27796925 ali mad ani pour s design of urban space an inquiry into a socio spatial process

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Design of Urban Space An Inquiry into a Socio-spatial Process

University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

JOHN WILEY & SONS Chichester • New York • Brisbar)e • Toronto • Singapore

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Contents

Library of Congress Cataloging~in-Publication 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 planning—History—20th century. 3. Architecture and society—History—20th century. I. Title. NA9053.S6M33 1996 7ir,4—dc20 96-21431

CIP

British Library Cataloguing in Publication 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.

Introduction

PART O N E PERSPECTIVES INTO U R B A N SPACE

Chapter 1 Unders tanding Urban Space

Di lemmas of space Absolute and relational space Space and mass Physical and social space Mental and real space Abstract and differential space Space and time Space and place -Space and specialization Conclusion

Chapter 2 Structural Frameworks of Urban Space

Socio-spatial geometries of urban space Natural space Created space

Urban form and historical processes The city as a work of art The city as an embodiment of functions Ecology of urban structure The internal structure of the city

Urban morphology Political economy of urban structure Conclusion

Chapter 3 People in the City

Environmental cognition

A behavioural approach to space Mapping urban images

4 4 7

10 12 16 20 23 26 28

31

31 35 38 39 43 45 48 49 53 56 60

63

63 65 66

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Contents Contents v i i

Meaning and urban semiotics 69 Perspective of everyday life 73 Order and difference in urban space 75 City of strangers 78 Fear and crime in urban space 80 W o m e n in urban space 83 Conclusion 87

PART T W O T H E M A K I N G O F URBAN S P A C E

Chapter 4 Urban D e s i g n Process 91

What is urban design? 91 Ambiguities of urban design 92 Macro- or micro-scale urban design? 94 Urban design as visual or spatial management? 97

Urban design as nice images 97 Urban design as the aesthetics of the urban environment 99

Urban design as social or spatial management? 102 Process or product? 104 Professional divide 107 A public or private sector activity? 109 Objective-rational or subjective-irrational? 110

Urban design as a technical process 113 Urban design as a social process 113 Urban design as a creative process 115

Conclusion 117

Chapter 5 Production of the Built Environment 119

Urban design and the development process 119 Models of the development process 122

Supply-demand models . 123 Equilibrium models 123 Event-sequence models 124 Agency models 126

Political economy models 127 Capital - labour models • 127 Structure-agency models 128

Use value and exchange value 130 Structures and agencies 132 Urban development process and urban form 135 A model of the development process 136 Impact of change in the development process on urban space 137 Commodification of space and standardization of design 137 Globalization of the development industry 141

Privatization of public space 144 What is pubhc space? 146

Public sphere theories Public space in a shopping mall?

Conclusion

Chapter 6 Regulat ing Urban Form

The state, the market and space production Planning and design Design control Design control or aesthetic control? Does aesthetics matter? Aesthetic judgement: subjective or objective? W h o sets the aesthetic s tandards? Good urban form Planning documents and design

Government advice Development plans Design guides Design briefs

Other experiences of design control Conclusion

Chapter 7 Images of Perfection

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 small town paradigm Garden cities

. • Neighbourhood unit Radburn Planned decentralization of London British new towns N e w Urbanism

Conclusion

Chapter 8

B ib l iography

Index

Des ign of Urban Space

148 150 153

155

155 158 160 161 163 165 167 169 171 172 172 174 175 177 181

183

185 186 188 188 192 196 197 200 200 201 201 202 204 205 206 206 209 213

215

223

237

How do we make sense of a city when walking along any of its streets, thinking about the complexity of what w e see before our eyes and wondering about that which lies behind the facades of the bui ldings and beyond the bend of the street? How do w e read and interpret the tangle of overlapping and intertwined stories that this collection of people, objects and events offers? As w e walk down what seems to be an endless labyrinth, we m a y w o n d e r about change in this urban scene. We may be conscious of a constant transformation of this landscape, or rather cityscape, around us, a mutat ion that w e have come to associate with livelihood. Without movement and change, we have learnt, there is no life.

If this change seems so essential, how do w e understand it and how do w e relate it to the urban society and urban space? W h a t kind of change is inevitable and what kind of change do w e want to happen? If there are changes that w e prefer to take place, how do w e promote and achieve them? H o w do w e relate to others and to changes they want to see happen? Is it possible, or desirable, to shape and reshape this apparently amorphous complexi ty amid the diversity of interests and preferences? What do w e do to prescribe change and to implement it? What kinds of processes can transform the urban environment? W h a t are the nature and scope of the design of the built environment?

In this book, I set out to understand urban design and the space it helps to shape. As I will show, there is a need to look at space, as a combination of people and objects, from a variety of interconnected perspectives. I will argue that this space is best understood in the process of its creation, and that political, economic and symbolic factors closely interact in such a process. T h e interdisciplinary activity of urban design is an important constituent part of this creation. To understand urban design we will need to understand the urban space and the processes that produce it.

This book is an attempt to delineate the subject areas of urban design in response to three interlinked demands . First, there is a degree of ambiguity and uncertainty about the nature and scope of urban design. Its interdisciplinary nature has led to a lack of clarity in its relationship to urban planning, architecture and landscape design, among a number of disciplines that are involved in the design and development of urban space.

Second, there is a growth of interest in urban design. As widely reflected in professional journals, urban design has increasingly been seen by architects, landscape architects, and planners as an important and exciting area for personal

X Introduction • Introduction xi

new interpretation and application in new circumstances. The approach concentrates on models, and on finding themes on which variations can be made. One difficulty with this approach is that the outcome can be personal and descriptive, rather than analytical and exploratory. Another difficulty is its relationship with social practices within urban space. It tends to assume that many aspects of human understanding and behaviour are relatively timeless; the examples are collected from throughout history, and fail to address the changes in socially constructed forms of behaviour and environment, which vary with time and place. This prescriptive concern, therefore, needs to be supported by an analytical one, a better understanding of the context for which norms are being proposed, and of the nature of the process in which urban space is made and transformed.

A third alternative, which I have adopted in this book, is to see urban design as a socio-spatial process. It is in this arena, I have found, that the nature of urban design can be explored. As it is rooted in political, economic and cultural processes and involves a number of agencies interacting with socio-spatial structures, urban design can only be understood in its socio-spatial context. From this perspective, the technical, creative and social elements of urban design all come together to provide insight into this complex process and its products.

In m y analysis of urban design and space, I have used the term "urban s p a c e " not merely to refer to the spaces between buildings, i.e. voids as distinctive from corporeal mass: I have used the term in a broad sense, to encompass all the buildings, objects and spaces in an urban environment, as well as the people, events and relationships within them. In this analysis, I have found a number of key concepts useful: the necessity of a broad approach to urban design (Lynch, 1981), of seeing urban space as the space of urban regions rather than city centres (Charter of Athens, 1933, cited in Sert, 1944), and through many architectural historians, seeing urban space in a historical context. Analyses of the treatment of space as a commodity, the notions of social space and production of space (Lefebvre,1991), the relationship between political economy analysis and everyday life perspectives (Habermas, 1987; Lefebvre, 1991) and between structures and agencies in social processes (Giddens,1984) have provided powerful insights into urban space and its transformation. The same is true of the notion of how different forms of use, and user expectations, can create conflicts of interest in the production, exchange and use of the built environment (Logan & Molotch,1987).

I start by studying urban space, as the context in which urban design takes place and as the potential product of the design process. This is the subject of Part One, complemented by Part Two, which looks at the urban design process itself.

Part One analyses the ways in which we look at cities and our perceptions and understanding of them. The key word here is our knowledge of cities: our descriptive and analytical approaches to the city, which form the basis of our ways of designing the-urban space. It is subdivided into three chapters. Chapter 1 looks for a meaning of urban space, searching for a concept that is not confined within disciplinary boundaries. It examines the dilemmas and gaps in our understanding of space, and suggests overcoming the dilemmas and bridging the gaps by concentrating on the process of creating urban space. Chapter 2 looks at how urban space is structured. T w o main approaches to the geometry of urban space are identified: one that

1 .

and professional development. Despite the s l o w - d o w n in property development, i interest in urban design has grown, part ly due to a rising awareness of \ environmental issues and concern for the qual i ty of urban experience, especially as j widely publicized debates about urban environments have attracted public | attention. The launch of n e w postgraduate p r o g r a m m e s in universities and of new j urban design journals are indications of this growing attention. Yet there is a dearth ' of published material on the subject. To unders tand the nature of urban design, I there is an increasing and urgent demand for m o r e analysis and debate.

Third, and directly linked to the other two , there is a demand for research in '• urban design. As a practical subject matter, w h e n compared with related academic | fields, urban design has not been sufficiently supported b y research. As a re- ; emerging enterprise, however , it requires a research agenda to be established, ; which would provide it with the much-needed conceptual support . This study is meant to offer a platform that will contribute to this agenda and help to identify the [ possibilities of further research.

The task is being undertaken to bridge a gap that exists in the approaches to ; urban design. The existing literature is most ly written within the architectural traditions and frames of reference, hence approaching normatively the physical dimensions of the built environment. This has clearly led to a lack of mutual ; understanding between those engaged in social dimensions of space, i.e. planners, i urban geographers and urban sociologists as well as urban designers. The book ;

.^ntends to address both physical and social d imensions of the built environment in I an integrated way. Therefore, it targets all groups w h o are involved in the ! relationship between society and space. T h e aim is to provide information and

insight into the dynamics of the design and development of urban space, without ' claiming to offer a comprehensive treatment of the subject but with a hope to offer : coherent perspectives and platforms for debate .

A book on urban design can be written in several \vays. O n e approach is to see '] urban design as a technical process, br inging together the scientific information ; needed in this process. Information about road standards, open space requirements, ' trees and plants in the urban environment , l ighting, infrastructure, patterns of • access, modes of transport, pedestrianization schemes , for example , is needed in the ; design of urban areas. An urban design b o o k could assemble this information or ; concentrate on any one of these areas. This is a valuable approach that has • generated an abundance of material, in the form of design manuals and standards : or in the form of engineering research and expertise. By following this route, •; practical solutions for some urban problems can be sought. However , it does not ] lead to an understanding of the nature and scope of the process in which this technical knowledge is employed, nor to an understanding of its product.

Another approach is to see urban design as a creative process. This approach, ' which has been widely used in architectural writing, brings together a collection of \ examples of urban space, where design has been considered successful, and draws \ conclusions in the form of design principles. This normative approach has a i number of advantages, as it tends to record and to provide a store of good examples ; for designers. The selection of examples and principles takes place on the basis of ' the accumulated wisdom of previous a n d contemporary generations, to b e ; interpreted through the authors ' experience and knowledge, and put forward f o r :

x i i Introduction

PART OlUE

Perspectives into Urban Space

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 women 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 Two 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 Two is devoted to the ways in which urban space is shaped and produced. The 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 Two 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. Some 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, we 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. Micro-urbanism, as exemplified in the British new towns or the American New Urbanism, has confronted and combined both urbanist and anti-urbanist tendencies. Chapter 8 brings the various elements together and offers some conclusions.

CHAPTER 1

Understanding Urban Space

The three chapters in this part concentrate on understanding urban space as an agglomerat ion of people , objects and events. In this chapter, the concepts of space and their relationship with urban design will be explored. In Chapter 2, we will look at h o w this urban space is structured. Chapter 3 then focuses on the people within these structures and on how understanding urban space will not be complete without looking at it from below, as well as from above. Together, these three chapters offer an insight into urban space. Part 2 will follow this understanding by analysing urban design as one of the processes that produce this urban space.

This chapter will focus on space as the main subject matter of urban design and a number of other disciplines and professions. It will explore some of the main approaches to, and the di lemmas associated with, the concept of space. At the risk of oversimpli fying complex concepts in the limited space of a chapter, 1 will search for a meaning of space, which can be used 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 study and transformation of space tend to understand it. Disciplines such as geography, planning and architecture, whose primary concern is with space, h a v e developed concepts of space from different, but inevitably interrelated, perspectives. In their theorizations, they have often benefited from debates in phi losophy, psychology, sociology, mathematics and physics, to name a few. These perspectives vary widely, including seeing space as a physical phenomenon, a condition of mind, 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 dimensions of space, with keys to a better understanding of the debates about space within different disciplines. This will help us to position ourselves and to find our w a y in understanding the intricate maze of urban space and the discussions about it.

T h e search for a meaning of space is a necessary step to take as it is crucial that before moving into the normative realm of design, we explore the realm of the descripti\'e and analytical , in other words , to understand urban space before attempting to transform it. The highly prescriptive and practical nature of design requires a set of information to be assembled, often too quickly due to time limits.

4 Design of Urban Space

Dilemmas of space

W e frequently hear about " 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 we all agree what space means. Yet most would be surprised by the multiplicity of its meaning if we monitored our own usage of the term. The Oxford English Dictionary gives no fewer than 19 meanings for the term, including a "cont inuous expanse in which things exist and move" , an "amount of this taken by a particular thing or available for particular purpose" , and an "interval between points or objects". These meanings reflect some aspects of the term's common understanding as used in daily life. They also illustrate the complexity of the concept and refer to deeply rooted debates about it, which have been running for a long time.

Absolute and relational space

It m a y m a k e sense to start our search for approaches to space at the core of the social sciences. However , despite the signs of increasing attention (e.g. Giddens,1984; Gottdicnor,1994), so far there has hardly been a strong interest in space by sociologists. This is clearly reflected in the absence of the term from most sociology reference books (Hoult,1969; Fairchild,1970; Mitchell,1979; Abercrombie, Hill & Turner,1984; Boudon & Bourricaud,1989; Marshall,1994). Perhaps sociologists have seen the concerns about space as metaphysical, as philosophers have tended to do for a long time. Or perhaps it has been considered to belong to the realm of natural sciences, as shown in the theories of space in physics. Yet there is a strong link between the debates about space in philosophy and physics, where space has been a long-standing concern (Jammer,1954).

T h e philosophical debates about space in the last three centuries have been dominated b y a dichotomy between absolute versus relational theories. The theory

Understanding Urban Space 5

of absolute space was developed by Isaac Newton, who saw space (and time) as real things, as "places as well of themselves as of all other things" (quoted in Speake,1979: 308). Space and time were "containers of infinite extension or duration". Within them, the whole succession of natural events in the world find a definite position. The movement or repose of things, therefore, was really taking place and was not a matter of their relations to changes of other objects (Speake,1979; 309). Before Newton, Aristotle had described space as the container of all objects (Wiener,1975; 297). The ancient Greeks, however, did not create a space of logical, ontological or psychological perceptions. Neither did they develop a general conception of space for geometry and geometrically oriented analysis, as they concentrated on space in cosmology, physics and theology (Bochner,1973).

The relationist theories were developed as a critique of the concept of absolute space. The first major opposition was that of y?ibniz ,^whoJieldJ l iat space_merety consisjgd in relations between non-spatial, mental items (Speake,1979: Smart,1988). Leibniz saw space as " the order of coexisting things, or the order of existence for all things that are contemporaneous" (quoted in Bochner,1973: 297). Another major opposition was that of Kant, who saw space as belonging to the subjective constitution of the mind and not arT empirical conce^pt d e n v e d T r b m outward__ experiences (1993] 48--68). W e can spealTof space only from the"human point of view. Beyond our subjective condition, " the representation of space has no meaning whatsoever", as it "does not represent any property of objects as things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relations to each other" (1993: 52). Space (and time) "cannot exist in themselves, but only in u s " (1993: 61). From this viewpoint, therefore, "what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space" (1993: 54). Whatever the nature of objects as things in themselves, our understanding is confined to our own mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us. Other relationists have tried to preserve the reality of space (and time) b y asserting that they are merely relations between physical objects and events and that, therefore, "the container is not logically distinct from the things it is said to contain" (Speake,1979:309) .

The theories of relativity and relationist theories of space are both opposed to the Newtonian concept of absolute space, but, as Smart (1988) argues, it is important to distinguish them from each other. He believes that some have been misled into thinking that the theory of relativity supports a relational theory, as the special theory of relativity maintains that lengths and periods of time are relative to frames of reference. On the contrary, both special and general theories of relativity appear to be perfectly compatible with an absolute theory of space-t ime. Yet Albert Einstein (1954: xii i-xv) gives us another impression. Ho contrasts the two concepts of relational and absolute space as, "space as positional quality of the world of material objects" versus "space as container of all material objects" (Figure 1.1). The former meaning, he maintains, is rooted in the concept of place, which was older and easier to grasp: material objects have a place in the world, i.e. a small portion of the earth's surface or a group of objects. The latter is a more abstract meaning, seeing space as "unlimited in extent", framing and containing all material objects, a concept that Einstein rejected on the basis of field theory and the concept of four-dimensional space-t ime.

and be employed in a solution-finding exercise. Far too many such exercises take place on the basis of assumptions that are in need of a critical evaluation and a more informed approach to the existing urban space. This is therefore an urgent task, despite theoretical and practical problems inherent in the relationship between knowledge and action, especially in an arena as complex as urban space, in a process as so often mystified and potentially controversial as design.

As we quickly find out by a brief look at some of these conceptualizations of space, there is a multiplicity of gaps and fragmentations in understanding space. These concepts are dominated by dilemmas and conflict of perspectives, conveying the impression that space is contested in almost every sense. A framework with which to confront these divides and to bridge some of these gaps will be put forward, with the aim of moving towards a more coherent understanding of space. It is only with such understanding that urban design as an interdisciplinary activity can promote a common discourse between fragmented circles of professions and disciplines (Madanipour, 1996).


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 these objects? {Cannes, France)

T h e distinctions in philosophy and physics between absolute and relationist theories can also be found in geography, even if not always specifically referred to (Clark,1985; Small & Witherick,1986). In geography, however, there is a tendency to use the term relative space for what philosophy calls relational space, perhaps due to the influence of the theory of relativity. According to J. Blaut (1961), the absolute conceptions of space refer to "a distinct, physical and eminently real or empirical entity in itself". A generation later, these meanings are still echoed in the definition of the concept. For example, absolute space has been defined as "clearly distinct, real, and objective space" (Mayhew & Penny,1992). Absolute space, or "contextual space" is "a dimension which focuses on the characteristics of things in terms of their concentration and dispersion". It is this aspect of space that can be traced back to the early map~inakers and their concern with precise measurement of locational relationships, continued in the contemporary geographer's interest in spatial analysis (Goodall ,1987). In contrast, the relative conceptions refer to space as "mere ly a relation between events or an aspect of events, and thus bound to time and process" (BIaut,1961). It is "perceived by a person or society" (Mayhew & Penny, 1992). Relative, or "created" space is perceptual and socially produced, a


Space and mass

The absence of the term space from the sociology reference b o o k s may seem understandable, considering the absence of interest in space on the part of the sociologists. But its absence from architectural reference books (Hat]'e,1963; Harris and Lever,1966, 1993; Yarwood,1985; Pevsner, Fleming & Honour ,1991 ; Sharp,1991; Curl,1992) is quite noticeable. The only exception I could find was an old text, which defined space as "the area at the corner of a turning s ta i r " (Sturgis,1989, originally published in 1901-2) . This seems to be surpris ing in a discipline where space is considered by many of its distinguished m e m b e r s as its essence (Zevi,1957; Giedion,1967; Tschumi,1990) . One obvious explanation for such a dramatic absence could be that architects' conception and use of the term space are so clear and universally accepted among them that no need has b e e n felt to explain a taken-for-granted term. This simple explanation, however , fades a w a y when we learn that the term is relatively new, in the context of the long history of architecture, and that it has become a controversial concept in recent decades . Perhaps it is not in the dictionaries and encyclopaedias that w e should expect to find a definition of the concept of space in architecture.

Tschumi (1990:13) reminds us that there are two approaches to defining space: the first is "to make space distinct", a normative dimension in which art and architecture are concerned; the second is "to state the precise nature of space" , a descriptive dimension that is the concern of philosophy, mathematics and physics. It is, of course, the enclosure of space, rather than space itself, which is the focus of attention. Bruno Zevi (1957) sees space as the essence of architecture: "The facades and walls of a house, church or palace, no matter how beautiful they may be, are only the container, the box formed by the walls; the content is the internal s p a c e " (1957: 24). This is a concept that is still widely accepted. According to Van der Laan (1983), for example, architectural space comes into being by theerec t ion of two walls , creating a new spacein between them, which is separated from the natural space around them.

Zevi (1957) follows the same definition for urban space , where streets, squares, parks, playgrounds and gardens are all " v o i d s " that h a v e been l imited or defined to

context that focuses on the characteristics of places, as in the early travellers' descriptions of unfamiliar areas (Goodall ,1987).

We might ask ourselves whether the dichotomy b e t w e e n absolute and relational or relative space is a mere difference in the way w e see things, a di f ference which at best can be treated as various aspects of a pluralist unders tanding of the world, or at worst be left aside as a scholastic, metaphysical debate only g o o d for armchair theorists. W e might compare the debate to two w a y s of descr ibing the same phenomenon: a half-filled glass or a half-empty one. After all, it w a s Albert Einstein (1954) himself who said that both concepts of space , "are free creations of the human imagination, means devised for easier c o m p r e h e n s i o n of our sense experiences". But we are quickly reminded that major batt les have been fought in natural sciences over the primacy of these two concepts of space. This debate can be traced to see how it has been powerful enough to inspire a transformation of our built environments.


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 two 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)


create an_enc losed jpace ._ "S ince every architectural 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 two 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 i t " (Zevi, 1957: 30) (Figure 1.2). In the creation of urban space, however, other objects are involved; objects that are not often identified as architecture, such as bridges, obelisks, fountains, triumphal arches, groups of frees, and the facades of buildings. T h e central role that these objects play is the w a y they enclose^ space and define it in new ways. For Zevi, therefore, the essence of architecture " d o e s not lie in the material limitation placed on spatial freedom, but in the way space is organized into meaningful form through this process of l imitation" (quoted in Scruton,1979: 43) . To define space in architecture, therefore, means " to determine boundar ies" within "a uniformly extended material to be model led in various w a y s " (Tschumi,1990: 13-14) .

The concept of architectural space, as "something préexistent and unl imited" , "a positive entity within ivhich the traditional categories of tectonic form and surface occurred" (Colquhoun, 1989: 225) was probably first formulated by August Schmarsow at the end of the nineteenth century. Ever since this influential definition, which is strictly phenomenological and psychological, the ideas of continuity, transparency and indeterminacy have been given new values (Colquhoun,1989: 225).

The emergence of the idea of space coincided with the first movement of modernist architecture, art nouveau (Van de Ven,1993). To the modernists , the concept of space, the relations between interlocking spaces, became accepted as the essence of architecture. Sigfried Giedion (1967) was one of the most influential advocates of modernism and of the concept of space as the essence of architecture. He identified three stages in the conception of space throughout the history of architecture. In the first stage, as exemplified in ancient Egypt, Sumer and Greece, architectural space was created by the interplay of volumes, paying less attention to the interior space. In the second stage, which began in the middle of the Roman period, architectural space was synonymous with the hollowed-out space of the interior. The third stage started at the beginning of the twentieth century with the abolition of the single view of perspective, which brought about an optical revolution. The profound consequences of this development on our perception of the architectural and urban space were the appreciation of the "space-emanating qualities of free-standing buildings", and finding an affinity with the first, ancient stage of space conception (Giedion, 1967: Iv-lvi).

This notion of "an abstract undifferentiated space", however, came under attack by the post-modern urban criticism (Colquhoun,1989: 225). Seeing space as "a uniformly extended 'material' that can be 'modelled' in different w a y s " was criticized as "naively realistic" (Norberg-Schulz,1971: 12). Critics saw the limitless, abstract space as a main feature of the modernist city with its tendency to blow apart the perceptible urban space. It had become a habit of thought in the modern city to conceive buildings as "simple-shaped volumes, floating in a sea of ill-formed space" (Alexander et al.,1987; 67).

The concept of space has been questioned since the 1970s by post-modernists , who have shown a renewed interest in corporeal mass and its meanings (Van de Ven,1993). This reflects the long-lasting dilemma between mass and void, between empirical and conceptual, between real and abstract. It is a d i lemma between physical space, which can be understood immediately by the senses, and mental space, which needs to be interpreted intellectually. An example of this challenge to abstraction is Scruton (1979: 4 3 - 5 2 ) , who criticizes the concept of architectural space on the grounds that it fails to give an account of all that is interesting in buildings. In St Paul 's , for example, we can speak about the "spat ia l " grandeur, but there are also "deliberate and impressive effects of light and shade, of ornament, texture and moulding" . Scruton beheyes that the experience_ of architecture and its "spatial" eiïects depends on significant details arid argues that the reduction of the effects to space is a misrepresentation of the entire nature of our experience. H e goes as far as suggesting that the concept of space "can be eliminated from most critical writings which make use of it without any real detriment to their meaning" (Scruton, 1979: 4 8 ^ 9 ) . Despite these criticisms, the

10 Design of Urban Space Understanding Urban Space 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)

concept of space as the essence of architecture remains powerful , and the question of the relationship between container and contained, between mass and space, an open one.

But what are we to think of this dilemma between mass and void in dealing with urban space? Is it not an exaggerated dichotomy in which no one wins? As w e walk^ in the streets, do we merely see the people, buildings, pavements, bridges, traffic lights, signs, etc., and their relationships? Or are we walking in a space that exists independent of these material objects? Does it not make sense to say that in our walking in the street w e have both a spatial experience, in which enclosures are different from open spaces and streets are different from squares, and an experience of the material objects which shape or condition this space? We could argue, then, that mass and void are interrelated and, in our experience, interdependent. After all, our interpretation of our environment draws upon our sensory impressions as well as our more formal abstractions. But is this experience sufficient to explain the complex relationship between human beings, who are agents of transforming space, and space and the material objects within it, i.e. the relationship between social and physical space?

Physical and social space

Colquhoun (1989: 223) defines the term urban space in two senses: social space and^biult space. The social space is "the spatial implications of social institutions" and is studied by sociologists and geographers. This is a viewpoint that tends to see the physical characteristics of the built environment as "epiphenomenal " . The built space, on the other hand, focuses on the physical space, "its morphology, the w a y it affects our perceptions, the way it is used, and the meanings it can elicit", which is the concern of architects. "This view", Colquhoun maintains, " is subject to two approaches—that which sees forms as independent of functions, and that which .sees functions as determining forms". It is in this interconnection of function and form that the latter perspective tends to approach that of the geographer and sociologist. Unlike them, however, " the architect is a lways finally interested in the forms, however these may be thought to be generated" (Colquhoun, 1989: 224).

An example of this interest in form is the work of Rob Krier (1979a), w h o begins with an attempt not to introduce new definitions of space but "to bring its original meaning back into currency" (1979a: 15), a meaning on which, to avoid value judgement, no aesthetic criteria are imposed. He therefore identifies urban space as the "external space" , "all types of space between buildings in towns and other localities". This is a purely physical space, which is "geometrically bounded by a variety of elevations". His analysis of urban space is therefore confined to a morphology, enumerating the basic elements of urban space, street and square, and its basic forms, square, circle and triangle, with a number of possible variations and combinations.

Colquhoun reasserts the conventional distinction between physical and social space by reliance on the role of social functions. He criticizes the modernist tendency "to take a historicist and relativist view of architecture and to regard the

city as an epiphenomenon of social functions, resulting in a particular kind of urban space". In doing so, he takes side with the post-modern critics w h o tend to dissociate the physical and social space, by concentrating on the former as "an autonomous formal system" (Colquhoun, 1989: 224).

The relationship between physical and social space, i.e. between form and function in modernist architectural language, has been one of the key themes of the post-modern challenge to modernism. The modernist formula, " form follows function", related the social and physical space in a rat ier__simplist ic_and d e t e r m i n i i t i c ' w a y (Figure 1.3). The post-modern' challenge, in contrast, has attempted to disengage this relationship and to concentrate on the physical space. However, neither the narrow linear way that social and physical spaces were combined in modernist architecture and planning, nor the political escapism associated with a post-modernist disregard of social space, can be maintained in a socially concerned approach to urban environment. In the meantime, the divorce between physical and social space has widened the gap between architecture and social sciences with their different conceptions of space.

12 Design of Urban Space Understanding Urban Space í 13

Mental and real space

Another manifestation of the debate between absokite and relational space is the one between mental and real space concepts. In this debate, real space , as understood through the senses, is differentiated from human beings ' intellectual interpretations of the world, which create a mental construct.

A representation of the dilemma of mental versus real space is m a d e b y Bernard

Tschumi (1990). Following the Surrealist author Georges Bataille, Tschumi concentrates on the relationship of concepts and experience in the normative realm of architectural theory. He identifies this relationship as the main paradox of architecture. The conceptual approach is visualized by a pyramid, " this ultimate model of reason" (Figure 1.4). In order to state the nature of space, architecture becomes dematcrialized, a theoretical concern, in which the modernist avant-garde felt free to act. In this way, the "domination of idea over matter" is eiisured by a rational, theoretical approach to understanding and transforming space.

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)

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)

Against this theoretical approach, there is a sensory approach to space. From this perspective, our experience of space is "a sensuous event". This involves movement , a movement that creates "a kaleidoscope of changing impressions, of transitions between one spatial sensation and another" (Porter & Goodman,1988: 6).

14 Design of Urban Space Understanding Urban Space t 15

Tschumi uses the image of a labyrinth to represent this experience of space from within (Figure 1.5). From this viewpoint, "space is real, for it seems to affect my senses long before m y reason" (Tschumi,1990: 20). This view, that "seeing comes before words" , had been known by Surrealists: "The child looks and recognizes before it can speak" (Berger,1972: 7). This gap can be traced in another sense in that, "It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world" . Yet there is an unsettled relationship between what we see and what we know: "Each evening we see the sun set. W e know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanatioTv, never quite fits the s ight" (Berger, 1972). This gap between words and seeing, between reason and senses, was vividly portrayed by the Surrealist painter Magrite in his paintings such as The Key of Dreams.

Within Tschumi's labyrinth, with its ambiguities and dark corners, we cannot have an overview of the space around us. The only way to relate to it is through immediate experience of space with the help of our senses, an empirical understanding of real space. Therefore, the paradox of architecture, according to Tschumi, is the "impossibility of questioning the nature of space and at the same time making or experiencing a real space" . It is a paradox between rationalist and empiricist approaches to space. As he puts it, "We cannot experience and think that we experience"; it then follows that, " the concept of space is not in space" (Tschumi, 1990: 27). The only way out of this di lemma, he maintains, is to shift the concept of architecture towards the building development process, as exemplified by the work of Henri Lefebvre. In this way, the philosophical gap between ideal space, which is an outcome of mental processes, and real space, which is produced by social praxis, can be bridged. Space is created in a historical process that produces and conditions both ideal and real aspects of space. Yet Tschumi hesitates to go along this route to bridge the gap. Instead, he prefers to treat physical space and the events and functions within it separately. There is a disjimction between these two, between physical and social space, which he seems eager to retain.

An interesting example of the relationship between mental and real space can be found in architecture and film, two spatial arts whose often asymmetrical relationship (Dear,1994) has been widely discussed (Vidler,1993; Toy,1994) . What :5 generally held to link them is that, " T h e actual experience of architectural space by an observer within that space has m a n y similarities to the viewer 's perception of a chosen sequence within a f i lm" (Toy, !994 : 7 ) . Whereas the former invites the observer to participate in its spatial narration, the latter's narrator tells "spatial stories" (0 'Her l ihy ,1994 : 90) . It is in this transition, from movement in real space to movement in imaginary space, that Eisenstein, writing in the late 1930s, identified architecture as the fi lm's ancestor. H e mapped the two contrasting paths of the "spat ia l e y e " : the "c inemat ic " , where there are "diverse impressions passing in front of an immobile spectator" ; and the "architectural" , where "the spectator m o v e d through a series of carefully disposed phenomena which he absorbed in order with his visual se nse " (quoted in Vidler,1993: 56) . It is this proximity that has inspired designers such as Jean Nouvel, for whom "Architecture exists , like cinema, in the dimensions of time and movement. One conceives and reads a building in terms of sequences. To erect a building is to predict and seek effects of contrast and l inkage through which one passes" (quoted in Rattenbury,1994: 35) .

It appears that this perspective reduces both architectural and cinematic experiences to visual experiences, abandoning, in Rattenbury's words, "the last lingering attempt to explore the objective existentialism of the building" (1994: 36). As Mallet-Stevens put it, "Real life is entirely different, the house is m a d e to live [in], it should first respond to our needs" (quoted in Vidler,1993: 56) . It is important to preserve the distance between the imaginary world of film (and by extension video and the cyberspace of computer images) , and the real space of architecture. This is in the face of the trend in which "buildings and their spatial sequences are designed more as illustrations of implied movements , or worse, as literal fabrications of the computer 's eye v iew" (Vidler,1993: 56). However the gap between these two spatial arts, as Dear (1994) argues, can be bridged through the socio-spatial dialectic that the spatial science of geography offers. This can be achieved b y understanding the shared purpose of architecture and film, i.e. "to forge new t ime-space relationships", and that they share in "distancing", i.e. the distance between the observer and the observed and between the author and the representation, al lowing the difference to be explored and recognized (Dear, 1994: 13-14) .

Sack (1980) argued, within a geographical frame of reference, that discussions about the duality between ideal and real space should be broadened to encompass the differences in our understanding of space. The meanings of space are differenj^ because our p e r c e p t i o n ^ a n d ^ s c r i p i i o n i a i i h e ] ^ ! ^ among things are~aifferent in different situati concepts of space, he sees both the absolute and relational aspects of space as its obje(rtTve~meanlngs, distinctive from subjective approaches to space. His broadened outlook includes the aesthetic, the child's view, the practical, the mythical-magical , and the societal views of space. To explore the interrelationship of these conceptions, he relies on two sets of distinctions to build up a general framework: distinction between objective and subjective and between substance and space. He then identifies two broad patterns: one in which these distinctions occur (sophisticated-fragmented) and one in which they are absent (unsophisticated-fused), signifying their differences in their different use of symbols.

Soja (1989:123) is not convinced by Sack's approach to space, which he classifies as neo-Kantian, and criticizes it as divorced from materialized social realities. Soja identifies two concepts of space: the first is the physical space of material nature, under which he (wrongly) classifies the classical debates about absolute versus relative theories (Soja, 1989: 120). The second concept (which is indeed the relational concept) is the mental space of cognition and representation, which includes the attempts to explore the personal meaning and symboUc contents of mental maps and landscape imagery. He then, following Lefebvre, introduces a third concept of social space and argues that one of the most formidable challenges to contemporary social theory is to define the interconnections of these three spaces.

Soja's analysis, similar to Tschumi 's (1990) and partly Dear's (1994), draws upon the powerful analysis of social space by the philosopher Henri Lefebvre, whose work, as outlined in his major work The Production of Space (1991), has influenced both modernist and post-modernist interpretations. While Lefebvre offers us ways of bridging the gap between mental and real space, however, he introduces another

1 6 Design of Urban Space Understanding Urban Space 17

commodification, which is fundamental to the analysis of capitalist order, is extended to space to entangle the physical mil ieu in the productive system of capitalism as a whole . He further argued that the organization of environment and society, and the l ayout j3f JawrLS_and. reg ions , . a r , e J l ld jper^ the production of space and its role in the reproduct ion of the socio-economic forrruition. David Harvey (1982, 1985a^b)~FoIIows Lefebvre By elaborating on this commodification process, outlining the contradictions within the pr imary circuit of capital, where the capitalist production process takes place. Here the drive to create surplus value by competing capitalists leads to over-accumulat ion. This becomes manifest in the over-production of commodit ies , with falling prices and surpluses of labour and capital. Trying to overcome the contradict ions, these extra resources are switched into a secondary circuit of capital , where investment is m a d e in the built environment, creating a whole physical landscape for the purposes of production, circulation, exchange and consumption. There is also a switch of f lows to the tertiary circuit of capital where investment is channelled to research and development and to improvement of the labour force. However , the switch is cyclical, due to the cyclical nature of over-accumulat ion, and temporary, due to the crisis rising f rom over-investment in the built environment . The implications of these contradictions for the spaces created under capitalism are, therefore, devaluation of structures to be put to use later and the destruction of the existing landscapes to open up fresh room for accumulat ion.

Lefebvre identifies a triad of perceived, conceived and lived spaces as the "three moments of social space" , which have dialectical interrelationships (Lefebvre, 1991: 3 8 ^ 0 ) . The first moment is spatial practice, which refers to the way space is organized and used. Under neocapital ism, spatial practice "embodies a close association, within perceived space, be tween daily reality (daily routine) and urban reality (the routes and networks which link up the places set aside for work, 'private' life and leisure)" . The second m o m e n t is representations of space, which refers to the "conceptualized space, the space of scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers" . This is " the dominant space in any society", tending " towards a system of verbal (and therefore intellectually worked out) signs". T h e third moment is that of representational space, "space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols , and hence the space of 'inhabitants' and 'users ' " , a space understood through non-verbal means. Representational space is " the d o m i n a t e d — a n d hence passively exper ienced— space", overlapping physical space and making symbol ic use of its objects. Lefebvre argues that these three moments should b e interconnected, as was the case in the Western towns from the Italian Renaissance to the nineteenth century (Figure 1.6). The historical space of the city, however , was taken over by the abstract space, "the space of bourgeoisie and of capital ism" (Lefebvre, 1991: 57), which approached the natural, historical and religio-political sphere negatively. The predominance of abstract space m e a n s "that the place of social space as a whole has been usurped by a part of that s p a c e " (Lefebvre, 1991 : 52) . To confront this, a new space, a "differential space" , will need to emerge , "because , inasmuch as abstract space tends towards homogeneity , towards the el imination .of..existing differences. .oj pecTilianties,^^^ a n e w space cannot be_ born^ (produced) unless it accentuates differences" (Lefebvre," 1991)."

di lemma: between differential and abstract s p a c ^ a dilemma that lies at the heart of the post-modernism versus modernism debate.

Abstract and differential space

Lefebvre's starting point is the gap between mental and real space. He criticizes the trend in modern epistemology, and its predecessors in philosophical thought, which see space as a "mental thing" or a "mental place" . He directs his criticism especially towards semiology, the systematic study of signs, which is "an incomplete body of knowledge" :

Wlien codes worked up from literary texts are applied to spaces—to urban spaces, say—we remain, as may easily be sfiown, on the purely descriptive level. Any attempt to use such codes as means of deciphering social space must surely reduce that space itself to the status of a message, and the inhabiting of it to the status of a reading. This is to evade both history and practice."

(Lefebvre, 1991: 7)

In its original context of linguistics and literary theory, this criticism has been similarly raised against semiology, or semiotics, which coincides and overlaps with structuralism. For structuralists, as Eagleton (1983: 109) puts it, "there was no question of relating the work to the realities of which it treated, or to the conditions which produced it, or to the actual readers who studied it, since the founding gesture of structuralism had been to bracket off such realities". Structuralism held that "Reality was not reflected by language but produced by i t" (1983: 108), and as such, it was "hair-raisingly unhistorical" (1983: 109).

Lefebvre's aim was to confront this shortcoming by contextualizing semiology, on the one hand, and b y introducing subjectivity into the political and economic understanding, on the other: in other words, by integrating mental space into its social and physical contexts. He argues that these dimensions of space—mental, physical and social—should not be kept separate, and sets out to formulate a "unitary theory" of space. A "unitary theory" that brought together the physical space of nature, the mental space of logical and formal abstractions, and the practico-sensory realm of social space. In his attempt, he was partly inspired b y the search in physics for unity, where space, time and energy are interlinked; and by Surrealists, who had been searching for a junction between the inner and the outer worlds of human beings.

To bridge the traditional duality between real and mental space, Lefebvre introduces the concept of social space, the space of social life, of social and spatial practice. He 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 mode of production, produces its own 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 be the object of interest, rather than things in space, although both process and product are inseparable.

The concept of the production of space has a central role in Lefebvre's thinking, " space as a social and political product, space as a product that one buys and sells" (quoted in Bürgel et al.,1987 :29-30) . It was based on the notion that

1 8 Design of Urban Space

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)

Lefebvre ' s first task , therefore, is to br ing together objective and subjective understandings of s p a c e by tracing them botli back to the process in which space is produced . H e ques t ions the vaHdity of any understanding of space that is not rooted in the poht ica l e c o n o m y of its production. At the same time, to strike a ba lance with the poli t ical economy of space production, he 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 subject ive, and intersubject ive, aspects of social life, which have been undermined by the traditional e m p h a s i s of social sciences on objective understanding. As such, it is a critical r e s p o n s e to the "crisis of totalizing classical sociologies" (Bovone,1989 : 42 ) , a n d brings into attention the importance of meaning and dif ference in social inquiry. A n u m b e r of approaches have attempted to incorporate the e v e r y d a y life perspective into the wider perspectives of social processes , as exempl i f ied by Alfred Schutz (1970), w h o brought together sociology and p h e n o m e n o l o g y , and Jürgen H a b e r m a s (1987), w h o outlined the relationship b e t w e e n systems and l ifeworld. Habermas , for example , separates everyday life f rom 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. By widening the scope of reason, he argues for a rationally constructed, communicat ive action between individuals, which enables everyday life to resist such penetration. According to Giddens (1984), the dichotomy between structures and individuals is the central problem of social theory, as reflected in functionalism and structuralism on the one hand, and hermeneutics and the various forms of interpretive sociology on the other. As he rightly observes, however, the difference between the two views can be exaggerated (Giddens, 1989: 704 -5 ) . He argues (Giddens, 1984) that social structures, as recursively organized sets of rules and resources, refer to structural properties of social systems. T h e structures, w h o s e transmutation or continuity leads to reproduction of social systems, are not external to individuals and exert constraining as well as enabling powers upon them. There is a process of "double involvement" of individuals and institutions: " w e create society at the s a m e time as we are created b y i t" (Giddens, 1 9 8 2 : 1 4 ) .

Urban sociologist Mark Gottdiener (1994), following Lefebvre, argues that reconciling political economy with everyday life compensates for the shortcomings of the two predominant approaches to urban analysis, human ecology and political economy. Human ecology appreciates the role of locations in social interaction, but theoretically does not develop this role and approaches social processes by adopting one-dimensional and technologically deterministic explanations. Political economy, on the other hand, offers a better understanding of the social processes that produce urban space, but is limited in that it treats space as a container of economic activities and ignores the importance of spatial relations. Urban socio-semiotics (Gottdiener & Lagopoulos,1986) is one interpretation of this reconciliation: relating semiotics to a concrete context through social processes. An example is to see how successfully shopping malls have translated commercial interests into new^urten^Torms (Gcjtfd^^ of urbahism (1994) thus brings together three aspects of the semiotics of place: the way environments are understood, through mental mapping and urban socio-semiotic analysis^Jhe p a t t e r n s j ) f j ) ^ ^ and its associated sociaLnetsmaiks.—

A second, but closely linked with the first, task in Lefebvre's project is to argue for differential space, for the "right to be different" (1991: 64). Difference in the city is as old as the city itself, as it was known from the ancient times that, in Aristotle's words, "A city is composed of different men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence" (quoted in Sennett,1994: 13). Especially since the nineteenth century and the unprecedented growth of cities, the issue of difference and diversity has become a central feature of urban life. In his theory of urbanism, for example, Louis Wirth (1964: 69) saw heterogeneity, along with population size and density, as a determining feature of the city. Emphasis on heterogeneity of urban life is evident in the discussions about strangers in the city, which have occupied a prominent place in sociological inquiries, to the extent that city life has been seen as a world of strangers (Karp, Stone & Yoels,1991).

There is no simple, deterministic relationship between social, psychological and physical dimensions of space. The overarching formula of the modern movements in architecture, " form follows function", attempted to show such a direct deterministic relation. According to this normative formula, the social dimension of


space, its functions, should determine its physical form. The attempt to integrate the social and physical dimensions of space, or in other words to contextualize the physical space into human practices, is an important step in our understanding of space. W e cannot identify our environment as an unrelated collection of material objects, as exemplified in the tendency to equate cities with their buildings. On 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 seem to have moved towards a concept of non-physical, mental space, which is merely a by-product of social relations, and which we 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.

Space and time

The way that we use words and expressions that describe space (e.g. short or long, thereafter, always and before) in order to indicate periods of time shows that space was probably an object of consciousness before t ime ( jammer,1954: 3 - 4 ) . In the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "space" has had, at least since around 1300, both temporal and spatial meanings. Until the beginning of this century, these two senses of the word had always been separately conceptualized. Space and time were, however, both dominated by one common paradigm; "the mathematical linear cont inuum" (Bochner,1973: 301).

Ever since the development of the special and general theories of relativity, the separate concepts of space and time have increasingly been approached as a combined concept of space-t ime (Smart,1988). According to Hermann Minkowski, w h o suggested the concept in 1908, space- t ime is a four-dimensional continuum, which 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 way is not possible, but is relative to a choice of a coordinate system. "The universe of four dimensions includes space with all of its events and objects as well as time with its changes and motions" (Winn,1975; 297).

There were parallels to this conception of space-t ime in art and architecture, by concentrating on movement within space. The 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. They offered a new 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 viewed objects relatively, dissecting them so that

the objects could be seen simultaneously from several points of \'iew. In this approach, the Cubists introduced a principle that, according to G i e d i o n (1967: 436) , is "intimately bound up with modern life — s imultanei ty" . T h e Futurists also attempted to enlarge the conventional optical vision b y introducing jnovement_ in^ 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 Sant 'El ia 's projcctTor hi i "Città Nuova" , in which high-rise apartments are connected by various means of movement at different levels (Figure 1.7). This w a s an image vividly portrayed later in Fritz Lang's film Metropolis. C inema, as " the modernis t art of space par excellence", offered an exciting opportunity for incorporat ìng t ime into space (Vidler,1993; 46) . As early as 1912, Abel Gance was fasc inated b y "that admirable synthesis of the movement of space and t i m e " (quoted in Vidler , 1993), which was made possible by film. In 1920, Scheffauer wrote of " th is photographic cosmos" giving birth to a fourth dimension; "Space — hitherto cons idered and treated as something dead and static, a mere inert screen or frame, of ten of no more significance than the painted balustrade-background at the village photographer ' s — has been smitten into life, into movement and conscious e x p r e s s i o n " (quoted in Vid!er,1993; 46 -47 ) .

m

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)

2 2 Design of Urban Space Understanding Urban Space 2 3

These appreciations of movement, as a representation of the fourth ciimension, were to be used in the famous Charter of Athens in 1933. Here m o v e m e n t is seen as one of the main four functions of the modern city (Sert,1944); one that, as w e have now experienced, was most instrumental in the transformation of the built environment during the past 50 years. To free the movement patterns within the city and to break with the Renaissance optical perspective, the modernis ts aimed to abolish the urban streets. "Today we must deal with the city from a n e w aspect, dictated by the advent of the automobile, based on technical considerat ions , and belonging to the artistic vision born out of our period — s p a c e - t i m e " (Giedion, 1967; 822). The outcome was high-rise buildings set within movement networks , al lowing < people to experience space while moving around the buildings.

The dramatic transformation that this viewpoint brought to the cities has been criticized by a generation of post-modern commentators. Trancik (1986), for example, referred to the vast open spaces thus created as "lost spaces" . There were attempts to introduce movement into our understanding of space without a call for radical transformation of space, as exemplified by Gordon CuUen's "serial v is ion" (1971). Furthermore, there are those who have not been convinced that the four-dimensional notion of space can have any scientific basis in, or usefulness for, architectural design (Cowan,1973; Scruton,1979). After all, as Sack (1980) reminds us, at the geographical (and architectural) scale, physical space is still seen as the familiar three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry. This is in line with a s imultaneous use of the Newtonian, absolute space and the relative space-t ime in various branches of scientific inquiry according to their area of involvement (Bochner,1973).

Yet the space-time concept, in which the duration in time is included, and the dynamism that this fourth dimension brings to space, continues to be attractive to architects (Van de Ven,1993) and to geographers (Massey,1994) alike. A "rediscovery" of the concept of space-t ime may be attributed to the denial of s o m e social scientists of the relevance of space in social processes. In the nineteenth century, a century obsessed with history, "space was treated as the dead, the fixed, the undialectical , the immobile" (Foucault, quoted in Soja,1989;10, as if himself quoting Scheffauer). Reasserting the role of space in social theory remains one of the main preoccupations of the contemporary period. Foucault, with his well-known "spatialized thinking" (Flynn,1994), intended to prove the fundamental importance of space in "any form of communal life" and "any exercise of power" (FoucauIt,1993:168). By seeing space as a social product, as "constituted out of relations", the spatial becomes social relations "stretched out". There is, however, a dynamism in social relations, which needs to be extended to spatial analysis. It is here that the concept of space-t ime is employed to allow such dynamism to be introduced into socio-spatial relations. As Soja points out, we should not intend "to replace historicism with an equally subsumptive spatialism, but to achieve a more appropriate trialectical balance in which neither spatiality, historicity, nor sociality is interpretively privileged a priori" (1993: 115). The central argument in the approach to space therefore becomes to conceptualize space integrally with time (Massey,1994: 2).

There is no doubt that this interpretation can be as appealing to us today as it was to the avant-garde artists at the beginning of this century. We may have a different outlook now, but we are equally fascinated by the freshness of the extraordinary perspectives that it opens up. Yet we will have to be aware of the distinctions

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 way 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.

Space and place

Whereas space is seen as an open, abstract expanse, place is part of space that is occupied by a person or a thing and is endowed with meaning and value (Goodall,1987; M a y h e w & Penny,1992). It is the interaction of people with this immediate environment that gives it characteristics distinct from those of the surrounding areas (Clark,1985). Place is a centre of "felt value" , associated with security and stability, where biological needs are met. This is in contrast to the openness and freedom of the undifferentiated space. 2f^gaceJs_aUowingjiMm:ilient to occur, place provides a pause. However , despite this contrast between place and space, between security and freedom,' the meanings of the two concepts often merge, requiring each other for their definition, as "we are attached to the one and long for the other" (Tuan,1977; 3 - 6 ) .

The notion of place as an enclosed particular space with fixed identities and meanings has been challenged as lacking dynamism. It is through social relationships and not the qualities of a piece of land that places are defined. "The reality of a place" , therefore, "is always open, making its deterniination an inherently social process" (Logan & Molotch,1987: 47). Critics have stressed that associated with the staticJiaturc^o£.place,i irej i ttentjcm react Ì9na]5I jDÌ iHc^(Harvey,19^^ Massey (1994) argues that the nationalist, regionalist and localist claims to exclusive places, and those who identify places as "sites of nostalgia" , as well as the critics of locaUty studies in geography, are all resting their cases on a static view of place. They all conceptualize place as timeless and bounded, with a singular, fixed and unproblematic, authentic identity. Massey, however, argues that if the dynamism of the concept of space-t ime is employed, place can be understood as open and porous. Place becomes a moment in the network of ever-changing social relations at all scales. The identity of a place is a particular mix of social relations, hence always becoming "luifixed, contested and multiple". The particularity of a place, she maintains, is "constructed not by placing boimdaries around it and defining its identity through counterposition to the other w'hich lies beyond, but precisely (in part) through the specificity of the mix of Knks and interconnections to that "beyond'" (Massey, 1994: 5).


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)

Conceptualization of place as a contested space with multiple identities offers a dynamism in our understanding of places. It allows us to grasp the diversity and difference of particular spaces within themselves and in relation to their larger contexts. It shows h o w to contextualize, without fixing, the characteristics of a place. Richard Sennett (1995: 15) convincingly argues that "Place-making based on exclusion, sameness, or nostalgia is socially poisonous, and psychologically use less" , and asks for the use of " m o r e diverse, denser, impersonal human contacts" in place-making. There are, however, limits to the fluidity and flexibility that this model offers. Its dynamism can be limited when the variety of speed of change in various locations around the world is studied. The centre of a world city is often a fast-moving place, with a multiplicity of identities and a potential for plurality and therefore fragmentation of social relations. This befits a large concentration of people and the headquarters of political and economic decisionmakers (Figure 1.8). The same, however, cannot be said about the remote villages of peripheral countries, where people and places have hardly been touched by m o d e r n technology and by commodification processes (Figure 1.9). Here the speed of change is slower and the dialectical dynamism of the metropolis is absent.

F igure 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)

Conflict and contrast often find forms of manifestation other than a rapid change 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 may mean a perpetuation of various forms of exploitation and inequality. This is why 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. On the other hand, as Herman (1982) has skilfully shown, socio-spatial dynamism, resulting from the dislocation and ever-shifting configurations of the modernization processes, can be painful and disruptive.

There is little doubt that à dynamic conception of place would more realistically represent the multiplicity of social practices and identities. There would be, however, fixities at any 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. The 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 be aware of the difficulties in conceptualizing place as a decentred locality. Following the arguments that see the human subject as

26 Design of Urban Space Understanding Urban Space 2 7

decentred, as a site for the interaction of external currents, place m a y b e seen as one such decentred site. Human beings and places can both be seen a s sites for the interaction of diverse social processes. This approach seems to reduce the physical and social dimensions of space (and of human beings) to a d iscourse at an intellectual level, where our knowledge is achieved by abstract processes and discourses, rather than concentrating on the lived experiences. A r g u i n g against basing knowledge on linguistics, Lefebvre draws our attention to the connection between the abstract body, which is simply understood as "a mediat ion between 'subject' and 'object '" , and another body, "a practical and fleshy b o d y conceived of a totality complete with spatial qualities (symmetries, asymmetries) and energetic properties (discharges, economies, waste ) " (Lefebvre,1991: 61) . A l t h o u g h it is potentially misleading to compare human agency with space, a s imi lar argimient might apply to place, where a physical stock exists with all its social and spatial qualities and which, despite its openness to constant change, reasserts its material totality and interconnections at any moment in time. When viewed in its social context and through its production process, space can have multiple identit ies and | yet be embedded in particular circumstances.

Space and specialization

In social sciences, there has been a process of structuration of disciplines in the postwar period. It evolved from when " m a n y windows [were] looking out on the same S

landscape" to when "The social sciences cut up the landscape and found a series of different aspects — shapes of windows and kinds of lighting — to gaze at their specific segment". This, although exciting at the beginning, led to rigidities and parochiaUsm, where "Paradigms became narrow-vision looking glasses which miss a wide range of phenomena" (Dahrendorf,1995: 5 -7 ,12) . The same deve lopment can be traced in spatial arts and sciences, where specialization has caused a collapse of ^ communication and restricted visions.

The disciplines involved in the study of space have witnessed a growing gap between their interests in physical and social dimensions of space, a gap that has made it increasingly more difficult for cross-disciplinary communicat ion . The general process of evolution of geography, for example, has seen the separation of human geography from physical geography. Associated with this -ividening gap has been an increased emphasis on cognitive and social space, as distinct f rom physical space. Interest in the physical characteristics of the built environment, which was expressed in early regional geography and urban morphology, h a s diminished sharply (Johnston,1991). Closely related to this loss of interest in physical space, there has been a rising enthusiasm for studying the relations be tween social processes and space. For many sub-areas of human geography, interest in physical space remains minimal. In " n e w " cultural geography, as McDowell (1994) notes, a revival of interest in the study of landscape is a major trend, as exemplif ied by the work of Dennis Cosgrove (Cosgrove,1984,1985; Cosgrove & Daniels ,1988; Cosgrove & Duncan,1994). An equally important, parallel trend in cultural geography, influenced by Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall, has been a concentrat ion on social relations, rather than on physical space and its representations. This change

in the balance of interest in physical and social space has been a significant feature in the development of human geography. Now, it seems, space, as well as Hme, is treated by some geographers as an all-embracing concept, an almost invisible dimension to which no overt reference needs to b e made: "Given that everything e.xists in space as well as time, there is no more reason to doubt that it has a .-eographical d imension" (Diamond, quoted in Richards,1995). However, Johnston argues that to promote 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. For example. Porter & Goodman (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. Another example is Colquhoun (1989), who sets out to outline the twentieth century concepts of urban space. In explaining these concepts, however, the narrative concentrates on what the designers have wished the city space to be, rather than analysing the results of urban transformation. This is especially apparent when post-modern criticisms are introduced. In design writing, knowledge and practice are tightly related, so that at times they are used interchangeably and difficult to distinguish.

The architects of the modern movement approached cities in a rather coherent and comprehensive 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)


its various scales and with its physical and social dimensions. They designed buildings, and objects inside them and landscapes around them, hoping, rather optimistically, that shaping space would lead to the creation of a better society. Despite their emphasis on the physical fabric of the city, they were similarly concerned with its social conditions. As 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 modern movement , 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 and concern with formalism, much of architecture became, in the words of Allan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard (1987: 114), "a narcissistic pursuit, a chic component of high art consumer culture, increasingly remote from most people's everyday l ives" .

T h e disciplinary fragmentation and specialization that followed the integrated approach of the modern movement needed an increasing multiplicity of 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 sub-area in the transformation of the built environment. Reacting against specialization m a y be, as Moore (1992: x) suggests, "a romantic absurdity". On the other hand, fragmentation potentially leaves large conceptual gaps between these sub-areas. Urban sociologists, urban geographers, planners, architects, engineers, landscape designers and interior designers, among others, find themselves with different and, at t imes, contradictory concepts of the space they intend to understand and transform. The compartmentalized specialists feel at ease within the precincts of their own 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 when a not only necessary but vital link is being sought across these divides. The di lemma 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 move across the boundaries to benefit from the multiplicity of ideas and approaches to space. If it is possible to argue that a unitary concept of space could be encouraged, then these various fields of interest can be linked conceptually but approached independently.

Conclusion

The dilemmas of space appear to lie in the way we relate to it: the way we imderstand, and therefore transform, it. The debates between absolute and relational space, the dilemma between physical and social space, between real and mental space, between space and mass, between function and form, between abstract and differential space, between space and place, between space and time, can all be seen as indicators of a series of open philosophical questions: how do we

Understanding Urban Space • 29

.1

understand space and relate to it? Does it exist beyond our cognition or is it conditioned by it? Do we relate to it by our reason or our senses? Is space a collection of things and people, a container for them, or are they embedded in it? Is it representing openness or fixity? Do we understand and transform space individually or socially? How do we relate space and time? In our response to these questions, we find ourselves divided between rationalism and empiricism, between materialism and idealism, between objective and subjective understanding, between reason and emotion, between theory and practice, between uniformity and diversity, and between order and disorder. In this sense, space could be seen as an abstract substitute for the world around us, for what we generally mean by our built and natural environments.

So what is the space of urban design, amid these dilemmas and fragmentations in the conceptions of space? Which side of these dilemmas should we identify with if we are engaged in designing and shaping urban spaces? It is possible to leave these gaps and fragmentations as they have developed and as we find them. W e could listen to a word of wisdom that warns us against generalization tendencies: "the concept of space is so ubiquitous, and is reached by so many avenues and channels, that it would be stifling and sterile to force upon it metaphysically a single logical schema, which, even if acceptable today, might become unsuitable tomorrow" (Bochner,1973: 300) . In this case, w e will have to seek a pragmatic notion of space, one that would be suitable for our immediate task of urban space design. In doing so, we may have to either use a very narrow, practical conception of space, leaving other conceptions aside as irrelevant to our specialist interests, or have to live with the fragmentation and divide in the concepts of space, especially when dealing with complex problems of urban space, and risk loss or disorientation.

Yet we are aware somehow, at least instinctively, that we cannot afford to remain in a cocoon of our own or of our discipline, profession or tribe. From across our differences, w e need to communicate and to arrive at a mutually understandable narrative. To be trapped in difference and not see the common threads that link human beings will deprive us from creating a better social and physical environment. It is therefore not only possible but also necessary to try to find a more unified approach to space. This does not need to be necessarily building up a grand narrative, disregarding the gaps and conflicts, arrived at a priori and imposed on a diverse range of concrete situations. A unified concept of space could be arrived at by realizing that many aspects of the dilemmas of space are exaggerated and can be bridged, as we have shown in this chapter. We are aware of the differences that exist in urban space and in our approaches to it. So w e may not arrive at a completely unitary concept of space, as Lefebvre would have wished. Yet we know that to have an "objective" grasp of the difference, we will have to negotiate constantly with our social and physical environments in our everyday experiences. It is b y concentrating on this process of daily Ufe, at its intersection w'ith the political economy of urban development, through which space is made and remade, that w e can expect to move towards a wider, more dynamic platform of understanding.

It is only in a fragmented, static concept of space that we see social processes as separate from the physical and mental space. If, however, physical and mental spaces are both socially produced, then both are subject to the process of production


of space. They are, by definition, the component parts of a more comprehensive conception of space; a physical space that is produced by complex bureaucratic and financial systems of a development process and is used and attributed with meaning through everyday life. There will be no need to use the conventional dualities of physical versus mental or physical versus social space. A more unified approach can see space as the objective, physical space with its social and psychological dimensions. It will be an integrated concept in which the ways societies perceive, create and use space are addressed simultaneously. This concept of space will be the most direct approach to offset the limitations of the dematerialized conceptions of space b y offering a social and psychological context for the material space.

This conceptualization, however, will not be complete without taking the dimension of time into account. By analysing the social processes involved in the making of space and place, the element of time will be integrated into our understanding. The conception of space arrived at in this way is dynamic; space at all its possible scales, from global space to the micro space of daily routines, are all constantly changing yet embedded in their social context, allowing multiple but interrelated identities. It is this dynamic conception of space that would allow design with change and for change while embedded in concrete social and physical contexts. It is with such a dynamic conception of space that charges against urban design can be challenged: charges that see it as a reactionary set of activities, seeking only visual improvement of small urban places and aiming at aestheticizing social processes and political concern in urban development processes. With this conception, we can hope to arrive at a common platform in understanding urban space, one that could link various groups who are interested and involved in explanation, interpretation and transformation of space, allowing them to enter into a dialogue.

In our search for a concept of space, we have concluded that an understanding of urban space will need to take into account its physical, social and symbolic dimensions simultaneously. In the next two chapters, we will expand on these themes and will explore how we can move towards such understanding.

CHAPTER 2

Structural Frameworks of Urban Space

In Chapter 1 w e searched for a meaning of space, arguing that to understand the space of the city, w e need to grasp its three aspects (physical, social and symbolic) in an integrated w a y and in the process of space production. In this chapter, we will look at h o w w e understand the structure of urban space, with its social and physical geometries. This study of the structures of urban space will be complemented in Chapter 3 by an inquiry into the way human agency interrelates with these structures. Part T w o will seek to understand the formation of urban space, by analysing the political economy of space production and the aesthetic and symbolic notions of space making.

In our search for structural patterns of differentiation in urban space, we look for ways to unders tand cities and their form, and to gain an awareness of the urban socio-spatial context and its dynamics of change. W e concentrate on approaches to the understanding of urban space structure. The city is a socio-spatial context to which we can enter as individuals or groups and interact with it to use or change it. The interaction between urban planners and designers with urban residents and urban space largely influences the form of this context.

W e start b y searching for a definition of urban form, followed by two perspectives into urban structure: one that sees it as a collection of buildings and artefacts, and the other that sees it as a site for social relationships. It will be argued that our picture of urban structure will only make sense when a socio-spatial perspective emerges to replace these two disjointed views.

Socio-spatial geometries of urban space

The term " u r b a n form" has been defined from many different points of view. Reviewing the literature in search of an explicit definition. Bourne (1982; 29) recounted that he had encountered an " immense diversity and frustrating inconsistency" in the way researchers use terms such as urban form and spatial structure. O n e reason for this diversity is that urban form has been studied by a variety of discipl ines, each following a variety of different approaches to its understanding with different definitions and conceptual frameworks. After

3 2 Design of Urban Space Structural Frameworks of Urban Space 33

attempting to ciefine urban form, we will review the approaches to urban space and form in urban architecture and urban geography, disciplines that have contributed to the development of urban planning and design.

U r b a n form has been equated with the term "townscape" , developed by Smai les (1955) as the urban equivalent of landscape, comprising the visible forms of the built-up areas. Its three main components are street plan or layout, architectural style of buildings and their design, and land use (Herbert & Thomas, 1982 ) . Ever since, a long the same lines, the geometry of each of these component parts , or some of their more detai led aspects, has been defined as urban form. A variat ion on this t h e m e with m o r e sensitivity to detail is the work of Shirvani (1985) . In search of the domain of urban design, he identifies the physical elements of urban form as land use, building form 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 combinations of these component parts and their functional roles .

T h e architectural interest often concentrates on the physical fabric of the city and its aesthetic and functional dimensions . The city is an act of will, a work of art m a d e up of two e lements of the architecture of movement and the architecture of repose (Bacon,1975: 322) . S o m e authors urge us to define urban form in two dimensions , in terms of its physical extent, street pattern and different areas; and a lso in three dimensions , in its sculptural expression of different heights and s h a p e s (Lowndes & Murray,1988) and its skyline (Hedman & Jaszewski,1985). Morphologica l e lements of urban space are identified as streets and squares (R. Krier ,1979a,b) , b locks (L. Krier ,1978) , which have been geometrically typified, quarters (Ungers et al. ,1978; L. Krier ,1979) , and other forms of urban division (Kostof , 1992). In architectural history, urban forms of the past are studied through their morphological c o m p o n e n t parts such as castles and manors, walls and gates, streets and circulation spaces , market-places, churches, and the mass of general town bui ldings (Morris,1979; Muthesius,1982; Lloyd,1992). Attempts to c o m b i n e this morphological interest with a functional dimension can b e seen in Reekie (1972), for example , for w h o m the town consists of buildings and other structures, open and enclosed spaces, and vehicular and pedestrian circulations. T h e s e are arranged in the central core, and in residential, industrial and recreation areas .

Another, mainly geographical, strand stresses the land use as the fundamental constituent of urban form, and takes on a functionalist interpretation of urban space. Scargill (1979) defines the form of cities on two distinct scales. There is the form that the elements of the city's physical fabric take: dwellings and the more specialized structures in which retail, office and manufacturing functions are housed. There is also the form that "assemblages of structures" take, which leads to another, more limited, definition of urban form as, " the juxtaposition of land use zones 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 being concerned with 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 " the pattern of residential and non-residential urban activities and

their interactions as expressed by the built environment which accommodates them".

Criticizing the attempts that equate urban spatial structure with physical arrangement of land use. Bourne (1982) tries to elaborate on the definitions of virban form and urban spatial structure to allow for both spatial and aspatial dimensions of the city. Relying on the systems theory, Bourne defines urban form as the spatial pattern or "arrangement" of individual elements within a city system. These elements include built environment, buildings and land uses, as well as social groups, economic activities and public institutions. Through interactions, these individual elements are integrated into functional entities or subsystems. The patterns of behaviour and interaction within subsystems, when overlaid on urban form and combined with a set of organizational rules that link the subsystems into a city system, constitute the urban spatial structure.

Each of the stated definitions seems to refer to one or more aspects of a multifaceted phenomenon. Indeed, the diversity in the definitions of urban form stems mainly from the fact that urban fabric is both a physical and a social artefact (Harvey,1985a: 226). As Gottmann (1978) interprets, the built environment is a "hardware" in which the socio-economic system works as "software" . Interpreting the relationship between people and the built environment in this way may be too mechanistic, as they interact in a variety of ways. Nevertheless, any study of urban form should address these two interrelated dimensions or, if focused on certain aspects of form, be able to locate the focus with due considerations towards these two major dimensions.

Physically, urban fabric might b e seen as a grouping of built spatial units. Here the study of form can, at different scales and in both two and three dimensions, refer to single buildings, blocks, urban quarters, and the whole urban fabric as the combination of these physical component parts. It is also possible to focus on the space between these parts when studying the pattern of streets and squares.

The social dimension of urban form deals with the spatial arrangement and interrelationship of the characteristics of the people who build, use and value the urban fabric. Here the study of urban form refers to the way the urbanités, individually or in groups, relate to each other in space.

Social and physical dimensions of urban form have a dynamic relationship. Physical fabric is produced and conditioned by different social procedures. At the same time, the form of urban space, once built, can exert influence upon the way these procedures recur. ^

On these bases, it is possible t o envisage urban form as the geometry of a socio-spatial continuum (Figure 2.1). In this continuum, individual elements, with both physical and social dimensions, are combined progressively through their interrelationships shaping complex combinations. In other words, the city as a whole might be seen as formed by a spectrum of structures at various scales down to the level of a single element. At all levels, physical and social dimensions of the structures are interwoven, though distinguishable and modifiable in the degree and the extent of their linkage. A study of urban form therefore refers to the way physical entities, singly or in a group, are produced and used, their spatial arrangements, and their interrelationships, and also how monetary and symbolic values are attributed to them.

34 Design of Urban Space Structural Frameworks of Urban Space 35

F i g u r e 2.1. Urban form is the geometry of a socio-spatial continuum. {Dublin, Ireland)

Approaches to the study of urban form have been as varied as the approaches to its definition. Yet it is possible to identify two basic explanatory approaches within the frameworks of the disciplines of geography and architecture. The difference between the descriptive nature of the former and the prescriptive nature of the latter is minimized w h e n they focus on the urban phenomena . Geography, which had started by describing the phenomena on the earth's surface, narrowed d o w n to the level of intra-urban studies in the field of urban geography. On the other hand, architecture, which initially was mainly concerned

with the des ign a n d construct ion of single bui ldings, extended its scope to cover whole cities. T h o u g h different in their subject matter, these two lines of in\'estigation of u r b a n form h a v e found their over lap in the prescriptive fields of urban planning a n d urban design.

Despite this v ic in i ty , their different approaches to the understanding of urban phenomena, as ref lected in their different areas of interest, have kept them apart, leaving a large g a p in be tween . W h e r e a s urban architecture tends to see the city as a physical ent i ty , u r b a n g e o g r a p h y , along with urban sociology, has shifted its focus more o n t o the people w h o l ive inside this fabric. In this way, urban -geography concentra tes on the s tudy of urban spatial structure rather than the study of the u r b a n fabric, w h i c h is the domain of urban architecture. A n attempt to link them h a s b e e n m a d e b y urban morphology which has combined elements of both. A m o r e sys temat ic approach to link, and to benefit from, the insights offered by these disc ipl ines is, as a lready discussed, to concentrate on the process of making the c i ty . Th is process inevitably starts from the physical space of nature.

Natural space

The physical e n v i r o n m e n t of nature is the main component part of urban space, the first context in w h i c h the buil t environment takes shape. The recognition of the impact of nature on physica l a n d social qualities of urban space, however , should not be mis taken for env i ronmenta l determinism, whose tenet was to stress "that the environment controls the course of human act ion" (Lewthwaite , quoted in Johnston, G r e g o r y & Smith , 1986: 131) . It is evident that some qualities of urban environment are the o u t c o m e s of an interaction between human action and the physical space of nature . B y interact ing with this natural space through time, social processes create the h u m a n space . The particular features of human space are thus largely d e t e r m i n e d through this interaction between particularities of the natural space a n d the social characterist ics of the people who have occupied and transformed it.

The interact ion b e t w e e n h u m a n societies and their environments can influence urban space in t w o different w a y s : on the one hand, natural space has an impact on physical a n d social qualit ies of h u m a n space. O n the other hand, human societies h a v e a f fec ted nature b y the development of urban space.

The impact of nature on physical qualities of urban space can be seen throughout the h is tory of cities. Especially in the case of the early human settlements a n d agrar ian societies, but also in the newer cities of the industrial era, urban form h a s b e e n largely inf luenced, among other factors, by climate, topography, w a t e r resources and agricultural land. Comparisons between settlements in m o u n t a i n s and on flat plains, between those in hot and cold climates, and b e t w e e n those a long the r iverbanks and on piedmonts would show how the built f o r m can b e different according to the conditions of the natural setting.

This diversi ty of phys ica l form and natural quahties have in return influenced the social qual i t ies of u r b a n space . In the historical process of creating cities.

36 Design of Urban Space Structural Frameworl<s of Urban Spac 37

F i g u r e 2 . 2 . Castles on hilltops are the best examples of the control of topography by the powerful. (Warkworth, Northumberland, UK)

these condit ions h a v e often been employed, symbolical ly and practically, to I institute dif ference and segregation. For example, topography is a specific tool frequently used throughout history to express spiritual and temporal power (Figure 2 .2) . In the ancient M e s o p o t a m i a , the natural and artificial raised platforms w e r e used to house citadels , the seats of the rulers and at times priests. In Greece, the hi l l tops , which w e r e the sites of the prehistoric settlements, were devoted to the g o d s , overlooking the life of the city from their temples. Higher points in towns w e r e favoured b y the better-off and the powerful for reasons of safety and security as well as for the quality of environment . In the Middle East and Central Asia , wherever the deve lopment of qanats had made the piedmonts habitable, the weal thier groups tended to occupy the higher ground, where they c o u l d ^ a v e t h e best access to fresh water from underground streams, as was the case in Herat . E v e n w h e n n e w technologies have permitted more flexibility in urban structure, the old distinctions have continued. A n example is the city of Tehran, where the h igher- income groups live on higher grounds even when the water supply is no longer dependent on wells and underground streams (Figure 2.3) .

T h e occupat ion of strategic points in urban landscape by powerful institutions and individuals has continued to this day, as exemplified by the hilltops in parts of California, w h e r e the wealthier groups live in large residences, at a relatively safe distance f rom other urban areas with higher cr ime rates and atmospheric pollution. A hil l top location, however , is not a lways associated with power and wealth, as can be seen by the hil l top shanty towns of South America and the hills

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 , Afghanistan. Height , in some cases, can be an obstacle, a barrier to accessibility, marginal iz ing some groups from urban services and opportunities.

Natural space exerts another influence on urban space as a consequence of human interaction. Since very early t imes, transformation of the biophysical environment b y h u m a n societies has occurred in two distinctive ways: deliberate, which we call "environmental m a n a g e m e n t " today, and accidental, now called "environmental impact" . T h e k e y phases in this process included the development of the ability to m a n a g e fire, which allowed human societies to change the form and composit ion of m a n y ecosystems. Another key stage was acquiring the ability to domesticate plants and animals , which, since 3000 BC, led to the development of compact cities as concentrations of material and energy, which had to be largely brought in f rom outside their boundaries, and waste, all of which altered the environment of the city and its surroundings. These transformations of the environment have intensified since the use of fossil fuels enabled the development of large urban areas. In addition to noticeable alterations to the lower a tmosphere , the land surface and the aquatic and ecological systems have been almost totally t ransformed by modern cities. By reaching out for resources and depositing their waste , urban areas are major agents of environmental change both within their boundaries and well beyond (Simmons, 1989).


Created Space

Transforming the natural space, and overlaid upon it, are layers of created environments and social forms, accumulated through time, all together making the urban space. The city is therefore a socio-spatial phenomenon with an inherent, but visible, temporal dimension. It is a "product of time" (Mumford,1940: 4) , a "historical creation" (Benevolo,1980; 5), the "embodiment of history" (01sen,1986) and hence itself a "historical process" (Blumenfeld,1982:51).

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 accumulation of populations and material artefacts.

The city's social forms are also historical creations, as cities and the people who build and use them are both "embodiments of the past" (Moholy-Nagy,1968:11). The multitude of layers, which are produced over long periods of time to constitute the cities of today, are formed not only of artefacts but also of ideas and practices. Similar

F i g u r e 2 . 4 . Old and new stand side by side, even in the cities of the "new world" {Columbus, Ohio, USA)

to the short walk in the city, a brief look at many of our institutions, daily activities and beliefs would reveal their historical roots.

Generations of people have m a d e and remade numerous sets of ideas, practices and artefacts, some fading away within a short time while others outlive their creators. Every new generation abandons some part of its socio-spatial inheritance and maintains some other parts. Bv this they ensure a permanent but dynamic coexistence of different social and spatial forms, from different modes of production and institutions to daily routines, cultural habits and physical fabrics of the cities. This coexistence would not imply that the present is a prisoner of the past, as each new generation transforms and interprets, and therefore recreates, its inheritance in its own image. On the contrary, it allows the city a degree of freedom so that, as Mumford put it, "By the diversity of its Hmp-stn i r t i i res^Jl ip_r i ty^jn parj escapes the tyranny nf a single present, a n d ^ t h e m o n o t o n y ^ F â ^ in r e p e a t a g only j i^ ingle bcafh^ard in the past" (Mumford,1940: 4).

In this way w F m a y acqliire a^sëïTsëôf the historicity of the city. But how can we understand this historical city with its complex socio-spatial layers? Perhaps we should seek our answer from the historians of urban space to see if they could unpack these layers and explain them one b y one. Urban historians, architectural historians and historical geographers claim an uiiderstanding of the constitution and evolution of urban form. We therefore concentrate our attention on approaches to urban form in search of explanations for the complexities of urban space and the way it has been structured.

Urban form and historical processes

The role of architectural historians, according to Girouard (1992: 11-12) , is to interpret buildings and make these interpretations accessible to others. Introducing his methodology, Girouard states that: "I work on an ad hoc basis: one subject leads to another; ideas, themes or hypotheses occur to me, and I follow them up. Sometimes they lead me into w i d e r fields than just architecture, sometimes away from architecture altogether, b u t it is from buildings that I start, and to buildings that I return". I h e tjuestion, ho\s'ever, remains as to which buildings to choose to interpret. Nicholas Pevsner (1963) offers a formula he had used to distinguish between buildings and architecture: "Nearly everything that encloses space on a scale sufficient for a h u m a n be ing to move is a building; the term architecture applies only to bui ldings des igned wi th a view to aesthetic appeal" . In this way, "A bicycle shed is a building; L incoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture" (Pevsner,1963: 15). T h e process of selection and interpretation of buildings may lead to an illumination of artistic styles and aesthetic trends. It offers us a knowledge of the monuments and other important buildings of the past. Flowever, it fails to address the cities in their totality. Perhaps this is why Kenneth Frampton feels obliged to apologize to "a large n u m b e r of small to medium craft practitioners throughout the w o r l d " , w h o s e w o r k he had not included in his history of modern architecture (Frampton,1992; 7 ) . In our quest for understanding cities, we must ask whether concentrat ing on bui ldings , or on works of architecture, is sufficient. To understand cities, it fol lows, w e will need to consider architecture as all the component parts of the built env i ronment (Roth,1993; Gorst,1995) (Figure 2.5).

Design of Urban Space Structural Frameworks of Urban Space 41

F i g u r e 2.5. To understand urban space, we need to component parts of the built environment. {Salmmbe, UK)

consider architecture as all the

T h e relat ionship o f historical processes with urban form is one of the key debatr a m o n g historians. O n e line of argument, as represented by Watkins (1978,1980) for . example , maintains that it is futile to try to relate individual works of art to their | contemporary political , economic and cultural conditions. These works, it is argued, can be best unders tood in connection with their concrete situations and with the I artist w h o created them, and at the most general level, in the context of an aesthetic || tradition or m o v e m e n t . A counter-argument is put forward by those who cannot disregard the relat ionship of artistic styles with their contemporary political forms, social institutions, economic practice and ideological convictions (01sen,1986). As "a nonverbal form of communicat ion" , architecture is "a mute record of the culture that produced i t " , and can be " r e a d " in the same way that written history and literature are read (Roth,1993: 3 ) . It becomes, therefore, possible to deal with identifying the architectural styles and the development of various urban forms in historical periods wi th an attempt to explain the relation between societal processes and these deve lopments (Vance,1977; Morris,1979; Benevolo,1980).

Benevolo (1980: 5—6) tries to explain the development of cities on the basis of the " m a j o r c l ianges in product ive organization that have transformed everyday life",

and the subsequent rise in population in each period. The change in physical environment, which is influenced by all other aspects of civilization and in turn influences them itself, and the w a y changes are hindered by the m o n u m e n t s of the past and hastened by the buildings of the modern era are subjects of study. Morris (1979) aims to study the most significant examples of urban form, through their morphological component parts, and to establish the factors with great determining effects on urban form, especially the "politics of p lanning" . The planned versus organic growth models of urban development, which formed a major line of argument against modernist planning in the 1970s (Vance,1977; Morris,1979), are taken up and expanded by Kostof (1992) in his account of the relationship between historical processes and urban form. He identifies three processes that lead to urban change. Two of these processes are forceful and sudden: the natural and human disasters such as earthquakes, fires and wars. Another example would be the large-scale intervention of the authorities in urban development, which he calls Haussmannizat ion, referring to Baron Haussmann's redevelopment of Paris in the nineteenth century. T h e third category is the incremental change, where a city is transformed through thousands of small-scale alterations and adjustments.

There have been other attempts of this kind to introduce overriding principles and processes determining urban form, as exemplified by Mumford (1975), who views the cities of all times as expressions of var ious combinations of two principles: accumulation and conquest (Tilly,1984). Another version of this approach might be that of Eisenstadt and Shachar (1987) who identify two processes, concentration and centrality, at work in the formation of the cities and urban systems. The city is seen as a mosaic, each part of which is the outcome of different environmental orientations, and whose concrete form is influenced by these orientations in different combinations (Cohen,1976; Eisenstadt & Shachar,1987). For Gottmann (1978), the city, as a social and political phenomenon, exists with the concurrence of three components : a large number of people, their built environment, and a combination of models of life. H e argues that the life and form of the cities are directly and indirectly affected by the forces that modify the society, categorized traditionally under four titles: demographic forces, economic forces, the impact of technological change, and cultural variation. Scargill (1979) envisages the processes that shape the city in two principal categories: the historical processes, focusing on the impact of the former patterns of land ownership on the growth of the city; and the political processes, involving the role of politicians and planners. According to Ravetz (1980: 13), however , the stress is on "the ideas or deliberate policy and design . . . the technology (building) . . . and the influence of cities as mechanisms for the control of some people by other groups" . W e can now see clearly how these interpretations of the way cities have taken shape tend to emphasize some factors and undermine others. If we see urban space as a physical space with social and psychological dimensions, our analysis of the processes that shaped it will therefore need to account for these dimensions.

Another trend in historical analysis of the city sees it as a "natural" phenomenon, comparing its historical transformation to the biological evolution of the natural world. The city as a natural phenomenon, a concept which Tafuri (1980) traces back

42 Design of Urban Space Structural Frameworks of Urban Space 4 3

to the century of Enhghtenment and the development of capitalism, is reflected in a [ number of design approaches. Ecological methods were applied in which the city : | was understood as a form that is derived from "geological and biological evolution, ' existing as a sum of natural processes and adapted by man" (Mcfiarg,1969: 175). The historic development of the city is also perceived as a sequence of cultural adaptations that reflect in the city plan and its constituent buildings both individually and in groups. Alexander et al. (1987: 13) identify a shared feature between the old towns and "all growing organisms", which is a "self-determined, inward-governing, growing wholeness" . For Smith (1977), the city of the past has evolved according to universal principles in which growth is the result of transactions between organism and environment on the basis of a fixed rule. One of the main problems with this comparison between urban transformation and biological evolution is their different time-scales, where changes in the former are short term and involve human beings whose behaviour does not necessarily follow the physical laws of nature — laws that govern the very long-term, evolutionary process of the latter. 'j

Different branches of the historical approach have tended to study the morphology of cities or their parts to provide awareness , criticism or practical |l advice. Some provide a critical framework for understanding and evaluating the present or the past approaches to urban form. Tafuri , for example, explains the development of urban form and architectural styles through the development of capitalism (Tafuri,1980: 178). Therefore, modern architecture is regarded as an attempt to resolve the imbalances, contradictions and retardations that characterize the capitalist reorganization of the world market and productive development . The appreciation of the collective memory through the monuments of the past (Rossi,1982), and the identification of the pre-industrial urban elements of the street, the square and the quarter, form a basis on which the re-integration of public realm contributes to the struggle against capitalism (L. Krier,1979; R. Krier, 1979a,b; GosHng & Maitland, 1984). Others aim to use historical studies to provide advice for future policies concerning urban form, such as preservation and conservation, or design guidance (e.g. Moughtin,1991a,b) . Lessons of the past are studied to offer guideUnes for the future. The question that is then raised is which period and which context offers the best examples for today. For example, for Westfall (1991: 286) , "Renaissance theory and practice provided all that one ought to know to design cities, although the form that theory and practice takes today is different because current circumstances surrounding building in cities is different". -As against views of this nature, Attoe and Logan argue that European urban design theories are not sufficient for addressing American urban context. For them, "M u c h recent urban development in the United States has been based on a pragmatic picking and choosing among European theories and precedents" , to which they object (1989: xi) .

Whatever their differences, these approaches seem to share the notion of the j historicity of urban fabric. This notion has been developed out of the belief that since cities are built over long periods of time, any approach to urban form should take account of this historical evolution (Flealey & Madanipour,1993). However, it should be noted that since urban fabric has social, physical and symbolic dimensions, only those views of historical evolution of urban form that address

these dimensions s imultaneously will be useful in our understanding of urban space.

In this way, b y considering that urban fabric is the outcome of a historic process of development, it will be possible to establish l inks between form and general societal processes by focusing on this deve lopment process. T h e development process, as the social process through which urban fabric is produced , finds a central importance in the study of the built form. It is through tracing this process that the course of the development of a part icular urban form and hence its rationale and its determinants can b e identified. Researchers of u r b a n form, along with those involved in the conservat ion and development of the city, are thus required, as Jacobs (1985: 137) proposes , to k n o w h o w cities have grown and developed physically and h o w this has been related to their social and economic history. This, however , is a notion that the des ign approach, due to its specific concentration on physical d imens ions of urban fabric, has not sufficiently developed. In order to find conceptual f rameworks that address the development process as a social process, other approaches to u r b a n form, from urban geography and urban sociology, should also be taken into considerat ion.

The city as a work of art

The architectural approach to the s tudy of urban form might conveniently be called the "design" approach (Eisenstadt & Shachar ,1987) , as it is essenfially normative. It deals with the plan of the city, the various c o m p o n e n t parts of urban space, and their functional and aesthetic aspects . T w o s t rands in the studies of urban form in architecture can be identified: those with a strong prescriptive content, which are often carried out b y designers to analyse urban space in order to transform it; and the work of architectural historians whose study of the urban forms of the past is more descriptive and has often only an indirect relat ionship to design practice. Both approaches, however , mainly seek to explain u r b a n form with an ultimately practical aim of being an aid to the design process , and hence their dividing line can be blurred.

Another dividing line, which can be more clearly distinguished, is between the way the functional and aesthetic aspects of the city arc approached. Due to the presence of aesthetic aspects in architectural concerns , the city in some of the designers' analyses tends to be explained through a set of subjective values. The city is seen as a "dramat ic event in the envi ronment" , a gathering of people who create "a collective surplus of e n j o y m e n t " and a gathering of bui ldings that can collectively give visual pleasure (Cul len,1971: 7 - 8 ) . T h e purpose of this gathering in the city is to offer pleasure and psychological welfare instead of stultification (Smith, 1977: 261) . The city is a work of art (Bacon,1975; 01sen,1986) , it "fosters art and is art" (Mumford,1940: 480) . T h e city is seen as an architectural, and therefore an artistic, creation.

Architecture c la ims superiority over other forms of visual art. Pevsner (1963) maintains that what distinguishes architecture f rom other arts such as painting and sculpture is its spatial quality. But it also incorporates elements of these art forms and therefore is the most comprehensive of visual arts. H e also believes in the social


F i g u r e 2 .6 . The city as "the largest work of art possible". {Florence, Italy)

superiority of architecture over other forms of visual and plastic art, as w e are surrounded b y architecture, unable to avoid buildings and "the subtle but penetrating effects of their character" (Pevsner,1963: 16). As we live in the environments shaped by h u m a n artifice, architecture becomes " the unavoidable art" (Roth,1993). A straightforward conclusion from this equation of city with its architecture is then that the city is interpreted as " the largest work of art possible" (01sen,1986; 4) (Figure 2.6).

In Britain, a strong concern for an artistic interpretation of the city can be found in the Townscape movement. This tradition, whose origins known as Picturesque go back to the eighteenth century, occupied the centre of architectural debates during the two decades that followed the Second World War (Banham,1968). T h e editorial board of the Architectural Review, w h o were among the major advocates 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 Townscape 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 redevelopment (Sharp, !968) .

Gordon CuUen's influential analysis of urban space was a major work in the Townscape movement. Its main claim was that it had "assisted in charting the structure of the subjective world" (Cullen,1971:194). To do 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. The environment is created either by means of common 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, we can begin to manipulate it, to "mould the city into a coherent drama" (Cullen,! 971:9).

The reduction of urban experience to only one of its aspects, the visual experience, however , can hardly satisfy us in our search for an analysis that entails a use of more than one sense. We have been searching for a combination of verbal and non-verbal means of communication. As Bandini (1992), following Ferrai, mentions, the methodological grounds of the whole of the Picturesque and Townscape enterprise were ambiguous and questionable. They lacked an interest in urban scale concepts and forms, and were largely perceived to be involved in the manipulation of the elements b f ' landscape and streetscape for environmental improvement.

The city as an embodiment of functions

The Townscape approach to the city was a critique of an earlier attempt to understand urban space objectively through its functions. The latter had been developed in the inter-war period by a group of avant-garde intellectuals who made up CIAM, the International Congress for Modern Architecture. Their famous

Design of Urban Spac0

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)

motto , " form follows function", meant to subordinate the aesthetics of environment to its functions (Figure 2.7). To find solutions for urban problems of the time, which | they saw as increasing congestion, spreading blight and intensifying chaos, they developed a framework that would enable them to analyse and compare the living conditions in contemporary cities. According to this analytical framework, which they used in undertaking case studies of 33 major urban areas, cities were sites of four elementary functions; dwelling, work (or production), recreation and transportation (Sert,1944). Their findings were then employed in the production of a town planning chart in 1933, known as the Charter of Athens, in which they suggested ways of reorganizing these functions hoping for a better fulfilment of the

cultural role of cities. T h e strength of the Charter lay partly in its integrated approach to urban

phenomena. It insisted that towns and cities cannot be studied out of their regional context that constitutes their natural limits and environments. A city is part of a geographic, eccmomic, social, cultural and political unit, a regional unit upon wliich its development depends and in which town and country merge into one another. Since then, these functional dimensions of urban structure have been widely studied, accumulating a vast literature on urban studies, and the

Structural Frameworks of Urban Space 47

prescriptions of the Charter have been implemented throughout the world . This modernist vision in creating better cities and the n a r r o w n e s s of its functionalist analytical framework, however, w e r e widely ques t ioned by a generat ion of commentators.

This is reflected in a major dichotomy that d o m i n a t e d the architectural debates during the 1970s and 1980s: the contrast between m o d e r n i s m , the established postwar approach to design, and post-modernism, which emerged as a reaction to it (Jencks,1973, 1992). This contrast has deeply affected the w a y urban form and phenomena have been explained. T h e modernist approach to history was to develop an evaluation and a critique of the past w i t h which to establish modern solutions as an achievement of the age (Gibberd,1959; Giedion,1967; Le Corbusier,1971). The urban form of the past was s tudied to prove its inability to cope with the requirements of the m o d e r n civilization (Sert ,1944) , or to offer lessons for modern developments (Moholy-Nagy,1968) .

As a reaction to this, the post-modernist historical analysis was concerned with urban forms of the past for developing a critique o f the modernist developments and propositions for the future. There was a revival of interest in an approach developed by Sitte (1945, originally published in 1889) . Sitte wanted to extract "universal principles out of the array of specific e x a m p l e s that old cities present" (Collins &L ColIins,1986; 64). It had been criticized b y modernist commentators as breaking from the time (Giedion,1967), returning to medieva l values and to the praising of aesthetics, which was unacceptable in " a n age of motor -cars" (Le Corbusier, 1971). With the revival of interest in old cit ies, " the traditional syntax of the cities" was appreciated, since it had been deve loped over millennia and was entirely sensitive to a wide range of psychological needs and aspirations (Smith,1977). This form of faith in traditional cities, however , has been open to criticism on grounds that it reinforces its argument "with all the nostalgia and authority which this view of the past can provide" (Gosling & Mait land, 1984: 29), and that it can be anachronistic with its lack of at tention to the social forms and urban dynamics of today.

Both Morris (1979) and Vance (1977) , in their historical research, focus on the contrasting categories of towns that have been de\eloped on a " p l a n n e d " or "preconceived" basis as against the "organic growth" . This view expresses a debate on the role of planning in the development of u r b a n areas. It is similar to the contrast between "blueprint" and " p r o c e s s " principles of design identified by Bourne (1982), or to "utopian" as opposed to "na tura l " (Gosling & Maitland,1984). It is manifest in the ' contrast be tween " m o d e r n i t y " and " tradit ion" , between "revolution" and "evolution" i(Smith,1977), be tween centralized authority and the people, and between laws and master plans with piecemeal growth (Alexander et al., 1987). Other aspects of this d ichotomy are the difference in the scale and the scope: the universal plan as against specific \vorking details (Collins & ColIins,1986), and in the battle against and for the revival of aesthetics (Scruton, 1983,1979) . These are the lines of argumeiit of post -modernism against modernism that were criticized for their stress on " technology, authoritarian utopianism, and mega-scale thinking" (Collins & Coll ins,1986: 125).

This dichotomy has its counterpart in social phi losophy, as exemplified in the discussions of Habermas and Lyotard (Dews,1986) . The transition from high-

4 8 Design of Urban Space Structural Frameworks of Urban Space 4 9 \

modernism to post-modernism fias been l inked with the transition from high-Fordism, the post-war socio-spatially centralized system legitimized by grand narratives of progress and emancipat ion, to post-Fordism as a socio-spatially decentralized system whose characteristic is the "exhaust ion of Utopian energies" (Habermas, in Albertsen,1988) . Harvey (1989: 256-257) refers to modernism as the Utopian programme to transform society b y transforming space, a programme whose failure had linked modern ism to capital accumulation through mass production. Modernism was representing corporate power , and, with the changing circumstances, post -modernism gained ground to represent the flexible accumulation of capital .

One of the early branches which developed as a counter-movement towards modernism with the aim of humaniz ing its approaches to urban form, was a search for the image of the city and its " legib i l i ty" (Lynch,1979) . It stimulated extensive research on patterns of behaviour and mental mapping of the cities and held a strong position in the development of criteria for morphological studies and design (Bentley et al.,1985; Jacobs & Appleyard , 1987; Tibbalds,1988) . Cultural imperatives in the development of urban form (Rapoport ,1969,1977) and symbolic meanings attributed to the site of a city or a part icular structure within it (Tuan,1977; Harvey, 1985a; Harbison,1991), and to the allocation of different areas in the city to various groups (Tuan,1982), and the a l ignment of walls, gates and major road axes (Wheatley, in Eisenstadt & Shachar ,1987) have constituted major lines of investigation of urban form.

Despite the extensive l iterature on the des ign approach, Eisenstadt and Shachar (1987) argue that it has provided a lmost no paradigm, and that m a n y of the studies in this approach , a iming at ident i fying the u n i q u e features of the city structure for a given period or place, are idiographic . It should be noted, however, that, although the approach m a y not h a v e developed a coherent conceptual framework, it has generated w i d e r cultural debates . It has also provided a considerable a m o u n t of information on architecture and urban form, widening the understanding of u r b a n design and b a s i c e lements o f the internal structure 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, and the attempts which have tried to put these relationships into changing societal contexts , have provided valuable insights to the dynamics of socio-spatial contexts. A n y s tudy of urban form, therefore, due to the predominance of modernist thinking in a large part of the present century throughout the world, will have to take it into consideration. It will have to address its impact on the production of that part icular urban form, along with its associated societal processes, and the types of reaction to it.

Ecology of urban structure

The ecological analysis that the Chicago school of sociology proposed in the inter-war period has occupied a predominant position in social sciences ever since. Urban sociology's concern with urban spatial structure was widely influential in the development of urban geographical thought .

The demand for a better understanding of the economic, political, social and cultural contexts of the city has been growing within urban geography 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 be identified: exploration and environmentalism. The latter at times reached the stage of determinism, investigating the ways in which the physical environment affects the functioning and development of societies (Herbert & Thomas,1982). From 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 pace of the emergence of new paradigms resulted in tensions, and a situation in which no paradigm was totally discarded (Herbert & Thomas,1982) , resulting in a diversification of interest and focus (Johnston,1991,1993; Gregory, Martin & Smith,1994).

The evolution of geographical thought during the post-war per iod has taken the form of a main strand which studied urban spatial structure, and two later strands which developed as a critique of the mainstream. T h e s e t w o strands, behavioural studies and radical geography, intended to deepen and broaden the scope of urban investigation by paying attention to subjective and polit ical-economic considerations of urban phenomena . This pattern, associated with the growing social movements after the late 1960s, shows broad consistency with other social sciences and with urban architecture 's approaches to the study of urban form.

The internal structure of the city

The study of the internal structure of the cities started from the Chicago school 's descriptions of urban structure, generalized in three models, concentric, sector and multiple nuclei. It then developed to a combination of these models in the form of social area analysis through the methodology of factorial ecology (Bourne,1982). In this approach, patterns of urban land use are described on the basis of models relating location and accessibility through price mechanism. The approach is called "neoclassical-functional description" (Johnston,1982), "empirical -analyt ical" (Bourne,1982) or "quantitative-theoretical" (Herbert & Thomas, 1982). It focused on documentation of the spatial organization of society and was strongly linked with the "quantitative revolution" (Hall,1984). With "spatial analys is" as its paradigm, it became the dominant approach in post-war geography (Herbert & Thomas,1982).

The earliest classical model of the city structure, developed in 1925, suggested that the growth of a city takes place concentrically. Inspired by the study of plant and animal ecology. Burgess envisaged the outward growth of the city resulting from invasion and succession, providing a descriptive framework to study both the spatial organization of land use in the city and its change over time, and the relationship between population mobility and social organization (Scargill,1979; Herbert & Thomas,1982) (Figure 2.8).

50 Design of Urban Space Structural Franneworks of Urban Space 51

I

F i g u r e 2 . 8 . The ecological approach to urban structure explained the spatial organization and the outward growth of the city through waves of invasion and succession by different groups. {Chicago. USA)

This theory was supported b y urban land rent theory, which assumes the centre of the city as highly desirable, and that, due to shortage of land supply, the users will make competitive bids for a site here (Alonso,1971) . The theory was criticized due to its static-equilibrium form and the assumptions which tend to simplify reality, such as the location of all the service and employment opportunities at a single city centre, a symmetric pattern of transport costs and the condition of

perfect competition. To compensate for these shortcomings , i m p o r t a n c e of factors such as topography, directions of urban growth, envi ronmenta l quality and historical factors were later empirical ly establ ished in n u m e r o u s studies (Korcelli,1982).

In 1939, Hoyt formulated a sector model on the basis of rent levels in residential neighbourhoods. According to him, the residential areas were not distr ibuted in the form of concentric rings, but as pie-shaped sectors. "If one sector of the city first develops as a high, medium, or low rental residential area, it will tend to retain that character for long distances" as through the process of a city's growth , the sector extends from the city centre along transportation routes (Hoyt, in Nelson , 1971: 79). These two models were modified by a third, the mult iple nuclei mode l , which was developed by Harris and Ullman in 1945. They argued that the city grows around not a single centre but a number of centres which are, in number and specialization, proportionate to the size of the city.

These models were tested extensively in many cities with no conclusive results. The pattern of intra-urban population density, described as a negat ive exponential decline of density with distance from the city centre, w a s also another supportive theory which was never invalidated (Korcelli ,1982). This has been explained in two ways; that cities are subject to de-concentration processes as a result of the passage of time and growth in size; and that the de-concentration processes , linked to certain economic, technological and cultural factors, are a feature of the modern world.

The three models of urban structure were developed in a certain period in America and often failed to be applicable to other t imes and places . As regards their declining relevance. Berry (1971) argued that in each city a different combination of three classic principles of urban locat ion operate: cities as the sites of special functions; cities as the expressions of the layout and the character of transport networks; and cities as central places . Hoyt (1971) at tempted to summarize the effects of urbanization, of widespread ownership and use of the car, high-rise construction for office and residential use, and other social and technological changes on the distortion of the traditional pat terns . For Nelson (1971), some of the most significant factors contributing to the urban structure in American cities included rapid and massive growth, a heterogeneous population, the desire for a single family detached house, and the changing form of urban transportation. Blumenfeld (1982: 51) saw urban form a result of " t h e interaction of situation, function, and site" . It also results " f r o m the concepts in the minds of its citizens and from the types of structure they bui ld , both derived f rom pre-urban roots; and from the reaction of these on situation, function, and site, and on subsequent human activity". Bourne (1971) called for attention to be paid to the additional effects of changes in attitudes and in political and institutional organization.

Korcelli (1982) identifies six m a j o r approaches f rom varied a n d previously unrelated disciplines which h a v e contributed to the body of theory on urban spatial structure and growth. T h e s e approaches are ecological concepts from sociology; theories of urban land from economics ; urban popula t ion density models from demography; models of intra-urban functional pat terns (or spatial interaction models) from urban planning; set t lement network (or sys tem) theories;

52 Design of Urban Space Structural Franneworks of Urban Space 53 î

and models of spatial diffusion on an intra-urban scale , both from geography. The theoretical underpinnings o f the a p p r o a c h w e r e locat ion theory, w h i c h was previously developed in G e r m a n y a n d dealt with the mapping of economic costs onto geographic space; and the gravi ty model a n d its later more sophisticated derivatives. Borrowed from N e w t o n i a n physics , the latter argued that the interaction between any two points on the earth 's surface would be found to be directly proportionate to the size or m a s s of the place and inversely proportionate ^ to the distance b e t w e e n them. F o r the urban geographer , the applicat ion of location theory and spatial physics resulted in the search for the underlying order | in urban behaviour in the f r a m e w o r k of a social sc ience . Urbanités, producers or 4

consumers, were rational beings with pure e c o n o m i c objectives w h o confronted ' the "friction of dis tance" in geographica l space. T o overcome this, they created spatial regularities, in various forms of urban space , patterns of land use, and the • distribution of inter- and intra-urban trips, that w e r e the expression of basic universal laws. Absent f rom this approach w a s an explanation of urban g '

phenomena where sociological , psychologica l , cultural and political factors came in (Hall,1984).

The central feature of the quanti tat ive a p p r o a c h to spatial analysis was an explicit philosophical position, logical posit ivism; a trend towards the development of geography on the basis of a quantif ied form of theory such яаШ "models " ; and subsequently tested through empir ical observation (На11,1984). T h e e description of the earth's surface w a s replaced b y an attempt to search for underlying laws governing the distribution of certain features on the space of the Щ

earth. The explanatory models of the approach stem in part from those o f B neoclassical economics , emphas iz ing the price-f ixing mechanisms through | competition in the free markets , into which the extra costs of crossing distance are 1 introduced by the geographer ; and from the functionalist sociology of Talcott 1 Parsons with its demographic notion of social structure (Johnston,1982). Characteristics of the post-war scientific d e v e l o p m e n t s in America which were È transferred to urban geography as spatial analysis included an emphasis o n j general trends and patterns and interpret ing specif ics within a theoretical matrix Щ

instead of focusing on the unique and exceptional ; an application of numerical methods to analyse data and so becoming "scient i f ical ly" respectable; and an apparently predictive power capable of being u s e d in the development of public policy (Herbert & Thomas,1982) .

As a proposition on the nature of structural growth of the city. Bourne (1982: 37-39 ) introduces "designer principles" as address ing the "rules, both explicit and implicit, that act to 'design' the s tructure" of the city. These principles pose the essential questions of " w h y cities are laid out the way they are? W h o then determines or designs the spatial form of the ci ty? and on what criteria?" He identifies in the literature three sets of designer principles: blueprint, process and relational principles.

Blueprint principles describe a premeditated process of planning and reflect the presence of a complete monopoly over the instrviments of design. In the process principles, the gradual evolution of urban structure is emphasized which has taken place through a sequence of thousands of events, act ions and decisions in which the parts fit together through adaptat ion, or trial a n d error. Three types of such

processes are identified: competition, as reflected in land market and territorial claims, which generate contradictory processes of co-operation and monopoly; socialization/stratification, as reflected in the process of social clustering, networks and organizations; and institutions, as reflected in the formalized patterns and rules of behaviour.

The third set of designer principles include viewing the urban spatial structure as based on some physical analogue, incorporating principles of least effort, minimization of the friction of distance, maximum entropy, allometric principles, or biological analogies. Bourne argues that in contemporary times, any urban area is, to some degree, subject to all these rules of design, thus "the internal structure of the city mirrors a complex interplay of pressures that derive from competing—if not contradictory—attempts to 'design' a structure that fits someone 's image and/or interests".

The extensive literature which the studies of the internal structure of cities have provided are a rich source of theoretical and practical approaches to urban form. However, any attempt to utilize these approaches will need to take into account the limitations inherent in their conceptual bases, as referred to earlier and as discussed further in Chapter 5. The quantitative techniques, which study the locational behaviour of individuals and their impact on determining the urban structure, will then be of prime importance when coupled with the consideration of their interactions with what constrains their actions in the form of social structures and systems.

Urban morphology

A major trend involved in the study of urban form in urban geography is urban morphology. The term morphology means "the science of form" (Slwrter Oxford Dictionary,ì970), which studies the "shape, form, external structure or arrangement, especially as an object of study or classification" {Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, 1976). It has been mainly used in biology for the study "not only of shape and structure in plants,- animals and microorganisms, but also of the 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 the close interrelation of the function and structure of organisms {The New Encyclopaedia Britannica,^984).

Urban morphology is the systematic study of the form, shape, plan, structure and functions of the built fabric of towns and cities, and of the origin and the way in which this fabric has evolved over time (Clark,1985; Small & Witherick,1986; Goodall, 1987) (Figure 2.9). For Gordon (1984: 3) , morphology entails "plots, buildings, use, streets, plans, townscapes" . It is dealt with mostly in urban geography which studies spatial aspects of urban development from two inter-

urban 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 use within the urban area and. to the spatial interactions of one part of the urban area with another, i.e. internal structure and processes" (Goodall,1987).

54 Design of Urban Space Structural Frameworks of Urban Spac 55

F i g u r e 2 .9 . Urban morphology is the systematic study of the form, shape, plan, structure ai function of the built fabric of towns and cities, and of the origin and the way in which this fabric has evolved over time. {Newcastle upon Tyne, UK)

Until the 1960s, the main concern of urban geographers was the internal structure of the city focused on morphology, which plotted the ages and types of buildings |, and identified different historical components of town plans (Dennis & 1 Prince,1988). Urban morphology in its most active period was emphasizing the classification of subrogions within individual cities in relation with the phases of urban growth (Herbert & Thomas,1982; Baker & Slater,1992). s

Urban morphology in the German-speaking world was flourishing in the inter- • w 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. This line of central European 'f, research was introduced to Britain mainly through the work of M. R. G. Conzen i (1960), who tried to explain the present structure of a town plan by examining its Î historical development. |

In the 1960s, with the rise of interest in functional classification and the economic bases of urban systems, urban morphology was severely criticized as being mainly i descriptive, lacking in good measurement techniques and faihng to develop a general theory, and focusing merely 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 morphology (Whitehand, 1988,1992; Slater,1990; Whitehand & Larkham,1992a) . In its revived form, urban morphology

has focused on town plan analysis and building form. A theoretical f r a m e w o r k was \vorked out which described the creation of morphology b y referring to " a c t o r s " in "stages" (Gordon,1984). Whitehand argues that for a m o r e realistic perspect ive , it is necessary to "set individual decision makers into a wider f r a m e w o r k of morphogenetics, economics, property interests and artistic cons idera t ions" (VVhitehand,1988: 288). He sums up the research questions of one o f the most important lines of investigation in British urban morphology in the 1980s as dealing with the location of the individuals and the firms involved in the deve lopment process, their relationship with each other, and the implicat ions of these relationships for the change of building form. These are the questions in response to which new studies have been carried out (Larkham,1986) .

The social geography of the nineteenth-century cities is studied on the bas is of the ecological theory of the Chicago school and social area analysis (Dennis & Prince,1988). The spatial structure of a city is reconstructed and c o m p a r e d with a few standard types: Sjoberg's pre-industrial city. Burgess 's concentr ical ly zoned city, and Hoyt's sectors. It becomes then possible to locate the city in question somewhere along a transition from "pre-industrial" to "modern" . In the 1970s, when the studies were still principally descriptive, the observed c h a n g e s were accounted for only by the most general of processes such as modernizat ion . But over time, the concept of modernity has become less unilinear and m o r e historical through observation of modern attitudes, perceptions, political phi losophies and forms of class consciousness, together with spatial patterns (Dennis & Prince , 1988).

In Germany, recent studies on urban growth during the nineteenth century often proceed to investigate processes and the agents—political , functional , social and economic—that lay behind such urban expansion (Denecke,1988) . Deta i led studies have focused on urban fragments, their morphogenetic and functional change, especially during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Individual sections of towns, as representatives of the whole , are studied, reflecting the processes that the town underwent. The researcher is thus allowed to go into detail a n d to follow threads, which finally knit everything together on a more general and theoretical level.

With these characteristics, is it not urban morphology that seems to provide the necessary frameworks for the study of urban form? T h e extensive empir ical studies of this line of enquiry have produced useful information about part icular urban landscapes and have shed light on some crucial relationships b e t w e e n physical space and social actors, such as that between the development agency ' s location and the building form they produce. Nevertheless, there are some b r o a d e r issues which this tradition, in its highly focused, empirical research, leaves unaddressed. Despite the recent emergence of interest in the study of urban landscape , urban morphology is sdll on the margins of architecture (Bandini,1992) and geography (Whitehand & Larkham,1992b). This is where it can b e distinguished f r o m the more critical approaches to urban landscape (Knox,l 992,1993) , which try to relate the changes in physical space to the fundamental social change which the cities have undergone. Urban morphology tradition remains sceptical of these a t tempts , as it believes, "Causal links between post-modern landscapes and economic restructuring have still to be convincingly shown" (Whitehand & Larkham,1992b 9). Although focusing on the operation of agencies within certain structures, it doe:


not seem interested in addressing the general processes and contexts in which these operations are carried out. This imphes that despite its apparent attempts to Imk urban form with wider societal contexts, it has only concentrated on certain aspects of urban form in relation to certain characteristics of the development process and its agencies.

It has, however, found growing support among u r b a n design and conservation circles. Urban morphology, as an empirical form of s tudy approached by urban geographers, is considered to be offering considerable opportunities for t h e « "understanding and appreciation of historical a n d morphological context" 1 (Lowndes & Murray, 1988). Morphological rules of t h u m b have been proposed to study the urban form at three levels of basic components : elements, and historical and contemporary characteristics. Here the positive contribution of urban design is seen to confine its ideas to small and manageable areas such as b locks , streets or, buildings. This approach to urban form has been criticized as leading to environmental determinism, ignoring the economic, political and cultural context within which buildings have been produced. What is called for are the guidelines which translate "all our understanding about the contemporary w a y s the built environment is produced, used and v a l u e d " (Healey,1988: 4 ) .

Political economy of urban structure

The main rival to human ecology in spatial analysis a n d social scientific inquiry has been the political economic analysis. In the late 1960s , a wide-ranging discontent with the predominant spatial analysis approach started to develop. It was|| discovered that the complexity of spatial change in the advanced industrial societies could no longer be explained b y the simplified model of neoclassical theory, with its "myopic focus on individual f irms, in perfect competi t ion and responding blindly, and perfectly, to market forces" (Massey,1984: 3 ) . It w a s the pattern of job losses and plant closures, rather than the growth of urban areas, which had remained unexplained but obviously influential in determining the spatial qualities and i relationships. ^,

A major criticism of spatial analysis was that it did not pay attention to thef l subjectivity of the social actors. This led to research into individuals' cognition and ? behaviour, which will be discussed in the next chapter . Another approach, called the institutional approach (Johnston,1982) , " r a d i c a l " or "socially concerned'' geography (Hall ,1984), "structuralist" or "political e c o n o m y " (Herbert & Thomas, 1982), originated from the social movements of the late 1960s, and was a reaction to the estabUshed spatial analysis approaches. By the early 1980s, this approach had almost become the standard geographical approach (Hall,1984), before being challenged in favour of a problem-solving geography or one which combines human and physical geography (Johnston,1991) .

It attacks the other two approaches of spatial analysis and behaviouralism for ignoring the realities of human decision-making, and focuses on the "constraints that society as a whole, and particularly certain groups within it, imposes on the behaviour of individuals" (Johnston,1982: 81) . T h e institutional constraints are disregarded in both other approaches: in the posit ivism of the quantitative

approach which focuses only on statistical associations between various aspects of the socio-economic system and the models emphasizing individual choice; and in the subjective approach which studies only the perceived world of individuals who ffiay well be only dimly aware of these constraints.

The positivist claims of being objective, value-free and politically neutral were criticized as working to serve the existing social system and enable its survival. The other main themes of criticism were the assumption of consensus arrangements between conflicting and unequal social groups; the descriptive role of the quantitative approach and the mechanical way in which it could predict within the prescriptions of existing orders; and the reductionism of subjective approaches.

Hall (1984) identifies the role of the liberals in this approach. Their focus on the question of " w h o got what in the contemporary c i ty" , led to the study of the distribution of money income, and of access to private and public services, followed by a look at the political processes within the city to understand how inequalities arose. The Marxists rejected the logical positivist philosophy that the liberals and the quantifiers shared, and adopted the view that objective knowledge of reality, as the product of a given socio-economic formation, can only be achieved by understanding the historical laws that govern the rise and fall of such formations.

The institutional approach argues that the main determinant of locational behaviour is power , particularly economic power, and identifies the core of problems facing geographers as being the structural analysis of capitalism and its spatial manifestations (Johnston,1982). Despite the criticisms of the existence of "hidden structures" (Scruton,1985), the value of structural approaches should be stressed as pointing towards the broader contexts within which urban spatial structures and social problems must be studied. Herbert and Thomas (1982: 41) describe structuralism as "a diffuse tendency rather than a really consistent doctrine", which was concerned with grasping the meaning of underlying structures. It was a holistic scheme which viewed patterns and processes as largely affected b y "structural imperatives" (Herbert & Thomas,1982: 41). Points of departure occur at more detailed levels of understanding, where local factors need to be considered. This has led, within the framework of structures, to the study of "symbolic" or social values and the impacts of more localized organizations and institutions, as well as the study of "managers" in the societal system (Herbert & Thomas,1982). There have been attempts to integrate the different approaches as "openings" which lead to the flexibility of Marxist thought, as inspired by the work of Gramsci. An early example of this flexibility has been Pickvance (1974), who suggests that the mode of production exercises a general rather than a specific effect upon the social content of spatial forms.

As a response to the increased awareness of the influence of social processes on urban form, the need to relate "shapes on the ground to the shapes in society" (Carter & Wheatley,1979: 237) and the need to reconcile the social and physical space (Shaw,1979), focus on the relationship between pattern and the underlying social, economic and political processes has been stressed by social geographers (Pooley & Lawton,1987). During the last two decades, other social sciences, e.g. sociology (Saunders,1981), political science (Agnew,1987) and urban history (Tilly,1984), have found a much greater awareness of the need for the recognition of the role of space in the comprehension of human behaviour. As King (1990: 1) puts


it, "physical and spatial urban form actually constitute as well as represent much of the social and cultural existence". -M

Within the general framework of behavioural research, a branch concentrated o n j the behaviour of organizations as the main agents of spatial change. Rather than t h e « individual's presumed rational economic behaviour, what 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). Ц

The decision-making of the managers and boards of the large business organizations had more impact on the spatial organization of a locality than the models which attempted to explain individual choices in s free, symmetrical space. The significance of these organizations in developing an oligopolistic economy can he seen from a description of the industrial landscape of America, which, "would begin with a vast plain of millions of tiny pebbles, representing all the economically powerless, monopolistically competit ive business firms. At the centre of this enormous plain would rise a few hundred colossal towers, representing the important oligopolistic corporations. These few hundred towers would be so large that they would make insignificant the entire plain below them" (Hunt and.^ Sherman, quoted in Dicken & Lloyd,1990: 259). A similar undertaking would show how the landscape of the world economy is dominated by a number of giant multinational firms, at the top of a hierarchy of smaller firms in a segmented economy. In this landscape, the prime movers of the economy and therefore the! main agents of spatial change can be seen as these large business corporations.' Through their location decisions and a whole host of other forms of investment decision-making, organizations influence the geography of economic activity. The' location of the headquarters of large corporations is especially important as they: constitute the control and administrative centres of these business empires. These; tend to concentrate in large urban areas, where information is readily available and; direct contact with other firms is easiest. The world cities such as London and New York are such centres, where the accumulation of these headquarters intensifies their influence in the economic landscape of large parts of the world. The location of the headquarters in the existing concentrations of financial and political power h a s f helped to prolong the distinctions between core and periphery in that decisions and innovations from the centre have significant impacts on the entire economic system. | Also, a change in the spatial structure of a firm, when the nimiber, size, function and geography of a firm's activities change, can have a direct influence on the local J economies and their spatial characteristics. r]

By opening u p the analysis of location in space to the way large-scale! organizations are structured and how they behave, new insights were introduced » into an earlier, narrower realm of inquiry. Yet this perspective was itself not broad i enough in that it failed to address the larger social and economic contexts in which they operated. The task now was to link the geography of industry and ' employment to the wider, underlying structures of society (Massey,1984) (Figure t 2.10). The inequality of employment in various regions demanded an investigation of spatial organization of the social relations of capitalist production, rather than mapping the distribution of jobs. It was the change in spatial structures of production that had caused a change in the economic landscape of Britain and many other industrialized economies. This change was more than an accidental

Structural Frameworks of Urban Space 59

Figure 2.10. Some analysts have tried to explain the rise and fall of economies and their impact on urban structure through political economy of industrialization and deindustrialization. {Dessau, Germany)

The new spatial division of labour therefore represents how activities in different places find new sets of relations, new spatial patterns of social organization, new dimensions of inequality and new relations of dominance and d e p e n d e n c e (Massey,1984). Analysis of the division of labour, with its complex patterns and dynamics, offers a key to the understanding of the emergence of urban processes . It analyses the forces which govern the internal and external organization of urban economies, forces which mobilize citizens to be deployed in productive work. T h e process of industrialization, therefore, can explain the dynamics of this process of agglomeration in urban areas and the form it takes (Scott,1990).

problem of a specific city or region: it was a deeply rooted feature of capita l ism. It was argued that, as mechanisms for resource distribution in a capitalist e c o n o m y , cities were unfairly structured (Badcock,1984). The individual parts of thé landscape of capitalism, which is "a seamless garment" , could only be unders tood in relation to the dynamics of the whole (Scott,1990: 216) . It creates and destroys urban space in its restless drive for expansion and commodificat ion of n e w parts of life, at the expense of reorganizing the old.


In the industrialization process, the specialization of industrial establishments creates a dense web of interlinkages between these establ ishments , giving shape to an interconnected complex of industries which tend to locate near one another to keep the cost of their externalized transactions d o w n . T h e local ized production complexes come into being as a result of the expansion of the social division of labour and the increased size of the market, together with the innovation process, industrial diversification and locational activity. A n interlocking network of activities evolves when a number of these complexes and their satellite peripheries, all with their associated communities of workers, c o m e together to form an urban area (Scott,1990). This perspective offers an insight into the making of urban form ^ by giving an account of the production processes which govern the growth and decline of older industrial cities. Yet it fails to answer w h y n e w urban forms are shaped as they are. A n obvious example is Orange County , w h e r e Scott ' s analysis is . limited to the "self-evident observat ion" that the development of a high technology • complex in Orange County relies on the initial drive b y fecieral defence and space contracting (Scott,1990; 202). Orange County's monumenta l industrial growth in a very low-density urban sprawl without any visible town centre complex has been described as an entirely new pattern of urban form (Sorkin,1992) , and as the archetype of post-modern urbanism (Dear ,1995) . Yet the analysis of industrialization on its own seems to be hardly sufficient to explain w h y its space has been structured in this unprecedented way.

Political economy analysis offers valuable insights into the work ings of the social processes and structures. It is an integrative approach which goes beyond the confines of politics or economics in explaining social phenomena (Dahrendorf,1995). However, it is restricted in that it often undermines the importance of cultural factors in socio-spatial analysis . As it has been stressed in a number of branches of humanit ies and social sciences, e.g. cultural studies (Williams,1981), urban sociology (Gottdiener,1994) and social philosophy (Lefebvre,1991), that the study of political economy will not be complete without a study of the related cultural factors. In other w o r d s , agencies are as important as the structures which frame their action (Giddens,1984) .

Conclusion

As nodes of human societies, urban areas are agglomerat ions of people and material objects. A n agglomeration of this kind, and the space it occupies and reshapes, can be seen from a variety of angles. W e can see the city as a collection of artefacts: buildings and our material possessions therein. The w a y this urban space is structured is therefore understood to be a matter of classifying these material objects into meaningful groups and exploring our relationships with them. For example, we can see urban space as a created, as distinctive f rom natural, space, and see how it relates to the natural processes within and without it. W e can concentrate on it as the built environment, classifying bui lding forms and street patterns according to their ages and styles: a temporal classification of urban space, which gives us a sense of how urban space is structured historically and how its current character is affected by this historical evolution. W e can classify the urban

Structural Frameworks of Urban Space 6 1

space of material objects according to the way we use it now. Hence, w e adopt a spatial classification, arriving at a land-use organization of space. There are areas in cities where land uses tend to mix, as in the city centres, and areas where single uses prevail, as in the suburban housing estates. In addition to the patterns of use, we can look at the intensity of use in urban space. The general picture seems to be a more intense use of space in the city centres, where it overlaps with the mixture of uses, and a diminishing density towards the outskirts of urban core in the suburbs, where single use is the predominant feature. Attached to this familiar urban structure are n e w agglomerations in the suburbs and exurbs, where the land uses which were characteristics of the city centres, such as office and retailing, have created new but disperse landscapes. In this sense we can see urban space as metropolitan space, at a regional scale, and the diversity and complexity which occurs throughout a large urban area. The relationship between these various areas, as physically exemplified by transport networks, gives us another view to urban structure, where spines and nodes in the movement patterns are primary elements in the constitution of urban structure. We can also see how urban space was produced by urban development processes and by the construction industry. In this way our understanding of the way urban space is structured will correspond to the patterns of its production, rather than consumption.

We can also see the city as an agglomeration of people. We can look for what brought them together in the first place and the forms that this congregation has taken. For example, we may look at the industrialization and its impact on urbanization, where industrial production processes attracted workers, giving rise to large agglomerations. The urban space is therefore structured by capital and labour markets and the dynamics of organization and reorganization of production, by the rise and agglomeration of units of production. Putting these relationships in the wider context of the world economy and the role an urban area plays in the world system gives us another dimension. Here we see how the movement of capital and labour, and the goods and services they produce, across the world can restructure cities in new ways. W e can also look at the patterns of consumption in the city space. The way social classes relate to each other becomes a criterion to find out how urban space is structured. The way housing areas are organized and their relationships give us a picture of urban structure from another angle. Another way to understand urban space is in terms of the public-private relationships, which structure the urban space by allowing some people to have access to some places and activities while constraining access to others.

We can look at urban space in terms of the people's different patterns of creating a diversity of places and neighbourhoods, where rich and poor are separated from each other through land and property market mechanisms. We can see how this spatial segregation has taken different social and spatial forms. It is also possible to look at how cities are structured along the lines of ethnicity, gender and age, where specific areas are, out of choice or desperation, identified with this diversity. Alternatively, we can see urban space from the viewpoint of individuals who, in their subjective capacity, understand cities differently. In this way, we could arrive at as many understandings of urban space as there are individuals, or could see how broad cultural patterns emerge out of a seemingly infinite variety.

It has not been intended here to produce an exhaustive list of all possible ways of


understanding urban structure. We may find it convenient to classify these into those which focus on the environment and those which focus on the people within it, set within larger physical and social environments. Yet it is important to know that at all levels, the two foci and their contexts are closely intertwined. Various approaches to urban space may have different emphases , which often al lows them | to explore oiie of the many aspects of a multi faceted phenomenon. In our ' understanding of urban space and the way it is structured, however, w e will need to overlay these different insights to get a clearer picture of the city w e intend to , deal with. Each holder of these viewpoints seems to b e convinced that what they are showing us is the best way the urban phenomenon can be understood. Yet we . will have to realize that only a combination of social and physical dimensions of space, of objects and people, will offer us a balanced v iew of the structures of urban space, despite the complexity that such a combined v iew asks for. A socio-spatial j viewpoint, in which these two dimensions with their complexities are intermeshed, • will allow us to see how spatial structures express the social formations as well as • affecting them. This picture, however, will not be complete without realizing that I the way we understand structures of urban life and space will need to be complemented with another layer of awareness. W h a t is needed is an^ understanding of the small-scale, unstructured dimensions of human behaviour within cities and the way symbolic interaction with urban space endows it with

meaning.!

CHAPTERS

People in the Cit^

This chapter investigates meaning and behaviour in urban space. It starts by looking at the way the patterns of meaning and behaviour define urban space at its different scales, and how these interact with structural dimensions of 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 everyday life, which stands against the notions of order as advocated bv urban planners and designers.

We have already looked at the way urban space and structure are understood from the more abstract, intellectual viewpoints. W e discovered that there are two perspectives from which to analyse the urban space to find out how it is structured; one that concentrates on people and the other on buildings and objects. Both, however, were views from above. In this chapter, we 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, meaning of the environment, and the relationship of individuals with others in public places and with their environments.

Environmental cognition

As individuals, what do we know about the socio-spatial world around us? Moore (1983) believed that finding an answer to this question, i.e. finding the contents of people's cognitive representations of large-scale environments, is an impossible task. Instead, he suggested we concentrate on the differences between 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 background and experience. According to this basic assumption, "There is no one ' env i ronment '— rather, 'environment' is a mental construct" (Moore,1983; 22), and its nature is understood by humans not directly but through a complicated process of interpretation.

Fundamental to this interpretive process, Moore maintained, are some basic images that inform the cognitive maps and linguistic conceptions of the city. These

64 Design of Urban Space People in the City 65

can be broadly divided into those which see the city as a site of opportunity and interaction, and those which see it as a place of deprivation and alienation.

Literature shows a body of research on the variety of ways 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 know 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 men'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 more restricted and confined than that of the white population who lived around them. This was 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

F i g u r e 3 . 1 . There is a dose relationship between the mode of travel in urban space and environmental cognition. {Frejus, Frar)ce)

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 what ways human beings develop their environmental awareness. Although some 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", when 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 "conception-about-space" , when "'abstract' spatial relations based on coordinates" are understood (Walmsley,1988; 19).

A behavioural approach to space

In the late 1960s, as a counter-movement to the quantitative methods of research, a general shift occurred towards a much more individually oriented, small-scale approach to urban studies (Hall,1984). The approach attacked the quantitative approach as being mechanistic, aggregative, "dehumanizing", failing to separate fact from value, and reducing place and space to abstract geometries in which the human being is a "pallid entrepreneurial f igure" (Ley in Herbert & Thomas,1982: 34). The "b lack box" now becomes the subject of study and the role of human values of space are re-asserted. Location theory is no more a series of equations which weigh cost and distance. It was advocated that the strictly rational and economic assumptions should give way to how thoughts, images and impressions affected action and behaviour (Moore,1983). It was argued that the "environment in the h e a d " is important because "it is the subjective environment which influences behaviour" (Rapoport, 1980) (Figure 3.2).

The behavioural approach increasingly accepted the broad frameworks of phenomenology as defined by Husserl, who argued that the world could only b e understood through a knowledge of the attitudes and intentions which motivated human behaviour. A proposed narrower concept focuses on the ideas and beliefs that lie behind human action and argues that behaviour must be understood through the mind of the "actor" at the point in time and space in which it occurs (Herbert & Thomas,1982) .

Behavioural studies are identified more as a critique rather than a precise methodology with a cohesive structure (Herbert & Thomas,1982). It has been seen as "insufficiently complex" to be used as a method of inquiry into modern sociefies (Habermas,1987: 375). Two intellectual developments resulted which did not produce major traditions, although they did prove interesting. In the first one, individual behaviour, and individual perceptions as a key to that behaviour, were stressed. This was reflected in the work on mental mapping of individuals and groups (Hall,1984).


F i g u r e 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).

Mapping urban images

To understand h o w we come to know our environment, research has focused on the way we remember our environments. The main technique used to capture this is mental mapping, i.e. uncovering the mental image of the environment which individuals develop and use in their behaviour in the city.

The technique of mental mapping became widely known when Kevin Lynch used it in his serhinal work The Image of the City (1979). He was concerned with the visual quality of the American city through citizens' mental images of their cities. Inhabitants of three cities, Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles, were asked to evoke their images of their physical environment by descriptions and sketches and by performing imaginary trips in their cities. The outcome of the research was that, with reference to physical forms, images of the city can be classified into paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. Paths, such as streets, walkways, canals and railways, are movement channels and form the predominant elements in people 's image of the city. Lynch believed that other elements relate to, and are organized around, paths. Edges, such as shores, edges of development, walls , etc., are the boundaries of areas. Districts are the sections of the city and are mentally recognized as having some identifiable character. Nodes are the focal points in the patterns of development, such as junctions or squares and street corners. Another type of focal point in the city are physical objects such as buildings, signs, mountains, etc., which we know as landmarks. Lynch concluded that creating environments with "apparent clarity or 'legibiUty' of the cityscape" (Lynch,1979: 2)

F i g u r e 3 . 3 . Landmarks act as mental anchor points in our mental maps of urban environment. {Isfahan, Iran)

^ ç r , Ci- .jroan Space People in the City 6 9

>''5S » ce 3 main concern. Therefore, cities in which these five elements w e r e clearU .eçcier, offered more visual pleasure, emotional security, and a heightened potential ce^tr. snd intensity of human experience.

xesesrch by others (e.g. Golledge,1978), however, has shown that individuals first -fisr-tjrxations, including landmarks, which act as mental anchor points (Figure - - - --'=>• then learn Hnks between locations, which correspond to L y n c h ' s paths, , ="C r.r,aîly the areas surrounding groups of locations. Other researchers have ' =f.ovm that we remember our daily physical environments in gross terms . Rather |

P^y^ng attention to subtle design factors, we recall environments first in terms * « v/hat we and others do there, i.e. "use significance", a setting for acti\'ities which I f " - r^'sonally meaningful for us. Then we remember where they are, i.e. visibility, : ir-C5t:on and siting considerations. At the last stage w e recall what they look like, i.e. i

physical form and the detailed architectural considerations such as contour, dj ^Fiape, size, etc. Furthermore, we seem to remember objects in our environment rsore easily if we attach a Unguistic term to them rather than an architectural form j or deteil CMoore,! 983). f

LvTich's five elements of urban images have been widely used in u r b a n design to 2 construct more ' legible" environments, as exemplified by a variety of design 1 r^r.dcooks and projects actually implemented. It is possible, however, to argue that ^ tKis approach is another attempt to impose some form of imaginary order onto the ^ orbsn fabric. This is especially valid for the concept of districts, w h i c h has been I t s<bd to create subdivisions in urban space. This shows a similarity with crime ' prevention measures that promote raising barriers and gating neighbourhoods, i Both subdivisions— for legibility or for s e c u r i t y — present the danger of 1 CKmtegration of urban space into fragmented, exclusive entities, creating new :' social and spatial barriers and failing to address the interface between strangers and inhabitants.

LvTich's technique is limited in that it reduces the understanding of signification in urban environment to "a perceptual knowledge of physical form" (Gottdiener & L8g<-4X3ulos,1986: 7). His emphasis on the five elements of paths, n o d e s , edges, dwtricts and landmarks may have led to a better, more informed u r b a n design. - '^-V- elements, however, imply the use of environment only through movement. L«irut (quoted in Gottdiener & Lagopoulos,1986), for example, sees this way of analysing human behaviour as being no different f rom analysing the behaviour of animals in a maze: both are adapting to their environment. In contrast, he believes, | urban residents have a more active role in the production and use of u r b a n fabric by ' feng involved in urban practices.

Thîs clearly indicates how mental mapping is l imited in scope . It stresses urbanités' perception of their environment , whereas people 's c o n c e p t i o n of urban environment is formed of a functionalist element, on the basis of w h a t they do there, and a symbol ic element. Furthermore, the meaning of e n v i r o n m e n t is s^AJght inside individuals, minds, depicting an imaginary picture of the city. It therefore tends to ignore that such a picture is social ly produced a n d its nature,

a representation of social processes, is ideological . The m e n t a l mapping rt-v^-arch, however, is unwilhng to accept this ideological nature and to recognize that even its pr imary data are " a n ideological product " (Got td iener & I^gopoulos,1986: 11).

Later developments in environmental cognition research have shown a move towards accepting some of the social dimensions of difference in understanding the environment. These studies and others have shown how conceptions of space are different for different people, both in objective and concrete terms and in subjective and symbolic terms. What is seen by one person as a "slum" is considered by another as an "urban village". Despite these differences, however, there are consistencies within socio-economic and cultural groups which make them sharply distinctive from other groups (Moore,1983). The existence of such differences shows clearly that environmental cognition is essentially a social product, as it is learnt by individuals and is shaped and conditioned by their social environment. In other words, the mental maps of individuals largely depend on their real or perceived place in social and economic hierarchies.

Meaning and urban semiotics

Another, completely different, approach to the meaning of environment has been to concentrate on the role of objects, events and appearances, which send messages to us to convey meaning. At the heart of this approach lies the concept of sign. In our relationship to the environment around us, we take appearances as signs of other things: a light inside a house at night is a sign of the house being used, of the presence of life there. This, however , is an interpretation which may not be shared by another person in another frame of mind or in another social and cultural context. The s tudy of signs, or semiotics has three basic elements: (1) the sign, which is the light in this case; (2) the referent, or that which it refers t o — the presence of humans in the house in our example; and (3) the user of the sign (Sless,1986; Fiske,1990). Semiotics , as Sless (1986) put it, is "a point of view, a vantage point from which w e survey our wor ld" , used when w e ask how we understand and communicate with the world around us.

According to Alfred Schutz (1970), following Husserl, the concrete form of marks, indications, signs and symbols appears as things to be seen, sounds to be heard, etc. They must therefore be something physical, which we can perceive with our senses. At the same t ime, however, Schutz maintains that the physical form of signs and symbols, etc., is rather accidental. These physical appearances are not marks, but "merely a potential vehicle of meaning. Whatever shape it takes, a physical appearance b e c o m e s à mark or sign solely by virtue of the meaning some human, or group of humans , attaches to it. There are no marks or signs as such, but only marks or signs for s o m e b o d y " (Wagner, 1970: 19).

There are two main traditions in semiotics: that which is associated with the American philosopher Charles Peirce, and the other with the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Peirce saw a sign as standing for something, its object, creating in the m i n d of somebody another, perhaps a more developed, sign, which he called an interprétant (Fiske,1990).

Rather than this concern for the sign and its relation to objects, Saussure was preoccupied with signs themselves. He saw language as a system of signs and held that a sign consisted of a signifier and a signified. The physical appearance of the sign that w e perceive with our senses is a signifier and the mental concept or

70 ;es.ga o: Urban Space People in the City 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)

socially constructed, symbolic meaning for urban form (Pipkin,!983). Nevertheless, it is limited in that it creates a symbolic system which is autonomous from the reality that it symbolizes. It tends to reduce social action to a language and social relations to a communicative system, leaving it unable to address the constant change of urban space (Castells,1977). Lefebvre (1991: 5 - 7 ) rightly maintained that the application of semiotics to urban space becomes a merely descriptive enterprise. Space is thus reduced to a "message" , and in "reading" it we evade history and practice. In describing space, this may provide "inventories of what exists in space, or even generate a discourse on space" , but it "cannot ever give rise to a knowledge of space". Furthermore, this leads to a mental realm detached from the reality of space with its physical and social dimensions.

To compensate for the shortcomings of semiotics, Gottdiener and Lagopoulos (1986) suggest the adoption of an urban socio-semiotic approach. Socio-semiotics attempts to relate semiotics to a concrete context through social processes. Semiotics in this way is put in the context of material conditions of everyday life, where space is produced. They argue that semiotic systems are not produced by

2:.e&ing to which it refers is a signified. The signified, or meaning, is shared by all "rr.ce v.-ho speak the same language. The relationship between signifier and i iT.ried, therefore, is a matter of cultural convention, and therefore there is no 'i^^rstantial" relationship between the two. The meaning of each sign is determined -,r,h- by its difference from other signs. The meaning of the word "cat" , for example, :- r.:r determined in itself but by being different from " c a p " or " c a d " or "bat"

i -.is systematic study of sign, which was closely associated with structuralism as :be study of structures and their underlying laws, was later used in contexts other i'z- linguistics. AH objects and activities could be seen as a text, as a system of

ITS, which could be analysed and understood in a new light. As this approach ' not stress the relationship between the sign and the object, the text became an i'-tonomous object, detached from its surroundings. In the words of Terry îîi-Ieton, "You do not need to go outside the poem, to what you know of suns and moons, to explain them; they explain and define each other." (1983: 94) . Meaning V'-as developed on the basis of the shared means of communication, the language cr a group of people, rather than originating in their minds first and then arbculated in the form of tongues and scripts. In other words, "Reality was not r^r'écted by language but produced by it" (Eagleton,1983: 108). Meaning therefore -riçriated outside the human subject, as language predates any living human

Tb.e advances of structuralism included a démystification of the arts and bterature and an exploration of the way meaning is constructed not as a private experience but as an outcome of identifiable processes of signification. Its major j problem, however, was its tendency to detach the text from both the human subject j and from the real object. What we see in a text is a system of underlying rules and 1 structures, rather than concrete actors, objects and situations. ;

.-.nother critique of structuralism questioned its concept of a clear, identifiable relationship between the component parts of the sign: the signifier referred to the iigr.ii-ied. Post-structuralism argued that there is no such clear relation between the

The signified, or the meaning, to which a signifier is referring, is yet another - i>-i;rier. This means that there is a flexible and endless chain, or rather web, of ' ifiers that we go through in search of a meaning. Meaning becomes undecidable

.'. e follow such a web of signs (Figure 3.4). Architectural semiotics used the linguistic model extensively, partly based on the |

much debated idea of seeing architecture as a language. Attempts were therefore ' made to use the basic concepts of semiotics— sign, signifier and signif ied— in s 'alysing urban form. For example, architectural codes and their transformation

---re discussed, as was the nature of meaning in architecture and its functional or non-functional basis (Broadbent et al.,1980). Despite their useful insights into the study of meaning of environment, architectural semiotics were limited in their tendency to cluster together different types of people. All, from finance capitalist and real estate developers to the working class and teenage graffiti sprayers, could be seen as the same group of citizens, ignoring the way social stratification affected their conception of the city (Gottdiener & LagopouIos,1986).

As against the cognitive research, which is based on the private understanding of Sne environment by individuals, urban semiotics has the advantage of offering a

72 u€s.Gn of Urban Space i

•4

People in the City 73

~t~.£eives and are rooted in non-semiotic processes of social, political and ecor.omic practices of society. To add an analytical dimension to the descriptive :iarure of semiotics, they suggest adding a new layer to urban s i g n s — one that rcTcrs to the substance behind their form. According to Gottdiener and Lagopoulos, other semioticians' analysis of urban sign is only based on the formal components ; f a sign. They argue that there is a substance beyond 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 down the *

Figure 3.5. Shopping malls exemplify how signs can be successfully manipulated to create '&/ / urban forms and meanings. {Dublin, Ireland)

tvs'O component parts of a sign, signifier or expression and signified or content, each into two levels of form and substance. The resulting four levels of a sign, therefore, stand in such a relationship (Gottdiener,1986).

A socio-semiotics analysis of an urban sign would therefore be based on a collection of observational data on both the substance (focusing on describing the material urban space) and the form (focusing on specific spatial elements as vehicles of signification) of the expression. It is at the same time based on cultural research which d o c u m e n t s the form and substance of the content. In this way, the core of the socio-semiotics approach is its concentration on "differences among semiotic systems due to and explained by differences in the social position of the corresponding social agents" , with their different ideologies influencing the production and consumption of urban space (Gottdiener &c Lagopoulas,1986; 19).

An example of a socio-semiotic analysis of an urban sign can be seen by how successfully shopping malls have translated commercial interests into new urban forms (Gottdiener,1986;1994) (Figure 3.5). The signs and symbols which refer to dense shopping districts of urban centres have been used in a low-density suburban location in an introverted design, with blank external facades surrounded by parking. A w h o l e series of familiar logos, themed areas and food courts convey the meaning of a place with shopping and related supporting activities. In this way, the intended m e a n i n g of many new developments such as theme parks, new neighbourhoods and gentrified districts can be unravelled.

This analysis and the mental-mapping analysis show how symbolic processes affect our b e h a v i o u r in urban environments. To elaborate these symbolic processes, Gottdiener (1994) brings together three aspects of the semiotics of place to offer a new theory of urbanism. The w a y environments are understood, through mental mapping and urban socio-semiotic analysis, the patterns of behaviour in pubhc places, and the sense of community and its associated social networks are the three component parts of this new theory of urbanism.

i j Perspective of everyday life

The way social sciences and humanities tend to understand urban environment is often by seeking to find out how society and space are structured. They try hard to see the city f rom above, in abstraction, and hence tend to see it in terms of its physical and social structures. In parallel with this, urban planners and designers think of ways of structuring the city so as to turn it into a manageable collection of orderly c o m p o n e n t parts. Both in our understanding of the city and in our prescriptions for it, w e aspire to see order and to give order to the complex array of objects and events that we come across in the city (Figure 3.6). An alternative way of seeing the city, however, is to leave this abstract, theoretical position and to look at daily life, with its spontaneity, difference and disorder. This alternative view will add new dimens ions to our understanding of urban space by acknowledging the different groups and life forms that can only develop in the city.

The everyday life perspective is a view from below, which "makes reality visible", offering " n e w insights and possibilities for transcending the artificial gap between product ion and reproduction and to see the existence as a whole" (The

74 Design of Urban Spac^ People in the City 75

Figure 3.6. Only looking fronn above offers a limited understanding of social and spatial' 'elationships. {Paris, France) i

Research Group for the New Everyday Life,1991:13) . The sociology of everyday life j brings together a range of "micro-perspectives". These include symbolic interactionism, dramaturgy, phenomenology, ethnomethodology and existential sociology. This diversity and absence of systematic integration between its subfields ' make it a difficult task to offer a brief outline of its focus and scope (Adler, Adler & ^ Fontana,1987: 217) . The theme of everyday life, as Maffesoli (1989a) asserts,! involves putting the social phenomena in a certain perspective, and as such cannot be^ taken as referring to a specific content. This approach has three basic requirements: that the researcher takes the position of a participant, rather than a detached observer; that it takes account of experience, with all the feelings and emotions associated with it; and that it questions the validity of political-economic analysis as sufficiently explaining the social life. This perspective is set to address the subjective, and the intersubjective, aspects of social life which have been undermined b y the traditional emphasis of social sciences on objective understanding (Maffesoli,1989b). As such, it is a critical response to the "crisis of totalizing classical sociologies" (Bovone,1989: 42), and brings into attention the importance of meaning and difference in social inquiry.

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 of life patterns and the w a y this is translated into the meaning 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 Giddens (1984), for example, stresses the importance of both structure and agency in social processes. Jürgen Habermas (1987) gives this realist viewpoint a normative dimension. He separates the everyday life from the systems of money 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 economic forces which shape urban structures. This approach, he argues, compensates for the shortcomings of the two 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 by adopting one-dimensional and technologically deterministic explanations. Political economy, on the other hand, offers a better understanding of social processes which make and remake the city, but is limited in that it treats space as a container of economic activities and ignores the importance of spatial relations.

Order and difference in urban space

The battle between modernist and post-modernist thinking partly dwelt upon the dichotomy between order and disorder (Madanipour,1995a,b), a dichotomy which can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, as exemplified by the tension between Plato and Aristotle, between reason and the senses as the source of our understanding of the world. It was also reflected in the ancient Greeks ' cities. Whereas Athens was a diverse city with a disordered geometry, Hippodamus, who was known as the father of town planning, put forward his famous plan for Miletus, a rational layout of streets and urban blocks, envisaging a carefully planned socio-spatial structure. A similar contrast can be seen between the overall disorder of Rome and the camp towns around the Roman empire (Morris,1979; Benovolo,1980). Such attempts to impose geometrical order onto the disordered growth of towns and cities can be followed throughout history in the design and development of new settlements. Such desire for the domination of reason is as evident in Miletus of the fifth century BC, as in the British New Towns two millennia later. From the Enlightenment period on, this desire has been

7 6 Design of Urban Space People in the City 77

accompanied by an aspiration for l iuman emancipation through the imposition of order and reason.

Inevitably, there have always been critical reactions towards such a stance by those who have questioned the validity of reason as a sufficient tool m understanding and managing the world, and those w h o have doubted the outcome ' j of rationalistic endeavours. Such criticism is represented by Michel Foucault, for ' example, who maintained that, rather than rejecting the reason, we should critically ^ evaluate it: "I think the central issue of philosophy and critical thought since the j eighteenth century has always been, still is, and will, I hope, remain the question; I What is this Reason that we use? What are its historical effects? What are its limits, J and what are its dangers?" (Foucault,1993; 165). It was on the basis of the rationality s of social Darwinism that racism and Nazism developed. In the planning and design ^ of cities, the approach of modernism was based on the use of reason, to rationalize J urban spatial structure; and its outcome, as we know now, was partly displacement, 1 disruption to lives and communities, and loss of built environment (Berman,1982 ;^ Harvey,1985a,b). Critics of rationalism, therefore, invite us to look at o u r ; ! environments through different glasses.

In his analysis of Los Angeles, Dear (1995) introduces three ways of reading thisM 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 the city as ^ essentially structured by its boulevards (Suisman,1989); and a third which'^ illustrates the city as a decentred and decentralized agglomeration of fragmented • theme 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. What he invites us to be armed with is a post- , modernist sensibility, concentrating on the extremely finely grained i microgeography of the city, and discovering that there is no common narrative, no i single reality to the city. ^

In this way of reading the city. Dear is drawing upon Michel de Certeu's invitation to concentrate on everyday life, 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 do Ccrteu (1993) describes when looking at Manhattan from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center. As we look down on it to see its "whole" , the gigantic mass of the city becomes immobilized before our eyes; we totalize this human context, as if it were a picture (Figure 3.7). De Certeu invites us to leave this abstract position, in which we only " s e e " things, to go down 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, "whose 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 "metaphorical" 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.

To find out about the lived space of everyday practices, de Certeu traces the

Figure 3 .7 . Views from above tend to reduce urban space to an abstraction. {Cincinnati, USA)

footsteps of people w h o m o v e around the city. An abstract representation of this movement, h o w e v e r , such as the surveys whose thick and thin lines show the volume of pedestr ian flow, cannot replace the reality of movement, "the act itself of passing b y " (de Certeu,1993: 157) , which can be walking, wandering or window shopping. In this movement and in response to the names of urban places, people invent stories and attribute meaning to spaces they enter, meanings that challenge the alienated and sterilized character of the city.

The walkers in the city, representing spontaneity and a challenge to the established order , are best exemplified by the mid-nineteenth century flaneurs (strollers, loiterers) of Paris. Their main interest was the microscale aspects of street life, rather than the official public city that Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III had created (WiIson,1991) . T h e theme of the movement of people in cities is taken up by Sennett (1994), w h o reasserts the importance of the spatial relations of human bodies in the w a y they see, hear, touch and relate to each other. The dilemma of the city, however, is that the individuals move around freely without a physical awareness of other human beings. There is "a divide between inner, subjective experience and outer , physical l i fe" , \vhich has caused the "reduction and trivialization of the city as a stage of Ufe" (Sennett,1993: xii). The speed of


Figure 3.6. Only lookin relationships. {Pahs, France)

above offers a limited understanding of social and spatial

Research Group for the New Everyday Life,f 991; 13). The sociology of everyday lift brings together a range of "micro-perspectives". These include symbolic interactionism, dramaturgy, phenomenology, ethnomethodology and existential 4 sociology. This diversity and absence of systematic integration between its subfields 5

make it a difficult task to offer a brief outline of its focus and scope (Adler, Adler & | Fontana,1987; 217). The theme of everyday life, as Maffesoli (1989a) asserts, ; involves putting the social phenomena in a certain perspective, and as such cannot be i taken as referring to a specific content. This approach has three basic requirements: ? that the researcher takes the position of a participant, rather than a detached . observer; that it takes account of experience, with all the feelings and emotions associated with it; and that it questions the validity of political-economic analysis as sufficiently explaining the social life. This perspective is set to address the subjective, and the intersubjective, aspects of social life which have been undermined by the traditional emphasis of social sciences on objective understanding (Maffesoli,1989b). As such, it is a critical response to the "crisis of totalizing classical sociologies" (Bovone,1989: 42) , and brings into attention the importance of meaning and difference in social inquiry.

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 of life patterns and the way this is translated into the meaning that we 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 Giddens (1984), for example, stresses the importance of both structure and agency in social processes. Jürgen Habermas (1987) gives this realist viewpoint a normative dimension. He separates the everyday life from the systems of money 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. He introduces a socio-spatial approach to urban analysis, in which he emphasizes the symbolic processes within the context of political and economic forces which shape urban structures. This approach, he argues, compensates for the shortcomings of the two 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 by adopting one-dimensional and technologically deterministic explanations. Political economy, on the other hand, offers a better understanding of social processes which make and remake the city, but is limited in that it treats space as a container of economic activities and ignores the importance of spatial relations.

Order and difference in urban space

The battle between modernist and post-modernist thinking partly dwelt upon the dichotomy between order and disorder (Madanipour,1995a,b), a dichotomy which can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, as exemplified by the tension between Plato and Aristotle, between reason and the senses as the source of our understanding of the world. It was also reflected in the ancient Greeks ' cities. Whereas Athens was a diverse city with a disordered geometry, Hippodamus, who was known as the father of town planning, put forward his famous plan for Miletus, a rational layout of streets and urban blocks, envisaging a carefully planned socio-spatial structure. A similar contrast can be seen between the overall disorder of R o m e and the camp towns around the Roman empire (Morris,1979; Benevolo,1980). Such attempts to impose geometrical order onto the disordered growth of towns and cities can be followed throughout history in the design and development of n e w settlements. Such desire for the domination of reason is as evident in Miletus of the fifth century BC, as in the British New Towns two millennia later. From the Enlightenment period on, this desire has been


accompanied by an aspiration for biuman emancipation through the imposition of a; order and reason. I

Inevitably, there have always been critical reactions towards such a stance by i those who have questioned the validity of reason as a sufficient tool m understanding and managing the world, and those w h o have doubted the outcome : of rationalistic endeavours. Such criticism is represented by Michel Foucault, for example, who maintained that, rather than rejecting the reason, we should critically j evaluate it; "I think the central issue of philosophy and critical thought since the eighteenth century has always been, still is, and will, I hope, remain the question: What is this Reason that we use? What are its historical effects? What are its limits, and what are its dangers?" (Foucault ,1993:165). It was on the basis of the rationality of social Darwinism that racism and Nazism developed. In the planning and design $ of cities, the approach of modernism was based on the use of reason, to rationalize 1 urban spatial structure; and its outcome, as we know now, was partly displacement, disruption to lives and communities, and loss of built environment (Berman,19h2; Harvey,1985a,b). Critics of rationalism, therefore, invite us to look at our environments through different glasses.

In his analysis of Los Angeles, Dear (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 the city as essentially structured by its boulevards (Suisman,1989); and a third which illustrates the city as a decentred and decentralized agglomeration of fragmented theme 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. What 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 common narrative, no J single reality to the city. ^

In this way 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 Trade Center. As w e look down on it to see its "whole" , the gigantic mass of the city becomes immobilized before our eyes: we totalize this human context, as if it were a picture (Figure 3.7). De Certeu invites us :i to leave this abstract position, in which we only " s e e " things, to go down 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, "whose 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 "metaphorical" 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.

To find out about the lived space of everyday practices, de Certeu traces the

Figure 3.7. Views from above tend to reduce urban space to an abstraction. {Cincinnati, USA)

footsteps of people who m o v e around the city. A n abstract representation of this movement, h o w e v e r , such as the surveys whose thick and thin lines show the volume of pedestr ian flow, cannot replace the reality of movement, " the act itself of passing b y " (de Certeu,1993; 157) , which can be walking, wandering or window shopping. In this m o v e m e n t and in response to the names of urban places, people invent stories and attribute meaning to spaces they enter, meanings that challenge the alienated and sterilized character of the city.

The walkers in the city, representing spontaneity and a challenge to the established order , are best exemplified by the mid-nineteenth century flaneurs (strollers, loiterers) of Paris. Their main interest was the microscale aspects of street life, rather than the official publ ic city that Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III had created (Wilson,1991) . The theme of the movement of people in cities is taken up by Sennett (1994), w h o reasserts the importance of the spatial relations of human bodies in the w a y they see, hear, touch and relate to each other. The dilemma of the city, however, is that the individuals move around freely without a physical awareness of other human beings. There is "a divide between inner, subjective experience and outer, physical l i fe" , which has caused the "reduction and trivialization of the city as a stage of life" (Sennett,1993; xii). The speed of

7 8 Design of Urban Space I

People in the City 7 9

movement in the city tends to reduce our contact v 'ith the urban fabric, as, in Sennett 's words, " w e now measure urban spaces in terms of how easy it is to drive ^ through them, to get out of t h e m " (Sennett,1994: 17 -18) . This lack of contact, with other people and with urban space, has profound impacts on our understanding of urban space and our approaches to its design. For Sennett, pedestrian movement in the city is not proving sufficknt, .a^Jhe_ab5iLnce_of_^ontaxLM such as st?eeti7 aTes department stores, or in public transport, t£become^"pjaces of the~gaze"faTlrefTRafrscenes of discourse" (Sennett,1994: 358). S£eed^_escape_and pa]»mty7 a i r a s s o c i ^ e d ^ i t h widen the gaps and fragmentations ' bcfween~individualsr-When confronted with -differenGe,-with-strangerSj,„ people become* passive "as the stranger does not fall into general categories and social stereotypes. Rapid movement, m a d e possible b y cars and other vehicles, and . fragmented geography, where land-use zones and social classes are set apart, j enhance this passivity and provide the possibihty of escaping from difference, from the other. Losing the ability to live with the difference is a major problem of the . modern city. Even where a will ingness by different people to live next to each other • has developed, as Sennett believes has been achieved in Greenwich Village, New-York, a shared fate is absent.

City of strangers

Difference in the city is as old as the city itself, as it was known from the ancient times that, in Aristotle's words, " A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence" (quoted in Sennett,1994: 13). Especially since the 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) saw heterogeneity, along with population size and density, as a determining feature of the city. He defined the city as a "melting-pot of races, peoples, and cultures, and a most favourable breeding-ground of new biological , and cultural hybrids" . In this context, it is difference rather than similarity that is essential. The city, therefore, "has not only tolerated but rewarded individual | differences". ^

Emphasis on the heterogeneity of urban life is clearly evident in the discussior«d| about strangers in the city, which have occupied a prominent place in sociological M inquiries, to the extent that city life has been seen as a world of strangers ( K a r p , l Stone &L Yoels,1991). A stranger, as Georg Simmel (1950) interprets, is one whose * formal position lies in a unity of nearness and distance, involvement and indifference, by being a member 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 the group's unique ingredients and tendencies. This objectivity can be defined as freedom, not out of non-participation, but due to the absence of commitments which would jeopardize an objective perception, understanding and evaluation. The stranger's actions are not tied down by "habit, piety, and precedent" (Simmel,1950: 405). W e may see here a similarity between what Simmel appreciates as the objectivity of the stranger, who can "experience and

F i g u r e 3 . 8 . Cities are places of difference and diversity. {Chinatown, San Francisco, USA)

treat even his close relationships as though from a birds'-eye v iew" (Simmel,1950), and the view from the top of the World Trade Center that was shown to us by de Certeu. Unl ike de Certeu, however, the philosopher Alfred Schutz (1970) maintained that this view of the cultural community from outside, by the stranger, is the only objective meaning of the group membership.

The stranger that Schutz and Simmel analyse is typified by the immigrants' experience of living in and moving between cities and countries, and their relation


associated with crime and v a n d a h s m . With their criticism, they paved the way for a number of handbooks, often offering common sense advice on how to ensure safer environments (Fennelly,1989; Noble,1989; Crowe,1991; Clarke,1992; Cheetham,1994). A crime is considered to h a v e four dimensions: an offender, a victim or a target, a law dimension, and an environmental dimension which environmental criminology focuses upon (Brant ingham & Brantingham,1991; Bottoms,1994). Different approaches to envirorunental design, e.g. crime prevention through urban design

2?r^'l safety and security from cnme and harsh climate, but only through segregation of urban space. (Cincinnati, USA) ^

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: 94) , who himself had fled to America 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 he belongs".

The relationship of the newcomer to an approached urban society is only one aspect of the heterogeneity and anonymity 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 more 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 women, 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 urbanités in public spaces in cities, are all aspects of seeing the city as a world of strangers. As Elizabeth Wilson puts it, "what was once seen as marginal becomes the essence of city l i fe" (Wilson,1991: 5) . Along with the economic restructuring processes and a reorganization of class and household structures, where 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 becomes the norm and tolerance of "the other" the key to social relationships.

The way urbanités deal with the city, make sense of it, and manage public encounters with strangers in large numbers, is a major, but neglected, aspect of sociological inquiry. The way persons relate or fail to relate to each other in anonymous public settings is a central concern of urban social psychology (Karp, Stone & Yoels, 1991). Another equally important concern in studying people in the city is to see how urban persons relate or fail to relate to the built environment in which they find themselves.

Fear and crime in urban space

The anonymity of the city has been paralleled with a rise in crime. Cr ime and the fear of criminal victimization in turn have led to a tendency to withdrawal from urban life. Urbanités ' range of psychological and behavioural reactions to crime includes "distrusting others, avoiding particular places, taking protective action, changing their daily activities, and participation in collective action" (Miethe,1995),

The last two decades have seen a rise of interest in environmental design as an instrument against crime. A line of widely known works, by Jane Jacobs (1961), Oscar Newman (1972), Alice Coleman (1985) and others, criticized the modernist designs which had apparently generated alienation from the environment and were


and situational crime prevention, are now a constituent part of environmental

criminology. Environmental design's advice on crime prevention has generated a variety of

responses. While it has been widely used in the development of new environments or the management of the existing ones, many have considered its focus as too narrow (Ekblom ,1995). It is argued that environmental design will have to see design as a wider process, combining a concern for both physical and social aspects of crime prevention.

To prevent crime, urban design's advice can create conflicts of interests, most notably between openness and safety, between freedom of choice and movement and security (Figure 3.9). Perhaps the first area of conflict is the definition of deviant behaviour, which affects the role of design. It has been argued, for example, that graffiti is a manifestation of black urban culture and is an art form, rather than a form of vandalism (Ferrell,1993). W h e r e does urban design, with its concern for the promotion of art in public places, stand in relation to this claim?

In his book Defensible Space, Gscar N e w m a n (1972) argued that in the anonymous 1 space of metropolitan areas, what is needed is a medium-density, defensible space, where residents are in control and hence prevent criminal behaviour. B y the use of i mechanisms such as real and symbolic barriers, strongly defined areas of influence, and improved opportunities for surveillance, the design of the residential en\'ironments can be effective in cr ime prevention. Four elements of physical design are then identified which contribute to the creation of secure environments: territorial definition of space through subdividing it into zones, where private, semi-private and public space are clearly identified and are under the residents' = influence; positioning of windows to allow surveillance; use of building forms which are not stigmatized; and careful location within urban areas. Newman was a^vare of the criticisms against the notion "that crime, born of a poverty of means, opportunity, education, and representation, could be prevented architecturally" (Newman,1972: 11), but argues that environment has an undeniable effect on 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 boundaries of an environment, to keep the strangers, and therefore the risk of cr ime, away. This idea has now culminated in gated neighbourhoods, of which N e w m a n himself is an advocate. An example is Dayton, Ohio, where 11 months after the plan's implementation in autumn 1993, violent crime fell by 50% and property values rose by 15%, but where the plan is criticized by residents who feel "locked i n " or "locked o u t " (Anon,1995). While effective in crime prevention, this development can potentially subdivide the urban space into fragmented entities, promoting further social segregation and exclusion. Fortress neighbourhoods, which have multiplied in the U S (Davis,1992) and to a lesser extent in Britain and elsewhere, can indicate the disintegration of the city as we know it, through restriction of access, a decline of public space, and a fear of difference.

Yet a city is a place of difference, of strangers. It is through allowing an interface between the strangers and the inhabitants of an area that safety can be secured and not through segregation. Hillier and Hanson (1984: 140), among others, stress the importance of such an interface:

People in the City 8 3

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.

(Hillier and Hanson,1984; 140)

The segregated environment reduces mobility and accessibility in urban space, allowing fewer choices of routes, and is less democratic. In the context of a locality, effective design may reduce vulnerability to crime. In a wider context, however, it could merely lead to a displacement of crime.

Another conflict that crime prevention through environmental design creates is associated with surveillance. Again it was one of Newman's principles to organize space in such a w a y that surveillance becomes possible. This principle has now, with the help of new technologies, developed into the wide use of closed-circuit television cameras , an issue which has created concern for civil liberties (Honess & Charman,1992). An argument against surveillance is that it takes away the "shadowed spaces" , the spaces without which, Denis Wood (1991: 95) argues, it "would be a dead world indeed" . "One way to take care of nightmares" , he goes on, "is to stay awake. Of course, that also takes care of the dreams. O n e way to take care of deviance is to clear away the shadowed spaces. Of course that also takes care of hfe". Not only the déviances of our parents and grandparents, but also philosophy, science and art and the policies of public government "were once practised in the dark". T h e intention is not to find murder or kidnapping or abduction or bodily assault tolerable, but to argue that, "if the cost of prohibiting these is the loss of the shadowed spaces, that cost is intolerably high".

These conflicts show how effective design can be, resulting in the permanent transformation of built environments into contested spaces. An average annual increase of 5 % since 1918 in Britain {The Guardian, 28 September 1995) shows its historical presence. Crime, however, is a major contemporary concern, as exemplified b y the political parties' race to announce measures against it as a cornerstone of their agendas. To use design to disintegrate the civil society into medieval factions, however, cannot be the proper contribution of urban design. This contribution is still to be developed, a contribution which fights crime while promoting tolerance and social integration, rather than segregation and divide. The starting point for this development will have to be seeing crime not as an isolated event but one in a wider socio-spatial context.

Women in urban space

The diversity and difference in the large city offer an exciting assortment of people with different patterns of life, often making the city a fascinating and stimulating

84 le.gn of Urban Space | People in the City 85

Figure 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)

urban space. She sees the nineteenth-century town planning as an organized campaign to exc lude w o m e n , chi ldren, working classes and the poor. She argues that the city m a k e s possible w h a t is feared and desired: an untramelled sexual experience. T h e w o m e n ' s presence in the city thus becomes a problem, an irruption and a symptom of the absence of order, as it is associated with sexuality, a source of ambiguity and disorder. This aspect of the male- female relationship, a perpetual struggle between male order a n d female disorder, lies at the heart of urban life. The "masculine" city, with "its r igid, routinized order" reflected in "its triumphal scale, its towers and vistas and arid industrial regions" , is constantly challenged by the "feminine" city, with its "p leasurable anarchy" , reflected in its "enclosing embrace" and its " indeterminancy and labyrinthine uncentredness" (Wilson,1991: 7 -8 ) .

But how is it that women find themselves marginalized in the city? What Karp, Stone & Yoels (1991: 153) call the "gendered nature of urban space" can be seen in the way urban space restricts w o m e n ' s mobility: physically through an imposition of patterns of movement and behaviour based on fear and restricted access, and socially through assumptions about w o m e n ' s role in urban society. There is a variety of ways in which w o m e n ' s freedom of movement in urban space is restricted, creating barriers to their mobility in the city. A structural constraint is that created by the expansion of suburbs, forcing \vomen to stay away from the centres of activity and reducing their opportunities, especially due to their heavy dependence on public transport. Separation of h o m e f rom work in the industrialization process and the suburbanization of city life increasingly prevented women from social and geographical mobility. The p lanned suburbs and new towns of the twentieth century, which have housed an ever increasing number of households, have created spatial barriers for women, especially of middle classes, who were assumed to remain housewives. T h e major contribution of women to the quality of urban life, however, has not often been properly appreciated, as it has not been in the form of paid labour, and hence has remained "an invisible w o r k " (Karp, Stone & Yoels,1991: 139). Women's work such as the domest ic upkeep, the care of children and the elderly, maintaining family ties and their overwhelming role in voluntary associadons have been seen as "natural" and " u n p l a n n e d " , as opposed to "real" work with more visible outputs. With the increasing integration of women in the economy as paid labour, however, these spatial barriers work against their access to opportunities and jobs. As the traditional role of women as unpaid housewives changes and their contribution to the formal e c o n o m y finds more and more importance, both they and the economic system as a w h o l e m o v e towards an inevitable renegotiating and reorganizing of women 's patterns of access and mobility.

Marginalization of w o m e n f r o m space production has been in parallel with their role as the co-ordinators of the different areas of fragmented lives and spaces. They have been "responsible for l inking together the home, the market, and the institutions" (The Research G r o u p for the N e w Everyday Life,1991: 12). The functional and spatial segregat ion of activities has meant that there is a need for someone to co-ordinate these spheres of life. Hence the women's "invisible" work, which "extenuates the negat ive effects of the functional division, and smoothens the hard edges of the present existence. . . W o m e n are obliged to find individual solutions to collective p r o b l e m s " (The Research Group for the N e w Everyday Life,1991:12) .

--i- T-e other side of this diversity, however, is anonymity, where people who < -larren to be in the same public place, in the shops, restaurants and streets, are 1 strar.giTs to each other. Some studies have shown how 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 sa—e e-citement as it does for men. It can be a more frightening, alien place, and that is why, as Elizabeth Wilson (1991) reminds us , with disagreement, many J feminist writers are against cities. •

A TOwerful argument by some feminist writers maintains that cities are historically built and run by men. As in other spheres of life, women have been marginalized in the process of planning and organization of urban space (Figure i 3.10). Examining some popular urban history books, Richter (1982) saw little i 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, women were absent from these studies. ^

Along with the poor, the elderly and the ethnic minorities, women have been ' seen as a threat to the order prescribed for and imposed on cities. Elizabeth Wilsonj (1991), for example, explores how the shape of contemporary cities has been determined by underlying assumptions about women, their roles and their place in


and situational crime prevention, are now a constituent part of environmental criminology.

Environmental design's advice on crime prevention has generated a variety of responses. While it has been widely used in the development of new environments or the management of the existing ones, many have considered its focus as too narrow (Ekblom,1995). It is argued that environmental design will have to see design as a wider process, combining a concern for both physical and social aspects of crime prevention.

To prevent crime, urban design's advice can create conflicts of interests, most notably between openness and safety, between freedom of choice and movement and security (Figure 3.9). Perhaps the first area of conflict is the definition of deviant behaviour, which affects the role of design. It has been argued, for example, that graffiti is a manifestation of black urban culture and is an art form, rather than a form of vandalism (Ferrell,1993). Where does urban design, with its concern for the promotion of art in public places, stand in relation to this claim?

In his book Defensible Space, Oscar Newman (1972) argued that in the anonymous space of metropolitan areas, what is needed is a medium-density, defensible space, where residents are in control and hence prevent criminal behaviour. By the use of mechanisms such as real and symbolic barriers, strongly defined areas of influence, and improved opportunities for surveillance, the design of the residential environments can be effective in crime prevention. Four elements of physical design are then identified which contribute to the creation of secure environments: territorial definition of space through subdividing it into zones, where private, semi-private and public space are clearly identified and are under the residents' influence; positioning of windows to allow surveillance; use of building forms which are not stigmatized; and careful location within urban areas. Newman was aware of the criticisms against the notion "that crime, born of a poverty of means, opportunity, education, and representation, could be prevented architecturally" (Newman,1972: 11), but argues that environment has an undeniable effect on behaviour.

One of the principles of N e w m a n ' s defensible space was the idea of defining and protecting the boundaries of an environment, to keep the strangers, and therefore the risk of crime, away. This idea has now culminated in gated neighbourhoods, of which N e w m a n himself is an advocate. An example is Dayton, Ohio, where 11 months after the plan's implementation in autumn 1993, violent crime fell by 50% and property values rose by 15%, but where the plan is criticized by residents who feel "locked i n " or "locked o u t " (Anon,1995). While effective in crime prevention, this development can potentially subdivide the urban space into fragmented entities, promoting further social segregation and exclusion. Fortress neighbourhoods, which have multiplied in the US (Davis,1992) and to a lesser extent in Britain and elsewhere, can indicate the disintegration of the city as we know it, through restriction of access, a decline of public space, and a fear of difference.

Yet a city is a place of difference, of strangers. It is through allowing an interface between the strangers and the inhabitants of an area that safety can be secured and not through segregation. Hillier and Hanson (1984: 140), among others, stress the importance of such an interface:

j People in the City 8 3

Women in urban space

St 'h '^aT' '^"" ' ' difference in the large city offer an excitmg assortment of people H.th different patterns of hfe, often making the city a fascinating and stimulating

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.

(Hillier and Hanson,1984:140)

The segregated environment reduces mobility and accessibility in urban space, allowing fewer choices of routes, and is less democratic. In the context of a locality, effective design may reduce vulnerability to crime. In a wider context, however, it could merely lead to a displacement of crime.

Another conflict that crime prevention through environmental design creates is associated with surveillance. Again it was one of Newman's principles to organize space in such a way that surveillance becomes possible. This principle has now, with the help of new technologies, developed into the wide use of closed-circuit television cameras , an issue which has created concern for civil liberties (Honess & Charman,1992). An argument against surveillance is that it takes away the "shadowed spaces" , the spaces without which, Denis Wood (1991: 95) argues, it "would be a dead world indeed" . "One way to take care of nightmares" , he goes on, "is to stay awake. Of course, that also takes care of the dreams. One way to take care of deviance is to clear a w a y the shadowed spaces. Of course that also takes care of life". Not only the déviances of our parents and grandparents, but also philosophy, science and art and the policies of public government "were once practised in the dark". T h e intention is not to find murder or kidnapping or abduction or bodily assault tolerable, but to argue that, "if the cost of prohibiting these is the loss of the shadowed spaces, that cost is intolerably high".

These conflicts show how effective design can be, resulting in the permanent transformation of built environments into contested spaces. An average annual increase of 5 % since 1918 in Britain (The Guardian, 28 September 1995) shows its historical presence. Crime, however, is a major contemporary concern, as exemplified b y the political parties ' race to announce measures against it as a cornerstone of their agendas. T o use design to disintegrate the civil society into medieval factions, however, cannot be the proper contribution of urban design. This contribution is still to be developed, a contribution which fights crime while promoting tolerance and social integration, rather than segregation and divide. The starting point for this development will have to be seeing crime not as an isolated event but one in a wider socio-spatial context.

84 Ja.gn of Urban Space People in the City 85

place. Tne other side of this diversity, however, is anonymity, where people who happen to be in the same public place, in the shops, restaurants and streets, are stTar.giT5 to each other. Some studies have shown how 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 us , with disagreement, many feminist writers are against cities.

A powerful argument by some feminist writers maintains that cities are historically built and run by men. As in other spheres of life, women have been marginalized in the process of planning and organization of urban space (Figure 3.10). E.xamining some popular urban history books, Richter (1982) saw 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, women were absent from these studies.

Along with the poor, the elderly and the ethnic minorities, women have been seen as a threat to the order prescribed for and imposed on cities. Elizabeth Wilson (1991), for example, explores how the shape of contemporary cities has been determined by underlying assumptions about women, their roles and their place in

Figure 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)

urban space. She sees the nineteenth-century town planning as an organized campaign to exc lude w o m e n , chi ldren, working classes and the poor. She argues that the city m a k e s possible w h a t is feared and desired; an untramelled sexual experience. T h e w o m e n ' s presence in the city thus becomes a problem, an irruption and a symptom of the absence of order, as it is associated with sexuality, a source of ambiguity and disorder. This aspect of the male- female relationship, a perpetual struggle be tween male order a n d female disorder, lies at the heart of virban hfe. The "masculine" city, with "its r igid, routinized order" reflected in "its triumphal scale, its towers and vistas and arid industrial regions" , is constantly challenged by the "feminine" city, with its "p leasurable anarchy" , reflected in its "enclosing embrace" and its " indeterminancy and labyrinthine uncentredness" (Wilson,1991: 7 -8 ) .

But how is it that women find themselves marginalized in the city? What Karp, Stone & Yoels (1991; 153) call the "gendered nature of urban space" can be seen in the way urban space restricts w o m e n ' s mobility; physically through an imposition of patterns of movement and behaviour based on fear and restricted access, and socially through assumptions about w o m e n ' s role in urban society. There is a variety of ways in which w o m e n ' s freedom of movement in urban space is restricted, creating barriers to their mobility in the city. A structural constraint is that created by the expansion of suburbs, forcing -(vomen to stay away from the centres of activity and reducing their opportunities, especially due to their heavy dependence on public transport. Separation of h o m e from work in the industrialization process and the suburbanization of city life increasingly prevented women from social and geographical mobility. The p lanned suburbs and new towns of the twentieth century, which have housed an ever increasing number of households, have created spatial barriers for women, especially of middle classes, who were assumed to remain housewives. T h e major contribution of women to the quality of urban life, however, has not often been properly appreciated, as it has not been in the form of paid labour, and hence has remained "an invisible w o r k " (Karp, Stone & Yoels,1991; 139). Women's work such as the domest ic upkeep, the care of children and the elderly, maintaining family ties and their over\vhelming role in voluntary associations have been seen as "natural" and "unplanned" , as opposed to "real" work with more visible outputs. With the increasing integration of women in the economy as paid labour, however, these spatial barriers work against their access to opportunities and jobs. As the traditional role of \vomen as unpaid housewives changes and their contribution to the formal e c o n o m y finds more and more importance, both they and the economic system as a w h o l e m o v e towards an inevitable renegotiating and reorganizing of women 's patterns of access and mobility.

Marginalization of w o m e n f r o m space production has been in parallel with their role as the co-ordinators of the different areas of fragmented lives and spaces. They have been "responsible for l inking together the home, the market, and the institutions" (The Research G r o u p for the N e w Everyday Life,1991; 12). The functional and spatial segregat ion of activities has meant that there is a need for someone to co-ordinate these spheres of life. Hence the women's " invisible" work, \vhich "extenuates the negative effects of the functional division, and smoothens the hard edges of the present exis tence . . . W o m e n are obliged to find individual solutions to collective p r o b l e m s " (The Research Group for the N e w Everyday Life,1991:12) .

86 Design of Urban Space People in the City 8 7

T h e global restructuring process , in which some parts of the world J | deindustr ia l ize w h i l e s o m e others industrialize, redefines the relat ionship of men S and w o m e n and their socio-spatial roles. With large-scale changes in economic I structures , where services have g r o w n and traditional industries have declined, fl n e w roles for w o m e n are emerging in the social division of labour. As old industr ies decl ine, the role of the working class man as the breadwinner of the family is changing. Although w o m e n are still seen as candidates for low-paid, part - t ime jobs, their increasing purchasing power and their rising rate of e m p l o y m e n t have started to affect the way urban space is organized. As the m traditional role of w o m e n as housewives providing unpaid, domest ic labour is K being replaced b y one in which w o m e n work both inside and outside the home, a w h o l e range of n e w patterns of activities have emerged. From fast food shops to • • shopping mal ls , w h i c h support the new, double role of women as paid workers * a longside their traditional role of looking after domest ic needs of the household, a ^ n e w landscape is developing in which women are increasingly assuming new roles and powers (Gottdiener ,1994) .

As the suburbs have matured and middle class w o m e n have entered the formal e c o n o m y in large numbers , the spatial organization of the suburb a n d the picture of w o m e n trapped in the suburbs begin to change. This change could be a reason for the populari ty and growth of suburban shopping malls, which offer a more convenient shopping environment as well as an escape from the house and the ne ighbourhood. T h e majority of visitors to Metro Centre , Gateshead, which claims to b e the largest suburban shopping centre in Europe, are women (MetroCentre Market ing ,1993) . Also , the deve lopment of office and industrial concentrations in the suburbs offers n e w opportunit ies to the middle class women of the suburbs. At the s a m e t ime, this spread of opportunities and activities in the suburbs reduces further the chances of the lower income groups and the p o o r who hve in 1 the city. Their access to jobs and facilities is seriously challenged b y a new spatial ' barrier. *

It is not only in the suburban shopping malls that women predominate in * numbers . With the primacy of retailing in the city centres in Britain, and two-thirds ^ of retail employees throughout Britain being female, women are likely to form the ^ majority of the population in central areas during the day (Worpole,1992). Both as • shoppers and shop workers, and for social meetings and voluntary activities, M w o m e n are the major users of the city centres. Yet the main emphasis in the design flj of these areas is still on car parks, rather than on public transport, which is a major • concern for w o m e n , or on childcare facilities, play areas, toilets or scats. m

T h e proportion of men and women changes substantially during the night. This m is a time when women may be afraid of going to town centres, and (especially J young) men claim these areas as their own territory. A study in Woolwich, for * example, showed that 6 5 % of w o m e n were afraid of going out at night for fear of attack. There were 3 6 % who were even afraid during the day for fear of mugging and robbery. Another study, in Edinburgh, showed how women felt dissatisfied with the town centre due to dirty and poorly lit streets, inadequate bus services and childcare facilities, and a fear of sexual harassment. A study of night life in 12 British towns and cities found that women's view of urban life was fundamentally different from that of men. Its conclusion was that these problems will not be solved 1

by the provision of better poUcing and security only, but also by "a genuine choice of activities, entertainment and places where women can meet in towns and cities at night, and provision for children where necessary" (Worpole,1992; 65) .

The problems of women 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 Standard 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 or separated. Another study has indicated how property crime and violence are associated with urban areas with large populations and high densities of single individuals and apartment houses. Women's vulnerability to such crimes is revealed in another study, in which the female respondents, "we re about 8 t imes more likely than men to restrict their solo nighttime walking, about 13 t imes more likely to avoid going alone to bars and clubs after dark, and about 6 t imes more likely to avoid going downtown alone after dark" (Karp, Stone & Yoels ,1991:151) .

Conclusion

In this chapter we have looked at urban space from below, from the perspective of individuals and groups. We have 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, geometry, structure and order, and finding them in need of critical assessment. But we find one major problem with this emphasis on the subjectivity and spontaneity of everyday life. W e can be trapped in difference, in relativism, unable to communicate with each other, as our increasingly pluralistic circumstances might entail. This perspective contrasts and complements 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 combine both these perspectives.

What the three chapters in this part offer, therefore, can be summarized in the following notions. The 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 engage in a dialogue on space. It means that our map of the city has to have overlapping layers to show its physical, social and psychological geometry at the same 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. From above, we have the perspective of political economy, where systems of money and power are at work to create built environments and where scientific inquiry offers an objective understanding of urban space. From below, we have the perspective of ever\'day life, where disorder

43 I es.gn of Urban Space

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 we 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 wider context of general societal processes. It also stems from the notion which regards thei development process and urban form as both outcomes 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 we turn our attention to in the second part. W e examine 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

Urban Design Process

In Part One, we looked at urban space, the product of the urban development process. We analysed the di lemmas of urban space and looked at the various approaches to the analysis of urban environment and its form. These concentrated on either the spatial or the social aspects of urban areas. We argued that a socio-spatial approach to urban space is needed, one which integrates views from above with those from the everyday life perspective.

In the second part, we concentrate on the urban development process itself, to find the place and role of urban design. We will explore the economic, political and symbolic aspects of the urban development process from an urban design point of view. To do this, we will look at the relationship between urban design and mechanisms and agencies of production, regulation, and with the images of ideal environments.

Four Chapters in Part Two analyse the urban development process from a socio-spatial viewpoint and in relation to urban design concerns. Chapter 4 looks at urban design definitions and processes. Chapter 5 reviews the urban development process, the role of developers, and their relationship to the shaping of urban environment. Chapter 6 looks at the way planning regulations set the parameters for the shape of urban space. Chapter 7 is devoted to urban design ideas in the twentieth century as urbanist, micro-urbanist and anti-urbanist trends.

A combination of the two parts, the process and the product, will draw a complete picture of urban design, its dynamics and its contexts. This will offer a socio-spatial insight into urban design, which addresses both the processes which shape the built environment and the products of this process.

What is urban design?

Despite its frequent appearance in educational and professional literature, urban design is still an ambiguous term, used differently b y different groups in different circumstances. Yet the growing attention to the subject and the rising number of academics and professionals who are engaged in urban design have brought to the surface a pressing need for a clearer definition of what they do. This chapter will begin by analysing those aspects of urban design which have caused such ambiguity and will then look for a definition that would address these uncertainties.


Ambiguities of urban design Urban design is a far from clear area of activity. Signs of the need for a clear definition of urban design can be seen in a variety of sources. The adequacy of the existing definitions is still doubted, as is evident in a recent conference on research and teaching in urban design (Bill ingham,1995). This indicates why the search to find a satisfactory definition of urban design continues (Kindsvatter & Von Grossmann,1994; Rowley,1994; DoE,1995) . A brief look at this search shows that it is still at an early stage. An example is a recent attempt which, after reviewmg a number of definitions of urban design, concludes that finding "a short, clear definition . . . simply is not possible" (Rowley,1994: 195). Instead, Rowley suggested w e should focus on the substance, motives, methods and roles of urban design.

Do we need a short , clear definition for urban design at all? There are manv ambiguit ies about some disciplines and professions as they inevitably overlap with each other. Controversy and never-ending discussions about what constitutes architecture, as dist inctive from bui ldings , can be taken as one example . It might be said that ambigui ty offers a wider scope for innovation and development ; once w e have clearly defined a subject w e have denied it some flexibility. But h o w can we claim to b e seriously engaged in urban design if wc are not even able to define it? W h a t we need to remember is to separate

Urban Design Process 93

complexity f rom ambiguity. In our search for the m e a n i n g of u r b a n design, w e should be able to address complexi ty , but also do our best to c lar i fy ambigui t ies .

VVe can see these ambiguities in a number of at tempts to find a definition for urban design. For example, w e can examine the list of definitions collected by the late Francis Tibbalds, a past president of the Royal T o w n Planning Institute and a passionate supporter of urban design (Tibbalds,1988) . These s h o w a puzzling variety of views on urban design, including "lots of architecture" , " spaces between buildings", "a thoughtful municipal policy", "everything that y o u can see out of the window", or " the coming together of business, government , p lanning, and des ign" (Figure 4.1). The more plausible definitions include " the interface between architecture, town planning, and related profess ions" ; " the three dimensional design of places for people . . . and their subsequent care and m a n a g e m e n t " ; "a vital bridge, giving structure and reality to two dimensional master p lans and abstract planning briefs, before detailed architectural or engineering design can take place" ; "the design of the built-up area at the local scale, including the grouping of buildings for different use, the movement systems and services associated with them, and the spaces and urban landscape be tween them" ; and " the creative activity by which the form and character of the u r b a n environment at the local scale may be devised". Here, as in other attempts to define urban design (Shirvani, 1985), we see a variety of foci: some are dealing with the domains of urban design, especially with its involvement with the physical fabric of the city. Others have focused on its scale, its points of departure from, or congruence with, planning and architecture, its political and management aspects , or its place in the planning process.

To arrive at a definition for urban design, we will need to take into account these various attempts, and identify the elements which create confusion and ambiguity. We could be then on our way to a clearer conception of what urban design is about. To review the areas of confusion and ambiguity, I propose to analyse at least seven arenas in which different definitions fall;

1. the scale of urban fabric which urban design addresses;

2. the visual or spatial emphases of urban design;

3. the spatial or social emphases of urban design;

4. the relationship between process and product in the city design;

5. the relationship between different professionals and their activities;

6. the public or private sector affiliation of urban design; and

7. the design as an objective-rational or expressive-subject ive process .

An examination of these arenas, I argue, will i l luminate the duali t ies and tensions within virban design and will show how a w a y can be sought to clarify the definition of urban design and its roles and areas of involvement .

These areas of ambiguity can be broadly grouped under process and product of urban design. The first three arenas address the ambiguit ies about the outcome of urban design: urban space. The last three arenas concentrate on urban design as a


process anci the ambiguit ies this has created. The issue of process arid product, a central area of ambigui ty , is discussed separately but in conjunction with these two sets of concerns.

Macro- or micro-scale urban design?

A main area of confusion is in the scale of urban fabric in which urban design is engaged. Definit ions of urban design refer both to the design of cities and settlements as a whole and to the design of some parts of urban areas. The issues and considerations addressed in these two macro- and micro-scales of urban design, however , are very different from each other. Whereas the design of cities and settlements has focused on the broad issues of organization of space and functions, micro-urban design has concentrated on the public face of architecture, on public space in parts of the cities, and more detailed considerations of design at that scale. W h e n observed simultaneously, as in the definitions of urban design,' they could create a large degree of ainbiguity.

Such ambigui ty can b e seen in a comparison between two sets of definitions. ]

F i g u r e 4 . 2 . Is urban design the "physical design of public realm"? {Paris, France)


Francis Tibbalds' (1988) preferred definition is the one which describes urban design as "the physical design of public r e a l m " (Figure 4.2). T h e term "public realm" often refers to the space in the city which is not private, the space outside the private realm of buildings, the space between the buildings. But does this lead to a lack of attention to the private space which makes up the bulk of every city's space? If "urban" is merely the public parts of the city, what should we call the totality of urban space with its both public and private dimensions? H o w do we compare this micro-scale urban design with Kevin Lynch's broader definitions? In one attempt he defined urban design as dealing with "the form of possible urban environments" (Lynch,1984). H e offered an even broader definition elsewhere (Lynch,1981: 290), as "the art of creating possibilities for the use, management, and form of settlements or their significant parts" (Figure 4.3).

The latter is a definition of urban design which is very close to city planning, albeit with a particular interest in the physical fabric and its form. If we compare this with the Royal Town Planning Institute's definition of planning as the "management of change in the built and natural environments" (RTPI,1991), the similarity becomes evident. On the other side of the spectrum, however, where urban design is seen as the design of small urban places, it becomes close to the aesthetic and spatial concerns of arts and architecture.

Figure 4 . 3 . Is urban design "the art of creating possibilities for the use, management, and form of settlements or their significant parts" ? {Frejus, France)


The large and small scales of engagement are rooted in much deeper debates about the nature and concept of space, as discussed earlier. It was partly reflected in the modernist-post-modernist confrontations. The modernists concentrated on the design of an abstract but integrated space. The post-modern reaction to such abstraction was an attention to smaller-scale urban places and their meaning. This shift of attention reflects a broad range of shifts and transformations in political, economic and cultural circumstances of the time. In Britain, the abolition of metropolitan authorities and their fragmentation is a prime example of how attention has shifted from the cities as a whole to parts of them. Economically, there has been a reduction in the resources which could be spent on cities as a whole , leading to policies and projects which concentrate on some parts of the city. Culturally, there have been strong reactions to the blanket treatment which the comprehensive planning and large-scale urban development have imposed on individual and group differences. It is in relation to these fundamental changes that macro-urban design has been largely abandoned in areas confronting economic decline. Yet at the same time, where growth pressure has been on the rise, such as in the sunbelt cities of the United States and in the fast-de',-eloping economies and their rapidly expanding cities, macro-urban design has remained a ] pressing need.

O n e solution is to acknowledge this divide and to maintain that there are two different types of urban design: a macro-urban design and a micro-urban des ign, with different concerns and foci. This division could offer a development of special isms in dealing with u r b a n fabric and would lead to a deeper understanding of the processes and products involved at each level. Yet the two levels have so much in common and are so interrelated that we may see them as be longing to the s a m e process of des igning the urban space. T h e brochure for Master of Urban Des ign degree at Univers i ty of Cal i fornia , Berkeley, calls it the " P r o g r a m in the Des ign of Urban P l a c e s " . Despi te this emphasis on the places, it expla ins that urban designers should w o r k at all scales of u r b a n space: "des igners are needed who can w o r k effectively in multidisciplinary teams, across a large range of scales . . . T h e s e professionals m a y shape the form and space of specific places , or design city wide s y s t e m s " . For another school , the urban design p r o g r a m m e "is in tended to a u g m e n t traditional professional training in architecture for those w h o wish to further investigate the physical aspects of urbanism. 'Urban Design ' is seen as an activist, social art; m o r e than a s ingular representation of physical scale, the term defines a commitment to discourse at all scales of design act iv i ty" (Columbia University Bulletin, 1992: 29) . Smaller scales of design activity can also address rural areas and smaller sett lements. This is w h y Lozano (1990) preferred the term " c o m m u n i t y design" to address design at a variety of scales and envi ronments , from villages to large urban areas.

The degree of overlap and commonali ty between the two scales of urban design, therefore, could be convincingly treated within the same definition, to see urban design as "an interdisciplinary approach to designing our built environment" (Vernez Moudon,1992: 331). By adopting a broad definition, we will have acknowledged the similarities and differences between the shaping of urban space and urban place-making as two parts of the same process.

Urban Design Process 9 7

Urban design as visual or spatial management?

Another source of ambiguity is the perception o f urban design as dealing with visual qualities of urban environment, which contradicts a broader v iew of urban design as addressing the organization of urban space. This may be the main source of confusion about, and the main area of criticism against, urban design b y its opponents, at least in Britain. To confront this confusion, we need to address two tendencies: one which sees urban design as an exercise in producing nice images, and the other which sees urban design as only attending the aesthetics of urban environment.

Urban design as nice images

At a recent conference on town centre management , Peter Hall asked for the traditional idea of urban design to be abandoned: " T h e concept of urban design should not be taken in its old-fashioned sense — producing nice d r a w i n g s to pin on the wall" (quoted in Hirst,1995: 6) . But why, w e m a y wonder, should urban design be associated only with drawings and not with realities? (Figure 4 .4) .

