La transformation du paysage urbain : entre imaginaire et experience

Abstract

The modernity has deeply changed the face of the earth. The transformation of urban landscape is effective in a double aspect: primarily, it introduces the urban homogeneity by reproducing the forms of capitalist life characterized by the globalization phenomenon; secondly, the liberating force is not totally erased in this global tendency. The installation of huge towers in town has similar effect. Imposing modern architectural technology makes possible another way of experiencing the urban space, there is another sublime lived in this modernity. This experience of repetition and diff erence also appears in the imagination of dwelling here or elsewhere. To imagine in living somewhere else is an effort of spacing that mobilizes the transmutation of dwelling places in the city. This erroneous imaginary has diffi culties in discovering the local characteristics but may insert an alien space in the same place. There is still some freedom in the desire for the otherness. The experience of urban landscape is never stabilized. In mobility, it puts us in a situation of permanent interrogation on our own existence in the world.