ABSTRACT
Tracing the succession of shape-shifting, creative-destruction-formed urban landscapes that constitute our narcotic modernity requires charting a pattern of radical changes in the socio-spatial form and function. This chapter deals with archaeological/metaphorical excavation, and begins by investigating the first two general periods in the historical development or evolution of the addicted city. Characterized by the emergence of phantasmagoric forms, the dawn of modern urban redevelopment, and the experience/interface of urban 'shock', the first formal phase of (narco-)modernity, the city of phantasmagoria, is situated between the turn of the twentieth century and the beginning of the Second World War. With the arrival of the Second World War, the corresponding forces of phantasmagoria and shock that served to animate the first incarnation of the (industrial, inter-war) addicted city slowly came to be displaced by new manifestations of control. The city of phantasmagoria and shock slowly began to give way to the city of spectacle and alienation.
