The generic city or the space of flows, or the flattened world, gradually creates its own context with its own norms and expectations. It “induces a hallucination of the normal,” Koolhaas wrote. A “hallucination” because it isn’t purely organic, it is a vision induced by technology, like a fever dream, and “normal” because it is a homogenized template, a repeating pattern whose ubiquity establishes its own normalcy. The generic city has spread implacably, unchecked.
