What constitutes a cinematic city has been the subject of much debate. Cinema's origins lie with cities and specifically with the processes of rapid urbanization and industrialization in Western civilization during the early modern period. At this time, new devices, modes of transportation, and architectural innovations allowed individuals to walk through or past different orderings of space and time that created a new form of spatiovisuality. From the 1960s to the 1980s, research trends related to cinematic cities often contrasted cities with the countryside and emphasized the anti‐urban sentiment that pervaded films. More recently, research has focused on multicultural exchange, global cities, specific genres, utopian and dystopian cities, urban planning, postcolonialism, reflection on the right‐wing perception of cities, and suburbs.