The city Autopoiesis, society, reality

In the previous chapter, a conceptualisation of the environment within the system has been performed in the form of asymmetry. The systemic environment of the environmental legal system has been found in a simultaneous relation of continuum and rupture with the system, thereby instituting a presence within the system, which, however remains inaccessible to the system itself. Such presence/absence is further examined in this chapter, this time in the context of the city. The city is deemed an appropriate terrain on which to proceed with an elaboration of the above form for various reasons: the institutionalised absence of the natural environment from the city; a replacement of the traditional definition of environment in the context of the city with human-made and exclusionary constructions; and a relation of ambiguous continuum between the city and its resources, ranging from the parasitic to the conceptually akin. The above will be put on an abstract level as the location of the city on the cusp of continuum/rupture with its environment. The autopoietic context in which such an analysis takes place is one of resistance to the concept of autopoietic society. In its stead, a diffusion is suggested between a reality that refers to everything, and a utopia that cannot describe anything but itself. The city is found to operate on a chunk of 'reality', a space in-between those two extremes, and at the same time, an entrance hall to the autopoietic definition of the urban system, which, unlike the relatively clear-cut social definition of the environmental legal system, necessarily spans the social and the conscious, without however residing on either. Such a 'suspended' definition delimits a space for an environment that remains absent within, through the reiteration of a form that includes simultaneously continuum and rupture with the system. Thus, the urban environment, the environment of the city, and the city in its environment become a terrain of continuous rupture which radically removes any sense of need of identity, except in the sense of operationality - and a disrupted one at that