Metropolis > Program > Seminars 2010 > Michael Stanton
Post-Generic Urbanism in the Middle East SEMINAR
Michael Stanton
As the planet struggles to slough off the mixed effects of the Enlightenment and as a bruised-but-not-broken late capitalism markets a global generic that may work with, or contradict, post-Cold-War re-tribalization, the city generates irrepressible energy that seems to come as much from the shanty towns and chaotic suburbs as from the centers of power and bourgeois ease that get all the attention. From the tawdry night-club scenes of Beirut to the post-culture of Dubai, irrelevance and imitation radiate from above. But from the crevices of society, from the fundamentalist periphery and subversively creative sleeper-cells, a vital energy causes the foundations of questionably-acquired wealth and miss-managed authority to shiver.
This seminar will present case-studies, theoretical armatures and contrasting western prototypes in order to test the accuracy of the above statements. Participants will actively debate, use analytic structures to assess and, when possible, will bring their own Pan-American, European, Asian or Middle Eastern urban contexts to bear on the margins of urban culture.