The Brave New World of the Post-society: The Mass-production of the Individual Consumer and the Emergence of Template Cities

Bas Spierings and Henk Van Houtum

European Planning Studies, 2007, vol. 16, issue 7, 899-909

Abstract: Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World (Longman, Harlow, 1932/1991) portrayed a post-human world, a world where human beings were mass-produced like clones and kept in complete happiness through an endless variation of seductions and pleasures. This essay explores parallels in contemporary urban society by analysing why and how we consume—goods, places, and ultimately ourselves—in our daily shopping spaces. In today's post-society, new fashions, representations and make-overs are introduced onto the global market at breakneck speed. Globalization implies an inexhaustible resource for change in local consumption spaces, creating continuous opportunities to transform our personal identities as well as our urban environments. In our world of globalization, hyper-capitalism, and mass-individualism, there seems to be no escape from having and parading a personal identity, no escape from the commercial template for seductive urban shopping spaces. Are we in control of our own destinies? Who are we fooling when we hide in the consumerist maze of fiction and fantasy? What brave new world are we living in?

Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.1080/09654310802224702

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