ABSTRACT
Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project is interpreted as a sustained and coherent exercise in urban philosophy that draws on elements of Marxism, phenomenology, surrealism, and Kabalistic theology to seek ways of escaping commodification, consumerism, and alienation specific to the modern metropolis. Core themes addressed in the Project are an analysis of urban time and the overcoming of the “phantasmagoria” impeding liberatory collective action, the unique nature of urban individuality, utopian and anti-utopian dimensions urban virtue, and the essential elements of “good city form.”