As urban design deals with all scales of urban space , it has c a u s e d ambigui ty about its role and areas of involvement . Nevertheless , what l inks these different scales of involvement is the central feature that they all collectively m a k e up the urban space, and urban design is the activity w h i c h shapes the u r b a n space . In this sense, it might be broken d o w n into di f ferent arenas in w h i c h different designers could concentrate. T h e t ime-scale and issues involved in masterplanning for n e w sett lements are inevitably different f r o m t h o s e involved in details of street design.

At the height of modernism, a designer could design all the physical objects which made up a development: the buildings, the landscape a r o u n d them, their interiors, and the objects within the buildings, such as the furniture and even the artworks inside and outside the buildings. This w a s an attempt for a total design of an environment and, if implemented, meant that all these objects w o u l d be created within a relatively short period of time. This integrated design of a total environment was a hallmark of the modernists, as best exemplified in the teachings of Bauhaus. These roles are now performed b y several special isms of urban and regional planners, urban designers, architects, lansdscape architects , interior designers, furniture and product designers, and artists such as painters and sculptors.

As discussed in Chapter 1, I argue that an integrated concept of space is needed, one in which an open interpretation of place is adopted. Fol lowing this line of argument, we should stress that although a degree of specialization through the separation in scale of engagement can be useful, the nature of both processes should be seen as closely interrelated. O n l y in this w a y can w e avoid a further divide in the scope of those dealing with urban space. To confront the ambigui ty about scale, therefore, we should conclude that urban design deals with urban space at all its scales.

98 Design of Urban Space Urban Design Process 99

Figure 4 4 Is urban design "nice drawings to pin on the wall", or ideas for change? Aenal view of the proposed Great Northern Square in Manchester, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. (©1996 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Inc. Reproduced with kind permission.)

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 t ime when no development was in sight, it was felt that no attention should be paid to design.

For a project to be implemented, there may be several designs and designers involved, each producing drawings to communicate their ideas. These ideas, however, may never be implemented, as the money may rtm out or the decisions be changed. As they are about cities, and cities take a long time to evolve and change, these designs may be implemented but over a very long period of time, with inevitable changes and adjustments in a changing political and economic context. However, the abundance of beautiful but potentially unimplementable images, especially at a time of economic difficulty, has a powerful 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 "futurism" 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 no 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 has been especially strengthened by the way design communicates through visual, rather then verbal, means. Furthermore, designers' understanding of social and economic issues of cities has not always been 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 more through visual rather than verbal means, its content should not be equated with its means. In design, as in other forms of communication, form and content are very closely interrelated. But confusing the form and means of communication with the content of communication is an avoidable mistake. Can we mistake, for example, urban policy for just nice words?

Urban design as the aesthetics of the urban environment

This is a more profoimd problem. To sec urban ciesign as dealing \vith the \isual rather than the spatial aspects of environment is a widespread tendency (Figure 4.5). This can be an understandable mistake, since when we try to understand space our first encounter is a visual experience. W e first see the objects in front of us and then begin to understand how they relate to each other. If our understanding is limited to a visual understanding, we only concentrate ort shapes. If, however, we go beyond appearances, we start a spatial understanding, a three-dimensional experience. W e can enter this space, rather than just see it. The same applies to the design of spaces. W e do not create mere appearances but spaces that we can use for different purposes. In an interview on spatial arts, Derrida asserts that "I do say 'spatial' more readily than 'visual' . . . because I am not sure that space is essentially mastered b y . . . the look . . . Space isn't only the visible" (Derrida, quoted in Brunette and Will.s,1994: 24).

An example of treating urban design as a visual concern is Edward Relph (1987; 229) who, following Barnett (1982), sees urban design as attending to the visual qualities of urban environments. For him, urban design focuses on "the coherence


F i g u r e 4.5. Is urban design attention to the aesthetics of the environment? {Turin, Italy)

of townscape, including heritage districts, the relationship between buildings both old and new, the forms of spaces, and small-scale improvements to streets". Another example is the policy guidance given to the planners on design in the planning process (DoE,1992), which appears to treat design as mainly dealing with the appearance of the built environment.

The long-standing tradition of Picturesque in Britain, which pays special attention to the visual qualities of the environment, may be seen as a fundamental drive in this case. Even at the height of modernism, which promoted more

utihtarian aesthetics, the Picturesc^ue tradition was strong in Britain, as exemplif ied by the post-war resentment against modernism and the name it was given in Britain: New Brutalism.

The tendency to equate urban design with townscape management , however , also draws upon another major trend in the past two d e c a d e s — w h a t Boyer (1990) calls the return of aesthetics to city planning. This process, she argues , is part of the commodification of culture, through which "eventually even c i ty space and architectural forms become consumer items or packaged environments that support and promote the circulation of g o o d s " (Boyer,1990: 101). The return of capital to the city centres as the real estate investment is what lies behind the creat ion of specially designed environments and spectacles, leading to aestheticization of evers^day life.

Visual improvement of the cities has been used to market cities as a whole , as increasingly cities have to compete in the global markets to attract investment . T h e investment may be made by companies searching for better re turns on their investment and a better quality of life for their employees. Investment m a y also be made by the employees and b y middle classes returning to the cities looking for new hfestyles. As urban design emerged in the 1980s along these t rends of urban marketing and middle class colonization of parts of the cities, it h a s generated a critical reaction, reducing it to a merely aesthetic enterprise. C o m m e n t a t o r s have seen it as a new packaging for urban environments, henoe its visual emphas is .

There are two mistakes that can be corrected. T h e first correction is that urban design is not merely dealing with visual qualities of urban environment . T h e way out of this confusion is to realize that visual qualities are one a m o n g the spatial qualities of the built environment. To separate and emphasize the visual qualities of urban space is to ignore the major role of design as the generator of ideas for spatial change. As Sherwin Greene stresses, "The ultimate purpose of c o m m u n i t y design is to improve the function and aesthetic quality of the built environment for its users" . As such, it "must translate utility into art and simultaneously respond to both public and private interests while enduring political, economic, and administrat ive challenges (Greene,1992: 186). T h e second correction is that urban des ign as spatial management is a tool. If it has been used to maximize investment return and exchange value, it is not the tool that should be blamed. This tool can be equally used to maximize use value, to be at the service of all citizens rather than only some sections of urban society. For example, it is to use this capacity of urban design that Peter Hall asks urban designers to "reconcile the huge constraints, both technical and property-based, which are placed on the centres" (quoted in H i r s t , ! 995: 6) . In this case, I would suggest, the terms innovative, -rather than fashionable , and spatial, rather than visual, can be used to define urban design.

Whatever the role of urban designers in this process, the aesthetic, visual qualities of the urban environment and the organization of urban space are both quahties which are addressed by urban design, both dimensions of urban space and reflecting the circumstances of the people who produce and use it. As Harvey (1989: 56-67) puts it, " H o w a city looks and how its spaces are organized forms a material base upon which a range of possible sensations and social practices can be thought about, evaluated, and achieved". It will be a limited view to see urban design as dealing with only one of these aspects, as was predominant in the 19S0s, or to see it outside the social practices of which it is a part.


Urban design as social or spatial management?

W e argued that urban design deals with spatial, rather than merely visual aspects o f ' urban environment. But do we m e a n b y this that there is no social dimension involved? Do w e mean that urban design is all about transforming spatial arrangements and not dealing with aspects of use and management of those environments? Are there not m o r e deeply seated social and cultural relatiora between society and space that urban des ign addresses? (Figure 4.6.) .4

F i g u r e 4.6. Is urban ciesign concerned with spatial or social managennent? {Dublin, Ireland)

As we have discussed in Part O n e , social and spatial aspects are intertwined in our understanding of urban space. T h e same applies to the transformation of urban space. When we are engaged in shaping the urban space, we are inevitably dealing with its social content.

The modernist design had the ambit ion of changing societies through changing space. This , which became k n o w n as environmental determinism and social engineering, was a too mechanistic v iew of how society and space are interrelated.


This view is now widely discarded. But what is increasingly finding acceptance by social sciences as well as spatial arts and sciences, is that there is a strong interaction between space and the social processes.

There are, however, commentators who see urban design as merely a spatial involvement without a social dimension. This is particularly the case when the visual element of urban design work is emphasized. What needs to be argued here is that spatial transformation will be caused by, and in turn will cause, social change. This may happen at a variety of scales and degrees of impact. The correlation, however, is inevitable. This is especially felt when aspects of urban design such as the management of urban environments or change in land use are dealt with. More broadly, the social and psychological significance of the built environment is where the connection between the two can be observed.

The way society and space are interrelated is a main concern of urban design education. The Urban Design Source Book (Billingham,1994) offers a list of eight urban design programmes in Britain. Some of the programmes, which are based in the planning and architecture departments and built environment schools, have outlined their definition of urban design and the objectives of their programmes. One programme's focus is "on the relationship between on the one hand, the economic, social and political forces shaping urban renewal and on the other, physical opportunities, constraints and changes, including the design of physical developments" (Billingham,1994: 21). For another programme, "Urban design is concerned with the physical form of cities, buildings and the space between them. The study of urban design deals with the relationships between the physical form of the city and the social forces which produce it" (Billingham,1994: 24).

Other programmes analyse the socio-spatial relationship by concentrating on the physical and social contexts of urban design. For one programme, "Urban design is concerned with the creation, regeneration, enhancement and management of the built environments which are sensitive to their contexts and sympathetic to people's needs" (Billingham,1994: 18). Similar concern for the context is expressed by another school's urban design programme, which "is based on a morphological approach, with a particular regard to context, and an assumption that traditional ideas of urbanism can help to generate socially and ecologically successful urban environments in the future" (p.19). Others see urban design as having "an important role to play in influencing the development of local urban areas" (p.22), and with their training aim "to produce urban designers able to manage the increasingly complex problems.of developing urban space, and urban form" (p.27).

The urban design programmes in the United States also show similar emphases on the relationship between physical fabric of the city and the processes which shape it. One school's urban design programme "explores the multiplicity of social, cultural, economic and political factors which play a role in the city's evolution, as well as other more qualitative aspects related to understanding the city as a spiritual and cultural artifact" (Pratt Institute in New York City, poster). At Harvard, the urban design programme provides "knowledge of urban issues and concepts, preparing architects and landscape architects for leadership in the design of environments for human settlement" (Harvard University,! 994: 30). The programme's foundation core is a design studio which "emphasizes the development of a critical awareness of how the physical city affects and is affected

1 0 4 Design of Urban Space Urban Design Process 1 0 5

by social, cultural, and economic factors" (Hodge et al.,1994: 28). For another ^ school, seeking a non-conventional approach, " T h e premise of the program is | investigation, exploration, experimentation, and representation of ideas and ' proposals regarding the development of the city". The curriculum, therefore, "is ' designed for the questioning of the existing connections and searching for I alternative ideologies and proposals for the city's architecture" (University of Colorado,undated; 10).

Policy-makers have also shown interest in broadening the scope of urban design. ^ After stating that a "single common definition of urban design" is not available, the i DoE's urban design campaign offers a definition which addresses several i relationships: "between buildings and the streets, squares, parks and other open spaces which make up the public domain; the relationship of one part of a village, „ town or city with other parts; and the interplay between our evolving environment j of buildings and the values, expectations and resources of people: in short, the complex inter-relationship between all the various elements of built and unbuilt ^ space, and those responsible for t h e m " (DoE,1995: 2). • |

Urban design can be seen as a socio-spatial management of urban environment I using both visual and verbal means of communication and engaging in a variety of J scales of urban socio-spatial phenomena. One aspect of the relationship between • social and spatial dimensions of urban design has been formulated as the ! relationship between process and product. i

Process or product? J

The sources of ambiguity between macro- or micro-scale of urban design and \ between urban design as visual or spatial management refer to urban design as dealing with its product, the urban space. This leads us to a fundamental source of potential confusion in defining urban design: whether the term refers to a process or a product. Architects have historically been interested in the product of their design and not in the administrative and urban development processes through which designs are implemented. O n the other hand, planners have shifted from an interest in the physical fabric of the city to the policies and procedures of change in the environment (Dagenhart & Sawicki,1992). As urban design stands between architecture and planning, it relates to the paradigms of both, which can create i overlaps and reduce clarity of scope. Depending on the commentators ' standpoint, 4 they might have a tendency to one or the other of these paradigms, preferring to see urban design as only a product or a process. Yet urban design, as many urban designers have stressed, refers to both a process and a product: " i t is defined by what urban designers do as much as it is by what they produce" (Kindsvatter & Von Grossmann,1994: 9). For one university programme, "Urban design can be thought of as both a product and a process. As a product urban design occurs at scales ranging from parts of an environment, such as a streetscape, to the larger wholes of districts, towns, cities, or regions . . . As a process and a conscious act, urban design involves the art of shaping the environment which has been built over t ime by many different actors" (University of Washington,undated: 1).

But how can we say that urban design is both a process and a product? Surely,

urban design is not a product, but it is interested in its product , the built environment. A more precise way of putting it may be as follows: urban design is a process that deals with shaping urban space, and as such it is interested in both the process of this shaping and the spaces it helps to shape.

In a sense this two-sided nature is reflected in the two component parts of the term: "urban" and "design", the former referring to the product and the latter to the process. The ambiguity of the scales of urban design refers to a m o r e fundamenta l question: what is urban? What parts of the ever-increasing urban areas are addressed by urban design? The dominant trend in Britain seems to be to address the city centres as the main urban space (for example, see Worpole ,1992) , leaving the rest of the cities as mere peripheries where the lower densities of populat ion and activities appear to make them less interesting.

There has been a decline in large-scale urban redevelopment or development of new settlements. This explains to a large degree, especially in Britain, w h y urban design is generally concentrated on a micro-scale of urban space, preoccupied with place-making. In the United States, where s o m e areas have experienced phenomenal growth pressures, large-scale urban development, as reflected in the New Urbanist movement, has also been a main feature. Parallel with the predominance of retailing in the city centres in Britain and in the nat ional e c o n o m y as a whole, urban design becomes pressed to concentrate on creating a n d supporting environments in which shopping, or consumption in general , is the main attraction to pull the crowds, leaving aside other uses and places as of secondary importance. The drive for regeneration of decayed inner areas of the cities has also led to such concentration on the city centres, taking the attention away from the urban region as an integrated space.

The urban space, however, is more than the city centre (Figure 4 .7) . It includes the suburbs, where large numbers of urbanités live. As these suburbs h a v e matured and new nuclei of services and employment have developed on the outskirts of the cities, any engagement with the city which disregards the suburbs is turning a bl ind eye to a substantial portion of urban space (Gottdiener,1994). In the case of the larger cities in Britain, multinucleated urban regions have evolved either through development of new shopping and office centres in the suburbs, or have grown by engulfing the older, smaller settlements into the urban whole. T h e urban space with which urban design is engaged is therefore the space of an urban region, including the centre and its peripheries. Restricting urban design to the city centres would deprive urban design of a broader perspective, and the urban space of a potentially powerful tool for its transformation.

As for the definition of design, we come across a fairly wide range of meanings . For example, the dictionary definitions of the word refer separately to a sequence of distinguishable moments in a process: from when there is only an intention, to when the ideas are conceived in mind, to when preliminary sketches are prepared, to when they are formulated as a set of instructions for making something which leaves the details to be worked out, and to making plans and drawings n e c ^ s a r y for the construction of a building etc., which the workmen have to follow {Oxford English Dictionary; Watson,1968). Each of these definifions is given as an independent definition for design. Yet if we put them all together, they still m e a n design, or rather the design process.

1 0 6 Design of Urban Space Urban Design Process 1 0 7

F i g u r e 4 . 7 . Is urban design merely the design of city centre space? {London, UK)

Nevertheless , these definit ions fail to in form u s of all the m o m e n t s in the sequence of the design process or of the process as a whole . On the other hand, attempts that h a v e been m a d e to provide a m o r e comprehens ive definition of design have found an entirely di f ferent focus. For example , in his entry for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Kevin L y n c h (1984) o f fered a definition of design as " the imaginat ive creation of p o s s i b l e form i n t e n d e d to achieve s o m e human purpose; social , economic , aes the t i c , or t e c h n i c a l " . E lsewhere (Lynch,1981 : 290), he elaborates on this def ini t ion o f design as " t h e playful creat ion and strict evaluation of the possible f o r m s of someth ing , inc luding how it is to b e made". Here the focus is on an ac t ion , the creat ion o f possible form, w h i c h is not ment ioned in our dict ionary definit ions, w i t h a reference to its mode, mechanisms a n d areas of c o n c e r n .

The relat ionship between p r o c e s s and p r o d u c t goes b e y o n d this formal analysis. As w e h a v e d iscussed in Part O n e , t h e y are closely intertwined. To understand urban space, w e a r g u e d fol lowing H e n r i Lefebvre, w e need to look at the processes which produce the space . U r b a n d e s i g n is a major component part of these processes and it is c o n c e r n e d wi th c i t ies a n d with h o w to shape and m a n a g e them. However , there are m a n y profess iona ls w h o are involved in this process of shaping. W h e r e do u r b a n designers s t a n d ?

Professional divide

A major area of ambiguity seems to be where we expect a practical clarity to reign. W h e r e should we look for definitions of urban design and find out what urban designers do? We would expect the best people to go to w o u l d be the professionals, as they should have a clear idea of what they do. T h e r e are 54 UK-based firms mentioned in the Urban Design Source Book (Bi l l ingham,1994) , varying in size and scope of their activity, from international firms to small consultancies . These are f irms that have indicated that they offer "an urban design or a related service". They offer a variety of services in relation to the built and natural environments, with many services and subjects overlapping each other. These include masterplanning, development frameworks and concepts, concept design, development briefs, design guidelines, urban design in deve lopment control, urban design training, environmental and visual impact assessment , site appraisal and context studies, environment statements, environmental improvement, building and area enhancement, town centre renewal , public realm design, transport and traffic management, pedestrianization, infrastructure strategies, computer modell ing, project management , engineering, interior, graphic and product design, landscape design, architectural design, urban design, town planning, land-use planning, policy formulation and promot ion, strategic planning studies , local planning, public inquiries, conservation, n e w design in historic contexts , planning in historic and sensitive areas, decontaminat ion strategies, adaptive re-use, enabling development, implementat ion, urban regeneration, small town and village regeneration, integrated regeneration of streets and buildings, community participation, civic and communi ty architecture, n e w settlements, large-scale site planning, landscape planning, physical planning, urban housing, shopping, employment , tourism, recreation and leisure, urban parks and spaces, urban squares, waterfront buildings and strategies, marinas , planning for pedestrian cr ime prevention and security, and energy efficient design. This diversity adds to the ambiguity of urban design as an activity; w h e r e do we draw the boundaries between these wide ranging but overlapping activities?

The Urban Design Group is the main forum dealing with the subject in Britain, largely bringing together urban design professionals. To produce a manifesto for urban design, initiated in 1986, the Group proposed a seven-point agenda, an agenda which aimed at "making explicit what urban designers do, or should d o " (Billingham,1994; 38). As such, it is referring to the realms of descriptive and prescriptive simultaneously, which is often a characteristic of design literature. There are also other boundaries that are crossed in the seven points of the agenda; disciplinary boundaries between architecture and planning, boundaries between developer's goals and a community 's needs, between promoting and enabling development and controlling it.

Urban design, as outlined in this agenda, is an interdisciplinary activity, occupying " the central ground between the recognized environmental professionals". It is "concerned with the careful stewardship of the resources of the built environment" and with "helping the users and not only the producers of the urban environment" . Therefore they " m u s t understand and interpret


community needs and aspirat ions" , as well as "understanding and us ing political and financial processes" . In short, urban designers operate "wi th in the procedures of urban development to achieve communi ty objectives" . Following this principle, "Urban design education and research must be concerned with the dynamics of change in the urban environment and h o w it can be adapted to be responsive to the ways in which people 's lives are l i v e d " (Bil l ingham,1994: 34). A list of "an irreducible m i n i m u m " of the criteria for the form of the " g o o d city" concludes the agenda. These criteria, derived from a variety of sources , include attention to variety, access, security and comfort, opportunity for personalization, and clarity.

But are these concerns exclusive to urban designers? Can other environmental disciplines and professions not claim to have similar concerns? The first point in the Urban Design Group's agenda, however, explains more: "Urban design has emerged as a discipline, primarily because it is able to consider the relationships ' between the physical form and function of adjacent sites, unlike the Architect who is constrained by site boundaries and client intentions and the Planner who has • been reluctant to address issues appertaining to the physical design agenda" (Billingham,1994: 34). Does this principle imply that urban design is the physical design of more than a site, but of a group of adjacent sites (Figure 4.8)? After all.

F i g u r e 4.8. Is urban (Jesign the physical design of more than one site? {Newcastle. UK)


interest in physical design was the first principal objective of the Urban Design Group, as published in its first issue of Urban Design Group News in July 1979. The Group was being established, "To provide a forum for those w h o believe that planning should be more concerned with improvement of the design of the physical environment and the quality of places and to encourage all the professions to combine to this e n d " (quoted in Linden & Billingham,1994: 30).

It is clear after all that urban design is an interdisciplinary activity. If professionals from different disciplines of built, natural and social environments work together in teams, they create an urban design process. Similarly, if urban space is to be shaped and managed by any professional, there will be a need for multidisciplinary concerns and awareness. The key is to go beyond the narrow boundaries of professions and disciplines and to approach urban space from an interdisciplinary, socio-spatial perspective.

A public or private sector activity?

Another area of confusion, which on the surface is in close connection with professional divides, is the affiliation of urban design with public or private sectors. The question is: which camp does it belong to? W h o performs it? W h o does it serve? Is it mainly performed by, or serving, the private developer or the city council? The confusion can therefore extend to urban design's political role, which potentially could be a conflicting duality.

If urban design is seen as the visual m a n a g e m e n t of the city centres only to maximize returns on private sector investment, then it is in tended to serve a minority interest (Figure 4 .9) . Some crit icisms of urban regenerat ion undertakings in Britain have taken this view and h a v e therefore associated urban design with the interests of private companies . A s visual m a n a g e m e n t is then seen as a luxury when more basic needs of health, education and hous ing are at stake, urban design has been considered as react ionary or at best irrelevant. If, however, urban design is practised by the public sector, it has b e e n held to b e at the service of the public at large, contributing to the improvement of the quality of the urban environment. T h e question is, which side do w e identify urban design with?

We may confront this ambiguity by stating that as a technical, social and aesthetic process, urban design can be practised by any agency large enough to initiate or deal with urban development projects. Furthermore, with the increasing role of public-private partnerships in urban development and regeneration, it may be difficult to locate the camp to which urban design belongs. We will return to this ambiguity in Chapter 5 when discussing the relationship between use value and exchange value in urban space production. At this stage, however, it may suffice to say that urban design is not necessarily bound to the public or private sectors. Each of these sectors may be engaged in urban design and, depending on w h o performs it, it may have different roles and serve different interests. Performed by whichever camp, urban design is the process that shapes and manages the urban space. Such urban space will inevitably reflect the values and aspirations of those who produced it.

Design of Urban Space Urban Design Process

F i g u r e 4 . 9 . Are visual improvements of city centres aimed to maximize returns on private investments? (San 7o5e, California, USA)

:| Objective-rational or subjective-irrational? W e have looked at the ambiguities about the aspects of the product with which urban design deals. We have come across ambiguit ies about its role as a professional activity and its association with different sectors of the poUtical i economy. W e also need to b e a w a r e of the ambiguit ies about the nature of the > process. W c need to know what kind of process urban design is. Is it an objective and rational process performed b y a number of people or is it a subjective process performed by an individual designer (Figure 4.10)?

René Descartes, who was " the greatest rationalist ever" (Gellner,1992: 1), had a firm belief in design as a rational endeavour. Ho mistrusted "cus tom a n d example", and hence the gradual growth of the cities as a representation of the irrational custom and example. Flis rationalist principle was that, "we ought never to allow ourselves to b e persuaded of the truth of anything unless on the evidence of our reason" (quoted in Gellner,1992: 1) . For him, the best buildings, legal systems and opinions were those designed b y a single author. On this basis , he held that, "ancient cities . . . are usually but ill laid out compared with the regularly

F i g u r e 4 . 1 0 . Is design the imposition of a rational order? (Stockf)olm, Sweden)

constructed towns which a professional architect has freely planned on an open plain" (quoted in Gellner,1992: 4) . This view of design as a rational undertaking was based on a classicist, individualist and bourgeois notion of reason and rationality, which came under attack by later generations of empiricists and idealists.

A contemporary and more complex notion of rationality is offered by Jürgen Habermas's models of action and rationality. In his communicative action models Habermas (1984) attempts to address, simultaneously, all three objective, social and subjective issues that the social actors are involved in. These models are identified as the teleological model in which the actor relates to an objective world cognitively and volitionally as rationalized by "truth" and "success"; the norm-guided model in which the actor is related to a normative, social context as rationalized by "normative correctness" or legitimacy; and the dramaturgical model in which action is related to the subjective world of the actor as rationalized through "truthfulness" or "authenticity" (McCarthy,1978; Dews,1986; Whito,1988). The notions of action and rationality provide us with an insight into the dynamics of each action in the series of actions which constitute the urban design process. They focus on how individuals relate to their objective, subjective and social contexts. Drawing upon the communicative action theory, we can analyse the urban design


F i g u r e 4 .11. Are tecfinical concerns predominant in design? {Beaubourg, Paris, France)

Urban design as a technical 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 knowledge 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 and development projects, the technical approach has been dominant. Entirely new settlements would be built as physical objects which are the product of a technical process (Figure 4 .11). Especially in the periods of rapid economic expansion, the technical approach tends to predominate. The whole project of the modern movement in architecture was based on technological necessity, as the built environment was required to be made fit for the machine 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 be employed. Any change in one 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 new technology, for example, would make a solution obsolete and in need of revision, whereas at the time of decision-making, it would 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 Urban design as a social process We can also look at the urban design process as a social process due to the involvement of a large number of actors with various roles and interests who interact in different stages of the process. A design is often prepared by a group of designers interacting with other professionals, with the agencies who control resources and rules such as landowners, financiers, planning authorities and politicians, with the users of the space, and with those who would be affected by it. The interaction continues with the parties involved in the implementation phase.

According to instrumental rationality, the process would only be rational if it ends in the purpose that was expected from it. As distinct from that, the form of rationality used here is one which aims at consensus between the players involved, and is in general making reference to nornas and values shared by them as a point

process as a combination of three distinctive and yet interwoven threads: the stage when 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 own 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.

114 Design of Urban Space j

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. (Гуле & Wear, UK) (Photograph by Phil Dyer)

It can be argued that arriving at a consensus would not necessarily guarantee the rationality of the action. It seems that consensus in technical-rational act ion is more readily available since the point of departure in any discourse will be only the available technology and scientific knowledge, even though scientific knowledge might be contestable or alternative technologies at comparable costs b e available for any specific task.

Urban Design Process 1 1 5

Figure 4 . 1 3 . Is design the playful and imaginative creation of possible form? {Paris, France)

Here, a m o n g the identif iable structures, with which the agency interacts, are the subject ivi ty of the des igner and the m e d i u m of expression. T h e subjectivity of the d e s i g n e r has been d e v e l o p e d through contacts with the outside world. It

zi departure. However, the patterns of rationality of the process and its o u t c o m e are :cer i to distortion due to the p o w e r relations involved. Any disrupt ion in this iialogue would either end in the break up of the process or would lead to a new ^evei of practical discourse where consensus is sought. If, however, all levels of T.teraction are not open to rational discourse, then the distortions m i g h t put any -ccsnnal consensus at risk.

-- . . -I example of the absence of consensus between the players having disastrous results is the post-war planning policy and implementation of s l u m clearance •.s"liiiout consulting the communities (Figure 4.12). The modernist rejection of rjntext can be seen as the manifestation of instrumental action, which has been a T.a:or feature of the scientific and technological age. On the other hand, its :!pponent, contextualism, can b e seen as focusing on the social interact ion, which employs the norm-based rationality.

Since the product of urban design is the manifestation of a set of policies or interests as solidified in physical space or its management, it becomes evident how the role of urban designers can be important. They could act as intermediary players in a complex interactive process. Their ability to convince others through all forms of presentation will have strong impacts on the process as a whole.

Urban design as a creative process

There is also a third angle: to look at urban design as a creative process, what Lynch (1981,1984) called a playful and imaginative creation of possible form (Figure 4.13). In this process, designers are interacting with their own subjective world and, by employing their aesthetic understanding and graphic skills, express their spatial concepts in the form of an appropriate scheme.

115 Descn of Urnaa Soace j Urban Design Process 117

r

includes a " l ibrary" of images a n d arrangements in the real wor ld , which iiu designer sees as appropriate a n d beautiful. Designers often m a k e frequent references to this library in the design process. Through a process of adaptation and adjustment, trial and error, designers set the stored images , or new combinations of them, against a concrete context and arrive at the required ro.-m.

Interacting with the medium of expression can have different layers . On the one hand, according to the requirements of the task at hand, appropriate forms , -of expression and presentation are chosen. Graphic and verbal techniques of communication are employed to convince the other agencies, and first of all the client, of the worth of the design. On the other hand, the traditions in a design profession have their own normat ive powers as to what is acceptable . At this level, there is always an ongoing discourse between the me mb e r s of a design 7 profession, which not only involves the present members of the profession, but'''" also embraces historical per iods and their representatives. T h r o u g h these interactions, conventions are deve loped, which become a source of influence on, and if needed suppression of, lay judgements .

From a Habermasian viewpoint , the form of rationality here is the authenticity ivith which the ideas are be ing expressed. In the subjective realm, the authenticity of expression might produce a moment of truthfulness, but it would hardly accotmt for the plurality of such moments as produced b y plurality of personalities and interests. It can b e seen how expressive rationality can have an adverse effect on rational consensus . Any attempt to reach a consensus in expression naight be threatened b y attempting to standardize the richness of expression and experience that a combination and variety of individuals and periods can offer. Of course, this point cannot b e overstressed since there is an optimtmi level of variety that people can accept, beyond which there is tendency to simplicity and homogenei ty rather than plurality. ^

Many have tended to look at urban design from only one of the three angles that we have analysed. S o m e tend to see it as only a technical process and therefore equate it with big architecture or big engineering. S o m e see it only as a é: social interaction to reach new institutional arrangements, and so tend to focus on its management capacities rather than on production of space. Yet others tend to see it as an artistic activity which should be taken up only b y talented designers. Such uni-dimensional focuses would naturally lead to narrow ; definitions and viewpoints at the cost of undermining the reality of the process and its plurality of aspects.

It is quite obvious from this analysis that each segment in the urban design process can have at the same t ime an involvement of three forms of action and rationality, each having a direct impact on the other forms. Despite the limitations of such an attempt towards making a multidirectional approach to the analysis of the urban design process , it can provide a powerful analytical and normative tool in complex situations. It can contribute to gaining an insight into the urban design process and its component parts. It can also b e useful in the practical design processes b y urging the designers to be constantly aware of the multiplicity of the dimensions of the process in which they play a significant part.

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 we consciously shape and manage our built environments. Urban 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 the 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 we 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 urban environments, interested in both the process of this shaping and the spaces it helps shape. Combining technical, social and expressive concerns, urban designers use both visual and verbal means of communication, and engage in all scales of the urban socio-spatial continuum.

Urban design is part of the process of the production of space. To understand this process, as an economic, political and cultural process, we concentrate on these three processes in the next three chapters. W e will explore urban design's relationships with the markets, where development of the built environment takes place, and with the state, where this development is regulated. We will also analyse the images of good urban environments that the designers use in their work.

CHAPTER 5

Production of the Built Environment

The concept that connects the chapters of I^art Two is that urban design is an integral part of urban space production. Chapter 4 explored some of the main ambiguities about urban design as an activity and sought a definition for it. This

j 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 urban design. The main relationship under consideration is that between urban development and urban design, between developers and designers.

The chapter starts by challenging two commonly held, but contradictory, views about the pr imacy of professionals or of property developers in shaping urban environments. This 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 do so, we look at various models of the development process and offer a model that addresses urban 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 change on urban design and urban form. The tendency towards standardization of design and privatization of public space are two aspects of this change which are discussed.

Urban design and the development process

Our search for a relationship between urban design and urban development process begins by challenging two illusions. The first illusion is that urban planners, urban designers, and architects are the main agencies shaping the urban space. It is because of this illusion that we see such widespread criticism of these professionals for the post-war urban development schemes and their perceived failures. Another illusion to be challenged is that the developers (or clients in architectural language) are those who make the main decisions and the role of designers is merely to provide "packaging" for these decisions. Due to this illusion, we see the widespread criticism of design as an associate of the business interests, without any other merits.

These two illusions are often the outcome of narrow definitions of these agencies and professionals and of the nature of design. It is argued here that urban design and property development are independent but closely interrelated activities. Any

1 2 0 Design of Urban Space

understanding of urban design will not be complete without an understanding of the development process. Similarly, development process will not be fully understood without an insight into the dynamics of design.

How far is design related to land and property development? M a n y would say they have no relationship whatsoever. Design, they would argue, is the process by which designers express their aesthetic creations and find solutions for functional needs. They would argue that this is very far from the realm of property development, where the main concerns of investors and developers are markets and profit margins. These two groups, designers and developers, are fluent in different languages, communicate in different ways, and have different aims.

This chapter, however, challenges this view by 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

F i g u r e 5 . 1 . To understand the urban design process, it is essential to understand the property development process. {Newcastle, UK) (Photograph by Phil Dyer)

Production of the Built Environment 1 2 1

understand the urban design process, therefore, it is essential to gain an understanding of the property development process (Figure 5.1).

This is not to say that this awareness can be a substitute for working in teams with sociologists, economists, architects, urban planners, community representatives and others. There is no doubt that the outcome of such teamwork will inevitably be more informed than a design exercise without consultation. What is stressed here is that the designers' awareness of the development process would give them an initial platform from which to communicate with other parties engaged in the process. Without such awareness, designers will only be involved in the creation of a form without being coiisciously related to its complex contents and processes.

A good example is the work of Rob Krier. In a postscript to his monograph on architecture and urban design, he accuses the development process of failing him to some degree:

This book can unfortunately only hint at what I would like to have achieved in practice, during my 30-year struggle for a valid conception of urban development structures and integrated clear housing typologies. For many years, vehement criticism of my work and defamatory public disputes consumed an excessive amount of my energy and time. When I did get the chance to build, the modest budgets (for the social housing for example), along with the undermining of the architect's authority in the construction process, effectively ensured that my ideal concepts were realized only in schematic form.

(Krier, 1993; 144)

This may be interpreted as a reaction to a short-sighted approach to new ideas. It may equally be interpreted as meaning that the works have remained on paper due to his disregard for the mechanisms of the urban development process.

Such awareness of the development process will help designers, from the outset, to gain a deeper understanding of the context in which they operate, and of the mechanisms which would eventually implement their design proposals. It might be argued that such realism could be a hindrance to the creativity and innovation of designers. Nevertheless, the history of urban space evolution shows that realism will be beneficial to the producers and users of space. It will be also helpful to the designers themselves by preventing a repetition of the historical mistakes in urban development, most notably undermining the needs and aspirations of those who were to use or inhabit these developments.

It is generally held that developers are unaware of design issues. In May 1995, the Royal Fine Arts Commission shortlisted 16 buildings for the Building of the Year Award. Notable in this selection was that there was no commercial office or factory on the list. The successful buildings were initiated by the public sector or by the private sector money-makers in their private capacity. This has led to the conclusion that developers are not perceived to see design as an important aspect of their work. There are, however, those who argue that companies can benefit from a strong design statement {The Economist, 3 June 1995).

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. However, if design is understood as the process of choosing possible form, w e may conclude that many decisions that are made by investors, surveyors and developers before a designer is involved, are all design decisions.

1 2 2 Design of Urban Space Prociuction of the Built Environment 123

F igure 5 . 2 . According to supply and demand analysis, the more desirable a place, the higher its density and price. {Chicago, USA)

affecting tlte form of the property and the urban space it helps to produce. That the investors or developers may 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 be argued that design, as a cultural factor, is not entirely subordinate to the economics 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 broadly 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 many cities shaped by non-designers.

Land and property markets are very important in shaping the social and spatial ; 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 narrow 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. The 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 with, 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 make sense of this complex process.

Models of the development process

Two main sets of models have described the development process. The first set analyses actors and institutions working within a market organized on the basis of supply and demand. Here Healey (1991) identifies three strands in theorizing the models of development process: equilibrium models, event-sequence models, and agency models. The second set of models, which is Healey's fourth strand, are models which rely on political economy analysis to explain the urban development process. W e identify two models of capital-labour and structure-agency within this set of models.

This section reviews these main models, explores h o w design relates to them, and

offers a model of the development process which discusses design as an integral part of the urban development process.

Supply-demand models

Equilibrium models

Most of the real estate literature relies on the equilibrium models of the neoclassical economy and the Chicago school of human ecology. For this school and its successors, the analytical basis for understanding urban systems is spatial relations. The development 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 ramework. The underlying assumption is that the land and property market is in equil ibrium between supply and demand. Buyers and sellers are autonomous individuals engaged in a competitive bidding process. To satisfy the consumers ' demands , new or recycled supplies of land and property enter the market. C o n s u m e r s are then free to choose among those supplies according to their taste, the price and the quahty of the development (Figure 5.2). The best land and buildings will inevitably attract more demand, which will be reflected in their


F i g u r e 5.4. Buildings and parts of urban space are bought and sold by a variety of actors, as other goods and services, in the market-place. {London, UK)

One of tfie main sfiortcomings of an analysis of actors is an undermining of the time dimension. Some analysts have therefore integrated actors with events to propose a model of the development process. For example, Bryant et al. (1982: 56), in an analysis of the land conversion process in urban fringe, identify a sequence of events, and within each event a number of primary and secondary agents. Primary actors include predevelopment owners (e.g. farmers and non-farm residents), who

Production of the Built Environment 127

give way to intermediate actors (e.g. builders, developers, realtors and investment companies) and to final consumers (e.g. householders, firms, government agencies and inst i tut ions) . Secondary actors include planners, politicians, institutions, realtors and lawyers . These actors are involved in the process of moving from non-urban use to a transitionary stage, in which development pressure is mounting and urban interest is seen in land purchases. It then leads to the active purchase of raw land, act ive development and active purchase of developed land (quoted in Healey,1991: 227) .

Integration of actors and events gives a clearer perspective to see the designer and the des ign as part of the development process. An analysis of the actors and stages of development process can include designers, whose role concentrates on the shape of the development . It shows very clearly that designers, their roles and interests, cannot be studied independently from this process. Evidence for this argument is the frequency of changes to a design in its preparation and implementat ion. Whether based on technical considerations or as a matter of policy in relation to investment and use considerations, a design is often altered even after the formal complet ion of the design process. This is an indication of the necessity of compromise , where designers ' efforts are only one part of an interactive process that involves a large number of actors in a complex sequence of events.

The a g e n c y models and others which take into account the sequence of events are often l imited in their scope, as they concentrate on describing the details of the development process. They fail to address the driving forces of the process, which act as its s tructural imperatives.

Political economy models

A n u m b e r of models can be identified within a broad definition of political economy. Earlier, Marxian, analyses dealt with structures of the market and the conflict b e t w e e n capital and labour. However , these models, did not address sufficiently the role of actors and institutions within the broad frameworks and structures. In response, a number of models have been proposed which can be called s t ructure-agency models , i.e. models which explain the social phenomena in the interaction between social structures and agencies. Although these models are critical of the traditional political economy approaches, they are listed here under the general title of political economy. The reason for such classification is that the underlying assumptions which inform their analysis are often within a political economy perspective.

Capital-labour models

Rather than the neoclassical emphasis on price mechanisms of the markets and the relationship between supply and demand, the political economy approach focuses on the w a y markets are structured and the role of capital, labour and land in this process.

Marx s a w landownership within the context of feudalism, and failed to pay attention to the role of space in general, and land and property in particular, in capitalism. A number of scholars, however, have extended political economy

Although these models offer insights into the development process b y describing its stages and identifying potential blockages, they fail to address the participating actors and their interests. Furthermore, the sequence of events may vary widely in different cases and circumstances.

Agency models

A third set of models concentrates on actors, their roles, and their interests in the development process (Figure 5.4). Actors such as developers, landowners and planners are identified and their relationships with each other and with the development process in general are traced and described.

3


frameworks into the analysis of space. According to this analysis, under capitalism, J | space is a commodi ty and its production is subject to the same processes as other"1H goods and services. This explanation places the development of the buUt J|| environment in the general context of capitalism and offers a convincing ^ explanation for space making. However , it tends to rely on a set of abstractions ' without explaining the more finely grained relationships which are also imporlanf in the process.' There is a tendency to see the conflicts in urban space as mere reflections of the tension between capital and labour. The structural imperatives of . the accumulation process, therefore, find primacy in the configuration of space "The only actors who matter, if any actors matter at all" , write Logan and Molotch ^ (1987: 11), "are the corporate capitalists, whose control of the means of production * appears to make them, for all practical purposes, invincible."

The implications of this treatment of actors for design is that it is seen as an 4k unimportant element in a process signified by the conflict between capital and * labour. In this battle, the design, and the development it leads to, will take side with ^ one or the other of these adversaries. And as the development of the built ' S environment takes place in the secondary circuit of capital (the first circuit being the i production circuit), the design process is one tool, among many, used to ensure the ^ smooth operation of capital in its restless expansion. , "S

Structure-agency models

To give a more detailed account of the development process, Ambrose (1986) proposes a model in which the main political and economic forces of the state, the ' finance industry and the construction industry are subdivided into a number of actors with different roles (Figure 5.5). The finance industry is an industry which "deals in one commodity — m o n e y " (Ambrose,1986: 80). It lends or invests money that is borrowed through deposits, savings, and pension and insurance contributions. Its main actors are building societies, pension funds, life insurance houses, personal investment agents and the banking system. The investment decisions of these actors play an important part in the development or dereliction of an area. For example, if the building societies, which dominate the housing market, decide to avoid lending in certain inner city areas, then they foster the deprivation and decay present in those areas. The amount of land and property that financial institutions hold and the relative importance of their investment decisions indicate how they influence the market rather than respond to its trends.

The state, the political force in the political economy of the development process, can be subdivided into central and local government. The central government agencies in Britain, the Bank of England, the Treasury and the Department of the Environment, and the local government agencies and their finance, estates, housing and planning departments, can each influence the production of the built environment. These range from planning regulations, which prefer some forms of development to others, through public spending policies, to tax incentives and direct spending, all of which can result in different socio-spatial forms.

While the state and the finance industry regulate and invest, it is the construction industry which develops the built environment. This is a fragmented industry where the small firms are predominant in the production process. Ambrose (1986)

Production of the Built Environment 129

Figure 5.5. The public and the private sectors are both involved in the production of the built environment. (Newcastle, UK) (Photograph by Phil Dyer)

identifies six functions within the industry: speculative housebuilding, property developing, general contracting, public authority direct works, plant hire, and material supply. While large firms may be involved in all of these functions (apart from public works) , smaller firms may perform only one or more of these functions. The size, structure and scope of these agencies have wide-ranging impacts on the built environment they produce.^

Healey (1991) is not convinced that this model explains the driving forces in the relationship between the state, the construction industry and the finance industry. Instead, she proposes an institutional model of the development process (Healey,1992). This is a universal model which, she argues, addresses the agencies, events, and the diversity of processes in different conditions. Drawing upon Giddens (1984) and earlier w o r k (Healey & Barrett,1990), the model is based on the identification of the agencies, the roles they play, and their strategies and interests. These roles, strategies and interests are then related to the rules, resources and ideas that govern the development process. The process is therefore related to the wider societal contexts of modes of production and regulation and ideology. These

130 Design of Urban Space Production of the Built Environment 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, and marketing/managing the end product) , roles in production (e.g. land, labour and capital as factors of production) and consumption (e.g. material values, property rights, and guardians of environmental quality).

Many models of the development process tend to under-represent the complexity of the process, as they only emphasize some of its aspects. The models of development process which aspire to give a comprehensive account of the process, on the other hand, often tend to become too complex and difficult to use in an • analysis of the process. According to Healey (1992: 43), using such models in empirical research can be "quite demanding" . 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.

These models do not often refer to design as a distinctive moment in the development process. Design is either not mentioned or is seen as one of the roles played by the developers in assembling a number of actors in the development of the new built environments. At best, it appears, design is considered as a tool in thé l ' î ? ! development process, a symbolic representation of the economic and political interests and decisions. Despite these limitations, the strength of the ' structure-agency perspective encourages us to seek an approach which addresses • design as an integrated element of the urban development process. To do this, we first look at the crucial relationship between use and exchange values.

Use value and exchange value

Rather than seeing the city's spatial relations as the outcome of an equilibrium between supply and demand, as advocated b y neoclassical economics, or a conflict between capital and labour, as analysed by Marxist economics, Logan and Molotch (1987) suggest we concentrate on the relationship between use value and exchange value. A single place can have both these types of values: a building may be a place to live in for some (use value) and a generator of rent for others (exchange value) (Figure 5.6). There is a potential tension between these two values. "For some, places represent residence or production site; for others, places represent a • commodity for buying, selling, or renting to somebody else". This contrast can reach its sharpest form in the relationship between "residents, who use place to satisfy essential needs of life, and entrepreneurs, who strive for financial return" (Logan & Molotch,1987: 2). They argue that the conflict between use and exchange values in the cities "closely determines the shape of the city, the distribution of , people, and the way they live together". As the urban development process occurs at a local level and involves local actors, they ask for primary attention to be paid to these "parochial actors", whose strategies, schemes, needs and institutions are hnked to "cosmopolitan political and economic forces" (Logan & Molotch,1987:12).

Design can be seen as a means of maximizing exchange value. Playing this role, it serves the investors and entrepreneurs in their money-making capacity. It can also be a means of increasing the use value. Playing this role, it serves the users and

F igure 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)

their requirements . There are obvious overlaps between the two roles of design. The design of a h o u s e can be expected to maximize its value in the market-place, at the same time as serving its users b y its functional and aesthetic competence. There are, however, potential conflicts between use and exchange values, which, according to Logan and M o l o t c h (1987) , lie at the heart of the urban development process and shape the physical and social fabric of the cities.

When des ign is considered as a tool, it is an integral part of an industry, a

1 3 2 Design of Urban Space Production of the Built Environment 1 3 3

"construct ion" or "development" industry which "produces" the built environment . It is then possible to compare this industry with any other industry and its design process with any other, serving the production of a product and its sale in the market . The 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 look good 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 product ion and consumption. But how far is a car comparable to urban space? Is , urban space produced and sold for profit, or bought for functional and symbolic use? T h e answer is that urban space is similarly being treated as a commodity in the market-place.

Apply ing the logic of commodi ty production, exchange and consumption of space m a y only be an economistic interpretation of the evolution and life of cities. / This outlook, however , shows the extent of the commodification of space. Yet we are aware of the major differences between space and other commodities. Unlike cars, there is a limit to the amount of land that can be supplied in response to a growth in d e m a n d , as the supply of this part of nature is finite. This explains why ^ the recycling of property, which may increase its intensity of use, is widespread. Rather than generating new developments, land and property markets are involved in renting and re-renting, selling and re-selling these commodities. The market for this commodi ty is also " inherently monopolist ic" , as the owners have almost total control over its supply. Unlike mass-produced cars, every parcel of land is different-T h e price of land and property in the market is determined not only by supply and d e m a n d but also b y the location of the development in urban space (Logan & Molotch,1987) .

