City-Without-Any-Quality (CWAQ) and Its Counterparts

Introduction

In an encyclopedia based on particular cities, on the literary specificities of the different cities in the world, it could seem at the same time both provocative and necessary to propose an entry dedicated to the anonymous though redundant and plethoric City-Without-Any-Quality (CWAQ).

What is meant by City-Without-Any-Quality (CWAQ)? And what are its counterparts?

Part 1: CWAQ or the City for a Man Without Quality

The CWAQ could be understood in reference to the globalized city. To parody and reverse Pascal’s famous aphorism about the universe as “an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere” (Pensées, fragment 199), the CWAQ is a city whose center is nowhere and its circumference everywhere: it is the global suburb made of faceless skyscrapers, tentacular thoroughfares, and rhizomatic subterranean metro lines. The CWAQ can be defined as an “ideal-type” modern city whose model is reproducible everywhere anytime. The CWAQ could be...