The City of the Future (Revisited)

Abstract

Someone leaves home, enters their car and the radio is turned on instantly. The same person enters the office and listens to music from the headphones. And if they decide to walk around, they do not forget to turn them on. This behaviour represents an incision in the crossing space that characterizes the city; a break with the constitution of a reality made from vision surveillance and acknowledgement of the other; and a substantial change in the subject’s perception of the urban landscape, that physical, architectural entanglement that has always made up the city. 

The constitution of urban data is made here upon sound objects that require a partial disappearance of the visual recognition and the acoustic space. The constitution of the subject in the public space –a space for exchanging signals, knowledge and affection – is done by uninstalling the sound playback device: this action opens up the optical channel to the street. 

Aristotle’s urban man, a living being (zoon) made for city life (bios politikós), is changing as a result of mobile devices of sound reproduction. And this change affects the substance of the city, its urban planning and architecture, its physicality.