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Dieter Hassenpflug
Reflexive Urbanism

Preface
There are two main socio-cultural discourses about reflexivity or rather reflexive
modernization. The first one is the risk discourse, which is closely related with the oeuvre of
German sociologist Ulrich Beck featuring the risk society (Beck 1986/2008). The risk
discourse, dealing with sustainable development and the related rationality of consequences
(Folgenrationalitt), revolves around subjects such as societal dependence on limited
resources, under-complexity of scientific approaches and practical problem solving strategies,
around integrated and holistic concepts.
The second discourse, being closely interconnected with the first one, focuses on the
modernization of modernity, i.e. on the post-industrial society and its keywords such as
difference, uniqueness, de-differentiation, thematization, branding etc.. The assumption,
being based on empirical evidence, is: Modernity and its related functionalism has growing
old and met its limits. It has to be renewed. How can this been carried out? Well,
modernizing modernity means in the final analysis reconciliation of modernity and tradition.
Referring at the subject of urban studies that means: In order to adapt space production to
the expectations and needs of an emerging post industrial society reflexive urbanism aims
at reconciling modern urban planning, urban design and place making with the urban
wisdom, experience and knowledge of the historical city and its related urban traditions.
Initially, there are three keywords which need a special explanation or definition: tradition,
urbanism and reflexivity.

Tradition
Usually tradition is taken as something that has to be connected with the past, with old
customs. Thus it got the touch of something old, gone by and old fashioned. In one word:
something that is not modern. Tradition is understood as being just the opposite of
modernity. However, tradition is not only referring to the past. It is also a stratum of the
present. In this case it stands not only for the old-fashioned and outmoded but also for the
unchanging in a world of change, the stable in a world of uncertainties, for the slow in a world
of acceleration and for the integrated in a world of specialisation and differentiation. In this
respect tradition appears in present times as something that stands aside of modernity and
that is penetrating it as well, as a dimension that is simultaneous and non-simultaneous at
the same time. But no matter if tradition is taken as mere memory or rather a fossil or if it is
taken as living rite or folklore - in both cases it means just the opposite of modernity:
Tradition is not modern and modernity is not traditional.
However, what goes for tradition and modernity, goes for the sociological categories
traditional and modern society as well. In the first, historical, case sociologists talk about
old, pre-modern, family-, community-, religion- and agriculture-based societies. The
interrelations between the individuals are direct, concrete and hierarchical. They are referring
to communities of various kinds (families, tribes, feudal entities, brother- and sisterhoods,
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guilds, parish etc.). These communitarian societies are driven by strict canonical morals as
layed down e.g. in the famous Aristotelian rules of good life. We know all this from
agricultural based, mostly feudal civilizations and their conservative way of reasoning and
acting. This traditional reasoning and acting was classified by the German Critical Theory
(Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Markuse) under what they called systems of
objective reason. In such systems all doing, even farming, cattle breeding and
craftsmanship is highly integrated (polytechnical instead of specialised work) and first of all
sacral service. The protection of the arcanum (the old treasure of knowledge, passed on from
one generation to the next) dominates or even suppresses any inventive behaviour. However,
not only labour is highly integrated (holistic) but also the social institutions which are following
the logic of closed economies, i.e. economies which do more or less without market and
money. Juergen Habermas described these traditional institutions (house, market,
brotherhoods, moral systems etc.) as total institutions. (Habermas 1981 II, 235)
The meaning of traditional society should not be restricted to a mere historical phenomenon
preceding modernity. Tradition is also a stratum of the modern, i.e. present world, a
persistent pre-modern dimension of present life. Traditional society surrounds us in the here
and now. It penetrates the modern societal life with its enlightened, rationalistic, quantitative,
impersonal or cold systems like contracts, specialised institutions and bureaucratic
administrations in manifold ways and even existentially. Modernity as such is not based on
transcendentally guaranteed truth. In contrary enlightened reason is struggling for a truth to
be found in the individual. Thats why Horkheimer calls it a system of subjective reason.
In the midst of the de-mystified (Max Weber) modern world elements of tradition are
asserting themselves. And these elements are much more than mere relicts, fragments or
left overs of a submerged epoch. They are indispensable parts of present culture, i.e.
modernised tradition. They are indispensable, because advanced societies cannot go without
those human relations which are based on kinship, friendship, community, direct relations etc.
And although the modern private household has been subject to a deep economization we
can still encounter elements of a close economy (oikos-economy), different forms of informal
work like homework, work for ones own, shadow-work, neighbourhood-assistance,
networking and last but not least investigations into satisfying relations.
