by a combination of historical forces - by
social and economic processes by the specific designs of urban planners and by the regulatory
and ritual practices of earlier times. As arenas of cultural activity they are also imbued with
legends symbolic associations and historical memories. This second volume of papers arising
from the conference 'Imagining the City' held in Cambridge in 2004 examines the physical
organization and the imaginative perception of cities from both a historical and a contemporary
perspective and over a geographical range that reaches from Ukraine to Mexico. It includes
discussions of the ways in which cities have been envisaged in late antiquity in the Middle
Ages and in early modern times as sites of religious cultural and political rituals of the
uses to which urban spaces have been put by industrial societies and by the political cultures
of the twentieth century and of the implications for the populations of particular cities of
the roles these have played in establishing the historical identity of particular communities
(whether national political or religious) and in the delineation of boundaries between
cultures.
