Intimate Anonymity

The new INTBAU Essay, "Intimate Anonymity, Breaking the Code of the Urban Genome" by Israeli architect and academic Hillel Shocken, is an attempt to decode why cities have been so successful as human habitats for so long. Shocken believes that it is not the community of a city which makes it more desirable than a village, but rather the opportunity cities provide to allow large numbers of potential contacts while remaining anonymous. The author advances the idea of "intimate anonymity" as the theoretical foundation for criticisms of the modernist city. Lack of connectivity, he posits, limits the number of potential anonymous connections. The urban grid in pre-modern and New Urban cities, he says, is a simple means of maximising connectedness and anonymity.This INTBAU Essay challenges the common view that cities can only function if they are conceived of - and often if they are planned as - a series of small neighbourhoods. The intimate, anonymous city is a place where connectivity is maximised. Neighbourhoods exist in the minds of the inhabitants, not as visible figues in plans or on the ground.

Thanks to Matthew Hardy