‘The city, as we imagine it … is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate in statistics … and architecture.’

City Dreamers examines the main currents in Australia’s urban culture – from the early colonial period to the present day – by looking at the ways in which artists, social scientists, poets, writers, reformers and engineers have imagined Australian cities over the last 200 years. Graeme Davison examines a range of these observers and thinkers, and argues that there’s a particular twist to the ways in which Australians think about cities. Rather than focus on disembodied ideas on cities, Davison excavates the cultural history of the Australian city by focusing on ‘dreamers’ – such as Henry Lawson, Charles Bean and Hugh Stretton.