Vademecum. 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places (original) (raw)
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<title> Vademecum<subtitel>77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places
2020
processes such as increasingly market-driven urban development, growing inequality, migration, segregation and surveillance capitalism. In order to act in this unstable urban terrain, spatial professionals such as urban planners, architects, landscape architects, heritage managers and policymakers may need to seek alternatives to conventional codes and models of spatial development. These univocal diagnoses and rigid planning methods, based on precise cost-benefit calculations and hypotheses regarding the predictable effects of architectural interventions, are no longer reliable or feasible, and often fail to Further readings de Sola-Morales, I. (1995). Terrain vague. In Territorios (pp. 123-132). Gustavo Gili.
Between the romanticized version of a Greek agora and the intense contemporary shopping centers there isn't probably a disparity as considerable as we can imagine, since both can be easily mistaken with the ancient markets and the public squares of today. Before, as now, there is a clear separation between the production of discourse and the experience of the symbolic spaces of the city. On the other hand, it is a fact that public space is not anymore what it used to be. Following the emergence of a new urban condition, other outstanding elements-such as stadiums, thematic parks, artificial beaches, industrial showrooms or multipurpose indoor arenasappear nowadays as meaningful places of the contemporary metropolitan landscape, in addition to the traditional network of public spaces. Amongst them, the shopping center is not only one of the most striking elements of contemporary city, but also a "quasi"-urban component where notions such as "public" and "private" or "non-place" and "place" are challenged by the ambivalent nature of this architectural typology. And shopping centers are, in fact, more than just mere sites for consumption. In the scenic environments of its "streets" and "plazas"-like in the historic, dense and "compact" city-we wander, eat, drink, rest and consume symbols and merchandises. So visiting them is, today, not so different of going to the "center". If today, undoubtedly, urban daily life is both linked to the use of public spaces and shopping centers; it's not surprising that phenomena such as urban tribes, sport celebrations, strikes or political demonstrations are both visible in city squares and shopping center plazas, where these are increasingly more and more common. And therefore, shopping centers are currently urban elements that we cannot continue to ignore in the theorization of the present and future of urban public space. KEYWORDS places and non-places; public and private spaces; shopping centers; collective use spaces; urban culture; contemporary city; Europe. UNPUBLIC SPACES OF EUROPE (U.S.E.) on places, non-places and other spaces of the european contemporary city __________________________________________________________________ 2 ***** 1. INTRODUCTION: beliefs and misconceptions The European city has, in the last decades, suffered a significant physical expansion that extended it beyond its own limits; becoming an entity whose scale and complexity makes it difficult to understand its true role and nature. If we find today the term "crisis" linked to its recent evolution, the truth is that the history of the European city, as a whole, is itself a process of dramatic changes that shook its own foundations. Events like the destruction of stonewalls of medieval cities, the introduction of the first hygienist and orthogonal urban plans or even the expansion of automobile were equally critical moments in its history. Jürgen Habermas pointed out-in his seminal book "The structural transformation of the public sphere" (1962)-that the concept of "crisis" was appropriated from the lexicon of Medicine; referring to the stage of a disease process, in which the body has no strength to recover its normal state or health. By analogy, the term is used in urbanism to describe a state of degradation of the identity, structure and physical form of the city. However wrongly, because the idea of an urban crisis is, by definition, a misconception due to the fact that the city is a constantly changing entity that will never return to a previous or ideal form. Even if the notion of "city" is commonly associated with a certain sense of "nostalgia", linked to a condition that has been, or qualities that have already been lost; the truth is that the city will never ever be as it was once before. Today, notions such "center" and "periphery", "public" and "private" or even "place" and "non-place" are challenged by the hybrid nature of new urban conditions, where renovated outstanding elements appear as meaningful places of the urban landscape, in addition to the traditional network of public spaces. This phenomenon, common to most European urban areas, is today materialized as an hypertext of recreational and commercial facilities-such as shopping centers, stadiums, thematic parks, industrial showrooms, nightclubs or multipurpose indoor arenas-that structure a network of uses of a post-urban culture, condensed in time and scattered in space. It is, therefore, an indisputable fact that, today, public space is not anymore what it used to be. Following the emergence of a new urban condition-embodied in a city that tend to relate as a network of fluxes and nodes-the European city has suffered, in the last four decades, numerous transformations and metamorphoses. And, in order to approach to the new urban configurations of the early twenty-first century, we need to confront them with a, more or less recent, set of dualisms that dominated, until today, the history of the European city.
