at its heart is an expression of the synergy of various factors embedded in modern life, not just the direct result of isolation, wounded cities, and loss. The emptiness of life is not just the absence of people and things that we love but the devaluing of relationship in preference to things. Although things cannot provide companionship, love, or the sense of connectedness that man craves, he pursues them with a zeal that indicates that he believes they can. The most nourishing and restorative force in lifeùloveùbecomes commoditized in manÆs quest for the latest gadget. Somehow wrongly sensing that acquiring enough gadgets will fill the void left by love, modern man has elevated shopping into a religion. Architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas describes commoditized cities in terms of the proportion of space they devote to shopping:
ôShopping is surreptitiously becoming the way in which urban substance is generatedö (quoted in Lubow 2000: 42). The U.S. leads a world list, he points out, with 31 square feet of real estate per person devoted to
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