Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
h I
Design of
Urban Space
An Inquiry into
a Socio-spatial
Process
University
Newcastle
of
Newcastle,
upon Tyne, UK
New
York
Brisbar)e
Toronto
Singapore
Contents
Introduction
Offices
PART O N E
Chapter 1
4
7
P h y s i c a l a n d social s p a c e
10
M e n t a l a n d real space
12
A b s t r a c t a n d differential s p a c e
16
S p a c e a n d time
20
23
S p a c e a n d specialization
26
Conclusion
28
31
31
Natural space
35
Created space
38
39
T h e city as a w o r k of art
43
T h e city as a n e m b o d i m e n t of functions
45
E c o l o g y o f u r b a n structure
48
49
Urban morphology
53
Political e c o n o m y of u r b a n structure
56
Conclusion
60
63
E n v i r o n m e n t a l cognition
63
A b e h a v i o u r a l a p p r o a c h to s p a c e
65
66
Data
Madanipour, Ali
Design of Urban Space: an inquiry into a socio-spatial process /
Aii Madanipour
p,
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-471-96672-X (cloth).~ISBN 0-471-96573-8 (pbk).
1. Space (Architecture). 2. City planningHistory20th century.
3. Architecture and societyHistory20th century. I. Title.
NA9053.S6M33 1996
7ir,4dc20
96-21431
CIP
A b s o l u t e a n d relational s p a c e
Space and mass
John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd, 2 Clement! Loop #02-01,
Jin Xing Distripark, Singapore 129809
D i l e m m a s o f space
Chapter 2
Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0-471-96672-X (cloth)
ISBN 0-471-96673-8 (paper)
Typeset in 10/12pt Palatino from the author's disks by Mackreth Media Services,
Hemel Hempstead, Herts
Printed and bound in Great Britian by Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd.
This book is printed on acid-free paper responsibly manufactured from sustainable forestation, for which
at least two trees arc planted for each one used for paper production.
Chapter 3
Contents
Contents
Chapter 4
U r b a n D e s i g n Process
Chapter 5
69
73
75
78
80
83
87
91
W h a t is urban design?
Ambiguities o f urban design
Macro- or micro-scale urban design?
Urban design as visual or spatial m a n a g e m e n t ?
Urban design as nice images
Urban design as the aesthetics of the urban environment
Urban design as social or spatial management?
Process or product?
Professional divide
A public or private sector activity?
Objective-rational or subjective-irrational?
Urban design as a technical process
Urban design as a social process
Urban design as a creative process
Conclusion
91
92
94
97
97
99
102
104
107
109
110
113
113
115
117
Production of t h e Built E n v i r o n m e n t
119
S t r u c t u r e - a g e n c y models
Use value and exchange value
Structures and agencies
U r b a n development process and urban form
A m o d e l of the development process
Impact of c h a n g e in the d e v e l o p m e n t process on urban space
Commodification of space a n d standardization of design
Globalization of the d e v e l o p m e n t industry
Privatization of public s p a c e
W h a t is p u b h c space?
Chapter 6
119
122
. 123
123
124
126
127
127
128
130
132
135
136
137
137
141
144
146
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
vii
Public s p h e r e theories
Public s p a c e in a s h o p p i n g mall?
Conclusion
148
150
153
R e g u l a t i n g U r b a n Form
155
155
158
160
161
163
165
167
169
171
172
172
174
175
177
181
Images of Perfection
183
Utopia
Urban context
Urbanism of the metropolitan paradigm
Modernist urban design
Post-modern urbanism
Anti-urban paradigm
Suburbanism
Planned anti-urbanism
Socialist anti-urbanism
Broadacre City
Micro-urbanism of the s m a l l town paradigm
Garden cities
N e i g h b o u r h o o d unit
Radburn
Planned decentralization of London
British n e w towns
New Urbanism
Conclusion
185
186
188
188
192
196
197
200
200
201
201
202
204
205
206
206
209
213
D e s i g n of U r b a n S p a c e
215
Bibliography
223
Index
237
Introduction
Introduction
xi
1.
xii
Introduction
concentrates on the city as an artefact and another that sees a city as spatial
relationships. These are, however, perspectives to study the city from above,
detached and objective. Chapter 3 offers another perspective, from below, looking
at everyday life. Here the issues of meaning, behaviour and difference are
discussed, as exemplified by the experiences of strangers and w o m e n in urban
space. Together these three chapters offer an understanding of urban space as a
socio-spatial entity that needs to be studied both objectively and subjectively, at the
intersection of space production and everyday life.
Part T w o concentrates on the urban design process as a constituent part of urban
space production. Following the study of our knowledge of urban space in Part
One, Part T w o is devoted to the ways in which urban space is shaped and
produced. T h e key word here is the action that is taken in the urban design process:
the prescriptive approach to the creation of future urban space.
Part T w o is subdivided into four chapters. Chapter 4 tries to confront ambiguities
in the scope of urban design and to find a definition for it. Chapter 5 looks at the
relationship between urban design and the urban development process. A model of
the development process is proposed, and the changing nature of development
agencies and their impacts on urban space are examined. S o m e of these impacts,
such as the standardization of design and the privatization of space, are then briefly
discussed. Chapter 6 focuses on the relationship between urban design and the
planning system. It evaluates the question of design and aesthetic control, and
reviews the means by which the planning system, mainly in Britain, deals with
design. After examining economic and political contexts of urban design, w e turn
our attention to the images and ideas used to shape urban space. Chapter 7
discusses Utopias as a strong influence on urban design thinking. It identifies three
main trends in twentieth century urban design: urbanism, anti-urbanism, and
micro-urbanism. In urbanism, with its modernist or post-modernist tendencies, the
focus of attention is on shaping and reshaping urban space. In anti-urbanism, the
intention is to abandon urban areas and to colonize the countryside. Microurbanism, as exemplified in the British new towns or the American N e w Urbanism,
has confronted and combined both urbanist and anti-urbanist tendencies. Chapter 8
brings the various elements together and offers s o m e conclusions.
PART OlUE
Perspectives
into Urban Space
CHAPTER 1
Understanding
Urban Space
The t h r e e c h a p t e r s in this part concentrate on understanding urban space as an
a g g l o m e r a t i o n of p e o p l e , objects and events. In this chapter, the concepts of space
and their relationship w i t h urban design will be explored. In Chapter 2, w e will
look at h o w this u r b a n space is structured. Chapter 3 then focuses on the people
within t h e s e structures and on h o w understanding urban space will not be
complete w i t h o u t l o o k i n g at it from b e l o w , as well as from above. Together, these
three c h a p t e r s offer an insight into urban space. Part 2 will follow this
u n d e r s t a n d i n g b y analysing urban design as one of the processes that produce this
urban s p a c e .
This c h a p t e r will focus o n space as the m a i n subject matter of urban design and a
n u m b e r o f other disciplines and professions. It will explore some of the main
a p p r o a c h e s to, a n d the d i l e m m a s associated with, the concept of space. At the risk
of o v e r s i m p l i f y i n g c o m p l e x concepts in the limited space of a chapter, 1 will search
for a m e a n i n g of space, w h i c h can be u s e d in urban design and can be shared with
other spatial arts and sciences. This chapter will look at the way various disciplines
involved in the s t u d y a n d transformation of space tend to understand it. Disciplines
such as g e o g r a p h y , planning and architecture, whose primary concern is with
space, h a v e d e v e l o p e d concepts of space from different, but inevitably interrelated,
perspectives. In their theorizations, they have often benefited from debates in
p h i l o s o p h y , p s y c h o l o g y , sociology, m a t h e m a t i c s and physics, to name a few. These
perspectives v a r y w i d e l y , including seeing space as a physical phenomenon, a
condition of m i n d , or a product of social p r o c e s s ^ A brief review of some of these
conceptualizations will serve us in a variety of ways. It will offer an awareness of
the d i m e n s i o n s of space, with keys to a better understanding of the debates about
space w i t h i n different disciplines. This will help us to position ourselves and to find
our w a y in u n d e r s t a n d i n g the intricate m a z e of urban space and the discussions
about it.
T h e s e a r c h for a m e a n i n g of space is a necessary step to take as it is crucial that
before m o v i n g into the normative realm of design, w e explore the realm of the
descripti\'e and analytical, in other w o r d s , to understand urban space before
attempting to t r a n s f o r m it. T h e highly prescriptive and practical nature of design
requires a set of i n f o r m a t i o n to be a s s e m b l e d , often too quickly due to time limits.
Dilemmas of space
W e frequently hear a b o u t " s p a c e " , a term that w e use easily and in a variety of
contexts. W e use it as if the meaning of the term is free from any problems and
contradictions, as if w e all agree what space m e a n s . Yet most would be surprised by
the multiplicity of its m e a n i n g if we monitored our own usage of the term. The
Oxford English Dictionary gives n o fewer than 19 meanings for the term, including a
" c o n t i n u o u s expanse in w h i c h things exist a n d m o v e " , an " a m o u n t of this taken by
a particular thing or available for particular p u r p o s e " , and an "interval between
points or objects". T h e s e m e a n i n g s reflect s o m e aspects of the term's c o m m o n
u n d e r s t a n d i n g as used in daily life. They also illustrate the complexity of the
concept a n d refer to deeply rooted debates about it, which have been running for a
long time.
F i g u r e 1.1.
Is space the container of all the objects we see or is it the positional quality of
France)
F i g u r e 1.2.
"Since every arcliitectural volume, every structure of walls, constitutes a
boundary, a pause in the continuity of space, it is clear that every building functions in the
creation of t w o kinds of space: its internal space, completely defined by the building itself, and
its external or urban space, defined by that building and the others around it." (Zevi, 1957: 30).
(Turin,
Italy)
10
11
F i g u r e 1.3.
The changing function of the buildings over time shows the complexity of the
relationship between social and physical space. Designed and built for Fiat car production,
Lingotto is now used for exhibitions and cultural events. {Turin, Italy)
12
13
F i g u r e 1.5.
Inside the labyrinth, our understanding of space is through immediate
experience. We cannot have an overview of the space beyond. {Isfahan,
Iran)
F i g u r e 1.4.
A pyramid is an "ultimate model of reason", transforming space through a
theoretical approach and a rational geometry. {Louvre Museum,
Paris,
France)
Against this theoretical approach, there is a sensory approach to space. From this
perspective, our experience of space is "a sensuous event". This involves
m o v e m e n t , a m o v e m e n t that creates "a kaleidoscope of changing impressions, of
transitions b e t w e e n o n e spatial sensation and another" (Porter & G o o d m a n , 1 9 8 8 : 6).
14
15
16
(Lefebvre, 1991: 7)
In its original context o f linguistics and literary theory, this criticism h a s been
similarly raised against semiology, or semiotics, which coincides and overlaps with
structuralism. F o r structuralists, as Eagleton (1983: 109) puts it, "there w a s no
question of relating t h e w o r k to the realities of which it treated, or to the conditions
w h i c h produced it, or to the actual readers w h o studied it, since the founding
gesture of structuralism h a d been to bracket off such realities". Structuralism held
that "Reality w a s not reflected b y language but produced b y i t " (1983: 108), a n d as
such, it was "hair-raisingly unhistorical" (1983: 109).
Lefebvre's a i m w a s to confront this shortcoming b y contextualizing semiology,
on t h e o n e h a n d , a n d b y introducing subjectivity into the political a n d economic
understanding, on the other: in other words, b y integrating mental space into its
social a n d physical contexts. H e argues that these dimensions of spacemental,
physical a n d socialshould not b e kept separate, and sets out to formulate a
" u n i t a r y t h e o r y " of space. A "unitary t h e o r y " that brought together the physical
space of nature, the mental space of logical and formal abstractions, a n d the
practico-sensory realm o f social space. In his attempt, h e was partly inspired b y the
search in physics for unity, where space, time and energy are interlinked; a n d b y
Surrealists, w h o h a d b e e n searching for a junction between the inner and the outer
w o r l d s of h u m a n beings.
T o bridge the traditional duality between real a n d mental space, Lefebvre
introduces the concept of social space, the space of social life, of social and spatial
practice. H e then uses the Hegelian notion of production to arrive at a unitary
theory of space. Social space, he argues, is a social product. Every society, and m o d e
of production, produces its o w n space. It is only through such understanding that
the duality between mental and real space can be confronted. It is this production
process that should b e the object of interest, rather than things in space, although
b o t h process and product are inseparable.
T h e concept of the production of space has a central role in Lefebvre's thinking,
" s p a c e as a social a n d political product, space as a product that one buys a n d sells"
(quoted in Brgel et al.,1987 : 2 9 - 3 0 ) . It w a s based on the notion that
17
18
F i g u r e 1 . 6 . Lefebvre argued that before the twentieth century, the ways in which space was
perceived, conceived and lived were interconnected. {Oxford,
UK)
L e f e b v r e ' s first t a s k , therefore, is to b r i n g together objective and subjective
u n d e r s t a n d i n g s of s p a c e by tracing t h e m botli back to the process in which space
is p r o d u c e d . H e q u e s t i o n s the vaHdity of a n y u n d e r s t a n d i n g of space that is not
r o o t e d in the p o h t i c a l e c o n o m y of its production. At the s a m e time, to strike a
b a l a n c e w i t h the p o l i t i c a l e c o n o m y of space production, h e resorts to everyday life,
a " p e r s p e c t i v e " that, as Maffesoli (1989a,b) explains, is set to address the
s u b j e c t i v e , and i n t e r s u b j e c t i v e , aspects of social life, w h i c h have been undermined
b y the traditional e m p h a s i s of social sciences on objective understanding. A s such,
it is a critical r e s p o n s e to the "crisis of totalizing classical sociologies"
( B o v o n e , 1 9 8 9 : 4 2 ) , a n d b r i n g s into attention the i m p o r t a n c e of meaning and
d i f f e r e n c e in s o c i a l inquiry. A n u m b e r of a p p r o a c h e s h a v e attempted to
i n c o r p o r a t e the e v e r y d a y life p e r s p e c t i v e into the w i d e r perspectives of social
p r o c e s s e s , as e x e m p l i f i e d b y Alfred S c h u t z (1970), w h o b r o u g h t together sociology
a n d p h e n o m e n o l o g y , a n d J r g e n H a b e r m a s (1987), w h o outlined the relationship
b e t w e e n s y s t e m s a n d lifeworld. H a b e r m a s , for e x a m p l e , separates everyday life
f r o m the s y s t e m s of m o n e y a n d p o w e r , stressing that these systems tend to
penetrate
and
colonize
everyday
life
through
monetarization
and
19
20
space, its functions, should determine its physical form. T h e attempt to integrate the
social and physical dimensions of space, or in other w o r d s to contextualize the
physical space into h u m a n practices, is an important step in our understanding of
s p a c e . W e cannot identify our e n v i r o n m e n t as an unrelated collection of material
objects, as exemplified in the tendency to equate cities with their buildings. O n the
other hand, we cannot understand our space as merely a container of social
relations without a physical dimension. In their attempts to introduce space into
social theory, some geographers s e e m to have moved towards a concept of nonphysical, mental space, which is merely a by-product of social relations, and which
w e can understand only through verbal means, denying the non-verbal forms of
understanding with which we relate to our space. At any point in time, our
conceptualization of space will need to focus on both its physical and social
dimensions. The physical space that w e perceive, create and use is embedded in our
daily practices and it is through charting the process of its making that we can
understand this environment. Inherent in the notion of making is the relationship of
space with time.
21
the objects could b e seen simultaneously from several points of \'iew. In this
approach, the Cubists introduced a principle that, a c c o r d i n g to G i e d i o n (1967: 4 3 6 ) ,
is "intimately b o u n d u p with m o d e r n life s i m u l t a n e i t y " . T h e F u t u r i s t s also
attempted to enlarge the conventional optical vision b y i n t r o d u c i n g j n o v e m e n t _ i n ^
their-paintings-and^archttectural d r a w i n g s ; ' a ^ b e s r ' s K o w n in A n t o n i o S a n t ' E l i a ' s
projcctTor h i i "Citt N u o v a " , in which high-rise a p a r t m e n t s are c o n n e c t e d by
various means of movement at different levels (Figure 1.7). T h i s w a s an i m a g e
vividly portrayed later in Fritz L a n g ' s film Metropolis.
C i n e m a , as " t h e m o d e r n i s t art
of space par excellence", offered an exciting opportunity for i n c o r p o r a t n g t i m e into
space (Vidler,1993; 4 6 ) . As early a s 1912, Abel G a n c e w a s f a s c i n a t e d b y "that
admirable synthesis of the m o v e m e n t of space and t i m e " (quoted in V i d l e r , 1993),
which was made possible by film. In 1920, Scheffauer w r o t e of " t h i s p h o t o g r a p h i c
c o s m o s " giving birth to a fourth dimension; " S p a c e hitherto c o n s i d e r e d and
treated as something dead and static, a mere inert screen or f r a m e , o f t e n of n o m o r e
significance than the painted balustrade-background at the village p h o t o g r a p h e r ' s
has been smitten into life, into m o v e m e n t and c o n s c i o u s e x p r e s s i o n " ( q u o t e d in
Vid!er,1993; 4 6 - 4 7 ) .
Ever since the development of the special and general theories of relativity, the
separate concepts of space and time h a v e increasingly been approached as a
combined concept of s p a c e - t i m e (Smart,1988). According to Hermann Minkowski,
w h o suggested the concept in 1908, s p a c e - t i m e is a four-dimensional continuum,
w h i c h unites the three dimensions of space with one of time (Winn, 1975; 297).
Every object, therefore, must not only have length, width and height, but also
duration in time. Albert Einstein, w h o incorporated this concept into his special
theory of relativity, contended that, as opposed to the Newtonian theory, a
separation of space and time in an absolute w a y is not possible, but is relative to a
choice of a coordinate system. " T h e universe of four dimensions includes space
with all of its events and objects as well as time with its changes and m o t i o n s "
(Winn,1975; 297).
There were parallels to this conception of s p a c e - t i m e in art and architecture, by
concentrating on movement within space. T h e Cubists, for example, used the concept
of the fourth dimension by moving round their objects, rather than trying to
represent them from a static viewpoint. T h e y offered a n e w conception of space by
enlarging the way space is perceived. By breaking from the Renaissance
perspective, which presented objects in three dimensions, the Cubists added a
fourth dimension of time. They v i e w e d objects relatively, dissecting them so that
F i g u r e 1.7.
An early example of integrating high-rise buildings and movement at different
levels in urban space, offering a new experience of space and time. (Chicago,
USA)
22
23
between this interpretation in social and aesthetic understanding and that of the
theory of relativity. In the latter, the space and time become interdependent at scales
.md speeds beyond our limited scope and slow pace of daily experience and beyond
our even slower social and historical processes. The w a y we can meaningfully
introduce the fourth dimension of time into space is by concentrating on the process
of its evolution and change. FoUo^ving the way space has been niade and transformed
allow us to add a fourth dimension to our spatial understanding. On the one
hand, we will need to study space in the context of the political and economic
processes that have produced it. On the other hand, by seeing space as an outcome of,
and a contributor to, the daily practices that constitute social relations, we can
broaden our spatial understanding to incorporate the fourth dimension. The lived
experience of space is one in which time is inherent. The question to ask is whether
there are any fixities in this dynamic conception of space.
24
25
F i g u r e 1.9.
The slow process of change in the peripheral regions means a more stable
relationship between people and space and more fixed identities. {Zavareh,
Iran)
F i g u r e 1.8.
The centre of a world city is often a fast-moving place, with a multiplicity of
identities and a potential for plurality. {Paris,
France)
Conflict and contrast often find forms of manifestation other than a rapid c h a n g e
of socio-spatial identities. Here a place may have a more fixed, but far from
dead, meaning. T h e slow pace of change here means a slower pace of identity
change and a m o r e coherent set of relations between social and physical space.
This m a y mean a perpetuation of various forms of exploitation and inequality. This
is w h y a nostalgic view of this apparent socio-spatial coherence needs to be
balanced with a critical stance towards its component parts, to prevent a simplistic,
static view of a given circumstance. O n the other h a n d , as Herman (1982) has
skilfully shown, socio-spatial d y n a m i s m , resulting from the dislocation and evershifting configurations of the modernization processes, can be painful and
disruptive.
There is little d o u b t that dynamic conception of place would more realistically
represent the multiplicity of social practices and identities. There w o u l d be,
however, fixities at a n y point in time, as change takes place over time in relation to
the existing frames of reference. These are frames that would inevitably change but
not all at once. T h e identities of places, therefore, will be defined and redefined
constantly in relation to constant changes in historical time. This conceptualization
explains why individuals are capable of making decisions in spite of their constant
change of circumstances.
W e should also b e aware of the difficulties in conceptualizing place as a
decentred locality. Following the arguments that see the human subject as
26
decentred, as a site for the interaction of external currents, place m a y b e seen as one
such decentred site. H u m a n beings a n d places can b o t h b e seen a s sites for the
interaction of diverse social processes. This approach s e e m s to r e d u c e t h e physical
and social dimensions of space (and of human beings) to a d i s c o u r s e at an
intellectual level, w h e r e our k n o w l e d g e is achieved b y abstract p r o c e s s e s and
discourses, rather than concentrating o n the lived experiences. A r g u i n g against
basing knowledge on linguistics, Lefebvre draws our attention to t h e connection
between the abstract body, which is simply understood as "a m e d i a t i o n b e t w e e n
'subject' and 'object'", and another b o d y , " a practical a n d fleshy b o d y c o n c e i v e d of
a totality complete with spatial qualities (symmetries, a s y m m e t r i e s ) a n d energetic
properties (discharges, economies, w a s t e ) " (Lefebvre,1991: 6 1 ) . A l t h o u g h it is
potentially misleading to compare h u m a n agency w i t h space, a s i m i l a r argimient
might apply to place, where a physical stock exists w i t h all its s o c i a l a n d spatial
qualities and which, despite its o p e n n e s s to constant change, reasserts its material
totality and interconnections at any m o m e n t in time. W h e n v i e w e d in its social
context and through its production process, space c a n h a v e multiple identities a n d |
yet be embedded in particular circumstances.
27
in the balance of interest in physical and social space has been a significant feature
in the d e v e l o p m e n t of human geography. N o w , it s e e m s , space, as well as Hme, is
treated by s o m e geographers as an all-embracing concept, an almost invisible
dimension to w h i c h n o overt reference needs to b e made: "Given that everything
e.xists in space as well as time, there is no m o r e reason to doubt that it has a
.-eographical d i m e n s i o n " ( D i a m o n d , quoted in Richards,1995). However, Johnston
argues that to p r o m o t e the study of place, which is central to geography, the
fragmentation of the discipline must be restrained in order to bring specialists
together (Johnston,1991: 253).
The evolution of architecture has also seen the development of a gap between
social and physical space. Designers look at space to shape it, tending to be practical
and normative in their study of space. F o r e x a m p l e . Porter & G o o d m a n (1988; 6-7)
begin their introductory text to design with a brief description of the way our senses
perceive the space around us. This is immediately followed by an example of how
space is being manipulated in oriental gardens in relation to our sensory
experiences. A n o t h e r example is C o l q u h o u n (1989), w h o sets out to outline the
twentieth century concepts of urban space. In explaining these concepts, however,
the narrative concentrates on w h a t the designers h a v e wished the city space to be,
rather than analysing the results of urban transformation. This is especially
apparent w h e n post-modern criticisms are introduced. In design writing,
knowledge a n d practice are tightly related, so that at times they are used
interchangeably a n d difficult to distinguish.
