The interrelations have changed. The scales have changed. The values have changed.

The city in its conventional form - as the structured ensemble it is constituted by - has seized to exist.

The disseminated city, archipelagos, unconventional city, mobile city, temporary city, informal city, emerging city, postmetropolis.

METAPOLIS.

The explosive increase in means of public transportation and virtual elimination of distances, the creation of international networks, the development of telecommunications, the internet and globalisation all contributing to transforming the natural habitat into new scales. We are currently experiencing a situation which can be described by a constantly expanding economic and social globalisation of the west, euro-american model of capitalism which accompanies the expansion of the residential state beyond the city’s borders. Everything is moving, everything is changing, the pace and speed of contemporary living is exceeding human capabilities. The city is being transformed, being amplified and moved, creating original and unprecedented structures and interrelations. Consequently, we can use the term Metapolis to describe the status after the Metropolis, a city connected, spatially and functionally segmented, a city which, in the traditional sense, is impossible to be viewed as an item and be defined and, as a result, it needs new terms to be redefined. 

The current scale and pace of modern urbanisation is contesting the definition of permanence as a primary prerequisite for cities. In response to this situation, there is an emerging debate for the need in placing the definition of ephemeral in a broader discussion concerning cities. In reality, when cities are analysed over time, their ephemerality is emerging as a prominent feature in the life cycle of each structured ensemble. 

In a similar wavelength, this research project is attempting to simulate the importance in exploring temporary landscapes, in order to provide a conceptual framework for the understanding of the long-lasting as well as the interim urban contours.

The study of the produced typologies of the “ephemeral cities” are articulated based on the primary architectural axis of design, transit, flow management, acceleration of the urban metabolism, infrastructure development, but also the equally critical variables of cultural identity, of adjustment and resilience in the urban conditions. We could argue that, in reality, they represent a substitute for the urbanity being developed and dissipated often in a remarkably short timescale. Essentially we could talk about continuations of the metropolis, nodes intertwined between cities, urban entanglement, which are all structured with a particular objective and ambition, but which are also described by ephemerality.

We refer to all of those cities with an expiration date.