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06858_Field_TCUM T423.txt
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1996-04-10
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margin structure, and neither do desert and steppe cultures.
Today with jet and electricity, urban centralism and specialism
reverse into decentralism and interplay of social functions in
ever more nonspecialist forms.
The wheel and the road are centralizers because they
accelerate up to a point that ships cannot. But acceleration
beyond a certain point, when it occurs by means of the
automobile and the plane, creates decentralism in the midst of
the older centralism. This is the origin of the urban chaos of our
time. The wheel, pushed beyond a certain intensity of
movement, no longer centralizes. All electric forms whatsoever
have a decentralizing effect, cutting across the older
mechanical patterns like a bagpipe in a symphony. It is too bad
that Mr. Mumford has chosen the term “implosion” for the
urban specialist explosion. “Implosion” belongs to the electronic