T h e architects of the modern m o v e m e n t approached cities in a rather coherent
and c o m p r e h e n s i v e way. These designers saw their space as an integrated one, in
F i g u r e 1.10.
The failure of earlier solutions for social problems led the architects to withdraw
from social concerns. (Tyne & Wear, UK) (Photograph by Stuart Cameron)
28
its various scales a n d with its physical and social dimensions. They designed
b u i l d i n g s , and objects inside them and landscapes around them, hoping, rather
optimistically, that shaping space w o u l d lead to the creation of a better society.
Despite their e m p h a s i s on the physical fabric of the city, they were similarly
c o n c e r n e d with its social conditions. A s evident in the Charter of Athens, it was the
social problems of the cities that urged them to seek planned action (Sert, 1944). The
exhaustion of the m o d e r n m o v e m e n t , however, led to the abandonment of the
social dimensions of space, leaving the architects concentrating on the built form
(Figure 1.10). By the 1980s, the design professions had largely lost their interest in
the social dimensions of built form. In their withdrawal from social engagement
a n d concern with formalism, m u c h of architecture b e c a m e , in the words of Allan
J a c o b s and Donald Appleyard (1987: 114), " a narcissistic pursuit, a chic component
of high art consumer culture, increasingly remote from most people's everyday
lives".
T h e disciplinary fragmentation and specialization that followed the integrated
approach of the m o d e r n m o v e m e n t needed an increasing multiplicity of .1
professionals to be involved in shaping the environment. This created and enlarged
a divide between architecture and other disciplines. Fragmentation of this kind can
be seen as a positive development, as it allows a deeper understanding of each subarea in the transformation of the built environment. Reacting against specialization
m a y b e , as M o o r e (1992: x) suggests, " a romantic absurdity". On the other hand,
fragmentation potentially leaves large conceptual gaps between these sub-areas.
U r b a n sociologists, urban geographers, planners, architects, engineers, landscape
designers and interior designers, a m o n g others, find themselves with different and,
at times, contradictory concepts of the space they intend to understand and
transform. T h e compartmentalized specialists feel at ease within the precincts of
their o w n territories, protected from outside intrusions by the walls of jargon,
exclusive academic circles and protective professional institutions. Communities of
interest and understanding that develop in this manner help a further
fragmentation of approach to overarching concepts such as space. Inevitably,
tension arises w h e n a not only necessary but vital link is being sought across these
divides. The d i l e m m a of dealing with space here is whether to accept the
conventional borders of specialists and to act within them, with or without the
collaboration of other specialists in teams, or to m o v e across the boundaries to
benefit f r o m the multiplicity of ideas and approaches to space. If it is possible to
a r g u e that a unitary concept of space could be encouraged, then these various fields
of interest can be linked conceptually but approached independently.
Conclusion
T h e d i l e m m a s of space appear to lie in the way w e relate to it: the w a y we
i m d e r s t a n d , and therefore transform, it. The debates between absolute and
relational space, the dilemma b e t w e e n physical and social space, between real and
mental space, b e t w e e n space and mass, between function and form, between
abstract and differential space, b e t w e e n space and place, between space and time,
can all be seen as indicators of a series of open philosophical questions: how d o we
29
30
CHAPTER 2
Structural F r a m e w o r k s
of U r b a n Space
In Chapter 1 w e searched for a m e a n i n g of space, arguing that to understand the
space of the city, w e need to g r a s p its three aspects (physical, social and symbolic)
in an integrated w a y and in the p r o c e s s of space production. In this chapter, we will
look at h o w w e u n d e r s t a n d the structure of urban s p a c e , with its social and physical
geometries. T h i s s t u d y of the structures of urban space will be complemented in
Chapter 3 b y a n inquiry into the w a y h u m a n agency interrelates with these
structures. Part T w o will seek to understand the formation of urban space, b y
analysing the political e c o n o m y of space production and the aesthetic and symbolic
notions of s p a c e m a k i n g .
In our s e a r c h for structural patterns of differentiation in urban space, w e look for
ways to u n d e r s t a n d cities a n d their form, and to gain an awareness of the urban
socio-spatial c o n t e x t and its d y n a m i c s of change. W e concentrate on approaches to
the u n d e r s t a n d i n g of urban s p a c e structure. T h e city is a socio-spatial context to
which w e can e n t e r as individuals or groups and interact with it to use or change it.
The interaction b e t w e e n urban planners and designers with urban residents and
urban space l a r g e l y influences the form of this context.
W e start b y searching for a definition of urban form, followed by two
perspectives i n t o u r b a n structure: o n e that sees it as a collection of buildings and
artefacts, and the o t h e r that sees it as a site for social relationships. It will be argued
that our p i c t u r e of urban structure will only m a k e sense w h e n a socio-spatial
perspective e m e r g e s to replace these two disjointed views.
32
a t t e m p t i n g to ciefine urban form, w e will review the approaches to urban space and
f o r m in urban architecture and urban geography, disciplines that have contributed
to the development of urban planning and design.
U r b a n form h a s b e e n equated with the term " t o w n s c a p e " , developed by
S m a i l e s (1955) as the u r b a n equivalent of landscape, comprising the visible forms
of the built-up a r e a s . Its three m a i n c o m p o n e n t s are street plan or layout,
architectural style of buildings and their design, and land use (Herbert & T h o m a s ,
1 9 8 2 ) . Ever since, a l o n g the s a m e lines, the geometry of each of these component
p a r t s , or s o m e of their m o r e detailed aspects, has b e e n defined as urban form. A
v a r i a t i o n on this t h e m e with m o r e sensitivity to detail is the work of Shirvani
( 1 9 8 5 ) . In search of the d o m a i n o f u r b a n design, h e identifies the physical elements
of u r b a n f o r m as l a n d use, b u i l d i n g f o r m and massing, circulation and parking,
o p e n space, pedestrian ways, activity support, and signage. Interest has also been
s h o w n in larger-scale c o m b i n a t i o n s of these c o m p o n e n t parts and their functional
roles.
T h e architectural interest often concentrates on the physical fabric of the city
a n d its aesthetic a n d functional d i m e n s i o n s . T h e city is an act of will, a w o r k of art
m a d e u p of t w o e l e m e n t s o f t h e architecture of m o v e m e n t and the architecture o f
r e p o s e (Bacon,1975: 3 2 2 ) . S o m e a u t h o r s urge u s to define urban form in two
d i m e n s i o n s , in t e r m s of its physical extent, street pattern and different areas; and
a l s o in three d i m e n s i o n s , in its sculptural expression of different heights and
s h a p e s ( L o w n d e s & M u r r a y , 1 9 8 8 ) a n d its skyline ( H e d m a n & Jaszewski,1985).
M o r p h o l o g i c a l e l e m e n t s of u r b a n s p a c e are identified as streets and squares (R.
K r i e r , 1 9 7 9 a , b ) , b l o c k s (L. K r i e r , 1 9 7 8 ) , w h i c h h a v e b e e n geometrically typified,
q u a r t e r s (Ungers et al.,1978; L. K r i e r , 1 9 7 9 ) , and other forms of urban division
(Kostof, 1992). In architectural history, urban f o r m s of the past are studied
t h r o u g h their m o r p h o l o g i c a l c o m p o n e n t parts such a s castles and m a n o r s , walls
a n d gates, streets a n d circulation s p a c e s , market-places, churches, and the mass of
g e n e r a l town b u i l d i n g s (Morris,1979; M u t h e s i u s , 1 9 8 2 ; Lloyd,1992). Attempts to
c o m b i n e this m o r p h o l o g i c a l interest w i t h a functional dimension can b e seen in
R e e k i e (1972), for e x a m p l e , for w h o m the town consists of buildings and other
structures, open a n d enclosed spaces, and vehicular and pedestrian circulations.
T h e s e are a r r a n g e d in the central core, a n d in residential, industrial and recreation
areas.
A n o t h e r , mainly geographical, strand stresses the land use as the fundamental
constituent o f u r b a n form, a n d takes on a functionalist interpretation of urban
space. Scargill (1979) defines the form of cities on t w o distinct scales. There is the
f o r m that the e l e m e n t s of the city's physical fabric take: dwellings and the more
specialized structures in which retail, office and manufacturing functions are
h o u s e d . There is also the form that "assemblages of structures" take, which leads to
another, more limited, definition of urban form as, " t h e juxtaposition of land use
z o n e s in an urban area, regarded as the response to variety in accessibility"
(Clark,1985: 667). Rogers (1971: 210) defines the theory of urban spatial structure as
b e i n g concerned w i t h the disposition of human socio-economic activities in urban
areas, with the goals of discovering, explaining and ultimately predicting
regularities that exist in people's adaptation to city space. For Brotchie et al. (1985:
5), urban form is " t h e pattern of residential and non-residential urban activities and
33
34
35
Natural space
F i g u r e 2.1.
Ireland)
36
Figure 2.2.
37
Castles on hilltops are the best examples of the control of topography by the
powerful. (Warkworth,
Northumberland,
UK)
Figure 2 . 3 . Even when reliance on underground water streams has disappeared, the social
geography continues to be influenced by topography. {Tehran,
Iran)
surrounding K a b u l , A f g h a n i s t a n . H e i g h t , in s o m e cases, can be an obstacle, a
barrier to accessibility, m a r g i n a l i z i n g s o m e g r o u p s from urban services and
opportunities.
Natural s p a c e exerts a n o t h e r influence o n urban space as a c o n s e q u e n c e of
human interaction. Since v e r y e a r l y times, transformation of the biophysical
environment b y h u m a n societies h a s occurred in two distinctive ways: deliberate,
which we call " e n v i r o n m e n t a l m a n a g e m e n t " today, and accidental, n o w called
"environmental i m p a c t " . T h e k e y p h a s e s in this process included the
development of the ability to m a n a g e fire, w h i c h allowed h u m a n societies to
change the f o r m and c o m p o s i t i o n o f m a n y e c o s y s t e m s . Another k e y stage was
acquiring the ability to d o m e s t i c a t e plants and a n i m a l s , which, since 3 0 0 0 BC, led
to the d e v e l o p m e n t of c o m p a c t cities as concentrations of material and energy,
which had to b e largely b r o u g h t in f r o m outside their boundaries, a n d waste, all
of which altered the e n v i r o n m e n t o f the city a n d its surroundings. T h e s e
transformations of the e n v i r o n m e n t h a v e intensified since the use o f fossil fuels
enabled the d e v e l o p m e n t of large u r b a n areas. In addition to noticeable alterations
to the lower a t m o s p h e r e , the l a n d s u r f a c e a n d the aquatic and ecological systems
have been a l m o s t totally t r a n s f o r m e d b y m o d e r n cities. By reaching out for
resources and depositing their w a s t e , urban areas are major agents of
environmental c h a n g e both w i t h i n their b o u n d a r i e s a n d well b e y o n d ( S i m m o n s ,
1989).
38
39
to the short w a l k in the city, a brief look at many of our institutions, daily activities
Created Space
environments and social forms, accumulated through time, all together making the
artefacts, some fading away within a short time while others outlive their creators.
urban space. The city is therefore a socio-spatial phenomenon with an inherent, but
maintains some other parts. Bv this they ensure a permanent but dynamic coexistence
of different social
institutions to daily routines, cultural habits and physical fabrics of the cities. This
Transforming
the
natural
space,
and
overlaid
upon
of
The historicity of urban fabric can be illustrated by a short walk in any old city
anywhere in the world, where buildings and street patterns of various past periods
stand side by side (Figure 2.4). Even newer cities have an inherent historicity: their
creation is rooted in historical processes and concepts; and their relative durability
could
promise
the
beginning
of
future
historical
significance
through
the
and
abandons
spatial
some
forms,
inheritance
modes of production
and
and
coexistence would not imply that the present is a prisoner of the past, as each new
generation transforms and interprets, a n d therefore recreates, its inheritance in its own
image. On the contrary, it allows the city a degree of freedom so that, as M u m f o r d put
it, "By the diversity of its H m p - s t n i r t i i r e s ^ J l i p _ r i t y ^ j n parj escapes t h e tyranny nf a
single present, a n d ^ t h e m o n o t o n y ^ F ^
in r e p e a t a g o n l y j i ^ i n g l e
architecture
shed
is
building;
Lincoln
Cathedral
is
piece
of
architecture"
2.4.
Ohio,
Old and new stand side by side, even in the cities of the "new world"
USA)
understand
cities, it f o l l o w s , w e
To
41
F i g u r e 2.5.
To understand urban space, we need to consider architecture as all the
component parts of the built environment. {Salmmbe,
UK)
42
43
44
45
In Britain, a strong concern for an artistic interpretation of the city can b e found in
the Townscape movement. This tradition, whose origins k n o w n as Picturesque go
back to the eighteenth century, occupied the centre of architectural debates during
the two decades that followed the S e c o n d World W a r (Banham,1968). T h e editorial
board of the Architectural Review, w h o were a m o n g the major a d v o c a t e s of the
Picturesque, saw architecture and planning as essentially visual arts. Distinguished
figures such as Nicholas Pevsner endorsed visual planning as the only suitable
approach to the city, which is in line with English traditions. N e w Brutalism, the
British version of modernist architecture, was criticized by the T o w n s c a p e
movement as lacking aesthetic and emotional dimensions (Bandini,1992). It
therefore studied the historical evolution of cities as a concern for preservation and
conservation against the threats of modernist r e d e v e l o p m e n t ( S h a r p , ! 9 6 8 ) .
Gordon CuUen's influential analysis of urban space was a major w o r k in the
Townscape movement. Its main claim was that it had "assisted in charting the
structure of the subjective world" (Cullen,1971:194). T o d o this, he concentrates on
our personal and emotional reactions to the environment. W e acquire these responses
by the "faculty of sight", as the environment is apprehended "almost entirely through
vision" (Cullen,1971:8). He then introduces his serial vision technique, in which he
recreates a walk in the environment, recording the existing and emerging views of a
moving observer. These are to be complemented with an understanding of our
reactions to the position of our bodies in our environment, an awareness of space,
and its mood and character. Another dimension to our emotional reactions to the
environment is our awareness of the contents of a place, i.e. the urban fabric with its
colour, texture, scale, style, character, personality and uniqueness. T h e environment
is created either by means of c o m m o n sense principles of health, amenity,
convenience and privacy: objective values which CuUen sees as thriving and not in
need of investigation. The environment can also be created through the subjective
values of its occupants, an aspect about which he is concerned and finds the situation
"disturbing". With an understanding of the sights of the city, he reasserts, w e can
begin to manipulate it, to "mould the city into a coherent d r a m a " (Cullen,! 971:9).
F i g u r e 2.6.
Italy)
superiority of architecture over other forms of visual and plastic art, as w e are
surrounded b y architecture, u n a b l e to avoid b u i l d i n g s and "the subtle but
penetrating effects of their c h a r a c t e r " (Pevsner,1963: 16). As w e live in the
environments s h a p e d b y h u m a n artifice, architecture becomes " t h e unavoidable
a r t " (Roth,1993). A s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d conclusion from this equation of city with its
architecture is t h e n that the city is interpreted as " t h e largest work of art possible"
(01sen,1986; 4) ( F i g u r e 2.6).
F i g u r e 2 . 7 . Following the motto, "form follows function", modernist design gave priority to
the way space is produced and used, rather than how it looked. {Dublin,
Ireland)
47
48
m o d e r n i s m to p o s t - m o d e r n i s m fias b e e n linked w i t h the transition f r o m highFordism, the post-war socio-spatially centralized s y s t e m legitimized by grand
narratives of progress and e m a n c i p a t i o n , to p o s t - F o r d i s m as a socio-spatially
decentralized system w h o s e characteristic is the " e x h a u s t i o n of Utopian energies"
(Habermas, in Albertsen,1988). H a r v e y (1989: 2 5 6 - 2 5 7 ) refers to m o d e r n i s m as the
Utopian p r o g r a m m e to transform s o c i e t y b y t r a n s f o r m i n g space, a p r o g r a m m e
w h o s e failure had linked m o d e r n i s m to capital accumulation through mass
production. M o d e r n i s m w a s r e p r e s e n t i n g corporate p o w e r , and, with the changing
circumstances, p o s t - m o d e r n i s m
gained
ground
to represent the
flexible
accumulation of capital.
O n e of the early b r a n c h e s w h i c h d e v e l o p e d as a c o u n t e r - m o v e m e n t towards
m o d e r n i s m with the a i m of h u m a n i z i n g its a p p r o a c h e s to urban form, w a s a search
for the image of the city and its " l e g i b i l i t y " ( L y n c h , 1 9 7 9 ) . It stimulated extensive
research on patterns of b e h a v i o u r a n d m e n t a l m a p p i n g of the cities and held a
strong position in the d e v e l o p m e n t of criteria for m o r p h o l o g i c a l studies and design
(Bentley et al.,1985; J a c o b s & A p p l e y a r d , 1987; T i b b a l d s , 1 9 8 8 ) . Cultural imperatives
in the development of u r b a n f o r m ( R a p o p o r t , 1 9 6 9 , 1 9 7 7 ) and symbolic meanings
attributed to the site o f a city o r a p a r t i c u l a r structure w i t h i n it (Tuan,1977; Harvey,
1985a; Harbison,1991), and to the allocation of different areas in the city to various
g r o u p s (Tuan,1982), and the a l i g n m e n t of walls, gates and major road axes
(Wheatley, in Eisenstadt & S h a c h a r , 1 9 8 7 ) h a v e constituted major lines of
investigation of urban form.
D e s p i t e the e x t e n s i v e literature o n t h e d e s i g n a p p r o a c h , Eisenstadt a n d S h a c h a r
(1987) argue that it h a s p r o v i d e d a l m o s t n o p a r a d i g m , and that m a n y of the
s t u d i e s in this a p p r o a c h , a i m i n g a t i d e n t i f y i n g t h e u n i q u e features o f the city
structure for a given period or p l a c e , are i d i o g r a p h i c . It s h o u l d be n o t e d , however,
that, although the a p p r o a c h m a y n o t h a v e d e v e l o p e d a coherent conceptual
f r a m e w o r k , it h a s g e n e r a t e d w i d e r cultural d e b a t e s . It has also p r o v i d e d a
considerable a m o u n t of i n f o r m a t i o n o n a r c h i t e c t u r e a n d urban f o r m , w i d e n i n g the
u n d e r s t a n d i n g of u r b a n d e s i g n a n d b a s i c e l e m e n t s o f the internal s t r u c t u r e of the
cities.
Moreover, the relationship of m o d e r n i s m with pre-modern and post-modern
schools of design and thought, a n d the attempts w h i c h have tried to put these
relationships into c h a n g i n g societal c o n t e x t s , have p r o v i d e d valuable insights to the
d y n a m i c s of socio-spatial contexts. A n y s t u d y of u r b a n form, therefore, d u e to the
p r e d o m i n a n c e of m o d e r n i s t t h i n k i n g in a large part of the present century
throughout the w o r l d , will h a v e to take it into consideration. It will h a v e to address
its impact on the p r o d u c t i o n of that p a r t i c u l a r urban f o r m , along with its associated
societal processes, and the types of reaction to it.
49 \
The demand for a better understanding of the economic, political, social and
cultural contexts of the city has been growing within urban g e o g r a p h y during the
second half of the twentieth century. Before the 1950s, the traditional geographical
approach mainly dealt with synthesizing separate features into a regional unity
(Hall,1984). In addition to this regionalism, two earlier paradigms can b e identified:
exploration and environmentalism. The latter at times reached the stage o f
determinism, investigating the ways in which the physical environment affects the
functioning and development of societies (Herbert & Thomas,1982). F r o m the 1950s
onward, the conceptual bases of urban geography experienced a rapid evolution.
New paradigms reoriented the perspectives of urban geographers, mainly resulting
in a greater regard for the philosophies of the social sciences. T h e p a c e of the
emergence of n e w paradigms resulted in tensions, and a situation in which no
paradigm was totally discarded (Herbert & T h o m a s , 1 9 8 2 ) , resulting in a
diversification of interest and focus (Johnston,1991,1993; Gregory, Martin &
Smith,1994).
T h e evolution of geographical thought during the p o s t - w a r p e r i o d h a s taken
the form of a m a i n strand which studied urban spatial structure, a n d t w o later
strands w h i c h d e v e l o p e d as a critique of t h e m a i n s t r e a m . T h e s e t w o strands,
behavioural studies and radical g e o g r a p h y , i n t e n d e d to d e e p e n a n d b r o a d e n the
scope of u r b a n investigation b y paying attention to subjective
and
political-economic considerations of urban p h e n o m e n a . T h i s pattern, associated
with the g r o w i n g social m o v e m e n t s after the late 1 9 6 0 s , s h o w s b r o a d consistency
with other social sciences and w i t h u r b a n a r c h i t e c t u r e ' s a p p r o a c h e s to the study
of urban form.
50
Figure 2.8.
and the outward growth of the city through waves of invasion and succession by different
groups. {Chicago.
USA)
This theory w a s supported b y u r b a n land rent theory, which assumes the centre
of the city as highly desirable, a n d that, d u e to shortage of land supply, the users
will m a k e competitive bids for a site here (Alonso,1971). T h e theory w a s criticized
d u e to its static-equilibrium form and the a s s u m p t i o n s which tend to simplify
reality, such as the location of all the service and e m p l o y m e n t opportunities at a
single city centre, a symmetric pattern of transport costs and the condition of
51
52
53
Urban morphology
A major trend involved in the study of urban form in urban geography is urban
morphology. T h e term morphology means " t h e science of f o r m " (Slwrter
Oxf
o rd
Dictionary,970),
which studies the "shape, form, external structure or arrangement,
especially as an object of study or classification" {Supplement ot the Oxfo rd
English
Dictionary, 1976). It has been mainly used in biology for the study " n o t only of
shape a n d structure in plants,- animals a n d microorganisms, b u t also o f t h e size,
shape, structure, and relationships of their parts". Although it is typically
contrasted with the study of functions of organisms and their parts, i.e. physiology,
their separation is somewhat artificial due to t h e close interrelation of the function
and structure o f organisms {The New Encyclo paedia
Britannica,^984).
Urban morphology is the systematic study of the form, shape, plan, structure and
functions of the built fabric of t o w n s and cities, and of the origin a n d the w a y in
which this fabric has evolved o v e r time (Clark,1985; Small & Witherick,1986;
Goodall, 1987) (Figure 2.9). Fo r Gordon (1984: 3 ) , morphology entails "plots,
buildings, u s e , streets, plans, t o w n s c a p e s " . It is dealt with mostly in urban
geography which studies spatial aspects of urban development from t w o interurban and intra-urban viewpoints. In the case of the latter, "urban areas are studied
in terms of their morphology, producing concepts and generalizations related to the
character and intensity of land u s e within the urban area a n d . to the spatial
interactions of o n e part of the urban area with another, i.e. internal structure a n d
processes" (Goodall,1987).
54
55
Until the 1960s, the main concern o f urban geographers was the internal structure
of the city focused on morphology, w h i c h plotted the ages and types of buildings
a n d identified different historical components of town plans (Dennis &
Prince,1988). Urban morphology in its most active period was emphasizing the
classification of subrogions within individual cities in relation with the phases of
u r b a n growth (Herbert & T h o m a s , 1 9 8 2 ; Baker & Slater,1992).
U r b a n morphology in the G e r m a n - s p e a k i n g world was flourishing in the interw a r years and remained an integrated part of urban geographical research in the
post-war period (Whitehand,1988). Architects and historians as well as geographers
liad contributed to develop urban morphology. T h i s line of central European
research was introduced to Britain m a i n l y through the work of M. R. G. Conzen
(1960), who tried to explain the present structure of a town plan by examining its
historical development.
|,
1
|
|
'f,
i
In the 1960s, with the rise of interest in functional classification and the economic
b a s e s of urban systems, urban m o r p h o l o g y was severely criticized as being mainly i
descriptive, lacking in good m e a s u r e m e n t techniques and faihng to develop a
general theory, and focusing m e r e l y on the observable and the inanimate (Herbert
& Thomas,1982). Following a period of quiescence, since the 1970s there has been a
resurgence of research activity in urban m o r p h o l o g y (Whitehand, 1988,1992;
Slater,1990; Whitehand & Larkham,1992a). In its revived form, urban morphology
56
57
58
it, "physical and spatial urban form actually constitute as well as represent much of
the social and cultural existence".
-M
Within the general framework o f behavioural research, a branch concentrated o n j
the behaviour of organizations a s the main agents of spatial change. R a t h e r than t h e
individual's presumed rational e c o n o m i c behaviour, w h a t needed explanation w a s j
the behaviour of the large-scale business organizations, whose turnover could b e '
larger than most nation states (Dicken & Lloyd,1990).
59
F i g u r e 2.10.
Some analysts have tried to explain the rise and fall of ec onomies and their
impact on urban structure through politic al economy of industrialization and deindustrialization.
{Dessau,
Germany)
60
Conclusion
As nodes of h u m a n societies, u r b a n areas are a g g l o m e r a t i o n s of people and
material objects. A n agglomeration of this kind, a n d the s p a c e it occupies and
reshapes, can be seen from a variety of angles. W e can see the city a s a collection of
artefacts: buildings and our material possessions therein. T h e w a y this urban space
is structured is therefore u n d e r s t o o d to be a m a t t e r of classifying these material
objects into meaningful groups a n d exploring o u r relationships w i t h them. For
example, w e can see urban space a s a created, as distinctive f r o m natural, space,
and see h o w it relates to the natural processes w i t h i n and w i t h o u t it. W e can
concentrate on it as the built e n v i r o n m e n t , classifying b u i l d i n g f o r m s and street
patterns according to their ages a n d styles: a t e m p o r a l classification of urban space,
which gives us a sense of h o w u r b a n space is structured historically and how its
current character is affected by this historical evolution. W e can classify the urban
61
62
CHAPTERS
People in t h e Cit^
This chapter investigates m e a n i n g and behaviour in urban space. It starts by
looking at the w a y the patterns of meaning and b e h a v i o u r define u r b a n space at its
different scales, a n d how these interact with structural d i m e n s i o n s o f the city's
physical and social space. This leads on to a discussion of differences, of people and
their life patterns, in urban space. W e address the complexity of e v e r y d a y life,
which stands against the notions of order as advocated bv urban planners a n d
designers.
W e have already looked at the w a y urban space and structure are u n d e r s t o o d
from the more abstract, intellectual viewpoints. W e discovered that there are two
perspectives f r o m which to analyse the urban space to find out h o w it is structured;
one that concentrates on people and the other on buildings and objects. Both,
however, w e r e views from above. In this chapter, w e leave these abstract levels of
urban structures and concentrate on the everyday life in the city. It is at this level
that the diversity and spontaneity of life can be observed. It is also at this level that
the patterns of behaviour in the city can be analysed in relation to the symbolic
processes, m e a n i n g of the environment, and the relationship of individuals with
others in public places and with their environments.
Environmental cognition
As individuals, w h a t do we k n o w about the socio-spatial world a r o u n d us? M o o r e
(1983) believed that finding an a n s w e r to this question, i.e. finding the contents of
people's cognitive representations of large-scale environments, is an impossible
task. Instead, h e suggested we concentrate on the differences b e t w e e n individuals
and groups of people in their environmental knowing. After all, the basic
assumption of research on environmental cognition has been that different people
interpret their environments differently, according to their b a c k g r o u n d and
experience. A c c o r d i n g to this basic assumption, " T h e r e is no o n e ' e n v i r o n m e n t '
rather, 'environment' is a mental construct" (Moore,1983; 22), and its nature is
understood b y h u m a n s not directly but through a complicated process of
interpretation.
Fundamental to this interpretive process, M o o r e maintained, are s o m e basic
images that inform the cognitive maps and linguistic conceptions of the city. These
64
can be broadly divided into those which see the city as a site of o p p o r t u n i t y and
interaction, and those which see it as a place of deprivation and alienation.
Literature shows a body of research on the variety of w a y s in which individuals
differ and the impact of this difference on their environmental cognition. "People
seem to differ not only in terms of what and how much they k n o w but also in terms of
the way they organize what they- know, and they change over time in clear
developmental stages" (Moore, 1983: 28). Individual differences, therefore, can be
found in relation to ethnicity, age, gender, lifestyle, length of residence in an area, and
travel mode within the city, all affecting the way environment is perceived. For
example, research has shown that m e n ' s image of the city is more composite whereas
women's image of their immediate surroundings is more detailed and they define a
larger territory as their home area than men do (Moore,1983). Another study of a
housing project, whose inhabitants were predominantly poor African Americans,
showed that the residents' view of their environment was far m o r e restricted and
confined than that of the white population who lived around them. This w a s found to
be the outcome of an anxiety of moving beyond the racially mixed areas into white
neighbourhoods (LaGory & Pipkin,1981). Environmental cognition will vary
depending on the mode of travel (Figure 3.1). Walking is m o r e intimate to the
environment and therefore allows a more articulated process of interpretation and
65
remembering. Cycling and active car driving come next. At the last stage, in which no
active contact is made with the environment, is the experience of passive passengers in
a car or on public transport. As research has shown, the latter group are least able to
remember their routes and to draw a coherent map of the urban road system they use.
The relationship between children and their environment (Ward,1978) and the
way they acquire information about the envirohment has been extensively studied,
to see h o w and in w h a t ways human beings develop their environmental
awareness. Although s o m e have argued that age has no notable impact on
environmental awareness, Piaget's influential views on children's development
maintain that they grow through stages in which their development of intellectual
abilities parallels changes in their relationship to space. The mapping accuracy of
individuals develops in distinct stages, from "action-in-space", w h e n they are able
to handle "'egocentric' spatial relations based on self"; to "perception-of-space",
when they can deal with "'objective' spatial relations based on objects"; and finally
to " c o n c e p t i o n - a b o u t - s p a c e " , when "'abstract' spatial relations based o n
coordinates" are understood (Walmsley,1988; 19).
Figure 3.1.
There is a dose relationship between the mode of travel in urban space and
Frar)ce)
66
67
Figure 3.2.
Rather than rational economic assumptions, behavioural research concentrated
on how the subjective environment influences behaviour. (Liverpool,
UK)
In this strand, sophisticated quantitative techniques are used to analyse large data
sets collected from individual respondents. The stress in the second development was
on the cognition of the individual as a guide to his or her culture. The concern is more
with a verbal, instead of quantitative, presentation of the ways in which people
experience the world around them (]ohnston,1982). Although little empirical research
was carried out, it led to a rediscovery of regional geography, interpreted in terms of
individuals' perceptions of time and space. This was a phenomcnological approach in
which the researcher, to avoid the imposed conceptual strait-jacket of the positivist
thinkers, needed to get inside the individual actor (Hall,1984).
M a p p i n g urban images
T o understand h o w we come to know our environment, research has focused on the
w a y w e r e m e m b e r our environments. The main technique used to capture this is
m e n t a l mapping, i.e. uncovering the mental image of the environment which
individuals develop and use in their behaviour in the city.
Figure 3.3.
Landmarks act as mental anchor
environment. {Isfahan,
Iran)
points
in our
mental
maps of
urban
,
'
|
2
1
^
^
I
'
i
1
:'
69
70
71
F i g u r e 3.4. Objects, events and appearances can be analysed as signs sending messages and
conveying meanings. These messages, however, may refer to fantasies, themselves signs of other
things. {Disneyland,
Los Angeles,
USA)
72
4
~t~.eives and are rooted in non-semiotic processes of social, political and
ecor.omic practices of society. T o a d d an analytical dimension to t h e descriptive
:iarure of semiotics, they suggest adding a new layer to urban s i g n s one that
r c T c r s to the substance behind their form. According to Gottdiener a n d Lagopoulos,
other semioticians' analysis of urban sign is only b a s e d on the f o r m a l components
; f a sign. They argue that there is a substance b e y o n d the form, w h i c h relates the
rcnr. to non-semiotic elements of its social context. Therefore, they b r e a k d o w n the *
73
ij
Figure 3.5.
Ireland)
74
75
It is clear that urban space and our interaction with it cannot be fully understood
without an account of the diversity of urban life. This involves an account of the
difference o f life patterns and the w a y this is translated into the m e a n i n g that w e
ascribe to our urban environments. It is at the same time clear that this perspective,
by concentrating on details, is unable to address the material conditions and the
overarching processes which affect this difference in patterns of urban life and
meaning.
A number of approaches rightly attempt to put the sensitivity of observation of
everyday life into-wider perspectives of social processes. Anthony G i d d e n s (1984),
for example, stresses the importance of both structure and agency in social
processes. J r g e n Habermas (1987) gives this realist viewpoint a normative
dimension. H e separates the everyday life from the systems of m o n e y and power,
stressing that these systems tend to penetrate and colonize everyday life through
monetarization and bureaucratization. After an attempt to widen the scope of
reason, he argues for a rationally constructed, communicative action between
individuals w h i c h enables the everyday life to resist this penetration.
Figure 3.6.
Only looking fronn above offers a limited understanding of social and spatial'
'elationships. {Paris,
France)
Mark Gottdiener (1994), following Henri Lefebvre (1991), tries to bring a unified
understanding to urban analysis. H e introduces a socio-spatial approach to urban
analysis, in w h i c h he emphasizes the symbolic processes within the context of
political a n d e c o n o m i c forces w h i c h shape urban structures. T h i s approach, h e
argues, c o m p e n s a t e s for the shortcomings of the t w o predominant approaches to
urban analysis, political economy and human ecology. Human ecology appreciates
the role of locations in social interaction, but theoretically does not develop this role
and approaches social processes b y adopting one-dimensional and technologically
deterministic explanations. Political economy, on the other hand, offers a better
understanding o f social processes w h i c h make a n d r e m a k e the city, but is limited in
that it treats space as a container of economic activities and ignores the importance
of spatial relations.
76
77
Figure 3.7.
USA)
74
F i g u r e 3.6.
Only lookin
75
It is clear that urban space and our interaction with it cannot be fully understood
without an account of the diversity of urban life. This involves an account of the
difference o f life patterns and the w a y this is translated into the m e a n i n g that we
ascribe to our urban environments. It is at the s a m e time clear that this perspective,
by concentrating on details, is unable to address the material conditions and the
overarching processes which affect this difference in patterns of urban life and
meaning.
A number of approaches rightly attempt to put the sensitivity of observation of
everyday life into-wider perspectives of social processes. Anthony G i d d e n s (1984),
for example, stresses the importance of both structure and agency in social
processes. Jrgen Habermas (1987) gives this realist viewpoint a normative
dimension. H e separates the everyday life from the systems of m o n e y and power,
stressing that these systems tend to penetrate and colonize everyday life through
monetarization and bureaucratization. After an attempt to widen the scope of
reason, he argues for a rationally constructed, communicative action between
individuals which enables the everyday life to resist this penetration.
Mark Gottdiener (1994), following Henri Lefebvre (1991), tries to bring a unified
understanding to urban analysis. H e introduces a socio-spatial approach to urban
analysis, in which he emphasizes the symbolic processes within the context of
political and e c o n o m i c forces which shape urban structures. This approach, h e
argues, c o m p e n s a t e s for the shortcomings of the t w o predominant approaches to
urban analysis, political economy and human ecology. Human ecology appreciates
the role of locations in social interaction, but theoretically does not develop this role
and approaches social processes b y adopting one-dimensional and technologically
deterministic explanations. Political economy, on the other hand, offers a better
understanding o f social processes which make and r e m a k e the city, but is limited in
that it treats space as a container of economic activities and ignores the importance
of spatial relations.
76
77
a;
I
i
:
j
$
1
In his analysis of Los Angeles, D e a r (1995) introduces three ways of reading this
city: one in which Los Angeles is seen as constituting four basic ecologies of beach
cities, foothills, plains and freeways (Banham,1973); another which sees t h e city as
essentially structured by its boulevards (Suisman,1989); and a third which
illustrates the city as a decentred and decentralized agglomeration of fragmented
t h e m e parks (Soja,1989). Dear argues that all these three are studies of the city
looking at it with a detached voyeuristic gaze from the top, offering inherently..|
modernist representations of the city. W h a t he invites us to be armed with is a post- i
modernist
sensibility,
concentrating
on
the
extremely
finely
grained |
microgeography of the city, and discovering that there is no c o m m o n narrative, no J
single reality to the city.
^
In this w a y of reading the city. Dear is drawing upon Michel de Certeu's
invitation to concentrate on everyday Ufe, as opposed to abstract visualizations of ^
the city. An example of this abstraction, one that is not unfamiliar to planners and ,<
urban designers, is what de Certeu (1993) describes when looking at Manhattan
from the 110th floor of the World T r a d e Center. A s w e look d o w n on it to see its
" w h o l e " , the gigantic mass of the city becomes immobilized before our eyes: we
totalize this h u m a n context, as if it w e r e a picture (Figure 3.7). De Certeu invites us :i
to leave this abstract position, in which w e only " s e e " things, to go d o w n to the
street level, where daily life is practised. Here, walking in the street provides us an
elementary form of experienceing the city. Walkers are those, " w h o s e bodies follow
the thicks and thins of an urban 'text' they write without being able to read it". The
complexity of lives and movements in the city creates paths that elude legibility,
stories without author or spectator, and "practices that are foreign to the
'geometrical' or 'geographical' space of visual, panoptic, or
theoretical
construction" (de Certeu,1993; 154). A "migrational" or " m e t a p h o r i c a l " notion of
the city is therefore put in front of the orderly clarity of the planned city. What we
enter here is the lived space of everyday practices, as distinctive from a
programmed and regulated field of operation.
T o find out about the lived space of everyday practices, de Certeu traces the
F i g u r e 3.7.
USA)
78
I
People in the City
79
City of strangers
Difference in t h e city is as old a s the city itself, as it was known from the ancient
times that, in Aristotle's w o r d s , " A city is c o m p o s e d of different kinds of men;
similar people cannot bring a city into existence" (quoted in Sennett,1994: 13).
Especially since t h e nineteenth century and the unprecedented growth of cities
throughout the world, the issue of difference and diversity in the city has become a
central feature of urban life (Figure 3.8). In his theory of urbanism, for example,
Louis Wirth (1964: 69) s a w heterogeneity, along with population size and density,
as a determining feature of the city. H e defined the city as a "melting-pot of races,
peoples, a n d cultures, and a m o s t favourable breeding-ground of n e w biological ,
and cultural h y b r i d s " . In this context, it is difference rather than similarity that is
essential. T h e city, therefore, " h a s not only tolerated but rewarded individual |
differences".
^
Emphasis o n the heterogeneity o f urban life is clearly evident in the discussiord|
about strangers in t h e city, which h a v e occupied a prominent place in sociological M
inquiries, to t h e extent that city life has been seen as a world of strangers ( K a r p , l
Stone &L Yoels,1991). A stranger, a s Georg S i m m e l (1950) interprets, is one whose *
formal position lies in a unity of nearness a n d distance, involvement and
indifference, b y being a m e m b e r of a group and at the same time outside it. There
he sees a positive role for the stranger who can maintain a degree of objectivity by
not being fully committed to t h e group's unique ingredients and tendencies. This
objectivity can b e defined as freedom, not out of non-participation, but due to the
absence of c o m m i t m e n t s w h i c h would jeopardize an objective perception,
understanding a n d evaluation. T h e stranger's actions are not tied d o w n by "habit,
piety, a n d p r e c e d e n t " (Simmel,1950: 405). W e m a y see here a similarity between
what S i m m e l appreciates as the objectivity of the stranger, who can "experience and
Figure 3.8.
San Francisco,
USA)
treat even his close relationships a s though from a birds'-eye v i e w " (Simmel,1950),
and the view f r o m the top of t h e W o r l d Trade C e n t e r that was s h o w n to us b y d e
Certeu. U n l i k e d e Certeu, however, the philosopher Alfred Schutz (1970)
maintained that this view o f the cultural c o m m u n i t y from outside, b y the stranger,
is the only objective meaning of the group membership.
T h e stranger that Schutz a n d S i m m e l analyse i s typified b y the immigrants'
experience o f living in and m o v i n g between cities a n d countries, and their relation
80
to the approached groups. They maintain that these strangers are well placed to
question all the unquestionable and taken-for-granted norms and practices of the
group they enter. Yet Schutz (1970: 9 4 ) , who himself had fled to A m e r i c a in the
wake of the Nazi occupation of Austria, argues that the stranger remains
"a
'marginal man', a cultural hybrid on the verge of two different patterns of group
life, not knowing to which of them h e belongs".
The relationship of the n e w c o m e r to an approached urban society is only one
aspect of the heterogeneity and a n o n y m i t y of urban life. It was analysed on the
basis that there is a period of transition in the experience of the immigrant, from a
newcomer to a more integrated m e m b e r of the social group. We see, however, that
this basis is too narrow for a m o r e pluralist condition in which social groups are
more and more fragmented and approach the mainstream more aggressively, as
distinct from the quiet suffering of an immigrant on the road to the adoption of the
host community's cultural patterns. The experiences of other groups who find '
themselves marginalized from the mainstreams of social life, such as w o m e n , the
elderly, the poor, and children; the multiplicity of lifestyles and sexual orientations
within apparently homogeneous groups; and the anonymity of life experienced by
almost all urbanits in public spaces in cities, are all aspects of seeing the city as a
world of strangers. A s Elizabeth Wilson puts it, " w h a t w a s once seen as marginal
b e c o m e s the essence of city l i f e " (Wilson,1991: 5). Along with the economic
restructuring processes and a reorganization of class and household structures,
w h e r e the middle classes and the number of single-person households grow in
cities, diversification of lifestyles increasingly finds a centre stage. In the modern
city, where commodification of social relations is strong, everyone is an individual
and potentially a stranger. At this scale, plurality b e c o m e s the norm and tolerance
of "the o t h e r " the key to social relationships.
81
associated w i t h crime and v a n d a h s m . With their criticism, they paved the way for a
number of h a n d b o o k s , often offering c o m m o n sense advice on h o w to ensure safer
environments (Fennelly,1989; N o b l e , 1 9 8 9 ; C r o w e , 1 9 9 1 ; Clarke,1992; Cheetham,1994).
A crime is considered to h a v e f o u r dimensions: an offender, a victim or a target, a
law d i m e n s i o n , a n d an e n v i r o n m e n t a l dimension w h i c h environmental criminology
focuses u p o n ( B r a n t i n g h a m & Brantingham,1991; Bottoms,1994).
Different
approaches to envirorunental d e s i g n , e.g. crime prevention through urban design
T h e way urbanits deal with the city, make sense of it, and m a n a g e public
encounters with strangers in large numbers, is a major, but neglected, aspect of
sociological inquiry. The w a y persons relate or fail to relate to each other in
a n o n y m o u s public settings is a central concern of u r b a n social psychology (Karp,
Stone & Yoels, 1991). Another equally important concern in studying people in the
city is to see h o w urban persons relate or fail to relate to the built environment in
which they find themselves.
2?r^'l
safety and security from cnme and harsh climate, but only
through segregation of urban space. (Cincinnati,
USA)
^
82
It is extraordmari/ tiiat unplanned growth sliould produce a better global order titan planned
redevelopment,
but it seems undeniable. The inference seems unavoidable that traditional
fi/stems work because they produce a global order that responds to the reqidrements of a dual
(iiihabdants and strangers) interface, ivhile modern systems do not work because they fad to
produce it. The principle of urban safety and liveliness is a product of the way both sets of
relations are co}tstructed by space. Strangers are not excluded but are controlled. As fane facobs
noted many years ago, it is the controlled throughput of strangers and the direct viterface with
inhabitants that creates urban safety. We shoidd state this even nwrc definitely: it is the
controlled presence of passvig strangers that polices space; while the directly
iiiterfachig
inhabitants police the strangers. For this reason, "defensible space", based on exclusion of
strangers and only on surveillance of spaces by inhabitants can never work.
improved
opportunities
for
surveillance,
the
design
of
the
residential
which
contribute
environments:
architecturally"
behaviour.
O n e of the principles of N e w m a n ' s defensible space was the idea of defining and
protecting the b o u n d a r i e s o f a n environment, to k e e p the strangers, and therefore
the risk of c r i m e , a w a y . This idea has now culminated in gated neighbourhoods, of
which N e w m a n himself is an a d v o c a t e . An e x a m p l e is Dayton, Ohio, where 11
m o n t h s after the plan's i m p l e m e n t a t i o n in a u t u m n 1993, violent crime fell by 50%
a n d property values rose b y 1 5 % , but where the plan is criticized b y residents who
feel "locked i n " or "locked o u t " (Anon,1995). W h i l e effective in crime prevention,
this d e v e l o p m e n t
entities,
can potentially
promoting
further
social
segregation
and
fragmented
exclusion.
Fortress
city as we
83
84
--i-
T-e
-larren to be in the same public place, in the shops, restaurants and streets, are 1
strar.giTs to each other. S o m e studies have shown h o w urban conditions which ,
promote this anonymity can also promote violence (Karp, Stone & Yoels, 1991). This :
can creste a risk of personal harm and danger to those who are physically more '|
^'ul-eraile, such as women. Urban space for ^vomen, therefore, will not have the
sae e-citement as it does for men. It can be a more frightening, alien place, and
that is why, as Elizabeth Wilson (1991) reminds u s , with disagreement, many J
feminist writers are against cities.
F i g u r e 3.10. Women argue that cities are built and run by men, marginalizing women in the
process of planning and organizaton of urban space. {Dublin,
Ireland)
85
82
83
it is extraordmari/
that unplanned growth should produce a belter global order tlian planned
reda'elopnient,
but it seems undeniable.
The inference seems unavoidable that traditional
systems work becatise they produce a global order that responds to the requirements
of a dual
(inhabitants and strangers) interface, whde modern systems do not luork because they fail to
produce it. The principle of urban safety and liveliness is a product of the way both sets of
relations are constructed by space. Strangers are not excluded but are controUed. As fane facohs
noted many years ago, it is the controlled throughput of strangers and the direct hiterface zoith
inhabitants that creates urban safety. We shoidd state this even more definitely: it is the
controlled presence
of passing strangers
that polices space; while the directly
interfacing
inhabitants police the strangers.
For this reason, "defensible space", based on exclusion of
strangers and only on surveillance of spaces by inhabitants can never work.
84
place. Tne other side of this diversity, however, is anonymity, w h e r e people who
happen to be in the same public place, in the shops, restaurants and streets, are
stTar.giT5 to each other. S o m e studies have shown h o w urban conditions which
proLr.oie this anonymity can also promote violence (Karp, Stone & Yoels, 1991). This
can creste a risk of personal harm and danger to those who are physically more
^T^'.eriile, such as \\'omen. Urban space for ivomen, therefore, will not have the
same efdtement as it does for men. It can be a more frightening, alien place, and
thai is why, as Elizabeth Wilson (1991) reminds u s , with disagreement, many
feminist writers are against cities.
A powerful argument by s o m e feminist writers maintains that cities are
historically built and run by men. As in other spheres of life, w o m e n have been
marginalized in the process of planning and organization of urban space (Figure
3.10). E.xamining s o m e popular urban history books, Richter (1982) s a w little
reference made to women's role in building American cities, especially where the
physical development of urban fabrics was involved. Apart from prostitutes and
entertainers, w o m e n were absent from these studies.
Along with the poor, the elderly and the ethnic minorities, w o m e n have been
seen as a threat to the order prescribed for and imposed on cities. Elizabeth Wilson
(1991), for example, explores h o w the shape of contemporary cities has been
determined by underlying assumptions about w o m e n , their roles and their place in
F i g u r e 3.10. Women argue that cities are built and run by men, marginalizing women in the
process of planning and organizaton of urban space. {Dublin,
Ireland)
85
86
87
by the provision of better poUcing and security only, but also by " a genuine choice
of activities, entertainment and places where w o m e n can meet in towns and cities at
night, and provision for children w h e r e necessary" (Worpole,1992; 6 5 ) .
The problems of w o m e n in urban spaces are even more severe in the United
States, which has a rate of rape seven times higher than in Europe. A study of the
125 largest S t a n d a r d Metropohtan Statistical Areas in the United States has shown
higher rates of rape in larger metropolitan areas and in areas with higher
percentages of persons divorced o r separated. A n o t h e r study has indicated h o w
property crime and violence are associated with urban areas with large populations
and high densities of single individuals and apartment houses. W o m e n ' s
vulnerability to such crimes is revealed in another study, in which the female
respondents, " w e r e about 8 times more likely than men to restrict their solo
nighttime walking, about 13 t i m e s more likely to avoid going alone to bars and
clubs after dark, and about 6 times more likely to avoid going d o w n t o w n alone
after dark" (Karp, Stone & Y o e l s , 1 9 9 1 : 1 5 1 ) .
Conclusion
In this chapter w e h a v e looked at urban space from below, from the perspective of
individuals and groups. W e h a v e seen how urban space finds different meanings
for the variety of life experiences and backgrounds. This perspective refreshes our
understanding of urban space and offers us new insights, challenging the notions of
objectivity, g e o m e t r y , structure a n d order, and finding them in need of critical
assessment. But w e find one m a j o r problem with this emphasis on the subjectivity
and spontaneity of everyday life. W e can be trapped in difference, in relativism,
unable to c o m m u n i c a t e with each other, as our increasingly pluralistic
circumstances might entail. T h i s perspective contrasts and c o m p l e m e n t s the
perspective offered in the previous chapter, which analysed urban space from
above, from the viewpoint of the experts and scientists, as agglomerations of people
and material objects. As Lefebvre has argued, our understanding of urban space
will need to c o m b i n e both these perspectives.
What the three chapters in this part offer, therefore, can be summarized in the
following notions. T h e first notion is that urban space is the material space with its
social and psychological dimensions, and urban form is the geometry of this space.
The dilemmas associated with the concept of space can be bridged by this notion,
allowing different parties to e n g a g e in a dialogue on space. It means that our m a p
of the city has to have overlapping layers to show its physical, social and
psychological geometry at the s a m e time. This is consistent with socio-spatial
approaches in social philosophy, urban geography, urban sociology and
architecture which address these dimensions simultaneously and focus on the
dynamic interrelationship of these aspects.
The second notion is that to understand urban space, we need to look at it both
from above and from below. F r o m above, w e have the perspective of political
economy, w h e r e systems of m o n e y and power are at work to create built
environments and w h e r e scientific inquiry offers an objective understanding of
urban space. F r o m below, w e h a v e the perspective of ever\'day life, where disorder
43
and spontaneity can take over and wliere human behaviour in, and use of, urban
space endows it with meaning.
Tne third notion is that understanding urban space, with all its dimensions, is
:est made possible by tracing the process of its development. It is through this
development process that w e can relate the physical geometry with social and
5>"rr.bol;c geometries, and relate the world of artefacts with the world of people. It
items from the traditions of urban architecture and urban morphology, which have
-eveloped the idea of historicity of urban fabric. Another source of this notion is the
tradition in social sciences which tends to link space with the w i d e r context of
general societal processes. It also stems from the notion which regards thei
development process and urban form as both o u t c o m e s of, and contributors to, the
production and reproduction of social systems.
It is this process of development, with its political, economic and aesthetic
dimensions, that w e turn our attention to in the second part. W e e x a m i n e in some
detail these three moments of the development of the built environment and the
role of design as one of its main component parts.
PART TWO
ie Making of
Urban Space
CHAPTER 4
92
93
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
94
Figure 4.2.
95
F i g u r e 4 . 3 . Is urban design "the art of creating possibilities for the use, management, and
form of settlements or their significant parts" ? {Frejus, France)
95
97
98
99
Attention to the social anci economic problems of cities has often sidelined the
design activities as irrelevant, or at best as unaffordable luxuries. At a time when n o
development w a s in sight, it was felt that no attention should be paid to design.
For a project to be implemented, there m a y be several designs and designers
involved, each producing drawings to c o m m u n i c a t e their ideas. These ideas,
however, m a y never be implemented, as the m o n e y m a y rtm out or the decisions be
changed. A s they are about cities, and cities take a long time to evolve and change,
these designs m a y be implemented but over a very long period of time, with
inevitable changes and adjustments in a changing political and e c o n o m i c context.
However, the abundance of beautiful but potentially u n i m p l e m e n t a b l e images,
especially at a time of economic difficulty, has a p o w e r f u l impact on non-designers,
who see design as merely images rather than ideas for spatial transformation. Even
if they see these ideas, the element of innovation and " f u t u r i s m " inherent in design
may convince the viewers of the designs' irrelevance to the reality and its
constraints.
This view of design, as an elitist, artistic enterprise which has n o relationship to
the real, daily problems of large sections of urban societies, has led to a reduction of
urban design to a visual activity. This confusion h a s been especially strengthened
by the w a y design communicates through visual, rather then verbal, means.
Furthermore, designers' understanding of social and economic issues of cities has
not always b e e n their major point of strength.
The way out of this confusion is to realize that design is an activity proposing
ideas for spatial transformation. If it communicates m o r e through visual rather than
verbal means, its content should not be equated w i t h its means. In design, as in
other forms of communication, form and content are very closely interrelated. But
confusing the form and means of c o m m u n i c a t i o n with the content of
communication is an avoidable mistake. Can we mistake, for e x a m p l e , urban policy
for just nice w o r d s ?
100
101
F i g u r e 4.5.
Italy)
102
F i g u r e 4.6.
Ireland)
103
104
Process or product?
105
106
107
Professional divide
Figure 4.7.
UK)
108
109
interest in physical design was the first principal objective of the U r b a n Design
Group, as published in its first issue of Urban Design Group News in July 1979. T h e
Group w a s being established, " T o provide a f o r u m for those w h o believe that
planning should b e more concerned with improvement of the design of t h e physical
environment a n d the quality of places and to encourage all t h e professions to
combine to this e n d " (quoted in Linden & Billingham,1994: 30).
It is clear after all that urban design is a n interdisciplinary activity. If
professionals from different disciplines of built, natural and social e n v i r o n m e n t s
work together in teams, they create an urban design process. Similarly, if urban
space is to b e shaped and m a n a g e d b y any professional, there will b e a need for
multidisciplinary concerns and awareness. T h e k e y is to go b e y o n d the n a r r o w
boundaries of professions and disciplines and to approach u r b a n s p a c e from a n
interdisciplinary, socio-spatial perspective.
F i g u r e 4.8.
Is urban (Jesign the physical design of more than one site? {Newcastle. UK)
W e may confront this ambiguity b y stating that as a technical, social and aesthetic
process, urban design can b e practised b y any a g e n c y large e n o u g h to initiate o r
deal with urban development projects. Furthermore, with the increasing role o f
public-private partnerships in urban development and regeneration, it m a y b e
difficult to locate the camp to w h i c h urban design belongs. W e will return to this
ambiguity in Chapter 5 when discussing the relationship between u s e value and
exchange value in urban space production. At this stage, however, it m a y suffice to
say that urban design is not necessarily bound to t h e public or private sectors. Each
of these sectors m a y be engaged in urban design a n d , depending on w h o performs
it, it may have different roles and serve different interests. Performed b y whichever
camp, urban design is the process that shapes a n d manages the u r b a n space. Such
urban space will inevitably reflect the values and aspirations of those w h o
produced it.
Figure 4.9.
Figure 4.10.
Sweden)
:|
Objective-rational or subjective-irrational?
W e have looked at the ambiguities about the a s p e c t s o f the p r o d u c t with which
urban design deals. W e h a v e c o m e across a m b i g u i t i e s about its role as a
professional activity a n d its association with different sectors o f t h e poUtical i
economy. W e also need t o b e a w a r e o f t h e a m b i g u i t i e s about t h e n a t u r e of the >
process. W c need to k n o w w h a t kind of process u r b a n design is. Is it a n objective
and rational process performed b y a n u m b e r of p e o p l e or is it a subjective process
performed b y an individual designer (Figure 4.10)?
Ren Descartes, w h o w a s " t h e greatest rationalist e v e r " (Gellner,1992: 1 ) , had a
firm belief in design a s a rational e n d e a v o u r . H o m i s t r u s t e d " c u s t o m a n d example",
and hence the gradual growth o f the cities a s a representation o f t h e irrational
custom and e x a m p l e . Flis rationalist principle w a s that, " w e o u g h t n e v e r to allow
ourselves to b e persuaded of the truth of a n y t h i n g unless o n t h e e v i d e n c e of our
reason" (quoted in Gellner,1992: 1 ) . F o r him, the best buildings, legal systems and
opinions were those designed b y a single a u t h o r . O n this basis, h e held that,
"ancient cities . . . are usually b u t ill laid o u t c o m p a r e d w i t h t h e regularly
112
113
process as a combination of three distinctive and yet interwoven threads: the stage
w h e n designers are interacting with the objective world through application of
science and technology; the stage when designers are involved with other
individuals and institutions constituting their social setting which is somehow
involved in the process; and the stage when designers are interacting with their
o w n subjective world of ideas and images. Depending on the circumstances,
however, these analytically distinctive stages are usually closely interlinked to
constitute a single, complex process.
VVe can look at urban design as a purely technical process, in which specific skills
from town planning, architecture and engineering, among others, are employed to
utilize resources in the production and management of space. Designers often need
to ensure an effective use of the rules and resources in the preparation and
implementation of the design. In doing so, a high level of scientific k n o w l e d g e and
technical competence is required; from understanding the rules and regulations
with which the design process deals, to analysing the circumstantial conditions, to
developing alternative approaches, and to formulating a final solution for a specific
task.
In the majority of design a n d development projects, the technical approach has
been dominant. Entirely n e w settlements w o u l d be built as physical objects which
are the product of a technical process (Figure 4.11). Especially in the periods of
rapid e c o n o m i c expansion, the technical approach tends to p r e d o m i n a t e . T h e
whole project of the modern m o v e m e n t in architecture was based on technological
necessity, as the built e n v i r o n m e n t was required to be m a d e fit for the m a c h i n e
age.
The main concern in urban design has often been the transformation of physical
space. In this technical process, an instrumental rationality is used to evaluate each
segment of the action against its aims and context. Any action which is not
corresponding to functional expectation, technological capability or financial
capacity has been regarded as irrational. Designers rely on knowledge and skills of
their own and of other related professionals of the built environment to utilize the
available resources.
But there are limits to the rationality that can b e employed. A n y change in o n e of
the structures, which may be largely out of the agency's influence, could turn the
rationality of a decision into an irrationality. The introduction of a n e w technology,
for example, w o u l d make a solution obsolete and in need of revision, whereas at the
time of decision-making, it w o u l d have been thoroughly rational. Other examples
include changes in administrative organizations, a change in interest rate or a crisis
of over production, which can all lead to render what looked rational into
irrational.
# I
Figure 4
.11.
Paris,
France)
114
115
Figure 4 . 1 2 . Only in a nninority of developments, such as Gleneagles Court, was there a chance
"'or tne public to participate in the design process. ( & Wear, UK) (Photograph by Phil Dyer)
It can be argued that arriving at a consensus w o u l d not necessarily g u a r a n t e e the
rationality of t h e action. It seems that consensus in technical-rational a c t i o n is more
readily available since the point of departure in a n y discourse will b e only the
available technology a n d scientific knowledge, even though scientific knowledge
might be contestable or alternative technologies at c o m p a r a b l e costs b e available for
any specific task.
Figure 4 . 1 3 .
Is design the playful and imaginative creation of possible form? {Paris, France)
115
117
Conclusion
Urban design, as w e have seen, still suffers from a lack of clarity in its definition,
partly due to its coverage of a wide range of activities. We have also seen that a
broad definition is needed to deal with these ambiguities. Rather than being
confined b y the differences and minutiae of these activities, it is still possible to see
it as a process through which w e consciously shape and m a n a g e our built
environments. U r b a n designers are interested and engaged in this process and its
product. By using this broad definition, we can avoid seeing urban design as merely
being engaged in t h e visual qualities of small urban places, or, on the other side of
the spectrum, in the transformation of an abstract urban space. It is only through
broad definitions that w e can encompass the range of interests and involvements of
urban design, in all its macro- and micro-scale, process and product, and visual
and spatial aspects dimensions.
Urban design therefore can be defined as the multidisciplinary activity of shaping
and managing u r b a n environments, interested in both the process of this shaping
and the spaces it helps shape. Combining technical, social and expressive concerns,
urban designers u s e both visual and verbal means of communication, and engage in
all scales of the u r b a n socio-spatial continuum.
Urban design is part of the process of the production of space. T o understand this
process, as an e c o n o m i c , political and cultural process, we concentrate o n these
three processes in the next three chapters. W e will explore urban design's
relationships with the markets, w h e r e development of the built environment takes
place, and with the state, where this development is regulated. W e will also analyse
the images of g o o d urban environments that the designers use in their w o r k .
CHAPTER 5
Production of t h e Built
Environment
The concept that connects the chapters of I^art T w o is that urban design is an
integral part of urban space production. Chapter 4 explored some of the main
ambiguities a b o u t urban design as an activity and sought a definition for it. This
chapter looks at h o w the nature of the land and property development prcKess, and
the nature of the agencies involved, have a major impact on the process and
product of u r b a n design. T h e m a i n relationship u n d e r consideration is that between
urban d e v e l o p m e n t and urban design, between developers and designers.
T h e chapter starts by challenging two c o m m o n l y held, but contradictory, views
about the p r i m a c y of professionals or of property developers in shaping urban
environments. T h i s challenge is followed by a search for a conceptual basis for the
analysis of land and property development process and the role of urban design in
this process. T o d o so, we look at various models of the development process and
offer a m o d e l that addresses u r b a n design as an integral part of the process.
The discussion continues with an exploration of the changing nature of
development agencies and the impact of this c h a n g e on urban design and urban
form. T h e t e n d e n c y towards standardization of design and privatization of public
space are t w o aspects of this c h a n g e which are discussed.
120
121
This chapter, however, challenges this view b y offering a perspective that sees
both propert}' development and urban design as different aspects of the same-|
process. The land and property development process is the vehicle through which!
the built environment is produced. The .shaping of this environment through design
is an essential part of this process. Contributing to the shaping of urban space, by a
proposing new forms or by regulating such proposals, by enabUng development or
controlling it, urban design is an integral part of urban space making. To
Investors m a y never see the development they promote or buy. The design
decisions are therefore seen to be secondary considerations in the property
development process. H o w e v e r , if design is understood as the process of choosing
possible form, w e m a y conclude that many decisions that are made by investors,
surveyors and developers before a designer is involved, are all design decisions.
122
affecting tlte form of the property and the urban space it helps to p r o d u c e .
That the investors or developers m a y not be engaged, or even interested, in the
design of a development may be further evidence for the lack of a relationship
between these two arenas. It may also be an indicator of the marginality of design in
the development process, implying that design is seen as merely a non-essential
aspect of the development. This would then reduce design to either an activity which
gives form to the decisions of the investors and developers, or to a free-floating
cosmetic addition. In the latter case, it might be assumed that the development
agencies can live without such a cosmetic and, at time.s, expensive activity. At best, its
potential is to increase the rent or sale of the development without necessarily being
an integral part of the development process. Against this view, it should b e argued
that design, as a cultural factor, is not entirely subordinate to the e c o n o m i c s of the
development process. It is an integral part of this process which can affect, and be
affected by, the decisions of investors and developers. When defined b r o a d l y as the
shaping of urban environment, urban design can be performed not only by designers,
but by those who do so without a conscious engagement or professional training.
History has seen m a n y cities shaped b y non-designers.
Land and property markets are very important in shaping the social a n d s p a t i a l ;
qualities of cides. But to see them as the sole determinants of urban space would be
questionable. For Logan and Molotch (1987:17), for example, "the market in land and
buildings orders urban phenomena and determines what city life can b e " . Although
this statement carries a powerful explanatory capacity, it would be too n a r r o w a focus
to equate cities with their space and see the shaping of the physical fabric and the
spatial distribution of social phenomena as the ultimate framework for " w h a t city life
can be". It is true that markets can stratify social space, create and enhance social and
geographical segregation, and therefore be of primary importance in the structuring
of urban life. At the same time, it is true that the responses of individual agencies, of
the lifeworld, to these structures vary enormously. T h e picture of the social space will
not therefore be complete without overlaying these two sets of insights and
information: about the structural imperatives of the state and the markets, and the
individual responses and initiatives of the individuals and firms.
-J i
Designers and developers are agencies within, and interacting w i t h , the wider
processes of urban space production. To understand this process, w e n o w turn our
attention to the models of the development process, attempts to m a k e s e n s e of this
complex process.
123
Supply-demand models
Equilibrium models
Most of the real estate literature relies on the equilibrium models of the neoclassical
economy a n d the Chicago school of h u m a n ecology. For this school and its
successors, t h e analytical basis for understanding urban systems is spatial relations.
The d e v e l o p m e n t of these spatial relations, which include the physical shape of the
city and the relations between urban areas and individuals, takes place within a
free-market f r a m e w o r k . T h e underlying assumption is that the land and property
market is in equilibrium b e t w e e n supply a n d d e m a n d . Buyers and sellers are
a u t o n o m o u s individuals engaged in a competitive bidding process. To satisfy the
c o n s u m e r s ' d e m a n d s , n e w or recycled supplies of land and property enter the
market. C o n s u m e r s are then free to choose a m o n g those supplies according to their
taste, the price a n d the quahty of the development (Figure 5.2). The best land and
buildings will inevitably attract m o r e d e m a n d , which will be reflected in their
Figure 5.2.
According to supply and demand analysis, the more desirable a place, the higher
its density and price. {Chicago, USA)
126
127
Capital-labour models
Rather t h a n the neoclassical emphasis on price mechanisms of the markets and the
relationship b e t w e e n s u p p l y and d e m a n d , the political e c o n o m y approach focuses
on the w a y m a r k e t s are structured and the role of capital, labour and land in this
process.
M a r x s a w l a n d o w n e r s h i p within the context of feudalism, and failed to pay
attention to t h e role of space in general, and land and property in particular, in
capitalism. A n u m b e r of scholars, however, have extended political economy
128
129
^
'
.
^
*
F i g u r e 5.5. The public and the private sectors are both involved in the production of the built
environment. (Newcastle, UK) (Photograph by Phil Dyer)
130
131
relationships are examined through the sequence of events in the production (e.g.
identification of development opportunities, land assembly, project development, ' site clearance, acquisition of finance, organization of construction, organization of
infrastructure, a n d marketing/managing the end product), roles in production (e.g.
land, labour and capital as factors o f production) and consumption (e.g. material
values, property rights, and guardians of environmental quality).
M a n y models o f the development process tend to under-represent the complexity
of the process, as they only e m p h a s i z e s o m e of its aspects. T h e models of
development process which aspire to give a comprehensive account o f the process,
on the other h a n d , often tend to b e c o m e too c o m p l e x and difficult to u s e in an
analysis of the process. According to Healey (1992: 4 3 ) , using such models in
empirical research can b e "quite d e m a n d i n g " . After all, the urban development
process is a process which involves a large number of agencies and is deeply rooted
in the general constitution of the social and economic processes.
F i g u r e 5.6. A place can have two potentially conflicting values: as a place to live in (use
value), and as a generator of rent (exchange value). {Frejus, France)
132
"construction"
or
"development"
industry
which
"produces"
the built
e n v i r o n m e n t . It is then possible to compare this industry with any other industry
a n d its d e s i g n p r o c e s s with a n y other, serving the production of a product and its
sale in the market. T h e shape of a product therefore becomes a matter of its
technical efficiency as well as its aesthetic appeal. A car, for example, is expected to
l o o k g o o d and to function well. It is produced and sold as a commodity and is used
often as a necessary means of transport. Design becomes a major factor of
p r o d u c t i o n and consumption. B u t h o w far is a car comparable to urban space? Is ,
u r b a n s p a c e p r o d u c e d and sold for profit, or b o u g h t for functional and symbolic
u s e ? T h e a n s w e r is that urban s p a c e is similarly b e i n g treated as a c o m m o d i t y in the
market-place.
A p p l y i n g the logic of c o m m o d i t y production, exchange and consumption of
s p a c e m a y o n l y b e an economistic interpretation of the evolution and life of cities. /
T h i s o u t l o o k , h o w e v e r , s h o w s the extent of the commodification of space. Yet we
are a w a r e of the major differences between space a n d other commodities. Unlike
cars, t h e r e is a limit to the a m o u n t of land that can be supplied in response to a
g r o w t h in d e m a n d , as the s u p p l y of this part of n a t u r e is finite. This explains why ^
the recycling of property, w h i c h m a y increase its intensity of use, is widespread.
R a t h e r than generating n e w d e v e l o p m e n t s , land and property markets are involved
in r e n t i n g and re-renting, selling a n d re-selling these commodities. T h e market for
this c o m m o d i t y is also "inherently monopolistic", as the owners have almost total
control over its s u p p l y . Unlike mass-produced cars, every parcel of land is differentT h e price of l a n d and property in the market is determined not only by supply and
d e m a n d b u t also b y the location of the d e v e l o p m e n t in urban space (Logan &
Molotch,1987).
T h e m a s s production of cars m a y result in a f e w designs serving a global market.
T h e d e s i g n of buildings and u r b a n environments, however, will be somewhat
different f r o m t h e design of mass-produced commodities such as cars. This is
s h o w n b y the idiosyncratic n a t u r e of the land a n d property market, where land
p a r c e l s are different, and the fragmented nature of the development industry,
w h e r e s m a l l firms are strongly represented.
133
important implications. It implies that none of the valuable insights which the
reviewed m o d e l s h a v e offered need to b e discarded. Bearing in m i n d their
limitations, it will be possible to take advantage of their developments.
On this basis, those trends w h i c h emphasize the supremacy of the individual in
social and spatial processes will be of special value when the actions of individuals
are being studied. Simultaneously, the trends which stress the importance of social
structures will be helpful in understanding the social processes from a wider point
of view. The crucial point, h o w e v e r , will be to acknowledge the importance of each
of these trends without ruling o u t the importance of others. This a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t
will, therefore, b e a major contributor to an approach which identifies a sociospatial process as an interaction between h u m a n agency and social and physical
structure within a particular p l a c e .
At the level of structures, in investigating the way these structures influence the
agencies by framing their actions, the concepts of commodification of space and the
flow of resources into the built environment are of fundamental importance to the
study of urban process. T h e concept of the production of space was introduced by
Lefebvre: "space as a social and political product, space as a product that one buys
and sells" (in Brgel et al.,1987: 2 9 - 3 0 ) . It was based on the notion that
commodification, which is basic to the analysis of capitalist order, is extended to
space to entangle the physical milieu in the productive system of capitalism as a
whole. Lefebvre further argued that the organization of the environment and society,
and the layout of towns and regions, are all dependent on the production of space
and its role in the reproduction of the socio-economic formation (Lefebvre,1991).
Bearing in mind these structural frameworks, it will be then possible to move on to
the level of agencies. Here the concepts developed by the supply-demand approach,
i.e. that socio-spatial patterns are the outcomes of competition between individuals,
will enable us to look at the dynamics of agencies' actions. Furthermore, models of
the development process often undermine the design dimensions of development.
Focusing on the psychological and cultural aspects of development, however, will
help to further our understanding of the processes by which urban form is produced.
To tackle this important issue, w e need to try to investigate the interaction of the
human agency, individual or collective, and the structures, resources, rules and
ideas. These are the resources which the agencies draw upon, the rules they
acknowledge, and the ideas t h e y assert in the course of their action.
134
135
F i g u r e 5.7.
Individual additions to urban space change urban space and are at the same time
UK)
136
Development
A model of t h e d e v e l o p m e n t process
W h a t h a v e b e e n identified so far as the c o m p o n e n t parts of the developmei!:
p r o c e s s are illustrated in Figure 5.8. A s it shows, it is a simplified m o d e l of the
p r o c e s s of production of urban fabric. In the model, each of the c o m p o n e n t parts of ^
the process, i.e. d e v e l o p m e n t agencies, development factors (resources, rules and
i d e a s ) , and their c o n t e x t s , are s h o w n in both aggregate and disaggregate forms. The
succession of s h a d e d figures (Figure 5.9) refers to the stages of the development
process.
Built
environment
development
Physical ( n a t u r a l )
environment
Physical ( b u i l t )
environment
Social
Development agencies
Development
resources
Development
r u l e s , ideas
factors:
environment
factors:
ev^opment
agencies
Social
environment
New
7\
F i g u r e 5.9.
Physical
environment
process
137
model
of
the '
138
Figure 5.10.
{Boston,
USA)
means that most urban fabrics are produced during the periods of building boom,"!!
vvnile the periods of slump witness a more limited rate of building activity.
Increasingly, these periods are of a global nature, affecting larger areas in the global
economy. Whitehand identifies h o w these cycles, which may vary according to
geographical location, have a different impact on different types of land use. M o s t '
notably, while residential developments follow the b o o m and slump patterns of the
market, non-residential uses are less affected, partly due to the public sector
involvement. Despite this variety, " t h e urban l a n d s c a p e is a cumulative, albeit
incomplete, record of the succession of booms, s l u m p s and innovation adoptions
within a particular locale" ( W h i t e h a n d , 1 9 8 7 : 1 4 5 ) .
There is a direct relationship between the size of the agencies w h o control the
property and the form it takes in the development process. Larger organizations
have historically tended to prefer large-scale developments. Whitehand (1988)
shows that since the early 1950s, the frontage of n e w buildings has b e c o m e wider,
increasingly exceeding 10 m. Another feature of large organizations is their
tendency towards standardization of design. An example is the large-scale retail
chain-stores which started to develop their branches around Britain in the 1930s.
139
140
141
Figure
5.11.
(Sosfon,
USA)
142
143
ttllll
ElBMIIIIIIIin
,!| l l l l i l l l l i l l l l l i ,
.11 S I S I S I I I I I I I I l i ,
i y i i i i s s i i i i i i i i l l ,
u.niiiiiiiitiiiaiii,
iiiiiiiviBaiBiif:
^ . U I I I I I C I I I V I I I I I I . L
HH.ii I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 1 1 , i
^ i l l i i i i i i i i i i i i i i | l ,
ll- I I I I S X I f
I I IIIl a i i s s i i i i i i i i II,.
I 3 S I S 2 S S I S J 3 5 S! "
Figure 5.12.
(London, UK)
144
145
Figure
5.13.
146
147
In p r e - m o d e r n urban settings, public spaces such as urban squares and marketplaces played the role of arenas for public communication. These w e r e places
wherein s o m e form of social interaction by large n u m b e r s of people w a s made
possible (Figure 5.13). The growth of the m o d e r n cities into a collection of
segregated neighbourhoods h a s led to a decline in the use and vitality of some of
these centres of activity and communication. As the stratifications generated by
industrialization have increasingly ceased to be meaningful, there has re-emerged a
strong d e m a n d for correcting the segregation processes and moving towards more
coherent physical and social e n v i r o n m e n t s (Healey et al., 1995). This can be partly
seen in the attacks on modernist redevelopments and their destructive effects on '
city life. H o w e v e r , the critics have argued that regeneration policies h a v e tended to
gentrify the existing public space through privatization or restriction of access '
(Smith,1992). T h e widening gap b e t w e e n social strata has been associated with the
rising fear of c r i m e and concerns about safety in cities. At the s a m e time, the
escalating costs of the provision and maintenance of public space as a public service
have parallelled an inability or reluctance by public authorities to meet these costs.
In this way, social and e c o n o m i c processes, sanctioned by public poHcy, have
deepened the spatial and social segregation. M a n y of the new developments h a v e ' ^
b e e n created with a degree of private control over the supposedly public space. In
other w o r d s , the post-modern era has seen the continuity and intensity of threats to
the public urban space, and the privatization of urban space has b e c o m e a main .t
area of concern (Punter, 1990a; Loukaitou-Sideris, 1993).
;
Figure 5 14.
A public street belongs to and concerns the people as a whole; it is open to
them, exists openly, and is provided by or concerns public authorities. (Oxford, UIQ
and c i t i e s J M s w J i e r e J h e _ g r e a t e s t a
Place-T-
=:;;-...,
A review of the.^law
literatur^ Kjownrs
Qoiuitts Dictionary
" < = ^ \ ' " "
u L c i r t i u i e
ulcaonary of ofEnglish
tnglisti Lmo;
Lnw;Strands
Strouds Judicial
Judicial
Dictionary of Words and -Phrascs;-Words
and Plirases Legally Defined; V e r n e z - M o u d o n
1992), shows that in legal t e r m s . J i a space_is_considered a public space, ownership
148
reason that explains why he is m o r e entitled to the resource than the questioner i s "
(Ackerman, quoted in Benhabib, 1992: 81). This dialogue i s b a s e d on a n u m b e r of
constraints, of which the^most significantJs^theuaeutjglit^_ollhe participants, a
notiQrTclerivedjrom the modern legal systeirLaccordLaKJ.ajivhiclLthe'la'w remairi_s
neutral irTthe debates between individuals and groups. However, this notion h a s
been challenged as being too restrictive, closing the issues to rational debate by the
participants in a dialogue, in which new grounds for consensus could b e arrived at
(Benhabib,!992).
.an.djdgb|_of_access_caimo^e^eea.asob^^
despite their inherent
restrictions i g r public acces^. Even in a primarily p n v a t e p l a c e , public access may be
achieved most~oTt'RF'tiriie, and if denied, may be sought legally. Public places cannot
legally prohibit interaction with other users, only the nature of those interactions.
It appears that the definitions of public space e m p h a s i z e open access to either the
: j space or the diversity of activities, most notably the social interaction, taking place in
'I it as caused by this open access. T h e dimension of access to space and its activities
?an be complemented by two other dimensions of a g e n c y and interest (Benn & Gaus,
1983a,b). A public space can therefore be defined as space that allows all the people
to have access to it and the activities within it, w h i c h is controlled b y a public
agency, and which is provided and m a n a g e d in the public interest.
149
*
=
^
Figure 5.15.
Public space is a spatial manifestation of
intersubjective communication. {Stockholm,
Sweden)
public sphere,
place for
150
Figure 5.16.
Centre
Gateshead.
UK)
151
152
153
it close to shopping centres like the Metro Centre. But there are still other activities
in the city centre that make it functionally more diverse. If the city centre space is
heavily monitored through security cameras, it still can afford to b e a site for a w i d e
range of m o r e spontaneous activities and events, where street vendors c a n b e seen
side b y side with political campaigners. T h e same diversity can b e observed with
the type of visitors. By definition, the town centre is a focal point for t o w n s p e o p l e
from a variety of age, gender a n d social groups. If some parts o f the city centre
favour the m o r e affluent groups, there are other parts that cater for the less affluent.
All these points lead to the conclusion that the city centre space, despite its o w n
limitations, offers a more genuine public space. It is a space that is controlled b y a
public agency in the public interest and is accessible to all citizens at all times. It
might b e a r g u e d , however, that this is a too formal analysis of the public a n d the
private space, as these spheres are intermeshed a n d the three indicators of access,
interest a n d control are not distinguishable within these two spheres. O r it might b e
argued, along with Habermas, that the public and private should be separated so
that the lifeworld could b e protected from the political and economic systems. This
may lead to urban public space being considered a part of the civil society, to b e
protected f r o m state intervention, implying that a space controlled b y the state is
not necessarily a public space. This argument m a y thus equate the public space in
Newcastle city centre with that in the Metro Centre, as both are controlled b y t h e
systems of p o w e r and money. In response, it could b e argued that, as shown here,
the city centre offers a wider range of possibilities to a larger part of the public a n d
hence is a m o r e democratic space.
That developments such as the Metro Centre are the new additions to the u r b a n
space means that the degree of publicness found in the city centre is not desirable
by the developers. Besides the traffic problems of a city centre, the coexistence of a
wide range of potentially conflicting interests in the public sphere, especially in a n
increasingly polarizing social environment, makes the choice of semi-public space
appealing to the developers a n d corporations. This is coupled b y the local
authorities' reluctance, a n d inability, to add to the public urban space, due to their
financial
limitations. T h e authorities are also restricted b y political a n d
administrative limitations, as exemplified in the diverse planning en\'ironments
where their control is challenged and confined. T h e Enterprise Zone in which the
Metro Centre w a s developed, or the areas controlled by the D e v e l o p m e n t
Corporation, w h e r e many n e w additions to the city space are made, are examples of
these challenges. T h e result is that urban public space is increasingly contested b y
semi-public, totally managed environments created for some social groups a n d
excluding others, a s caused by, and causing further, social and spatial segregation.
Conclusion
Figure 5.17.
UK)
154
space, bridges the gaps in our spatial understanding, and offers a dynamic
perspective with which to gain k n o w l e d g e about t h e built environment. Armed
with such knowledge, designers engage in t h e transformation of the built
environment in a more informed w a y . If w e can explain the spatial phenomena, our
ability to transform the built environment will i m p r o v e .
To m a k e sense o f j h e j p m p l e x process of urban development, w e have reviewed
'
modelsTwhich describe or explain~this process.~We^Iiave concluded^tbat-the^bi^t^
\vl^;30"Tmderstan'd"urb'ari'aevelopmeiif ^^^^^
i s j o ^ c o n c e n t r a t e orNdevelopmentNi
^agenciilJTfteJffiraurSTKeyTnr
of resources^'nHiSs^aha'TagaS; j
-and-the'sbcial a i i d ^ a T i a F c o n t e x t s i n which fhey_operate.
We have looked af the changing nature of the development agencies and at the
way land, a natural resource, is treated as a c o m m o d i t y . A n implication of this
treatment has been a growing g a p between t w o t y p ^ j o f j y a h r e j i t t a d i e d j g ^
propertyj_.use value a n d j x c h a n g e value. To retluce t h e g a p between t h e two, and to
r e s p p n d J o j T i e changmg naJure.of iny.e.sjmentj3p,pp_rjunjt
h a s b e e n a_rnQye
towards^ s t a n d a r d i z a t i o n ^ f design and privatization of _space. Along with
globalizationT5f theproperty mdustTyTthesFcKangeS^fiave had far-reaching impacts
on urban landscapes and on the processes w h i c h produce them. In the next tvvp a"
chapters, w e will explore the rules and ideas that ai'e involved in the urban design '
and urban development process.
CHAPTER
Regulating Urban F o r m
Following o u r look at the relationship b e t w e e n urban design a n d the u r b a n
development process, w e n o w turn our attention t o the relationship b e t w e e n u r b a n
design and t h e regulatory f r a m e w o r k of t h e planning system. C h a p t e r 5 w a s
concerned with urban design a n d the markets. T h i s chapter concentrates on u r b a n
design a n d the state. In Chapter 5 w e looked at t h e w a y t h e c h a n g i n g n a t u r e of
development companies has h a d a n impact o n u r b a n form. In this chapter w e s e e
h o w the changing nature of t h e plarming s y s t e m , resulting f r o m a c h a n g e in
state-market relationships, can influence urban f o r m and its design.
The debates on design control form only a part of the general question of t h e
relationship of state and markets in space production. In this general context, t h e
predominant tendency has been to see design as attending m o r e to the aesthetic
qualities of the built environment, i.e. the a p p e a r a n c e of the u r b a n fabric. A s w a s
discussed in Chapter 4, this is a rather narrow v i e w which u n d e r m i n e s the role of
urban design as deahng with form, use a n d m a n a g e m e n t of cities. Nevertheless, in
this chapter w e follow these debates and the m e c h a n i s m s the British p l a n n i n g
system has devised to deal with design issues. W e also look briefly at these
concerns in s o m e other countries.
156
157
Lefebvre's assertion, i.e. tfiat every society creates its o w n space, m a k e s sense. No
matter liow the production of s p a c e is regulated, it is an o u t c o m e o f the whole'
political e c o n o m y .
If we leave this bird's eye v i e w , h o w e v e r , and l o o k at the p r a c t i c a l details of tliis
relationship, w e see constant c h a n g e and a d j u s t m e n t in the f o r m o f confrontatioii/
negotiation and collaboration b e t w e e n different parties. T h e d e b a t e s about the
production of the built e n v i r o n m e n t often take p l a c e within this s p h e r e . At this
other end of the spectrum, it is the details of their relatioitships t h a t matter, the
institutional relationships b e t w e e n the agencies i n v o l v e d in s p a c e p r o d u c t i o n . The
regulation of space p r o d u c t i o n is a central t a s k of the p o l i t i c a l economy,
employing a large n u m b e r of a g e n c i e s and i n t e r a c t i n g w i t h a v a r i e t y of sociospatial structures. T h e r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n t h e state, the m a r k e t and space
production can therefore b e a n a l y s e d in t e r m s of the s t r u c t u r e - a g e n c y
relationship.
The history of the e m e r g e n c e o f the planning s y s t e m and its development in
Britain after the Second World W a r shows a c h a n g i n g relationship between the
state and the market. The planning system w a s an effective tool f o r the post-war
Keynesian emphasis on increasing d e m a n d for c o n s u m p t i o n a n d increasing state
intervention in different spheres of life to e n s u r e the c o n t i n u i t y of societal
structures. In the urban arena, this intervention a n d e m p h a s i s o n c o n s u m p t i o n was
partly reflected in the large-scale r e d e v e l o p m e n t of urban fabrics. T h e powerful
state could employ new technologies in massive r e d e v e l o p m e n t s , a i m i n g at social
and spatial engineering. T h e planning system w a s at the operating e n d of a gigantic
bureaucratic organization w h i c h attempted to s t i m u l a t e a n d , at t h e same time,
control the change in the built environment. T o u n d e r t a k e this task m o r e effectively,
ever more sophisticated m e t h o d s were d e v e l o p e d and e m p l o y e d . During this
period, a relative harmony b e t w e e n the state a n d the m a r k e t supported the
operation of the planning system.
However, the relatively h a r m o n i o u s relationship b e t w e e n t h e state and the
market was disrupted by major c h a n g e s in w e s t e r n e c o n o m i e s a f t e r the 1960s. The
end of the post-war b o o m and a n e w global e c o n o m y with a multiplicity of new
players forced the break-up of the Keynesian coalition. T h e n o d e s of this coalition,
e.g. the planning system, needed redefining. T o s u r v i v e the global competition, the
only alternative was seen in the 1980s to be a liberalization of t h e economy. The
political and administrative structures which w e r e r e m a i n d e r s of t h e past and could
prevent this liberalization w e r e destined for restructuring.
.*i
This w a s a pressure from a b o v e on the p l a n n i n g s y s t e m , d e m a n d i n g it to
disappear or to play a more flexible role. T h e r e w a s another p r e s s u r e from below,
demanding more flexibihty and sensitivity. T h e large-scale r e d e v e l o p m e n t s of the
post-war years had caused c o m m u n i t y d i s p l a c e m e n t and disruption. Urban
development processes were criticized for their lack of u n d e r s t a n d i n g for urban
communities. To use the H a b e r m a s i a n terminology, the lifeworld w a s protesting
against the systems of power and m o n e y against their penetration (Figure 6.1). The
protest movements after the late 1960s were rejecting the p r o d u c t i o n of the built
environment as it had happened after the S e c o n d W o r l d W a r . In L e f e b v r e ' s (1991)
terms, there w a s a d e m a n d for differential s p a c e , to confront the a b s t r a c t space that
was being imposed on everyday life.
158
more cJirect form of state intervention and control. W h e r e there has b e e n no attempt
to adjust, there has been a conflict between w h a t has been called a modernist
planning system and a post-modern reality {Dear,1995).
T h e disruption to the communities caused b y the modernization projects has
been widely acknowleged. These examples of the unintended consequences
(Giddens,1990) of instrumental rationality (Habermas, 1984), amongst others,
required a process of adjustment in what was once a set of s o m e w h a t harmonious
relationships. T h e planning system, as a locally based activity, had to adjust its
relationships with the markets and the state. T h e nature and extent of control by the
state through the planning system needed to be readjusted. Within the political
economy, the planning control needed to prove o n c e again its legitimacy and
capabihty in contributing to societal and environmental reproduction.
T h e outcome of these pressures to adjust has b e e n an increased flexibility in the
planning process. The state is no longer the sole player in the major urban
development schemes. Local government's slow and reluctant response to
restructuring has resulted in direct action by central government. This has taken the
form of development corporations and public/private partnerships. On the other
hand, the traditional local planning system has been encouraged to adopt a softer^ '
less interventionist form of control through negotiation and enabling. T h e planner
as an enabler is now expected to respond equally to the structural pressure for
space production and to the local pressure for public participation and betterquality built environments.
159
Figure 6.2.
160
To uncierstand the relationship between the state and the market and its
reflection in planning and urban design, we n e e d to look at a m o r e detailed level at
the relationship between planners and designers.
Design control
Design control is the interface b e t w e e n planners and designers. In the process of
development control, the production of space is often reviewed m a i n l y from an
aesthetic point of view. T h e design review takes place within t h e g e n e r a l context of
the state-market relationship. T h e questions often put forward in this relationship
are wide ranging. Should design b e controlled at all? H o w m u c h intervention is
appropriate? Is it possible to i n t e r v e n e in a field perceived to b e l a r g e l y subjective?*:
W h o should intervene and w h o sets the standards? (See Figure 6.3.)
In 1993, in an RIBA exhibition in London called "Before and After
Planning",
examples of projects which had passed through the p l a n n i n g s y s t e m were
displayed. T h e projects varied w i d e l y in their topics and c i r c u m s t a n c e s . H o w e v e r , .
161
what they all shared was that the appearance of the schemes had been altered
noticeably as a result of the planners' comments. O n e housing association project
had been rejected because of its horizontal shape and the use of inappropriate roof
materials. T h i s had been replaced by a revised scheme costing substantially more.
In another project the architects were asked to change the curved roof to a pitched
roof. A n o t h e r project with a flat roof was criticized, calling for a "more traditional
design" that " w o u l d o v e r c o m e reasons for refusal".
These are revisions which, according to the reporter (Welsh,1993), contributed to
"urban dyslexia", the schemes' former sense of scale and proportion being
undermined and their points of interest reduced. The question posed was whether
"the public, represented by a planner, or, more abstractly, the city, represented by a
facade, (should) really concern itself with somewhat obscure architectural principles".
This exhibition has been only a part of an ongoing debate between the planners
and architects over design control. The legitimacy and usefulness of design control
have been studied and discussed for decades. The debate has often been expanded
to cover the w h o l e of the planning agenda, even to the extent that the post-war
planning s y s t e m has been severely questioned (Manser & Adam, 1992a,b).
T h e debate about design control often has several dimensions. At one level there
is the tension between architects and planners on issues of aesthetic control, at the
heart of w h i c h lies the tension between freedom of expression versus public control.
This occurs within a b r o a d e r framework of the tension between the development
(or the developer) and the local communities, between exchange value and u s e
value. This can relate to the debate between the economic necessity of a
development and its relationship to the quahty of environment. It can also focus on
the tension between freedom of individual action versus public accountability. T h e
focal point of the debate m a y be the private interest as distinct from public interest
and the relationship of these t w o sets of, at times, contradicting interests. Within an
even b r o a d e r framework, the debate is between the state and the market on the
production of the built environment. This entails economic, political, social and
aesthetic considerations and debates, which have formed the agenda of design
control a n d , in a wider sense, planning control.
Figure 6.3.
Italy)
This question of design control or aesthetic control should be seen as being closely
related to the discussions in Chapters 1, 2, and 4, where the ambiguities and
differences b e t w e e n visual a n d spatial aspects of design were addressed. T h e
difference b e t w e e n these t w o terms, design control and aesthetic control, is often
ignored as they are used interchangeably. The Annex A to P P G l (DoE,1992) is titled
"Design C o n s i d e r a t i o n s " . H o w e v e r , the Annex begins with the sentence, " T h e
appearance of proposed development and its relationship to its surroundings are
material considerations." This is clearly an indication of the tendency to equate
design with appearance. A l t h o u g h A n n e x A later denotes the broader, and
therefore, as it sees it, more relevant, design concerns of the planners as "scale,
density, height, massing, layout, landscape, and access", the main focus of the
guidance is the aesthetic dimension of the appearance of developments.
162
163
which only one, albeit important, dimension is aesthetic. Yet it is clear that the
design control process or to use the American term, design review, is not i n t e n d e d
to interfere in all of those stages. In practice, h o w e v e r , the interaction b e t w e e n the
designers and the planners, in w h i c h the design of a d e v e l o p m e n t is b e i n g
discussed, tends to cover both the functional a n d aesthetic c o n s i d e r a t i o n s of t h e
proposal. Aspects of design such as density and access, as m e n t i o n e d in A n n e x A,
have a w i d e range of implications, each with a potential aesthetic iiigredient.
This clearly s h o w s that the term "design c o n t r o l " addresses a m u c h w i d e r set of
considerations, w h i c h includes aesthetic control. A t this scale, the design control
process can be seen as an active c o m p o n e n t of urban design. N e v e r t h e l e s s ,
regarding the g o v e r n m e n t ' s a d v i c e as well as the arguments against d e s i g n
control, the aesthetics has f o r m e d the focal point of the design c o n t r o l c o n c e r n s
and debate so far.
