Quaderns 238: Hiperurban

Quaderns 238: Hiperurban

The last issue of Quaderns dealt with urban dysfunction or, rather, with the dysfunctionality of the suburban model and of the elements attendant on this dysfunctionality: the increase in mobility based on private transport, the appearance of shopping and leisure centres linked to road networks, the development of a mortgage system geared towards the purchase of the family home, and the social and environmental consequences of the extension across the territory of low-density urban sprawl. This issue sets out to address the opposite pole of dysfunctionality. On the basis of the paradox established by the images of scenes one and two, it aims to draw out an itinerary that takes in various places where the urban phenomenon approaches a degree of paroxysm. It explores situations that are brought about in very specific contexts of the city and that respond to the idea of the hyperurban, of the urban taken to the extreme of its spatial and signic saturation: city-centre districts, busy markets, plots so tiny as to be almost non-existent, the marginal occupation of residual spaces in the centre which are too small to be of any interest to the speculators.… In short, a whole series of situations with conditions of density, concentration and intensity of use that are well in excess of the levels usually found in the urban fabric. It is between the suburban unconscious and hyperurban over-reality that the most plausible forms of a possible city are likely to be found.