In cultural analysis the theoretical focus on
postmodernism and historical focus on the metropolis is often taken to be one
of a kind. But in fact, this double focus is oxymoronic in nature. The term
metropolis means `mother city` or `mother cities`. This term is based on
assumption that there is an original city, a first city from which other cities
emerge like Athens or Rome in Antiquity or Paris in the nineteenth century, or
in the ideal sense of a prototypical city, real or not, on which other cities
are modeled, for example from the urban planning of functionalism or from the
recirculation of grid structure on the North American continent.However, the
other term of the title, postmodernity, means almost everything that goes
against and even destroys this notion of the city and of place in general. But,
nevertheless, without a highly developed urbanity, postmodernity would never
have exsisted or been thought of.
More often than not, this contradiction is subsumed
under the unifying umbrella of `urban culture`, which seems to allow us to
avoid predetermining whether the postmodern urban condition is contradictory or
not. The decision is left open to the actual dynamics of history, where we are
confronted with various manifestations of urban culture through history, the
term itself being considered historically neutral.But urban culture is too
complex to just be a trivial fact, because it is always an imagined
realithy-`reality` because it is a material fact whatever its definition might
be, and `imagined` because its conceptualization, the basic understanding of
it, does not automatically follow from historical urban realithy all by itself.
In cultural analysis the theoretical focus on
postmodernism and historical focus on the metropolis is often taken to be one
of a kind. But in fact, this double focus is oxymoronic in nature. The term
metropolis means `mother city` or `mother cities`. This term is based on
assumption that there is an original city, a first city from which other cities
emerge like Athens or Rome in Antiquity or Paris in the nineteenth century, or
in the ideal sense of a prototypical city, real or not, on which other cities
are modeled, for example from the urban planning of functionalism or from the
recirculation of grid structure on the North American continent.However, the
other term of the title, postmodernity, means almost everything that goes
against and even destroys this notion of the city and of place in general. But,
nevertheless, without a highly developed urbanity, postmodernity would never
have exsisted or been thought of.
More often than not, this contradiction is subsumed
under the unifying umbrella of `urban culture`, which seems to allow us to
avoid predetermining whether the postmodern urban condition is contradictory or
not. The decision is left open to the actual dynamics of history, where we are
confronted with various manifestations of urban culture through history, the
term itself being considered historically neutral.But urban culture is too
complex to just be a trivial fact, because it is always an imagined
realithy-`reality` because it is a material fact whatever its definition might
be, and `imagined` because its conceptualization, the basic understanding of
it, does not automatically follow from historical urban realithy all by itself.