Figure 6.4.
France)
T h i s long-standing tendency of central g o v e r n m e n t to see aesthetic control as
dealing with the appearance of buildings, and more specifically their elevations,
h a s b e e n n o t e d b y some observers (Punter,1990b) (Figure 6.4). Punter a r g u e s that
the tensions b e t w e e n this v i e w p o i n t and the wider definitions of aesthetics, design
and e n v i r o n m e n t a l quality are " a t the heart of the d e b a t e about design control"
(Punter,1990b: 3 ) . His suggested definition of aesthetic control is, " t h a t aspect of :
the regulation of d e v e l o p m e n t that seeks to control the physical attributes and
u s e s of n e w b u i l d i n g s , and the spaces between them, so as to ensure a rewarding
s e n s u o u s e x p e r i e n c e for the p u b l i c w h o use the environment thus created"
(Punter,1990b: 2 ) . This definition, which is m u c h wider, is obviously focusing on
t h e aesthetic experience, as reflected in its aim of achieving "a rewarding
s e n s u o u s e x p e r i e n c e " . The definition has been given under the title " T o w a r d s a
definition of design or aesthetic control", which uses the t w o terms
interchangeably.
Urban design has been defined as some, or all, stages of a process and the
product it p r o d u c e s , as w e s a w in Chapter 4. Any of the definitions mentioned
there w o u l d s u g g e s t that the design as a process has a variety of dimensions, of
164
165
Figure 6.5. Apart from severe crises, aesthetic choice can be found in almost all human
conditions as an important part of understanding and action. {Newcastle, UK)
166
167
F i g u r e 6.6.
How should one building relate to others around it? {Boston, USA)
We have seen h o w the aesthetic experience is important and how the aesthetics of
the environment can form a c o m m o n , and therefore objective, concern. T h e next
step would be to set up a f r a m e w o r k for collective action that would address this
common concern. T h e question to ask will then b e , is it the job of the planners to set
the aesthetic standards? If that is the case, w h o s e tastes do they represent? Are the
planners representing an elite which produces these standards and spreads them
throughout the society? Are they the guardians of the canons of good taste as set b y
the high culture and enforced b y an administrative system which is the operational
device of a polidcal economy?
Planners have frequently been accused of elitism, especially in their modernist
interventions in the urban areas, disregarding the identities and cultural
preferences of the local communities and iniposing on them alien standards of good
taste and good design. Planners are also constantly being criticized b y architects as
not having the proper c]ualifications for making aesthetic judgements. This has led
to attempts to clarify the boundaries and responsibilities as well as the educational
requirements. In many design control debates, it appears that the architects
represent the high culture, attacking planners for their allegedly poor tastes.
On the other hand, both planners and architects have been accused of being elitist
in their association with the post-war urban development. It was after the 1960s, with
the criticisms of modernism and the gradual rise of post-modernism, that architects
and planners started to see themselves as part of the mass culture. By using
ornaments, historical reference and double coding (Jencks,1991), post-modern
architecture tried to denounce its elitist past and bridge the gap between architecture
and popular culture. In planning, attempts to democratize the planning process were
among the most important signs that the elitist tendencies of high culture were being
challenged. Both planners and architects attempted to acquire a degree of
embeddedness in their social and physical contexts; hence the rise of interest in public
168
169
Good urban f o r m
No discussion of design control w o u l d be c o m p l e t e without finding out what the
final aim of t h e design control is. W h a t is the i m a g e in the m i n d of the planner of
the final f o r m of a town? Is this intervention in the appearance of growing and
changing cities carried out according to a set of clear images which would together
make a c o h e r e n t vision of the future of a town?
It could b e a r g u e d that t h e r e is n o n e e d for s u c h an i m a g e as an urban form is
so c o m p l i c a t e d a n d d y n a m i c that it w o u l d b e futile to envisage a final form for it.
A n y a t t e m p t t o visualize t h e final, or a n ideal, f o r m of a t o w n w o u l d be either
unrealistic o r too rigid to b e e v e n w o r t h a c h i e v i n g . Utopian ideals of the past
have all f a i l e d to materialize. S o w h y s h o u l d w e try to find an answer to the
question a b o u t an overall i m a g e of the " c o n t r o l l e d " urban f o r m in the mind of the
planner? S h o u l d design c o n t r o l b e a p r a g m a t i c intervention which is flexible
enough to a c c o m m o d a t e e a c h c a s e w i t h o u t n e c e s s a r i l y having a vision of the final
outcome?
This m i g h t s e e m to be realism. M a n y decisions are made according to arguments
of this k i n d . But design control is a c o n t i n u o u s process in which any n e w
development is being j u d g e d against s o m e criteria. What are these criteria for
judging the u r b a n form? W h a t are the m e a s u r e s for evaluating the increments to
urban fabric? A s distinct f r o m these, or in relation to them, are there any criteria for
judging the u r b a n form as a w h o l e ?
After a p e r i o d of design control, there will b e a cumulative effect of individual
cases on u r b a n form in general. In the long term, it might be argued, the urban.form
will be largely transformed in relation to the intentions of the actors involved in the
design control process. If this is the case, then w e should be able to search for a
vision of this future o u t c o m e in the mind of the design controllers. This is a vision
which m i g h t b e consciously k n o w n or u n c o n s c i o u s l y held. Without even a vague
idea of the w h o l e of urban fabric, or at least parts of it, at the m o r e identifiable scale
of urban p l a c e s and n e i g h b o u r h o o d s , it w o u l d not be possible to make a clear
decision a b o u t a n y new d e v e l o p m e n t . There are convincing arguments that urban
design s h o u l d contribute to the development of " a n ideal long-term hypothesis",
which w o u l d b e used as a yardstick to measure the values of the built environment
(Gregotti, 1 9 9 2 ) .
Figure 6.7.
Respecting the existing context is a way of humanizing and democratizing any
new proposal. It is also a safe way out of making aesthetic judgements. {London,
UK)
The a r g u m e n t here is not that w e need to h a v e such a vision in the design control
process, w h i c h is quite a valid argument. M y point is that whoever is controlling
the design of the d e v e l o p m e n t s already has that mental image of the good city form,
and the d e c i s i o n s are being m a d e with reference to that image or set of images. For
example, the t w o contrasting approaches to the context of a n e w development, i.e.
170
Figure 6.8.
171
choice. {Stockholm,
Sweden)
W^eZtstfe^K)^^''^'
'""P"'''"*
'^^"^'"9^ themselves.
172
Government advice
T h e main government advice on design is the Annex A to Planning Policy
Guidance 1 (DoE,1992). This one-page document, which was a product of
collaboration between RIBA and R T P I and endorsed by the government, sets out
the guidelines for planners on h o w to deal with design. It invites planners to show
more flexibility and involvement at larger, rather than more detailed, scale issues of
developments. It invites the planning permission applicants to aim for good design,
a consideration for the context, and for better communication with the planning
system.
173
used
in the
Development Plans
Development plans are the d o c u m e n t s prepared by the local authorities "to provide
a firm basis for rational and consistent decisions on planning applications and
appeals". These documents are " t h e primary m e a n s of reconciling conflicts between
the need for development, including the provision of infrastructure, and the need to
protect the built and natural environments" (DoE,1992, para. 17). In nonmetropolitan areas, development plans can be structure plans or local plans, setting
out strategic policies or detailed development policies. In metropolitan areas, a
unitary development plan combines these roles.
Research into the design content of development plans found that m a n y plans in
its 73 samples, "displayed a very low emphasis on design" (Punter et al.,1994: 217).
It noted an overall lack of general design strategies or strategic design
considerations. Design issues appear to be treated as marginal, dispensable
considerations, concentrating heavily on individual buildings rather than being
integrated into the plan's overall strategy. Most plans, it concluded, avoided "either
Figure 6.10.
Areas. {Durham,
174
Design Guides
Design guides are documents prepared by the local planning authorities as
additional information and g u i d a n c e regarding design matters. As distinct from
d e v e l o p m e n t p l a n s , which h a v e statutory status, design g u i d e status is
s u p p l e m e n t a r y planning guidance.
Design guides and design briefs are both classified b y the PPG12 as
s u p p l e m e n t a r y planning g u i d a n c e . There is, however, a major difference in that
design guides are not site-specific, whereas design briefs are. W h e r e design guides
h a v e been p r e p a r e d , they are often of a general nature and will cover almost every
eventuality. T h e y deal with large areas or with specific topics, such as shopfronts,
security grilles, and advertisements. As distinct from these design guides, and
ideally within their framework, design briefs deal with specific sites and more
specific issues. W h e r e such overall design guides d o not exist, design guidance may
be limited to the general design principles within the local plan. In such cases,
design briefs are produced in an ad hoc manner. However, the brief does not
necessarily b a c k u p the local plan, as the planning conditions rarely refer to design
matters.
Esse.x C o u n t y Council's design guide (County Council of Essex, 1973) was a
major d o c u m e n t which influenced a generafion of design guides across Britain. It
wa:. prepared for residential areas in response to the intensive suburbanization
processes of t h e time. T h e g u i d e ' s design policies were clearly divided into physical
and visual policies. Under physical design policies, the envelope and curtilage of
the house, its services and s t a n d a r d s and maintenance were discussed. In its visual
design policies, attention was shifted to the principles of spatial organization and
the design of the buildings within an urban framework. T h e principles of spatial
organization distinguished three types of development: urban, rural and suburban.
T h e former t w o were to be strengthened and the latter discouraged.
175
Design Briefs
There is a variety and an apparent lack of clarity in the use of the term "design
brief". Different planning authorities use different terms, including planning brief,
development brief, principles of development, planning guidance, planning
framework, etc., along with design brief. One of the common characteristics of the
different definitions of briefs is that they are detailed development guidance for
specific sites, distinguishing them from design guides which focus on areas
(Madanipour, Tally & U n d e r w o o d , ! 993).
The Royal T o w n Planning Institute (RTPI,1990) acknowledges this variety, stating
that, "briefs are non-statutory documents and there are no regulations specifying
their role a n d f o r m a t " . H o w e v e r , it attempts to offer s o m e clarifying frameworks in
terminology as well as in the preparation and use of the briefs. T h e RTPI suggests
the term " d e v e l o p m e n t b r i e f " as a general term to cover these various areas of
concern. It includes the d o c u m e n t s called "planning briefs", which deal with
planning, land use and transportation matters; "developers' briefs", which address
financial a n d land m a n a g e m e n t aspects; and "design briefs", which cover
townscape and other design aspects, and aesthetics. However, in practice, as it
notes, and depending on the circumstances, s o m e or all of these matters are
combined in such documents.
A design brief has been defined as incorporating "the full range of requirements
specified by the local planning authority for the development and design treatment
of particular sites, with explicit emphasis on the appearance of the development"
176
>
177
178
']
!
-'~
(quoted in Lai,1992:219)
T h r e e years later, in City of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, in a dissent from the
majority, h e w r o t e against the city ordinance, w h i c h was prohibiting the posting of
political signs on pubhc property to avoid "visual clutter":
In cases like this, where a total ban is imposed on a particularly valuable method of
communication,
a court should require the government
to provide tangible proof of the
legitimacy and substantiality of its aestlietic objective. Justifications for such restrictions
articulated
by the government
should be critically examined to determine
whether the
government has committed itself to addressing the identified aesthetic problem.
In my vieiv, such statements of aesthetic objectives should he accepted as substantial and
unrehUed to the suppression of speech only if the govenunent demonstrates -that it is pursuing
an identified objective seriously and comprehensively and in ways that are unrelated to the
restriction of speech. Without such demonstration, I ivould invalidate the restriction as violative
of the First Amendment.
By requiring
this type of shozuing, courts can ensure that
governmental
regulation of the aesthetic environments
remains within the constraints
established by the First Amendment.
First, we would have a reasonably reliable indication that
it is Jiot the content or communicative aspect of speech that the government finds unaesthetic.
Second, when a restriction of speech is part of a comprehensive and seriously pursued program
to promote an aesthetic objective, zve have a more reliable indication of the government's own
assessment of the substantiality of its objective. And finally, when an aesthetic objective is
pursued on more than one front, we have a better basis upon which to ascertain its precise
nature and thereby determine whether the means selected are the least restrictive ones for
achieving the objective.
(quoted in Lai,1992:220)
It is in response to such calls that design guidelines and urban design plans are
p r o d u c e d b y s o m e cities and towns as comprehensive strategies for enhancing the
aesthetic qualities of an environment. Searching for a democratic process of dealing
179
with design, Delafons (1992: 58) finds design guidance very promising, especially
when it is focusing on b r o a d e r issues of "building's context, not only on its design
concept". In A m e r i c a n cities, he argues, it is design guidance rather than regulatory
controls w h i c h is leading to the most successful examples of design policy. Design
guidance has three stages. First, it relies on a detailed analysis of the existing urban
space, identifying the local, character of districts and neighbourhoods. It includes an
assessment of the area's location in the city, the form and mixture of uses and types
of businesses that generate that character, and its spatial and architectural
characteristics. Second, on the basis of this analysis, and with the help of the local
community, design policies are developed for each area. T h e third stage is the
implementation of the design guidelines through negotiation with developers and
their architects.
A successful example of this type of aesthetic control is Portland, Oregon. T h e
design guidelines of the city, " f o c u s on relationship of buildings, space and people.
They are u s e d to coordinate a n d enhance the diversity of activities taking place in
the d o w n t o w n area. M a n y w a y s of meeting a particular guideline exist, and since it
is not our intent to prescribe a n y specific solution, the Commission encourages a
diversity o f imaginative solutions to issues raised by the guidelines" (quoted in
Delafons,1992: 55). As a result, the city's comprehensive attempts to maintain a
well-designed and w e l l - m a n a g e d city centre h a v e attracted the support of the
developers a n d businesses. F o r Delafons, this is "surely the best approach to
aesthetic c o n t r o l " .
In D e n m a r k , there is no p r o c e d u r e equivalent to the US design review process, as
it appears that a consensus h a s existed for designers to respect the local traditions
and the z o n i n g requirements. This consensus was rooted in the first half of the
twentieth century and survived the post-war urbanization and industrialization of
the country a n d the building b o o m s of the 1960s and 1970s. H o w e v e r , it is n o w in
danger of falling apart due to the current cultural pluralism (Mammen,1992).
Several attempts have b e e n made to ensure the design quahty of new
developments. For example, the Danish National Agency for Physical Planning has
developed a method of S u r v e y i n g Architectural Values in the Environment (SAVE),
with a h e a v y emphasis on historic city centres, aiming to provide a complete
picture of the characteristic architectural qualities of a locality. This w o u l d then help
the local politicians and p l a n n e r s as well as the local residents in their decisionmaking in relation to the protection of these qualities. A Municipal Atlas is
produced w h i c h maps the u r b a n relationships and registers individual buildings. In
this voluntary co-operation between the Ministry of Environment and local
authorities, data are collected b y professional architects and planners, and local
architectural and historical values are assessed in close collaboration with local
organizations and individuals. Another attempt b y the Danish Building Research
Institute intends to brings urban architecture into the local government's planning
and daily administration. It approaches the mapping of physical structures and
registration of buildings in a similar way to the S A V E system, but its analysis is
based on visual-historic registration of the town and its buildings. Analysis of the
existing fabric leads to the generation of design guidelines, demanding the physical
shape, skyline, streetline, building proportions, prevaihng building materials and
details to be respected in future developments (Mammen,1992).
180
In France, the demand for protecting the character of areas under hea\'y
development pressure has led to n e w forms of design control, as exemplified by the
plan for Ansieres sur Oise (Samuels,1995). Ansieres, a settlement of 2400 people at
the northern edge of the lie de France, 35 k m a w a y from Paris, has b e e n identified
b y developers as a desirable location for new residential development. The new
houses, however, tend to be in the form of paviUions, detached single family houses,
the suburban m o r p h o l o g y of which contrasts with the existing character of the
181
Conclusion
The advent of major c h a n g e s in the w e s t e r n economies has redefined the
relationship b e t w e e n the state, the m a r k e t , a n d society. The planning system, w h i c h
was the o u t c o m e of a coalition b e t w e e n the state a n d the market, has had to adjust
itself to these n e w relationships. It has b e c o m e m o r e flexible as a result of structural
pressures f r o m above, r e g a r d i n g its role in s p a c e production, and from b e l o w ,
regarding its role in e v e r y d a y life.
Figure 6.11.
{Florence, Italy)
182
of intense d e b a t e s about the scope of design control and the role of planners in this
process. O n e m a j o r criticism has b e e n m a d e by those w h o see design as a subjective
issue, and w h o see the d o c u m e n t s as a stifling innovation, restricting individual
rights, and controlled by planners unfit to m a k e aesthetic judgements. Planners
h a v e c o u n t e r - a r g u e d that aesthetic concerns are objective, as w e try to convince
others about these values. T o find an objective basis for their aesthetic judgements,
p l a n n e r s h a v e resorted to the u r b a n context and h a v e argued for the need for
accountability to the public. T h e main question, h o w e v e r , remains open; how much
design control a n d on what bases?
T h e relationship of planning a n d design has b e e n changing from a large degree of
overlap to a large gap in the middle. What is n e e d e d now, after these shifts of
focus, is a t o w n planning which adopts a socio-spatial approach, emphasizing both
social and spatial relationships in close connection with each other. This town
p l a n n i n g will b e an essential part of the political e c o n o m y , but will have to address
the concerns of the lifeworld in the face of overwhelming pressure by bureaucratic
and financial s y s t e m s . At its strongest, the contribution of urban design to this
evolution is to bring back to the urban planning agenda the attention to the built
e n v i r o n m e n t , creating a balance b e t w e e n its social and spatial concerns. Similarly it
can bring to architecture m o r e interest in social processes and relationships, leading
t o a m o r e b a l a n c e d , socio-spatial approach. A t its weakest, however, it is seen as
m e r e l y a t t e n d i n g to the visual qualities of the built environment, being blamed for
aestheticizing the space production and becoming a substitute for social concerns.
CHAPTER 7
Images o f P e r f e c t i o n
In its search for new forms and possibilities, design is an exploratory activity.
Through the generation of a variety of ideas a n d testing them against the concrete
situation in which they operate, designers aim to perform their task. In most cases,
the scope o f the search is w i d e ranging, allowing designers to find a solution from
whatever source: from historic precedents, f r o m theoretical constructs, or from
everyday scenes and events.. This is w h y designers show interest and sensibility to a
wide range of social and e c o n o m i c as well as aesthetic and artistic issues. Without
constant exploration for new w a y s of understanding and expression, designers'
potentials w o u l d be left unfulfilled.
However, open-ended and pragmatic as this may seem, designers in their
explorations are often influenced b y s o m e conventions, paradigms, fashions and
styles that are prevalent at the time. Directly o r indirectly, these paradigms enter
the process of design and influence it. In a w a y , many design tasks b e c o m e
variations on themes, explorations within paradigmatic boundaries, or conscious
and unconscious attempts to change these p a r a d i g m s . The paradigms therefore act
as structures with which designers interact, enhancing or transforming them, in a
Giddensian interaction between structure and agency.
Design p a r a d i g m s , and the w o r k of designers in relation to them, can all be seen
as the sot of ideas and images that designers develop and promote for a better
environment. If urban design is a conscious attempt to transform and improve
urban space, then urban designers are expected to have an idea of what that good
environment m a y look like. This m a y run counter to the idea of design as
exploration. But as we h a v e stressed, this exploration takes place not in a void but
in response to s o m e paradigm, s o m e image of an ideal environment.
Images of ideal environments m a y be p r o d u c e d in a fragmented, pragmatic way,
in response to the situation in which the design takes place. These fragments,
however, can find a coherence w h e n interconnected and theorized in the form of
Utopian d r e a m s of good cities and societies. T h e paradigms that the Utopian
projects of the garden cities and the modern m o v e m e n t in architecture produced
formed formidable forces that largely transformed the built environment of our
time.
This chapter reviews the desirable and ideal environments that the good design
aims to achieve, the Utopian paradigms in which designers have operated.
Throughout the history of cities, these i m a g e s of perfection have been very
184
important, as paramount in tfieir influence upon the form of the built environment
produced. These images relate to the political context, in which the state regulates
the shaping of environment, and the economic context, in which the development
process produces space.
The twentieth century has witnessed three m a i n paradigmatic approaches
towards cities. T h e first is u r b a n i s m of a metropolitan paradigm, focusing on the
city by either trying to change it, as in modernist design, or to preserve or celebrate
it, as in the conservation m o v e m e n t and post-modern designs. T h e second is antiurbanism, as signified by the criticism and a b a n d o n m e n t of cities. T h e suburbs,
arguably the main feature of the twentieth-century Anglo-American "urban"
development, exemplify this trend. T h e third trend, micro-urbanism of the small
towns paradigm, has been a conscious criticism of the other two trends by offering
an alternative that is more m a n a g e a b l e than metropolitanism, and m o r e collective
than anti-urbanism.
What all these trends share is their response to the challenge of the cities, these
ever larger agglomerations of p e o p l e and objects. A n o t h e r shared dimension closely
related to the first, is their Utopian roots, all reflecting images of perfection in
human settlements.
-"M
images of Perfection
185 i
Utopia
The idea of ideal e n v i r o n m e n t s , Utopias, has b e e n a r o u n d for p e r h a p s as long as
h u m a n beings have thought of possible a l t e r n a t i v e s to their existing c i r c u m s t a n c e s .
As a response to the reality of their lives, w i t h all their possible deficiencies, h u m a n
beings have thought, throughout history, a b o u t an ideal world, w h e r e their i m a g e s
of perfection w o u l d prevail. T h e s e i m a g e s c o u l d r e m a i n as dream.s, offering an
escape from the difficulties of the real w o r l d . T h e ideal e n v i r o n m e n t s so conceived
could remain a fragmented collection of i m a g i n e d r e s p o n s e s b y i n d i v i d u a l s to the
real world. T h e y could also b e d e v i s e d as s y s t e m s o f t h o u g h t , d r a w i n g an overall
picture of a c o m p l e t e socio-spatial system w h i c h could b e actively p u r s u e d , in
search of an ideal society a n d a g o o d life ( F i g u r e 7.1).
Especially after the R e n a i s s a n c e , w e see a s t r e a m of Utopian thinkers, following
the h u m a n i s t s ' belief that h u m a n b e i n g s h a v e t h e c a p a c i t y to take control of their
lives a n d s h a p e them in a n y c h o s e n form. A n e a r l y , b u t i m p o r t a n t , e x a m p l e is
T h o m a s M o r e ' s Utopia (1964), w h i c h w a s first p u b l i s h e d in Latin in 1516 and w i d e l y
influenced later generations of Utopian t h i n k e r s . T h e ideal cities of the Renaissance
period reflected a Utopian desire for order a n d r a t i o n a l o r g a n i z a t i o n of space. W i t h
their star-shaped, polygonal, m a s s i v e fortifications, their designs reflected the n e w
defensive r e q u i r e m e n t s of a t i m e of p r o g r e s s i v e i m p o r t a n c e of
firearms
(Argan,1969; R o s e n a u , 1 9 7 4 ) . In the n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y , p o s t - E n l i g h t e n m e n t thinkers
such as G o d w i n , Fourier, O w e n a n d S a i n t - S i m o n d e v i s e d their Utopias, which w e r e
their responses to the rising social diseases of early capitalism. Their c o m m o n
starting point w a s the idea of " p e r f e c t i b i l i s m " , b e l i e v i n g in the possibility of
creating a perfect society, a n d seeing society as " a h u m a n artefact open to rational
i m p r o v e m e n t " ( G o o d w i n , 1 9 7 8 ; 1 ) . T h e i r c o m m o n e n d w a s to create social h a r m o n y ,
free from conflict, c r i m e and m i s e r y . U t o p i a as t h e " e x p r e s s i o n of desire for a better
way of b e i n g " w a s so essential in political life that for O s c a r W i l d e ,
A map of tiie world thai does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out
the one country at ivhich Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it
looks at out, and seehig a belter country, sets sail
of an
essentially
labour
utopia
(Beilharz,1992).
