Contemporary Canadian Film and Literature: Survival in Post/Modern Cities(Fall, 2001)

1. What is a city, or a modern city?  What're the common issues of a modern city?  And what makes its cultural productions interesting? 
2. What are the differences between modern and postmodern city? 
3. What are the issues specific to Toronto and Monntreal as Canadian cities? 

 

1. 都市人口的增加大約是由1850年左右開始的。1900

rapid increase of population: As late as 1800 only 3 percent of world population lived in towns of more than 5,000 inhabitants.  . . .  In the century after 1850, world population doubled, and the proportion living in cities of more than 5,000 inhabitants rose from less than 7 percent to almost 30 percent.  Between 1900 and 1950 the population living in large cities (100,000 plus) rose by 250 percent, the rate of increase in Asia being three times that of Europe and the United States.
 (source: Britanica.com)

台灣都市化
1) 10萬以上人口的都市
1952年--   8個，
1980年--  17個，高雄市及台北市已成為百萬人以上的都會區，

2) 集中在都市人口比率
1960年-- 53%，
1982年-- 75%，
1985年-- 78.6%，台灣都市化的現象更產生郊區化的現象。（Ref. 1）
Taipei -- 2001/8 --  2,626,811

2) industrialism + technological developments  --> special rhythm and pace, convenience, fast flows of information, capital, commodities and people.

3) convergence of people and their cultures: --> contradictions

1st – emergence of industrial city --> serious social problems and environmental problems.
2nd – the split between the spectacular metropolitan centers and spreading suburbs that appeared at the end of the century and the beginning of the twentieth century . . .
3rd – characterized by globalization, gentrification and ghettoization.   (Ref. 2: 450)

Another view on the differences between Modern and Postmodern city:
簡單、幾何式的設計、理性、單一的區域劃分 --> 複合式空間設計、中產階級回流、綠化、人性化都市。

"Modernist urbanism's utopia is a 'voiceless object of …deduction', an uncovered metaphysical truth to which metropolitan life shall henceforth conform.  In contrast, post-modernist urbanism conceives of a multiciplicty of diverse and reverberating lifeworlds, 'a plurality of full valid voices' (Bakhtin 1984: 34), whose combination moves toward an unknown city.  (Ref. 3: 109)"

多倫多的例子

Canadian Issues 

1. 陳瑞貴.  〈變遷中的台灣正在邁向未來嗎？ <http://members.tripodasia.com.tw/wilhelm/3.htm>: Sept. 19, 2001.
2. Donald, James.  “Metropolis: The City as Text.”  Social and Cultural Forms of Modernity.  Ed. Robert Bocock & Kenneth Thompson.  Cambridge: Polity, 1992.
3.