Living In The Hyperreal Post Modern City Cultural Studies Essay

Categories: Architecture City Experience

Essay, Pages 14 (3491 words)

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Technological alteration in the past few decennaries has occurred at a gait ne'er experienced before, and its impact has besides been unprecedented. With the displacement from the 2nd industrial age to the digital age, the speed uping flows of population, stuffs and information within the planetary web have basically changed constructs about 'permanence ' and 'transience'.1 As a consequence, metropoliss are transforming dramatically as the accent on urbanism is switching from concrete constructions to more complex and flexible administrations every bit good as 'soft ' ( digital and ecological ) infrastructures I.

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Architects and urban contrivers need to take into consideration wider webs transporting flows of information that now reach every portion of the universe and make a practical but incorporate community, instead than developments associating entirely to their immediate context. This thought is promoted in Collage 'City, where the impression of entire urbanism is rejected in favor of analyzing urban signifier as the disconnected, uncomplete consequence of every effort of all time made to organize it logically.

Georg Simmel 's The Metropolis and Mental Life ( written in 1903 ) had been extremely underrated at the clip he was composing and yet a similar topic is explored by Jean Baudrillard in Simulations ( written in 1983 ) . Through this essay I will demo how these two theoretical accounts are extremely applicable to our modern-day times and to this I am adding the geographic expedition of two active procedures that shape the posturban experience: Disneyfication and McDonaldisation. Tokyo and Las Vegas may put the utmost boundaries for these, but understanding the connexions between them and issues of simulacra and hyperreality starts suggesting at how we produce a mental image of a topographic point and more significantly, how we discriminate a topographic point from a infinite.

Life in the modern metropolis - overstimulation and hyperreality

The first portion of the essay introduces a comparative survey between two theories that emerged at a difference of 80 old ages. Even though more than a hundred old ages have passed since the first of the essays has been published, they both are highly relevant within our modern-day context. In his 1903 essay, Simmel provides one of the most acute snapshots of life in the city. The modern metropolitan person is distinguished by a blas & A ; eacute ; attitude which is itself a merchandise of the 'intensification of emotional life due to the Swift and uninterrupted displacement of external and internal stimulation. '5 This engenders a certain liberty, so that the modern single becomes an intellectualised animal whose ain disinterested circulation within the city reflects the circulation of money and commodities themselves.

The blas & A ; eacute ; attitude is explained by Simmel as an 'indifference toward the differentiation of things. Not in the instance that they are non perceived, as in the instance of mental obtuseness, but instead that the value of the differentiation between things is experienced as meaningless. '6 This psychic temper is considered to be the contemplation of a 'money economic system ' combined with the physiological beginning caused by the intensification of stimulation.

The blas & A ; eacute ; person of Simmel 's city, or 'creature of the crowd ' , can be easy identified within the webs of Tokyo. Typically individual and inhabitant of a one room sign of the zodiac they are a sophisticated consumer that does non necessitate a life room, dining tabular array or a kitchen. Housed in au naturel concrete edifices in the metropolis 's Centres, 'one room sign of the zodiacs ' are flats of around 20 M2 ( 4 1/2 tatami mats ) with a maximal ceiling tallness of 2.1 m. They normally include a prefab bathroom and a little dining/living country, and echo the manner and intent of the Nagakin Tower. Residential life of this sort has been made possible by the development in Tokyo of a comprehensive support substructure: convenience shops unfastened 24/7 ( conbini ) offer a broad assortment of services - from hot repasts, books, measure paying and laundry services, etc.7

Conbinis use a sophisticated computer-driven stock list ( known as Pointed Operation System ) to record and roll up the gross revenues figures for every metropolis block, which are so used to be after marketing schemes. The system has no demand for architecture, public, or commercial infinite, vicinities, communities, households, category, civilization or ethical motives. In short, it can make without any of the elements of the traditional metropolis, for it depends on persons who love to devour the marks of the metropolis every bit good as its blink of an eye food.8

The being of such convenience shops brings about the birth of a edifice type holding no respect for the alleged construct of 'place ' . They want to be able to run into any location, and so the issue of 'place ' is avoided. If 'place ' starts to lose its aura, so the construct of 'site ' must besides change.9 For each convenience shop store, there is non merely the physical site, but besides positioned within a site on a web. If we think of the physical site as 'real ' , we can take the 2nd type of site as 'virtual ' .

