In Katarzyna Ancuta’s Asian Ghosts and the City, Ancuta incorporated a recurring motif of ghosts to signify the lack of raw communal exchanges emphasized in modern day architecture, whereby the intangible forces of political and economic means further reinforced urban isolation. This in turn, resulted in a self imposed effect where we are gradually vanishing into ghosts, too, as we ignore the blatant halt of traditional architecture which makes us subsequent reinforcers of this phenomenon – the asian apartment horror, and accordingly, we are “disappearing away” alongside the traditions that once marked the essence of communal exchanges.
Upon reading this paper, it sparked my epiphany in the strictly transactional direction architecture is advancing towards as in today, such with neoliberalism being one of the key reasons in motivating this practice. For instance, neoliberal cities like Seoul prioritize urban redevelopment over the sustenance of meaningful communities in hopes of resolving capital crises, hence a plethora of old buildings are redefined with aggressive urban renewal schemes with a focus of catering them to the affluent. Learning this, it evoked a dystopian view in this discourse as the continuation of this “administrative urbicide” would mean an escalation to a monotonous, lifeless and isolated urban ecosystem, one that dismantles the essence of traditions and human connections, yet somehow it bothers to exhaust the last bits of energy in persisting the spirit of financial capitals against competitors. Overall, Ancuta’s marxist lens in encapsulating the commodification of urban space has facilitated my acquisition in architectural learning, such where it left us as readers the ultimate question to whether radical architecture development is necessary given our ancestral roots at stake and the need for urban communal lifestyles.