T h e m a s s production of cars m a y result in a few designs serving a global market. The design of buildings and urban environments, however, will be somewhat different from the design of mass-produced commodities such as cars. This is shown b y the idiosyncratic nature of the land and property market, where land parcels are different, and the fragmented nature of the development industry, w h e r e small f irms are strongly represented. ^

Structures and agencies

T h e dichotomy between structure and individual is a central problem of the main theoretical approaches to social inquiry. This is reflected in functionalism and structural ism on the one hand, and hermeneutics and the various forms of " interpret ive sociology" on the other (Giddens,1984). Nevertheless, as Giddens observes (1989: 704-705) , the differences between the two views can be exaggerated. . H e argues (Giddens,1984) that social structures, as recursively organized sets of rules and resources, refer to structural properties of social systems. The structures, w h o s e transmutation or continuity leads to reproduction of social systems, are not external to individuals and exert constraining as well as enabling powers upon them. There is a process of " d o u b l e involvement" of individuals and institutions: " w e create society at the same time as we are created by it" (Giddens,1982: 14). Ackno^vledging the double involvement of individuals and structures has some

important implications. It implies that none of the valuable insights which the reviewed models have offered need to b e discarded. Bearing in mind their limitations, it will be possible to take advantage of their developments.

On this basis, those trends which 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, however , will be to acknowledge the importance of each of these trends without ruling out the importance of others. This acknowledgement will, therefore, be a major contributor to an approach which identifies a socio-spatial process as an interaction between human agency and social and physical structure within a particular place.

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. The 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 Bürgel et al.,1987: 29-30) . 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.

Although such a combination of these separately developed conceptual frameworks would address the two required levels of analysis, the agency and the structure, they are not yet referring to the dynamic interrelation between the two. It appears that special attention should be paid to this interrelation, which Giddens (1982,1984) identifies to be of central importance to the social processes.

To tackle this important issue, we 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 they assert in the course of their action.

Structures and agencies may be analysed as the properties of social systems, focusing on the interaction between individuals and their social environment. They may also be analysed in terms of their interaction with the physical environment: both people and objects. The double involvement can also be observed here. Therefore, individual additions to urban space can be seen as creating urban space as well as being conditioned by it. Social and physical environments are produced and reproduced through the interaction of agencies and structures, objects and contexts (Figure 5.7).


F i g u r e 5.7. Individual additions to urban space change urban space and are at the same time conditioned by It. (London. UK)

Furthermore, it is important to know what type of rationaHty the agencies use in their actions. In the development process, the Habermasian notions of rationality can offer interesting insight (McCarthy,1978; Dews,1986; White , f988) . The instnmiental rationality of the teleological model is the channel through which the actor, the development agency, seeks self-interest from the course of development. The norm-guided model offers a social rationality for this course of action, in which a social, as distinct from individual, gain would result. These two rationalities, in.strumental and social, along with the subjective rationality of the dramaturgical model , are especially important notions which should be identified if any course of development, as a social process, is to be thoroughly understood.

The study of the development process and its relationship with urban form would not be complete without the study of the contexts in which these processes take place. Therefore, there is an emphasis to be put on the social systems of which the studied structures are a constituent part. This runs parallel with Giddens ' (1984) recognition of differentiation between structure and system. Another context to study is the physical context which, together with the social context, makes a socio-spatial context.

Urban development process and urban form

To find out w h y a particular u r b a n form is as it is and how it is likely to change, a methodology can be used in w h i c h development agencies, the structures they interact with, and the rationalities they use can be investigated. This would provide an analytical f ramework with which to approach the development process and its product, the urban fabric.

This approach will be basical ly founded on four interrelated notions: that urban form has physical , psychological and social dimensions; that the study of urban form is best m a d e possible b y tracing the process of its development; that the development process , as a social process , will be best understoocl by addressing both individual actions and the structures which f rame these actions; and that the understanding of this process will not be complete without addressing the social and physical contexts in which it takes place.

The first notion is consistent wi th the approaches in urban geography and architecture which try to address both physical and social aspects of urban fabric simultaneously and focus on the d y n a m i c interrelationship of these aspects.

The second notion, the necessi ty of the observation of the development of urban form, stems mainly from the traditions of urban architecture and urban morphology, as reviewed earlier, w h i c h have developed the idea of the historicity of virban fabric. Another source of this notion is the tradition in social sciences which tends to link space with the wider context of general societal processes. It also stems from the notion which regards the development process and urban form as both an o u t c o m e of and a contr ibutor to the production and reproduction of social systems.

The third notion, the recognit ion of both structure and action in the development process, s tems mainly from the theoretical approaches in social sciences which avoid the determinism associated with stressing the supremacy of individuals or structures in social processes. It a lso stems from the fact that the traditions in urban geography (quantitative, subject ive and institutional) have provided valuable insights into the process, which should not be disregarded.

At the structural level, this will , therefore, enable us to draw upon the notions of the institutional approach in social sciences which focuses on the frameworks which condition h u m a n behaviour. At the individual level, it will be possible to take advantage of the insights of b o t h quantitative and subjective approaches. At this level, it will also be applicable to dwell upon the tradition in social philosophy which tends to approach a social process with a combination of three models of action and rationality to address objective, social and subjective issues simultaneously. These models wil l enable us to investigate the forms of rationality with which the development is being undertaken.

The fourth notion, the necessi ty of the study of the social and physical contexts, stems from the fact that the u r b a n fabric is, due to its nature, fixed in a certain location. The development process takes place within a locality with certain social and physical characteristics. In address ing the disparity between localities, we rely upon the notions in social science which focus on the emergence, expansion and transformation of capitalism. It also relies upon those architectural studies which are concerned with regional characteristics of urban form.


W h a t have been identified so far as the component parts of the developmei!: process are illustrated in Figure 5.8. As it shows, it is a simplified model of the process of production of urban fabric. In the model, each of the component parts of ^ the process, i.e. development agencies, development factors (resources, rules and ideas) , and their contexts , are shown in both aggregate and disaggregate forms. The succession of shaded figures (Figure 5.9) refers to the stages of the development process.

P h y s i c a l e n v i r o n m e n t

ev^opment agencies

S o c i a l e n v i r o n m e n t

B u i l t e n v i r o n m e n t

F i g u r e 5.8. A model development process

of the '

T h e two main constituent parts of this process are the social and physical contexts. The model is therefore divided into two parts, each representing one of these contexts. W h e r e these two, social and physical, contexts overlap, there is the built environment. Development factors, as structural properties of these contexts, are framed within them. Therefore, the resources are shown as s temming mainly from the physical environment but also as being incorporated into the social environment. Similarly, rules and ideas are shown as mainly stemming from the social environment but also being located within the physical environment.

Where these two, the resources and the rules and ideas, overlap, the development agencies are shown to be involved in the production of new urban fabric.

Development process New development

7 \

Physical (natural) environment

Physical (built) environment

Social environment

Development agencies Development factors: Development factors: resources rules, ideas

F igure 5.9. Component parts of the development process

Impact of change in the development process on urban space

We can identify several forms of change in the development process, each with a different impact on urban space. Most notable are the commodification of urban space and the increasing size and scope of development agencies. These have given rise to standardization of design and to privatization of urban space.

Commodification of space and standardization of design

The intersection between agencies, structures and contexts is where the built environment is produced. The nature of development agencies and their expectations of a development have a large impact on its form. As space has been increasingly produced and exchanged as a commodity , its qualities are largely influenced by this transformation. Therefore, commodification of space, the changing nature of development agencies and the evolving socio-spatial structures will all be reflected in the urban design process and its product.

The commodification of space has led to a close relationship between space production and the cyclical nature of the markets, resulting in cycles of urban development (Figure 5.10). The cyclical nature of land and property development

On these bases, the development process can be analysed by identifying its component parts, the w a y they interact, and the impact of this on the urban fabric and its form. It is argueci that, in a development process, there are "development agencies" who operate through certain "development factors" within interrelated social and spatial " contexts " ; and that any configuration of urban form is directly affected by variations of these component parts of the development process and their interrelationship.

This constitutes a conceptual framework to approach specific urban fabrics to investigate the causes of their existing and changing forms. It shares the idea of agencies with the f ramework developed by British urban morphologists. However, the difference lies in the recognition in this approach of the development factors and its emphasis on the broad contexts in which the development takes place.

A model of the development process

138 Design of Urban Space Production of the Buiit Environment 1 3 9

F igure 5 .10 . A city's skyline can clearly show the cycles of urban development, {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 how 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, " the urban landscape is a cumulative, albeit incomplete, record of the succession of booms, s lumps and innovation adoptions within a particular locale" (Whitehand,1987:145) .

There is a direct relationship between the size of the agencies who 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 new buildings has become 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.

Their insistence on a house style resulted in a standardization of high street appearances throughout the country.

Examples of this standardization in housing deve lopment in Britain abound since the dawn of speculative housebui lding. The height of such standardization was the mass production of housing in the post-war per iod, creating high-rise and high-density housing. N o w the v o l u m e builders and their housing designs, which are often variations on a very limited n u m b e r of des igns , s h o w this continuing trend.

Whitehand's (1988) study of N o r t h a m p t o n and Wat ford sheds light on the impact of the changing nature of developers on the standardization of design. This happened when local developers , w h o often commiss ioned local architects, were driven out by the growing involvement of the national property and insurance companies. The result of this process , which started in the 1930s and has grown rapidly since the 1950s, was the involvement of outs ide designers and developers who would introduce new architectural st\Tes into the local townscapes. The predominance of fewer large-scale national firms, Whitehand argues, has led to a spread of investment and redevelopment activity across a number of cities. Compared to w h e n local developers predominated , however, this has led to the involvement of a more diverse set of designers and a wider stylistic diversity for localities, but m o r e standardization and homogenizat ion at inter-urban and international levels.

The increasing commodif icat ion of space and the development agencies ' attempts to reduce the conflict between use value and exchange value largely explain the standardization of design. Property has increasingly been seen as a vehicle of investment by the finance industry, which has c o m e to dominate the property market in Britain. To make the market operat ion smoother , the property itself is expected to b e c o m e as flexible as possible, to find a larger potential market. This has meant standardization in design, a requirement which coincides with the technological possibility of mass product ion of bui ldings . Conflict could arise out of a necessity to marry the flexibility in product ion a n d marketing of a building with the post-modern expectation of stylistic diversity.

In the last two decades, commerc ia l property in Britain has increasingly been dominated by large financial institutions. After the 1973 property crash, minor property companies and the surplus commercia l property on the market were taken over by large-scale players looking for new investment opportunities. By the early 1980s, some 8 3 % of all property investment w a s controlled by a relatively small number of large financial institutions, a l though this was reduced in the 1980s. Investment by large financial institutions, w h i c h control most of the institutional sector's UK property holdings, has led to a higher turnover of property, increasing from less than 2 % before 1980 to 1 0 % annual ly in the late 1980s (Pratt & Ball,1994).

This treatment of property by the f inance industry has had specific implications for industrial property: an increase in the deve lopment of high-tech science parks, a concentration of investment in economical ly growing areas rather than declining ones, and the standardization of design. These developments have led to the widespread use of " s h e d s " for industrial use. T h e s e strvictures provide spaces with maximum flexibility for any potential user. T h e standardization of design is thought to reduce the risk of low valuation, and there is a tendency to group these units together for valuation purposes . As such, it appears that the purpose-built


industrial property, designed to accommodate a specific production process, has - J become less common in Britain (Pratt & Ball,1994). Pratt and Ball argue that the demand for an industrial building is not met b y supply in many cases. They show s that "the interests of property development and investment may not, at any I particular site, coincide with the needs of the industrialists". Traditionally, a industrial estates had been developed by both private and public sectors. The smaller units in these estates were rented, but the larger units were built by the occupants. The split between use and exchange widened when, in the 1970s, the industrial buildings "emerged as an investment vehicle, beyond the interest of specialist developers" (Pratt & Bal l ,1994: 5) . Such standardization of design, we may therefore argue, is the outcome of attempts to reduce the gap between exchange value and use value, in a process w h i c h has increasingly commodified space. <v»*

The impact of this predominance of financial capital and the subsequent high turnover in the property market h a s been significant for the built environment. Town centres in Britain, more than in France, Germany or the Netherlands for example, have witnessed redevelopment and transformation. In Britain, new shopping centres have replaced the old physical fabric at the core of the cities. The pattern of investment b y financial institutions, which prefer safe, conventional -

Figure 5.11. Conversion of wholesale market buildings to retail space in Faneuil Hall (Sosfon, USA)

locations and spatial forms, has shaped this redeveloped physical landscape of town centres and has had huge impacts on suburban developments.

An example of this conservatism of financial capital is its dislike of what is known as "festival" and speciality retailing, as it relies on independent retailers, short-term leases, and a deliberate avoidance of major anchor tenants. In North America, where developers are concerned that city centre locations are not attractive to shoppers, the idea of festival retailing has been promoted successfully in the last two decades. Faneuil Hall in Boston is a widely-known example , where in 1976 some nineteenth-century wholesale market buildings were converted to retail space (Figure 5.11). This conversion was substantially supported by the Boston city administration, due to the reluctance of other sources of funding. The scheme included small-size units which were leased, on short-term bases, to local businesses rather than major retailers. Pedestrian access, a combination of open and enclosed space, an abundance of restaurants and fast food outlets, and the possibility of informal entertainment were other features of the scheme. Encouraged by its success, the scheme's developer, a company called Rouse, created similar developments in Baltimore, N e w York and Miami. In Britain, where city centre retail can be profitable without government subsidy, similar trends have been slow to follow. A number of schemes, however, such as Covent Garden in London, have been developed (Guy,1994).

Globalization of the development industry

In the context of the American real estate market, Logan (1993) notes an increasing linkage, in the last two decades, between development process and the broader capital markets. The savings and loans institutions, which historically provided about half of residential mortgage funds, have n o w been replaced by pension funds, life insurance companies and large commercial banks. In the absence of other opportunities, these institutions found real estate an appropriate venue for investment. Of equal importance, a more direct link to the broader capital markets is established through a process called "securitization". Property markets are riskier than "securities", i.e. stocks and bonds. Property prices are subject to fluctuations in local circumstances and the property market is not comparable to the stock exchange, where the price of stocks and bonds is determined through millions of transactions. Also the trade in securities on the stock exchange is much easier than in property with its complex stages of purchase and disposal. To make investment in property safer, and therefore make it attractive to global financial markets, rating services or credit enhancement schemes have been introduced. These are known as securitization, i.e. "converting an asset into a financial obligation that has readily identified characteristics and can be accordingly rated to risk in the international capital markets" (Logan,1993: 38) .

Corresponding to the involvement of these markets in the urban development process, there has been a growth in the size of development companies, whose engagement in national and international markets has fostered changes in organizational relationships. Through these changes, development companies have established financial subsidiaries, set up long-term financial partnerships with


insurance companies , and captured savings and loans institutions. While these changes have enabled the development companies to gain access to capital markets % around the world, they have blurred the traditional distinction between developers i and financiers. j

This trend, in which large-scale developers operate at national and international -| levels and have access to international capital markets, can be called globahzation \ of real estate. However , Logan argues that there is a local dimension to this I process, and doubts the omnipotence of these global players in transforming local . landscapes. Most of these international agencies have local partners who are 1

familiar with local markets and the local planning authorities and regulations, n Without a local component , therefore, the globalized development industry cannot operate properly, as is evident in the workings of the American companies in i Europe. In other words, due to the real estate's strong local character, its | globalization remains different from the globalization of manufacturing, which has epitomized the global production patterns. ^

This picture changed somewhat at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s, * with the failure of some global developers, such as Olympia & York over the Canary Wharf development in London Docklands (Figure 5.12). Despite t h e s e " ^ failures, the general pattern of commodification of land and property has not reversed. Further integration of real estate into global capital markets has made the * property markets more volatile and has promoted regional imbalances. The unprecedented capacity for development which has been thus created continues to colonize and transform locaUties beyond recognition. ,

An outcome of this globalization process, it has been feared, could be cultural '« homogenization. If the development agencies were to act globally, then what we ,. wouM see in future would be similar landscapes everywhere. However, it should » be remembered that even before the recent globalization wave, the standardization process was in place. The modernist developments around the world bear witness to this trend. j

The spread of concepts of space, and subsequent similarities of urban form between different places, can be traced back even further, for as long as human 1 settlements ha\'e existed. Wherever communication was made possible, through the administration of centralized states and empires, or through trade and cultural J exchange, images and practices of shaping urban environments found their ways to •* distant lands. The modern day spread of urban images and styles may therefore be j interpreted as yet another manifestation of how innovation can be diffused through , communication across geographical artd -political divides. What distinguishes the modern day practices, however, is the scale of transformation and the speed of ; diffusion of ideas, which are unprecedented in history. Another major characteristic of current developments is the treatment of the built environment as a commodity. This has meant a disjunction between control of the built space and the locality, as '1 has happened through a higher turnover of owners, and through absent and/or i corporate owners based elsewhere. The new commodified urban landscapes can be : therefore linked to local population on bases which are narrower than ever before. ; Rather than local elites who used to be largely influential in shaping local urban_J environments, it is now the international elite of corporate institutions which play a ' major role in shaping localities without any physical or emotional contact with them, i

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Figure 5.12. (London, UK)

Transformation of the urban landscape by global developers in Canary Wharf.

144 Design of Urban Space Production of the Built Environnnent 145

Privatization of public space The changing nature of d e v e l o p m e n t companies and the entry of the finance industry into buil t e n v i r o n m e n t p r o d u c t i o n and management h a v e partly led to what is widely k n o w n as the pr ivat izat ion of space . Large-scale developers and financiers expect their c o m m o d i t i e s to be safe for investment and maintenance; hence their incl ination to r e d u c e as m u c h as possible all the levels of uncertainty w h i c h - c o u l d threaten their interests . This is part of the process of commodif icat ion of space, in w h i c h space is approached, and treated, as a~ commodity . Th is trend is para l le l with the increasing fear of crime, rising competition f rom similar d e v e l o p m e n t s , and the rising expectat ions of the consumers, all encouraging the d e v e l o p m e n t of totally managed environments! What has e m e r g e d is an u r b a n s p a c e w h o s e increasingly large sections-are managed b y pr ivate c o m p a n i e s , as distinctive f rom those controlled by public' authorities. E x a m p l e s of these f r a g m e n t e d and privatized spaces are gated neighbourhoods , shopping m a l l s , a n d city centre walkways , under heavy private surveillance a n d separated f r o m t h e public rea lm b y controlled access and clear boundaries .

With the ongoing change of b a l a n c e be tween the public and the private in cities, social a n d physical u r b a n e n v i r o n m e n t s are being radically transformed. T h e f ramework that organizes ac t ion in a social environment is part ly formed by the way the society d is t inguishes b e t w e e n the publ ic and the private. This has an impact on regulat ing the ins t i tut ions , practices, activities and aspirations of a culture. T h r o u g h o u t history, the way urban space has been divided into public and private has reflected, a n d inf luenced, social relationships. In the last two centuries, publ ic space as an a r e n a for a s trengthening civil society has found more and m o r e s ignif icance. Y e t recent ly , the private creation and control oC public urban space has been an e m e r g i n g trend.

Public space has been a l o n g - s t a n d i n g concern of the students of cities and societies. Recent ly , in social s c i e n c e s and humanit ies , interest in the subject has grown considerably , part ly d u e to the ongoing changes in western societies, where a decl ine of publ ic s p h e r e has been noted. (Sennett, 1977,1993; Thomas ,1991 ; Ca lhoun,1992) . T h e w a v e of development and redevelopment of cities in the 1980s also at tracted the attention of urban geographers , planners and architects to the central role of publ ic space in urban areas (Carr et al.1992; Bussell ,1992; Fisher ,1992; G l a z e r , 1 9 9 2 ) . Another reason for the rising interest in the public sphere has b e e n t h e e m e r g e n c e of, or struggles to establish, new democracies in Eastern E u r o p e a n d other parts of the world. In these societies, the development of a civil society , as an arena independent of the state, has been an urgent task (Huang, 1993) . In t h e absence of institutionalized arenas of public debate, publ ic space has p l a y e d a considerable role as a meet ing point and a" container for social m o v e m e n t s .

Much of the urban design a n d p lanning l i terature stresses the importance of public space (Glazer & Li l la ,1987; V e r n e z Moudon,1992 ; Sorkin,1992; Tibbalds, 1992; Worpole ,1992) , w h e r e soc ia l interaction and the daily experience of urban life take place . Pubhc u r b a n s p a c e is space that is not controlled by private individuals or organizat ions, a n d h e n c e is open to the general public. This space

is characterized by the possibility of al lowing different groups of people regardless of their class, ethnicity, gender and age, to intermingle . This is distmctive from the private and semi-private space that is controlled b y one group, keepmg other groups at a distance. Wherever polit ical and economic developments have led to the segregation of social groups, spatial deve lopment has followed this trend and has contributed to that segregation.

Figure 5.13. In pre-modern urban settings, public spaces provided arenas for public communication. {Pisa. Italy) ^

1 4 6 Design of Urban Space Production of the Built Environment 147

In pre-modern urban settings, public spaces such as urban squares and marketplaces played the role of arenas for public communication. These were places wherein some form of social interaction by large numbers of people was made possible (Figure 5.13). The growth of the modern cities into a collection of segregated neighbourhoods has 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 demand for correcting the segregation processes and moving towards more coherent physical and social environments (Healey et al., 1995). This can be partly seen in the attacks on modernist redevelopments and their destructive effects on ' city life. However , the critics have argued that regeneration policies have tended to gentrify the existing public space through privatization or restriction of access ' (Smith,1992). T h e widening gap between social strata has been associated with the rising fear of cr ime and concerns about safety in cities. At the same 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 economic processes, sanctioned by public poHcy, have deepened the spatial and social segregation. Many of the new developments h a v e ' ^ been created with a degree of private control over the supposedly public space. In other words, the post-modern era has seen the continuity and intensity of threats to the public urban space, and the privatization of urban space has become a main .t area of concern (Punter, 1990a; Loukaitou-Sideris, 1993). • ;

What is public space? According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1933), the term public means, "in general, and in most of the senses, opposite of PRIVATE" . The definition includes "of or pertaining to the people as a whole; that belongs to, affects, or concerns the community or nation". In the most recent edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1990), a similar definition, "of or concerning the people as a whole" , is followed by "open to or shared by all people" ; "done or existing openly" ; and "provided by or concerning local or central government" . Relying on these definitions, a public street, for example, belongs to and concerns the people as a whole, is open to them, exists openly, and is provided by or concerns the government (Figure 5.14).

These concepts are echoed in various definitions of public space. Carr et al. (1992: xi) regard public space as " the common ground where people carry out the functional and ritual activities that bind a community, whether in the normal routines of daily life or in periodic festivities". It is "the stage upon which the drama of communal hfe unfolds" (Carr et al.,1992: 3) . For VValzer (1986: 470), "Public space is space we share wjdLstr j ingers^geople w h o a r e n ' t our relatives, fnendiTor v\;ork.assQciates^Jt is space. forpol i t ics , i^gion,-commercer^portrspaire for peaceful coexis tence . and^mp^rson;d jmcounter" . The character of public space "expresses and also conditions our public life, civic culture, everj 'day discourse". Fjrancis Tibbalds (1992: l ) )saw the public realm as, "all the parts of the urban fabric to which tiie public have physical and visual access. Thus, it extends from the streets, parks and squares of a town or city into the buildings which enclose and line them." The public realm is, therefore, " the most important part of our towns

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 citiesJMswJiereJhe_greatesta of human contact and interaction takes

Place-T- ^ =:;;-..., A review of the.^law literatur^ Qoiuitts Dictionary of English Lmo; Strands Judicial

" • < = ^ \ ' " " u L c i r t i u i e Kjownrs ulcaonary of tnglisti Lnw; Strouds Judicial :lose and Dictionary of Words and -Phrascs;-Words and Plirases Legally Defined; Vernez-Moudon urjowns 1992), shows that in legal terms . J i a space_is_considered a public space, ownership


.an.djdgb|_of_access_caimoêêea.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 emphasize 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. The dimension of access to space and its activities

?an be complemented by two other dimensions of agency 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, which is controlled b y a public agency, and which is provided and managed in the public interest.

Public sphere theories In social and political thought i lhree main currents)have been identified which offer concepts of public sphere (Benhabib ; t992)rThBseûrrents correspond to the works' of Jürgen H a b e r m a s ^ H a r ^ widèIy~inHijintiaI ~theory ' o f p u b l i c sphere ( C a l h o u n J 9 9 2 ; R o s e n a u , ! 992)^_aj formulat idl iy Jürgen HäbermasTl989) , a publk^sphere, where interactiyediscourse Hkes^pjaciindependentôf^the private sphexe, r r e i s e n t i i l T o r a l i e a l t h v poIityTlts i existence in a democracy means that decisions are macte_tli jaughjatÌQnal:<ritical 5^ debate a n d jnJfirsübjetÜYeZQm 1 where they,can.be.pubhdy^reviewgd, . à

The other distinguished political thinker of the twentieth century, who has * theorized public sphere is Hannah Arendt. In her major theoretical work. The Human =

! Condition Ârendt,.!958), she offers_a^_critÌ£ue]]oOE^^ ^ public realm._VVhereas H i b e r m a s tends toar ia lyseâi id indeedideaUze , the modern bourgeois public spher'e toi"Bé'véfópTns j i o ^ ^ public realìBrin'theX^éeiripolis. There the economic activities related to individuals' lives anci the "survival of the species" , and w e r e non-political, household affairs (Arendt,1958: 29). In the modern age, however, the housekeeping-and its related activities, problems anci organizational devices have risen from the_^'shadowy interlorlrf the household i n t o the light of •the-public-spIiSè":^(Afentlt;i958: 38). The rise of a social realm has led to an interflow of thè pubHc^^nd p r i y a t e ^ h è f t f ^ n d to substantial transformation of their m e à h i n g ^ n a ^ i g n i f i c a n c e (Arendt , !958: 29-38). TTiejiOcial realm thajLlLaS-emerged_is_,neither^ publ ic nor private. The mass society, vyith its drive for equality, has conquered.the publ ic realm.

Àrendt-ancl-Haberma5-betÌragree~on-the-losso£the.distinction between the public and private spheres an^jhemegatiye_effects-oTthis^prp£ess_or\_pjjblic_sphere/riiey

IbQtgJHl iazéTRiTmass society^with which they associate the declJTie_ofJhe public ' sphere J ^ o t K Z I E ö w | v e r r a r ^ others , . . the_femimsts_for^t3r_

idealization of..the distmction between public and private spheresiFraser ,1989) . ênn and Gaus (1983a) believe that the liberals have a general aammitment to an

equil ibration'of the public and private spheres of life. The normative model of public sphere^fhät^rü'ce"Äckermari"offers focuses on legitimation of power through" public dialogue: "Whenever a n y b o d y questions the legitimacy of another 's power7 the p o w e r holder must respond not b y suppressing the questioner but by giving a

Production of the Built Environment 1 4 9

F i g u r e 5 . 1 5 . Public space is a spatial manifestation of public sphere, a place for intersubjective communication. {Stockholm, Sweden)

reason that explains why he is more 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 number 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 has 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) .

The relevancfc nf puhUc-Sj)here theories to investigations on spaceJs_becQhling paranwunLiHowel l J523L Thejr_relevance to_a s t t i d y l J p u b l l c s p a c e l i e s mainly in tTieiranalysis of the constitution and transformation_of public sphere, which provides mformairon_ ajût'trie^Qiual and._political.processes thatjake^^place in the physical public realm. The public space, as a constituent part of the pubric~sphere, can be betterjundefstood^^jth such an insight. At a more detailed level, its relevance l iesJn the ^ a t i a l dimensionôf the intersubjgctiye__commuriLcal^^ d e b g f e b j C a i u a c f ^ ^ g T O l i f T F i g ) ^ dimension of these theories has the ability to be empirically used in the analysis of the public space.

150 Design of Urban Space Production of the Built Envlrcr.r.ent 151

Public space in a shopping mall? T o study the changing relationship between the public and the private in urban space, it would be appropriate to look at the new additions to urban areas. As large-

scale schemes constitute a large proportion of new urban fabrics, one such scheme, the Metro Centre in Gateshead, a suburban development with urban claims, can be chosen as an example (Madanipour,1995c) (Figure 5.16). M u c h has been said about

Figure 5.16. The "public" space In a shopping mall is owned by private companies, allowing individuals to use it for private purposes. {Metro Centre Gateshead. UK)

the suburban shopping malls in North America (Whyte,1988; C r a w f o r d , ! 992), which have competed with city centres by taking a w a y their social a n d economic livelihood. In Britain, however, the development of gigantic suburban shopping malls has been a less widespread phenomenon. Although known as an out-of - town shopping centre, the scale of the Metro Centre has had a far-reaching i m p a c t on the metropolitan region in which it is located. By following the process of its development, the publicness of its public spaces can be evaluated. F o l l o w i n g the five stages of planning, design, development, management and use s h o w s how public spaces in this development have been perceived, developed a n d used by different agencies and groups. W e need to find out to w h a t degree these spaces are public, and we need to understand the relationship between the degree of publicness of space, and the stages of development and use.

Gateshead Metro Centre is an out-of-town shopping and leisure c o m p l e x with 5.5 km of shopping malls and 24 million visitors per year generat ing an annual turnover of £500m. It is located on the A l trunk road 5 km from the centre of Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne. The size of the Centre has help>ed to create the image of a city. The Metro Centre Official Guide (Metro Centre ,1991 : 7) calls it "Metrocentre Shopping and Leisure City", covering 135 acres, w i t h 12 ООО car parking spaces and "its own security team, fire protection systems, c o m m u n i t y rooms, and even a chaplain".

The five stages of planning, design, development, management a n d use in the Metro Centre all show similar qualities in a publ ic -pr ivate relationship. In relation to the three indicators of agency, interest and control, a study of these s tages shows a strong private dimension. Within a semi-privatized planning environment , the stages of design, development and control were all undertaken by private firms for private interest. It is used by private individuals w h o go there for shopping or leisure. The public space in the Centre may appear to be similar to a high street or a town square populated by promenading and relaxing people. This is a "public space" with a clear functional role: it is owned b y private companies , allowing private individuals to use it for certain purposes. Public space here h a s a leisure function associated with shopping, rather than contributing to an act ive social function such as intersubjective communication. Users can be seen as p)rivate individuals entering a trading space whose leisure fvmctions essential ly serve trading interests. Its qualities of a well-managed, climatically protected, secure shopping environment correspond to, and invite, those social, g e n d e r and age groups who use it for predetermined purposes.

Yet there are several dimensions in which the development of the Centre can be seen to have public roles. Its, albeit adverse, impact on the surrounding town centres, its ability to earn taxes, and its provision of jobs, with w h a t e v e r quahties, create a public significance for the Centre as reflected in the public m o n e y spent on access roads and in the public policies of Gateshead Borough Counci l . Most important of all is the large number of visitors to the Centre, who create a public space with dynamics of its own. It may not cater for the diversity and needs of all social groups. But that it is used by millions of people each year gives it a considerable public dimension. It may not be designed for intersubjective communication, but the presence of the people in these spaces renders it a site for such actions. Besides, it appears that its pubhc spaces are, in legal t e rms , considered


public and the restrictions of ownership or access would not prevent them from being so. ,^ . .

On a functional basis, and on the basis of our three indicators, it m a k e s sense to compare the Metro Centre to its equivalents in Newcast le ' s city centre, such as the 1970s' Eldon Square, or even an older example of a closed shopping environment, the nineteenth century's Grainger Market (Figure 5 .17) . Both of these spaces were developed to offer attractively decorated, cl imatically protected and securely controlled environments for trading. They m a y share similar principles in their developments, but what makes the Metro Centre different is its suburban location, which adds a further, exclusive, dimension to it. A n o t h e r major difference is its scale, and its desire and claim to compete with the city centre, which makes it in some sense comparable to the whole of the city centre rather than to some of its parts.

When compared with the more traditional city centres , however , this public space would rate as semi-public due to its l imitations. In a city centre such as Newcastle's, the ranges of use and of users are wider . It is true that the! predominance of shopping in the city centre has reduced its diversity, which brings

Figure 5.17. A comparison of the new suburban shopping malls and the nineteenth-century covered markets shows a degree of similarity. {Grainger Marlcet, Newcastle, UK)

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 be a site for a wide range of more spontaneous activities and events, where street vendors can be seen side by side with political campaigners. The same diversity can be observed with the type of visitors. By definition, the town centre is a focal point for townspeople from a variety of age, gender and social groups. If some parts of the city centre favour the more 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 own limitations, offers a more genuine public space. It is a space that is controlled by a public agency in the public interest and is accessible to all citizens at all times. It might be argued, however, that this is a too formal analysis of the public and the private space, as these spheres are intermeshed and the three indicators of access, interest and control are not distinguishable within these two spheres. Or it might be argued, along with Habermas, that the public and private should be separated so that the lifeworld could be protected from the political and economic systems. This may lead to urban public space being considered a part of the civil society, to be protected from state intervention, implying that a space controlled by the state is not necessarily a public space. This argument may thus equate the public space in Newcastle city centre with that in the Metro Centre, as both are controlled by the systems of power and money. In response, it could be argued that, as shown here, the city centre offers a wider range of possibilities to a larger part of the public and hence is a more democratic space.

That developments such as the Metro Centre are the new additions to the urban 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 an increasingly polarizing social environment, makes the choice of semi-public space appealing to the developers and corporations. This is coupled by the local authorities' reluctance, and inability, to add to the public urban space, due to their financial limitations. The authorities are also restricted by political and administrative limitations, as exemplified in the diverse planning en\'ironments where their control is challenged and confined. The Enterprise Zone in which the Metro Centre was developed, or the areas controlled by the Development Corporation, where many new additions to the city space are made, are examples of these challenges. The result is that urban public space is increasingly contested by semi-public, totally managed environments created for some social groups and excluding others, as caused by, and causing further, social and spatial segregation.

Conclusion

As we have argued before^iriton_space£an be best understoodJJTrough_thejprocess of its making. To understand, on a macro-scale, the social and economic processes that shape and reshape cities, it is best to concentrate on the urban development processes which create and transform the city's socio-spatial fabric. Tracing the production of space through time integrates the social and temporal aspects of


space, bridges the gaps in our spatial understanding, and offers a dynamic perspective with which to gain knowledge about the built environment. Armed with such knowledge, designers engage in the transformation of the built environment in a more informed way . If we can explain the spatial phenomena, our ability to transform the built environment will improve.

To make sense o f j h e j p m p l e x process of urban development, we have reviewed ' modelsTwhich describe or explain~this process.~WeÎiave concluded^tbat-the^bi^t^ \vl^;30"Tmderstan'd"urb'ari'aevelopmeiif ^ ^ i s jo^concentrate orNdevelopmentNi

âgenc i i l JT f te J f f i raurSTKeyTnr of resources^'nHiSsâha'TagaS; j •-and-the'sbcial a i idâTiaFcontexts in 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 commodity. An implication of this treatment has been a growing gap between two 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 the gap between the two, and to resppndJojTie 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 which produce them. In the next tvvp a" chapters, we will explore the rules and ideas that ai'e involved in the urban design ' and urban development process.

C H A P T E R 6

Regulating Urban Form

Following our look at the relationship between urban design and the u r b a n development process, we now turn our attention to the relationship between u r b a n design and the regulatory framework of the planning system. Chapter 5 w a s concerned with urban design and the markets. Th is chapter concentrates on u r b a n design and the state. In Chapter 5 w e looked at the way the changing nature of development companies has had an impact on urban form. In this chapter w e see how the changing nature of the plarming system, resulting f rom a change in state-market relationships, can influence urban form and its design.

The debates on design control form only a part of the general question of the relationship of state and markets in space production. In this general context, the predominant tendency has been to see design as attending more to the aesthetic qualities of the built environment, i.e. the appearance of the urban fabric. A s w a s discussed in Chapter 4, this is a rather narrow v iew which undermines the role of urban design as deahng with form, use and management of cities. Nevertheless , in this chapter w e follow these debates and the mechanisms the British planning system has devised to deal with design issues. W e also look briefly at these concerns in some other countries.

The state, the market and space production

The role of the plarming system is defined by the Royal Town Planning Institute as the management of change in the built and natural environments (RTP1,1991). This management role, played by the local and central governments , is one among m a n y forms of state intervention in the economy. A s it deals with the production and transformation of space, it occupies a central role in the interface between the state and the market.

The relationship of the state and the market in the product ion of the bui l t environment is complex and can be analysed from a wide variety of angles. A t the most general level of analysis, the state and the market form the two m a i n component parts of a single political economy. The production of the buil t environment occurs within this poliHcal e c o n o m y and helps to ensure its continuity. Therefore the relationship of the two structures of state and market can be seen as mutual ly supportive and ultimately unproblematic . Here we see h o w

156 Design of Urban Space Regulating Urban Form 157

Lefebvre's assertion, i.e. tfiat every society creates its own space, m a k e s sense. No matter liow the production of space is regulated, it is an o u t c o m e o f the whole' political economy.

If we leave this bird's eye view, however , and look at the pract ical details of tliis relationship, we see constant change and adjustment in the form of confrontatioii/ negotiation and collaboration be tween different parties. The d e b a t e s about the production of the built environment often take place within this sphere . At this other end of the spectrum, it is the details of their relatioitships that matter, the institutional relationships between the agencies involved in space production. The regulation of space production is a central task of the poli t ical economy, employing a large number of agencies and interact ing with a var ie ty of socio-spatial structures. The relat ionship between the state, the m a r k e t and space production can therefore be analysed in te rms of the structure-agency relationship.

The history of the emergence of the planning system and its development in Britain after the Second World W a r shows a changing relat ionship between the state and the market. The planning system was an effective tool for the post-war Keynesian emphasis on increasing demand for consumption and increasing state intervention in different spheres of life to ensure the continuity of societal structures. In the urban arena, this intervention and emphasis on consumption was partly reflected in the large-scale redevelopment of urban fabrics. T h e powerful state could employ new technologies in massive redevelopments , a iming at social and spatial engineering. The planning system was at the operating e n d of a gigantic bureaucratic organization which attempted to s t imulate and, at the same time, control the change in the built environment. To undertake this task m o r e effectively, ever more sophisticated methods were developed and employed . During this period, a relative harmony between the state and the market supported the operation of the planning system.

However, the relatively harmonious relationship between the state and the market was disrupted by major changes in western economies after the 1960s. The end of the post-war boom and a new global e c o n o m y with a multiplicity of new players forced the break-up of the Keynesian coalition. The nodes of this coalition, e.g. the planning system, needed redefining. T o survive the global competition, the only alternative was seen in the 1980s to be a liberalization of the economy. The political and administrative structures which were remainders of the past and could prevent this liberalization were destined for restructuring. .*i

This was a pressure from above on the planning system, demanding it to disappear or to play a more flexible role. There w a s another pressure from below, demanding more flexibihty and sensitivity. T h e large-scale redevelopments of the post-war years had caused community displacement and disruption. Urban development processes were criticized for their lack of unders tanding for urban communities. To use the Habermasian terminology, the lifeworld was protesting against the systems of power and money against their penetration (Figure 6.1). The protest movements after the late 1960s were rejecting the product ion of the built environment as it had happened after the Second Wor ld War . In Lefebvre 's (1991) terms, there was a demand for differential space, to confront the abstract space that was being imposed on everyday life.

Figure 6 . 1 . The large-scale redevelopment of urban areas was a result of harmonious relationships between the state and the market (Photograph by Wallace Pace)

These two sets of pressures were pulling the planning system in different directions. The structural pressure from above was aimed at loosening the grip of the planning system in order to help the growth of the economy through the growth of the private sector. It was therefore expecting to emphasize the exchange value of the built environment as an incentive for economic growth. On the other hand, the pressure from below was demanding an emphasis on use value, on improving the quality of environment for the users and inhabitants of the built environment.

Under these pressures, the planning system has adopted a more flexible, conciliatory role. There has been an introduction of a document-led planning system, leading to the redefinition of the planning system's discretionary powers. The move towards a plan-based planning system, where the requirements of the locality are more clearly documented by the state, offers a sense of security to the potential developers. In this sense, the flexibility of the planning system can be seen to be reduced, and yet the planners are seen to be providing a more flexible service.

The new flexibility is thought to have the potential to solve numerous conflicts which may arise in a period of substantial change. One example would be the contradiction between societal reproduction, which now seems to be supported with more flexible planning, and environmental reproduction, which requires a


more cJirect form of state intervention and control. Where there has been no attempt to adjust, there has been a conflict between what has been called a modernist planning system and a post-modern reality {Dear,1995).

The disruption to the communities caused by 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 somewhat harmonious relationships. The planning system, as a locally based activity, had to adjust its relationships with the markets and the state. The 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 once again its legitimacy and capabihty in contributing to societal and environmental reproduction.

The outcome of these pressures to adjust has been an increased flexibility in the planning process. The state is no longer the sole player in the major urban development schemes. Local government's s low 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. The 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 better-quality built environments.

Planning and design

The relationship of planning and design can be traced against this brief outline of the changing role of urban planning in a changing political economy. Town planning had evolved as the branch of architecture dealing with urban design. The architect's approach to space production tended to concentrate on the "hardware" , on the physical fabric of the city, rather than on the "software". During this early period, design had a central role in the town planning agenda, as best exemplified in the 1933 Charter of Athens. However, large-scale state intervention in the city was a complex process and needed administrative management as well as the support of the new science and technology. As a result, planning as an independent activity emerged, seeing the city as a site of spatial relationships, rather than merely a collection of artefacts. There was a shift of role for the planner from design to management.

As a result of the post-1960s reduction in large-scale urban development and the rise of community pressure groups, this tendency for bureaucratic management of space had to be abandoned. Economic decline led to a slowing down of space production, driving attention away from the built environment and its qualities. During a period of crisis and change, the decay of the built environment was seen as inevitable and therefore design was seen as an unaffordable, or irrelevant, luxury. The economic crisis and the grass-roots pressure for change demanded the tools of the state be deployed in job creation and public participation.

The structural change in the economy, from mass production for a mass society to flexible production for a fragmented society, brought about a new interest in the

built environment. The form that the structural pressures from a b o v e took in the 1980s led to a new boom, hence a new cycle of space production and n e w attention to the qualities of the built environment. This phase coincides with a rising interest in urban design within the town planning field.

The gradual shift of attention in planning, from physical artefacts to spatial relations to social relations to the built environment, has created imbalances of focus. However, these imbalances and shifts of focus should be seen in their close connection with the cycles of space production. Attention to the built environment, and hence to environmental design, has been closely associated with the intensity of producing space. This can be observed in the fast-growing regions of the world especially, where a surplus of capital is directed towards the development of the built environment.

To compensate for the previous neglect of the built environment, town planning has now turned its attention to urban space. The new emphasis on urban design should be a balancing act, bringing to the town planning agenda spatial as well as social coi\cerns. In many cases, however, it appears that urban design is seen merely as a visual concern largely replacing or masking the earlier social concerns. It is in these circumstances that urban design is seen as the return of aesthetics to city planning (Boyer,1990) (Figure 6.2).

Figure 6.2. The return of aesthetics to town planning is leading to visual improvement schemes. (San Jose, California, USA)


To uncierstand the relationship between the state and the market and its reflection in planning and urban design, we need to look at a m o r e detailed level at the relationship between planners and designers.

Design control

Design control is the interface between planners and designers. In the process of development control, the production of space is often reviewed mainly from an aesthetic point of view. The design review takes place within the general context of the state-market relationship. The questions often put forward in this relationship are wide ranging. Should design be controlled at all? H o w m u c h intervention is appropriate? Is it possible to intervene in a field perceived to b e largely subjective?*: W h o should intervene and who 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 planning system were displayed. The projects varied widely in their topics and c ircumstances . However , .

Figure 6.3. Would the development on the left-hand side be permitted today in a design control process? (Florence, Italy)

what they all shared was that the appearance of the schemes had been altered noticeably as a result of the planners' comments. One housing association project had been rejected because of its horizontal shape and the use of inappropriate roof materials. This 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. Another project with a flat roof was criticized, calling for a "more traditional design" that "would overcome 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 whole of the planning agenda, even to the extent that the post-war planning system has been severely questioned (Manser & Adam, 1992a,b).

The 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 which lies the tension between freedom of expression versus public control. This occurs within a broader framework of the tension between the development (or the developer) and the local communities, between exchange value and use 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. The focal point of the debate may be the private interest as distinct from public interest and the relationship of these two sets of, at times, contradicting interests. Within an even broader 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 and, in a wider sense, planning control.

Design control or aesthetic control?

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 between visual and spatial aspects of design were addressed. The difference between these two terms, design control and aesthetic control, is often ignored as they are used interchangeably. The Annex A to PPGl (DoE,1992) is titled "Design Considerations" . However , the Annex begins with the sentence, "The 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. Although Annex 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.


Figure 6.4. Should design control only address the appearance of developments? {Cannes, France)

This long-standing tendency of central government to see aesthetic control as dealing with the appearance of buildings, and more specifically their elevations, has been noted b y some observers (Punter,1990b) (Figure 6.4). Punter argues that the tensions between this viewpoint and the wider definitions of aesthetics, design and environmental quality are "at the heart of the debate about design control" (Punter,1990b: 3 ) . His suggested definition of aesthetic control is, " that aspect of : the regulation of development that seeks to control the physical attributes and uses of new buildings, and the spaces between them, so as to ensure a rewarding sensuous experience for the public who use the environment thus created" (Punter,1990b: 2 ) . This definition, which is much wider, is obviously focusing on the aesthetic experience, as reflected in its aim of achieving "a rewarding sensuous exper ience" . The definition has been given under the title "Towards a definition of design or aesthetic control" , which uses the two terms interchangeably.

Urban design has been defined as some, or all, stages of a process and the product it produces , as we saw in Chapter 4. Any of the definitions mentioned there would suggest that the design as a process has a variety of dimensions, of

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 intended to interfere in all of those stages. In practice, however , the interaction be tween the designers and the planners, in which the design of a development is being discussed, tends to cover both the functional and aesthetic considerat ions of the proposal. Aspects of design such as density and access, as mentioned in Annex A, have a wide range of implications, each with a potential aesthetic i i igredient.

This clearly shows that the term "design control" addresses a m u c h wider set of considerations, which includes aesthetic control. At this scale, the design control process can be seen as an active component of urban design. Nevertheless , regarding the government 's advice as well as the arguments against design control, the aesthetics has formed the focal point of the design control concerns and debate so far.

Does aesthetics matter?

How substantial are the aesthetic considerations iii a development? Is the aesthetic control really an important part of the planning process? Is it meaningful to hinder a development, which can be potentially beneficial to a local economy, on aesthetic grounds? In the face of the enormous difficulties that the restructuring of the global economy has inflicted upon individuals and households, and therefore collectively on towns and regions, the main issue s e e m s to be the battle for survival for the more disadvantaged regions. Is it realistic to give any significance to aesthetics as distinctive from or, in s o m e cases, as opposed to job creation and the well-being of a community? In the context of the depressed economies all over the world, is aesthetics not a preoccupation of the more prosperous economies? Even within a relatively wealthy society, is it not more a concern of the middle classes whose more secure standard of living al lows them to concentrate on cultural matters?

These questions are part of a long-standing cultural debate. T h e relationship of aesthetics and the social and economic considerations is a crucial part of cultural studies (Hutcheon,1992) . To address these questions, one approach would be to trace the evolution of a mass culture as distinct from, and challenging, high culture. Within the context of the cultural forms with which large sections of communities readily identify themselves, and its challenge to the aesthetics of the establishment, w e can look for some answers to these questions. What needs stressing, however , is the importance of aesthetic experience to human beings , which is of equal significance within the contexts of both high and mass cultures.

