La Cité de la Méditerranée
In Marseille, a new district and a new image rise from the ruins of a dreamed-of, bygone industrial past. A short stroll through "Euroméditerranée", Europe’s largest urban renewal project, reveals yet another privatized public space, turned into a 'non-place' of standardized concepts.
I explore the full-scale model, walking under the gaze of surveillance cameras toward the conquering sentinel towers, glass soldiers at the border posts of poverty.
The sleek lines and shapes of locked buildings accompany the crossing of this impersonal, interchangeable world.
A merchant city, where dynamic customers move from one air-conditioned bubble to another through icing-sugar aisles.
In the distance, cranes echo the urban conquest, fueled by real estate speculation.
The new City rises from the ground:
A skyline dreamed up on the tracing paper of the globalized city.
Immaculate architecture, reflecting a prohibited social energy.
Imagination without imagination, varnished in a beauty-less modernity.


























