City rhythm is a metaphor for the regular coming and going in cities, the repetitive activities, the sounds and smells that occur regularly in cities. The recognition of city rhythms is a useful metaphor, helping to understand modern city life. The concept of city rhythm makes it possible to understand the multitude of aspects of city life. Traditional approaches to urban thinking focus on one such rhythm only, normally the dominant one. This leads to the omission of many aspects of city life.
Dominant rhythm is a metaphor used in conjunction with city rhythm. It is the most powerful rhythm in a city, enabling the shaping and forming of time and space, both within the city and in faraway places through networks.
These dominant rhythms are not fixed and indeed change. Religious rhythms were more dominant in the past, whereas at present economic rhythms prevail.
Famous quotes containing the words city and/or rhythm:
“San Francisco is where gay fantasies come true, and the problem the city presents is whether, after all, we wanted these particular dreams to be fulfilled—or would we have preferred others? Did we know what price these dreams would exact? Did we anticipate the ways in which, vivid and continuous, they would unsuit us for the business of daily life? Or should our notion of daily life itself be transformed?”
—Edmund White (b. 1940)
“My brain sang
a rhythm I never dreamt to sing,
“I will be gay and laugh and sing,
he is going away.””
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)