The
Soviet
theorists,
environment
of
communism
had
to
foster
and
encourage
"ties,
185
Images of Perfection
187
Edinburgh
Journal
wrote,
Manchester streets may be irregular, and its trading inscriptions pretentious, its smolce may be
dense, and its mud tdtra-muddy, but not any or all of tlicse things can prevent the image of a
great city rising before us as the very symbol of civUization, foremost in the march of
improvement, a grand incarnation of progress
Urban c o n t e x t
T h e context in w h i c h all three f o r m s of Utopias developed was the nineteenth
century city, w h e n the process of industrialization led to a rapid growth of cities in
Western E u r o p e a n d North A m e r i c a . London's population grew from one million in
1 8 0 ! to m o r e t h a n six and a half million in 1 9 0 ! ( H a l l , ! 9 7 5 ) . In England (outside
L o n d o n ) and W a l e s , b y the end of the century, there were 23 cities with populations
of 1 0 0 0 0 0 or m o r e , as c o m p a r e d to none a century earlier (Briggs,1968). This rapid
g r o w t h c a u s e d a n a c c u m u l a t i o n of capital and labour in the cities, which became-
sites of e x t r e m e s of wealth and poverty, generating simultaneous reactions of
admiration a n d fear. After all, this w a s a time w h e n polarization of social classes
could urge c o m m e n t a t o r s to see t w o nations inhabiting the s a m e small island
(Disraeli, t p o t e d in B r i g g s , 1 9 6 8 : 1 7 ) .
T h e w o r k i n g - c l a s s housing stock erected a r o u n d the new industries was often
uncontrolled, w i t h poor materials on insecure foundations, without a n y drainage or
water s u p p l y ( G i b s o n & Langstaff,1982: 40). T h e overcrowding and the "absence of
amenities, the b r u t a l d e g r a d a t i o n of the natural environment and inability to plan
and often to c o n c e i v e the city a s a w h o l e " led to "appalling living conditions"
(Briggs,1968: 1 7 ) . A l l shades of political opinion s e e m e d to agree that cities were
" p l a c e s of o v e r c r o w d i n g , p o v e r t y , crime, disease, insanitary condition and potential
Figure 7.2.
The industrial cities of the nineteenth century created fear and admiration.
{Liverpool,
UK)
188
Images of Perfection
189
This duality of fear and admiration inspired the visions for, and the practice of, the
urban transformation that followed. T h e fear of crime, disease and revolution led to
a coiistant concern for the control o f crowds and for the quality of urban life. The
city was at the same time exciting and the source of newly emerging wealth and
power of western nations. T h e m i d d l e classes, whether colonizing the city, as on the
continent of Europe, or a b a n d o n i n g it for the suburbs, as in England and America,
wanted a reformed city. In France, the most notable undertaking of this kind was by
Baron Haussmann and N a p o l e o n III, w h o transformed the dense fabric of Paris. In
Britain, the responses to u r b a n conditions included the demolition of back-to-back
and courtyard houses and the development of bye-law streets, a "noteworthy
innovation", where rows of h o u s e s flanked straight streets (Bayley,1975: 20).
Figure 7.3.
USA)
190
Images of Perfection
191
"the first urban function", were to occupy the best sites, with m i n i m u m exposure to
the sun and a fixed density, using modern b u i l d i n g technology to build high,
widely spaced apartment blocks a w a y from traffic thoroughfares. A s for recreation,
it asked for clearance of slums, devoting their sites to open spaces and recreational
purposes. Workplaces were to b e located in special zones, industrial zones to b e
separated from the residential areas by green b a n d s or neutral z o n e s , and central
business districts to be linked to industrial and residential areas. Transport
problems were to be solved b y a universal use of motorized transportation, and a
new street system was to b e classified according to the function and speed of
movement in the streets. Traffic w a s to b e concentrated in the great arteries,
separated from the buildings of all kind by green b a n d s .
These images of ideal, ordered environments w e r e so powerful that the public
authorities, with whatever ideology, and the private sector developers all
subscribed to them. A Soviet writer, for e x a m p l e , imagines the c o m m u n i s t city of
the future along similar patterns:
Figure 7.4. Ornament was rejected for simplicity and functionalism. {Bauhaus,
Germany) (Photograph by Simin Davoudi)
Dessau,
Imagine, reader, that we are ivalking with you doxvn one of the streets of the future city. There
are wide, well-lit thoroughfares which nowhere cross each other at the same level; hurrying
automobiles, resembling rockets, pass by us at great speed. You have noticed that they do not
raise any dust, for the streets are absolutely clean; as a system of drawing off dirt by suction,
binlt directly into the roadway, solves this problem rather well. Look how freely the great
buildings are placed amidst gardens and parks. Only in a section preserved from the old city like
a museum rarity does there remain a few blocks of closely bunched houses . ..
The city freely and deeply breathes zvith each part of its great lungs, for there is not a single '
corner which does not receive plenty of fresh air and life-giving sunshine. Yoji see around you
not only the grandeur of the city and of nature, but, what is most important, the splendid
people, with traits of high nobility and good breeding, proud ivorking people of the neiv society,
of the new life.
192
Post-modern urbanism
Hi
Images of Perfection
193
The aesthetic as image, representing fasiiionable tastes, became indispensable to tiie economy of
serial repetition. Museums became totalized environments selling culture through their shops,
restaurants, condominiums, and gigantic extravaganzas. The recycling of old market areas of
the city, waterfronts and river fronts, main streets, frontier towns, whatever historic inoutd
could be found - these became the background environments
or containers for neio shopping
malls and food-oriented entertainment zones. These culture markets produced secondary
effects
as well. The neiv professional classes expected to be entertained ivhile they shopped, so that more
and more money was diverted to the decoration of faddish boutiques, luxurious
restaurant
interiors, refurbished department stores, pliantasmagoric hotel, theatre, shoppir.g
contaiiiers
untd the city took the appearance of a gigantic spectacle. This aestheticization of everyday life,
the spreading
out of designed
environments,
had another effect as well: the
further
fragmentation and hierarchicalization of urban space into luxury and non-luxiiry
areas.
(Boyer,]990: 107)
Some, such as Jameson (1991), see these p h e n o m e n a as part of a f u r t h e r integration
of aesthetic production into commodity production processes, a n d h e n c e define
post-modernism not only as a n e w aesthetics, but as part of a m u c h m o r e significant
change in society. Post-modern space, or multinational space a s J a m e s o n calls it,
shows h o w late capitalism has destroyed the s e m i - a u t o n o m y of the cultural s p h e r e .
Sharon Zukin (1988: 437) quotes a developer; " M y buildings are a p r o d u c t . T h e y are
a product like Scotch T a p e is a p r o d u c t . . . T h e packaging of that p r o d u c t is the first
thing that people see. I am selling space and renting space a n d it h a s to b e in a
package that is attractive enough to be financially successful."
It is possible to trace h o w the reactions to modernist d e v e l o p i n e n t s h a v e c h a n g e d
in nature. T h e first criticisms w e r e m a d e to protect c o m m u n i t i e s against the
destructive fury of modernization and r e d e v e l o p m e n t ( J a c o b s , 1 9 6 1 ; B e r m a n , 1 9 8 2 ) .
This critical stance gradually found widespread support, e s p e c i a l l y w h e n the
massive redevelopment projects seemed no longer financially feasible. T h e n c a m e a
new wave, defining the aim of urban d e v e l o p m e n t as catering for m o r e affluent
urbanits and accommodating their tastes and n e e d s . This w a v e e m p l o y e d the postmodern ideas, devoiding them from any critical capacity. H o w e v e r , it is also
possible to see how the n e w principles of u r b a n design are s h a r e d b e t w e e n s u c h
apparently disparate groups and forms of reaction to m o d e r n i s m . It w a s s u c h
similarities and related de\'elopments beyond the domain of d e s i g n that led to the
notion of a post-modern approach to design a s a representative of a p o s t - m o d e r n
age.
A s a concept, post-modernism has been very a m b i g u o u s . O n the o n e h a n d , it is
seen as a historical period which follows m o d e r n i s m and s o is called postmodernism. O n the other h a n d , it is seen as a " m o o d " ( D o c h e r t y , 1 9 9 3 ) , " a state of
m i n d " (Bauman,1992), "a question of expression of t h o u g h t " ( L y o t a r d , 1 9 9 3 ) , "a
refusal, a rupture, a renouncement, much m o r e than a simple c h a n g e of d i r e c t i o n "
(Rose,1991; 153). While Baudrillard and Lyotard associate p o s t - m o d e r n i s m w i t h
post-industrialism (Featherstone,1988), H a r v e y (1989) sees p o s t - m o d e r n i s m as
associated with post-Fordism. Post-Fordism, the flexible a c c u m u l a t i o n of capital
which led to flexibility in the patterns of production and pluralism in c o n s u m p t i o n ,
is seen therefore as a replacement for Fordism, which w a s b a s e d on m a s s
production and central planning, in parallel with modernism. A s H a s s a r d (1993: 3)
interprets, this change is a fragmentation of the social and e c o n o m i c structures that
have been reproduced since the industrial revolution into " d i v e r s e n e t w o r k s held
194
Images of Perfection
195
Figure 7.5.
Road networks in cities were meant to ease the vehicular movement. {Boston,
USA)
196
Figure 7 . 6 .
Repairing tfie urban fabric after being cut across by a road network: The removal
of the central artery is intended to link the urban fabric and the pedestrian movement within it
to the waterfront. {Boston,
USA)
Anti-urban paradigm
It is widely held that there is an anti-urban tendency among the English and the
North Americans, where the expansion of urban areas in the past century has been
dominated b y suburban developments. Whereas urbanism a n d micro-urbanism
have been promoted by visionaries and experts, anti-urbanism and its most famous
Images of Perfection
Figure 7 . 7 .
197
USA)
-Suburbanism
Suburbia is "an archetypal middle-class i n v e n t i o n " , e m b o d y i n g t h e ideal of a n e w ,
private, family life. The basic unit of the suburban form is the single family h o u s e . It
is usually a detached (in America) or a semi-detached (in Britain) h o u s e built on a
relatively large garden plot. Together, these h o u s e s and their access roads m a k e a
198
Images of Perfection
F i g u r e 7.8.
UK)
199
200
Images of Perfection
201
forms which are no longer dependent on urban cores (Fishman,1987: xi). The extent
of low-density growth across the countryside is such that these n e w suburbs, as
best exemplified by Orange C o u n t y in Southern California, are no longer relying on
the city centres. Suburban workplaces, shopping malls and residential areas mean
that suburbanites can work, s h o p and live without visiting the city. F o r a long time,
these trends have continuously undermined the cities and their centres. Suburbs
continue to be criticized today, this time as anachronistic: " w e continue to build
post-World W a r II suburbs as if families were large and had only one breadwinner,
the jobs were all downtown, land and energy w e r e endless and another lane on the
freeway would end traffic congestion" (Calthorpe,1994: xii).
Soviet revolutionaries in the 1920s and 1930s mistrusted the cities as places for
accumulation of wealth. A m o n g them were " d e u r b a n i s t s " , w h o w a n t e d to d e m o l i s h
Moscow eventually (Hall,1988: 201). T h e socialist countries of the T h i r d W o r l d , such
as Cuba, used these arguments for their anti-urban policies. T h e d e p o p u l a t i o n of
the cities in Vietnam, and the disastrous effects of such policies o n u r b a n lives in
Cambodia, are now well k n o w n (Government of Vietnam, 1985; Lefebvre, in Brgel
et al.,1987).
Suburbs have grown in m a n y parts of the world, wherever a middle class has
emerged with a demand to separate itself from the rest of the society. For example,
the suburbs in the former socialist countries are growing fast, with the breakdown
of state control and the emergence of new rich and middle classes, especially
wherever the Anglo-American cultural patterns are influential. Spatial segregation
seems an inevitable companion of social segregation. A journalist calls the current
suburbanization in Russia " a new revolution" (Scott,1995). T h e new Russian
bourgeoisie can afford to flee the city, from its cramped flats, its horrendous
pollution, and its rising crime. They are n o w "embracing suburbia with an
enthusiasm unparalleled anywhere in the w o r l d " . According to Alexander Zubkov,
a Russian real-estate developer, "Moscovites are sick of living in Soviet flats where
they can't choose their neighbours". For them, Scott argues, "Suburbia . . . means
space, grass, freedom to build whatever additions you can afford, no zoning
restrictions that cannot be solved with a bribe, and an escape from the smog and
congested traffic of the capital. And it is less obvious driving a B M W when
everyone else in the neighbourhood has one, t o o " .
Sharing a mistrust of large cities with Soviet revolutionaries and socialist reformers,
but from the viewpoint of individualism, was the American architect, Frank Lloyd
Wright. Like them, he maintained that big cities were unhealthy concentrations of
power and wealth, which had to be dismantled. Disintegration w a s , h e b e l i e v e d , the
future of the metropolis, as the wide use of cars and telephones w o u l d m a k e it
anachronistic (reminding us of a new generation of technology enthusiasts w h o
believe the Internet will abolish the need for cities). Concentrations of people and
centralized institutions could therefore be spread across the countryside,
decentralizing the greatest barrier to human progress: the m o n s t r o u s metropolis.
Planned anti-urbanism
As against the continuous growth of the suburbs, a number of initiatives have been
taken to introduce some degree of control on this process. W h a t is shared between
these measures and proposals, despite their different origins and orientations, is
their anti-urban stance. W e look at a few of these measures.
Socialist anti-urbanism
An anti-urban debate w a s d e v e l o p e d in the early years of the Soviet Union, after the
1917 revolution. It was argued that large modern cities were products of capitalism
and had no place in a communist Utopia, where such accumulations of people and
wealth w e r e not needed. At the same time, industrial production and the workers'
collective lives formed the central concerns of the Bolsheviks, w h i c h meant some
form of population agglomeration was seen to b e necessary in order to achieve a
communist society. The distrust of the large cities ran in parallel with a distrust for
rural populations, who showed hostility towards the revolution and w h o s e patterns
of production and ownership did not favour a collective Utopia. These anti-urbanist
tendencies led to proposals for a deconstruction of the central business districts and
eventually to a preference for small cities as the cities of workers (Bater,1980).
Broadacre City
202
Images of Perfectio n
203
from the Soviet rejection of large cities as sites of capital accumulation and
exploitation of workers, to the A m e r i c a n N e w U r b a n i s m ' s rejection of suburbs as an
unsustainable waste of time, s p a c e a n d resources, this trend h a s a n argument to
make. The small town p a r a d i g m c a n also b e isolationist and ultra conservative, as
portrayed in m a n y films a n d stories. A c h a r a c t e r in a J o h n U p d i k e story, for
example, brings together all that h e sees as the e s s e n c e of being an American; "I'm
an American. Eleventh-generation G e r m a n . W h i t e , Protestant, Gentile, small-town
middle-class. I a m pure A m e r i c a n " ( U p d i k e , 1 9 9 5 ) . W h a t e v e r the format of the small
town paradigm, it seems to d r a w upon s o m e form of collective, rather than
individualistic, ideals. W h e n confronting the m e t r o p o h s , with its pluralism and
diversity, however, m i c r o - u r b a n i s m h a s t h e potential to collapse into a reactionary
position.
The design o f small towns reflects this c o m m u n i t a r i a n i s m and its challenge to the
individualism o f the suburbs a n d t h e a n o n y m i t y o f the metropolis. T h e major trend
in this century which represented this trend w a s t h e garden cities and new towns
movement. It is n o w being f o l l o w e d b y n e w u r b a n i s m .
Garden cities
T h e idea of garden cities w a s introduced b y E b e n e z e r H o w a r d in 1898. As with
other major urban ideas of this century, its o r i g i n s lie in the conditions of the
industrial cities of the nineteenth century, for w h i c h the garden cities w e r e thought
to b e a remedy. T h e Industrial Revolution h a d caused a rapid urbanization in
Britain in the first half of the n i n e t e e n t h century. F r o m 1860 on, surburban railway
helped .London's spread a c r o s s t h e s u r r o u n d i n g countryside (Hall, 1975).
Unprecedented densities d e v e l o p e d , with all their w e l l - k n o w n social a n d physical
consequences. A s places of c r i m e , disease, a n d p o v e r t y , cities w e r e criticized by
most commentators.
In this context, Ebenezer H o w a r d , w h o is r e g a r d e d as t h e midpoint in line
between nineteenth-century Utopians a n d twentieth-century planners (Camhis,
1979: 27), put forward his g a r d e n cities proposal. In his Three M a g n e t diagram, he
introduces positive and negative elements in town a n d country, and suggests their
marriage as a solution ( H o w a r d , 1 9 6 0 : 48). T h e t o w n is a place of social opportunity
and amusement, with high w a g e s a n d more c h a n c e s of e m p l o y m e n t . O n the other
hand, it is closing out nature a n d is o v e r c r o w d e d ; there are high rents and prices,
excessive hours of toil; distance f r o m w o r k a n d t h e "isolation of c r o w d s " ; fogs,
draughts and slums. T h e c o u n t r y magnet, a s c o m p a r e d with t h e town magnet,
offers beauty a n d wealth; l o w rents; fresh air, s u n l i g h t and health; while there the
hands are out of work, t h e w a g e s are l o w , a n d t h e lack of public spirit and
amusement is felt. A c o m b i n a t i o n of these t w o m a g n e t s w o u l d b e free from the
disadvantages of either ( H o w a r d , 1 9 6 0 : 4 6 ^ 7 ) .
H o w a r d ' s proposal is a city o f 30 inhabitants in a circular form, to b e built in
1000 acres, surrounded b y a rural area of 5000 acres in which 2000 more live. His
ideas were influenced b y t h e m o d e l industrial settlements, the first of which was
built b y Robert O w e n in N e w L a n a r k in Scotland at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. T h e s e model t o w n s w e r e built f o l l o w i n g t h e idea that " g o o d work could
only b e expected from w e l l - f e d , w e l l - c l o t h e d , a n d educated
workers"
LeTO4vJ0B.Ta:
IKlOUlTRlAi- 5
Figure 7.9.
The two garden cities of Welwyn and Letchworth were developed on the basis of
Ebenezer Howard's ideas
204
Images of Perfection
(Trevelyan,1964: 244). In many model towns, the urban form followed the ideal
cities of the Renaissance (Argan,1969; Rosenau,1974), offering a spatial structure for
a Utopian, " p e r f e c t " social order, expressed in "perfect" geometrical forms of circles
and squares.
H o w a r d ' s project is economically based on the concept of changing the value of
land, to be achieved by the migration of a considerable number of people to a
certain area, thus leading to a rise in the value of the land so settled upon. When the
town is fully inhabited, H o w a r d proposes a system of multiplication of settlements.
H e introduces, under the n a m e of "Social Cities", " a cluster of cities . . . grouped
around a Central City". Here, every inhabitant lives in a small town of small size
and gets "all the fresh delights of the country", while living in, and enjoying all the
advantages of, a great city (Howard, 1 9 6 0 : 5 5 , 1 4 2 ) .
With his ' s u p p o r t e r s and colleagues, Howard founded the Garden City
Association in 1899 and began the preparations that led to the building of the
garden cities of Letchworth in 1903-1904 and W e l w y n in 1919-1920 (Figure 7.9).
The design of the garden cities was influenced b y garden suburbs. Raymond
Unwin, the architect of the first garden city, had introduced his fundamental design
principle in N e w Earswick garden suburb: that the main road should be straight
and that m i n o r roads should bend. This was completed by cul-de-sacs, which
reflected a n e w attitude to the design of houses in relation to the streets, creating a
sense of enclosure and intimacy (Bayley,1975:18).
T h e plan of Letchworth, 55 km north of London, was designed b y Unwin and
Parker, with great attention paid to landscaping. It is a largely radial scheme but is
far from a geometrical or rigid form. Welwyn, the second garden city, was founded
in 1 9 1 9 - 1 9 2 0 , and designed b y Louis de Soissons. For the design of the housing
areas in both garden cities, the density of 12 houses per acre was seen as ideal, with
a widespread use of cul-de-sacs, and constantly changing street scenes. The roads
could be built hghtly due to the lack of heavy traffic and the greater possibility of
organizing the sewer plan. The cul-de-sacs allowed a reduction in the main road
frontage for the authorities to maintain. Every close was planned to accommodate
anything b e t w e e n 12 and 30 houses. De Soissons applied a ruling principle that the
shops should not be farther than three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km) from any urban
Neighbourhood Unit
A widely influential idea, developed in the United States during the 1920s, was that
of the " n e i g h b o u r h o o d u n i t " . It was based on the concept of the catchment area of a
primary school, within a radius of a quarter to half a mile (0.4-0.8 k m ) , bounded
with main arteries, to provide a safe area for children to reach the school. The
primary school w a s to be used at nights by adults as a c o m m u n i t y centre. The
population of such a neighbourhood unit was, according to the standards of the
overcrowded N e w York, to be about 10000.
Clarence Perry first developed this idea in the Regional N e w York Plan, inspired
by the social concerns of the time. It stemmed, on the scientific side, from Charles
Horton C o u l e y , w h o emphasized the part played by "the intimate, face-to-face
c o m m u n i t y , o n e based on the family, the c o m m o n place, and general shared
205
Radburn
Between the world wars, influenced by Howard and by the experiences of U n w i n
and Parker, the Radburn idea was developed in the United States. This idea, w h i c h
became widespread throughout the world, has been adopted as a device that could
give s o m e order to the apparent disorder of the suburban sprawl.
About 25 k m a w a y from N e w York in N e w Jersey, Radburn was planned to be a
new town. H o w e v e r , not being able to provide the green belt a n d the industrial
zone, it remained a mere suburb. Its planners, Clarence Stein and Flenry Wright,
had previously travelled to Britain to explore n e w ideas. The original idea for the
layout of Radburn, however, was proposed by a young general m a n a g e r , Herbert
Emmerich, in 1928 (Stein,1966: 39).
The R a d b u r n pattern is widely accepted as being a superblock with a park at its
centre. T h e entire block is encircled by a service road, from w h i c h roads lead
inwards to cul-de-sacs giving access to groups of houses. The idea w a s based on the
functional separation of vehicles from pedestrians. Accordingly, the spatial
organization of the house was functionally divided into a service zone and a living
zone. T h e living side of the house, living room and as many as possible b e d r o o m s ,
was facing pedestrian ways running through the central park and its social facilities
in the middle. T h e service side of the house, incorporating the kitchen and the
garage, faced the road. T h e complete separation of pedestrian and vehicular routes
is strengthened b y using bridges and underpasses in connection with other
superblocks (Stein,1966: 3 7 - 7 3 ) .
