Mobility orients a place around movement rather than stasis. Of course, mobility constitutes an inevitable component of any urban site, particularly as the populations of people and places expand beyond the pedestrian sphere where one may walk comfortably. Even in a small town, one must practice some degree of mobility, even to visit the central park for an afternoon picnic. However, omnitopian mobility differs from traditional urban mobility. Within omnitopia, mobility becomes essential to transform disparate places into nodes of the same place. Unlike a nineteenth-century international exposition’s Crystal Palace, in which all things were imagined underneath one vast roof, omnitopia must connect distinct geographies while rendering them perceptually unified. To accomplish omnitopian mobility requires more than cars, walkways, trams and the like. This manner of mobility calls for the perception of flow. Thus, one quickly discerns which gate to depart, which exit ramp to take, which shuttle to catch, anywhere in the world, without stopping for long at any site. One indeed senses a motive power that orients an otherwise random shuffle into a directed march. The language of omnitopian mobility is simple, generic, and universal. Only when mobile technology fails -- the elevator breaks down, waiting for the airplane, for example -- does “this” place adopt a particular meaning. At once, this node of omnitopia recedes, becoming merely a non-place. Beyond its ability to connect the disparate nodes of omnitopia, mobility also reduces one’s ability, indeed one’s inclination, to contemplate the edges and foundations of this environment. Indeed, the strategy of mobility reduces -- even criminalizes -- the possibility to reside in one omnitopian location for an unauthorized purpose or inordinate amount of time. Within omnitopia, we find it almost unthinkable to critique this environment when we endlessly move through it. Thus, rather than moments of stasis, one encounters a perpetual experience of flow.

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