City Dreamers: The Urban Imagination in Australia

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Author: Graeme Davison

Number of Pages: 320

I became an urban historianbecause I believed that our cities deserved more of our curiosity and idealism. In City Dreamers Graeme Davison restoresAustralian cities, and those who created them, to their rightful place in thenational imagination. Building on a lifetime’s work, Davison views Australianhistory, from 1788 to the present day, through the eyes of city dreamers suchas Henry Lawson, Charles Bean and Hugh Stretton and others who have helpedmake the cities we inhabit. Davison looks at significant individuals or groupsthat he calls snobs, slummers, pessimists, exodists, suburbans andanti-suburbans and argues that there’s a particular twist to the ways inwhich Australians think about cities. And the ways we live in them. Thisextraordinary book excavates the cultural history of the Australian city byfocusing on ‘dreamers’, those who battle to make and re-make our cities. Itreminds us that for most of us the city is home, and it is there that we findbelonging.