The writing which this volume brings together is as multifaceted as are its objects of investigation. Ranging from theoretical or design-based perspectives to historical and politically charged foci, the chapters reflect an amalgam of concerns with the social, visual, political and material aspects of developed and developing cities. While all share a passion for cities and incorporate the use of visual material as either objects of investigation or illustrative accompaniments to textual or ethnographic analyses, the mixed methodologies and theoretical paradigms employed reflect a wider academic trend towards a critical cross-breeding of disciplines for a more expansive, and arguably more inclusive, conceptualisation of the urban. The chapters reveal the city through the lenses offered by different fields, and speak to the multiple sites involved in the production, contestation and experiences of urban spaces. Each chapter offers explorations of the spatial and temporal scales of urban transformations, centring on the authoritative and oppositional acts that simultaneously make the city. In this sense, there is an inclination towards analysing representations of urban change, and the ways in which transformations are reflected in the fabric of city space and life. The authors address the politics and experience of urban change by travelling imaginatively between the past and the present, the abstract and the specific, the global and the local, the human and the material, and the social and the technological. In their creative engagements with the many textures of `the city´, they suggest the need for us, as readers, to pause, revise, and re-envision our own sense of urban forms and futures
Cities in Sight, Inside Cities: An Introduction
Amsterdam University Press eBooks, 2009
Dutch dealings with urban change This book presents the results of the most recent research on urban topics in the Netherlands. Why would those results be of interest for a wider and also non-Dutch audience? We think for several reasons. In the first place, the Netherlands' struggle with many urban problems might be instructive for the urban problems other countries face as well (or will have to confront in the near future). Huge transformations that have manifested themselves in the Netherlands affect many more countries. The Dutch economy has become one of the most open (and in times of economic crisis: most vulnerable) and service-oriented of the world. Moreover, the Dutch population has changed dramatically: with one million Muslims and about one million other migrants (out of sixteen million inhabitants), the Netherlands has de facto become an immigration society, like many other West-European countries experiencing similar changes in the past decades. Compared to the old settler societies (the US, Canada, and Australia), the new immigrant countries struggle with problems they had not run into before. Especially for these 'new' immigration societies, the Dutch case might present relevant insights, pointers as well as warnings. That brings us to the second reason why a book on Dutch urban topics is pertinent at this particular moment in history. The Dutch political and societal crisis-that became so visible in the two political murders of Pim Fortuyn (in 2002) and Theo van Gogh (in 2004)-are to a large extent perceived as urban crises: it is especially in the big cities of the country that the enormous changes in the economy and in social life express themselves the most. Just as in many other European countries, social problems of disadvantaged neighborhoods have become top priorities for policy makers at all levels: the district, the city, the region, the national and even the EU level. The time when (supra)national governance distanced itself from direct intervention in highly local, neighborhood-specific urban issues is clearly over: some national politicians visit the cities so often now that they come to resemble parttime community workers!
Urban beings or city dwellers? The complementary concepts of urban and city
City & Time, 2009
This paper discusses, essayistically, the concepts of urban and city. It starts with the acceptance that conceptualizing things is not an easy task. Quite the contrary, it is full of complexities, intricate approaches and calls for the consideration of historical and moving related facts. What is certain is that, despite being closely connected, they are different phenomena. Urban is considered something intangible, a way of life, which may characterize our entire contemporary society. ?The world is becoming urbanized!? is in fact a constantly stated mantra in many scientific fields since the Industrial Revolution. City is a real object, territorially delimited, and is represented by the concentration of buildings, roads, public and private spaces, people, altogether in high densities. This justifies the title of this paper: it is hardly difficult in our contemporary society not to be urban, but not necessarily a city dweller. This conceptual exercise turns more difficult when we co...
