Published in 1967, Art in a City was the first sociological study of art in a single city. It presented the findings of a study by its author, John Willett, commissioned by the Bluecoat five years earlier, into the role that art might play in the city's resurgence. Forty years later, a new volume, Art in a City Revisited, produced with Liverpool University Press, revisited some of Willett's themes as it examined visual art in a Liverpool transformed as European Capital of Culture. By then, many of Willett's recommendations for how the city could embrace contemporary art as a way to regenerate itself had been adopted.