The interconnectedness between the urbanist bequest of the Nagakin Tower, the typology of the 'one sign of the zodiac room ' and the enlargement of faceless convenience shops that support the web of consumers was made possible by the enlargement of the skylines of communicating. Nowadays, they have extended beyond the household, escaped the bounds of the metropolis, rendered national boundaries meaningless and given us the possibility to pass on freely through practical webs instead than utilize archetypical infinites for communicating - the street, the market, etc.

Therefore we observe that modern-day Tokyo seems merely a verification of Simmel 's theories formulated more than a hundred old ages ago - the modern person is seen to be both a merchandise of and a defense mechanism against the modern metropolitan being. An person who has to bear an tremendous measure of stimulations, from ocular to acoustic to physical ( people in Shinjuku traversing the street at a green traffic visible radiation resemble a combat scene depicted in an action movie ) , must develop certain abilities to protect himself or herself. It might be easier for a alien as they might non be so surprised and overcome by ocular inputs ( perchance already known through the Nipponese stereotypes promoted via telecasting and cyberspace ) , but instead by acoustic 1s: advertizements through mega screens, bird-song traffic visible radiations, the unbelievable noise degree of a Pachinko parlor - all form zones of high intervention. In such an atmosphere foibles start looking, from Pachinko participants to Otaku to conbinis, as reactions apprehensible merely in a specific metropolitan state of affairs.

In footings of using Jean Baudrillard 's impressions of simulacrum and hyperreality ( which have besides been theorised by Umberto Eco ) , I will non discourse their roots in the post-modern paradigm, or the negative overtones that seek to judge the present against an idealized version of the yesteryear. The intent of presenting these theoretical facets is entirely to represent how theories of the yesteryear can add an excess bed of understanding contemporary phenomena.

The work of Jean Baudrillard brings in 1983 a new point of position sing life in the modern city and introduces a cardinal construct: hyperreality. The prefix 'hyper ' , meaning 'more than existent ' introduces the impression that the existent is produced harmonizing to a theoretical account unnaturally reproduced as existent, a existent retouched in a 'hallucinatory resemblance ' with itself.10 The existent implodes on itself, and the implosion in Baudrillard 's work describes a procedure taking to the prostration of boundaries between the existent and simulations of it. Hyperreality, in which we are overloaded with simulations and images, blurs the boundaries between world and representation and ties in with Paul Virilio 's construct of the 'overexposed metropolis ' , in which perceptual experiences of clip and distance have been irrevocably altered by the invasion of new communications technology.13

The largest human crossing in an urban status, Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo, exemplifies both instances ( overstimulation and hyperreality ) . Ad screens surround the crossing ( the edifices act merely as props for the screens ) , making a nonspace of both experience and representation, an elsewhere. Such nonspaces can be considered to be now constituent of our accustomed experience of urban infinite and make a private - public environment: the mass of people waiting to traverse experiences a alone minute in clip and infinite, where they are being addressed.

The capacity of the electronic ( or LED presents ) screen to exercise the transmutation of the conceptual construction of urban infinite resides in its operational belongingss as a simulation machine. Unlike hoardings or other inactive constellations, electronic screens embody clip. The signifier within their frame appears as impermanent or temporal and hence the simulation it produces is one of clip and infinite instead that one of form or visual aspect. As the difference between existent and simulation is abolished, the two conditions mirror each other 's temporal and spacial properties as Baudrillard notes in Simulations: 'the district no longer precedes the map, it is the map that engenders the district. '14

Therefore, the overstimulation explored by Simmel and exemplified in the consumerist forms of Tokyo, additions a new bed of intending through the add-on of hyperreality and simulacra, in a universe of small or no difference between sciencefiction and world, between the media and the societal, or between existent experiences or simulated 1s.

On the other manus, hyperreality solves the quandary of 'new ' metropoliss, where the deficiency of any noteworthy public infinites or memorials leads to two options: either the commissioning of 'high-class ' designers / starchitects to supply the metropolis with a landmark with an implied image capital and hence boost the local touristic market, or, the cheaper option, the transmutation of the metropolis 's image by changing the experience of public infinites. This creates the demand for a sustainable array of attractive forces which are alone to each single finish and frequently sets up a focal point which places the aspirations of the tourer above the demands of local dwellers. This technique has been achieved via an advanced architectural solution in the transmutation of Fremont Main Road into the Fremont Street Experience. Fremont Street was the first portion of Las Vegas to be built, but the early 1990s saw competition from the larger casinos along the Strip to take trade off from the smaller casinos along Fremont Street. This was a affair of concern to the Las Vegas metropolis authorization, which was losing revenue enhancement gross to the strip ( which lay outside metropolis bounds, under the legal power of the State of Nevada ) .15

