The Fiction of the Equal: Boundaries Disappearance and Border Neutralization in the American City”
Abstract:
This paper takes the concept of “Open City” by Richard Sennett as an investigative lens to theorize the current state of affairs in American urbanism. A lack of critical thinking, social isolation and rising mental health issues are becoming characteristic of cities in the United States. By performing a historiographical analysis of the broad trends of city development in the United States, from the earlier settlements to the conquering of the frontier, the idea of closed and open systems employed by Sennett becomes an essential tool to analyze American Urbanism; Chicago has been taken as an example since different thoughts on urbanism were played out. In the paper we delve deeper into how the status quo, i.e. the dominating sources of power, allowed certain architectural typologies, such as the church and the mall, to replace the essential friction inherent in cities. In such places of religious and capitalistic doctrination, the critical sense to be exercised by the general pop…
The whole article available at:
https://sita.uauim.ro/f/sita/art/10_Mejias_Villatoro_Shafique.pdf
Authors: Paco Mejias Villatoro and Tanzil Shafique
