The Generic City

“Throughout the history of humankind cities have grown through a process of consolidation. Changes are made on the spot. Things are improved. Cultures flourish, decay, revive, disappear...all on the same site. This is why archaeology is a profession of digging: it exposes layer after layer of civilization. The Generic City, is not improved but abandoned. The idea of layering, intensification, completion are alien to it: it has no layers. Its archaeology will therefore be the evidence of its progressive forgetting, the documentation of its evaporation.” _Rem Koolhaas, The Generic City