© Milos Zivkovic
“All Generic Cities issue from the tabula rasa; if there was nothing,
now they are there; if there was something, they have replaced it. They must,
otherwise they would be historic” ~Koolhaas
People are rooted in time,
whether they accept it or not. Who is the Generic City home to, then? To whom
does the Generic City belong? Who belongs to the Generic City? A city without
identity is also inherently without people – people bring with them history and
culture, and though the Generic City may contain that of the present, it
contains only that of the present. Obviously the Generic City is an idealistic
argument and would certainly alleviate a variety of unsavory urban conditions –
but in reality, it is unrelatable, distant, and belongs to no one. No resident
of any city identifies completely with his airport – and doesn’t expect to. But
in terms of an entire city, any identity is better than none.
It has been a little over a
decade since Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas unleashed his concept of “the generic
city,” a sprawling metropolis of repetitive buildings centered on an airport
and inhabited by a tribe of global nomads with few local loyalties. His
argument was that in its profound sameness, the generic city was a more
accurate reflection of contemporary urban reality than nostalgic visions of New
York or Paris.
Perhaps Dubai was the inevitable
place for the realization of Koolhaas’ ideas. It is the capital of an economic
and political New World Order. A city-state without income taxes, labor laws,
or elections, it is ruled by a corporate oligarchy of hereditary rulers,
accountable only to themselves and their investors.
Built up rapidly over the past
few years on the wealth gotten from the world’s need for oil—and more recently
as an unregulated sanctuary for cash—it has no depth of history or indigenous
culture, no complexity, no conflicts, no questions about itself, no doubts, in
short, nothing to stand in the way of its being shaped into the ultimate
Utopia.
Quite a model for our global
future.
