Cities as Multiple Landscapes : Investigating the Sister Cities Innsbruck and New Orleans

Cities are composed of a combination of urban and rural spaces, buildings and boundaries, and human bodies engaged in political, social, and cultural discourses. Together, these combine to create what the contributors to this volume call multiple landscapes. Developing a new theoretical conceptualization of cities, this book unites American and European approaches to comparative urban studies by investigating the concept of multiple landscapes in two sister cities: New Orleans and Innsbruck.

As the essays reveal, both New Orleans and Innsbruck have long been centers of multicultural exchange, have strong senses of historical heritage, and profit from the spectacular geographies in which they are situated. Geography, in particular, links both cities to environmental, technological, and security challenges that must be considered in connection with aesthetic, cultural, and ecological debates. Exploring the many connections between New Orleans and Innsbruck, the interdisciplinary essays in this book will change the way we think about cities both local and abroad.

Christina Antenhofer is associate professor of medieval history and auxiliary sciences in the Department of History and European Ethnology at the University of Innsbruck. Gunter Bischof is university research professor of history, the Marshall Plan Professor, and director of Center Austria at the University of New Orleans. Robert L. Dupont is associate professor and chair in the Department of History of the University of New Orleans. Ulrich Leitner is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Innsbruck.