In the Lawscape - Introduction to the Edited Collection 'Law and the City'

In this introduction to the edited collection 'Law and the City' by A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, a survey of the current literature of law and urban geography is sketched. Special emphasis is given to feminist legal geography, environmental law and space, body and the law and other critical legal theoretical strands that in one way or another attempt to capture the elusive connection between the law and the city. In order to advance such an understanding of the connection, the text builds on existing research and suggests 'the lawscape', namely the bringing together of law and the city, the logos and the polis, in a pairing that is determined by the law and the city's needs to be mutually conditioned (regulated, arranged, delimited) by the other. While the one constitutes the horizon for the other, at the same time each one is constitutive of the other in ways that belie any impression of epistemic or even ontological distance between the two. The text closes with a brief description of each one of the fifteen chapter-lawscapes that make up the edited collection 'Law and the City', which include Berlin, London, Panjim, Istanbul, Manhattan, Athens, Dar-es-Salaam, Moscow, Singapore, Johannesburg, Sydney, Toronto, Brasilia, Mexico city, and the Cybercity, as written by some of the most original and thought-provoking theorists of contemporary critical legal theory