It is late at night, and the yellow lights at the train station dimly illuminates the dark city around. There is subdued chatter next to you, breaking laughter behind, and droning announcements of incoming trains from above as you scroll aimlessly through your phone. Or, breaking dawn, you are at the gas station. There are no houses or stores for miles to come. In that moment, there exists only you, the unremarkable convenience store behind, and the changing sky above. 

 

 

From wandering the streets of Chicago aimlessly to buying a snack from a 24-7 open market, there are certain times and places that evoke an eerie feeling of both longing for a place that has never existed and detachment from your current physical surroundings. Watching the city life continue from a one-night hotel stay, the sense that something is missing from your life that cannot be placed, the “urban sadness”, returns. 

So where did this feeling come from? What is its source? In order to have this sense of longing and aloneness, there has to exist a culture so busy it inspires that feeling. It can be hypothesized that someone from Ancient Egypt plopped into the modern world would not immediately grasp on to the same feeling of removal at a train station, so then it must be a symptom of modernity. 

 

 

As Marc Augé, a French anthropologist, explores, this urban sadness from “non-places” is a result of the current state that our society has quickly evolved into. On one hand, there is this “supermodernity” of a world that seems to be ceaselessly moving, from local to global, each demanding attention and focus to keep up with. The rapid spread of information online is certainly a contributor. On the other hand, there are places not tied to any specific identity, almost existing in limbo. Unlike traditionally anthropological places inevitably tied to reminders of the world around us, these non-places are less attached to determinants and provide more abstract identities where the role of the individual is simply confined to what they are doing. In essence, non-places are areas of great equalizers. Where places confine and label, non-places empty and generalize. If supermodernity creates an interconnected world where “people are always, and never, at home”, then non-places, according to Augé, are everyone’s homes because it is “equally alienating to everyone”. 

 

 

Rem Koolhaas, a Dutch architect, takes on a new perspective and re-defines these areas of isolative feeling as “junkspace”. The architecture of this utopian-esque supermodernity that we are approaching has yet to be claimed by any one culture’s influence or identity. Koolhaas identifies that the featureless buildings inhabiting these junkspaces are a result of a more capitalistic lifestyle, described as large in both presence and absence. They are areas which spawn constant production and consumption, the buildings without character and bland. A less idyllic definition than Augé’s, the standardized buildings only inspire struggles of identity with its inhabitants, leading to that feeling of unfulfillment and urban sadness. 

In its entirety, these non-places and junkspaces describe areas which do not have enough identity of its own to be considered an anthropological place, but enough weight to be categorized as places of transience. From airports, railway stations, malls to international hotel chains, they are merely a passing point from one frame of life to the next. Exciting at first, they are fun to ponder on but are forgettable in the long run. The elusive feeling which we are unable to grasp the source of only leaves us with a notion that we are missing something – it is almost as if these spaces came into existence to make us doubt the comforts and experiences that we currently have.

 

 

Moving on to college, students aspire to make anything from an artist to a zoologist of themselves. An ideal future that many are headed towards includes making ground-breaking discoveries in geology or outbreaks of ideas in epidemiology, a future I aspire to participate in. But I also want to live in anonymity, as one among thousands in a city who can switch from contributor of society to observer. When caught up in the pressures of study or a tense work environment, the value of non-places becomes pivotal as a space where you can abandon your denominations. There is consolation in the momentary detachment as workload piles up, being unrooted in society bringing peace to many during more challenging times. Although uncomfortable in its mystery and inexplicableness, the value of non-places are important as a breather and a pause from society. While riding the train, or simply wandering around, you can almost feel invisible in the eyes of society thanks to this realm of escapism.

 

Sources

https://duexpress.in/navigating-my-place-in-a-non-place-millenials-and-their-urban-sadness/

http://www.dkolb.org/sprawlingplaces/generalo/placesto/augonnon.html