Playing with information: urbanism in the twenty-first century

Call them megacities, edge cities, 100-mile cities – finally the city as a topic of intense research has caught the eye of the architectural avant-garde. Conceived as a radical alternative to architecture and urbanism in the twenty-first century, this approach develops visions and scenarios to deal with the instability and unpredictability produced by the ever-shifting territorial growth and unstoppable population expansion of urban territories around the globe. These conditions have produced, in the words of Rem Koolhaas, the ‘Generic City’. Yet it must be asked how the architect, the master form-giver, can make sense of this “diffusion with a deficit of meaning”, this bigness and ugliness erupting on a tabula rasa, be it Mexico City or Paris, Singapore or London, Shanghai or Tokyo. ¹