In 2025, I began to not only muse significantly more on the topic of ‘ordinary cities’, but also realize it as a key developing research interest and dimension for urban thought at Pedestrian Space.
In conjunction with this, I began investigating titles for literature on the topic and was happy to come across ‘Ordinary Cities, Extraordinary Geographies: People, Place and Space’, in the Cities Series at Edward Elgar Publishing, edited by John Bryson, Ronald Kalafsky and Vida Vanchan.
I just received the book in the post last month and in scanning the chapters, was intrigued to see a chapter on the city of Ithaca in upstate New York (by George Frantz) that I called home for a few years as well as exploration by diverse others on what constitutes ‘ordinary’- one of my own developing, key research questions for this topic.
The editors reflect that ‘Each chapter in this book acts as a lens to explore one town/city or collection of towns/cities’ and that ‘Each is an entry point into a discussion of the urban.’
I greatly look forward to this read as well as later, an interview with editor John Bryson on the motivations for this volume and further developing insight on the role of ‘ordinary cities’ in contemporary urban discourse, planning, practice, and study.
-Annika
P.S. I’m beginning to share a few of my own notes on developing thoughts on the role of ‘ordinary cities’ in urban discourse at the below link: