Lesson V Theories of city III

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Lesson V Theories of city (III)

• The symbolic dimension of space
• Concerns the meaningful of physical environment
  and emotions that people assign to places.
• At the heart of the relationship between
  individual and space.
• Some authors 
•  
• Claude LEVI STRAUSS
• Tristes Tropiques, Plan, Paris, 1955 trans. John
  Weightman and Doreen Weightman, 1973 translated
  as A World on the Wane
• Richard SENNETT
• The Conscience of the Eye The design and social
  life of cities, Faber and Faber, London, 1991.
• Flesh and Stone The Body and the City in Western
  Civilization, W. W. Norton Company Édition ,
  1996.

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• Spatial environments contain signs and symbols,
  represented in peoples minds and in the
  conception of the city by politicians and
  ordinary residents. The meaningful of space draws
  its meaning and significance from social
  activities carried out there. 
• an important part of metropolitan culture.
• Kevin Lynch (1918-1984)
•  
• Professor at Massachusetts Institute of
  Technology (MIT) and urban planner.
•  
• References
• The Image of the City, MIT Press,Cambridge MA
  1960
• Good City Form, MIT Press, Cambridge MA and
  London 1984, 1981
• Managing the Sense of a Region, MIT Press,
  Cambridge MA and London 1976, 1980
• A Theory of Good City Form, MIT Press, Cambridge
  MA and London 1981

3

• Explores the presence of time and history in the
  urban environment and how urban environments
  affect people.
• Studies how users perceive and organize spatial
  information as they navigate through cities ?
  users understood their surroundings in consistent
  and predictable ways, forming mental maps with
  five elements
• paths, the streets, sidewalks, trails, and other
  channels in which people travel
• edges, perceived boundaries such as walls,
  buildings, and shorelines
• districts, relatively large sections of the city
  distinguished by some identity or character
• nodes, focal points, intersections or loci
• landmarks, readily identifiable objects which
  serve as reference points

4

• Variation exists among individuals regarding how
  they depict a space but also places themselves
  vary in their ability to invoke detailed mental
  images (mental maps).
• The legibility of space (psycho-sociological
  level)
• Some spaces are more legible than others because
  they are better designed ? the importance of
  imageability facilitates movement or use.
•  
• A legible space one in which the external world
  recalls representations that we make of it. To be
  legible a space must convey meaning.
• The legibility of a city is essential and depends
  on the image that would make people (or users) ?
  This image has two functions
• helping to identify and move easily and quickly
• providing an emotional safety

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• The varying degrees of legibility show
• the importance of our mental structures in our
  ability to discover space
• the role of socialisation which teaches us to
  discover how society and places are interwoven.
• The collective images result from a common
  culture and interaction with the same physical
  reality.
• The legibility of space depends on
• -        Individual characteristics
• -        Clearness, understand ability, of the
  layout
• -        Quality of the architectural forms
• -      Sharing the same symbols all people who
  share the same symbols will read the place the
  same way.
• The phenomenon of the mental maps is but a
  special case of the more general semiotics of
  space.

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• The semiology of urban space
• The space can be understood as a non-verbal
  system of signifying elements. This approach
  looks at the city from the angle of symbolic
  systems that are vehicles for communication.
•  
• Semiology semiotics the study of signs and
  symbols and their meaning and use
• Some references
• James S. DUNCAN, The City as text  the politics
  of landscape interpretation in the Kandyan
  kingdom, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ.Press,
  1990.(consacré aux anciennes cités royales de Sri
  Lanka) fait le point sur ces questions.
• BARTHES R., LEmpire des signes, Paris, Skira,
  1970.
• SONTAG Susan (dir.), A Barthes Reader, Hill
  Wang (juillet 1983)
•  

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• Françoise Choay (1925 - )
• Philosopher and urban planner.
•  
• Some references
•  
• Urbanisme, Utopies et réalité  Une anthologie,
  "Urbanism, Utopia and Reality" Seuil, coll.
   Points , Paris, 1965.
• Modern City Planning in the 19th Century,
  Littlehampton Book Services Ltd, Collection 
  Planning Cities, 1969.
• City Planning in the XIXth Century , New York,
  Braziller, 1970.
• The Rule and the Model On the Theory of
  Architecture and Urbanism, MIT Press, 1997
  (published in French 1980).
• The Invention of the Historic Monument, Cambridge
  University Press, 2001 (published in French
  1980).

