This thesis proposes five conceptual headings through which to perceive the
city. They are: City as History, Spectacle, A Work of Art, Corporate Image, and
Home. Each heading is a complete concept on one level and the part of a greater
concept on another. A number of celebrity cities (e.g. London, Paris, New York, Los
Angeles, Las Vegas, etc.) are considered at each of the headings in turn.
A city is the spatial embodiment of memory and modernity. Memory and
modernity are multi-facaded within a totality. Each of the five conceptions reflects
one facade and their juxtaposition provides meanings to each other. A good city can
embrace parts of the five conceptions; whereas an ideal city must achieve an
equilibrium of them all. The second part of the thesis, The Phenomenology of A
City, examines the urban experience and consciousness of citizens, through the gaze
of four representational figures of the modern city (the shopper, flaneur, stranger, and
transgressor). Finally, the theories were applied to an exceptional modern city, Hong
Kong, in which the identity and image of the city is evaluated and explored. It is
worth noting that this thesis, if not the first, will be one of the few to analyse the city
of Hong Kong from an aesthetic and historical dimension.
The modern city is too gigantic and erratic to grasp completely. This thesis,
however, approaches it from these several historical and aesthetic viewpoints. It
seeks to capture the urban experience of ordinary people with a poetic lens, and
through which one glimpses what is it to experience (a very problematic word in this
thesis) the modern city.