Michael Lissack loosening of ties to any specific space. Globalized capital. electronic means of production. and uniform mass culture abhor the indurate, undisciplined differentiation of traditional cities. The new city replaces the anomaly and delight of such places. With a universal particular, a generic urbanity is in- flected only by applique. Here, locality is efficiently acknowledged by the inclusion of the beignets at the airport lounge in New Orleans. This place is fully ageographic: it can be inserted equally in an open field or in the heart of town, the inward-looking atrium hotel is as apt to the featureless greensward as it is to teeming unreclaimed downtowns. With its components reduced to a repetitive minimum. space is departicularized. Obsessed with the point of production and the point of sale, the new city is little more than a swarm of urban bits jettisoning a physical view of the whole, sacrificing the idea of the city as the site of community and human connection. A second characteristic of this new community is its obsession with security, with rising levels of manipulation and surveillance over its citi- zenry and with a proliferation of new modes of segregation. The methods are both technological and physical. The former consist of invasive polic- ing technologies-domesticated versions of the electronic battlefield"-and a growing multitude of daily connections to the computer grid, ranging from encounters with the auto teller to the full-blown regulatory environ- ment of the electronic workplace. The physical means are varied: parallel, middle-class suburban cities growing on the fringes of old centers abandoned to the poor: enclaved cities for the rich, gentrification; the globe-girdling cocoon that envelops the business traveler as he or she encounters the same airport, hotel. and office building from Denver to Dubai; the lacework of overhead and underground circulation systems imposed in Minneapolis to permit shoppers and office workers to circulate in climate-regulated security through threatening urban territory. A century ago, major technological changes occurred that transformed and benefited urban growth: electricity, the internal combustion engine, subways, indoor plumbing and sanitation systems, elevators, and steel struc- tured buildings. A century later, new technologies have emerged that are not captives of urban places, but rather lend themselves to applications allowing
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