Title:

The Generic city as a contemporary imaginary city. The General characteristics,

similarities & differences between typical Greek Cities and the Generic city. The
presence or the absence of these characteristics make or do not make Athens a
Generic city?

Graduate Program in Architecture & Urban Design Department of Architecture

Professor: Yannis Aesopos

Student: Athena Spiliotopoulou

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Abstract

This paper explores the characteristics of the Generic city as described by Rem Koolhaas in his book S,
M, L, XL. The Generic city encompasses the characteristics of a contemporary global architecture, as a
non-place. It emerges as a major urban phenomenon for a global production of space that concerns
the current globalized contemporary metropolises. The Generic city has no identity, no past, no future,
no distinction, it abandons everything inefficient and moves towards efficiency. It rejects conceptions
of identity as derived from physical and historical substance with its insistence for centrality. Indicative
characteristics of the Generic city are evident in Athens, although issues like identity and authenticity,
remain crucial elements of the Greek cities, thus preventing them from being Generic city.

Keywords:

free of context, big, unshapable, without qualities, stripped Identity, no history, generic, homogeneous,
loss of centrality, present, modular, no past, no-future, no identity, free-form, eternal, inorganic,
permissive, endless repetition.

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Introduction

The Generic city is an urban phenomenon introduced by Rem Koolhaas and emerged through the need
for a blank urban space1 that can accommodate convergence and efficient adaptation. It is the efficient
and pragmatic outcome that arises from the remains of a city of the past, purging itself to a minimum.
The Generic city is a current city which is made from interactive present communication, knowledge
and culture and accommodates mainly inhabitants of the ‘Kinetic elite2’. The urban condition of the
Generic city is designed to attract this new type of human being, for whom historic cities are archaic
and airports represent a contemporary living.

Definition

Generic (adjective noun) is defined as something that:

- is exactly typical and has no special or unusual characteristics, Colins Dictionary.

- is not having a particular brand name, Merriam Webster Dictionary
- is not having particularly distinctive quality or application, Merriam Webster Dictionary.

City (noun): is defined as a plane inhabited in a most efficient way by people and process. Rem Koolhaas

1.0 Characteristics

The Generic city is an urban phenomenon derived from the current needs and the abilities of the
present inhabitants. It is a place free of context, history and identity, which exists in an authoritarian
universe retaining an air of permissiveness. Its stripped identity enhances continuous convergence and
it interprets an unshapable city in a continuous movement without qualities that allows citizens to tend
towards an eternal alteration. It is aesthetically free of form, while embraces change, remains practical
and is always resistant at nostalgia. History does not have any place in the Generic city. It abandons
everything that does not work and moves towards a continuous reshaping to accommodate both the
primitive and the futuristic.

It is a current city which is made from the interactive communication, the knowledge and the culture
of its inhabitants that has abandoned everything coming from past that does not work. It is fractal,
modular, inorganic and is liberated from the rules of centrality. It resists urban planning and zoning,
layering, thus remains free of standard forms. It is represented as an endless repetition of the same
simple structural module that is eternally up to date. It is efficient and pragmatic, in a way that is

1 Non-place urban realm.

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People whose personal lives are entirely subordinated to business demands, travel hundreds of thousands of miles every year,
need not a home but a home base, a comfortable and convenient nest in which to recuperate while waiting for the next flight. It
is an elite whose status is proportional to what they sacrifice in ordinary human satisfactions.

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interpreted as an absolute representation of modernism and science which moves towards a
universalism. It can be perceived as a leftover after a large section of urban life that crossed over to
cyberspace.

The Generic city can be seen, as a cinematographic studio which is superficial. Every day can be
generated a city with a new identity as a non-sterile but artificial substance. Homogenization is
synonym to liberation for the Generic city as it allows adaptation and division. The Generic city is a
blank space that allows its inhabitants to do what they want and form different identities every day. It
is a conscious movement away from difference towards similarity. It is founded by the ‘kinetic elite’
who are people with instable foundations and always on the move. Airports3 of different sizes represent
their homes and they feel comforted in the placelessness of the airports.

2.0 Greek cities: similarities & differences from the Generic city

Antithetically to the historical European cities, in Generic city there is an absolute lack of identity – a
city without history, originated from flexible structures organizes on a flat surface. The historic past of
the Greek cities is preventing them from liberating to a blank canvas and be as flexible needed for
forming new identities from ‘tabula rasa’. Koolhaas declares that progress, identity, and architecture of
the city are elements of the past for the Generic city. In Greek cities, history, architecture and identity
cannot be left at the past and be abandoned, as they certainly form their present contemporary living.

Koolhaas declares that Paris, as a historical European city has turned itself into a self-parody to remain
Parisian, while London changes constantly, only to become more and more like any other city. Qualities
of the past from these cities prevent convergence towards the Generic style. According to Koolhaas,
the Generic city is like a sketch that is never elaborated, is not improved but abandoned. The idea of
layering is alien to the Generic city. Athens current identity and urban form is aesthetically conscious
and is represented through historical traces that create a palimpsest which incorporates the past.

Urbanisation fetched indicative metropolitan elements into the contemporary living of Athens and
globalisation incorporated the multicultural and multiracial existence. The presence of the element of
anonymity brought into light, Generic city characteristics in Athens that together with its powerful and
precarious, fragile and flexible character, form a patchwork of the past and the present.

Conclusion: The presence or the absence of these characteristics make Generic city: Athens

The ‘Generic style’ cannot have an absolute representation in the Greek cities as the historical past
cannot be abandoned by obstructing the pure exploitation of its present. The theoretical value of the
past cannot be a present absence. The presence of the historical past and its importance for the current

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Airports as non-places, or transition spaces.

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urban Greek City, prevent Athens from being characterized as Generic city. It cannot be a past that
purges itself to a minimum, in order for the Generic city to be generated. Its urban sprawl formed with
layers, centrality and organity, incorporates a presence of qualities that derive from the past and insist
on an essence of transformation that correspond to an urban model with a center and a periphery. The
presence of qualities, history and a nostalgic atmosphere of Athens declares a city that the past is
elaborated in the present and kept its indisputable supremacy. It implies the absence of a tabula rasa
urban plane that can incorporate bigness, abandon the past and move only towards efficient scenes.
The general urban condition of the Generic city seeks to considerably interfere with the importance of
the Greek cities’ historical past, as a physical and material phenomenon and as a cultural barrier.

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REFERENCES

Ghent Urban Studies Team, Meyer De D., Versluys K., (1999), ‘The Urban Condition: Space, Community,
and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis’, Rotterdam , 010 Publishers.

Koolhaas R, (1998), ‘S,M,L,XL’, New York, The Monacelli Press.

Koolhaas, R. (1994), ‘Delirious New York, a Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. Rotterdam: 010
Publishers.