"In this encyclopedic book, British architectural visionary Nigel Coates asks us to reimagine the city as a dynamic hybrid of inventive design and cross-cultural political empowerment. His innovative view of the contemporary metropolis is presented in the form of Ecstacity, a hypothetical place that collapses the real into the imaginary, with fragments of cities from around the world woven together into one multifaceted urban fabric. With streetscapes, buildings, and plans appropriated from Tokyo, Cairo, London, New York, Rome, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro, Ecstacity constructs an urban kaleidoscope marked by cultural diversity and suggests that pluralism, and not uniformity, is the best response to the multiplication of modern lifestyles and revolutions in global communication"--Bookjacket.