The book on planetary urbanisation and cinematic urbanism by Lorenzo Tripodi published by AgenziaX Is now out in the bookshops!
A diary of navigation in the changing urban landscape that mixes theory, action and psychogeographical drift. Retracing his own militant, artistic and research experiences in the Florence overwhelmed by touristicisation, in the Berlin after the fall of the wall and in the New York in the ashes of ground zero, the author reinterprets the concept of the city in relation to the growing intertwining of space and image production. As industry and conflict become increasingly invisible, cities have been transformed into devices for the distribution and consumption of images, giving rise to a new cinematic urbanism. Financialisation, gentrification, festivalisation and touristicisation of urban centres correspond to as many forms of control over visual flows that require new tools of analysis. In this process, technologies play a crucial role: everything that once justified the city’s existence as a discrete and circumscribed spatial entity – the market, education, entertainment, culture, healthcare – is now available virtually everywhere. Yet the city is alive and well: diluted in planetary urbanisation, it has changed role, texture and disposition, but continues to be a fundamental element of the human landscape. Its latest incarnation, and at the same time nemesis, is the platform city, a technological infrastructure that supports the capitalist extraction process through control and concentration of data. The final stage of this evolution is the condition of urbiquity.
