That strange feeling of longing when you are at a train station, in a 24/7 open market, when you are buying a coke from a vending machine, watching the city lights glow from your window, when you're walking aimlessly on a busy street after 5 pm, that feeling as if something is missing in your life and it will never come back although it was never there in the first place; that inexplicable urban sadness.
This is an actual thing in anthropology and urbanism guys!
Marc Auge explained how when we shifted from modernity to what he calls "supermodernity" we ended up creating "non-places". They're the opposite of place, as in they're places with no real identity, and have no real emotional connection with the users. They're there to fulfil a specific need and that's it. It's places like gas station, metro station and supermarkets, places where you go and you feel so detached, like everything is out of place. (The name of the book is "Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity" it's really interesting)
Rem Koolhaas also has a similar concept called Junkspaces, which are basically spaces that are born out of a capitalistic lifestyle, where everything is about selling and being bigger and more. Like malls and airports, and most big buildings. It's places that are empty, that tend to cut you off from the outside world and have no real connection to the users other than functionality. He also talked about the struggle of identity and city planning in Asian cities specifically in his essay "the generic city" and talks about how a lack of identity can lead to "empty" cities and this "urban sadness" op was talking about