A s M u m f o r d mentioned, although the superblock and continuous inner park had
been employed before by U n w i n and Parker in Hampstead G a r d e n Suburb, these
were not used systematically or universally (Stein,1966: 16). Furthermore, s o m e
changes had been introduced. These included the separation of the neighbourhood
access road from the main traffic arteries, as outlined by Perry's neighbourhood
unit concept; and the school and swimming pool set in the park, as the civic nucleus
of a neighbourhood. At the s a m e time, what s e e m e d to undermine these changes
was the retention of the conventional suburban house (Mumford,1975).
206
Images of Perfection
2.
M i a o u
K6M6s.- AccEssioXiT/
Figure 7.10.
Four main stages can be identified in the design of the British new towns
207
208
Images of Perfection
wider contexts of which they were a part. Although each of the new towns
attempted to solve the design problems of a specific case, it is possible to make
s o m e generalizations that w o u l d allow us to typify the design approaches in four
main stages (Figure 7.10). T h e first stage is that of isolated, small towns with a
limited mobility and a radial, dispersed pattern of form. T h e second is a more
compact u r b a n entity which, under the influence of vehicular movement, has
found a linear form. The third is a synthesis of these two opposites, and the fourth
stage is the introduction of an open matrix of roads to which urban fabric is freely
adapted.
1. In the first stage, the aim was to create a healthy and relaxed environment as
opposed to the overcrowded city and its potential conflict of social classes. The
design brief was to lay out a small settlement whose inhabitants, with their
supposedly simple and predictable activity patterns, were expected to form wellintegrated communities.
In the first generation of the new towns, such as in Stevenage, Crawley and
H e m e l Hempstead, the influence of garden cities is visible. T h e town consists of
separate, relatively independent neighbourhood units of low density, gathering
together around a town centre. The density is not high and it is possible to walk
to the s h o p p i n g centre or workplace in a few minutes. The industrial zone is often
concentrated at one or two points, served by railway and major roads, and the
town centre is nearby. T h e design of the town centre is based on the pattern of the
market square. One- or two-storey cottages are standing on either side of winding
roads and cul-de-sacs. Each neighbourhood unit, formed of one or more
superblocks, has the required population to support a primary school that has
been located in the middle of the superblock for easy and safe access, and not far
from the community centre. Green space fills the distance between
n e i g h b o u r h o o d units. T h e socio-spatial system is arranged according to the idea
of clusters a n d centres, which is seen as a means to social integration of the
townspeople (Osborn & Whittick,1963; Chermayeff & Tzonis,1971; LlewelynDavies,1972; Gibberd,1972,1982; Champion et al., 1977; Aldridge,1979).
2. An increase in the target population of the new towns leads to the problems and
needs of larger towns. A change in scale causes changes in transportation: from
pedestrian and bicycle to public transport and private car, signifying an increase
in mobility. A limited, self-supporting town changes to being a town set in a
regional context. A change appears in social behaviour: mobility renders the
concept of social contact within a neighbourhood unjustified and obsolete.
T o allow for the greater mobility resulting from the use of private cars, and in
response to the demand for urbanity, as opposed to suburban dispersal, the
radial dispersal form of the first generation was later changed to a compact linear
form, as exemplified b y Cumbernauld n e w town and the planned new town.
H o o k (Greater London Council, 1965). This second type of town w a s related to its
regional context but in contrast to its immediate surroundings. It had a strong
concentrated linear centre from which all the inhabitants w e r e housed within
walking distance. The pattern of the town centre changed, becoming dominated
by covered shopping streets with multilevel vehicular and pedestrian access.
Separate neighbourhoods w e r e eliminated and the heights of buildings were
209
increased. T h e population target became higher and the industrial zone tended to
be spread over the town.
3. C o m b i n i n g these ideas puts forward the third stage in the evolution of design
concepts in the new towns. In the second generation, such as in Runcorn,
Redditch and Irvine, a town is formed of separate residential units of certain size
connected with each other b y a public transport route, around whose stopping
points local facihfies are concentrated. Each unit shows a radial scheme based on
walking distance, but a number of units, producing the whole town, are g r o u p e d
in a linear form around a public transport route as the generator of urban form. A
network of roads encompasses these c o m p o n e n t parts of the town structure,
connecting them to each other (Wilson & Womersley,1966; Ling,1967; Irvine N e w
T o w n Corporation,1971).
4. W h e n the situation and d e m a n d s changed, as society became wealthier and m o r e
mobile, the problem was no longer one of simply providing m i n i m u m acceptable
standards; the question was n o w about striving for a better quality of hfe. In these
circumstances, with higher levels of car ownership, freedom of choice and
flexibility were sought. T h e design approaches had to be adapted to the ever
changing conditions, or be regarded as outdated or paternalistic prescriptions
belonging to previous ages, especially at a time when the rationale behind a
s c h e m e might be subject to change, even before the s c h e m e had b e c o m e
operational.
In the fourth stage of the evolution of n e w town design, exemplified b y
W a s h i n g t o n and Milton Keynes, these ideas are reflected in the complete
p r e d o m i n a n c e of the private car over the town structure, and the car becoming a
crucial factor in design. The grid network as a large flexible infrastructure is the
main characteristic of the most recent new towns. In the course of change, the
private car has shifted the local centre from the heart of the residential area to its
b o u n d a r i e s just to make it accessible from the road network (Llewelyn-Davies,
W e e k s & partners,!966; Llewelyn-Davies,1972; Walker,1982; Holley,1983).
Nearly all these transformations in 30 years of n e w town design might be seen to be
related to the increasing importance of mobility as the cardinal feature of the
Zeitgeist. W h a t remained unchanged in these developments, however, was the
search for s o m e form of social interaction through design. Even though its
systematic use as a means of social engineering becomes discredited, the essence of
cul-de-sac a n d cluster housing continues its centrality in the design approaches in
the n e w towns. The use of superblocks and abundant green space are other
u n c h a n g e d features, although considerable changes in detail are traceable. T h e
functional segregation of access, vehicular and pedestrian, remains approximately
the same, although less vigorous than in the early stages.
New Urbanism
T h e N e w Urbanism is a movement in the United States which challenges urban
sprawl b y arguing for the channelling of suburban growth into the creation of small
towns and settlements. In putting this proposal forward, it relies heavily on a
revival of the town-planning concepts developed in the early twentieth century, but
210
Figure 7 . 1 1 . German Village is an example of the kind of American sma'l town that New
Urbanists try to recreate. [Columbus,
Ohio,
USA)
Images of Perfection
211
sized (from 40 to 200 acres) and configured (a radius of no more than one-quarter mite) so that
most of its homes are within a three-minute walk of neighbourhood parks and a five-minute
walk of a central square or common. There, a meeting hall, child-care centre, bus stop and
convenience store are located. Each neighbourhood would include a variety of housing types and
income groups
(Bressi,1994: xxxii)
This is put forward as a reaction to the "congested, fragmented, unsatisfying
suburbs and the disintegrating urban centres of today" (Duany, Plater-Zyberk &
Chellman,1989: 71). These, they argue, are not "the products of laissez-faire" or " t h e
inevitable results of mindless greeci", but "are thoroughly planned to be as they a r e " .
T h e zoning and subdivision ordinances are "virtual recipes for urban disintegration"
as they "dictate only four criteria for urbanism: the free and rapid flow of traffic;
parking in quantity; the rigourous separation of uses; and a relatively low density of
b u i l d i n g s " ( D u a n y , Plater-Zyberk & Chellman,1989: 71). Their vision of the N e w
Urbanism, in contrast, is one which, "offers an alternative future for the building and
re-building of regions. Neighbourhoods that are compact, mixed-use and pedestrian
friendly; districts of appropriate location and character; and corridors that are
functional and beautiful can integrate natural environments and man-made
communities into a sustainable w h o l e " (Duany & Plater-Zyberk,1994: xx).
T h e y identify the fundamental organizing elements of the N e w Urbanism as the
n e i g h b o u r h o o d , the district and the corridor, a n d then offer principles of design for
each. A n ideal neighbourhood should have (1) " a centre and an edge"; (2) a n
" o p t i m a l s i z e " of " a quarter mile from centre to edge"; (3) a "balanced mix of
activitiesdwelling, shopping, working, schooling, worshipping and recreating";
(4) " a fine n e t w o r k of interconnecting streets", which organizes building sites and
traffic; (5) priority for " p u b l i c space and the appropriate location of civic
b u i l d i n g s " ( D u a n y & Plater-Zyberk,1994: xvii). T h e district, the second fundamental
element, is " a n urbanized area that is functionally specialized". Rather than an area
with o n e function, it is an area in which a function predominates and other
functions are clustered a r o u n d it, as is the case in tourist districts with their
associated hotels, retail and entertainment units. Districts and neighbourhoods are
spatially organized on similar principles. T h e third fundamental element, the
corridor, is connecting, and at the same time separating, the other two. A corridor,
which can include wildlife and railways, is not " t h e haphazardly residual space that
remains outside subdivisions and s h o p p i n g " . It is true that "it is defined by its
adjacent districts and neighbourhoods and provides entry to t h e m " , but it should
be seen as " a n urban element characterized b y its visual continuity" (Duany &
Plater-Zyberk,1994: x i x - x x ) . This continuity is partly ensured through the use of
grid-like street patterns. T h e y argue that frequent connections in street networks
would p r o v i d e a choice of paths and so ease traffic congestion, while controlling the
speed of cars (Bressi,1994: xxxii). T o ensure that their design of settlements
maintains the essential character of the environment and at the same time allows
the participation of various designers, they have produced n e w ordinances and
codes, which h a v e become their hallmark ( D u a n y , Plater-Zyberk & Chellman,1989).
A n o t h e r major figure in N e w Urbanism is Peter Calthorpe, who applies n e w
urbanist ideas at the regional scale. T h e Environmental Design Research
Association's advance notice for the 1996 events introduced him as being named b y
212
Images of Perfection
213
Neiusweek magazine as one of 25 "innovators on tfie cutting e d g e " for his work
redefining the models of urban and suburban growth in America. The
Environmental Design Research Association describes Calthorpe as one of "100
visionaries that could change your life". Calthorpe defines urbanism through
"diversity,
pedestrian
scale,
public
space
and
structure
of
bounded
n e i g h b o u r h o o d " . He then argues that these principles should be applied at all
scales of a metropolitan region and in all locations. Whether we are dealing with
n e w growth, the suburbs, regeneration of the inner cities, or with the region as a
whole, all should be (re)organized according to the characteristics of urbanism.
Although these principles of urbanism have been understood and applied inside
the cities, w h a t needs attention now is suburbia and the urban regions
(Calthorpe,1994: xi).
(Wilson & Womersley,1966) and Irvine (Irvine N e w T o w n Corporation,1971) newtowns. A l t h o u g h there is a clear difference in the economic b a s e of the N e w
Urbanist settlements and the garden cities, there are a large n u m b e r of similarities
between them. O n e difference is in the wide u s e of Radburn cul-de-sacs in the n e w
towns, as o p p o s e d to the use of grids in n e w urbanist settlements. A n o t h e r
difference b e t w e e n them is the conscious use of historic architectural styles and
traditional visual qualities in N e w Urbanism. Garden cities and the British N e w
T o w n s , on the other hand, w e r e new developments which embodied progress and
modernity at the time of their introduction. A point of contradiction is, therefore,
that N e w U r b a n i s m uses the s a m e functionalist language of modernism, but wears
a traditional appearance, especially in the works of Duany and Plater-Zyberk with
their picturesque renderings.
There should be defined edges (i.e., Urban Growth Boundaries), the circulation system should
function for the pedestrian (i.e., supported by regional transit systems), public space should be
formative rather than residual (i.e., preservation of major open-space networla), civic and
private domains should form a complementary
hierarchy (i.e., related cultural centres,
commercial districts and residential neighbourhoods) and population and use should be diverse
(i.e., created by adequate affordable housing and a jobs/housing
balance).
(Calthorpe,1994: xi)
This formulation by Peter Calthorpe has led to a basic template known as "transitoriented d e v e l o p m e n t " or T O D , which is "a dense, tightly woven community that
mixes stores, housing and offices in a compact, walkable area surrounding a transit
station" (Bressi,1994; xxxi). A direct relationship between the pattern of public
transport and the land use is therefore established. The main idea being "Put more
origin and destination points within an easy walk of a transit stop and more people
will use transit" (Bressi,1994; xxxi).
Attempts to apply the n e w urbanist ideas to regions are a major challenge facing
this m o v e m e n t , as a conference early in 1995, entitled " N e w Regionalism",
explored. T h e n e w urbanist settlements are increasingly designed and built, and
their codes finding application in wider contexts. For example, in the
redevelopment of the H u l m e district of Manchester inner city, a modified version of
Duany and Plater-Zyberk's codes has been used.
T h e first statement of n e w urbanism can be seen to be Leon Krier's entry in the La
Villette competition, which won the second prize in 1976. N e w Urbanism draws
heavily u p o n Garden Cities, the neighbourhood unit concept, and the British New
T o w n s , although the latter often fail to be mentioned. For example, Ebenezer
H o w a r d had proposed the idea of Social Cities, where a cluster of garden cities
were interlinked. This was the basis for s o m e n e w towns to use public transport as
the spine of the development of compact settlements, as exemplified by Redditch
Conclusion
The main characteristics of urban form in the twentieth century have been the
growth of metropolitan areas and the spread of suburbs. Urban design has offered
three forms of evaluation and response to these characteristics. O n e trend has
accepted a n d appreciated the metropolis. U r b a n i s m , in its post-modern or m o d e r n
versions, w h e t h e r celebrating the plurality and diversity of the city or attempting to
give order to it, has focused on the city. The decline of the city centres has been a
generator of, and a serious threat to, the urbanist Utopias. Another, anti-urban,
trend has b e e n the gradual retreat of the m i d d l e classes from the metropolis to its
outskirts. Suburbanization has created an individualist utopia for the bourgeoisie, a
Utopia which is in decline, threatened by social disintegration, rising crime and
infrastructure costs. A s against this suburbanization, and its extreme form,
exurbanization, and against the anonymity of the metropolis, the small towns have
been celebrated and promoted as the hallmarks of collective living, offering an
alternative utopia of micro-urbanism. As against the other two trends, which are
integrated into the political and economic systems of the western cities, micro-
214
CHAPTERS
216
217
218
219
220
conservation, rather than a role in the future s h a p e of urban areas. What are the
m e c h a n i s m s in which a civil society can influence o r even manage urban space and
its transformation? Public participation in the planning and design process may
only be a small step towards such an undertaking. There are those, such as
Cfu-istopher Alexander, w h o p r o m o t e the idea of changing altogether the way space
is being produced, to return to self-help development processes. But the extent to
which this can relate to the c o m p l e x division of labour and the highly organized
processes of production and advanced technologies is unclear. Another trend in
giving a voice to civil society has been to focus on public spaces of cities. These have
b e e n idealized as sites for intersubjective communication, to strengthen the arenas
in which a civil society can develop. Against the current of socio-spatial
polarization and privatization of urban space in the building b o o m s of the 1980s,
e m p h a s i s on public space in the cities grew, as another manifestation of a search for
social and spatial cohesion. A t the same time as the urban space was being
developed by private c o m p a n i e s and sold to the middle classes, public spaces
within the city became a selling point for attracting potential customers. The drive
for public space found a d o u b l e role, as m a n y other urban design ideas which had
developed as a critique, w e r e utilized by the development industry once the
industry recognized some c o m m e r c i a l value in these ideas.
T h e t w o trends of public participation in planning and design and the emphasis
on urban public spaces are both reactions by the civil society to the pressures that
the systems of power and m o n e y have created in urban development. Yet these
major trends h a v e remained largely marginal as their impact on space production
patterns has b e e n relatively insignificant. For civil society to have a stronger role in
space production, there m u s t b e either a substantial change in the way space is
p r o d u c e d , through a restructuring of the construction industry, or there should be a
change in the w a y space production is regulated and controlled. In the absence of
such changes, the role of civil society in space production may only be limited, as it
is n o w , to the role of c o n s u m e r s w h o interact, often on an individual basis but in
increasingly sophisticated w a y s , with the systems of supply in the marketplace.
Access to this market exchange, however, is limited to those w h o have sufficient
resources. As such, a lack of resources means social and spatial marginalization and
therefore the disintegration of urban space. It w a s partly against a fear of sociospatial disintegration that w e see the emergence of a micro-urbanist trend by urban
designers in the last two centuries, seeking to create orderly, manageable towns and
n e i g h b o u r h o o d s . This has often been a communitarian attempt in the face of
individualistic tendencies of suburbanism and the amorphous mass of the cities.
H o w e v e r , combined with land and property markets subtext, in which socio-spatial
hierarchies and segregation are established according to access to resources, the
effect of micro-urbanism has remained marginal, or even leading to further sociospatial disintegration.
In this book, it has been a r g u e d that we need to confront the ambiguities of urban
design b y a broad definition, rather than a n a r r o w delimitation of the subject
matter. It has b e e n argued that w e should see u r b a n design as the multidisciplinary
activity with which we shape and manage u r b a n environments. Urban designers
are interested in the process of shaping urban space and in the product of this
process, the space they help to shape. They need to be familiar with all scales of
221
these processes and products. T o do this, they need to address technical, social and
expressive concerns, through visual and verbal m e a n s of communication.
The twentieth-century application of Cartesian rationality in the transformation
of urban space has been w i d e l y associated with a disregard for and displacement of
the lifeworld. In response, w e cannot afford to abandon rationality, as design is by
definition a rational conduct. W h a t we can do, however, is to broaden the scope of
rationality and to conduct u r b a n design accordingly.
It has b e e n argued here that to transform urban space through urban design, w e
need to understand urban space. This understanding is best m a d e possible b y
concentrating on the intersection between space production and everyday life,
between e x c h a n g e value and u s e value, b e t w e e n the systems of m o n e y and power
and the lifeworld, b e t w e e n the socio-spatial structures and the agencies interacting
with them. U r b a n designers operate at these intersections and the nature of their
work is best understood in this context. T o b e aware of this position means that
urban designers can and s h o u l d pay attention to their role, which can at best be
helping the o n e side in the intersection which is often most at risk of being
undermined.
To b e able to make this contribution, it is crucial to see urban space in a sociospatial context, i.e. the physical space with its social and psychological significance.
Urban design as a socio-spatial process has to approach this context very broadly
and dynamically. Any n a r r o w concentration o n one of the aspects of this complex
context a n d process w o u l d lead to an undermining of the important roles that
urban design can play.
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103,105,107,109,128,136,138,140,151,
156,171,174-5,181,188,191,197,199,
202, 205, 219
Broadacre City 197, 201
California 36,96,200
Calthorpe, P. 211-12
Cambodia 201
Canary Whari 142
capitalism 17,42, 57-9,127-8,133,135,
185-6,193,200
Central Asia 36
character 174,179-81,199
Charter of Athens xi, 22, 28,46-7,158,190
Chicago 4 8 - 9 , 5 5 , 1 2 3 ^ , 1 7 7
children 65
CIAM 45,190
Cincinnati 205
civil society 144, 219
Coleman, A. 80
collective action 167
collectivism 185
Colquhoun, A. 9-10, 27
commercial property 139
commodification 17, 24, 59, 80,101,132,
137-42,
communism 185,191, 200
communitarian 202,220
construction industry 128-9,132, 220
context 170,172,182,186-8,194
contextualism 114,168-69
contrast 14,180,198
Conzen, M. 54
Cosgrove, D. 26
Covent Garden 141
Crawley 208
creative process 115-16,165
crime 80-3,144,146,176,186,188, 200, 213
Cubism 20-1
Cullen, G. 45
cultural homogenization 142
238
Index
Cumbernauld 208
cyberspace 15
Daly, C. 199
Dayton, Ohio 82
de Certeu, M. 76,79
De Soissons, L. 204
Dear, M. 15, 76
decentralization 201,206
decentred locality 25-6, 76
definition of urban design 91,117, 220-21
Delafons, J. 179
Denmark 179
Derrida, J. 99
Descartes, R. 110,221
design brief 174-7,181
design control 160-82
design guidance 174-5,179,181
design process x-xi, 93,104,110-16,121,
125,127,128,162,183, 215-16, 220
design review 177-9
development agencies 135-7,139,154, 218
development briefs 175-7
development industry 132,196, 218-20
development plan 172^, 177,181
development process 43, 61, 88, 91,104,
119,130-54,156,184, 220
models of 122-30,136-7
difference 17-19, 23, 29, 36, 63-4, 69, 74,78,
82-3, 87,96,145,194,217
DoE 104,128,171-2
Duany, A. 210,213
Eagleton,!. 16,70
Edinburgh 86,187
Egypt 9
Einstein, A. 5,7,20, 215
Eisenstein, S. 14
Eidon Square 152
elitism 167
emancipation 194
empiricism 14,111
England 186,188,196,199
Enlightenment 42, 75,185,194
environmental cognition 63-5
environmental criminology 81-2
environmental determinism 35, 56,102
equilibrium 123-4
Essex 174
Europe 42, 54, 86-7,142,144,169,185-6,
188,191,199
evervday life 18-19,29-30, 71, 73-6,87-8,
156,181,193, 217-19, 221
exchange value 101,130-2, 139-40,154,
157,161,216,218-19,221
exurbs 198
index
239
202
paradigm 183
paradox of architecture 13-14
Paris 4 1 , 7 7 , 1 8 0 , 1 8 8 - 9 0 , 1 9 9
Parsons, T. 52
Peirce, C. 69
perfectibilism 185
Perry, C. 204-5
240
Index
Index
securidzation 141
security cameras 153
semiology/semiotics 16,19, 69-73
Sennett, R. 23,77-8
serial vision 45
Sheffield 173-4,199
Shin'ani, H. 32
shopping mall 73, 86,144,150-3, 193, 200
sign 69-70,72-3
signification 68
Simmel, G. 78-9
simultaneity 21
Sitte, C. 47
smalltown 186,195,201-13
Smart, J. 5
social process 103,113-15,149
social realm 148
socialism 200-1
Soja,E. 15,22
South America 36
Soviet Union 185,191,200-1,217
space and architecture 7,10-11,22, 27,32,
3 4 - 5 , 3 9 - 4 0 , 4 4 , 5 5 , 87,135
space and geography 6-7,10,15, 20,22-3,
26-7, 32, 34-5, 49,53-5,135
space and philosophy 4-5, 87
space and sociology 4,10,35,57, 74, 80,87,
121,135
space
absolute 4 - 7 , 1 2 , 1 5 , 2 1 5
abstract 16-20, 96,156
created 6,38-9
defensible 82-3
differential 16-20,156
mental 12-16,216
multinational 193
natural 35-7
organization of 101,174,185, 205, 216,218
physical 10,15, 55, 62
production of 16,18, 26, 29, 85,113,119,
133,144,153,155,158-9,172,181-2,
215, 218-19, 221
public 94,144-54, 212, 218, 220
real 12-16,216
relational 4 - 7 , 1 2 , 1 5 , 2 1 5
social 10,15, 62,122
unitary theory of 16, 29
space-time 20,22-3
spatial analysis 49, 52
spatial division of labour 59-60
spatial eye 14
spatial management 102
spatial segregation 83, 85,122,145-6,153,
200, 213
spatial structure 31, 33,35,48-53, 55,57
specialization 26-8,97
241