City/art : the urban scene in Latin America / Rebecca E. Biron, editor.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [251]-265) and index.

City/art : setting the scene / Rebecca E. Biron -- What is a city? / Nâestor Garcâia Canclini -- Buenos Aires is (Latin) America, too / Adriâan Gorelik -- The spirit of Brasâilia : modernity as experiment and risk / James Holston -- City, art, politics / Nelly Richard -- The writing on the wall : urban cultural studies and the power of aesthetics -- Marcy Schwartz, Miami Remake, Josâe Quiroga -- The Jew in the city : Buenos Aires in Jewish fiction / Amy Kaminsky -- On maps and malls / Hugo Achugar -- Culture-based urban development in Rio de Janeiro / George Yâudice -- Latin American megacities : the new urban formlessness / Nelson Brissac Peixoto.

"In City/Art anthropologists, literary and cultural critics, a philosopher, and an architect explore how creative practices continually reconstruct the urban scene in Latin America. The contributors, all Latin Americanists, describe how creativity - broadly conceived to encompass urban design, museums, graffiti, film, music, literature, architecture, performance art, and more - combines with nationalist rhetoric and historical discourse to define Latin American cities. Taken together, the essays model different ways of approaching Latin America's urban centers not only as places that inspire and house creative practices but also as ongoing collective creative endeavors themselves. The essays range from an examination of how differences of scale and point of view affect people's experience of everyday life in Mexico City to a reflection on the transformation of a prison into a shopping mall in Uruguay, and from an analysis of Buenos Aires's preoccupation with its own status and cultural identity to a consideration of what Miami means to Cubans in the United States." -- Book cover.