Urban Fragmentation in a cultural context

KOZAK, DANIEL

Globalization, Urban Form and Governance: Exploring Collaborative Urban Strategies

Delft University Press

Lugar: Delft; Año: 2004; p. 137 - 152

In the current period the concept of fragmentation has become common, not only in urban and social discourses, but also in descriptions of cultural production. Despite this shared use, these discourses have not been directly interrelated. Fragmentation is perhaps one of the most repeated terms used in discussions about postmodernity as well as in descriptions of current urban trends. It may have a very positive or a very negative connotation depending on the context in which it is asserted. But in spite of the large using of fragmentation to describe urban processes or settings there is a remarkable lack of work analysing what "Urban Fragmentation" really means. When reading an urban text and the word fragmentation is mentioned we have to rely on an understanding of the concept gained from other disciplines. But what are the implications when this concept is drawn from other discourses and is applied in urban debates? As Roland Barthes (1984 )argues in Writing Degree Zero: "language is never innocent?. Words, when extrapolated from different disciplines, always carry attached a memory that produces secondary meanings". When a word is so greatly repeated, and its meaning remains ambiguous or at least blurred, there is a phenomenon to be studied. This research paper seeks to explore the meaning, roots and consequences of urban fragmentation in the current period in a cultural context and to relate these cultural interpretations abides with those of other discourses.