cities

Cities are also juxtaposition engines, instruments for both producing and adjudicating adjacencies. The character of cities emerges from the characteristic ways in which they solve the problems of keeping things together or apart, whether socially or formally. Racial or class segregation; use zoning that locates work far from living; height restrictions and solar access guarantees; mandated materiality; the siting of highways; a preference for gardens_all of these taken together yield the particularity of cities. On the other hand, this is also a point of incredible promise. As old constraints on adjacency are loosened, as time and space become graspable in new ways, as any place can truly be any place, our position as designers is liberated. If juxtaposition can really be free, then we are also free to reimagine the basic structures of urbanism according to tests which respond to our best attempts at reason: democracy, sustainabiliy, and pleasure.We are in a position to reconsider cities fundamentally. - Michael Sorkin