6 a.m.
The city wakes up, in a sense.
Jacque Ellul saw the founding of the city as an act of counter-creation, performed by Cain after God exiled him; the power accorded to God, the city gave to man. What Ellul did not claim, however, was that the then-new city was not alive.
The city persisted for millennia, but it has since been turned into a pseudo-city, slowly rendered inert from within, as if it possessed some inexorable force that will lead to its transformation into pure simulation.
The modern city’s golden-age vibrancy still exists in the mind of the romantic urbanist’s imagination: the city as organic life possessed by a mission, one given by God, or maybe history. Even the violence of the city’s underworld held a certain vitality.
In the time since — no one knows the exact moment, only that we looked up, and things were different — life turned into counter-life. The telos of the things of the city — the sidewalk, the shops, work, shelter — now act in the service of either accumulation or narcissistic projection. The living city has been replaced by a replica.
However, as the sun rises, the streetlamps shut off, one by one, but electric current still powers the city; Richard Brautigan once described electricity as divine, and the holy can reanimate the non-living.
7 a.m.
Morning in the city is the commute. Highways route drivers to the same interchanges and cross streets, while subway stations funnel passengers through the underground. Many people are barely awake.
Their destination is work. Over the past few decades, however, the city core has been emptied of factories and replaced by sites of “knowledge production.” The concrete objects that used to ground human life give way to ephemeral “flat information.” The modern city formed around the need to concentrate the workers needed for the mass production of things. Now, it produces only signifiers.
8 a.m.
If capitalism invented the proletarian and the bourgeoisie, then postindustrial society conjured the “creative class.” Sometimes called “knowledge workers” or the “professional-managerial class, they don’t need the plant, the field or even a storefront. Instead, they can be rootless, unattached to place.
Except for the class’s upper echelon, most still go to the office even though the work could be done anywhere. The solidity of the city dissolves in the presence of the so-called creative class. The reality of ordinary life becomes abstraction.
9 a.m.
Even after the workday begins, the mid-morning sidewalk pulses with activity Jane Jacobs’ “sidewalk ballet” takes center stage in the New Urbanist imagination: It is where city and people meet. For the city romantic, few other things capture the city as electric organism as much as the sidewalk — one shaped by human life.
Now, it is shaped by consumption, the city responds to organic life, which must necessarily reciprocate, which relates to others on a level other than transaction. The city, formerly the complex interconnected system of an old-growth forest, becomes the mono-crop of a tree farm that only exists to be harvested and replanted.
10 a.m.
Boutiques, indie bookstores and record shops open for business a few hours after the workday begins for everyone else. Once a key part of the city fabric, they now constitute part of the city as Terry Nicholson Clark’s “entertainment machine.” Even if neighborhood residents don’t enter the establishments, it still provides a setting for consumption; the art galleries, festivals and live music venues: In the pseudo-city, “culture exists as adornment.” The creative class, but not just the creative class, looks at the aesthetic quality of the city the same way tourists do (Clark 291). The “dense, walkable city” ultimately becomes shorthand for quicker access to consumption.
Actual tourists take the street at this hour too. Critics will cite Tourist Cities like Las Vegas as examples of the “fake city,” but in many ways, their honesty about who they are makes them much more real than the modern playgrounds of other urban centers. Even the “Instagrammable museums” are more authentic than the vision of NYC, often used as a content farm for Twitter users with stories about the bodega.
11 a.m.
The creative class and its entertainment machine warp the city around them. By late morning, children and their parents leave the playground. The new city is increasingly emptied of children, increasingly replaced by childless members of the professional class. The new character of the urban populations means that the city blocks of churches and schools instead become the homes of gastro-pubs and boutique resellers. In its perhaps most creative act, the knowledge worker molds the city in its image, its own transience reflected in the pop-up shops and gone-in-a-year restaurants.