Traditional society is not only elsewhere, if you like in the last paradises located on Pacific
islands and South-American rain forests. And it is not only to be found in the backyards of
our metropolises. Traditional society is first of all near by, in the proximity of our every-day-
life. It criss-crosses through the specialized institutions of modern society thus serving for a
stability. But with respect to sociological thinking its true that in both cases - in the diachronic
one of tradition that remains behind and in the synchronic one of omnipresent tradition -
modern society gets its identity from denying tradition.

Urbanism
And what about urbanism? This term integrates all the knowledge, rules and skills needed for
urban space- and placemaking, i.e. primarily urban research, strategic urban planning and
urban design. Urbanism is - in modern terms and understanding - an inter- and
multidisciplinary project. I said in modern terms because it is impossible to talk about inter-
or multidisciplinarity with regard to traditional or moral urbanism.
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As already pointed out the category of tradition is not linked with specialisation or
differentiation of knowledge and skills at all. On the contrary! Both, traditional knowledge and
skills are highly integrated, experience based, static, non-inventive, holistic, mimetic, poly-
technical etc. The stock of knowledge and skills is not based on nomothetic and systematic
empirical science but first of all in Gods Creation and on every day life experience (so
called Aristotelian knowledge). Knowledge and skills are regarded as a well preserved and
unchangeable treasure, as a so called arcanum which will be handed down from father to
the son and mother to daughter.
Thus traditional urbanism has to be taken as a set of unchanging and stable rules about how
to built a beautiful public city, a divine Jerusalem, i.e. how to keep the city neat, secure and
well organised. The traditional city of good governance, German urban historian Dilcher
says, demonstrates its centrality by providing a crowded public space called piazza. Here
the local civic society shows itself publically by means of its groups and occupations. Here
the poor and the rich meet and the market with its exchange between citizens and peasants
will take place. The magnificent city palaces of the rich are framing with their beautiful
facades the piazza showing their windows and galleries. By keeping and developing the key
virtues of pax and iustitia (freedom and justice) the civil society develops. Its stage is the
public and its space is the piazza. (Dilcher 2004, 67)
The main features of this urbanism are socio-cultural centrality, functional diversity and mix,
radial concentric growth pattern, organic ground plan, parcelled block border construction,
well articulated threshold between private and public areas and distinctive city borders.
1. Socio-cultural centrality: The traditional European city is characterised by strongly
accentuated social and cultural (spiritual) centrality, the precursor of which has been
the Greek agora. This ancient centrality has been followed by the medieval dualism of
profane and religious space, both forming the city crown of the old bourgeois city. On
the one hand we find the market place and its public infrastructure like city hall, council,
school, court, prison etc. and on the other hand the church with its surrounding
community oriented infrastructure of compassion such as cloister, hospital,
poorhouse, university etc.
2. Variety and mix of urban functions: Housing, working, merchandising, learning,
economical negotiating, political decision making, praying and celebrating were not
separated from each other. As to their functions not only the traditional city in the whole
but also its institutions were strongly integrated. Juergen Habermas (Habermas 1981 II,
235) denoted the traditional market or church as total institutions. This could also be
applied for the city. The medieval city has to be taken as a total institution. The old
bourgeois market and its city hall has not only being regarded as a place for selling and
buying, but also as a public medium (an oral forerunner of the newspaper), a theatre, a
school, a court, a parliament etc.. It embraces all functions which later gradually
specialized and differentiated. City hall and market place still include all functions which
in the course of time became differentiated societal systems and subsystems.
3. Radial concentric growth pattern: This type of urban growth is reflecting the strong
impact of centrality and spatial hierarchy. While the symbolic meaning of urban space
is the highest in the centre (city crown), the density of the urban fabric is highest at the
periphery, near the city fortifications.
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4. Organic layout of streets (ground plan): Bended streets are not only due to
topographical conditions but also results of aesthetical ideas and functional
considerations. Many bended roads in our old cities have to be taken as the result of
wilful, planned action. (Humpert, Schenk 2001) Alberti, the Renaissance architectural
theorist and expert of urban hygienics, pointed out that bended roads do not only
improve security but also contribute to the beauty of a city by providing visual surprises
which make its space rich and vivid.
