Urban Cultures of Collapse

The interest in the urban fact has been renewed. However, it is no longer focused on models of growth and efficiency. The economic growth that characterized late capitalism and much of the postmodernist cultural production manifests some symptoms of fatigue, making place to a global unease on a possible system breakdown. Once the economy no longer grows and is threatened with imminent collapse, the architectural concern shifts to those places that display, somehow, an urban culture of collapse.

This notion of collapse is not the result of a sudden and unexpected event, but of an urban condition beyond what is desirable that remains over time. It does not imply the suspension of urban activity, but the emergence of other models of development. The places where this collapse may be observed persist in a permanent state of exception and in them, the exception becomes the norm. They challenge the reductionist and restrictive idea of unlimited growth that has ruled both the economic system and urban planning in recent decades, which is not always sustained or sustainable. For this reason, they reveal its perversions and denounce its principles. The 1970s collage city has led to the present-day collapsed city.