TIME AND SPACE IN A DIFFUSED SOCIETY

The Randstad diffuse vitesse

Luuk Boelens
Network cities provoke new concepts. We van not speak about planners and urbanists in the future
without analysing actual developments. We must therefore recognise that there is no longer one timespace reality, but at least three: the ARCHE, CINE and TELE. These time-space realities, which are
unrelated to one another, have to follow their own conditions and laws. This makes the actual
developments chaotic and even schizophrenic. The lecture does not surrender, but tries to find new
ways for a second enlightenment. However, this is an enlightenment that must be plural; an
enlightenment not focussed on the city, but rather on the urban, on multidimensional aspects of social
networks. In this way, the lecture shows new ways for urban theories and practice.

For the classic utopian architect there is an implicit correlation between spatial and social structure,
according to Thomas Daniell (Daniell 1998). The central idea was: Create a harmonious ordered
environment and a harmonious ordered society will inevitably follow.
The ideal cities of architectural history are therefore blueprints for a perfect relationship between man,
society and nature. From the snowflake-shaped towns of the Renaissance to the infinite Cartesian grid
of La Corbusiers Ville Radieuse, there is a consistent faith in a deterministic relationship between
space and sociology, between the ideal city-shape and the good urban.
For engaged urbanists and city planners, such a belief in a natural correlation between special and
social structure has long passed. Such ambitions and visions of unification are automatically suspect
in our pluralistic world. The modern form of planning developed in opposite ways and is now as
embarrassing as it once was inspiring. But is has also become very clear that The Urban does not
necessarily correlate with its supposed classic spatial structure: The City. Thanks to our new
informational technologies, computer and telematics, The Urban could be here, there and everywhere
all at once. The Urban the intensified interrelation, exchange and communication of man, goods and
finance is footloose. It could occur in the countryside as well as in a new kind of metropolis the
carpet metropolis or in its accompanying periphery the edge cities.

Simply mentioning The Urban and the city does not make entirely clear, what precisely we are talking
about. The new cities seem to be developing in such an unordered, unplanned and chaotic way, that
we do not seem to have any general understanding of the urban anymore. We only need to look at the
literature of the last ten years. One speaks of the overexposed city (Virillo 1987), the wired city
(Duton 1987), the fantasy city (Crawford 1990), the invisible city (Batty 1990), the sprawl city
(Fishmann 1991), the moral city (Lang 1994), the city of the collective memory (Boyer 1994) and
the walled city (Tan 1998) in describing The Urban. We speak of these conceptions as if one had to
prevail over the other. All these scenarios are legitimate in one way or another and so the actual urban
development seems not only to be de-territorialized - footloose but also to be diffused and
respondent to divergent rules and conditions.
The present mega trends seem to be developing in opposite directions. At the same time, one may
recognise a scaling up (border crossing, global networking) as well as a scaling down of spatial
development (the urge for local and regional identity). One may also recognise a speeding-up (socioeconomic mobility in an ever changing world) and an urge for a speeding down of human
developments (ecological interest and the demand for an enduring environment). And these divergent
trends result in an enormous emptiness in the middle of these opposites; the classic place of urbanists
and spatial planners. How do we approach the new spatial developments and the present urban
condition?
Numerous, confusing, and contradictory conditions are the current response of urbanists, planners
and politicians. Some say that we have to prepare the city as an central node of international
competition. Others suggest an enduring ecological system. Some say that we have to go into the
social problems of today (that of the poor and homeless).Others believe we have to realise a kind of

digital cyber city. Some say that we need to preserve a kind of collective memory of the city. Others
expect that we simply have to create potentials in this world of flux.
Nothing seems to be clear any more. Politicians, urbanists and planners oscillate between the one
and the other, according to how it suits them. Only one thing seems to be very clear. The actual
development of cities no longer responds to the classic, functional terms of development.
Nevertheless, most architects design and plan in this classic functional and Cartesian manner. Manual
Castells is right to suggest that we have to send most of the actual urbanists, city planners, politicians
on a refresher course (Volkskrant 1997). When the classic control of space and time is increasingly
bypassed flows of capital, technology and communication, or by the steady-state (and not in my
backyard demands of the locals), the actual theories and practice of planners have to be revitalised
fundamentally. Otherwise we had better resign. Actual spatial developments do not seem to be
generated by our interventions, but sooner in despite of these.
This fundamental reflection has to be focused on our approach of space and time. Given that space
and time are not the only fundamental dimensions of this world, it relates also fundamentally to the
essence of planners. For their task is essentially to make proposals for spatial interventions based on
a long and thorough insight in time. I will start here by going into the actual insights of space and time.