5. Parcelled block-border construction: In the old bourgeois city each block, framed by
streets and places (block), consists of numerous plots of mostly private land. Being
under private control, the plots and the houses built on them serve for a vivid small
scale layout of the city. According to very strong statutes of urban shape the gable
facade of each house, its size, scale, the order of windows, the entrance and its
appearance in the whole has to serve as attractive backdrop for public spaces like
squares and streets. The cult of smart facades aims at the fame of the city, at its
uniqueness, its image and identity. By staging public space a theatrical atmosphere
was created making the city liveable and its dwellers proud.
6. Well articulated thresholds between private and public areas and distinctive borders
(walls, fortifications) between inside and outside the city, symbolising cultural
independence. Comparing with the urban space the size of the walls and fortifications
is gigantic. That makes sense because the fortifications have to threaten the enemies.
But the walls are not only protecting the city. They are also symbolising its pride,
autonomy, freedom and wealth. Thus the wall can be treated as counterpart or counter
image of the church (cathedral, dome). While the church symbolizes the security of the
souls, the wall symbolizes the security of the bodies. While the walls were destroyed
during the incipient phase of nation building, the Paying for and maintaining the
fortifications has always been one of the most noble duties for the free citizens.
With regard to the end of the traditional European city/country-contradiction
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, modern
urbanism is from its beginning engaged in the re-invention of the city. This is its definite
project. If it would be up to the will of the protagonists of modernity the city obviously has to
be a machine, a smoothly artefact, easy to operate and to control.
If we compare the rules and features of traditional urbanism with those compiled in the
famous Charta of Athens, edited by CIAM in 1937, we meet an agenda which strongly
opposes the traditional one. While opening the city for more light, sunshine and fresh air,
block border construction and cult of facades is rejected. Staged, theatrical and distinctly
framed public space is abolished in order to mix cityspace with rural green. Aiming at
speeding up the city, spatial zoning was promoted to the debit of the pre-existing variety and
mix of functions. Previously integrated functions such as living, working, services, recreation,
consumption etc. are separated and assigned their own territories. Adapting Ebenezer
Howards garden-city idea of integrating the spatial virtues of city and country and combining
them with the new rules of orientation, the modern city becomes a functional city in the park,
a rational version of garden city. While settlements and (noisy and dirty) arterial roads are
separated from each other, modern urbanism tend to put much more emphasis on greenery
than on piazzas. Thus, for the sake of living in urban green, not only socio-cultural centrality

1
This contradiction never existed in China - or better: it ended more or less when Chinese
feudalism disappears more than 200 years BC.
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but also the distinctiveness of private property and public goods was severely weakened.
The modern philosophies of hygiene, public health, speed, specialisation and efficiency
overcome the traditional philosophies of symbolically charged centralism, staged public
urban space, bourgeois pride, threshold culture and spatial hierarchy. Last but not least this
urbanism renders the open, borderless city to a program.
Under fordistic treatment, streets are transformed into mono-functional traffic routes, squares
into parking lots, lively house-fronts into smooth, sterile and cold facades: a conglomerate of
wide trunk routes, housing blocks surrounded by green strips, office complexes, industrial
estates, pedestrian zones, bungalow housing estates and sport arenas. The public spaces
where once young and old, rich and poor, the bohemian and the conventional, locals and
strangers ensured variety have mutated into efficient functional spaces. Children no longer
have a place to play in front of their house, nor pensioners their place in the sun. Large-scale
unimaginative childrens playgrounds and old-age homes become the replacement
infrastructure for a lost urbanity.
The city-dwellers move out of the city to return as commuters, making the cities more
inhospitable causing in turn more people to leave the city. Todays dream of the good life is
the single-family house in an estate in the suburbs. Almost 80% of young people in Germany
want to live in a detached or semi-detached house with garden. Living in ones own house in
the periphery is the modern day dream. The state promotes this through a series of subsidy
programmes, tax-rebates, kilometre allowances and various grant funding packages. Life
moves outwards to the edges of the cities following political, fiscal and socio-political forces.
It remains to be seen whether in time the same economical and social dysfunctions will be
observed in the bungalow sprawl as in the high-rise residential settlements. Both tend to be
boring, poor, uniform mono-structured spaces with little or no urban or rural qualities.
So we are left with insular patches of highly-specialised spaces cutting the life of the people
into time and place segments. All social and age groups are seriously effected, particularly
children and young people for whom aesthetically attractive, stimulating spaces are most
important for developing their individuality.
Under the pressure of economic globalisation and mechanisation, of growing mobility and
permanent acceleration, places transform themselves, as the French ethnologist Marc Aug
has observed, into non-places. These may be efficient, fast spaces with a high turnover of
people and goods or traffic, but they lack any sense of character and meaning. They become
increasingly similar until they become indistinguishable from one another. Their difference
becomes reduced to purely appearance, the facades. Non-places can be found everywhere,
in particular in the periphery, near motorway interchanges, trunk routes, airports etc.
