Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives. This item is unavailable.Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives

How urban paradigms of efficiency, sanitization and surveillance transform city life into seamless "experience" and erode the non-normative

In cities across the world, a new urban condition is spreading rapidly: an ever-increasing push toward efficiency, sanitization, surveillance and the active eradication of any aberration, friction or alternative. From Dubai, Hong Kong and London to Amsterdam and Cairo, the smooth city, with its gated communities and theme-park zones, insidiously transforms urban life into seamless "experience." While the demand for safe, clean and well-functioning urban environments is understandable, the ascent of the smooth city corrodes the democratic and emancipatory potential of cities, leaving little space for the experimental and the non-normative. Smooth City investigates the origins, characteristics and consequences of "smoothness" and points toward possible alternatives.
René Boer (born 1986) is a critic, curator and organizer in and beyond the fields of architecture, art, design and heritage. Based in Amsterdam, he is a founding partner of Loom: Weaving New Worlds and an editor at Failed Architecture.

In cities around the world a new urban condition is spreading rapidly, characterized by ever-increasing levels of ‘perfection’, efficiency, control, and the active eradication of any aberration or alternative. In the smooth city, urban space is sanitized and urban life is compressed into a seamless experience. While the
need for safe, clean, and well-functioning urban environments is clear, the rise of the smooth city undermines the democratic nature and emancipatory potential of cities as it leaves almost no space for anything that is experimental or incompatible with dominant norms. Smooth City offers a critical analysis of the origins, characteristics, and consequences of the smooth city, while also offering a starting point to challenge the obsession with perfection and instead collectively work towards porosity in the urban realm.