Architect Jon Jerde was given the duty of transforming Fremont Street and it had been decided that pedestrianising the downtown country would non be adequate - it would hold to be turned into an 'Experience ' . As a effect, Fremont Street was roofed over, collectivizing the single casinos and transforming the street into a practical inside. Norman Klein refers to this as 'malling the space'.16 ( HOS 192 ) As twilight falls, the spectacle begins - the barrel roof starts giving its public presentation, supplying a ceiling show, electronic, pre-programmed, timetabled and viewed like a film showing. As Jean Baudrillard seems to hold predicted in his 1986 essay America: 'When one sees Las Vegas at twilight rise whole from the desert in the glow of advertisement, and return to the desert when morning interruptions, one sees that advertisement is non what brightens or decorates the walls ; it is what effaces the walls, effaces the streets, the frontage, and plunges us into this stupefied, hyperreal euphory. '17

The Post-Urban experience: Disneyfication and McDonaldisation

The 2nd portion of the essay trades with the two active procedures that metropoliss undergo - Disneyfication and McDonaldisation. These procedures tie in with the old constructs I have explored - overstimulation and issues of hyperreality - and after a brief debut into the complex mechanisms behind those procedures I will come back to the old illustrations I have used - Shibuya Crossing and Fremont Street Experience. These two illustrations represent merely the surface of the phenomena and are likely two of the most obvious instance surveies. However, by utilizing these as get downing points, we can theorize further and oppugn how our ain familiar illustrations of urban experience can be traced back to these illustrations.

The post-urban experience is non considered to be a direct equivalent word for the post-modern or post-industrial, but an result of the combined consequence produced by such forces of alteration such as gentrification, globalization, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and post-Fordism. As Anthony King argues in Re-presentingCities, progressively the metropolis figures in the societal complex number more as 'representation than as stuff world, understood through mediated urban experience and vicarious brush and, in academe, constructed as discourse. '18 The post-urban metropolis is non what it is, but what it is made out to be. VI Cities are being promoted through a assortment of tactics such as set abouting Olympic commands, new tourer attractive forces, advancing the metropolis as a movie location or a location for a universe acme. This can be easy observed in the manner metropoliss need to constantly update their celebrated 'landmarks ' in order to procure a changeless flow of visitants that return more than one time. Again, a few obvious illustrations of such topographic points are Times Square in New York, Picadilly Circus or Fremont Street and they show how metropoliss have to use their ain trade name of particular effects in order to populate up to their projected mental images. These attempts of capturing and branding a metropolis 's alone merchandising point are summarised by Rem Koolhaas as 'part of an iterative rhythm of intertextual referencing between the metropolis and its image, whose end is to make the 'citiest metropolis ' , where the throbbing bosom of the capital is momently and at the same time glimpsed on screen and 'for existent ' , self-consciously designed to maximize its seductive potency. '20

The two active procedures in the outgrowth of post-urban infinite - Mc- Donaldisation and Disneyfication - set up this urban cringle of fake infinites developed by amusement developers in the effort of capitalizing the mental image of a place.21

The instance of Disney architecture, like the architecture of movies to which it is so close, is summarised by Robert Venturi in the undermentioned statement: 'Disney World is nearer to what people truly want than what designers have of all time given them. '22 Whether one considers his thought correct or non, it still embodies a half truth. Disney epitomises the civilization industry 's enormous capacity wof making fabulous figures and the most effectual simulacra of existent 'places ' . The architecture, like all the other signifiers of delicious simulation, is a piece in the huge selling schemes of the archetypical postindustrial corporation.23 At the same clip, Disney 's universe of paid amusement proves that most people pay attending non to architecture, but to the antic images and associations it connotes. The viewing audiences do non associate either to each other or to the architecture by wont or usage instead by the fanciful bonds of spectacle.

The Disney landscape provides a multimedia experience stand foring a tourer attractive force and a symbolically desirable life style. This is a 'public ' civilization, where societal interactions occur within a security government in which there is no force - presenting in symbolic and fanciful signifier the enjoyable facets of urban life while taking the fear.24 Disney World, through its spacial control andstimulating / simulated ocular civilization, is the new theoretical account for making public infinite ( rules that are besides echoed in shopping promenades ) .

