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July 23, 2003
I came across this phrase---modernist urbanism---and it caught my fancy. What does it mean?
traffic flows and freeways, skyscraper landscapes, garden city suburbs, inner city decay, the dominance of the car, the end of inner city urban life, the shopping mall as the mediator between the decay-of-the-inner-city and the rise-of-the-suburb and machine living.
It means shopping. department stores as a ladies delight. high art/mass culture split, the wealth of a nation as a wealth of nations an immense accumulation of spectacle of consumer images. the expansion of desire.
junk space. lots of trash. human debris
airconditioning. paralysed historical imagination. a nightmare of being eternally trapped in a shopping mall.
In the end there is little else to do but shop.
Modernist urbanism. A mode of urban life in decay.
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