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Nowadays, a city is the most popular place of dwelling for the major part of the people living on the planet. Thus, the city landscape is one of the things that influence people’s moods and ways of thinking. According to Nicholas Mirzoeff, there are three major types of big cities that have existed since the 20th century (Mirzoeff, 2016). The paper aims to analyze three types of big cities that were outlined by Mirzoeff: Imperial City, Divided City, and Global City.
Imperial City
Imperial City is the form of urban organization prevailing from 1800 to 1945. In an Imperial City, the architecture and infrastructure were aimed to serve the needs and interests of a certain public constituted mostly by white men. Some of them, the people called flaneurs, were strolling around the city, observing contemporary life. Nineteenth-century Paris can serve as an example of an Imperial City. Full of lights, having a wealthy core surrounded by outskirts, the city allowed strolling through the shops without any purchase. Earlier, people would go into the store only to buy something, but the practices of window-shopping and browsing replaced this shopping format. The Imperial City had a colonial flavor as it was the center of an empire. Pieces of art from different countries were brought to Imperial Cities, as it was important to create a sense of the power of the empire. However, it was contrasted by poor industrial outskirts, dwelled by the low-class people.
Divided City
The concept of a Divided City occurred after the Second World War and was developed during the Cold War (from 1947 to 1990). Berlin can serve as a vivid example of a divided city, as it has been literally divided into two parts by a wall. The wall separated the Eastern and Western parts of the city, as each part was controlled by different sides of the Cold War conflict. Strict segregation also could be seen in American cities, as there were special places for colored and white people. Thus, the Divided City is a city based on segregation, either political or racial. In Israel, the segregation goes much deeper, extending from the ground (mineral rights, water resources, traffic control) to the sky. The streetlights in a Divided City serve to monitor the streets in order to prevent crimes or minor abuses.
Global City
In a Global city, light also plays an important part in creating the city ambiance. For example, in New York and Hong Kong, there are special effects in the malls that create a sense of daylight, even if it is nighttime outside. This is the part of the marketing strategy that aims to make people buy more things. On the one hand, Global Cities seem to be comfortable for people, as there are, for example, franchises that allow anyone to order familiar dishes or beverages, and there are malls with thousands of items to buy. On the other hand, the cities are overcrowded, and the luxury center is surrounded by outskirts with a high crime rate. If in Imperial City there was a class division, nowadays it is replaced by ethnical division, as the poor outskirts are inhabited mostly by migrants. The center of the city is the place of tourist attraction, while in the rest of the city, there is not much to do or see. Thus, despite the ideas of globalization and multiculturalism that are popular in the 21st century, a modern Global City is still divided.
A Global City changes very quickly, and it is difficult to look at the city due to an excessive volume of visual information. Old familiar architecture is replaced by practical blocks made of steel and glass combined with replicas of castles and tourist sights. Everything seems to be fake and ruled by marketing purposes. For people living on the outskirts, the city often becomes a concrete cage, which slightly resembles Divided and Imperial Cities. Thus, something changes with the urban landscape, but some concepts remain despite changing the form.
Work Cited
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and More. Basic Books, 2016.
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