ULTIMATE SUBURB

I

The city dissolves into myriads of fragments that derive from an ever-growing offer of possibilities to its inhabitants: the chance to live in it without being subjected to all the constraints attached to city life since times immemorial; the right to choose how they wish to move about; to choose the venues they like; to visit their favourite areas of the city; to be informed by sources of their own choice; to contact people and things they wish to; to run their businesses from home; to eliminate face-to-face contact with civil servants or authorities; to use the city’s infrastructure to create their own physical and mental microenvironment; to come to a point where they would be in a position to interpret and live-in the city in the context they have created and by the rules they have set for themselves; that is, the possibility for each one to construct his or her own personal world within the city.


II

Let’s see the flip side of globalization.
Our cities are what they are because there are other, different, cities.

The inhabitants of the cities require that their man-made environment delivers what they regard as desirable or essential to their well-being. How far are those requirements fulfilled by amenities that are available in other places and in other cities, and on the internet?


III

The most striking homogenization of the European cities took place in late 19th and early 20th century. Beaux-Arts architecture, street-cars and railway stations, kiosks and billboards testify of their inhabitants’ desire to adopt, duplicate, recreate on their own everything they considered interesting or worthwhile that existed in other cities. We now live in a world of which virtual reality is a considerable part (no novelty in history if one takes into account let’s say the imaginary world of medieval man), and distinguished by the overabundance of information and the unlimited travel opportunities. How have these factors affected our inclination to seek to live here-and-now everything offered, and has rendered us capable of taking advantage of them even they are not at hand’s distance, but in Mykonos, in London or in Istanbul?


IV

There is little doubt that to some inhabitants of Paris V Clichy-sous-Bois is felt to be closer than Taksim.
If we prepared cognitive maps of our built environment, like those Kevin Lynch devised in the 1960’s based on the image people have of their cities, they would probably include Norman Foster’s Millennium bridge, New York’s skyscrapers and Hong Kong’s Star Ferry.


IV

How has the widening of our personal universe affected our inclinations the configuration of our cities?
How far does the character attributed over the years to Athens’ coastal front depend on the fact that we are aware that in three hours we can lay on the unspoiled beaches of Mykonos?
How far have Germany’s provincial towns retained their basic features due to the fact that their inhabitants are able to spend several weeks yearly in India, in Sicily or in Crete?


VI

The homogenization of our cities will not cease, because cities develop in first place in an aggravating manner, and not by replacing older, existing structures. The factors that today contribute to the homogenization of the cities in the Western World have been shaped before and the years following World War II: invasion of automobiles in city-centers, international style, development of advertisement, corporate capital and retail chains.
How will have affected our cities at the end of the day, after 10, 20, 40 years, the new media and the new traveling opportunities? How will our cities look like tomorrow? No doubt that the Toyotas and the Volkswagens will be the same all round the world, but what about the streets and the sidewalks and the beach bars?


VII

Globalization shapes a new world. Its unifying force has been exhaustively studied. What has drawn less attention is the fact that in a world dominated by global trade, booming travel and virtual reality people tend to satisfy their needs not in the “traditional” way; they don’t imitate what they’ve seen and liked elsewhere –they consume it in situ. They might want to live somewhere and experience things either on the internet or in other cities.


VIII

This is hardly a new trend. This has always been the essence of suburbs. We are heading towards the ultimate suburb; towards a globe turned into a suburban universe.


IX
Each and every town and each and every city have a star architect designing some new building. What is demanded is far more than just good architecture. It is a sign that “we’ve got it, too”; a sign that they, too possess the object of desire. It is the old-fashioned status symbol thing keeps cities struggling to get one. But this reflects a mentality of the past. How long will this trend last? Will the Gehrys and Zahas be advertised in tourist guides as much as other features of the respective cities? Are ultimately Gehrys and Zahas real assets or does this trend have an expiry date? In a highly competitive world we might witness the reverse trend: the survival strategy for cities and cultures which cannot keep-up to an all-out competition may well be for them to develop complimentary to their competitors, and not try to imitate them.

X

Cities as physical entities have long ceased to represent the communities they shelter. A city isn’t a world. It is literally a part thereof; consisting of myriads of personal worlds. A fractal –not in shape, but in essence.

XI

Regional centers will grow complementary to each other. In that sense we will have the suburb model spread over the globe: almost-self-contained entities (self contained in the sense that will provide for everything needed for everyday activities, but not complex and rich enough to capture people’s imagination) complementing each other in the big scale, in the minds and hearts of people. In a world dominated by internet and travel opportunities no Babylon and no Rome can ever be: there is no point in creating them.

XII

Globalization means on one hand identical products flooding the globe -from PCs to music-, but on the other hand free flow of information and people: this latter aspect of globalization will make the imitation of what already exists elsewhere partly redundant. It is in this sense that the globe will become a huge suburb: a huge network of not-self-sustained cities, a sea of inhabited areas constantly dependent from what happens outside their own territory.


XIII

This dependence will be enacted in people's "minds and souls", but the repercussions of this mentality will be visible on our surroundings, as people will build and refrain from building keeping in mind that they can enjoy many things from distance or by visiting it easily. We zap across the globe and across the www. We need less physical points of recognition, because we change too fast. Koolhaas is definitely right when he claims that architecture is slow. Can cities serve as personal points of reference?

XIV

The immense spread of contemporary cities makes the built environment increasingly less representative of any collective will or perception, which was still expressed, albeit in a paternalistic manner, in the major urban-renewal projects of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The coherence of cities was once secured (to some extent even created) by the imposition of specific patterns on their physical configuration. The coherence of today’s sprawling urban conglomerations is increasingly achieved through the imposition of patterns of thought on the people living within their territories and beyond. Pure ideologies take over.

XVI

Experts, writers and artists define the “evocative power”, and also the “points of reference” and the “monuments” of cities. Travel agencies and local authorities make these focal points easy to perceive and comprehend. They define the “places to be” in each city and they shape the identity of the city itself. In times dominated by images they enhance the image of the city. They sharpen the features of the entities it is composed of; they create the “proper” image of the city. Only few features of the city’s built environment in the most physical sense of the word acquire renewed importance: What would New York be without its skyscrapers, and Athens without the Acropolis?