
The City in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - dadt
https://www.city-journal.org/china-cities-built-from-scratch
======
proc0
"China’s national competition to produce “civilized cities” creates new
guidelines by which cities should be measured. They include greening and
upgrading of sidewalks but also smart policing through visual recognition, pet
management, and the creation of “civilizing barriers” to prevent jaywalking
and “civilizing banners” to build spirit."

This is literally a nightmare distopia. Why would you allow government to own
you as a person, that is insane and always leads to some individual gaining
too much power and making people suffer through their perceived, perpetual
benevolence (acting as if they can do no harm).

~~~
knolax
> They include greening and upgrading of sidewalks

That's a bad thing?

> “civilizing barriers” to prevent jaywalking

Already a thing everywhere else[0]

> “civilizing banners” to build spirit."

You mean like PSAs?

> smart policing through visual recognition,

Ok that one seems like a poor idea.

How is this supposed to be a "nightmare dystopia"? It's reasonable to describe
things like mass surveilance as dystopic but are sidewalk barriers really the
mole-hill we're supposed to die on?

[0][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_verge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_verge)

~~~
proc0
That might not have been the best example of it but it is the impression I get
from the article. Some more (maybe better) examples ...

"The city, in this understanding, is no longer a community of life or a
subject of economic and social development; it has become a product, evaluated
by objective measures and ranked according to what is effectively a price or
value matrix."

And then this "product" seems to be fully controlled and at the mercy of the
government:

"Until 2014, China’s National Civilized City Assessment System manual had nine
general evaluation categories. The new manual introduced that year featured
ten main indexes and 30 points of evaluation."

Which means they can change the criteria at any time for whatever reason.

And then finally the article ends with a Mao quote, which not only is it like
ending an article with a Hitler quote, but the quote itself is another great
example, "Once, standing on Tiananmen Square, he pointed south and said that,
looking to the horizon, there should be a “forest of chimneys.” Oh great, Mao
thought he was playing a game of Civ or Age of Empires.

------
gattilorenz
Off-topic: The title is based on an essay from Walter Benjamin that I find
both interesting and... dated

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_o...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction)

~~~
jolmg
Off-topic: but I wonder why Wikipedia redirects en.wikipedia.org to
en.m.wikipedia.org on mobile, but it doesn't redirect en.m.wikipedia.org to
en.wikipedia.org on non-mobile.

------
eternalban
All that verbiage and what was the point exactly.

Was this a polite and subtle way of calling modern China a Potemkin village,
or is it simply what it appears to be: a specimen of pseudo-intellectualism.
(There are other possibilities, but the date is not 1919, it is 2019, so a bit
too late to the party, Bruno?)

------
egypturnash
Holy crap is that image at the top an actual photo? That's straight out of a
Le Corbusier drawing. Kinda nightmarish.

