No Longer a Place But a Condition

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, a decentralised urban landscape emerged in which the differences between centre and periphery, city and country and culture and nature are no longer clearly defined. The city no longer seems a place but rather a condition. According to the Italian urban planner Stefano Boeri, the city has exported its genetic code'. Furthermore, since an urban culture has also settied in rural areas, nature has become, to a large extent, an urban artefact. City, suburb, countryside and nature are all touched by human management. All have become cultural landscapes. The contemporary city no longer stands opposed to nature, but encloses large parts of it. 

Steven Jacobs
from The Photoresque: Images Between City and Countryside