THE CONTEMPORARY CITY core course
Xavier Costa
This course is directed to examining some of the seminal texts and ideas that have led to a contemporary and critical understanding of the metropolitan phenomenon. Three themes articulate this study: The first one is based on the assumption that cities may be interpreted as collective apparatuses of subjectification -modern subjects are shaped by the constraints of city culture, by the domicile they inhabit or the city in which they are socially conditioned. Second, the metropolitan culture in its dependent correlation with visual regimes, techniques considered in light of contemporary science and of the emergence of a spectacular culture. The relationship between vision and space has determined the construction of twentieth-century cities - the course investigates the emergence of multiple scopic regimes in European capitals and their embodiment in the collective spectacle. As a third theme, the metropolitan phenomenon implies the projection of its order on a vast territorial scale. Therefore, the metropolis cannot be considered separate from its expansive condition, as both a place and a project to impose on other places. The capital exists also in its own colonies and its expeditioned regions. It is precisely in its peripheral ambition, in its impulse to occupy and extend the border, where the modern metropolis proposes a specific articulation of civic site and territorial integration. The capital city embodies a social and cultural order that through its physical presence can be projected outside itself