Much of the modern thinking about aesthetics has been influenced by Kant , who divided the mental faculties into theoretical, practical and aesthetic. H e suggested that the sense of beauty is a distinct and autonomous employment of the human mind comparable to moral and scientific understanding (Scruton,1979). An example of the continuity of this conceptual approach is the work of Jürgen Habermas, whose models of action and rationality are set out to address the instrumental, social and aesthetic dimensions of the human actions simultaneously (McCarthy,1978; Dews,1986; White ,1988) .


The aesthetic choice in individual and collective life m a y be significant, but where does it figure in our list of priorities? In other words, are cultural identity and quality of the environment as important as economic development and the more material and immediate needs of life? When formulating public policy or taking collective action, what are the chances that the quality of the environment will be properly addressed? The answer is bound to be that, based only on instrumental rationality, these chances are less significant than when social and aesthetic concerns are taken into account.

Apart from severe crises, it would be a grave simplification of h u m a n natvire to hold the view that below a certain level of income and living standards, aesthetic choice disappears or loses its meaning, to be replaced with desperation. What looks from the outside to be poverty of means and a battle for survival, a lways contains a process of aesthetic judgement. Examples of this aesthetic choice can b e found everywhere: from choosing which route to take when passing through the town or the countryside, to choosing which piece of bread to eat first. This is true in the case of those educated within the high culture, whose taste is cultivated through critical reasoning and careful elaboration. It is also true where the taste is f o r m e d through mass consumption of prefabricated images and objects. It is true in the case of pre-

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)

modern cultures where relationships and tastes are based on long-standing traditions. It is also true where these traditions have been broken down and no clear cultural patterns are in place. N o matter what the circumstances, aesthetic choice can be found in almost all human conditions as an important part of understanding and action (Figure 6.5).

The aesthetics of daily actions and the choices made within that framework may not be acceptable when judged b y the standards of the high culture. Nevertheless, it is not possible to deny altogether the existence of such ingredients in daily experience. Apart from the most extreme cases of individual and social crises, when the rhythm of life is entirely disrupted by disasters, human beings are involved in a mental or actual process of aesthetic judgement and choice. This is a crucial component part of individual and collective identity and the absence of it could lead to alienation and a crisis of identity.

Aesthetic judgement: subjective or objective?

A large part of the debate over aesthetic control involves the issue of subjectivity or objectivity of aesthetic judgement. Many have tended to disregard the debate altogether on the grounds that it is a matter of taste and so it belongs to the realm of subjectivity, a private realm in which individual choice matters most and where there is no place for direct public intervention. Individuals may be influenced b y the society around them, but they often make their aesthetic selections freely, from a wide range of possibilities open to them, as required by an open society. For this viewpoint, this is the end of the discussion.

This view can also be heard by those who do not have an interest in aesthetic matters, w h o therefore dismiss any further discussions on the subject simply due to lack of interest. The same level of freedom that people enjoy in the way they dress themselves should apply to the way they erect, embellish and organize their buildings and environments. W h y does design control not keep up with the other trends in society? There has been a significant liberalization of public behaviour since the Victorian period, with its strict moral values and attitudes, and with the advent of the post-war social movements. It should naturally follow that the appearance of the buildings, like the appearance of the people, should be judged on a more liberal basis (Figure 6.6).

In addition to those who think aesthetic understanding and choice are private matters and should remain in the realm of subjectivity of the individuals, there are those who think it should remain there because of its creative dimensions. They maintain that design is a creative process in which designers as individuals express their subjective world and therefore the aesthetic choice is an integral part of this highly mystified process. Here the aesthetic control is challenged on the grounds that it restricts artistic creation. This viewpoint is often defended by designers, who are themselves involved in this creative process and see any restrictions as irrelevant, due to the subjective element of the design. "What is good or bad design remains largely subjective", as "there is no 'correct' approach, in any context" (Manser & Adam,1992b: 24). Beauty, or ugliness, of the environment simply lies "in the eye of the beholder" (Earl of Arran, quoted in Hillman,1990: 2).


F i g u r e 6.6. How should one building relate to others around it? {Boston, USA)

So is this assertion of the subjectivity of aesthetic judgement a definitive statement agreed upon by everyone? Is aesthetic judgement an individual experience which cannot be objectively shared by others? The answer to these questions can be found in the attempts that are made to share this individual experience with others. In our arguments to convince others of the validity of our choice, w e try to use reasons that are acceptable to them. This attempt gives the aesthetic judgement an objectivity, which is beyond the subjectivity of individual experience. It can be noted that our aesthetic understanding a n d judgement,

especially of public arts such as architecture, could be changed through argument and critical reasoning. Our aesthetic judgement tends to change as we know more about the subject of judgement. This can happen through reflecting upon our direct experience of that object, or through reading criticisms about it. It is the involvement of reason in this process which makes it an objective process. As Scruton (1979: 237) puts it, aesthetic judgement is in a sense objective, "for it aims to justify that (individual) experience, through presenting reasons that are valid for others besides oneself".

It is certainly beyond the level of individual preference that societies are formed for the protection of a building and for the conservation and preservation of certain areas. O v e r the years, governments have listed buildings that have been regarded as being worthy of preservation, have designated conservation areas, and have selected areas of outstanding natural beauty. These activities have all been based on some principles shared by large numbers of people , a consensus reached at through some form of reasoning, hence giving the judgement an objective validity.

Who sets the aesthetic standards?

We have seen how the aesthetic experience is important and how the aesthetics of the environment can form a common, and therefore objective, concern. The next step would be to set up a framework for collective action that would address this common concern. The question to ask will then be, is it the job of the planners to set the aesthetic standards? If that is the case, whose 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 by the high culture and enforced by 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 by 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


participation, communicative action, community architecture and contextuahsm. Nevertheless, today as before, planners make decisions about the organization

and appearance of the built environment on the basis of s o m e , sometimes undefined, criteria. The question is still open: whose taste do planners represent and where does their aesthetic judgement originate? The p o s t - m o d e m notion of pluralism, with its associated relativism, has made the aesthetic judgement ever more difficult. In the relative absence of the modernist canons of good taste, planners and architects are left to judge a variety of styles and f o r m s which are proudly presented as eclectic.

To confront the symptoms of disappearing canons, the notion of context has played an increasingly important role in the aesthetic judgement of urban planners, urban designers and architects. Most urban design guidelines and manuals of the last two decades have emphasized adherence to the urban context. T h e starting point of design process and design control has become the context in which the development takes place. 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 (Figure 6.7).

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)

This conservat ism in taste has been prolonged due to a decline of confidence in exploring n e w territories and an absence of intense real estate development. However, as this century draws to a close, new developments, such as a new faith in technology and a hope in the future of a unified Europe, have prompted a new atmosphere of confidence. Wi th this new confidence, the contextualism of the postmodern period is increasingly being questioned.

Good urban form

No discussion of design control would be complete without finding out what the final aim of the design control is. What is the image in the mind of the planner of the final form 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 coherent vision of the future of a town?

It could b e argued that there is no need for such an image as an urban form is so compl icated and dynamic that it would be futile to envisage a final form for it. Any at tempt to visualize the final, or an ideal , form of a town would be either unrealistic or too rigid to b e even worth achieving. Utopian ideals of the past have all fa i led to material ize. So w h y should 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 form in the mind of the planner? S h o u l d design control be a pragmat ic intervention which is flexible enough to a c c o m m o d a t e each case without necessari ly having a vision of the final outcome?

This might seem to be realism. Many decisions are made according to arguments of this kind. But design control is a continuous process in which any new development is being judged against some criteria. What are these criteria for judging the urban form? W h a t are the measures for evaluating the increments to urban fabric? A s distinct f rom these, or in relation to them, are there any criteria for judging the urban form as a whole?

After a per iod of design control, there will be a cumulative effect of individual cases on urban 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 outcome in the mind of the design controllers. This is a vision which might b e consciously known or unconsciously held. Without even a vague idea of the w h o l e of urban fabric, or at least parts of it, at the more identifiable scale of urban places and neighbourhoods, it would not be possible to make a clear decision about any new development. There are convincing arguments that urban design should contribute to the development of "an ideal long-term hypothesis", which would b e used as a yardstick to measure the values of the built environment (Gregotti, 1992) .

The argument here is not that we need to have such a vision in the design control process, which is quite a valid argument. M y point is that whoever is controlling the design of the developments already has that mental image of the good city form, and the decisions are being m a d e with reference to that image or set of images. For example, the two contrasting approaches to the context of a new development, i.e.


whether the context is to be treateci with respect or be ciisregarded, both rely on mental libraries of possible images. Whereas one set of references aims to perpetuate the character of the context, the other seeks to alter it to a new form. Both approaches, however, share the act of making references to a set of images in the mind of the designer as well as the planner who is involved in development control.

Planning documents and design

The British planning system deals with design issues through three sets of documents: development plans, design guides and design briefs. These documents rely on the advice from the Department of the Environment on design considerations. °

Figure 6.8. A library of idealized images accumulates in our mind, influencing our aesthetic choice. {Stockholm, Sweden)

A library of images can b e found in every person's mind (Figure 6.8). It is a very interesting process to see how people acquire their mental images and h o w they use them in their aesthetic understanding and choice. This process often takes place in the course of daily life and can be influenced and changed by communicat ion , interaction and even manipulation. Aesthetic choice in a personal capacity , however , has often a limited effect at a large scale. This is not the case for the design and planning professionals whose decisions can have a long-last ing influence on the built environment. It is surprising then to see how few discussions are taking place around this aspect of planning, which could play an important role in shaping the future form of the urban environments .

W e will discuss the images of good urban form in the next chapter. Before concluding this chapter, h o w e v e r , we discuss the documents the planning system uses to control design. W^eZtstfe^ÒK)^^''^' '""P"' ' '"* '^^"^'"9^ themselves.


Government advice The 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 RTPI and endorsed by the government, sets out the guidelines for planners on how 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.

The importance of "the appearance of the proposed development and its relationship to its surroundings" is stressed at the beginning of the document. The buildings as well as the "spaces between and around buildings" should be carefully jj, set in relation to the context around them (Figure 6.9). To ensure good quality design, planners are encouraged to recognize and seek expert advice and to avoid imposing their tastes on the applicants for planning permission. The balance that the document seeks to achieve is between development and its control, drawing the boundaries of intervention in design matters. When they outline their requirements^'? planners should concentrate on "broad matters of scale, density, height, massing, layout, landscape and access", avoiding "excessive prescription and detail" .

This government advice is one indication of the structural pressures on the planning system to become more flexible by reducing the potential obstacles to the development market. It parallels an emphasis on the speed of operation. On the first page of the Planning Policy Guidance: General Policy and Principles (DoE,1992), this becomes evident: "Unnecessary delays in the planning system can result in extra costs, wasted capital, delayed production, reduced employment opportunities, and lost income and productivity." At the same time, it tries to strike a balance between the ease of space production with the quality of the space so produced.

The DoE advice on design considerations has been widely used in the preparation of the planning documents by the local authorities.

Development Plans Development plans are the documents prepared by the local authorities "to provide a firm basis for rational and consistent decisions on planning applications and appeals" . These documents are " the primary means 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 non-metropolitan 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 many 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

detailed coverage or prescr ipt ion" , and failed " to relate design policy to context". Only slightly m o r e than one in ten plans had a "very well-developed design policy throughout", as exemplif ied by plans for Leicester, Bristol, Westminster, Guildford, Sheffield, R i c h m o n d and Har ingey (Punter et al . ,1994).

Sheffield's Uni tary Deve lopment Plan starts with its strategic vision of the city. In ten years' t ime, it is intended that the city will be "a place that offers everybody a good quality of life; a place where people can find suitable work; a better place to

F i g u r e 6 . 1 0 . More detailed attention is paid to spatial and visual qualities of Consen/ation Areas. {Durham, UK)


live, work, bring up children, spend your spare time — whoever you are; a profitable place to invest in; and a good place to visit — for business or pleasure" (Sheffield City Council ,1991; 10). Within this framework, design is treated as an integral part of the approach to the built environment. " H o w buildings are designed, the ways they are grouped together, the spaces between them, and trees, seats and paving — these all help to form the character of Sheffield. . . Our responsibility is to cherish this character for the benefit of present and future Sheffielders" (Sheffield City Council ,1991: 136). The section on the built environment is divided into two subsections. In the first subsection, "townscape and design", the aim is for a high-quality townscape through policies on environmental improvement in city centre and other areas, building design requirements, art and design, access to buildings, design for vehicles, design of streets, pedestrian routes, cycleways and public spaces, and advertisements. The second subsection, "buildings and areas of architectural and historical interest", concentrates on Conservation Areas and Areas of Special Character and the developments and alterations within them. In these areas, building materials, highways, listed buildings, and archeological monuments and sites are subjects of more detailed policies (Figure 6.10). -

Design Guides Design guides are documents prepared by the local planning authorities as additional information and guidance regarding design matters. As distinct from development plans, which h a v e statutory status, design guide status is supplementary planning guidance.

Design guides and design briefs are both classified b y the PPG12 as supplementary planning guidance. There is, however, a major difference in that design guides are not site-specific, whereas design briefs are. Where design guides have been prepared, they are often of a general nature and will cover almost every eventuality. They 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. Where such overall design guides do 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 back up the local plan, as the planning conditions rarely refer to design matters.

Esse.x County Council 's design guide (County Council of Essex, 1973) was a major document which influenced a generafion of design guides across Britain. It wa:. prepared for residential areas in response to the intensive suburbanization processes of the time. The guide '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 standards 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. The principles of spatial organization distinguished three types of development: urban, rural and suburban. The former two were to be strengthened and the latter discouraged.

A more recent, well-known example of urban design guidelines in Britain is Birmingham's urban design study (Tibbalds, Colbourne, Karski, & Wil l iams, !990) . It was the first in a series of studies on the city, with the aim of presenting "a robust, coherent, apolitical vision of how the physical environment of Birmingham's Central Area can be gradually improved over the next 30 years or s o " (Tibbalds et al.,1990: 1). To do this it introduces a set of guidelines, against which new developments can be assessed.

Its first main concern is to help people find their way around; that is, a concern for legibility of the urban structure, and for increased accessibility within it. The means to achieve this include identifying transport nodes as gateways to the city centre; making the movement around the city easier; marking places and spaces by landmarks; and promoting livelihood in the city at night as well as day. To enhance a legible image of the city, the second main task is to develop and protect views to the landmarks, which will enhance the legibility of the city through a clearer image. Yet another task is to rediscover the topography of the city, which was ignored by the post-war developments, to enhance the image of the city. Further remedial work to the post-war redevelopments is the recreation of the streets and blocks, those which structured the traditional cities but have been swept away. What is hoped to be the outcome is a tight-knit urban fabric with carefully created and managed public spaces and landscapes. Other visual improvements to be undertaken include sweeping away the clutter, softening the city and enhancing open space. In line with the improvement of the city core, other areas of character are also identified as in need of enhancement.

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 and format" . However , it attempts to offer some clarifying frameworks in terminology as well as in the preparation and use of the briefs. The RTPI suggests the term "development brief" as a general term to cover these various areas of concern. It includes the documents called "planning briefs", which deal with planning, land use and transportation matters; "developers' briefs" , which address financial and land management aspects; and "design briefs" , which cover townscape and other design aspects, and aesthetics. However, in practice, as it notes, and depending on the circumstances, some 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 Design of Urban Space Regulating Urban Form 1 7 7

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(Owen,1979: 1). The RTPI's definition of the development brief is "a summary statement of the author's policy position on development matters relating to the site and/or premises" , and any other relevant material (RTPI,1990). This is largely in line with an earlier DoE (1976: 25) definition suggested in the context of housing development: " A brief for a site is a detailed statement of what development the local authority would like on that particular site a lone" . A brief is often prepared for sites which are economically, socially or architecturally sensitive; for local authority sites that are being released; and for many residential developments.

Apart from design briefs prepared by the planning authority, briefs are also prepared by the architects as the beginning stage of a project, covering the requirements of the client for a site or even putting forward ideas for the client. A design brief in this context is therefore "information, both general and specific, assembled for the purpose" , which clarifies the circumstances and requirements (Powell,1980: 374). It is "the factual foundation of the project" (Cox & Hamilton, 1991: 221). Conventionally, the architects have the task of producing a design which, in their judgement, satisfies the client's brief completely (Thompson, ! 990: 95). In this sense, the meanings of the design brief for architects and for planners overlap, with the difference that these two professions have different positions regarding the preparation and implementation of briefs. Whereas the planners prepare the brief as a framework for development, architects and developers work within this framework and a framework of their own.

There are two major component parts in a brief:

1. a descriptive part which contains information on the characteristics and the context of the site, and

2. a prescriptive (to varying degrees) part in which the intentions of the planning authority for the site are spelled out.

The contents of a brief are largely determined by the nature of the site and the range of issues that the authority wishes to address in the brief. Both of these vary widely. Briefs can be very broad and short or very specialist and detailed. Some briefs cover almost everything from planning background to design content, which can include density, size of development, amount of open space, highway access, relationship to neighbouring properties, landscaping, and designing out crime. The building design content could stipulate the form, massing, scale, context and materials, but rarely the actual style of the development. The brief could- also contain some element of community gain in the form of play areas, creche facilities, community rooms and access for the disabled.

Some briefs tend to categorize their requirements into essential and preferred. The preferred category could contain the desirable elements which are not essential for the site.

Design briefs are documents through which the intentions of the planning authority for the development of a site are being expressed. The level of certainty with which the planners can express these intentions varies widely according to circumstances. In most cases, however, documenting these intentions provides a framework for negotiation with the potential developers. The outcome of such a

negotiating process again depends on circumstances. Success or failure of the briefs, if judged by their resistance to change and therefore asserting the original intentions, might not be always the main task in their evaluation. If, however, they are evaluated according to their being an instrument of negotiation, then they have a potentially promising capacity. In this sense, the design briefs are a part of a planning process in which attempts are m a d e to manage the change and development in the built environment. They can be compared to the development plans, which are seen by the government as negotiating frameworks, although at different levels of iiwolvement and statutory power. T h e design briefs, design guides and development plans can b e seen as complementary devices in the planning process.

Other experiences of design control

In the United States, the des ign control process, or design review, deals with urban design, architecture, and the visual impact of proposed developments. It is "the process by which private and public development proposals receive independent criticism under the sponsorship of the local government unit, whether through informal or formalized p r o c e s s e s " (Lightner,1992: 2). A survey of 370 planning agencies showed that 787o of the towns and cities had some form of design review process. This has been an increasingly popular process for the planning authorities, as 6 0 % of the respondents had adopted it since the beginning of the 1980s. It also found that a lmost three-quarters of the American cities and towns use the design review process for both historic and other parts of their urban areas. Design review procedures are largely (82%) mandatory and legislated. Some 4 0 % rely on design guidelines, which are assembled by planners from different sources and are legally binding, a l though m o r e than one-quarter had no documented guidelines. The design is reviewed b y a special design review board (36%) or by the planners themselves. Public participation is relatively rare (only 17%) and the elected officials participate in 2 8 % of the reviews, although without a heavy influence when compared to the professional opinion of design review boards, planners, or zoning commissioners (Lightner ,1992) .

Despite signs of con\'erging trends, the main difference between the British and the American planning and design control is that the former is discretionary, whereas the latter is based on written regulations. The main method of regulation, with most influence on the shape of the cities, is the zoning system of land-use control. A classic example is the Chicago Zoning Ordinance, .which lists 22 types of use-district and 71 categories of floor-area ratio. The bulk of this ordinance deals with prescribing dimensions, beyond which there is no other reference to design and aesthetic objectives. An alternative w a y of controlling design is to follow a "stylistic imperative", where the developments are asked by the planning authority to harmonize with the surrounding architectural styles. A call for stylistic harmony can also be seen when landowners act as the planning authority: subdividing their land and asking the individual developers to follow some design rules. The status of design review boards m a y vary in legal and administrative terms: some may be appointed by a mayor, some may be provided for in local ordinances or in State legislation. The courts have the capacity to interfere in the design review process (Delafons,1992).


The potential importance of the courts in design control, especially in the context of the controversies and debates around whether aesthetic control runs against the freedom of speech, can be exemplified by the rulings of Supreme Court Justice Wil l iam Brennan (I,ai,1992). In two rulings, he asked for a comprehensive effort by the municipality to address the problems of environmental aesthetics, rather than emphasizing single buildings or issues. In the first case, Metromedia Inc. v. Cify of San Diego in 1981, he wrote.

Of course, it is not for a court to impose its own notion of l>eauty on San Diego. But before deferring to a city's judgement, a court must be convinced that the city is seriously and comprehensively addressing aesthetic concerns with respect to its environment. Here, San '] Diego has failed to demonstrate a compreljensive coordinated effort in its commercial and ! industrial areas to address other obvious contributors to an unattractive environment. In this sense the ordinance is underinclusive. Of course, this is not to say that the city must address all aesthetic problems at the same time, or none at all. Indeed, from a planning point of view, -'~ attacking tlie problem incrementally and sequentially may represent the most sensible solution. On the other hand, if billboards are batmed and no further steps are contemplated or likely, the commitment of the city to improving its physical environment is placed in doubt. By showing a comprehensive commitment to making its physical environment in commercial and industrial areas more attractive, and by allowing only narrowly tailored exceptions, if any, San Diego could demonstrate that its interest in creating an aesthetically pleasing environment is genuine and substantial. Tins is a requirement where, as here, there is an infringement of important constitutional consequence.

(quoted in Lai,1992:219)

Three years later, in City of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, in a dissent from the majority, he wrote against the city ordinance, which 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 produced by some cities and towns as comprehensive strategies for enhancing the aesthetic qualities of an environment. Searching for a democratic process of dealing

with design, Delafons (1992: 58) finds design guidance very promising, especially when it is focusing on broader issues of "building's context, not only on its design concept". In American cities, he argues, it is design guidance rather than regulatory controls which 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. The 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. The design guidelines of the city, " focus on relationship of buildings, space and people. They are used to coordinate and enhance the diversity of activities taking place in the downtown area. Many ways of meeting a particular guideline exist, and since it is not our intent to prescribe any specific solution, the Commission encourages a diversity of 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 well-managed city centre have attracted the support of the developers and businesses. For Delafons, this is "surely the best approach to aesthetic control" .

In Denmark, there is no procedure equivalent to the US design review process, as it appears that a consensus has existed for designers to respect the local traditions and the zoning requirements. This consensus was rooted in the first half of the twentieth century and survived the post-war urbanization and industrialization of the country and the building booms of the 1960s and 1970s. However , it is now in danger of falling apart due to the current cultural pluralism (Mammen,1992) .

Several attempts have been made to ensure the design quahty of new developments. For example, the Danish National Agency for Physical Planning has developed a method of Surveying Architectural Values in the Environment (SAVE), with a heavy emphasis on historic city centres, aiming to provide a complete picture of the characteristic architectural qualities of a locality. This would then help the local politicians and planners as well as the local residents in their decisionmaking in relation to the protection of these qualities. A Municipal Atlas is produced which maps the urban relationships and registers individual buildings. In this voluntary co-operation between the Ministry of Environment and local authorities, data are collected by professional architects and planners, and local architectural and historical values are assessed in close collaboration with local organizations and individuals. Another attempt by 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 SAVE 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).


In France, the demand for protecting the character of areas under hea\'y development pressure has led to new 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 km away from Paris, has been 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 morphology of which contrasts with the existing character of the

Figure 6.11. The rhythm of detailed elements can contribute to the coherence of townscape. {Florence, Italy)

town: traditional streets l ined with cont inuous buildings. T o prevent the suburbanization of the town, the n e w mayor has been influential in devising a new system of design control, which has been endorsed by the French minister of the environment and has been used in three other c o m m u n e s in the He de France. T h e French land-use plan, the Plan d'Occupation des Sols, or POS, is a legally binding document and if a proposal meets its requirements , it must be approved. M a n y of the plans, however, are not sufficiently sensitive to the character of the localities they deal with.

The new POS for Ansieres d r a w s upon the Italian morphological approach and the British design guides to analyse the local character and to specify the preferred forms which would maintain this character. Through direct observation, discussions with local experts , and desk research, the new P O S analyses the morphology of the settlement at six different levels of resolution: districts, streets and blocks, plots, building form, and elements of construction. At each level, a range of acceptable varieties are then put forward. At the district level (altogether eight districts in the sett lement) , a range of acceptable land uses and plot types are identified. Within each plot type (with its m i n i m u m dimensions, plot proportions, buildable area and plot coverage) , there are, typically, three to five acceptable building types. The two elements of construction, roofs and walls, include details of acceptable types of chimneys, dormers , openings , doors and windows. The range of choice at the lower level of resolution, i.e. the detai led elements of construction such as doors and windows, is far m o r e restricted than the higher levels, where there are more choices for plot size and bui lding arrangement . This is in contrast to the housing developers ' formula to achieve diversi ty in their developments, where details may vary within a l imited range of bui lding form and plot type (Figure 6.11).

There are also commonalit ies to be observed within districts and between them. In each district, for example, there is a c o m m o n range of possibilities for length of facades, type and degree of roof pitch, length of gable wall, a range of permitted storeys and of proportion be tween building height and building depth. The common range of details for all districts covers gutters , chimneys, dormers, facade opening arrangements, types of door and w i n d o w frame and shutter, wall and roof materials, and even hedging shrubs (Samuels ,1995) .

Conclusion

The advent of major changes in the western economies has redefined the relationship between the state, the market , and society. The planning system, which was the outcome of a coalition between the state and the market, has had to adjust itself to these new relationships. It has b e c o m e m o r e flexible as a result of structural pressures from above, regarding its role in space production, and from below, regarding its role in everyday life.

To show more flexibility, the planning sys tem has moved towards a document-based structure. A range of documents , f r o m central government advice to development plans, design guides and design briefs address the design concerns. These concerns, which are predominant ly aesthet ic concerns, have been the subject


of intense debates about the scope of design control and the role of planners in this process. O n e major criticism has been made by those who see design as a subjective issue, and w h o see the documents as a stifling innovation, restricting individual rights, and controlled by planners unfit to make aesthetic judgements. Planners have counter-argued that aesthetic concerns are objective, as we try to convince others about these values. To find an objective basis for their aesthetic judgements, planners have resorted to the urban context and have argued for the need for accountabil ity to the public. The main question, however, remains open; how much design control and on what bases?

The relationship of planning and design has been changing from a large degree of overlap to a large gap in the middle. What is needed now, after these shifts of focus, is a town planning which adopts a socio-spatial approach, emphasizing both social and spatial relationships in close connection with each other. This town planning will be an essential part of the political economy, but will have to address the concerns of the lifeworld in the face of overwhelming pressure by bureaucratic and financial systems. 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 environment , creating a balance between its social and spatial concerns. Similarly it can bring to architecture more interest in social processes and relationships, leading to a m o r e balanced, socio-spatial approach. At its weakest, however, it is seen as merely attending 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 of Perfection

In its search for new forms and possibilities, design is an exploratory activity. Through the generation of a variety of ideas and testing them against the concrete situation in which they operate, designers aim to perform their task. In most cases, the scope of the search is wide ranging, allowing designers to find a solution from whatever source: from historic precedents, from theoretical constructs, or from everyday scenes and events.. This is why designers show interest and sensibility to a wide range of social and economic as well as aesthetic and artistic issues. Without constant exploration for new ways of understanding and expression, designers' potentials would be left unfulfilled.

However, open-ended and pragmatic as this may seem, designers in their explorations are often influenced b y some conventions, paradigms, fashions and styles that are prevalent at the time. Directly or indirectly, these paradigms enter the process of design and influence it. In a way, many design tasks become variations on themes, explorations within paradigmatic boundaries, or conscious and unconscious attempts to change these paradigms. The paradigms therefore act as structures with which designers interact, enhancing or transforming them, in a Giddensian interaction between structure and agency.

Design paradigms, and the work 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 may look like. This may run counter to the idea of design as exploration. But as we have stressed, this exploration takes place not in a void but in response to some paradigm, some image of an ideal environment.

Images of ideal environments m a y be produced in a fragmented, pragmatic way, in response to the situation in which the design takes place. These fragments, however, can find a coherence when interconnected and theorized in the form of Utopian dreams of good cities and societies. The paradigms that the Utopian projects of the garden cities and the modern movement 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 images of perfection have been very

184 Design of Urban Space images of Perfection 1 8 5 i

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 main paradigmatic approaches towards cities. The first is urbanism 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 movement and post-modern designs. The second is anti-urbanism, as signified by the criticism and abandonment of cities. The suburbs, arguably the main feature of the twentieth-century Anglo-American "urban" development, exemplify this trend. The 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 manageable than metropolitanism, and more collective than anti-urbanism.

What all these trends share is their response to the challenge of the cities, these ever larger agglomerations of people and objects. Another shared dimension closely related to the first, is their Utopian roots, all reflecting images of perfection in human settlements. -"M

Figure 7 . 1 . Utopias were the foundation of modern urban planning and design, [A new town outside 5tocl<holm, Sweden)

Utopia

The idea of ideal environments, Utopias, has been around for perhaps as long as human beings have thought of possible alternatives to their existing circumstances. As a response to the reality of their lives, with all their possible deficiencies, human beings have thought, throughout history, about an ideal world, where their images of perfection would prevail. These images could remain as dream.s, offering an escape from the difficulties of the real world. T h e ideal environments so conceived could remain a fragmented collection of imagined responses b y individuals to the real world. They could also b e devised as sys tems of thought , drawing an overall picture of a complete socio-spatial system w h i c h could be actively pursued, in search of an ideal society and a good life (Figure 7.1) .

Especially after the Renaissance, w e see a s t ream of Utopian thinkers, following the humanists ' belief that human beings have the capacity to take control of their lives and shape them in any chosen form. A n early, but important , example is Thomas More 's Utopia (1964), which was first publ ished in Latin in 1516 and widely influenced later generations of Utopian thinkers. T h e ideal cities of the Renaissance period reflected a Utopian desire for order and rational organization of space. With their star-shaped, polygonal, mass ive fortifications, their designs reflected the new defensive requirements of a t ime of progress ive importance of firearms (Argan,1969; Rosenau,1974). In the nineteenth century, post-Enlightenment thinkers such as Godwin, Fourier, O w e n and Saint-Simon devised their Utopias, which were their responses to the rising social diseases of early capitalism. Their common starting point was the idea of "perfect ibi l ism", bel ieving in the possibility of creating a perfect society, and seeing society as " a h u m a n artefact open to rational improvement" (Goodwin,1978; 1) . Their c o m m o n end w a s to create social harmony, free from conflict, crime and misery. Utopia as the "express ion of desire for a better way of being" was so essential in political life that for Oscar Wilde ,

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

(quoted in Levitas, 1990: 5)

In the twentieth century, a number of streams of Utopian thinkers and movements emerged, each embodying the ideal environments f rom a particular social and ideological stance. Bolshevism and the welfare state, for example, were different versions of an essentially labour utopia (Beilharz,1992). The Soviet theorists, however, were reticent to give any portrayal of their Utopian communist society. But as the most important principle in the communist society was to be collectivism, the physical environment of communism had to foster and encourage "ties, interdependence, and constant and close interrelation of the members of the society" (Gilison,1975: 152). The communes each had several thousand members and self-sufficient services, and the " large complexes of interconnected apartment houses, with large indoor and outdoor areas designated for public functions", all promoting "togetherness" (Gilison, 1975: 152). The social movements and polidcal change in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union showed how this utopia failed.

185 Design of Urban Space Images of Perfection 187

to be replaced b y a capitalist Utopia, one that is based not on market but on "consumption" . According to George Steiner (quoted in Beilharz,1992: 126), observing the events in Eastern Europe, "American standards of dress, nourishment, locomotion, entertainment, housing are today the concrete Utopia in revolutions".

Despite such paramount failure of Utopias and exhaustion of Utopian ideas, some commentators cont inue to bel ieve that Utopia is "not escapist nonsense but n significant part of h u m a n cul ture" (Levitas,1990: 2) , and a fruitful device through which we can discuss the question of good society (Beilharz,1992). The greatest service of Utopian thinkers has been " the articulation of social alternatives", offered to the "prisoners of the prevailing ideology", who " lack the imagination to escape even in spirit" ( G o o d w i n , ! 9 7 8 ; 204) . What is needed, however, is not "an exact picture of a desirable future" , as this can be "a suspect activity". History has shown that "The r e a d y - m a d e 'Utopia ' is by its very nature authoritarian". Instead, "an unfinished ' U t o p i a ' " is required; " o n e that offers a direction rather than defining the goal" . Its strength Ues in helping us "to discover the possibilities already existent in our daily l ife" (The Research G r o u p for the New Everyday Life,1991: 35) .

We can identif) ' three strands of Utopias in the twentieth century that directly articulated alternative environments. They have all been responses to the growth of \ the cities and urban regions and have been widely influential movements contributing to the planned transformation of the human settlements. These Utopias were confronted by a series of critical reactions: the modernist urban Utopia challenged by post-modernist sensibilities; the small town ideal abandoned and then revived as new urbanism; and suburban sprawl continuing to be rejected or accepted as part of urban regions. These are different reactions to the urban context and often fall,within our three Strands of urbanism, anti-urbanism and micro-urbaiusm.

Urban context

The context in w h i c h all three forms 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 Europe and North America . London's population grew from one million in 1 8 0 ! to more than six and a half million in 1 9 0 ! (Hall , !975) . In England (outside London) and W a l e s , by the end of the century, there were 23 cities with populations of 100000 or m o r e , as compared to none a century earlier (Briggs,1968). This rapid growth caused an accumulat ion of capital and labour in the cities, which became- • sites of ex t remes of wealth and poverty, generating simultaneous reactions of admiration and fear. After all, this was a time w h e n polarization of social classes could urge commentators to see two nations inhabiting the same small island (Disraeli, t p o t e d in Br iggs ,1968 :17) .

The working-c lass housing stock erected around the new industries was often uncontrolled, w i t h poor materials on insecure foundations, without any drainage or water supply (Gibson & Langstaff ,1982: 40). The overcrowding and the "absence of amenities, the bruta l degradation of the natural environment and inability to plan and often to conceive the city as a whole" led to "appalling living conditions" (Briggs,1968: 17) . All shades of political opinion seemed to agree that cities were "places of overcrowding, poverty, crime, disease, insanitary condition and potential

revolution" (Thomas & Cresswell ,1973: 6). This fear of cities coincided with admiration for cities, as seen in the writings of

the Victorians who regarded their time as the "age of great cities". In 1858, the Chambers' 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

(quoted in Briggs,1968: 88)

In Newcastle, a politician and newspaper proprietor, James Cowen, wrote in 1877,

The gathering of men into crowds has some drawbacks, yet the concentration of citizens, like the concentration of soldiers, is a source of strength . . . we can hear the songs of children who are fed and clad, and the acclaim of a world free . . . Wlien people declaim in dolefid numbers against the noise and dirt of the busy centres of population, they should remember the liberty we enjoy as a consequence of the mental activity and enterprise which has been generated by the contact of mind with mind brought together in great tozvns.

_ (quoted in Briggs,1968: 67; Figure 7.2)

Figure 7.2. The industrial cities of the nineteenth century created fear and admiration. {Liverpool, UK)


This duality of fear and admiration inspired the visions for, and the practice of, the urban transformation that followed. The fear of crime, disease and revolution led to a coiistant concern for the control of 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. The middle classes, whether colonizing the city, as on the continent of Europe, or abandoning 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 Napoleon III, who transformed the dense fabric of Paris. In Britain, the responses to urban conditions included the demolition of back-to-back and courtyard houses and the development of bye-law streets, a "noteworthy innovation", where rows of houses flanked straight streets (Bayley,1975: 20).

Urbanism of the metropolitan paradigm

This paradigm foaises on the city, finds it valuable but in need of care and attention, and attempts to offer solutions for the whole, or parts of, the city. The._

. growth of cities in the nineteenth century had created centres of new economic** vitality and political power on the one hand, and centres of congestion, disease and misery on the other. To find a solution for these difficulties, the metropolitan paradigm, mainly represented by the modernist movement in arts and architecture,'" advocated a radical urban transformation. It is also represented by post-modern criticisms against such transformations, with their concentration still on the city but , offering different solutions. This makes these opposing approaches to the city distinguishable from the anti-urban stance, which turns its face away from the city, and the micro-urbanism of the small town paradigm, which creates parallel alternatives to it.

Modernist urban design

- The modernists believed that the technological advances of the age, brought about by the process of industrialization and urbanization, were capable of eradicating the urban problems. In his book. The City of Tomorrow (1971, first published in 1924), Le Corbusier sees the cities as "a h u m a n operation against the nature", which is now "ineffectual". "The lack of order to be found everywhere in them offends us; their degradation wounds our self-esteem and humiUates our sense of dignity. They are not worthy of the age; they are no longer worthy of u s " (Le .Corbusier,1971: 1). He then explains how he, when caught in the middle of traffic in Paris, begins to see the advantages and the power of new technologies to confront the problem:

Motors ill all directions, going at all speeds. I was overwhelmed, an enthusiastic rapture filled me. Not the rapture of the shining coachwork under the gleaming light, but the rapture of power. The simple and ingenuous pleasure of being in the centre of so much power, so much speed. We are part of it. We are part of that race whose dawn is just awakening. We have confidence in this new societii, ivhich will in the end arrive at a magnificent expression of its power. We believe in it.

Its 'power is like a torrent swollen by storms; a destructive fury. The city is crumbling, it cannot last much lom^er; its time is past. It is too old.

(Le Corbusier,! 971: 3-4)

Figure 7.3. The modernist vision was to create vertical cities. {Boston, USA)

This destructive fury became the cornerstone of Le Corbusier 's idea of town planning and, as it was widely accepted b y others, led to large-scale urban transformations around the world, changing the urban landscapes of the twentieth century (Figure 7.3). In the existing cities, he suggested, "corr idor streets" should be eliminated from the city space, as they poison the houses with noise and dust and deprive them of light, and that the current n u m b e r of intersections creates traffic congestion. Instead, a hierarchy of roads and high-rise buildings should be built, which ease the movement of traffic, increase the density of the city centres, and allow the dwellings to be away from the streets and looking to large parks and open spaces.

Le Corbusier 's recipe for urban transformation was first outl ined in his plan for A Contemporary City of Three Million Inhabitants, shown in an exhibition in 1922 in Paris. In it he introduces four basic principles for arriving at the plan of the city: to "de-congest the centre of our cities"; to " a u g m e n t their densi ty" ; to "increase the means for getting about" ; and to " increase parks and open spaces" (Le Corbusier,1971).

Le Corbvisier (1971: 7) encourages architects to follow engineers , as the latters' aesthetics is "inspired b y the law of E c o n o m y and governed by mathematical


Figure 7.4. Ornament was rejected for simplicity and Germany) (Photograph by Simin Davoudi)

functionalism. {Bauhaus, Dessau,

calculat ions" , and therefore capable of achieving "harmony" (Figure 7.4). This praise for the simplicity of form and functionalism of engineering technology is evident in his C o n t e m p o r a r y City. As w e approach it in our fast car, we see "the repetition against the sky of twenty four sky-scrapers", and " low buildings of a horizontal k i n d " , leading the eye to the trees (Le Corbusier,1971: 177). When this model is applied in a concrete situation, as in the "Voisin" scheme for the centre of Paris, the result is,

. . . instead of a flattened-oul and jumbled city such as the airplane reveals to us for the first time, terrifying in its confusion . . , our city rises vertical to the sky, open to light and air, clear and radiant and sparkling. The soil, of xvhose surface 70 to 80 per cent has till now been encumbered by closely packed houses, is tww built over to the extent of a mere 5 per cent. The remaining 95 per cent is devoted to the main speedways, car parks and open spaces. The avenues of trees are doubled ami quadrupled, and the parks at the foot of the sky-scrapers do, in fact, make the city itself one vast garden.

(Le Corbusier,1971: 280-281)

\,

A group of avant-garde architects and town planners, called C I A M (International Congress for M o d e r n Architecture) , elaborated these urban visions and presented them as the Charter of Athens in 1933. For CIAM, town planning was "the organization of the funct ions of collective l i fe" , and the city performed four main functions: dwell ing, work , recreation and transportation, the latter connecting the others (Sert,1944; 242). T h e Charter asked for a radical transformation of these functions along the l ines L e Corbusier had described in his plans. The dwellings.

"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 building technology to build high, widely spaced apartment blocks away 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 be located in special zones, industrial zones to be separated from the residential areas by green bands or neutral zones, and central business districts to be linked to industrial and residential areas. Transport problems were to be solved by a universal use of motorized transportation, and a new street system was to be classified according to the function and speed of movement in the streets. Traffic was to be concentrated in the great arteries, separated from the buildings of all kind by green bands.

These images of ideal, ordered environments were so powerful that the public authorities, with whatever ideology, and the private sector developers all subscribed to them. A Soviet writer, for example, imagines the communist city of the future along similar patterns:

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.

(Lifanov, quoted in Gilison,1975:158-159)

The dream was similarly powerful in the West, where the post-war period saw large-scale urban transformation schemes to carve up the cities in these new images. The Second World War provided a decisive occasion for the Modern Movement concepts to spread around the world, especially in the European cities large parts of which had been devastated by the war. In Britain, urban fabrics were largely seen as a remainder of the polluted and congested industrial cities of the Victorian period (Briggs,1968), as ugly structures to be demolished (Burns,1963; Holliday,1973). Moreover, the inter-war building boom had created the much-debated urban sprawl and ribbon development (HaU,1975; Gibson & Langstaff,1982). These issues had caused a concern for the re-planning of towns (RIBA,1943), in order to build a "rationally planned, more egalitarian brave new post-war world" (Ambrose,1986: 36).

The post-war generation accepted redevelopment as a way of re-shaping the cities and towns. Attacking slums had already started in the preceding two decades. This was especially the case where they faced two apparently major problems: traffic congestion and worn out physical structures. It was argued that, "if we are to have any chance of living at peace with the motor car, we shall need a different sort of city". One influential solution was to transform the city into a cellular structure consisting of environmental areas set within interlacing distributionary highways


Hi

(Buchanan et al.,'1963: 41-42) . T h e trust in technology (Crosby,1967), which was manifest in plug-in cities (Rowe & Koetter,1978), helped to develop a trend towards comprehensive redevelopment to create modernized "total environments" (Gibson & Langstaff,1982: 42) . In the older parts of the town centres, any arrangement could be questioned, "the street layout, the general distribution of major uses, even the traditional size or location of the centre" (Ministry of Housing,1962: 2). People who Uved in slums were regarded as those with "no initiative or civic pride . . . satisfied with their miserable environment" whose groupings had to be broken (Burns,1963: 94). Proximity to others was seen as their main desire (Tuan,1977: 63). What replaced the old structures were large-scale, high-rise office blocks and housing schemes, and supermarkets , the latter reflecting the change in retail industry as well as the modernist concepts of space and land use.

Post-modern urbanism The modernist images of perfection, when implemented, started to create resentment and disenchantment, partly through the unintended consequences of modernity (Giddens,1990). F r o m the late 1960s, the drive to transform cities in the modernist image slowed d o w n and was abandoned. It was argued that the change of physical environment had little impact on the values and the pattern of behaviour of their inhabitants (Gans,1968) . Urban motorways and redevelopment schemes were seen as favouring the middle class commuters at the cost of the low-income residents of the inner areas (Blowers,1973) who suffered from dislocation and social disorganization, amongst other things (Clarke,1973). The high-rise housing for low-income groups was abandoned due to its costs and social problems (Barnett,1982) and arguments w e r e made that high density was also achievable b y low-rise bui ldings (Martin,1975) . The critics saw the Utopian images of high -r ise housing in the parks as "planned by a paternalistic authority, which offered hopes of improved standards but also ran the risk of trapping people in dwell ings not of their o w n choosing" (Coleman,1985; 6) . In short, what had once been a "romantic vision of modern technology, freeing individuals f rom tradition" w a s later considered as suitable for "mindless bureaucratic repetition, and the cost cutting of profit-motivated entrepreneurs" (Barnett,1982: 8) .

From the early 1970s, partly as a result of an economic crisis and a shift of attitude, conservation, improvement and regeneration of the existing urban fabric replaced redevelopment. The emphasis shifted to the problems of employment, public transport, and housing (Gibson & Langstaff,1982; Holliday,1983). Improvement took the forms of upgrading and gentrification (Clay,1979), the latter seen as attracting the suburban middle class back to the city (Bradway-Laska & Spain,1980) in response to an energy crisis (Owens,1986) . In the 1970s and 1980s, the flow of capital, in the form of land and property development, returned to the city, creating entirely new environments superimposed on and juxtaposed to the older, degenerating areas. To attract new professional classes to the city, investment concentrated on the re-imaging of the urban environment with a new aesthetics:

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 phenomena as part of a further integration of aesthetic production into commodity production processes, and hence define post-modernism not only as a new aesthetics, but as part of a m u c h m o r e significant change in society. Post-modern space, or multinational space as J a m e s o n calls it, shows how late capitalism has destroyed the semi-autonomy of the cultural sphere. Sharon Zukin (1988: 437) quotes a developer; " M y buildings are a product . T h e y are a product like Scotch Tape is a p ro du ct . . . T h e packaging of that product is the first thing that people see. I am selling space and renting space and it has to be in a package that is attractive enough to be financially successful."

It is possible to trace how the reactions to modernist developinents have changed in nature. The first criticisms were made to protect communi t ies against the destructive fury of modernization and redevelopment ( Jacobs,1961; Berman,1982) . This critical stance gradually found widespread support, especial ly w h e n the massive redevelopment projects seemed no longer financially feasible. Then came a new wave, defining the aim of urban development as catering for more affluent urbanités and accommodating their tastes and needs. This wave 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 new principles of urban design are shared between such apparently disparate groups and forms of reaction to modernism. It was such similarities and related de\'elopments beyond the domain of design that led to the notion of a post-modern approach to design as a representative of a post -modern age.

As a concept, post-modernism has been very ambiguous. On the one hand, it is seen as a historical period which follows modernism and so is called postmodernism. On the other hand, it is seen as a " m o o d " (Docherty,1993) , "a state of mind" (Bauman,1992), "a question of expression of thought" (Lyotard,1993) , "a refusal, a rupture, a renouncement, much more than a simple c h a n g e of direct ion" (Rose,1991; 153). While Baudrillard and Lyotard associate post -modernism with post-industrialism (Featherstone,1988), Harvey (1989) sees post -modernism as associated with post-Fordism. Post-Fordism, the flexible accumulat ion of capital which led to flexibility in the patterns of production and pluralism in consumption, is seen therefore as a replacement for Fordism, which was based on mass production and central planning, in parallel with modernism. As Hassard (1993: 3) interprets, this change is a fragmentation of the social and economic structures that have been reproduced since the industrial revolution into "diverse networks held


together by information technology and underpinned by . . . a 'postmodern sensibility'".

Modernism has been related to the project of the EnHghtenment (Habermas,!993), which stresses the use of reason for the emancipation of human beings from the dark forces of nature. As a reaction to this optimism, post-modernism shows a decline of confidence in a linear history of progress . Lyotard (1993: 47) follows Gregotti when he characterizes the difference between modernism and post-modernism as "the disappearance of the close bond that once linked the project of modern architecture to an ideal of progressive realization of social and individual emancipation encompassing all humanity. Postmodern architecture finds itself condemned to undertake a series of minor modifications in a space inherited from modernity, condemned to abandon a global reconstruction of the space of human habitation."