Noon
Weekday daytime shopping peaks at lunchtime. If it were Sunday, church bells would ring to let out their congregations, but God left the cities years ago. A few critics assert that emphasizing density will foster community. However, in the pseudo-city, density equals transience. The vision of the neighborhood street with block parties and the eccentric-but-harmless neighbors reveals itself to be simulation.
Ultimately, the churches and sports leagues bind people together more than the bicycle path. The personal relationships in the organic city decades prior have been replaced by relations that are more abstract (Clark, “Amenities Drive Urban Growth” 306). The activist urbanist, in particular, conjures a vision of community in which everyone plays their pre-assigned political roles.
1 p.m.
The lunch rush slows. By the end of the hour, maybe another, the afternoon shift will arrive. Customers continue to trickle into or out of laundromats and lunchtime sessions at gyms or fitness studios.
The service class complements the creative class, even if many in the big city service class see themselves as temporarily embarrassed knowledge workers. Its development runs parallel to the erosion of traditional city life; what the family used to do, the service class now manages.
The post-family city no longer needs the family. The typical metropolis used to consist of families that could mediate between the individual and the city. In the pseudo-city, every interaction is a transaction, and friendships and relationships are increasingly spoken of in terms of utility.
2 p.m.
An aging population necessarily tries to freeze the status quo, preserving its own wealth instead of making sure the young can thrive. As the last of the email caste returns from lunch, as toddlers enter the final hour of elementary school, the elderly attend their early afternoon doctor appointments. The modern city, as part of contemporary civilization, attempts to freeze the cycle of life. In an attempt to freeze death, it turns the world into a doctor’s office.
3 p.m.
The elementary school children leaving school for the day yearn for space, but the current city is inhospitable to children. The progressive urbanist believes that density can recreate the life that feels missing in the modern city. However, the density of the postindustrial city undermines its organic life.
4 p.m.
As the workday ends, people get ready to leave work. However, in many buildings in certain urban areas, no one will leave. Like a theater backdrop, the structures are essentially fake, characteristic of what Matthew Soules calls “zombie” or “ghost urbanism.” The financialization of the economy turns buildings, particularly housing, into investment vehicles. The buildings remain vacant because their ultimate purpose is to serve as financial instruments. Buildings no longer fulfill their purpose as shelter or work — they exist as spiritually, and increasingly, physically, empty vessels for exchange value.
5 p.m.
Office workers take one last look out the window as they leave the office (if they’re lucky enough to have one) and the members of the creative class who don’t get to work in the high rises and the service class dream of big city views. The view has become the most important part of urban housing, the uniqueness of the view masking the uniformity of the interior. The view separates one from the city, the same as watching a screensaver or phone wallpaper.
6 p.m.
When the workday ends, most people go home. The old fraternal organizations, the church, are gone, along with the disappearing sports leagues, church groups, and fraternal clubs. The old neighborhood organizations fostered a sense of self that could be transmuted into the collective identity integral to the cohesiveness of the city. They foster a sense of obligation and trust, both stronger bonds than shared hobbies.
So the worker finishes his commute either alone, or a family, or roommates, but still, with their household cut off from the outside. The neighbor you pass by in your mid-rise apartment is just as much a stranger to you as the neighbor you only see when he enters his garage.
7 p.m.
Streaming services possess the eye. Robert Putnam lays part of the blame for atomization on technology’s effect on leisure time. Writing “Bowling Alone” in 2000, he singles out television for its ability to “privatize” leisure, making it impossible to connect with others in fraternal clubs or neighborhood organizations. Infinite choices across streaming platforms and entertainment algorithms mean a tailored experience. The traditional couch potato addicted to cable or network TV could feel a connection to America, not yet separated into algorithmic clusters.
The small screen is even more customized, predicting your desires before you become conscious of them. The end result is Byung-chul Han’s digital narcissist, in which the self, finding no objects outside itself, projects itself on to the world.
8 p.m.
In medium-sized cities, 8 p.m. marks the hour that many retail and restaurants start to close down and the nightlife begins. Many from the afternoon-shift service class join the nighttime entertainment machine.
9 p.m.
