Temporary Contracts- article review

The Post-industrial landscape has been shaped by the effects of temporary contracts. Our flexible capitol-based economic arena characterized buy the ease of mobility of investments flowing from one company to the next has driven the value of location down in the aim to accumulate short-term capitol. Bigtime businesses are no longer controlled by a single owner who has a vested interest in the long term growth of a company, but many individual investors who's sole interest in the company is if it is profitable right now. This low-commitment attitude is described in the article as having a direct impact on the life-span of commercial buildings which are now becoming too old at 'thirty years'. Big box discount businesses like Wal-Mart operate on a 'flexible accumulation' strategy that allow them to pick up and leave a location at the drop of a dime undermine the economies of their host communities. Companies such as this target regional market groups, providing discount prices on goods that would otherwise be profitting the community-based businesses. This fierce competition stamps out small businesses and changes the consumption patterns of the community who becomes dependent on the WalMart for their daily items so that when the store vacates a location the community is left in an economic lurch.

The post-industrial landscape is shaped by the mobility of information which allowed businesses to move out of the premium lots of the downtown core to the edge of the city where lots are cheap. This has drastically created the shape of the urban environment and, subsequentially, social transactions. The formation of the 'edge city' is emblematic of the post-industrial landscape, the configuration of which favoring the private realm over the public realm. The result of this change in urban condition is described by Arendt when she criticized early on the encroachment of commerce into the public realm. The privatization of the public realm has turned the public arena into a place where the only social transactions occur out of necessity and consumer interest. The edge city is a prime example of this phenomenon, its social arena further compromised by it's autocentric infrastructure. This has left the edge-city completely void of any public social transactions outside of the commercial realm.