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• Cities are based on a system of signifying
  elements ? can be apprehended by the same methods
  as those of general linguistics.
• New urban building complexes lack rich sets of
  meaning ? the interest in a semiology of city is
  desirable because it would foster an architecture
  more meaningful.
•  
• F. CHOAY identifies certain urban forms that are
  strong signifiers of social systems.
• Example the case for the cities of Ancient
  Greece and the medieval city.
•  
• See in Le Sens de la ville, (en coll.), éd.
  Seuil 1972.
• The Greek city of the 6th century BC- Athens
• Agora the more valued place.
• Both a busy market and the place of democratic
  institutions.
• The political and religious buildings were
  located on this site
• The Agora was the center of social life.
• Minor elements arranged around the square the
  family residences whose semiotic weights are
  identical
• ? This structure corresponds to that of the
  political system (the citizens' legal and
  political equality) and the religious rituals.

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• On the role of spatial forms fostering the
  expression of democracy in the Greek city, see
  also SENNETT R., The Spaces of Democracy, Raoul
  Wallenberg Lecture, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
  1998.
• The medieval city
•  
• a system defined by an enclosure
• Two types of elements are opposed
• maxi-elements a very strong symbolic meaning
  (the cathedrals, palaces, and squares)
• mini-elements the basic units (houses) which
  are both similar yet already bear the traces of
  differentiation
• ?? This urban system regulates and orders daily
  life by expressing the central role of religion
  and the feudal system.

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• CHOAY makes a distinction between
• -        Closed systems hyper-signifiers
• They are signifiers through the interplay of
  their own elements without needing additional
  verbal or graphic systems ? They are pure, and
  fulfil a key social integration role.
• -        Open systems hypo-signifiers
• The modern city is an open social system with
  changing rapidly. It has lost its purity and
  semantic autonomy, for it requires external
  verbal or graphic additionnal codes. Furthermore,
  the modern city's social integration role is
  assisted by other communication systems
  (printing, the media).
•  

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• The Renaissance the period of rupture between
  hyper- and hypo-signifier spaces an
  organisation of the pictorial space took place
  that puts the aesthetic and stresses the
  dimensions of performance, ceremony and games.
  This transformation was not experienced equally
  by all residents.
•  
• These transformations are accentuated and
  amplified with industrialisation predominant
  role of economics.  
• Conclusion
• The specificity of the urban perception is
  something different from aesthetic perception
  space is not perceived the same way as one
  perceives a painting but formed more by a series
  of existential, practical and emotional links
• ? A considerable difference between aesthetic
  perception and perception of urban space.
  Awareness of this difference should be a key to
  city planning. The corollary of the specificity
  of urban perception is the legibility of the
  urban space.

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• Urban anthropology
• a relatively new and developing field.
• Some references
•  
• BASHAM Richard, Urban Antrhopology. The
  Cross-Cultural Study of Complex Societies, Palo
  Alto, Ca., Mayfield Publishing Cy, 1978.
• EAMES Edwin GOODE Judith Granich, Anthropology
  of the City. An Introduction to Urban
  Anthropology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ,
  Prentice-Hall, 1977.
• HANNERTZ Ulf, Exploring the City. Inquiries
  toward an Urban Anthropology, New York, Columbia
  University, 1980 (translated in French 1983).
• PRESS Irwin SMITH Estellie, Urban Place and
  Process Readings in the Anthropology of Cities,
  New York London, Macmillan, 1981.

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• M. AUGE (1935-) - From space to place and
  non-place
• Reference
• (Howe J. translator), Non-Places Introduction to
  an Anthropology of Supermodernity, Verso,
  London/New York, 1995 (Published in French in
  1992).
• A distinction between space and place
• - space a "geometrical" fact
• - place an anthropological and historical
  layer
• expresses the identity of the group
• Modernity fosters the production of non-places
  anonymous spaces frequented daily by a growing
  number of people.
• Example
• the infrastructure needed for rapid circulation
  of people and goods (freeways, intersections,
  stations, airports)
• the means of transportation (automobiles, trains,
  planes)
• large hotel chains with interchangeable rooms
• the opposite of a home, a residence, of a place
  in the common sense of the term.

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• General conclusion
• Two broad classes of perspective
• Processes to transform urban space as the result
  of aggregate individual choices - focus on
  demand-side
• City is the expression of individual desires
• Focus on factors within the city
• Urban organization is not the product of any
  particular interest (of a group) but as the
  interplay of many separate ones.
• Culturalist approach (cf. human ecology of the
  Chicago School ethnographic approach) focus
  on factors within the city.

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• (2) Processes to transform urban space as the
  result of structural transformations of advanced
  industrial economies - focus on supply-side
• City is the expression of social driving forces
• Focus on factors outside the city
• Marxist approach, urban political economy, world
  systems theory
• In fact
• Supply and demand reciprocal processes
• Space is structured by a dialectical process
• a context produced and structured by actions,
  which are the result of interactions between
  individuals and between individuals and
  structures
• AND
• a context that nurtures and structures the
  practices of actors