But the machine city got more and more into critique. When analysing this critique of the
modern city we can find two different, although closely related, lines. The first one is
criticising the modern space use and the urban form. Keywords of this discourse are
entropic urban growth, urban sprawl, peripherisation (of inner cities as well),
dysfunctional spatial specialization; spatial fragmentation and isolation, cutting up the city
from its surrounding landscape by free- and highways, iron and water tracks, gated areas etc.
More and more people regard this development as incompatible with the demands of
sustainable urban development.
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The second line which is most relevant in this context, is criticising the cold, soulless modern
city. Keywords are the one dimensional city, the universalistic city without character and
qualities, without meaning and individuality. It were the shortcomings of these urban features
which mostly stimulated the demand - and in the consequence: a market - for urban qualities.
The rise of this market for urban atmospheres was firstly detected by private entrepreneurs
of the so called culture or media industry, e.g. Walt Disney. This company was one of the
first to develop theme parks faking the vivid atmosphere of traditional cities (see the Main-
Street-USA-concept, or old New Orleans at Disney World, L.A.). Today citytainment, i.e. the
staging of the good old city is a big business. Its theme-parks, malls, urban entertainment
centres etc. cannot do without the images of traditional urban spaces.
Citytainment has already influenced urbanism. It is no surprise at all that urban designers,
urban planners and other urbanists are looking for alternatives to the universalistic and
borderless city without qualities. Amazingly the rules and features of the traditional city are
now coming into sight. Recentering, de-acceleration, improving the variety of functions, de-
differentiation, integration and mix of functions, accentuation of thresholds and borders,
placemaking etc. are going through a real renaissance.
In the meantime the so called New Urbanism movement has become a most prominent
exponent of this urban turn. It is no coincidence at all that the Disney corp. and the ideas of
new urbanism crossed their path at Celebration, an ideal city following the rules of new
urbanism launched by Disney. On the other hand the urban turn has also influenced politics
of post-industrial restructuring. On this field the traditional rules and features have already
become indispensable strategies. There is no restructuring and redevelopment project that
does not fall back on the traditional agenda of urban placemaking. The receipts of how to
convert old industrial and commercial sites, harbours and storehouse areas, railway freight
depots and shunting yards and how to adapt these spaces to the post-industrial information,
knowledge, service and leisure society seem to exist already: they are only hidden in the
treasure-house of tradition and are waiting for their rediscovery.

Reflexivity
These post-fordist receipts or better: strategies, aiming at spatial uniqueness and
distinctiveness, are typical for what I call reflexive urbanism. Reflexive Urbanism has to be
taken as the core philosophy of post-industrial urban modernisation.
Since long reflexivity has become a keyword for understanding the basic idea, type or
nature of the so called post-industrial society in some social and cultural discourses. (Beck
1986; Lash 1987) Generally spoken this term characterises a socio-cultural project aiming at
the readjustment or even more: at the reconciliation of modernity and tradition. All
dimensions of the present society, the social, economical, political, cultural and, last but not
least, the spatial dimension will be - and, as we will see: should be - affected by this project.
Reflexivity is about to penetrate our whole life.
But what does reflexivity signify? Let me try to make this term more understandable: Having
started about 250 years ago, it is said that the modern industrial age has grown old and thus
became old-fashioned (unmodern) - and that means traditional. Getting traditional,
modernity slipped into a contradictio in adjecto (a contradiction in itself), as the terms
modern and traditional are opposing each other.
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While traditional society is rooted in community life, i.e. in personal interrelations (e.g.
kinship, personnel commitments, religious bonds), customs, unchangeable moral systems,
rural life, agriculture and craft, modern society is primarily based on society, i.e. on abstract
interrelations (e.g. through contracts, legal obligations, rational institutions...), inventions,
urban life, industry and trade. While traditional societies are characterised by the static, slow,
the ever-the-same, modern societies are featuring acceleration and change, the capability
of the making, of human power and control. While traditional societies seem to be ruled by
transcendental powers of creation (nature), modern societies pretend to be ruled by reason.
