The modern city has many dimensions, both physical and imaginative. This book offers an innovative approach to exploring its complexity by focusing on the varied and often conflicting rhythms of urban life. Spanning the nineteenth and twentieth century, it draws on cultural texts as varied as Edgar Allan Poe's London, Parisian department stores, colonial and anti-colonial Algiers, the North American cities of recent detective fiction, and the virtual city of The Matrix. The resulting text is original in conception, vivid in its analysis and insight, and highly accessible to students