The Hyper Modern City - Essay Example

Page The hyper modern has been increasingly shaped by the spaces and practices of consumption. The Las Vegas Effect (an urban space) and Walt Disney Theme Parks, for instance, has created cities as brands and brands as cities. In ‘Drifting in Las Vegas: A Postmodern Ethnography’(1995), the author speaks of how American, British, as well as other geographies have been shaped to be similar to Las Vegas and other brands to make cities as carnivals: The super-hyper version is Las Vegas. I call Las Vegas the Versailles of America ... long after Las Vegas’ influence as gambling heaven has gone, Las Vegas’ forms and symbols will be influencing American life. That fantastic skyline! Las Vegas’ neon sculpture, its fantastic fifteen-story high display signs, parabolas, boomerangs, rhomboids, trapezoids and all the rest of it, are already staple design of the American landscape outside of the oldest parts of the oldest cities. They are all over every suburb, every subdivision, every highway ... They are the new landmarks of America, the new guideposts, the new way Americans get their bearings (Wolfe 1965, p. xvi) The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2003) defines utopia as “(the idea of) a perfect society in which everyone works well with each other and is happy”. Due to technological advances, the speed of Page 2 our lives has increased with the speed of communication, fast foods, and the information age so much so that we try to create our own utopia. Like the thousands of images flashing before our eyes on television, at the cinema, everywhere, we want it our way and we want it now. This stimulation and fashioning of our lives on the temples of consumption has created an urban experience is influenced our landscape and modernity. As fast as high speed internet delivers information and fast food delivers the instant technology-created “meals”, cars zoom by at unbelievable speeds whilst drivers and passengers view Vegas-style billboards with lights and huge letters. The landscape is interrupted from nature to an architecture of light shows. The electric city that we have created in our consumption and quest for utopia contains an overwhelming amount of high-speed stimulation, one in which we have made reality from fantasy that was created via technology, imagery, and commercialism. Speed trains, planes, and automobiles; factories and industries, airports that offer the mall experience and malls that offer the airport experience; the cinema and the streets, the crowds and the loners, etc. are all actors who engage in this cosmopolitan utopia-turned-dystopia. Page 3 Why has our glorification of superlativism, our mystical fantasies, turned into the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language’s definition of the word dystopia, which is “An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror”? How has our relationships turned into a triangle interrelationship between people, place, and space? How has something that came into reality from modern art photography with its interpreted symbolic meanings turn into such a love-hate relationship where actors, network, and knowledge all come to play and live? I will use the Las Vegas Effect in answering these questions. However, do keep in mind that the answers of our engaging in cosmopolitan can be found in the geographies of British modernity, or Asian modernity, or European modernity. I will let Las Vegas represent all post modern cities: One the other hand, and not unlike real life in the 1990s, while this text celebrates individualistic financial victories against statistically impossible odds, it also ignores those who cannot participate in the game, those who have only recently been invited to play, and those who have lost at it. In the Strip casinos, the spectacular opulence produced through the endless circulation of capital diverts the players’ attention away from the silent Page 4 shuffle of an invisible minority casino proletariat. Homogenized in uniforms, they are endlessly cleaning carpets, emptying ashtrays, carrying huge trays of drinks high above their heads, pushing heavy carts of change, and wiping benches. At impossibly minimal wages and under constant surveillance. As we use the land to express our interests and form a common ground, not only do we create social problems but problems with ourselves; internal issues. Forcing our dreams and imagery to come true via urban development, creates social, economical, and political forces (within this “growth machine”) and we must deal with the consequences. Due to our increased quality of life demands, we live our daily lives as if we are on holiday. Therefore, our cities have become our entertainment. Lloyd, Richard & Clark (2000) state that “the city becomes an Entertainment Machine leveraging culture to enhance its economic well being. The entertainment components of cities are actively and strategically produced through political and economic activity”. We have created a geography where the relationship is not a “give and take”. I believe it can be more accurately described as a “take and take” relationship. As our lives are focused more on entertainment in an imbalanced, unhealthy manner, we demand more out of what naturally should not be there. So we create and take from our cities and in return, they take from us. This results in Page 5 destruction/abuse of land, space, privacy, peace, quality time, the actual speed of time as it should be, demands, health issues, expense, debt, etc. We need to strive for a balance. We need to strive for a win/win, “give and take” relationship. Page 6 References American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000). Houghton Mifflin Company. [online]. [Accessed 30th December 2005]. Available from World Wide Web: [online]. [Accessed 30th December 2005]. Available from World Wide Web: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=dystopia The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2003). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drifting in Las Vegas: A Postmodern Ethnography (1995). Journal of Contemporary Ethnograpy Vol. 24 (2): 195-238 (1995). [online]. [Accessed 30th December 2005]. Available from World Wide Web: < http://www.unlv.edu/Faculty/gottschalk/FRAGMTS.html> Lloyd, R. and Clark, T.N. (2000) The City as an Entertainment Machine (Report #454). American Sociological Association. ). [online]. [Accessed 30th December 2005]. Available from World Wide Web: Read More