White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 3morphology and peripheralsettlements) and if we fail to focussufficiently on these links, we will bemisled into writing off as banal andunworthy of the lofty interest ofintellectuals those concretephenomena which build up societyfrom daily life and have majorrepercussions on the structure of oursettlement system. We must not stopshort at the purelyquantitative/material situation,important as it is: the transformationof urban dwelling and city livingcannot simply be accounted for by thefact that cities are larger. They are alsodifferent, and one of the greatdifferences concerns dwelling,especially the relationship between thephysical position and internalorganisation of homes: in technicaljargon, the relation between the“front” and “back” of our house.Receding boundaries and the riseof the metacityThe most significant aspect ofcontemporary urban reality is relatedto the changes to the physical and socialmorphology of cities which took place inthe 20th century. It is now clear thatworldwide the traditional city and the“first-generation metropolis”, whichcharacterised urban life in the mid-20th century, have now given way to acompletely different kind ofmorphology which is producing aseries of what United Nations officialreports call Mega Urban Regions(MURs). In these regions variousforms of human settlements areinextricably woven, creating a new stillill-defined urban entity. For analyticalreasons which I will mention below, Ihave suggested calling this new entitythe metacity. ii This reflects thethreefold meaning of an entity that has“gone beyond” (meta) and even wellbeyond the classic physicalmorphology of the “first-generationmetropolis”, which dominated the20th century with its core and rings;the name also alludes to “goingbeyond” (meta) the traditionaladministrative control exercised bylocal authorities over the territory; andto going beyond (meta) the prevailingsociological reference to theinhabitants, with the development ofthe “second (and third) generationmetropolis”, increasingly dependenton “non-resident populations”. iiiThe traditional city had well-definedboundaries and a well-definedpopulation, albeit in both cases withsome variations to these definitions,but the concept was clear and widelyheld. The fact a population coincidedwith a well-defined territory is not onlythe outcome of original ancienturbanisation, mainly based on the ideaof the city-state, i.e. thesuperimposition of polis and astu, ofthe social city and the built city, butalso the consolidation of this matchingthrough the rationalisation of theterritory for administrative purposes,driven by the rise of the modern state.Even in linguistic terms bond,boundary, boundedness, and bondage(all terms derived from the Germanbund), describe both the spatialdefinition of a given social unity andits internal cohesion. Similarly, weWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 61