hat Ever Happened to Urbanism?windingly float over the “o-man’s: Tandy the wall, andthe “death sti 1 foreshadow ofthe angels Daiel fad Cassel, who wall Between layers ofthe wal in Wim Wenders" im, Wings of Desire butthey dida’t want io ace snd thet got on my nerves. had paid ported good mx {whole $70 worth—tohave my ame legally changed and nobody edt call me B i NaMe® ‘And then there was Rose Rose washer name and would she have been Ros if her ame had not boon Rose. She used think and then she used to think again name PLEASE DON'T SEND LET IN MY NAME WITHOUT ME KNOWING. name The practice of identifying hutianes by giving them individual names Va nitiated in Avstalia i the early 1900s by Clement Wrage. He took to naming anteyclones ater people ho liked and low-pressure systems alter people, notably politicians, that hedisliked NAME-DROP Marvin, one ofthe richest men athe worl, doesnot do things by halves, nto guest tte ball he had flown in some of he biggest names in fils, TV and polities Cary Grant, Lille all James Stewart, Raquel Welch Lee Majors, Dolly Parton, Wagner, Diana Ross, Mety Grit, Stefanie Powers, Henry Kissinger and ex-president Gorald Ford were just some ofthe famous faces on the eitering dus, long with Fob, Linda, Joh, Tames, Kathleen Beller and Michael Nader vo new faces on “Dynasty") and me NAMELESS? shard to tell you what it was pe cisely she wanted wo wrest from me ‘Obviously it would be something ety simple — the simplest imposs- bility in the wordy as, fr instance, ‘he exact description of the form of cloud She wanted un assurance, astae- ment, a promise, an explanation—1 ont know how to cal tthe thing has no mame RS 960 This ce) quantity In spite ism has demanc Lagos t has dou stagger How to sion, he everyw is on its of the u Moderr into qui been a aesthet to make of a nev this fia: of mod What n architec and apy agenci¢ logistic The pre lose toThis century has been a losing battle with the issue of quantity. In spite of its early promise, its frequent bravery, urban- ism has been unable to invent and implement at the scale demanded by its apocalyptic demographics. In 20 years, Lagos has grown from 2 to 7 to 12 to 15 million; Istanbul has doubled from 6 to 12. China prepares for even more staggering multiplications. How to explain the paradox that urbanism, as a profes- sion, has disappeared at the moment when urbanization everywhere — after decades of constant acceleration — is on its way to establishing a definitive, global “triumph” of the urban condition? Modernism’s alchemistic promise —to transform quantity into quality through abstraction and repetition —has been a failure, a hoax: magic that didn’t work. Its ideas, aesthetics, strategies are finished. Together, all attempts to make a new beginning have only discredited the idea of a new beginning. A collective shame in the wake of this fiasco has left a massive crater in our understanding of modernity and modernization. What makes this experience disconcerting and (for architects) humiliating is the city’s defiant persistence and apparent vigor, in spite of the collective failure of all agencies that act on it or try to influence it—creatively, logistically, politically. The professionals of the city are like chess players who lose to computers. A perverse automatic pilot constantly at