What would dwelling in the metropolis be?
A metropolis in late modernity sunders the old values of familial relationships once embodied in the holiday shacks of yesteryear, with their unity between inner and outer and self and world.
Does not dwelling in the metropolis mean taking up residence somewhere? It is finding one's own place, once the organic conception with place, community and nation has been severed by the utilitarian logic and dynamics of the economy and politics.
"Finding one's own place." What does that mean in the metropolis?
Does not that appear to be limited to choosing a house or apartment from which one explores one's surroundings? There is no longer a harmonious relationship to place to any more; We are homeless and lacerated from the cuts from urban living damaged lives. We regret what has once has been, and we have a deep utopian longing to restore the lost harmony of self and place whilst searching for freedom and play in our everyday surroundings.
Homelessness is the basic condition of life in the metropolis where all is fleeting and transient. There is no new wholeness in formation to heal the pain of living with the fragments of yesteryear. We are left with trying to write a history of how we got to be here, without knowing how to go about writing a history of our lived experience. Somehow we have to become social critics of our modernist mode of urban life and subjectivity.
In choosing a house or apartment we seem to be left with good design and high quality in preference to the commercialized junk produced by the speedy and efficient production of a large number of buildings.
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