Recopiladors de la informació: Carlos Llop, Mara Marincioni, Adrià Calvo*

Panell elaborat el gener de 2006. Hi ha la relació dels llibres que contenen els conceptes fonamentals per entendre les formes de la ciutat del segle xx. Aquesta bibliografia s'ha extret del llibre: l'Explosió de la ciutat. Dins la biblioteca s'han exposats els llibres per facilitar-ne la consulta.

_{* Han col·laborat també en la fase de documentació bibliogràfica, Adam Grifoll i Gemma Vidal}

“Need of inquiry into smaller cities and city-groups. But here the same growth-process appears, industrial towns and cities uniting into vast city-regions, “conurbations”, which the broadest surveys are needed to realize…
Some name, then, for these city-regions, these town aggregates, is wanted. Constellations we cannot call them; conglomerations is, alas! Nearer the mark at present, but it may sound unappreciative: what of “Conurbations”? That perhaps may serve as the necessary word, as an expression of this new form of population-grouping, which is already, as it were subconsciously, developing new form of social grouping and of definite and administration by and by also.”

“The Exploding Metropolis ranks as one of the first most influential manifestos for choice, diversity, integration, anti-expertiseism, and citizens' participation in urban design. It provides a window into the undertow of post-modernist historicism in the 1950s and introduces problems that persist in current debates about the form and structure of urban life.”

"La città-regione è un organismo che non ha bisogno di limiti, perché rende possibile ad ognuno la scelta, momento per momento, esigenza per esigenza, dei limiti più opportuni. E questo è il punto, secondo me, importante dell' idea regione."

“We must abandon the idea of the city as a tightly settled and organized unit in which people, activities, and riches are crowded into a very small area clearly separated from its non-urban surroundings. Every city in this region spreads out far and wide around its original nucleus; it grows amidst an irregularly colloidal mixture of rural and suburban landscapes; it melts on broad fronts with other mixtures, of somewhat similar though different texture, belonging to the suburban neighborhoods of other cities.”

“The world city hypothesis is about the spatial organization of the new international division of labor. As such, it concerns the contradictory relations between production in the era of global management and the political determination of territorial interests. It helps us to understand what happens in the major global cities of the world economy and what much political conflict in these cities is about. Although it cannot predict the out-comes of these struggles, it does suggest their common origins in the global system of market relations.”

“The world city hypothesis is about the spatial organization of the new international division of labor. As such, it concerns the contradictory relations between production in the era of global management and the political determination of territorial interests. It helps us to understand what happens in the major global cities of the world economy and what much political conflict in these cities is about. Although it cannot predict the out-comes of these struggles, it does suggest their common origins in the global system of market relations.”

"The technoburbs which might stretch over seventy miles from the cores in all directions, are often in more direction communication with one another - or with the other techno cities across the country - than they are with the core".

“Lo sviluppo teorico da Ecopolis, città di villaggi, che affiora dalla scomposizione degli agglomerati periferici metropolitani verso il progetto di una costellazione regionale di città solidali, segue il filo conduttore di un modello implosivo che riduce il gigantesco prelievo di risorse ambientali e umane dalle periferie del mondo ritrovando al proprio interno, nei valori profondi del proprio territorio, “grandezza e potenza.”

“Questa diversa configurazione dell’urbanizzazione a bassa intensità è quella che abbiamo chiamato città diffusa. Tale fenomenologia territoriale si caratterizza quindi per:

• una massa consistente (da città, per intenderci) non solo di popolazione, ma anche, almeno parzialmente, di servizi e di attività produttive;
• una dispersione di tale massa in un territorio tanto vasto da non presentare, nell’insieme, fenomeni di alta densità e intensità. Questo, ovviamente, non sta a significare che non ci possano essere singoli “punti” con alte densità, ma soltanto che la configurazione spaziale non da luogo a significativi fenomeni di densità e intensità di tipo urbano;
• un’alta connessione tra i diversi punti del territorio. Si tratta, cioè, di un territorio che presenti connessioni molteplici di tipo orizzontale (infrastrutture), tali da garantire la possibilità di un’altissima mobilità.”

