¶ City as Center of Abstract Intercourse (1)
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Index Entry
Today in New York you have exactly the opposite of the Greek city of many centuries ago. Then the thinker lived out of the city, and all the metaphysical ‘weightless’ activities such as thinking were conducted off in the remote places like Delphi, and the thinker only came into the city to speak once in a while, as Socrates did. Then and up until our own time cities were places where the physical, as opposed to the metaphysical, was concentrated-- all the warehousing, all the manufacturing, all the wealth. This was really a very bad situation because of the power the exploitative gangster-rulers held over the people who lacked mobility and therefore had to stay in one place and work for very menial wages. Then Henry Ford broke this monopoly with the mass production of wheels. Now you have all the manufacturing and warehousing being deployed outside the city, and all the metaphysical functions being concentrated inside. That is what is happening in New York. It is becoming a metaphysical abstract communications center. The only things that are being produced are with typewriters and calculating machines, a lot of figures, a lot of ‘weightless,’ or practically ‘weightless,’ things.
“And you are getting this tremendous mobility. It is silly for planners and architects to want to design a place where people”
