IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/eurpls/v16y2007i7p899-909.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Bas Spierings
  • Henk Van Houtum

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?

Suggested Citation

  • Bas Spierings & Henk Van Houtum, 2007. "The Brave New World of the Post-society: The Mass-production of the Individual Consumer and the Emergence of Template Cities," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(7), pages 899-909, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:eurpls:v:16:y:2007:i:7:p:899-909
    DOI: 10.1080/09654310802224702
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09654310802224702
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09654310802224702?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:eurpls:v:16:y:2007:i:7:p:899-909. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CEPS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.