Today, the urban appears as a kind of generalised background of life. At once an immediately recognisable condition, it is also one that permanently escapes our grasp and remains just beyond the horizon of perception. Yet what precisely do we mean by the category ‘urban’? While more people talk about it, build and live within it, few have asked the basic question of what exactly it is. This talk will offer a brief history of the urban by examining a subtle relationship at its heart – between circulation and political order. If the urban has become a universal datum of life today, it can do so only as a political category.
Ross Adams is a writer, architect and urbanist. He has worked in offices such as MVRDV, Foster & Partners, Arup and Productora. He has taught at the Architectural Association, the Berlage Institute and Brighton University. Currently he is a PhD candidate at the London Consortium and teaches urban design at the Bartlett.
This is the third of the ongoing History and Theory Studies lecture series organised by Mark Cousins, Mollie Claypool and Ryan Dillon.