Soft City contains essays and personal reflections on urban life, discussing things such as self-expression and
gentrification. A key idea is that cities are "soft" in the sense that city dwellers can impart meaning onto them as they create their identities. Throughout the text, Raban references writers such as
Jane Jacobs,
Lewis Mumford,
Frederick Engels,
Robert E. Park,
Ralph Ellison, and
Plato. In a retrospective of
Soft City, the Museum of Walking described the "soft city" concept as a "mythic city, where illusion, dream, aspiration, and nightmare are all fixed into place...passed through and acted upon by an individual or a collective." ==References==