In undertaking a systematic analysis of urban materiality, this book investigates one kind of material in Melbourne: stone. The work draws on a range of pertinent, current theories that consider materiality, assemblages, networks, phenomenology, resource and extraction geographies, memorialisation, maintenance and repair, place identity, skill, sensation and affect, haunting and the vitalism of the non-human. In appealing to the general reader, academics and students, this book provides a highly readable account, replete with evocative examples and fascinating historical and contemporary stories about stone in Melbourne.

Tim Edensor is Professor of Human Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Principal Research Fellow in Geography at Melbourne University. He is the author of Tourists at the Taj (1998), National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (2002) Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (2005) and From Light to Dark: Daylight, Illumination and Gloom (2017). He is the editor of Geographies of Rhythm (2010) and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Place (2020), Rethinking Darkness: Cultures, Histories, Practices (2020) and Geographies of Weather (2020).