From the Generic to the Specific

Koolhaas' Generic City is a city of smoothness, good weather, successful people, and complex, anti-historical identity. Hajer et al. call for a new language capable of describing public space, the complexity and temporality of its use, and the highly specific interactions among its users. Koolhaas' description of the Generic City also seems to illustrate the difficulty of speaking in broad, collective terms about users of urban public space -- there is no room for the anomalous. The airport becomes the primary public space, a major symbol of identity. Everything is in constant flux, defying easy classification.

Conceiving of public space in the broader sense of the public domain – of cultural exchange and surprise among individuals forced to confront new possibilities – seems to emphasize the specific. Public space becomes a heterotopian realm where convention is inverted and one is forced to reconsider identity and the relationships among parts. The Generic City, then, seems like the stage or tabula rasa on which such encounters may occur, but escape description or understanding. Because urban identities are formed through change itself, through the massive speed and smoothness of culture, the ability to encounter and study the minutiae of urban life eludes us. Could Koolhaas, in effect, be making the same point about the inadequacy of finding language that can describe the specifics of this situation?