he title, My Beautiful City is a homage, not to mention a theft, from our good friend and collaborator, El Persa.

There are many books about cities, almost as many as cities, and all the serious publishers -and as you will see, even the not so serious ones- possess a complete series. This is natural, because the commentaries about the city excellently explain many of the ideas and mechanisms which govern modern life. There is no subject which unites a greater variety of topics and interests.

Practically everything has already been said about cities, and nonetheless it makes sense to continue to be concerned about them. It makes sense to speak of the people that live in cities, and we would like to be able to do so from different perspectives. We will flee from the tourist guides and avoid suggestive names with magical resonances summarized in a set of monuments or bars.

The author of each of the books which comprise our series will always be a graphic artist, someone who lives in that place, and consequently, loves and hates it, and who will have the freedom to highlight the aspects that he or she prefers. The artist can thus conceive a book about Paris, for example, which does not contain the Eiffel Tower, or a book about Helsinki which does not mention the low temperatures, since the author got used to them a long time ago.

What is important to us, above all, is that someone from Tokyo (let's say) is interested in a book about Zaragoza (for example) only for the pleasure of finding out what it is like and how the people live in that remote exotic place, even though they don't have any family there and they have not planned to make a trip.

The selection of cities will be determined by the whim of the publishers and by an Alphabetical constriction which establishes a correspondence between each one of the letters with the initial of a specific city, which cannot allow repetitions. The book about Tokyo would cancel other potential ones about Toledo and Timbuktu, and the one about Zaragoza would regrettable, hinder books about Zamora, Zacatecas, Zurich, Zagreb, and Zagora. The next books will be about Buenos Aires, Oaxaca, and Valencia.

All the books of this series will be printed in two inks; they will have the same format -17 x 17 cm.-, use 140 gr. paper and will be bound in hardback. The price of each unit, depending on the number of pages (always between 100 and 200) and the print-run (from 2,000 to 3,000 copies) will oscillate between 15-20 euros.

INFORMATION: MEDIA VACA - c/. Salamanca 49, pta. 13 - 46005 Valencia - SPAIN - tel./fax.: (34) 96 395 69 27 - mediavaca@mediavaca.net