The divergent dimensions of SPACE and TIME

In a wonderful trilogy about The Network Society (Castells 1996-1998), Manuel Castells speaks
about the new culture resulting from the present technological revolution centred around information
technologies. According to him the material foundations of this new culture are a space of flows and
a timeless time.
With the notion of the pace of flows, he means a kind of space which is increasingly constructed
around various flows: flows of capital, flows of information, flows of technology, flows of organisational
interaction, flows of images, cars, trains, aeroplanes and transport. There are different kinds of flows,
which he further distinguishes in three layers:
The first layer is constituted by a circuit of electronic impulses (micro-electronics,
telecommunications, computer processing, broadcasting systems etc.) which provokes a kind
of placeless deterritorialised and footloose society.
The second layer is constituted by its nodes and hubs, which provoke a kind of network,
linking up specific places with well-defined social, cultural;, physical and functional
characteristics.
The third layer refers to the spatial organisation of the dominant, managerial elites, which
provoke a kind of asymmetrically organised society. Segregation by location happens in
different places, and security control of certain spaces is only open to the elite.
Nevertheless, Castells also stresses that people still live in places. So, next to the spaces of flows,
there is also a space of places. But because function and power in society is organised in the spaces
of flows, the structural domination of its logic essentially alters the meaning and dynamic places
(Castells 1996, pp.410-428). It follows a structural schizophrenia between several spatial logics that
increasingly provoke a kind of fragmented and split development, existent in different kinds of places
next to each other, without any interconnection and mostly contradictory.
The same is going on in time. With the notion of timeless time Castells points out the occurrence of
phenomena aimed at instantanuity (instants wars, split second financial transactions, instant
communications, etc.) as well as the occurrence of developments introducing a random discontinuity
in the sequence (as in the hypertext of integrated electronic media communications). Castells stresses
that time is seemingly erased in the new communication systems, because their Past, Present
and Future can be programmed to interact with each other in the same message. What is there?
What is now in the Chat-Box? Does it really exist, or is it only virtual?

Nevertheless, Castells stresses with this new phenomenon that forms of time are still conceived of
and proposed in social practice, and according to the other principles. He calls these the glacial time
principle and the clock time principle, The notion of glacial time implies that the relation between
humans and nature is long-term, evolutionary and cosmological. Ecologists say that you feel glacial
time running through your life, flowing in your blood. We measure our life by the life of our children,
and of the children of the children of our children.
Different from this time notion is the notion of the clock time, the central characteristic of
industrialism. This kind of time notion provokes a kind of chronological sequence of events and a kind
of discipline of human behaviour to a predetermined schedule. According to Castells this creates a
scarcity of experience our of institutionalised measurement (Castells 1997, pp. 125-126).
As with space with time we have to distinguish too between different forms of temporality, each
generating developments in different ways. Most processes function according to timeless-time. Most
people live according to clock-time, while the environment is often understood as according to the
glacial time. So, Castells concludes, we can no longer speak, think and plan according to one kind of
time-space dimension. We have to start from several, which are increasingly divergent, contradictory
and conflicting, thereby creating a schizophrenic environment.
Castells is not alone in this opinion. Already in 1988, Paul Virilio spoke of a fundamental split in our
view and perception of reality (Virilio 1988). As opposed to perception, which starts from the living
environment, the living subject and its biological time. He also spoke of a perception of precisely the
same reality as our new technological means of hearing, seeing and acting at distance (tele-phone,
tele-vision and tele-acting). Next to the real physical world, Virilio stresses, there also exists a kind of
artificial world that is instant and timeless. The first Is still geographically determined. The second is
omnipresent and border-crossing. The first still knows the normal physical movement, which can be
measured in the distance covered in meters or minutes (mobility). The second world only knows the
image movements and the image times, immeasurable and from which even in total rest, the
whole world can be reached (mobility). The actual metropolis is therefore not only habituated by the
real inhabitants, on foot or hyper-circular on the metropolitan network. It is also habituated by the
virtual, physically absent inhabitants who live in other times and other worlds, but are nevertheless
digitally connected.
In a similar fashion, Villm Flusser too spoke of a radical change in our time-space experience. He
distinguished at least three different kinds of spaces (Flusser 1992).
The first he called the Lebensraum; a space which he, like Virilio, characterised as a kind
of Newtonian space (lespace newtonien). This is the space of topological thinking, the
space of gravity and the space with a clear distinction between here and now, inside and
outside.
The second space he called the Weltraum, a space that he characterised as a kind of
Einstein space. It was not only the world of an ever-increasing speeding up in aspiration of
the speed of light, but also the world of a global relativity. Something happens in New York,
and has consequences over here and vice versa.
Nevertheless, with the present telematic revolution, a third kind of world appears. Flusser
called this new space the Quantumraum, and he characterised it as a kind of Max Planck
space. Because of the present telematics, the technological system not only expands all over
the world, but also penetrates the inside world, becoming smaller and smaller (bio-genetics
and artificial intellect).
Next to the digital world, a world of clones develops.
Last but not least, John Thackara too analysed the world in this way. In his marvellous Travellers tale:
Lost in space (Thackara 1995), he distinguished architectural, aviation, and telematic space. First,
Thackara defined architectural space as the space of stability, solidity and foundation. It is the space
in which the architect, urbanist and planner tries to grasp reality with the big picture, the totality.
Aviation space he claimed, is the environment in which airports, aeroplanes, electronic signals and
people interact with each other continuously on a global scale. Lastly, telematic space was space of
electronic communication, highways of the mind and so on, where all that is whizzing around is
information. Thackara concludes that in a confrontation with these diverging spaces, we need to
develop new design languages or a grammar of complexity which can describe and plan. The world is
not as it used to be, but as it is e.g., in the plural. What we need now, he stressed, was a kind of

second enlightenment. That is an enlightenment which could free ourselves from a one-dimensional
ordered perception of the world and provoke a complex vision. Why run away from complexity? Why
hide from it?
Several theorists and analysts have increasingly pointed to the developing multi-dimensionality of
SPACE and TIME. They stress that there is no longer one time-space dimension, but rather several.
They are competing, mutually provoking and running parallel to one other, mutates mutandis. They
also stress that there can be no longer one view of the city, the region and the world, but rather at
least three:
architectural and archetypical time-space dimension: fixed, stable and according to a kind of
longue dure;
fluid time-space dimension of the network society: the space of physical flows and the clock
time of 24 hours;
digital and virtual time-space dimension; that of cyberspace, electronic communications;
footloose, de-territorialized, instant and timeless.
In agreement with and in extension of these views, I have developed my own vision on city planning
and urban design. I believe we have to analyse, plan and act according to three time-space worlds:
the Arche-Citta
the Cine-Citta
the Tele-Citta
Each of these worlds determine present spatial developments according to their won logic and
conditions. Together they represent an enormous complexity of conflicting processes which are
seemingly random and perhaps chaotic interventions. But, although the present reality is complex and
chaotic, it is at the same time stratified in different layers. Each of these layers has its own logical
pattern and van be designed and planned for accordingly.
We have to analyse the present situation according to these layers.
We have to develop adequate interventions for them separately.
We must confront these diverging and perhaps conflicting interventions with each other, in order to
develop specific strategies for them (by cross-, dis- or trans-programming).
I will attempt to explain this with the case of Randstad Holland, an exemplary diffused, schizophrenic
and polynuclear metropolis.

Randstad Holland a split phenomenon

Arche-Citta
Until the beginning of this century the time-space experience in the area now called Randstad Holland
was still essentially arche-typical, arche-ologic, arche-archipelagic. Although the horizon one can
also say the region of some Dutch cities already reached towards the Far East and the Far West, the
experience of space and time was not at all global, but essentially local. Trade cities like Amsterdam,
Haarlem, Hoorn, Vlissingen and Enkhuizen manifested themselves as lilliputstates, each with its own
regional influence-areas. Not only the direct surroundings, but also the regions abroad were exploited
to increase their growth, power and prosperity. In fact, here the same model dominated as that of the
classic medieval city; a central city which reigned over the surrounding agricultural land as far as the
eye could see or the arms of repression could reach.
Nevertheless, in the Randstad, the model resulted not only from its apparent economic and
exploitative considerations, but also from the old geomorphologic conditions of the western
Netherlands. Earlier the west was a spacious swamp area, and could only be colonised and cultivated
in a step by step process, land after land. This resulted in administrative and governmental forms,
which still have an enormous effect on the spatial development in todays Randstad. In fact, a kind of
Archipel-model still reigns in the Randstad. This is the model of some 250 local authorities which do
not do business with each other and still have only their own interest in mind. Therefore, if one tries to
plan and design a regional urban field, it is immediately fragmented into various parcels and parts.

When one tries to plan an (inter)national railway-line, opinions stressing a not in my backyard
standpoint immediately arise.
Cine-Citta
Nevertheless, next to this narrow minded, petit bourgeois manner of thinking and acting, global
oriented cosmopolitan views too have begun to dominate the spatial structure of the Randstad. With
some overstatement, one can perhaps stipulate that this kind of thinking started when the people of
The Netherlands freed themselves from the pragmatic and functional bonds of this earth and started to
fly. According to the story, when Albert Plesman, the Dutch aviator-pioneer, flew above the western
part of the Netherlands in the mid-thirties, he discovered the specific spatial structure of the Randstad
to be a horseshoe-like string of cities around a Green Heart. He immediately wrote a letter to the
Dutch government, stressing that one should not plan several airports for the different cities in the
West, but rather one large one for the whole Randstad.
Despite Dutch politicians and planners, this holistic vision has been partially realised today. Schiphol
Airport is an airport not only for Amsterdam, but for the whole of the Randstad, the Netherlands and
even the entire globe. It is the main flux of entry to Paris. Schiphol Airport has become a hub in a
global network, and KLM a global carrier in a global alliance. It is the third biggest airline in the world.
The same could happen to Rotterdam. Given that it is the biggest harbour in the world, and is
attempting to develop as a central node in a cross-border network of short-sea and inland shipping, as
well as railway and land transportation.
Here the network planning reigns in terms of spaces of flows and just in time: not only is space and
biological time relevant, but also the preservation en extension of its central position in a cross-border,
global network.
Moreover, cities are no longer physical phenomenon, but have become artefacts of a kind of inhabited
circulation. They have become completely dependant on this hyper-circulation of people, goods and
finance, which is every day greater, more immense en faster. The urban population is no longer just a
coherent society, but also a set of hyper-mobile passers-by. The surrounds are perceived in various,
successive images like a film. Cinematic!
Tele-Citta
How radical this network-way of thinking and planning already is, the Randstad like every region
elsewhere is also already confronted with a time-space compression of a next generation.
As the contradiction between town and country during this century slowly becomes this contradiction
between high and slow speed, every border (town/country, inside/outside, private/public and even
reality/fiction) virtually dissolves thanks to our new methods of electromagnetic broadcast and
transmission. This had had an enormous effect on the development of the Randstad. The urban
becomes omnipresent. Urbanisation gets a footloose, de-territorialized structure. The Randstad is no
longer the only exclusive, or even major economic, motor of Dutch society. New ideas develop in a
kind of light, nomadic urbanisation, scattered over the country-side. Offices still tend to be concerned,
and industries dissolve in the air, resulting in a kind of paradox of labour markets.
And yet, at the same time, the medium becomes the message, and makes of our culture a kind of
cocooned nature (Jameson, 1984). It is no longer clear what is real and what is not. Some say that
the Green Heart still exists and thereby try to justify the collection of one billion guilders of tunnel
below this landscape for the newly planned high speed train track, Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Brussels.
Others say that this is all nonsense, that the idea of a Green Heart is obsolete and that the one billion
guilders could be better spent. So what is real and what is not? The planners discipline no longer
coincides with this issue and brings other stake-holders, like the already entangled politicians, in
further confusion.
Three conflicting Cittas
We see three kinds of time-space dimensions increase in the Randstad. Three kinds of realities, that
no longer coincide, but have their own determined effect on the spatial development of the Randstad.

