he concept of a ‘musical city’ is based on Henri Lefebvre’s philosophy of rhythmanalysis,2 developed in the 1980s by the French philosopher and urbanist as a way of understanding our cities through the experi-ence of its rhythms. He was to develop philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s rhythmic view of life as a composition of rhythms and apply it to everyday urban life in an attempt to understand the rhythmic relationship between our body and our urban environments. To Lefebvre, the city was a sym-phony, with rhythms permeating everywhere3 and he sought to develop a ‘theory, practice and mode of analysis for the understanding of one’s environment through the experience of its rhythms’.4 In this chapter, we explore this concept of an urban symphony of rhythms, identifying the various rhythms that it comprises. But first, we need to understand what rhythm is.