So when the modern age becomes old and thus traditional it gets a problem: It plunges into a
severe crisis raising the question: How to modernise modernity? The answer is, as we
already know, reflexive modernisation, i.e. modernisation by integrating tradition into the
ongoing process of modernisation deliberately. Therefore the future development of modern
societies will all in all be also dependent on their ability to integrate the features of traditional
society, i.e. to revalue community, customs and personnel commitment, to balance
acceleration by de-acceleration, the capability of making by the virtue of composure and last
but not least the pressure of inventing by the esteem for the proven etc. As to architecture: It
is, as already pointed out, not at all by chance that we experience on this field the
rehabilitation of the ornament and the renaissance of eclecticism (including the
ornamentation of the modern or international style). But thats not all. We also observe a
growing sensitivity for cultural heritage, i.e. for the values of the built narratives of the past,
old monuments, urban ensembles and textures. In the meantime re-centering of cities,
propagation and mix of functions, staging of public spaces became most important strategic
elements of post-industrial urban restructuring.
However, reflexive modernisation, i.e. modernizing modernity by reconciliation with tradition
is still at its very beginning. Its not by chance that entertainment industry has been the first
to discover the market potentials of the growing demand spatial qualities, for atmospheres,
appearance and meaning, for balancing not only function and form but also (warm tempered)
community and (cold tempered) society.
The perceptible loss of place-qualities, of experience-qualities and atmosphere, induces what
I call simulative infrastructure. Amazingly the disappearance of places is contrasted by their
re-appearance! Places return in an altered form and function. Apparently, the loss of the
qualities of place is experienced as a lack of something. A need for places develops. This
need is translated into a demand, which is answered with a corresponding supply. A market
for places - and with this an accompanying 'place industry' comes into being, an industry for
urban and rural fictions.
Today you can find the old town of Amsterdam near Tokyo in Japan, and most spectacular,
hyper real versions of Venice, Paris, New York or antique Rome can be visited in Las Vegas.
The amount of more or less free-adaptations of prominent buildings, ensembles, landscapes
and textures are conspicuous in todays urban landscape. A new cultural mining industry
has developed in which not geological riches are prospected but products of human creation
with qualities of place.
A type of cultural mining industry develops, which, instead of iron and coal, exploits pictures
of spectacular nature scenes and attractive cultural details. The products of this branch are
non-places which clothe themselves in the garments of place. I refer to these places as a-
topias, in order to highlight their close but complicated relationship to utopias.
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The distinction between a-topias and utopias refers to the difference between reality and
possibility. Utopias are places which exist nowhere (only in the imagination). They are pure
possibility and therefore a force for changing reality. They represent the eros of the political.
A-topias, in contrast, are realized non-places with fictional qualities. They are simultaneously
real and placeless. They are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Whereas utopias,
the stuff of which dreams are made, produce images of a better social life in an imaginary
world, a-topias unfold themselves in the here and now. They are available and materially
present and at the same time without any connection to place, location and region. They are
the topological expression of the fact that in today's world, everything is everywhere at the
same time. They are the socio-spatial harbingers of a very powerful but superficial
experience- or leisure-society - also called Erlebnisgesellschaft.
With this term, sociology is reacting to a transition that is already in its advanced stages - the
transition from the 'reason dominated' to the 'emotion dominated' modern age. According to
this theory, people's actions today are no longer determined predominantly by reason, rather
more decidedly by feeling. The rationalistic, fordistic consumer society has become a mood-
governed affluent society. Whereas instrumental-technical aspects such as efficiency,
productivity, functionality, objectivity, etc. have dominated until now, emotional factors like
atmosphere, ambience, aura, flair and other dimensions aimed at the senses and sensibility
are gaining influence. An object must not only function, it must also be appealing to the
senses, even exciting or fascinating them.
Erlebniswelten are staged environments which should generate wellness, agreeable moods
and feelings. The medium of this activation of emotions is a strategy-mix of
1. strategies of thematisation that represent singularity and compensate the absence of
atmosphere
2. strategies of action that are responsible for new and spectacular happenings at any
time
3. strategies of multiplicity that aim at the variety of offers, functions and atmospheres
4. strategies of identity that guarantee a good consumer-conscience by connecting events
with culture, sustainability and sociability.
5. strategies of life-style and cult that strengthen the feeling to be part of a social group or
community
6. strategies of impression that connect the space and its fixtures and fittings to the big,
the great, the dynamic, the extreme, the surprising
7. strategies of the future that guarantee the impression of being part of those, who share
in revolutionary innovations.