The ongoing discussion on the privatization of cities primarily focuses on the controlled spaces of gated communities in the outskirts just as in inner city neighborhoods. However, the physical gating of neighborhoods is increasingly being replaced by other, soft forms of inclusion and exclusion. Not being physically gated or walled has become one of the Unique Selling Points of communities designed according to the concepts of new urbanism. The production of hegemonic urban spaces in these areas is accomplished by tight regulations on the physical environment and “declarations of covenants”, stretching beyond the public governmental realm and into the control of personal lives. More subtle forms of control have evolved and have been transferred to privatized public spaces of inner city areas. The paper puts the discussion forward by extending the discursive context of soft urbanism to the strengthening strategic role of urban governments. The Historic City Center of Vienna serves as an example of converging policies set in effect by private actors and the city administration. In contrast to a privatization of the public realm, in the Historic City Center of Vienna power relations are continuously shifting towards the institutional networks of the municipality, becoming the major player, developer and investor in the production of the meaning, the narrative and the affects attached to the Historic City Center. The tightening regulations for the Historic City Center indicate a programmatic convergence between the concepts of new urbanism and regulations, enacted by the urban government. Empirical analyses, presented in the paper, reveal how power and control are increasingly exerted over residents, private entrepreneurs and private developers alike. The analysis is based on different multi-scaled approaches. The introductory section examines the accelerating deployment of regulations and control. General codes and directives are increasingly supplemented by more detailed, small-scale guidelines just as their objectives are shifting towards the production of ambience based on the thematic production of the city’s narrative. Akin to privatized urban spaces, power is exerted by the cultural reproduction of the Historic City Center, reducing the discrepancy between the imagined and the real city. The mediated translation of power is examined in the second section, critically dissecting the conceptualization of downtown redevelopment projects. Social control and control of social interaction are becoming unfolded by the continuous negotiations of the urban stakeholders. The incremental closing down of options in the public realm is supported by empirical data on the changing economic, social, cultural and institutional assets attached to the Historic City Center of Vienna. The urban functions of the city center follow the new urban form. The third section refers back to the broader conceptual framework of urban renaissance. The re-definition of the strategic function and power of the municipality in the context of urban renaissance is scrutinized in terms of power enacted by constraints of economy and globalization and raises the question of alternate solutions. References: Allen J., 2006, “Ambient Power: Berlin's Potsdamer Platz and the Seductive Logic of Public Spaces”, Urban Studies, Vol.43, No.2, 441-455 Bodenschatz, H., 2005, "Vorbild England: Urban Renaissance in Birmingham und Manchester", kunsttexte.de, No. 3/2005, 18 p. (http://www.kunsttexte.de) Fassmann H., Hatz G., Patrouch J. F., (2007), “The Historic City Today”, in Fassmann H., Hatz G., Patrouch J. F., 2007, Understanding Vienna. Pathways to the City. Münster-Hamburg-Berlin-Wien-London-Zürich, LIT Verlag Füller H., Marquardt, N., R., 2007, " Soft Urbanism: Safeguarding the private city", research network: private urban governance, Paper No. 043, 11 p. (http://www.gated-communities.de) Hatz G., 2007, “Struktur und Entwicklungstendenzen der Wiener City“ in: Kretschmer I. (ed.), Das Jubiläum der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. 150 Jahre (1856-2006, Wien, Österreichische Geographische Gesellschaft
The article deals with the change of paradigms in European urban thinking through time. The principles of Modern City Planning conceived in the first half of the 20th century, which despised the classical ideals of the European city and of historical urban environments, as well as the subsequent advent of their counterplot, i.e. the approach of integrated conservation and preservation planning, are seen as the two main opposing tendencies of city development in the last 100 years. They have preceded and, in a sense, prepared the way for a new urban consciousness which puts emphasis on the principles of sustainable development in both global and local terms. While the pressing demands for sustainability have been taken into consideration and even recorded in the law on a certain level in most European countries at the turn of this century, there are still many other new-type urban phenomena which express the present-day tendencies of change in our city-life. The breaking of the traditional space-time relationship due to the arrival of the Internet and the multicultural post-modern urban nomadism, which both go together with a tremendous worldwide economic, social, and environmental restructuration, are among them. As a result, the concept of place has lost its former meaning as an explicitly physical scene. At the same time, mentally, socially and culturally processed issues, such as the identity of a place, have become more and more important putting emphasis on the type of interaction between different people and the places of their lives. Thus the question of dwelling (in Heideggerian terms) and the expression of multi-cultural identities in our post-modern “collage cities” have become fundamental urban issues, which concern not only the very essence of the city, but also the actual paradigms of urbanism. In the old continent today, city planning is most often less concerned with building new environments than with transforming extant environments, which happens in interaction with old and new and in a new kind of synergy. Multicultural and tolerant living environments with different historical, social and cultural layers function as magnets for creative people and for inspiring city-life. Key words: conception of the city, sustainability, identity of place, mosaic identity, urban interaction
New Rules for the Spaces of Urbanity
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 2014
The best way to conceive semiotical spaces that are not identical to single buildings, such as a cityscape, is to define the place in terms of the activities occurring there. This conception originated in the proxemics of E. T. Hall and was later generalized in the spatial semiotics of Manar Hammad. It can be given a more secure grounding in terms of time geography, which is involved with trajectories in space and time. We add to this a qualitative dimension which is properly semiotic, and which derives from the notion of border, itself a result of the primary semiotic operation of segmentation. Borders, in this sense, are more or less permeable to different kinds of activities, such as gaze, touch, and movement, where the latter are often not physically defined, but characterized in terms of norms. Norms must be understood along the lines of the Prague school, which delineates as scale going from laws in the legal sense to simple rules of thumb. Such considerations have permitted us to define a number of semio-spatial objects as, most notably, the boulevard, considered as an intermediate level of public space, located between the village square and the coffee house presiding over what Habermas called the public sphere. Urbanity originates as a scene on which the gaze, well before the word, mediates between the sexes, the classes, the cultures, and other avatars of otherness. However, this scenario is seriously upset but the emergence of the cell phone and other technical devices, as well as by the movement of populations.