A city bike rack

May 21, 2020, by Ross Wilson

Invisible Cities and Inspiration

In the latest edition of The Things That Made Us, we’re talking about Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. This book was originally published in 1972, it describes a series of conversations between the explorer Marco Polo and the Emperor Kublai Khan. The book is a fascinating examination of what it means to be human as life, death, power and loss are explored as a series of fantastical cities are described by Marco Polo.

More than just a great work of literature, the book is a tool to think with. It is a means of inspiring new ways of analysing as you can see in these pages a means to draw analogies and develop ideas about a whole host of other things. As you hear about cities, you can think about how we organise our world and the narratives we tell each other about ourselves.

Episode 7 – The Things That Made Us 

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