ABSTRACT
The world society on the horizon also means a new centrality and urbanity, which can expand economically fixed perspectives. It also proceeds on the basis of communication of social systems across national borders, from the public realm to world literature to the lifestyle of global milieus. First it defines the category of the new downtown more precisely according to its size, functional mix, connection to world society, and planning, and then move on to the question of urbanity in a second step. New downtowns represent the claim of spatial advantages in world society with regard to the production of centrality. This comprises our second argument: an increase in the significance of architecture and the physical settings of centrality. The performative urbanity of the new downtown is the keen attention of the urbanite for the fleetingness of the observed performances. Finally the able to plan a new urbanity harks back in a broad sense to an old dream of mankind.
