I came across a great article if you have the time.

 

NEW CAPITALISM, NEW ISOLATION

A flexible city of strangers

 

Once people used to come to the city in search of anonymity, diversity and the freedom to meet others. Cities were also places of collective struggle and solidarity. Now, just as the workplace is affected by a new system of flexible working, so the city, too, risks losing its charm as businesses and architecture become standardised and impersonal.

By Richard Sennett

 

Cities can be badly-run, crime-infested, dirty, decaying. Yet many people think it worth living in even the worst of them. Why? Because cities have the potential to make us more complex human beings. A city is a place where people can learn to live with strangers, to enter into the experiences and interests of unfamiliar lives. Sameness stultifies the mind; diversity stimulates and expands it.

 

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http://mondediplo.com/2001/02/16cities

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Discuss.

I like this:

"Because cities have the potential to make us more complex human beings. A city is a place where people can learn to live with strangers, to enter into the experiences and interests of unfamiliar lives."

 

Great find David.

Wow, great piece.

 

 

 

 

This is why i want a debate forum! So we can dig deeper into stuff like this.

 

And the experience of being only temporarily in an organisation prompts people to keep loose, not to get involved, since you are going to exit soon.

 

Yeah, it's called the ADD generation.

 

 

It's not ADD that's causing this (though ADD generation is another topic of concern) but it is a matter of efficiency. Flexibility is efficiency. Look how common temp. workers are. They're a great benefit to corporations and the reason why is because they're the first to be hired or fired. They don't show up as layoffs in news articles because they work for a temp agency, not the corporation. Think about how much attachment you have to your workplace if it is a Wal-mart or a Gap. When I worked at Old Navy, I knew I was just a number. I worked part time and had no benefits. Even supervisors were part time so that Gap Inc. could get out of benefits. I had a stellar year end review and recieved a 26 cent raise! That is BLATANTLY a short term employment place. You can't expect employees to take a place like that seriously, or consider a place like that for the long-term. Unfortunately, the vast majority of jobs are like that, not private firms.

 

I guess Sennett sees that reflected in the design of cities. As cities become more and more like each other, they lack a distinct character. People have a more impersonal relationship with the city. With the homogeneity you see in architecture and urban design, one city is hardly any different from another. Corporations don't exert authority and responsibility over any given city as they once did, due the fact that the largest ones are so globalized.

 

I think he's right when he says standards of loyalty are diminishing in all aspects of people's lives. If you're switching jobs all the time, moving to different cities, how do you explain those values of loyalty and trust to your kids?

Ayn Rand said that civilization is the separation of the individual from the mass, the movement of everyone from each other.  She saw value in that. This article makes it sound like we're getting closer to her ideal-- and I'd rather we didn't.  Civilization to me is people coming together to do things greater than themselves.  Each generation leaves something more for the next one to build on.  And cities are the bastions of civilization, where all that effort accumulates. 

 

However fleeting our associations become 10 or 100 years from now, Terminal Tower will still be there.  There will always be a place, and a need, for permanence.