On the other manus, McDonalds operates, as George Ritzer 's analysis has shown, through four chief schemes - efficiency, predictability, calculability and command - supplying the cozy acquaintance and making a penchant towards know quantities.25 Traveling back to the Fremont Street Experience illustration, we can see how the four traits of McDonaldisation surface: it brings big Numberss of people, who might otherwise hold stayed in the casino-hotel farther up the Strip, to patronize casinos on Fremont Street and through the separated timing of the LED shows ( a 2004 add-on ) supplies - like traffic visible radiations - controlled moving ridges of gamblers to the casinos. This architectural intercession shows another manner in which the post-urban experience adopts cinematic tactics in order to vie with its ain cinematic D & A ; ouml ; ppelganger. At the same clip, in extinguishing the hazard of the unpredictable in the quality, measure and timing, the consumer must turn elsewhere in order to see surprise or to recover an component of the unexpected, and this is where the Disney consequence fills the gap.26 The topic of theming can be discussed - since the cinematic experience is controlled by package, it is non a fixed structural consequence and hence, the 'shows ' can be adjusted to accommodate the subject of the minute. This Disneylike attack besides serves as an addition of ware gross revenues ( where else, but at the Fremont Street Experience Store ) .

When Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour visited with their pupils in the early 1970s, Las Vegas was a metropolis of grownup amusement, nocturnal in wont and to be experienced from the auto. By the terminal of the 1970s, the market for chancing entirely was saturated and Las Vegas had to reinvent itself as a resort aimed more at households, supplying daytime amusement and pedestrian-orientated. As a consequence, the frontal auto Parkss have been replaced with roller coasters, pirate ships, pyramids or simulacra of full metropoliss - New York, Paris, and Venice - from the decorated shed to the duck.27 This alteration has been noted in aggregation of essays by Robert Venturi, Iconography and Electronics upon a Generic Architecture, where he states that 'the Strip is no longer a additive colony within the desert, it is a avenue in an urban scene. The Disneyfied Boulevard provides a 3-dimensional, theatre-like experience for the prosaic, with redolent imagination for function playing, a entire going from the auto orientated iconography of the Canonized Strip. '28 The development of Las Vegas is summarised in the same article as from: 'the Strip to the Boulevard ; urban conurbation to urban denseness ; parking batch to look yard ; asphalt field to Romantic garden ; the decorated shed to the duck ; electric to electronic ; Ne to pixel ; electrographic to scenographic ; pop civilization to gentrification ; perceptual experience of the driver to perceptual experience of the Walker ; strip to mall ; mall to inch metropolis. '29

A walk down either the Strip / Boulevard or Fremont Street is similar to a walk down Disneyland 's Main Street - the lone difference is that the theatrical events along their length are designed to entertain and entice people into the different casinos, which possibly masks the existent danger of losing money by chancing.

Separating between topographic point and infinite

This essay has analysed so far the ways in which the forms we experience the urban environment through can be traced back to theoretical facets of psychological or economical procedures. This adds another bed to our apprehension of how we form a mental image of a topographic point and how the battle for endurance on an international market led to urban topographic points seeking for a comparative advantage through the acquisition of symbolic capital. If modern theory regarded clip as the dynamic field of societal alteration, modern-day times have moved the accent onto the favoritism between infinite and topographic point as socio-cultural buildings, with the latter marked by embedded human emotional investing and designation. As an illustration, Nipponese metropoliss, including Tokyo, have no tradition of big urban infinites such as the squares, place or plaza of European metropoliss, around which civic and spiritual edifices are positioned to organize an unfastened but chiseled public infinite. Public activities in Japan were held in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines and, more significantly on the streets. As discussed antecedently, due to set down monetary values and ever-changing life manners, the places of most people are highly little. Hence, the frequently narrow and labyrinthine streets have become extensions of the life infinite and topographic points where much of the day-to-day life unfolds. The crowded streets are sites of assorted events and activities - trading, socializing, amusement, festivals, and the topographic point where 'momentary communities ' for good unfold. At the same clip, we have explored the slightly unsafe intensions of the street as urban topographic point in the instance of Fremont Street - where the naif and playful imagination of the experience acts as a double-edged blade as it masks the possible danger of chancing.

As a decision, this essay inquiries whether our environing infinites ( such as the street ) can be reclaimed as an original of urban topographic point instead than mere public infinite. This has to take into account economical issues of stigmatization and selling, sociological issues such as the safety of contested infinites or the interrelatedness of gender, ethnicity, category and power, every bit good as the ineluctable impact of the spaceless place'30 formed by the unseeable practical webs.