Phenomenology of the Winter-City

Born at Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) in 1948; B.A. (1973) in philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; M.Sc. (1977) in environmental planning, University of Calgary, Canada; Ph.D. (1982) in urban and regional planning, University of Waterloo, Canada; Principal Planner, City of Edmonton (Canada) Planning Department (1982-1990); Associate Prof. of Geography and Planning, University of Saskatchewan (1990-1995); Professor of Geography and Planning, University of Saskatchewan (1996 – present); Assoc. Member, Department of Philosophy, Univ. of Saskatchewan (2000 – present); Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada – grant (1992); SSHRC – grant application under review (2014); Fellow: Royal Geographical Society (London, UK); Member: Canadian Institute of Planners; Canadian Population Society.

1. Introduction: Intertwining consciousness, human body and the environment.- Part I. Winter and the North in the emergence of civic space.- 2. Human posture and the nightly sky: Cosmos in Diluvial prehistoric myth.- 3. The North, Axis mundi and gender myths: The primordial civic space.- 4. Winter acumen and mood disorder: Apollo, Dionysus and Foucault's History of Madness.- 5. Hero under the weather: Mood disorder and the emergence of civic space.- 6. Psychocultural aspects of weather and place: The Little Ice Age.- Part II. Body-earth-sky and city-form.- 7. Sky myths and gender projection in early city-form.- 8. The North and paradigms of balance: Harmony and equilibrium as an urban ideal.- 9. Axial Age civilizations as a project of north-hemispheric masculinity: The Antipodean myth.- 10. Philosophical urbanism from Thomas More to Walter Benjamin.- Part III. Phenomenology of the winter-city.- 12. From Cartesian doubt to heroic design: The late LIA and the Myth of the Grand Designer.-13. The late LIA and its urban sequel: Reason, mental illness and the emergence of crowd.- Part IV. Solvitur ambulando.- 14. Aftermaths of the LIA: Loss of place and the North American winter-city .- 15. Epilogue