Chapter 8 – Reflecting on the City

“No amount of words could ever go near to capturing the essence of Sydney. Neither can these pictures. There is no way, ultimately, to really tell the history of city. At best, these images are an invitation to explore this place called Sydney, and to add a bit more meaning to every new journey we take here.” (Fitzgerald 1995; p.32)

If we take the city as truly understood only when experiencing it directly, then such experiences need to be considered when constructing a representational identity for that city. If a tourist visits a city, it is that moment of actually being in that city that is significant and not the icon that enticed them to come.

Examining the wealth of experiences, textures and components to a city surely it is possible to delve into these quieter aspects of Sydney’s identity to balance the over emphasis on the more obvious distinctive aspects that currently appeal to tourists. The possibilities of narratives and representations of a city are truly infinite, almost incomprehensible. From a research point of view it makes it extremely difficult to value only a handful of these possibilities as worthwhile. The aim is not to necessarily identify the “best” method of representation, but to broaden our perceptions of representing the city.