Postmodern City

Postmodernism

To talk about postmodernism is to talk about the problem of objective truth. Postmodernism as a movement can be understood as cultural projects or as a set of perspectives. The term “postmodernism” comes from its critique of the “modernist” scientific mentality of objectivity and progress associated with the Enlightenment. Postmodernists believe that many, if not all realities are only social constructs, as they are subject to changing in time and place. They emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations. Postmodernists also attack the use of sharp classifications. Rather, they view reality to be relative, and dependent on who the interested parties are and what their interests consist in.

Atlanta: Place in the non-place urban realm

An example of post modern city we learn in the reading of “Theorizing The City” is The city of Atlanta. The reading talked about the role of power elite in designing and planning the landscape and how their ideology could be realized through what they termed “ the renovation of the public character of the city”. The 90s was significant in Atlanta to the host the 1996 Olympic games which was seen as an opportunity for redevelopment of central and its surrounding depressed residential neighborhood. The responsibility for creating a meaningful Olympic legacy fell between  the city government and the business community. Two entities that in the past enjoyed a close working relationship described as a marriage of white money and black political power in the south.

Through generations of profit minded visionaries have transformed a once rail road hub into a world class postindustrial metropolis. The city official slogan evolves from gate city and capital of the new south to major league and national city that’s too busy to hate to world’s most great international city. I like the way the chapter presented a historical perspective on the character of the urban population who occupied the city. Massive white flight. They made two thirds of the city population. In the 70s the white population made less than half. In the 80s two thirds of the city’s population was African American. During the 70s and 80s the suburban expanded to include african american middle class as well as the african american poor. The year 1990 is significant in Atlanta to the host the 1996 Olympic games which was seen as an opportunity for redevelopment of central and its surrounding  ring of depressed residential neighborhood. The responsibility for creating a meaningful Olympic legacy fell between  the city government and the business community. Two entities that in the past enjoyed a close working relationship described as a marriage of white money and black political power.

Their vision of transforming the city is centered around safe, clean, and user friendly city. They only sell the clean look and feel rather than the realties of the urban lifestyle. These are examples of the contemporary paradigm of urban renewal that privileges the artful design of secure, simulated, and re-segregated environments over the articulation of plans for dealing with uneven development, homelessness, poverty, crime and unemployment in the city as a whole.

User friendly city

I like the way he explains the underlying structure of the term user friendly cities:

1.The term is most used in the filed of computer where it refers to an interface carefully designed not to intimidate or confuse the user. What makes the interface friendly is that all the potentially problematic and complicated choices have been worked out for the user in a simple, persuasive, and clear way. User friendliness has tendency to program out certain kinds of knowledge. It constrain choices and assumes a certain standardization of human needs and experiences. The notion of user friendlessness also assume that all users have the same identities or that certain groups such as poor are excluded from the category of desired users.

2.Describing the urban population as users rather than residents or citizens imply that the city is more oriented toward visitors than residents or rather that the line between them is no longer significant, that even natives are strangers who need guides.