The first reality drives towards a socio-ecological sustainability and a local identity, like
Heideggers urge towards an Auf dem Leib zugeschnittene Geographie. Here one has to stress
the small, the beautiful and the long-time planning over several decades.
The second reality drives towards multi-social accessibility (by supersonic aeroplanes, mammoth
tankers, high speed trains, triple long barges and vast pipelines), economic corridors, value added
logistics and generic culture in a dynamic, hyper-circular world.
The third reality drives towards an omnipresent urbanisation, a condition of being here, there,
everywhere in the same and in no time, without moving in closed, self-defensive spaces or
paradoxically, permanently on the move. This corresponds to a kind of nomadic culture.

In fact, each of these realities demand their own planning concepts and planning principles. Such
principles do no coincide necessarily in a diffused practice. What must be done? We need a second
enlightenment. We need new guidelines. One might even say, a new kind of utopia. And this utopia
should be essentially multi-dimensional. An utopia in the plural, because what we see now are
numerous privatopias. There are places where only one kind of people, function or reality dominates.
Places that are dedicated to the Arche-Citta here, to the Cine-Citta there and over there to the TeleCitta, as a result of their too incompatible spatial plans. A sharp distinction develops not only between
rich and poor, but also between in rest and on the move or between the analogues and digital's.
Life in booming societies deteriorates everyday, because of the lack of interconnection and the loss of
heterotopias, places where it is impossible for the one to dictate the other, place of essential multidimensionality (e.g. Hajer, 1996).
The new utopia - according to our new guidelines should provoke heterotopias. Arata Isozaki is now
promoting his Mirage City. The intention of this project, developed in close co-operation with a
research team at Waseda University is to create a metropolis without a master plan, in order to avoid
the imposition of a singular, rigid vision The desired inter-determinacy is to be achieved by a process
of consecutive layering. Each successive intervention reinforces, contradicts or subverts the preceding
one, creating urban interference programs. Isozaki has asked twelve guest architects and artist to add
their own layers. Of these, perhaps the most radical was that of Diller & Scorfio, which infested the
plan with drugs, gambling, piracy and prostitution or, according to Thomas Daniell, every
undesirable or dystopian activity conceivable (Daniell, 1998). Mirage City is available on the
World Wide Web (http://www.ntticc.or.jp/special/utopia) and design submissions via e-mail can be
incorporated. According to Laurie Anderson, paradise is exactly like where you are right now only
much better. Finally, Isozaki is now trying to solicit developers to realise this virtual plan. When he
succeeds, Mirage City could be (via the collective and utopian memory of internet) truly an other
place, a true heterotopia. Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard might be impressed.
Nevertheless, this project still reminds me too much of the Exquisite Corps Game of Michael Sorkin.
This was a game in which one person starts a drawing on a piece of paper, folds it and passes it on to
the person next to him who does the same until, finally, the paper is unfolded to reveal a calculated yet
random composition. Sorkin suggested with this game that cities are similarly assembled by many
players acting with varying autonomy in a complicit framework (Sorkin, 1991).
To me this game, and the Mirage City project of Isozaki, should be more focused on the three timespace dimensions of the Arche-, Cine- en Tele-Citta, because the apparent players act from these
divergent perceptions of the world. Moreover, I also think that the desired inter-determinacy should be
guided from these three views of the world in less random fusion, because heterotopia could be more
than just putting the different layers next to each other. Herein, I follow Bernard Tschumis notion of
the event cities in which he distinguishes between trans-, dis- and cross-programming.
By trans-programming he means combining two of more programs, regardless of their
incompatibilities together with their respective spatial configurations>. In other words, simply putting
the Arche-, the Cine- and the Tele- next to each other.
By cross-programming he means, using a given spatial configuration in a program for which it is nog
intended. For instance, one could use the specific spatial configuration of the Arche-Citta for the TeleCittas program.

And finally, by dis-programming he means combining two or more programs, whereby a required
spatial configuration, for example the Arche-Citta, contaminates a program derived from the Tele-Citta
of Cine-Cittas possible configuration, in such a way that the combination creates a new reality.
So, heterotopia could have several images, programs, programmatic combinations and/or spatial
configurations. It could occur in the centre of a metropolis, in the periphery of a big town, on the
country-side, in movement or in cyberspace. Heterotopia coincides with the urban, characterised as
the intensified confrontation of different and divergent worlds, realities and possibilities. This urban
and not the city is still the task of urbanists. Their importance resides in their ability to accelerate the
transformation of society by careful agency of diverging worlds and time-space dimensions.

Literature
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