Blurb:

This chapter explores how U2’s music and stage presentation use the image of the contemporary city as a site for exploring the utopian and dystopian aspects of contemporary life. The ways that U2 approach the urban experience also point to the band’s complicity, as U2 expresses both a powerful utopian idea (social change and human progress) and dystopian problem (being complicit with market forces; being drenched in irony or postmodern flux).