- Zoli professes: “Each time, a city is inscribed into a long cultural sequence, of which it is the utmost incident”3.
- A city is a condition which more or less efficiently meets its citizens. Also it is a context within which consciousness develops. How would a historian describe the contemporary urban period in about 50 years from now?
- life in the metacity
- Cities are reduced in choice byDisneylandingthemselves. It will become too perfect, there will be no more growth, and there will be a reduction of choice. But the visitors are expecting certaindisneyficationin the city.but "of every Disneyland: you can'trepurposea theme park" (88).
> Necessity being one of invention's many mothers, I have a certain faith in our ability to repurpose almost anything, provided it becomes sufficiently necessary. Then again, I suspect we've abandoned cities in the past because they were too thoroughly built to do some specific something that's no longer required.
> The Internet, which I think of as a sort of meta-city, has made it possible for people who don't live in cities to master areas of expertise that previously required residence in a city, but I think it's still a faith in concentrated choice that drives migration to cities.
> V rámci Světové výstavy EXPO 1910 která se konala v Bruselu vytvořil Otlet s La Fontainem instalaci Mundaneum jako utopickou vizi kosmopolitního „města intelektu.“ Za podpory belgické vlády se Otletův plán začal formovat do podoby enormní kolekce kartiček a dokumentů, tehdy nejmodernější technologie pro skladování informací. S iniciativou byla spojená i vyhledávací služba – uživatelé mohli poštou zaslat dotazy a za poplatek 27 franků na tisíc kartiček obdrželi odpověď. (ibid., s. 188–189)
> Recorded sound vibrates between history and pleasure. Live Sound exists only in the present. It cannot linger. This is one of the reasons why sound defines public space even more than architecture. Kids jamming that week's hit, neighbors fucking bchind a thin wall, the call to prayers divine layer competing with traffic's blare, the loud low boom of something blowing up-and its opposite, hilltop garden quiet. #las
> Architecture real or imagined-prompts memory so etfficiently because our brains are hardwired to recall things-in-places and unusual or -disturbing scenes. Memory-quiz champion envision fantastic images that correspond to what they want to remember and "place" each icon in some specific nook of their mental building. These mnemonic aids are called memory palaces. Their effectiveness speaks to how when a place is destroyed or erased, all the personal histories linked to it slip further into the past. #las
> The crowd was the veil from behind which the familiar city as phantasmagoria beckoned to the _flâneur_. In it, the city was now landscape, now a room. And both of these went into the construction of the department store, which made use of _flânerie_ itself in order to sell goods. The department store was the _flâneur's_ final coup. As _flâneurs_, the intelligentsia came into the market place. As they thought, to observe it – but in reality it was already to find a buyer. In this intermediary stage... they took the form of the _[bohème](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism "Bohemianism")_. To the uncertainty of their economic position corresponded the uncertainty of their political function.
> Drawing on Fournel, and on his analysis of the poetry of Baudelaire, [Walter Benjamin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin "Walter Benjamin") described the _flâneur_ as the essential figure of the modern urban spectator, an amateur detective and investigator of the city. More than this, his _flâneur_ was a sign of the alienation of the city and of capitalism. For Benjamin, the _flâneur_ met his demise with the triumph of [consumer capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_capitalism "Consumer capitalism").[\[7\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur#cite_note-benjamin-7)
> Fournel wrote: "The _flâneur_ must not be confused with the _badaud_; a nuance should be observed there.... The simple _flâneur_ is always in full possession of his individuality, whereas the individuality of the _badaud_ disappears. It is absorbed by the outside world... which intoxicates him to the point where he forgets himself. Under the influence of the spectacle which presents itself to him, the _badaud_ becomes an impersonal creature; he is no longer a human being, he is part of the public, of the crowd."[\[8\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur#cite_note-FOOTNOTEFournel1867270-8)[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur#cite_note-FOOTNOTEShaya2004-1)
## R&D neeeded
- [City Walks and Tactile Experience](https://contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=607&searchstr=warburg)
- [Bertolt Brecht 1935 Questions From a Worker Who Reads](https://www.marxists.org/archive/brecht/works/1935/questions.htm)
