Table of Contents

Foreword Prismatic Identities; Part 1 City of an Old Europe; Prologue Strasbourg, Betwixt and Between; Chapter 1 Alsace-Lorraine; Chapter 2 War and Remembrance; Chapter 3 Postwar; Chapter 4 The Cosmopolitan Eurocrats and Their Hosts; Part 2 City of a Provisional Europe; Chapter 5 The EU’s Clever Children; Chapter 6 The Invisible Immigrants; Chapter 7 “Because You Were There.” Shards of the Colonial Past; Chapter 8 “We are Here” … From Turkey, and From the World Entire; Chapter 9 Who is a Strasburger?; Part 3 Envoi; Chapter 10 On the Livable City, from the Youngest Voice of All Appendix: The Questionnnaire;

About the Author

John Western, Professor of Geography and Maxwell Professor of Teaching Excellence, Syracuse University, New York, USA

Reviews

'I have often hoped that a geographer would write a book about a place - say, a city - of such substance and originality that scholars in other disciplines simply have to take notice, learn from it, and thereby start a whole new trend. John Western's portrait of Strasbourg is such a book. Did I say portrait? Yes, I did, for it is a portrait and Western is the artist, but it is even more a self-portrait, drawn by 160 residents of all ages, occupations, and nationalities. Strasbourg, as a result, becomes vividly real, as a great novelist's city is real, as Dickens's London is real, and yet, because of Western's hidden hand guiding the narratives, teasing out their commonalities, and raising questions of varying scope, the book also illuminates urgent issues of the day. John Western's second masterpiece.' Yi-Fu Tuan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA 'No room for quibbling. What we have in Cosmopolitan Europe is clearly and simply a masterpiece. This volume is the culmination of John Western's career-long program of crafting a novel geographic genre: the quest for locational and ethnic allegiance among displaced populations as revealed through their own words. But in this beautifully written report we also have a sensitive chronicle of a hundred years of sudden shifts and turns in a comely and uniquely marginal-but-central metropolis that still remains undecided about its place within a troubled continent. Implicit in this argument with itself are questions about spatial rootedness that are becoming universal. Read and ponder.' Wilbur Zelinsky, Pennsylvania State University, USA 'Un chef d'/uvre.' Paul Claval, Universite de Paris-Sorbonne, France 'A very special book. It really brings to life a place to which I've never been, yet I feel I know intimately by the end of your portrayal of it. The interview form works brilliantly, letting the narrative be told through the people of the city. A clever idea that is very hard to pull off, and the author succeeds wonderfully. What it gives is a sense of the flow of so many historical and linguistic and ethnic forces through this one intersection, starting with the Franco-German conflicts and ending with the Islamic challenge. By pulling out those tensions the way John Western does gives the reader a great feel for the genius of the place -- somehow a creative, beautiful and functioning city has been created out of so much cacophony. It also gives one a strong sense of history - how so many extraordinary lives have been lived in this one place, many of them bringing with them cultures from all around the globe, and each one flowing into the next. Above all though, Western's deep love of the city shines through on every page and makes it a great read.' Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, UK '... a fascinating analysis of recent urban change that will be appreciated by social scientists and planning practitioners. In addition, those working in French Studies or European Studies will savor its perceptive findings and relate them to conditions in other regions of this infinitely complex continent. To my mind, Cosmopolitan Europe is a triumph of which "Monsieur John" should be justly proud.' Hugh Clout, University College London, in The Geographical Review 'Grounded in an extraordinary range of interviews conducted over many years, Cosmopolitan Europe provides a remarkable portrayal of the city - one that offers nuance and insights that go well beyond the typical urban monograph... The genius of the book lies not just in the range and depth of the interviews conducted by its author, but in the way Western tells the stories of his interviewees. He interweaves their stories with thoughtful observations of his own - extrapolating from his own background and experiences in a way that makes the book eminently readable.' Alexander B. Murphy in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers 'The work that John Western has just published offers us a rich and nuanced portrait of Strasbourg. To deal with a city torn between France and Germany and being transformed by the powerful currents of contemporary global migration is a touchy business, but John Western, who has long been interested in divided worlds, here succeeds admirably.' Paul Claval in Geographie et Cultures 'All told, Cosmopolitan Europe is a beautifully written and powerful piece of ethnography with real potential to compel the field of EU studies to take notice of what geography and geographers bring to the study of identity and integration'. Social and Cultural Geography