Just as many Marxists say that bourgeoise and proletarians are the same everywhere, so does Florida’s “creative class,” which demands the same consumer amenities in every big city and mid-sized arts district in the country.
Their special events close up, or they get relocated to the bar. Some of the service class is here as well, some hoping to rise to the ranks of the creative class, or at least capture its aura by association.
10 p.m.
The lowest-hanging irony: Does the creative class create culture? Christopher Lasch saw the motivating force behind culture both its connection to the divine or transcendental, and its ability to condemn and exclude. Contemporary culture does neither: Art either aims at comfort or reaffirming political (and therefore class) allegiance, and exclusion is impossible in the age of the algorithm.
11 p.m.
The 11 o’clock hour becomes the hour of decision: Does the night continue or not? The dilemma masks the false decision of the contemporary city. The pseudo-city is defined by its lack of purpose beyond pleasure or escapism. H.D.F. Kitto wrote that the Greek polis ensured that each citizen could fulfill “spiritual, moral and intellectual capacities.” Instead, the city residents remain stuck in the cycle of Mark Fisher’s “depressive hedonia,” the compulsive pursuit of pleasure that fails to bring substantial happiness. Regardless of the decision, the result is the same — the night ends or continues in barlight.
Midnight
On weekday nights in neighborhoods that are not too dangerous or busy or both, you can walk in silence, observing the setpieces of the city. New LED lamps light up the street, revealing both history embedded in brick buildings and the city’s pulse yearning to escape encased fiber cement panels.
The older buildings anchor the city, but now they find themselves slowly replaced by engineered wood, composite metals, clean lines and neutral tones. Kevin Lynch knew the result in 1960: The complete replacement of the old makes life disorienting.
1 a.m.
The decision made at 11 a.m. is locked in. The rest of the night is ultimately predetermined. The night’s potential is replaced by exhaustion. This is the last hour for something to happen — the afterparty, hookups, anything. Shakespeare asked “What is the city but the people,” but no matter what happens with the individual person, the pseudo-city remains in stasis. It formerly contained life, but now lives on in digital video files.
2 a.m.
Closing time arrives in most cities. Once a key part of the neighborhood, the bar became assimilated into the entertainment machine — the locals increasingly replaced by “scenes.”
3 a.m.
Late at night, still too early for morning, the true transients walk the street. Isolated yells from still-out revelers intervene in the nighttime quiet. Night shifters carry out their duties in hospitals, hotels and 24-hour convenience stores.
4 a.m.
After 100 or so pages into “The Meaning of the City,” Ellul pronounces the city redeemable, despite its status as counter-creation. The city can be reclaimed.
5 a.m.
Twilight: electrifying silence.
Sources
- Jacques Ellul, The Meaning of the City (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers 2011)
- Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn, The Abortion, So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away (Boston: Mariner Books Classics 1995), 78
- Joel Kotkin, The Human City (Chicago: Agate B2, 2016), 31
- Byung-chul Han, “I Practice Philosophy as Art,” interview by Gesine Borcherdt, Art Review (December 2, 2021)
- Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 67
- Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995), 20
- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1993), 65
- Terry Nichols Clark, “Introduction: Taking Entertainment Seriously,” in The City as Entertainment Machine, edited by Terry Nichols Clark (London: Elsevier, 2004), 8
- Terry Nichols Clark, “Urban Amenities: Lakes, Opera, and Juice Bars: Do They Drive Development?,” in The City as Entertainment Machine, edited by Terry Nichols Clark (London, Elsevier, 2004), 104
- Derek Thompson, “The Future of the City Is Childless,” The Atlantic, January 9, 2020
- Giorgio Agamben, Where Are We Now? (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)
- Matthew Soules, Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra-Thin (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2021), 16
- Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 55
- H.D.F. Kitto, The Greeks (London: Penguin Books, 1951), 78
- Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2008), 21
- Kevin Lynch, The Image and the City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960), 4
— Kris Aldag is a writer from San Antonio.