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Architecture through symbolic power can be a healing agent in the cluttered chaos of a technological age by changing consumerist attitudes into responsibly managed natural and human ecological systems.

Today's successful urban spaces are characterized by a healthy mix of efficiency, density, and diversity, but this is only made possible by a responsible allocation of resources. The American failures of excess and egregious demands for energy are pitted against the incentives of developing worlds, where the lack of modern mass manufacture methods results in pollution and waste, leaving a greater potential for environmental improvement. How will the coming globalist carbon market force the construction industry and regulatory agencies to meet needs of individuals and groups across the world?

The futuristic vision of the city by science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick is known for being filled with spaces accumulating gadgets and electronic trinkets, the garbage of a technocratic culture. As in our world, the actual location of a given experience or event is flavored or characterized by the mundane repetition and identifiable details in the daily usage of space. Symbols employed by product advertisers are the labels used by the culture of mass consumption. The paradoxical namelessness that is established as a result may inadvertently end up hurting the chances of innovative yet unconventional solutions through marginalization away from the mainstream. The transformation of the container into an extension of the consumer fantasy is akin to the process by which houses create a market of wealth in a given neighborhood. The current economic crisis is a problem of much of this wealth being imaginary or synthetic, and the challenge to artists and designers is to make material advancements still meaningful to restore the usefulness of our commercial context. The urban interactions and social sensibilities of a global city or metapolis posit the perception of space as directly affected by those placeless fixtures of culture that initially led to its oversaturation and downfall. We will need to remove redundancy in the system and consolidate the advances we've developed. Now to only narrow down the methods by which we do this.