Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie

Ubiquitous urbanity: cities beyond place

The lecture will explore an emerging mode of urban life that is both  familiar and startlingly new: a continuum of places, technologies, and  performances that meld disparate enclaves into a seemingly coherent  whole. We may access this convergence of terminals to the same place  by way of interstate ...highways, internet connections, and personal  media devices, even as we encounter ever more unyielding barriers to  meaningful human communication. This lecture is meant for anyone who recognizes the odd and frightening pleasures of urbanity. Flowing from  airport to hotel to coffee shop to chain restaurant, we glimpse the  alienation and fascination of looking, consuming, and communicating in  the staccato rhythms of contemporary urban life. It will investigate this phenomenon, this structure and perception of an emergubiquitous urbanity, by investigating its origins in Parisian arcades,  world’s fairs, and military-industrial superslabs, its manifestations  in airports, hotels, and shopping malls, and its potential undoing  through performance, placelessness, and reverence.