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A poetic urbanism: Recreating places, remade to measure, but from the inside out

This commentary offers a reflection on Flusty’s piece ‘The Emperor’s Used Clothes, or, Places Remade to Measure’ in City 14(3). It is argued that Flusty uses the imagination as a methodological device for transforming our understanding of the urban experience and, in doing so, invites a comparison with the English Romantic poet S.T. Coleridge. In addition to outlining stylistic similarities in their work, this commentary argues that Flusty’s analysis of the generic development of cities globally offers an example of how Coleridge’s theories of the imaginative faculty can be applied today. Extended from their origins where they offered analytical insight into the processes of poetic writing, Coleridge’s theories are shown, via Flusty, to be of value in augmenting our comprehension and representations of contemporary city life.