The city – A bounded infinity

Abstract

“The city – a bounded infinity. A labyrinth where you are never lost.” (Kobo Abe, 1967): in the frame of a broader research project about “getting lost”, we focus on disorientation in the universal pantopolis of the future. The present metropolis become the literary place of aimless wandering, the labyrinth a metaphor of urban disorientation. In 2007, urban world population surpasses rural world population. The city of urban sprawl and boundless slums doesn’t coincide anymore with an organism, with a project. It becomes a boundless net of virtual connections, with no centre, no map, no co-ordinates. How do you get lost in the urban sprawl? The global city hides a complex and mobile reality. A mosaic of different and fragmented spaces, where is still possible to get lost; where multicultural citizens, foreigners but at the same time actors and producers of the space around them, drive though thousands of paths.