ABSTRACT
Baudrillard first addressed the metropolitan area or commuter belt, a densely populated urban agglomeration comprising multiple jurisdictions and municipalities, in Simulacra and Simulation (1981), where he raised key questions such as: What is it that ‘anticipates’, ‘projects’ and determines the metro area? By analysing the hypermarket as the fundamental ingredient of metro areas, Baudrillard takes us back to the origin of the phenomenon, which on the one hand identifies the department store and shopping mall as the originators of contemporary consumerist practices and, on the other, fascinatingly traces the evolution of the consumerist ambience as a totalizing system of signs. The originality of Baudrillard’s argument is assessed in Chapter 4 against the work of Lewis Mumford, Aldo Rossi and Joseph Rykwert, as well as the ascent of Fordism in capitalist societies. Baudrillard’s reformulation of triage centres, power stations and black boxes, as well as the way in which CCTV and billboards alike produce a form of self-enclosed space within hypermarkets is also discussed.
