The contemporary city is now a matrix of communication systems that have propelled beyond the territorial limits of the city. The Freeways, telephone and satellite networks, fiber optic cables, radio and television frequencies each provide systems through which the everyday city flows and composes itself. The desire for individuality has led to a devaluing of the collective which previously marked a city as a whole. Citizens are now stockholders deciding on the form of the city through buying habits. The city changes daily, rearranging itself to the rhythms of its citizens, each creating their own city through the windshield, the computer monitor and cell phone. What is to be made of architecture and urban planning in this dispersed postwar city? Urbanism must come to grips with the new reality of mobile and malleable infrastructures. We must begin to compete with corporate telecommunications planners; creating malleable alternatives and subversive itineraries to their transparent systems. Like the cellular towers themselves, today’s urbanist must form connections between the communications networks and the everyday reality of the city, carving new systems of interaction and collective space from the smooth surfaces of corporate control.

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