ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores an array of familiar American landscapes that reflect the interplay between market economy and the market culture. It describes the extreme cases of the postmodern cities: Miami and Los Angeles, where "the modern city's image of centrality is turned inside out by the landscape of power at the bicoastal extremities of the sunbelt." The book takes Heidegger's metaphysical architectural conception as the "House of Being" to be foundationally patriarchal. The art in the built environment (ABE) movement in England, by and large, was not a "critical movement." Housed in the visual arts, its curriculum materials and workshops for teachers stressed the "aesthetic" decisionmaking processes of urban reform. In the mid '80s there was a concerted attempt to introduce ABE into the art education curriculum.
