Review of "Arte(s) Urbana(s)" book

Abstract

In writing this book, the authors sought the difficult balance between a work capable of interest the academic reader and sufficiently accessible, capable of attracting the reader curious about this phenomenon. It should be noted that despite the search for balance, the tendency to direct discourse in the academic sense clearly prevails. For example, citations in a foreign language are made in the original language (English and French) which would be good academic practice but without translation it would mean a distance from readers.

The book is divided into two parts, the first part delimits concepts, the second part presents reference cases. It should be noted with regard to this organization that the fact that the second part of the book is called “Urban Art in the national context” is not completely correct because within it there is a sub-chapter on “Imbolic cases in international cities”.

It is a well-structured introduction, which would not be worthy of notice if it were not the origin of some ideas that during the book are not actually fully implemented. Noteworthy is the stated “thesis”, “Urban Arts”, which is not re-visited and also worth mentioning is the lack of accessibility to the non-academic reader. Even because in the introduction they identify 2 objectives, that of discussing concepts and that of making history. With the particular exception of not being an exhaustive history, forcing the repeated mention that the references (to authors, texts, projects and others) are partial, leaving, however, the criterion of the choices to be clarified.