Cities are socio-cultural constructions in which physical spaces stand in a symbiotic relationship with their representations. In this context, city guides play a crucial role in framing how urban spaces are mediated and engaged with. In spite of critical readings of such guides, a gender analysis is lacking. In 2006 the first Wallpaper* city guide series was launched, advertising themselves as design-conscious handbooks. In this article we incorporate gender into the making of a particular urban aesthetic as articulated in the Wallpaper* city guides. Based on autoethnographic snapshots and critical textual and material analyses, we examine how these guides simultaneously reinforce, subvert and expand binary gendered thinking through the tensions between representations and experiences of urban place. In particular, the paper points to how these guides create a gendered geography of the city within specific aesthetic boundaries and practices.
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