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The presence of cities in art and the presence of art in cities are two fields which have often been studied separately, be it by different disciplines (history, geography, sociology, etc.) or by various approaches within a single discipline (cultural geography or urban geography for example). Nevertheless, the increasing visibility of culture in general, and art in particular (see Debroux’s paper in this issue), in cities since the end of the 20th century tends to challenge this strict separation. Indeed, art is more and more understood as an integral part of the urban fabric in a post-industrial era. Not only are the spaces and places of art in cities being redefined, but so are its functions and relations to the urban environment. Consequently, one can wonder to what extent art – in its various forms (sculptures, murals, performances, etc.) – is urbanized in that process and the degrees to which cities are subsequently aestheticized or “artialized” (Roger, 1997).This line of inquiry explains why art is becoming a subject as well as an object (Volvey, 2014) or even a method for geographers (Hawkins, 2011), and more specifically for urban geographers, urban planners and urbanists (Vivant, 2006; Grésillon, 2010; Molina, 2010; Boichot, 2012; Debroux, 2012; Zebracki, 2012; Guinard, 2014). But of course, the spatial and urban approach of art is not exempt from theoretical and methodological issues. How could urban geographers, urban planners or urbanists study not only art in cities but also cities in art? Are there specific tools they might use to do so? To what extent can a spatial and urban approach of art be distinguishable from the one offered by other research fields such as the sociology of art or art history? This thematic journal issue explores the potential theoretical and empirical inputs that a spatial and urban approach of art can bring to the understanding of both arts and cities.Previous researches have already explored a city or several cities in a transversal perspective and on the urban scale in order to analyze cultural and artistic urban politics and the role they play in urban development (Ducret 1994; Landry 1995, 2000; Allen 2000, 2005; Sibertin-Blanc 2008; Grésillon 2014). But the studies that explore the relations between arts and cities and the urban spaces at a finer scale are still fragmented, either according to geographical areas (primarily North America, Europe, East Asia, and secondarily Middle East, Africa, etc.) or artistic media (public art, visual art, music, dance, cinema, literature, etc.). By bringing together innovative and original researches that investigate different urban contexts – with different locations or sizes (Atlanta, Los Angeles, Lyon, Paris, Palestinian refugees’ camps, Rio de Janeiro, Toulouse) – and various forms of art (contemporary art, street art, cinema, music), this issue intends to overcome this fragmentation by building bridges between cities and arts. The importance of comparison in the papers (see for instance Guillard and Pleven’s one as well as Bouhaddou and Kullmann’s one in this issue) reflects this attempt to consider together various types of cities and arts in order to better understand their points of divergence and convergence.Exploring simultaneously “cities in arts” and “arts in the cities” involves analyzing the plurality and complexity of the links between cities, societies and arts. Thus, this issue combines an internal analysis of the artworks (to highlight the question of urban representation in arts) and an external analysis of artworks (to question the co-production of arts and cities and the reception of art works in an urban context). Comparative reading within and in-between the papers in this issue will outline common concerns related to the capacity of arts to participate, to transform, to contest or to reveal the way cities are produced, as well as the capacities of cities and urban places to participate in art making.
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