Geoff CARVER
(Germany)
People travel the world in ever-increasing numbers just to get away, to taste and experience the exotic. So why would they build a Starbucks in the Opernplatz in Vienna, just across the street from the world-famous Sacher Hotel?
Why do people travel great distances to experience not the “original” or the “authentic,” but “only” a simulacrum of rich café culture and traditions?
There seems to be a paradox in the fact that… the more people travel, the more things become the same: we encounter a global ubiquity, where every street in every city looks the same as any other, all lined with the same international chains of shops and fast-food restaurants: the exopolis.
So why travel…?
If nothing else, this globalised consumer culture is probably not sustainable: how long will it take for tourists to realise the absurdity of travelling long distances to do the same things they do at home?
This paper starts with the premise that cities are uniquely human creations, that each city is expressed in its streets and layouts, and that one way to fight the worst aspects of that inhuman juggernaut known as globalisation is to re-examine what makes us – and what we value as – humans. This can be done in part by reading the text of city as a palimpsest of its own history, and to focus attention back on the local.