Marcel Smets The book is structured into twenty-nine essays, each dedicated to a pair of urbanistic concepts. Discussing historical and contemporary, interpretive and designerly approaches to urbanity, the notions composing the 29 pairs relate dialectically, as theses-and-antitheses. Still, we are warned, ‘the presented antagonisms are not a priori in opposition, but rather complementary. “With this book, Marcel Smets not only offers an inspiring vocabulary to describe the spatial features of the city but, above all, a unique dictionnaire raisonné to discuss past and future interventions in our largest man-made artefact.” Tom Avermaete, Chair for the History and Theory of Urban Design, ETH Zürich. Smets’ fundaments may be likened to emblems. A Renaissance genre, proliferating before the Industrial Age, emblems are complex knowledge repositories, their meaning emerging at the intersection – but not as ‘sum’ of – a title, a text and an image. The paired titles, the written analysis, alternating abstractions and historic references,