It’s funny that Rohini uses the word “nomadic” when referring to Singapore expats. Because the first cities were actually created by the settled: farmers, for whom space was an enemy used by their rivals—the nomads—to destroy and subjugate. How things have changed.
I think of cities as the greatest anti-space constructions that exist, because they were created to combat space. The point of a city is to reduce space.
Or is it? The particularly American model of the city seems to contradict this concept. America itself was built on the exploitation of what was crucially perceived as space—land undeveloped by Westerners—even if it wasn’t, since it was actually already in use. Similarly, beginning last century invasive American cities in turn exploited the same land, once again perceived as space; sometimes exploiting it on absurdly grand scales. (In this case the space wasn’t space either: it was already in use by farmers, ranchers, miners, or manufacturers.)
The most grandiose example of this is Los Angeles, a desert valley whose first mass exploitation came with orchards and farms made possible by modern irrigation. But this farming stratum was almost completely obliterated by the extended undense deposit of human construction, both residential and commercial, a hundred miles wide and two hundred long, that makes up the modern city.
Cities are often interpreted as vertical expressions of the human spirit, but the seeming contradiction of the American example shows us that it’s not so. The American example shows us that cities really are the anti-space. The key to understanding this comes from an example like Los Angeles, which demonstrates how space, in fact, is perceived as time, and vice versa. For without the compression of time the automobile gave us in crossing distances, Angelenos would not perceive the compression of space their city gives them—and it would not be a city at all. Would it?
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MORE ON CONTRADICTIONS: Following up on this post, it’s interesting how, the more I think about cities, the more the old saw rings true to me about them embodying masses of contradiction. In my post above, I mentioned one: American cities contradicting the notion of cities as compressors of space.
But there was another contradiction inherent to my argument, one that actually I kind of tried to avoid stating: that the city should happen to be a container of highly valuable space for its inhabitants and visitors, when its reason for existence is actually to compress space.
Space is precious in cities (some more than others); thus it was always. How strange and wonderfully emblematic of the human condition that, in the creation of cities, we destroy space only then to exalt it.
My friend Dean Chandler also talked to the concept of compression over a wine we had last month (Dean, can you speak up, please?). He says that that personal space around one in New York, as compared to SF or LA, is much the same, except that it is compressed. I agree, you carry it around you like a winter coat rather than your car.
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