The Vanishing City

The world inclines toward uniformity. It undergoes entropy, the tendency for different energy levels in a system to equalize as, for example, when a kettle of hot water warms a cold room while it itself cools. Entropy, dis-ordering, inexorable in nature according to the second law of thermodynamics, also describes urban systems. Human interactions occur across a system of interconnected places, extending from the busiest point in the largest of cities to the furthest spot in the most desolate of boondocks. Technological change ramifies through societies, altering economies and thereby diffusing the interactions in space. What once had to happen in the city can now take place anywhere. Technology, then, shapes destiny. Public actions do modify outcomes; social movements redirect them temporarily. But ultimately, how we live, where we live and near whom we live depend on the underlying forces inherent in technological evolution and subsequent economic change. (See Norton in this volume on the history of this idea). Technology-based change breaks out most dramatically in the cities of advanced industrial societies, particularly those that maintain an active market sector. But the collectivist economies and the developing world are not immune. To understand how the platonically ideal city works requires examining the phenomena that shape all cities in all times. The consequences for living cities are to be gleaned in two sources: the historical record and contemporary data on cities that already exhibit the more advanced stages of urban entropy. Thus the explanation for the rise of the industrial city lies in the conditions of the nineteenth century, when such places first emerged. The course which cities are now beginning to trace can be deduced from the experience of communities in today's nascent post-industrial societies. Of course every city is unique. Geography and circumstance combine to make each different from some mythical mean. The intent here, nevertheless, is to speculate about the future of this convenient fiction, the average city. By examining trends and tendencies, rules and regularities, we can more clearly envision what is in store for all cities and even glimpse the prospects for particular cities.