In his book "Invisible Cities," Itallo Calvino wrote about a city where all connections, however intangible, were traced out with different colored yarns, from building to building, from person to person, and from thing to thing. This of course, had the secondary effect of turning the city into one knot of connections, impassible to all who were unable to ignore these relationships made tangible.
All cities are, of course, knots of connections, as are all networks. These huge conglomerations function precisely because of the connections from one element to another, not in spite of them. And cities gain their character because of the connections between the different parts; sometimes this is mapped out and becomes a part of a city's normal functions, like a subway or bus line; and more often these connections are left hidden and through repeated use become part of a city's personal or collective mythology.
These connections branch out and inwards, forming an almost living organic being – noting this has become almost routine, of course. But it is another order altogether to capture the city itself breathing. It is difficult indeed to speak of the creeping layers and time which consume and exhume, leaving traces of individual relationships etched in the rock and soil of a city, like coral fossils endlessly inhabited by unrelated generations.
Picturing the city is a necessity now, but not like it once was. The city was once a stage for a multitude of discreet scenes to play out in front of the attentive viewer; and indeed these dramas are still here, though they’ve become banal from repetition and cliché. Instead, the city becomes metaphor for our own tangled, globe spanning knots of relationships, a network made manifest, swelling up from below as lines between me and you and us and them catch and snag and agglomerate.
