Modernist city dreams turn to nightmares

In a culminating acte de theatre at the well-organised, high-calibre, but poorly attended conference on 'The Modern City Revisited', Michael Sorkin rolled out a four post-er. Revisiting the 'modern city' was, he claimed, an ongoing process dominated by concepts and ideas that are post- universal, post-zoning, post-automobile and above all post-adjacency - the latter a new and liberating condition that means anything can now be developed anywhere next to anything else.