City
From Audcwiki, the free encyclopedia.
City
By the city, we mean an urban area with a coherent self-identity.
Cities have traditionally been thought of as dense accumulations of people, buildings, and infrastructural tissue. But already in 1970, geographer Ronald F. Abler noted that "the production, exchange and distribution of information is critical to the function of the modern metropolis...cities are communications systems."
Until the mid-nineteenth century, the Capital city was the dominant form of urban inhabitation. From then to the 1960s, the Metropolis dominated. Since then, as cities have grown together, we have seen the rise of the Megacity and the emergence of the Postmetropolitan Realm.
Most cities are emergent systems and grow from unexpected origins. Quartzsite, Arizona is a new city that succintly reveals this process.
First, a few individuals randomly collect in close proximity and share casual interactions. Over time, they begin to interact and set up exchanges with each other, forming groups and associations. As these groups solidify and invest in territory, the local areas where they live become neighborhoods. Within each neighborhood individuals with a diverse collection of interests and skills bring communal knowledge to the group as a whole.
But a neighborhood is not a city. Only when multiple neighborhoods and larger entities interact can a city come together. As with individuals in a neighborhood, individual motives and behavior combine to form more sophisticated levels of thought and behavior. Patterns between groups emerge and new combinations form that produce urban centers within the city.
As individuals and groups gain power in cities, directions emerge. Urban sociologist Harvey Molotch suggests that the "political and economic essence" of any city is growth. Under capitalism, wealth in the city is most directly produced by the sale of real estate. For this wealth to be produced, a constantly rising urban population must be develop. Cities, for Molotch are growth machines.
Increasingly, architecture functions to fabricate a city's identity and thereby produce growth, following a recipe of disconnected monuments and islands. Over here, a historic district acts as an alibi for the absence of history. In other areas, we have a building by Frank Gehry, two buildings by Richard Meier, a building by Rem Koolhaas, a building by Renzo Piano, a building by a Japanese architect, and a building by a Spanish architect. This gives rise to urban konsumterror.
- Abler, Ronald. F. "What Makes Cities Important", Bell Telephone Magazine, March/April. (1970)