Is there something of value that comes out of the insistent repetition of the place in popular culture? Are there redeeming qualities to be found for architecture? Perhaps only for the potential of informal spatial consequences to be studied and not repeated—an anti-case study. This is what you don’t do when you are planning a city. But all we are left with now is imagination. Best to keep it there. But if you never lived there it’s hard to imagine.
George Packard, writing for The New Yorker on Rem Koolhaas' fly-overs of Lagos, Nigeria had this to say: "The impulse to look at an 'apparently burning garbage heap' and see an 'urban phenomenon,' and then make it the raw material of an elaborate aesthetic construct, is not so different from the more common impulse not to look at all."
Guy Horton is a writer based in Los Angeles. In addition to authoring "The Indicator", he is a frequent contributor to The Architect's Newspaper, Metropolis Magazine, The AtlanticCities, and The Huffington Post. He has also written for Architectural Record, GOOD Magazine, and Architect Magazine