Stray Thoughts on Cities, Development and Aesthetics

To think of it, global cities of culture were also sites where ideas for art and design were developed from creative sparks of ideas into more of mass followings that must have justified the place of these cities in the collective memory of next generations. This backward perspective nevertheless seeks to project itself into a comparative and a present dimension in order that a sense of how one might detect emerging urban hot soots of style can develop. The flurry of down-town development/redevelopment projects that one might discover upon zooming in on a given urban landscape leaves one wanting for terms in which their comparison can be achieved with reasonable conceptual economy. In absence of a leading kind of economic activity that might independently boost the fortunes of any given city, the urgency to reinvent not only economic make-up of a given city but also to manage the on-going crisis of the efforts to do so singles out urban style as a single workable strategy for encouraging positive sum cooperation strategies among the stakeholders in cities, surrounding regions and across the globe. As bases for economic common sense melt away buffeted by the uncertainties of the disorganized capitalism, it is the shared aesthetics that seems to provide the common ground for shared urban life.