4. the individuated subject

INDIVIDUATION. This final diagram maps the logic of the terminal node in cul-de-sac urbanism. The path to a specific place in the cul-de-sac city will always terminate in an exclusive destination or endpoint. The path on the open grid, on the other hand, will never terminate because the gridiron is infinite in all directions. As opposed to the cul-de-sac's termination of movement, the grid offers only a series of arbitrary stopping points often described as coordinates in space: for example, 239 East 339th Street. The organizational logic of a grid produces points that are connected by an infinite number of circuits or loops. The organizational logic of a cul-de-sac produces, on the contrary, a distribution of terminals or terminal distribution. In the cul-de-sac city, the pattern of movement through urban space traces the figure of a discrete SPIRAL through a succession of the overlaid structural hierarchies described above. This path might begin on a primary urban freeway and from there turn inward toward a singularly defined place. This in-turning spiraling path — from freeway to feeder to collector to development spine to driveway — forms the trajectory of a closed urban system. Turning inward upon itself, the path configures a series of discrete segments each more exclusive than the last. We no longer live on an anonymous grid coordinate but at the end of a particular path, on the last driveway, on the last cul-de-sac, in a city whose overall form is unknowable. In the cul-de-sac city we are right where we have always wanted to be, at the very origin of the spiral, each of our delicate egos seated at the base of a terminal destination.