REACTION TO LEFEBVRE'S 'CITY TO THE URBAN SOCIETY'

Time is a constant. It cannot be devalued to a point, or moment in time, a critical point. An occurrence of tragedy, infamy, or celebration. The projection of a Critical Point across all objects/subjects, is objectively a material hypothesis, recognizably Marxist in its valuation on production, in terms of its correlative and temporal properties, deduced from the agrarian transition/dissolution to the urban, and discernibly sociological in its approach to identifying the method used to proliferate the urban fabric.

It is a projection of temporality that I believe Lefebvre is predicting, not of moment, where the metaphorical seams are to burst, but a temporal paradigm, a post technological, intimately leisure based apprehension of time and space.

Lefebvre predicts well the rise of the technological revolution and the ideology of the leisure society, however the pseudo-post-technological-leisure revolution is impossible to predict. Perhaps we have already reached the critical point in terms of Manuel Castells Space of Flows, where we are interconnected by flows of energy, data, information, the negation of contact and recently the intermittent transmission of RSS feeds, linking you to every possible interest you might have in the world around you. Or maybe according to Lefebvre himself, reaching a proximity in space and time where the urban fabric no longer extends as an obvious physical place or object, but as the relationship between objects on every scale is changed. In my opinion the way in which we conceive, perceive and receive the physical environment is no longer an entity of interaction, but subtraction. The relationship to all economic, social and cultural tools is changed to a point where its historical meaning or eidos is corrupted perhaps as much by its own creation (the machine that produced it) than of the consumerist demand of the world around it. The deletion of history and culture from our fingertops/laptips, sorry fingertips/laptops.

Does this mean we have already reached a critical point as Lefebvre graphs out the post industrialist timeline? Maybe, However I don’t believe it is possible to project an exact moment where it occurred. We may have reached/lived/passed this critical point, as we no longer conform to an ideology of industry, time has caught up. We no longer conform to the technological industry even though we still buy into it. The consumerist/idealist engrained into our bored and stagnant minds. We HAVE become bored and now expectant. We become frustrated when we cannot access our facebook, or we become furious when we cannot access our bank accounts. Your time being wasted by the little white box in the corner of your living room. Its LED lights flash as though it is telling to wait///then wait...then u disconnect. The ultimate reliance on online. It may now mean you will have to leave your domicile or habitation, and walk...for a while, to another but larger white box in another street. Deduced only by the faint glimmer of a few letters that spell out BANK. Then you realise its Sunday. Time again wasted.. i mean who would have thought, walking through our beautifully stark and pristine neighbourhoods or high street could be such a chore. When will time improve, slow down. When can one step outside into an environment not completely deducible to the sum of all its parts? A mathematical equinox, of silver lined, glass façades and concrete trees arching like red woods over the human tête. more to follow.......