“Edge cities represent the third wave of our lives pushing into new frontiers in this half century. First, we moved our homes out past the traditional idea of what constituted a city. This was the suburbanization of America, especially after World War II. Then we wearied of returning downtown for the necessity of life, so we moved our marketplaces out to where we lived. Today we have moved our means of creating wealth, the essence of urbanism-our jobs-out to where most of us have lived and shopped for two generations. That has led to the rise of Edge Cities.”

“… The combination of spatial dispersal and global integration has created a new strategic role for major cities. Beyond their long history as centers for international trade and banking, these cities now function in four new ways: first, as highly concentrated command points in the organization of the world economy; second, as key locations for finance and for specialized service firms, which have replaced manufacturing as the leading economic sector; third, as sites of production, including the production of innovations, in these leading industries; and fourth, as markets for the products and innovations produced… Cities concentrate control over vast resources, while finance and specialized service industries have restructured the urban social and economic order. Thus a new type of city has appeared. It is the global city. Leading examples now are New York, London, and Tokyo.”

“Ogni centro è connesso a rete con l’intero sistema regionale, assommando i vantaggi della metropoli (intensa comunicazione, informazione, mobilità, libertà di scelte) con i vantaggi di un’alta qualità urbana e paesistica (abolizione delle periferie, integrazione funzionale e ricostruzione dello spazio pubblico, eliminazione del traffico, alta qualità estetica del paesaggio agrario)…”

“Postfordist economic restructuring, intensified globalization, the communications and information revolution, the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of cultures and identity, the recomposition of urban forms and social structures, and many other forces shaping the postmetropolitan transition have significantly reconfigured our urban imaginary, blurring its once clearer boundaries and meanings while also creating new ways of thinking and acting in the urban milieu.”

“Este ensayo afirma que durante el siglo XX se ha ido generando una nueva forma de organización social que tiende a expandirse por todo el planeta, transformándolo en una nueva ciudad: Telépolis (…)

Telépolis se sustenta en una nueva forma de economía, el telepolismo, que convierte los ámbitos privados en públicos y puede transformar el ocio en trabajo y el consumo en producción (…)

Los medios de comunicación, y en particular la televisión, constituyen parte de la infraestructura de Telépolis (…)

Telépolis existe en la medida en que los ciudadanos se interrelacionan a distancia, bien sea directa o indirectamente.”

 “Io vorrei che noi tutti fossimo consapevoli del fatto che oggi lo spazio periferico, della dispersione e della diffusione è altro dell’attenzione di tutta Europa,… L’attenzione attuale per lo spazio periferico e della dispersione sembra invece essere il tentativo di capire che in quello stesso spazio si rappresenta qualche cosa di più importante, di più coerente alla nostra società, al nostro sistema di valori, anche alle nostre aspirazioni, solo che lo si sappia cogliere.”

“Une métapole est l’ensemble des espaces dont tout ou une partie des habitants, des activités economique ou des territoires sont intégrés dans le fonctionnement quotidien (ordinaire) d’une métropole. Une métapole constitue généralement un seul bassin d’emploi, d’habitat et d’activités. Ses espaces sont profondément hétérogènes et pas nécessairement contigus... La ville se transforme plus par densifications, par ajouts, par conquêtes, par transformations, par implosions, par dédensifications. La métapole se constitue et se diffuse à partir de lieux, de projets, qui ne sont plus nécessairement contigus à la ville ancienne.”

“The network is the urban site before us, an invitation to design and construct the City of Bits (capital of the twenty-first century), just as, so long ago, a narrow peninsula beside the Maeander became the place for Miletos. But this new settlement will turn classical categories inside out and will reconstruct the discourse in which architects have engaged from classical times until now.”

“The new global economy and the emerging informational society have indeed a new spatial form, which develops in a variety of social and geographical contexts: megacities... They are the nodes of the global economy, concentrating the directional, productive, and managerial upper functions all over the planet… Megacities are discontinuous constellations of spatial fragments, functional pieces, and social segments.”

“The hundred mile city is where suburbs have ceased to be suburban and the whole urbanized territory can be seen as an immense force field reacting to human mobility and real estate possibilities. The dynamics of global economic competition have led to disposable cities and expendable parts of cities, which generate great waste and tragic displacement.”

“Edgeless cities should concern anyone seeking to curb sprawl because they are the not dispersed, low-density form of development. They are not mixed-use, pedestrian friendly, or accessible by transit and they cannot be remade into traditional downtowns. They represent a new and different urban form.”