Dreamscaping (Erlebnisorientierung) is a world-wide effective feature of post-modern space
production. If one asks how the Erlebnisgesellschaft expresses itself in a spatial sense,
then one comes up with the so called theme park. The category of thematisation refers to the
origin of the ratio of experience (Erlebnisrationalitaet) in the medial "logic" of film and
television. The medial habits of reception improve a kind of narrative space production that is
oriented at the sequent of pictures and cut of films. (Sorkin 1997) So each theme park
remembers us that the time of functional space consumption and space organization has
come to an end and that the time of story telling space improvement has already begun.
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How can we picture it?
Here is an example from the leisure industry, a typical European example, in my opinion:
Until recently, the administrators of German municipalities were proud if they could provide
their citizens with a public indoor or outdoor swimming pool. Such an offer was considered
the expression of a social state concerned for the welfare of its people. If one carefully looks
at these facilities from an aesthetic viewpoint, one is struck by the cold, clinic-like rationalistic
design: the water basins are rectangular, inviting one to partake in athletic activity, if not even
competitive sport. The other facilities make a hardly less rationalistic, sober impression: the
changing cubicles are strung together by functional (kafkaesque) corridors, spartan benches
flank the edge of the pool, and the grassy areas somehow remind one of a soccer field.
For several years now in Europe, the water parks of the third generation have been springing
out of the ground like mushrooms. They are mainly found near major highways, easy to
reach, located between several larger cities or centres of population. The core of these
spacious facilities are huge domes made of steel or glass, underneath which tropical beach
landscapes are reproduced. Water ripples over blue tiles, palm trees sway to and fro in the
airstreams created by wind generators, the sound of birds chirping and other jungle noises
resound from hidden speakers conjure up images of an island in the South Pacific, near the
equator. Carefully regulated air temperatures and an artificial climate deliver one from the
moods of nature and the smells produced by the agrarian and industrial high-performance
landscapes outside.
If you believe the advertisement literature from these places, a virtual paradise awaits you.
Violence, obtrusive poverty, losers must remain outside. The entrance fees, the house rules,
the family-oriented profile (for instance the absence of accommodation for groups) and not
least the private security forces ensure this. The water, walkways and other areas are always
absolutely clean, and environmental problems are also left standing at the entrance door. As
one guest commented: 'One comes here because it's just like in the tropics, only without the
bugs, the foreigners and the dirt.' Everything is worked out to the last detail, finished, without
wrinkles, perfect, smoothly-running, without any demands or risks, but enriched with carefully
measured doses of sensation. The original was the dream of an island in the South Pacific.
Now it is a three-dimensional picture in which one can walk and play, a manufactured fiction,
a fake. In this designer world, dream and reality seem to be as indistinguishable as public
and private. And concepts such as democracy and participation seem to be out of place here.
Acts of individual self-expression don't take place. And why should they? Everything is
already here! The water park is a fast-food landscape, waiting to be devoured in event-sized
portions.
Following the example of Holland and Belgium, numerous such pleasure-reserves are
currently being planned, built and operated on Germany's North Sea coast. This shouldn't
come as a surprise. One look at the dirty water and the blobs of oil on the beach is enough to
put a damper on anyone's pleasure. Even the sun can't be enjoyed without harm - too little
ozone in the upper atmosphere, too much in the lower! How can one not take delight in
swimming in a synthetic water park with the sun setting over the North Sea in the
background?
Recreated vacation dreams, visions from films, scenes from comics, etc. are found
everywhere today. Alpine wild-water rides or climbing tours in the lowlands of Northern
Germany are just as possible as a visit to a tropical rainforest near New York or a trip to the
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Caribbean at the polar circle. In Japan you can visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa, in Las Vegas
the pyramids of Egypt, the Skyline of New York, old Rome and a Fake of Venice, in L. A. the
autopoietic myth machine of Hollywood and in South Africa a fake medieval Tuscan City, a
little derivate from Las Vegas (Monte Casino, see image above). Fakes of the Campo of
Siena, the Eiffel Tower of Paris or the Rialto Bridge of Venice youll find in nearly every part
of the world. And so is Neuschwanstein, the neo-romantic fairy tale castle of Ludwig II of
Bavaria (which is itself only the fiction of a fictional castle of the French Duke of Berry, as
portrayed in a miniature in his book of hours by the Brothers Limburg). Even the European
Middle Ages have announced their resurrection. More than one medieval cultural and
amusement park has already been build, mostly complete with fortress, village and jousting
knights. Copyright landscapes and cities have been, since the leisure industry invented them,
a booming business.
In short: The age of reflexive modernity has already begun. Leisure and entertainment
industry are the pioneers. Academic planning has to study its strategies for to direct its
change of paradigm.

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