It is in the modernist industrial city (Fordism) that the representations of the city come to the fore, in the sense that photography, cinema, print, and advertising shaped the way our senses experience modern life through images. If visuality becomes integral to our knowledge of and practice in urban society in the 29th century, then it is cinema, which has the prominent role in inserting visuality in the experience of modern life in Australia.
As is well known, these representations of the new urban experience celebrated the daily life of the street as the stage for the chaotic energy of the traffic, the swirling maelstrom of the crowd; the clockwork-like rhythm of daily life as thousands of workers and office-goers entered and exited their corporate workspaces at regular hours.
Adelaide, of course, was a late developer as a modernist city.
Modernist architecture, in the form of corporate office office blocks, only started being inserted within the fabric of the 19th century mercantile city after 1945 with the emergence of industrialisation. Adelaide's street life was minimal, and the photographic representations of the experience of the modernist city are lost and forgotten. Sydney was the modernist epicentre of Australia.
There are good examples of modernist architecture in Adelaide as Stuart Symon's walking tours in the CBD highlight.