In the foreword to his biography of London, Peter Ackroyd described the city as "a labyrinth, half flesh, half stone… in a continual state of change and expansion".
In a surprisingly pessimistic moment, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright once described the modern city as "a place for banking and prostitution and very little else".
In his influential book The Rise of the Creative Class, published in 2002, the American academic Richard Florida saw the city being refreshed and reanimated by people who "add economic activity through their creativity", the so-called creative class.
City rivalries have shaped national development - in Greece, Moorish Spain and Renaissance Italy; in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro jostles with Sao Paulo; in Australia, Sydney vies with Melbourne. Closer to home, Mancunians have been said to be surprised to find Birmingham claiming to be England's second city, when they had thought that position was held by London.
Meanwhile, tables of the world's largest cities reveal a statistical shift from Europe and America to conglomerations in Asia and Africa, often characterised by vast overcrowded slums.
In 1900 Europe had more than half the world's 100 largest cities; today only London finds itself in the top 30. The population of Lagos in Nigeria now grows so fast that demographers are almost unable to track its expansion with any degree of certainty.
Just what is a city? Does it have essential elements? And how should city museums try to collect and interpret the ever-changing focus of their attention? Although the editors try valiantly to put figures and statistics to one side, it is inevitable that contributors use numbers to define the elusive nature of their conurbations.
The 12 chapters in this book are drawn from contributions to the meeting of Camoc (the international committee for museums of cities) held as part of the International Council of Museums conference in Vienna in 2007.
Deftly edited, it's a far more compelling book than others of its kind. A pity, therefore, that the dull black-and-white photos suggest that a perpetual smog has descended upon the world's cities.
The book offers perspectives on ways of interpreting the city. From Stuttgart to Sydney, Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, in the Russian Federation, to London. British contributors include Max Hebditch, a former director of the Museum of London, Jack Lohman, the current director, as well as Ian Jones, the secretary of Camoc.
Along with most of the book's other authors, they share a desire for the city museum to be not only about the past, but the rapidly changing present and, if possible, the future.
It's not an easy task. The mercurial, multifaceted, multicultural nature of the city means that there is a danger that the museum can frequently be too late to capture the moment. As Lohman tellingly asks: "Why is it that city museums often seem as if the city had departed?"
One attractive solution is to see the city itself as the museum, as happens in Portland, Oregon. This results in "richly interpretive tours, exhibits in public places, explanatory labels on buildings, and places described on cell phones and other handheld devices". In this way, the "museum" can reflect change as it happens and find ways of contributing to planning and regeneration from the front line.
In its enthusiasm for cities, City Museums sometimes gets carried away - to describe Australia as "overwhelmingly urban" is clearly nonsense. And occasionally it's just incomprehensible. Try this for size: "The materiality of city space, the solidarities of cohabitation, constitute an essential remedy for the vertigo of the open seas of globalisation."
In a changing world, as Hebditch puts it, museums have a part to play "transmitting an understanding of urban historical change in the environment, human behaviour and migration". City Museums and City Development makes a valuable, if perhaps optimistic, contribution to consideration of ways in which this can best be achieved.
Timothy Mason is an arts and heritage consultant
In a surprisingly pessimistic moment, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright once described the modern city as "a place for banking and prostitution and very little else".
In his influential book The Rise of the Creative Class, published in 2002, the American academic Richard Florida saw the city being refreshed and reanimated by people who "add economic activity through their creativity", the so-called creative class.
City rivalries have shaped national development - in Greece, Moorish Spain and Renaissance Italy; in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro jostles with Sao Paulo; in Australia, Sydney vies with Melbourne. Closer to home, Mancunians have been said to be surprised to find Birmingham claiming to be England's second city, when they had thought that position was held by London.
Meanwhile, tables of the world's largest cities reveal a statistical shift from Europe and America to conglomerations in Asia and Africa, often characterised by vast overcrowded slums.
In 1900 Europe had more than half the world's 100 largest cities; today only London finds itself in the top 30. The population of Lagos in Nigeria now grows so fast that demographers are almost unable to track its expansion with any degree of certainty.
Just what is a city? Does it have essential elements? And how should city museums try to collect and interpret the ever-changing focus of their attention? Although the editors try valiantly to put figures and statistics to one side, it is inevitable that contributors use numbers to define the elusive nature of their conurbations.
The 12 chapters in this book are drawn from contributions to the meeting of Camoc (the international committee for museums of cities) held as part of the International Council of Museums conference in Vienna in 2007.
Deftly edited, it's a far more compelling book than others of its kind. A pity, therefore, that the dull black-and-white photos suggest that a perpetual smog has descended upon the world's cities.
The book offers perspectives on ways of interpreting the city. From Stuttgart to Sydney, Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, in the Russian Federation, to London. British contributors include Max Hebditch, a former director of the Museum of London, Jack Lohman, the current director, as well as Ian Jones, the secretary of Camoc.
Along with most of the book's other authors, they share a desire for the city museum to be not only about the past, but the rapidly changing present and, if possible, the future.
It's not an easy task. The mercurial, multifaceted, multicultural nature of the city means that there is a danger that the museum can frequently be too late to capture the moment. As Lohman tellingly asks: "Why is it that city museums often seem as if the city had departed?"
One attractive solution is to see the city itself as the museum, as happens in Portland, Oregon. This results in "richly interpretive tours, exhibits in public places, explanatory labels on buildings, and places described on cell phones and other handheld devices". In this way, the "museum" can reflect change as it happens and find ways of contributing to planning and regeneration from the front line.
In its enthusiasm for cities, City Museums sometimes gets carried away - to describe Australia as "overwhelmingly urban" is clearly nonsense. And occasionally it's just incomprehensible. Try this for size: "The materiality of city space, the solidarities of cohabitation, constitute an essential remedy for the vertigo of the open seas of globalisation."
In a changing world, as Hebditch puts it, museums have a part to play "transmitting an understanding of urban historical change in the environment, human behaviour and migration". City Museums and City Development makes a valuable, if perhaps optimistic, contribution to consideration of ways in which this can best be achieved.
Timothy Mason is an arts and heritage consultant
Edited by Ian Jones, Robert R Macdonald and Darryl McIntyre
£46 AltaMira Press
ISBN 978 0 7591 1180 6
£46 AltaMira Press
ISBN 978 0 7591 1180 6