But what are the post-modern urban design principles? A short answer is that they are mostly a reversal of w h a t modernist design is about. Modernist urban design concentrated on endre cities, as is evident from Le Corbusier 's projects and from the subsequent development of city planning. The city was seen from above, in an abstract way, as an eiitity in space which needed ordering and management. In contrast, the post-modern u r b a n design only concentrates on parts of the city, on the visible places and on their meaning and vitality, arguing against the abstractions and totalizations of modernism. It shows a move from the modernist avant-garde w h o promoted high culture to a celebration of popular culture by the post-modernist. Modernist urban design is socially concerned and believes that new technologies offer a solution for social problems. Post-modern urban design is not involved in social problems and sees them as beyond its remit, regarding such concerns as Utopian. However , there has been a strong pressure for public participation in the process of design, as a response to the redevelopment schemes of the moderidsts, though this pressure concentrates on local rather than universal issues. Post-modern urban design rejects the modernist emphasis on reason, order and geometry, and strives for diversity and difference. Post-modern urban design favours a mixture of land uses , to give vitality to urban places, as against the modernist desire to separate land use in rationally organized zones. Post-modern urban design is eclectic in style and borrows from various historic periods, seeing the city as a historical and spatial cont inuum, whereas modernist design breaks its links with the past and only looks to the future. Post-modern urban design claims to give,priority to the context in w h i c h design takes place, as opposed to the modernist disregard of the context and the existing urban socio-spatial fabric. Post-modern urban design favours ornament , double-coding and colour, as distinct from the purity of form in modernism and its appreciation of the colour white. Post-modern urban ciesign encourages pedestrian movement and a degree of control on cars in the city space, as against the modernis t urban design which saw the cars as central to the city and concentrated on road-building activities. Post-modern urban design argues for a return to the city of streets, squares and low-rise buildings, as against the modernist vision of high-rise buildings in the parks (Bentley et al.,1985; Tibbalds ,1988, !992; C o l q u h o u n , ! 9 8 9 ; Punter,1990c; Jencks, !991, !992; Lyotard,!992a,b; Andreas Papadakis Ltd,1993; Knox , !993) (Figures 7.5 and 7.6).

Unlike modernist urban design, which was put forward by a group of like-minded colleagues and was argued as a coherent theory, post-modern urban design

is a collection of reactions and sensibilities developed over t ime in response to modernism. These responses range from outright rejection to a request for humanizing the abstract notions of modernism.

What modern and post-modern urban design both share, is a claim over the city, each attempting to transform urban space in a different way. Therefore, w e can see both emphasizing the "urban space" , rather than leaving it altogether, as the anti-urbanists believe, or proposing to create alternatives to it, as in the small town paradigm. The urban paradigm acknowledges the importance of the city and fights

Figure 7.5. Road networks in cities were meant to ease the vehicular movement. {Boston, USA)


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)

to shape it in an ideal image. Whatever the image and whoever the image maker, it is part of a battle over the ever-contested space of the cities as huge accumulations of people and objects too important to be left abandoned.

Modernist and post-modernist urban design both started as critiques of the existing practices and built environments, showing new sensibilities and new perspectives. They were both, however, "appropriated" by the development industry, which commercialized them and deprived them of their critical stance. Although such commercialization has meant a degree of success for these design theories, it has also meant a decline in their vitality and innovation.

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 by suburban developments. Whereas urbanism and micro-urbanism have been promoted by visionaries and experts, anti-urbanism and its most famous

Figure 7 . 7 . Anti-urbanists have sought to move away from the city. {Cincinnati, USA)

form suburbanism have been a sustained, widespread movement promoted b y the middle classes. Furthermore, this movement has been fully integrated within the financial and administrative frameworks of the built environment production. A s a result, the majority of the population in Britain and the United States now live in what are considered suburbs (Figure 7.7).

There have been some attempts to channel the anti-urbanist developments , e i ther by practical solutions, such as Radburn pattern, or by grand visions, such as Frank Lloyd Wright 's Broadacre City. Another example is Abercrombie 's post-war plan for London, proposing a planned decentralization of the city. Here state intervention has been employed to reduce the urban density, and therefore effectively promote suburban living.

-Suburbanism

Suburbia is "an archetypal middle-class invention", embodying the ideal of a n e w , private, family life. The basic unit of the suburban form is the single family house . It is usually a detached (in America) or a semi-detached (in Britain) house built on a relatively large garden plot. Together, these houses and their access roads m a k e a


low-density suburban sprawl, w h o s e characteristics sharply contrast those of the towns. Peter R o w e (1991) argues that this contrast of city and countryside, "urbs cl rus", has now given way to "sub-iirbs in rure". H e therefore calls the suburbs and exurbs a "middle landscape" , i.e. one that is located between the city and the countryside.

The suburbs ' contrast with cities and w i t h countryside, and their restless expansion, has created resentment and criticism by experts, such as architects and planners, and by the upper classes, to the extent that suburbia became "a dirty word" (Edwards,1981: 1). Speculat ive megalopol i tan sprawl, which is the hallmark of our time, has been saici to reduce urban design to "a virtual non-sequitur" (Frampton,1992: 7) . A major criticism of the suburbs focused on their appearances. Suburbs have been criticized as be ing " m o n o t o n o u s , featureless, without character, indistinguishable from one another , infinitely bor ing to behold" (Thompson, !982 :3) (Figure 7.8). Semi-detached houses were " h o r r i d little red mantraps" for D. H. Lawrence and the way they w e r e isolated f rom each other reminded W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood of " cases of f e v e r " (quoted in 01iver ,1981: 11). But they were also criticized on social grounds , as they w e r e seen as, "wastelands of housing as settings for dreary, petty l ives without social , cultural, or intellectual interests, settings which fostered a pretent ious preoccupat ion with outward appearances, a fussy attention to the trifling details of genteel living, and absurd attempts to conjure rusticity out of minute garden plots" (Thompson,1982; 3) . As early as 1876 a

F i g u r e 7.8. Suburbs are resented as being dull and monotonous. {Newcastle, UK)

commentator expressed his "distinct and unmitigated hatred" for the London suburbs, which he saw as "a place which is neither one thing nor the other, which had neither the advantages of the town nor the open freedom of the country, but manages to combine in nice equality of proportion the disadvantages of bo th" (quoted in Edwards,1981: 223) .

Not all the commentators have criticized suburbs; for Cesar Daly, who wrote in 1864, suburban architecture revealed "the spirit and character of modern civilization" (quoted in Fishman,1987: 3). This fascination with the suburbs seems to be to some extent shared by the millions of people who live in suburbs now. There is of course a "conflict of va lue" between those w h o choose to live in the suburbs and those professionals who criticize it (01iver,1981: 9) .

The form of the city, Fishman (1987:12) argues, "rests ultimately upon the values and choices of the powerful groups within the city". It was therefore the decisions made by the bourgeoisie in the early industrial cities of England that set the pattern of Anglo-American suburban growth. This is comparable to the decisions of their counterparts made in the 1850s and 1860s in Paris, and supported by the government intervention, to live in the city centre in flats, which created the "modern continental-style c i ty" (Fishman, !987:12) .

Suburbanization in England started in the eighteenth century, a century in which the number of urban dwellers rose from one million to three million. However , these new suburbs, although socially and geographically distinguishable from the town, had urban appearances: terraced houses flanking streets and squares. It was only after the early nineteenth century that the pattern of the modern suburbs began to be established. Half a century before the arrival of cheap mass transit, around the 1890s, the largest English towns such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and London, were suburbanized and socially segregated. When compared to the Scottish and continental Europe's compact cities, where the town's extension was vertically accommodated, it becomes evident that suburbanization was an English development. Even in most American cities until the 1870s, compact fabric of "walking" cities grew without suburbanization or pronounced social segregation (Thompson,1982).

Suburbia are described as "bourgeois Utopias", as the "collective creation of the Anglo-American middle class" (Fishman,1987: x) , as the "collective effort to live a private l i fe" (Mumford, quoted in Fishman,1987: x). Their creation was, and is, associated with a separation of home and workplace, and the introduction of masses of commuters. It was associated with an emerging sense of cultural identity of the middle class families in the nineteenth century, with the "code of individual responsibility, male economic dominance and female domestic subordination, and family-nurtured morality" that was expressed in this particular physical form (Thompson, ! 982: 13).

The criticisms of the inter-war suburban sprawl in Britain led to the establishment of the planning system and to the introduction of new towns. This preveiited a massive suburban sprawl, and channelled new development into urban forms such as dormitory towns and urbanized villages or the transformation of older suburbs. What has remained, in the face of the planners' efforts, is the separation of home and work and hence commuting (Thompson,! 982).

In the United States, suburbs have "succeeded too well" , creating new urban


I

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 new suburbs, as best exemplified by Orange County in Southern California, are no longer relying on the city centres. Suburban workplaces, shopping malls and residential areas mean that suburbanites can work, shop and live without visiting the city. For a long time, these trends have continuously undermined the cities and their centres. Suburbs continue to be criticized today, this time as anachronistic: "we continue to build post-World War II suburbs as if families were large and had only one breadwinner, the jobs were all downtown, land and energy were endless and another lane on the freeway would end traffic congestion" (Calthorpe,1994: xii).

Suburbs have grown in many 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). The new Russian bourgeoisie can afford to flee the city, from its cramped flats, its horrendous pollution, and its rising crime. They are now "embracing suburbia with an enthusiasm unparalleled anywhere in the world" . 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 BMW when everyone else in the neighbourhood has one, too" .

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. What 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 wasdeveloped 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 were not needed. At the same time, industrial production and the workers' collective lives formed the central concerns of the Bolsheviks, which meant some form of population agglomeration was seen to be 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 whose 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).

Soviet revolutionaries in the 1920s and 1930s mistrusted the cities as places for accumulation of wealth. Among them were "deurbanists" , who wanted to demolish Moscow eventually (Hall,1988: 201). The socialist countries of the Third World , such as Cuba, used these arguments for their anti-urban policies. T h e depopulation of the cities in Vietnam, and the disastrous effects of such policies on urban lives in Cambodia, are now well known (Government of Vietnam, 1985; Lefebvre, in Bürgel et al.,1987).

Broadacre City 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 was , he bel ieved, the future of the metropolis, as the wide use of cars and telephones would 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 monstrous metropolis .

Frank Lloyd Wright's ideal city, Broadacre City, as exhibited in 1935 in N e w York, was a plea to abolish the metropolis. T h e city was decentred and scattered over the countryside to the extent that the town and country were not distinguishable from each other any more. W h a t was left of this decentralization was buildings in the countryside: it was not even possible to see the city at all. Covering 250 km^ or more were hundreds of homesteads, each set within a minimum one acre of land. All modern institutions, such as schools, factories, stores and cultural centres, were small-scale institutions scattered around the settlement. Each citizen was strongly attached to land and would be a part-t ime farmer, but also a part-time mechanic and a part-time intellectual. In this way, he saw Broadacre City as "the plastic form of a genuine democracy" , in which there is no difference between urban and rural lifestyles (Fishman,1977: 91 -96 ,122 -134) .

Micro-urbanism of the small t o w n paradigm

As a reaction to the alienation and degradation of the metropolis , and to the individualism of suburban growth, the small town paradigm has been a powerful movement in the last two centuries. This paradigm has been based on idealizing small communities, on the small town as a place where intersubjective communication is still possible. The rejection of the large city and the idealization of the small town has been used by some of its proponents to romanticize pre-modern urbanism. It has also been used as a compromise between urbanism and anti-urbanism.

Micro-urbanism is a trend searching for a challenge to the excesses of the metropolis and for a form of control on the growth of suburbs. Its political standpoint is often reformist, as can be seen from the long line of micro-urbanists. From the early socialists' utopianism to Ebenezer Howard's path to social reform.


from the Soviet rejection of large cities as sites of capital accumulation and exploitation of workers, to the American New Urbanism's rejection of suburbs as an unsustainable waste of time, space and resources, this trend has an argument to make. The small town paradigm can also be isolationist and ultra conservative, as portrayed in many films and stories. A character in a John Updike story, for example, brings together all that he sees as the essence of being an American; "I'm an American. Eleventh-generation German. White , Protestant, Gentile, small-town middle-class. I am pure Amer ican" (Updike,1995) . Whatever the format of the small town paradigm, it seems to draw upon some form of collective, rather than individualistic, ideals. W h e n confronting the metropohs , with its pluralism and diversity, however, micro-urbanism has the potential to collapse into a reactionary position.

The design of small towns reflects this communitar ianism and its challenge to the individualism of the suburbs and the anonymity of the metropolis. The major trend in this century which represented this trend w a s the garden cities and new towns movement. It is now being fol lowed by new urbanism.

Garden cities The idea of garden cities was introduced by Ebenezer Howard in 1898. As with other major urban ideas of this century, its origins lie in the conditions of the industrial cities of the nineteenth century, for w h i c h the garden cities were thought to be a remedy. The Industrial Revolution had caused a rapid urbanization in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century. F r o m 1860 on, surburban railway helped .London's spread across the surrounding countryside (Hall, 1975). Unprecedented densities developed, with all their well-known social and physical consequences. As places of crime, disease, and poverty, cities were criticized by most commentators.

In this context, Ebenezer H o w a r d , who is regarded as the midpoint in line between nineteenth-century Utopians and twentieth-century planners (Camhis, 1979: 27), put forward his garden cities proposal . In his Three Magnet diagram, he introduces positive and negative elements in town and country, and suggests their marriage as a solution (Howard,1960: 48). The town is a place of social opportunity and amusement, with high wages and more chances of employment. On the other hand, it is closing out nature and is overcrowded; there are high rents and prices, excessive hours of toil; distance from work and the "isolation of crowds" ; fogs, draughts and slums. The country magnet, as compared with the town magnet, offers beauty and wealth; low rents; fresh air, sunlight and health; while there the hands are out of work, the w a g e s are low, and the lack of public spirit and amusement is felt. A combination of these two magnets would be free from the disadvantages of either (Howard,1960: 4 6 ^ 7 ) .

Howard's proposal is a city of 30 ООО inhabitants in a circular form, to be built in 1000 acres, surrounded by a rural area of 5000 acres in which 2000 more live. His ideas were influenced by the model industrial settlements, the first of which was built by Robert Owen in N e w Lanark in Scotland at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These model towns were built fol lowing the idea that "good work could only be expected from well-fed, well-clothed, and educated workers"

L e T O 4 v J 0 B . T a : IKlOUlTRlAi- АЛГА5

Figure 7.9. The two garden cities of Welwyn and Letchworth were developed on the basis of Ebenezer Howard's ideas


(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, "perfect " social order, expressed in "perfect" geometrical forms of circles and squares.

Howard'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, Howard proposes a system of multiplication of settlements. He introduces, under the name 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, 1960 :55 ,142) .

With his 'supporters 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 Welwyn in 1919-1920 (Figure 7.9).

The design of the garden cities was influenced by 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 minor roads should bend. This was completed by cul-de-sacs, which reflected a new attitude to the design of houses in relation to the streets, creating a sense of enclosure and intimacy (Bayley,1975:18).

The plan of Letchworth, 55 km north of London, was designed by 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 1919-1920, and designed by 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 between 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 "neighbourhood unit" . 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 km), bounded with main arteries, to provide a safe area for children to reach the school. The primary school was to be used at nights by adults as a community 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 New York Plan, inspired by the social concerns of the time. It stemmed, on the scientific side, from Charles Horton Couley, who emphasized the part played by "the intimate, face-to-face community, one based on the family, the common place, and general shared

interests, rather than on specialised vocations and conscious affiliations" (Mumford,1954). Its basis was what the German sociologists called Gemeinschaft, as opposed to Gesellschnft. Its two other points of origin were related to "social impoverishment" and to "an attempt at social integration". An example of such tendencies was the Social Unit movement in Cincinnati, seeking to rehabilitate democratic institutions at the neighbourhood level. Perry defined "a new generalized urban pattern" that would change the basic unit of planning from the city block or the avenue, to the more complex unit of the neighbourhood (Mumford,1954: 259-261) .

The concept was widely successful, was adopted in many schemes and gave rise to discussions about the degree of isolation in a neighbourhood unit, its size, the mixture of classes and its consequences (Mumford,1954). Gradually, however, the neighbourhood unit concept, with its social objective, was attacked on the grounds that it was essentially anti-urban, attempting to idealize the form of village life, and that it would fail to face up to the modern structure of urban life (Goss,1961).

Radburn

Between the world wars, influenced by Howard and by the experiences of Unwin and Parker, the Radburn idea was developed in the United States. This idea, which became widespread throughout the world, has been adopted as a device that could give some order to the apparent disorder of the suburban sprawl.

About 25 km away from N e w York in New Jersey, Radburn was planned to be a new town. However, not being able to provide the green belt and the industrial zone, it remained a mere suburb. Its planners, Clarence Stein and Flenry Wright, had previously travelled to Britain to explore new ideas. The original idea for the layout of Radburn, however, was proposed by a young general manager, Herbert Emmerich, in 1928 (Stein,1966: 39).

The Radburn pattern is widely accepted as being a superblock with a park at its centre. The entire block is encircled by a service road, from which roads lead inwards to cul-de-sacs giving access to groups of houses. The idea was 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. The living side of the house, living room and as many as possible bedrooms, was facing pedestrian ways running through the central park and its social facilities in the middle. The service side of the house, incorporating the kitchen and the garage, faced the road. The complete separation of pedestrian and vehicular routes is strengthened by using bridges and underpasses in connection with other superblocks (Stein,1966: 37 -73) .

As Mumford mentioned, although the superblock and continuous inner park had been employed before by Unwin and Parker in Hampstead Garden Suburb, these were not used systematically or universally (Stein,1966: 16). Furthermore, some 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 same time, what seemed to undermine these changes was the retention of the conventional suburban house (Mumford,1975).


Tfie I^adbum pattern remained essentially a suburban pattern. It has been abandoned by the New Urbanists who, in search of new urban forms for the suburban growth, have rejected anti-urban, low-density solutions and have preferred a return to the urban grid.

Planned decentralization of London

As a reaction to the inter-war urban sprawl and the damage that occurred during the Second World War, the Greater London Plan of 1944 (Abercrombie,1945) was based on the assumption that m o r e than one mill ion inhabitants of London should be moved to the outskirts to release the congested areas of the centre. However, this was not a recipe for urban sprawl but a "methodical or mass decentralization and dispersal". It was to be achieved b y adding to the populat ion of existing towns and by setting up new settiements outside London.

The plan criticized the "lack of focal points" in the n e w suburban developments, which had become "tragically ev ident" (Abercrombie,1945: 2) . The main feature of the inter-war growth had been "sporadic growth and sprawl over the countryside". The plan put forward the case for "ordered growth and reconstruction on a basis of community planning" (Abercrombie,1945).

The ideal of small communities as the centre-piece of the plan can be seen in its demand for preservation of the existing villages and towns and the grouping of new growth into existing or new communities . T h e n e w communit ies that the plan was asking for became part of what is generally k n o w n as the British new towns.

British new towns New towns can be undoubtedly identified as o n e of the main themes of urban development in the twentieth century (Madanipour,1992,1993) . For decades, the approaches to the design and development of the built environment around the world were largely influenced b y the experience of the British garden cities and new towns, which attracted "great international interest" from sociological, architectural and planning viewpoints (Fleming et al., 1984; 227). The arrival of the new towns and their importance was compared, by Lewis M u m f o r d , with the invention of the aeroplaiie (in Howard , 1960: 29) . It has been said that two major movements have been influential in forming the shape of the built environment in the twentieth century; New T o w n s and Modern M o v e m e n t in architecture (Jacobs & Appleyard, 1987).

In Britain, the new towns are those developed during the post-war period under the 1946 Act. They were "purposefully founded, planned and developed . . . as an alternative . . . to city overgrowth and congestion on the one hand and unduly sparse or scattered human settlement on the other h a n d " (Osborn & Whittick, 1963: 7). Hxcluding the four new towns of Northern Ireland, the 28 new towns have added just over a million people to the original populat ion of the designated areas, creating nearly half a mill ion extra jobs within those areas (Nuffield Foundation,1986; 10).

The general approaches to, and principles used in the design of, the new towns changed over the period of their development , in line with the changes in the

J

FIRST Gene RAT

2.

M i a o u K6»M6s.- AccEssioXiT/

Figure 7.10. Four main stages can be identified in the design of the British new towns

208 Design of Urban Space Images of Perfection 2 0 9

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 some generalizations that would allow us to typify the design approaches in four main stages (Figure 7.10). The first stage is that of isolated, small towns with a limited mobility and a radial, dispersed pattern of form. The second is a more compact urban 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 well-integrated communities.

In the first generation of the new towns, such as in Stevenage, Crawley and Hemel Hempstead, the influence of garden cities is visible. The 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 shopping 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. The 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 neighbourhood units. The socio-spatial system is arranged according to the idea of clusters and centres, which is seen as a means to social integration of the townspeople (Osborn & Whittick,1963; Chermayeff & Tzonis,1971; Llewelyn-Davies,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.

To 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 by Cumbernauld new town and the planned new town. Hook (Greater London Council, 1965). This second type of town was related to its regional context but in contrast to its immediate surroundings. It had a strong concentrated linear centre from which all the inhabitants were 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 were eliminated and the heights of buildings were

increased. The population target became higher and the industrial zone tended to be spread over the town.

3. Combining 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 by 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 grouped in a linear form around a public transport route as the generator of urban form. A network of roads encompasses these component parts of the town structure, connecting them to each other (Wilson & Womersley,1966; Ling,1967; Irvine N e w Town Corporation,1971).

4. When the situation and demands changed, as society became wealthier and more mobile, the problem was no longer one of simply providing minimum acceptable standards; the question was now about striving for a better quality of hfe. In these circumstances, with higher levels of car ownership, freedom of choice and flexibility were sought. The 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 scheme might be subject to change, even before the scheme had become operational.

In the fourth stage of the evolution of new town design, exemplified by Washington and Milton Keynes, these ideas are reflected in the complete predominance 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 boundaries just to make it accessible from the road network (Llewelyn-Davies, Weeks & partners, !966; Llewelyn-Davies,1972; Walker,1982; Holley,1983).

Nearly all these transformations in 30 years of new town design might be seen to be related to the increasing importance of mobility as the cardinal feature of the Zeitgeist. What remained unchanged in these developments, however, was the search for some 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 and cluster housing continues its centrality in the design approaches in the new towns. The use of superblocks and abundant green space are other unchanged features, although considerable changes in detail are traceable. The functional segregation of access, vehicular and pedestrian, remains approximately the same, although less vigorous than in the early stages.

New Urbanism The 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


adjusted for the patterns of modern hving. h draws its appeal o n the popular preference for living in small towns. According to a Gallup s u r v e y i n 1989 and published in the N O T York Times (11 September 1990) , 34% of t h o s e questioned preferred to live in a small town. This was followed by a 247c preference for a suburb, 22% for a farm, and 19% for a city (in Krieger & Lennertz, 1 9 9 1 ) . In focusing on small towns, therefore, the New Urbanism is responding to a present demand. It is also drawing upon a nostalgia for the American Dream, a n d as such "K represents a rediscovery of planning and architectural traditions that h a v e shaped some of the most livable, memorable communities in America" (Bressi ,1994; xxv). It is a demand for what some see as "a cherished American icon: that o f a compact, close-knit community" (Katz,1994: ix) (Figure 7.11).

The work of Florida-based architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, especially their design of Seaside, has been widely considered as pioneering an expanding movement. Duany and Plater-Zyberk's approach, w h i c h was first known as "traditional neighbourhood development" or T N D , h a s b e e n used in resort settlements, the redevelopment of shopping centres, mobile h o m e parks and suburban settings. The basic unit of their approach is a ne ighbourhood, which is.

Figure 7.11. German Village is an example of the kind of American sma'l town that New Urbanists try to recreate. [Columbus, Ohio, USA)

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 " the inevitable results of mindless greeci", but "are thoroughly planned to be as they are" . The 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 buildings" (Duany, 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 whole" (Duany & Plater-Zyberk,1994: xx).

They identify the fundamental organizing elements of the N e w Urbanism as the neighbourhood, the district and the corridor, and then offer principles of design for each. An ideal neighbourhood should have (1) "a centre and an edge"; (2) an "optimal s ize" of "a quarter mile from centre to edge"; (3) a "balanced mix of activities—dwelling, shopping, working, schooling, worshipping and recreating"; (4) "a fine network of interconnecting streets", which organizes building sites and traffic; (5) priority for "publ ic space and the appropriate location of civic buildings" (Duany & Plater-Zyberk,1994: xvii). The district, the second fundamental element, is "an urbanized area that is functionally specialized". Rather than an area with one function, it is an area in which a function predominates and other functions are clustered around 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. The 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 " the haphazardly residual space that remains outside subdivisions and shopping". It is true that "it is defined by its adjacent districts and neighbourhoods and provides entry to them", but it should be seen as " a n urban element characterized by its visual continuity" (Duany & Plater-Zyberk,1994: x ix -xx) . This continuity is partly ensured through the use of grid-like street patterns. They argue that frequent connections in street networks would provide a choice of paths and so ease traffic congestion, while controlling the speed of cars (Bressi,1994: xxxii). To 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 new ordinances and codes, which have become their hallmark (Duany, Plater-Zyberk & Chellman,1989).

Another major figure in N e w Urbanism is Peter Calthorpe, who applies new urbanist ideas at the regional scale. The Environmental Design Research Association's advance notice for the 1996 events introduced him as being named by


Neiusweek magazine as one of 25 "innovators on tfie cutting edge" 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 neighbourhood". 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 new 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, what needs attention now is suburbia and the urban regions (Calthorpe,1994: xi).

In this way, Calthorpe is asking for "urbanism of the pieces" and "urbanism of the whole" . The latter refers to a new order for the urban sprawl, so that the edge cities and the suburban settlements acquire the "fundamental qualities of real towns; pedestrian scale, an identifiable centre and edge, integrated diversity of use and population and defined public space" (Calthorpe,1994: xv). In the urbanism of the whole, the principles used to design a neighbourhood should be appUed to a whole metropolis;

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 "transit-oriented development" 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 new urbanist ideas to regions are a major challenge facing this movement , as a conference early in 1995, entitled "New Regionalism", explored. The new urbanist settlements are increasingly designed and built, and their codes finding application in wider contexts. For example, in the redevelopment of the Hulme district of Manchester inner city, a modified version of Duany and Plater-Zyberk's codes has been used.

The first statement of new urbanism can be seen to be Leon Krier's entry in the La Villette competition, which won the second prize in 1976. New Urbanism draws heavily upon Garden Cities, the neighbourhood unit concept, and the British New Towns, although the latter often fail to be mentioned. For example, Ebenezer Howard had proposed the idea of Social Cities, where a cluster of garden cities were interlinked. This was the basis for some new towns to use public transport as the spine of the development of compact settlements, as exemplified by Redditch

(Wilson & Womersley,1966) and Irvine (Irvine N e w Town Corporation,1971) new-towns. Although there is a clear difference in the economic base of the N e w Urbanist settlements and the garden cities, there are a large number of similarities between them. One difference is in the wide use of Radburn cul-de-sacs in the new towns, as opposed to the use of grids in new urbanist settlements. Another difference between 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 Towns, on the other hand, were new developments which embodied progress and modernity at the time of their introduction. A point of contradiction is, therefore, that N e w Urbanism uses the same functionalist language of modernism, but wears a traditional appearance, especially in the works of Duany and Plater-Zyberk with their picturesque renderings.

The strength and vitality of N e w Urbanism has predominantly stemmed from its critical stance towards modernism and suburban sprawl. In their theorizations, the new urbanists tend to promote a social and environmental mix, as a reaction to the socio-spatial segregation which is the hallmark of the suburbs. This theorization, however, takes place within a market mechanism which is capable of using these ideas as a selling device without taking their social content too seriously. With the market success of New Urbanist settlements, as they become increasingly popular with middle-class home buyers, the aspiration of the designers to offer a social mix would be adjusted to the "realit ies" of the market. This was also the case with modernist ideas, which started as a critique and ended in their widespread use b y commercial interests. Commercialization of the N e w Urbanist ideals, in a similar way, would mean that it too can become part of a market operation which does not welcome a mixture of different social groups, as it jeopardizes the comfort of the middle classes by opening up their space to the potentially "undesirables" . As Audriac and Shermyen (1994) argue, the social consequences of neotraditional design are problematic.

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. One trend has accepted and appreciated the metropolis. Urbanism, in its post-modern or modern versions, whether 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 been the gradual retreat of the middle 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. As 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-


urbanism has always been promoted by visionaries and Utopians, and has largely remained a marginal, but influential, enterprise in the development of cities.

What these three trends have not come to terms with is the fact that suburbs are now parts of a larger entity which incorporates the city itself. T h e city centre and the suburbs together make up the urban region and it is at this scale that cities should be theorized and managed. Urbanism therefore should not exclude suburbs. The suburbia have matured enough, and house a large enough population, to be considered as an integral part of the city. If urban design is promoting urbanism (and micro-urbanism), then it will have to address the whole urban region. Urban design is not merely a tool for the beautification of the city centres; it is a tool with which to address the urban regions and their constituent parts.

CHAPTERS

Design of urban space

H o w can w e bring together the various discussions we have had so far on understanding urban space and urban design? The variety and wide scope of issues entail clarifying the interrelationship between these discussions and to show how, on the basis of these discussions, we can move towards developing consistent perspectives into urban space and urban design. W e have explored how urban desigri is directly related to the way we understand urban space, our perspectives into it, our potential use of space, the role of urban designer, the nature of design, the scale of designers ' engagement, the place of design in administrative and economic systems, and the images of ideal environments that designers and patrons pursue. It is time now to bring these together to offer a matrix of relationships which are at work in the process of urban design.

The nature of urban design is conditioned by the way we understand it as a process and its product, which are interdependent. Space can be best understood, we can argue, following Lefebvre, by tracing its development. In this way, by concentrating on space production processes, we combine space and time in our investigation. Space and time, the product and the process, integrate closely in an investigation into the nature of urban design: to understand space we must understand the processes which produce it. Similarly, to understand these processes, which include urban design, we need to have an understanding of their product.

The context and the outcome of the urban design process, its (potential) product, is urban space. Our approach to urban design is directly related to the way w e approach space. Depending on whether w e understand space as appearances, as the physical organization of objects, or as a container for social relationships, the nature and the outcome of our urban design will be different.

Space is a central concern for a number of spatial arts and sciences, which have generated a range of sometimes opposing definitions and conceptualizations of the subject. At the heart of these opposing views lies a single dichotomy. As we saw in Chapter 1, Albert Einstein described this dichotomy as being between "space as container of all material objects" versus "space as positional quality of the world of material objects" . These formulations, or as Einstein put it "these free creations of human imaginat ion" , have had profound effects on spatial arts and sciences during the past century. The dichotomy between absolute and relational concepts of space, a subject of debate for philosophers and physicists for the last three centuries, has come to have a dramatic impact on the twentieth-century urban environments.

216 Design of Urban Space Design of Urban Space 217

The dichotomy was between understanding space as a mental construct or a real phenomenon as understood by the senses; between a pyramid, which we grasp from outside, and a labyrinth, which we understand from inside. It was translated in urban design into a dichotomy between void and corporeal mass, between space as an unlimited entity, in which buildings and other objects occurred, and space as the relationship between these objects. The modernist transformation of urban space in the twentieth century and the post-modernist reaction to this transformation represent the two sides of this dichotomy. For modernists, it was the space that mattered, and to envelop and shape this space into a useful entity, buildings and objects were needed. Their undertaking was to radically transform space to take on new characteristics. Post-modernists, on the contrary, asked for new sensibilities against such abstract thinking. They demanded an emphasis on visible, corporeal mass, on buildings, their details and their relationships, including the spaces between buildings.

The dichotomy in understanding space and its impact on the nature and outcome of urban design can be seen in a variety of ways . If we stress that understanding space is only through visual means (for example, as the Townscape movement did), then our urban design would tend to deal with appearances. What can be seen, therefore, matters most and urban design becomes a beautification exercise, an attempt to give visual delight. Urban design becomes only an aesthetic undertaking. Whi le this m a y b e an important undertaking, it is b y no means the only role urban design plays. T o o much emphasis on the aesthetic role of urban design would mask the wide array of other issues that it deals with. It also undermines the fact that our spatial understanding is not merely through the faculty of sight.

If we accept that space is m o r e than its appearances , then we would have another form of urban design. If w e understand space as the container for, and the organization of, material objects, our urban design becomes a transformation of this space. In this sense, urban design becomes a technical process engaged in what is needed in such transformation. Inevitably, such an undertaking has substantial technical requirements . However , too much emphasis on understanding space as a physical entity would m a s k the fact that this space also has a social dimension. In its quest for instrumental gains, therefore, the urban design process can undermine the social dimension of space and be no more than an engineering undertaking.

W e may go beyond understanding space as appearances or spatial organization and look at its interrelationship with people w h o inhabit this space. A major tendency is to concentrate on the way we utihze this space, on functional space. This enables urban design to make the best use of resources for utilitarian gains. However , we m a y realize there can be a conflict between different functions of space. Space can have an exchange value, for those who use it as a commodity and a vehicle for investment, and a use value, for those who use space for any other purpose. Emphasizing the exchange value and some forms of use value means approaching space for instrumental gains. The question becomes: which function of space should urban design promote? Furthermore, concentrating on instrumental gains can undermine the deeply rooted social and psychological significance of space.

To confront this shortcoming, w e may concentrate on the individual significance of urban space, how individuals and groups interpret and use space. Our urban design becomes sensitive to the yneaning of places, to the relationship between individuals and small-scale spaces or the impact of large-scale changes on them. This gives us an insight into the psychological significance of space for individuals and groups and their behaviour within space. Too much emphasis on this aspect, however, undermines the broad social contexts in which individual and psychological significance develop. Our urban design becomes sensitive, but only in a limited sense.

By analysing the psychological significance of space for individuals and groups, we see how different places have different identities. Rather than an abstract notion of space, in which space everywhere has similar characteristics, we become more sensitive to local circumstances in which different people live. Understanding the way space is appreciated and used by people will help urban design acquire a degree of sensibility, which would help to maintain and enhance these local identities. A narrow approach to identity, however, means to see places as having fixed identities, undermining their constant change. Knowing the identity of places without knowing the impact of t ime and change on them would lead to an urban design that limits opportunities and freedom of choice. Allowing for multiple identities and flexibility for transformation is what can be missed in design for fixed identities.

To overcome the abstract, functionalist notions of space, we may give priority to difference and disorder. W e may question the validity of conventional urban design, for its attempts to look from above and impose order onto the diversity of everyday life. This imposition of order is prevalent in the modernist version of urbanism, where urban space has been transformed beyond recognition. It is also inherent in the anti-urbanist approaches: in the individualist version of suburbs which show an escape from difference, or in the bureaucratic version of Soviet anti-urbanism which sought to abolish difference. W e may see urban design as part of the political and economic systems which dominate the western societies, and which intend to dominate in the rest of the world. Therefore, w e may resist any orders that these systems may want to impose on the lifeworld. W e would then argue for a view from below, from the everyday life perspective, where difference prevails. Too much emphasis on difference, however, may lead to a breakdown of relationships between different groups, and to an urban design which follows tribal interests and identities. Ultimately, it would be an urban design of relativism. Without some broader frameworks , such relativism may lead to a total collapse of all forms of social action, of which urban design is one.

There are clear limitations in concentrating on psychological significance of space without addressing its wider contexts. We may confront this limitation by paying attention to the large-scale societal processes and mechanisms which deal with space, ranging from land economics to political conflicts over space. We concentrate on social significance of space and on social, political and economic relationships within space. Our urban design would be sensitive to structural frameworks of urban society and environments. With too much emphasis on these broad issues, however, w e may lose our sensibility towards aesthetics of space, or space as a physical entity, or the psychological significance of space. Our urban design would


tend towards management of spatial relationships, undermining spatial Organization and form.

Looking at social relationships means to address the dynamism and change within urban space. Taking into account the factor of time can be a substantial improvement in our understanding of space and our urban design undertakings. To understand space more fully, we need to follow its evolution and change over time. The production of space, in a historical as well as a short-term perspective, becomes a key in understanding space. To see space integrated with time offers us a dynamic approach which analyses phenomena as constantly changing, leading to design with change and for change. Too much change and too fast a pace of change, however, would lead to a disintegration of identities and loss of control over objects and events.

A clear way out of these limitations is to see urban space as a socio-spatial entity and to see urban design as a socio-spatial process. In this way w e may take into account the social and psychological significance of physical space in our understanding of space and in transforming it. W e may see space in a dynamic relationship with time, so that our urban design would be an open exercise rather than a limiting procedure. It has been argued here that understanding urban space and understanding the nature of urban space are best possible at the intersection between space production and everyday life. This is an intersection between the systems and lifeworld, between structure and agency, between exchange value and use value.

To understand these intersections and to be able to design within them, we need to know about the political, economic and cultural processes that produce and use urban space.

Urban designers are among the agencies involved in urban development process, interacting with other agencies and with rules, resources and ideas which form a social and spatial context and therefore frame the process. The changing nature of development agencies and the treatment of space as a commodity have far-reaching impacts on the way space is understood and managed. A gap has developed and widened between exchange value and use value of space, as best exemplified by the privatization of public space in the cities.

For the market to operate, there needs to be a balance between exchange value and use value. The built environment which is developed must be useful enough to be marketable. The nature of the market, however , is to tend more towards maximizing the exchange value. To reduce the gap and to respond to changes in investment opportunities, the development industry has moved towards a standardization of design, a change often associated with mass production of commodities. Modernist urbanism attempted to utilize the logic of mass production and standardization at the service of use value. This was , however, a narrow notion of use value, undermining the diversity of the lifeworld beyond instrumental gains.

Tlie role of urban designers who are aware of the development industry's tendency towards maximizing exchange value therefore becomes to emphasize the use value in a sensitive way. Yet they should be aware that they often operate at the intersection between these two values. Urban designers can bo in a position to maximize the exchange value of space, or to help the lifeworld develop its

independent spheres of activity. At the intersection between the systems and the lifeworld, b e t w e e n exchange value and use value, between space production and everyday life ( intersections which correspond but do not necessarily overlap), they will ult imately have to try to strike a balance.

Striking a ba lance of this kind, between the market and civil society, has traditionally been done by the state, especially through the planning system which was an o u t c o m e of a coalition between these players. The transformation of this coalition, as a result of major changes in western economies, has redefined the relationship be tween the state, the market and civil society. The planning system has been u n d e r pressure, from above, from the market and the central government, to be m o r e flexible and al low the market to operate in a less restricted way. At the same t ime it h a s been under pressure from be low, from the lifeworld, to pay more attention to the use value.

The relat ionship between town planning and urban design has been changing, from w h e n they largely overlapped to there being a large gap in between them. As , urban design is undertaken by both the private and public sectors, it often falls in a : rather vague area in the relationship between the state, the market and civil society. If the urban designers ' contribution is to support and enhance the use value of space while responding to the dynamics of exchange, then it can redefine its relationships with both town planning and development industry. Urban design's emphasis on u r b a n space can bring to architecture and town planning agendas a sensibility and a balance between social and spatial concerns. Rather than being blamed for replacing social concerns with aesthetic concerns, urban design can promote a socio-spatial agenda in which both social and aesthetic concerns matter. In this way, it can provide arenas in which use value of urban space can be better understood and enhanced.

It may b e argued that urban design is conducted only within the spheres of the state and the market and as such its contribution to maximizing use value can be limited. T h e question therefore becomes whether there is an urban design by civil socictyl This requires more active participation by civil society in the production and regulat ion of space. In the current pattern of space production, only the large-scale developers and the governments can afford controlling urban development beyond a s ingle site. Urban design is a tool only at the disposal of large-scale, organized plavers . It is either an undertaking by the state to regulate the environmental form and function, or it is that part of a large-scale developer's job to co-ordinate a large-scale urban development project. But what happens if these two political and economic systems decide against urban design? Where the state appears to b e withdrawing its services, but tightening up its control mechanisms, what is the hope for the future of urban design? Similarly, the development industry m a y he only interested in maximizing returns on their financial investment in single si tes , without paying attention to social and environmental contexts. If urban design is the process with which we shape our urban environments, there must be a m e c h a n i s m to ensure the continuity of this vital enterprise at the service of citizens and the social and environmental quality of their cities. At the moment, civil society has little direct impact on the creation of urban form, except b y individual, often unrelated, actions. In Britain, it appears that many civic societies that interfere in urban development have a concern for preservation and


conservation, rather than a role in the future shape of urban areas. What are the mechanisms in which a civil society can influence or 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, who promote 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 complex 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 been 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 booms of the 1980s, emphasis on public space in the cities grew, as another manifestation of a search for social and spatial cohesion. At the same time as the urban space was being developed by private companies 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 double role, as many other urban design ideas which had developed as a critique, were utilized by the development industry once the industry recognized some commercial value in these ideas.

The two 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 money have created in urban development. Yet these major trends have remained largely marginal as their impact on space production patterns has been relatively insignificant. For civil society to have a stronger role in space production, there must b e either a substantial change in the way space is produced, through a restructuring of the construction industry, or there should be a change in the way 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 now, to the role of consumers who interact, often on an individual basis but in increasingly sophisticated ways , with the systems of supply in the marketplace. Access to this market exchange, however, is l imited to those who have sufficient resources. As such, a lack of resources means social and spatial marginalization and therefore the disintegration of urban space. It was partly against a fear of socio-spatial 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 neighbourhoods. This has often been a communitarian attempt in the face of individualistic tendencies of suburbanism and the amorphous mass of the cities. However , 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 socio-spatial disintegration.

In this book, it has been argued that we need to confront the ambiguities of urban design by a broad definition, rather than a narrow delimitation of the subject matter. It has been argued that we should see urban design as the multidisciplinary activity with which we shape and manage urban 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

these processes and products. To do this, they need to address technical, social and expressive concerns, through visual and verbal means of communication.

The twentieth-century application of Cartesian rationality in the transformation of urban space has been widely 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. What we can do, however, is to broaden the scope of rationality and to conduct urban design accordingly.

It has been argued here that to transform urban space through urban design, we need to understand urban space. This understanding is best made possible by concentrating on the intersection between space production and everyday life, between exchange value and use value, between the systems of money and power and the lifeworld, between the socio-spatial structures and the agencies interacting with them. Urban designers operate at these intersections and the nature of their work is best understood in this context. To be aware of this position means that urban designers can and should pay attention to their role, which can at best be helping the one side in the intersection which is often most at risk of being undermined.

To be able to make this contribution, it is crucial to see urban space in a socio-spatial 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 narrow concentration on one of the aspects of this complex context and process would lead to an undermining of the important roles that urban design can play.

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Page numbers in bold refer to figures.

Abercrombie, P. 197 access 148,153,161,172,175-6,197,205,

208-9,220 Ackerman, B. 148 admiration for cities 187-8 aesthetic control 161-3,165,179 aesthetic judgement 165-9,182 aesthetics 46-7,97, 99,124,131-2,159-70,

175,177-8,181-2,189,192, 216-17, 219 African Americans 64 Alexander, C. 42,220 Ambrose, P. 128 Anglo-American 184 Ansières sur Oise 180-1 anti-urbanism 184,186,195-201,205,217 Arendt, H. 148 Aristotle 5,19,75,78 art 43-4,82-3, 95-6, 99 ,101 ,103^ , 167 Austria 80,188,215

41, 77,188

Baltimore 141 Barnett,]. 99 Baron Haussmann Battaile, G. 13 Baudrillard,]. 193 Bauhaus 97 behaviour 58,63, 65-6, 68, f Benevolo, L. 40 Benn,S. 148 Berkeley, Ca 96

' 25 175,199

3,192,217

Berman, M. Birmingham Blau,]. 6 Bolshevism 185,200 Boston 67,141 Bourne, L. 31,33,47,51-2 Brennan, W. 178 Bristol 173 Britain 45,54-5,75,82-3, 86, 96-7,100-1,

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 48 -9 ,55 ,123^ ,177 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 index 239

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

Faneuil Hall 141 fear 80-3,144,146,187,188 feminism 84,148 film and architecture 14-15, 21 finance industry 128-9,139^2,144 Fishman, R. 199 flaneurs 77 Florida 210 Fordism 48,193 Foucault, M. 76 fourth dimension 20, 22-3 frames of reference 25 Frampton, K. 39 France 140,180-1,188 functionalism 45-8,52, 132, 190, 213,217

garden cities 183,202^,213 gated neighbourhoods 82,144 Gateshead 86,150-1 Gaus,G. 148 gemeinschaft 205 geometry 5,22,31,33, 65, 75-6, 87,204 Germany 52, 54-5,140, 205 gesellschaft 205 Giddens, A. xi, 19, 75,129,132^, 183 Giedion, S. 9,21 Girouard, M. 39 globahzation 141-2,154,163 Gottdiener, M. 19,71-3,75 Gottmann, J. 33, 41 Grainger Market 152 Greece 9,36,75,148 Greene, S. 101 Greenwich Village 78 Guildford 173

Habermas,;, xi, 18,47, 75, 111, 116, 134, 148,153,156,163

Hall, P. 57,97,101 HaIl,S. 26 Hampstead 205 Haringey 173 Harvey, D. 17, 48,193 Healey, P. 122,129,130 Hegel 16 Hemel Hempstead 208 Herat 36 hermeneutics 132 high culture 163-5,167,194 Hippodamus 75 historicity 38-9,42, 88,135 Horton Couley, C. 205 Howard, E. 201-2,205,212 Hulme 212 human ecology 19,48-9,55,75,123-4 Husserl 65,69

ideal environments 183,185-6, 215 identity 23-6,30,164-5,199, 217 He de France 180-1 individualism 201-2, 213, 220 industrial property 139-40 industriaUzation 59-61, 85-6,146,179,186,

188 innovation diffusion 142 intersubjective communication 148,151,

201, 220 Irvine 209,212 Italy 181

Jacobs, J. 80, 83 Jameson, F. 193 Jersey City 67

Kabul 36 Kant 5,163 Krier, L. 212 Krier, R. 10

La Villette 212 labyrinth 14,216 Le Corbusier 188-90,194 Lefebvre, H. xi, 14-19,26, 29, 71, 75,87,106,

133,156, 215 Leibniz 5 Leicester 173 Letchworth 204 Ufeworld 153,156,182,218-19,221 Lincoln Cathedral 39 Liverpool 199 Lloyd Wright, F. 197,201 location theory 52, 58, 65 Logan, J. xi, 122,128,130-2,141-2 logical positivism 52 London 58,141-2,160,186,197,199,202,

204, 206 Los Angeles 67,76,178 Lynch, K. xi ,67-8,95,106,115 Lyotard, J.F. 4 7 , 1 9 3 ^

Maffesoli, M. 18,74 Magri te, R. 14 Manchester 199,212 Manhattan 76 Marx, K. 127 Marxism 57,130 mass 7-10,216 mass culture 163,167 mass society 148,158 Massey, D. 23 meaning 25,30,57,63,88,194,214 mental map 63,66, 73 Mesopotamia 36

Metro Centre 66, 86 ,150-3 Miami 141 micro-urbanism 184,186, 201-13, 220 Middle East 36 Miletus 75 Milton Keynes 209 Minkowski, H. 20 modernism 9-11,13, 1^16 , 19, 27-8, 47-8,

75-6,80, 96-7,100, 113,142,158,167 184,188-92, 206, 2 1 ^ 1 8

modernization 25,193 Molotch, H. xi, 122,128,130-2 Moore, G. 63 More, T. 185 morphology 10, 26, 32,35, 53-6, 88,135-6,

180-1 Morris, A.EJ. 41,47 Moscow 201 movement 13-14,20-3 , 32, 61, 76-8, 82,175,

189,191,194, 208-9 Mumford, L. 41,206

Napoleon III 188 natural environment 35-7, 62-3, 65 neighbourhood unit 204-5,208,212 neoclassical economics 52,127,130 Netherlands 140 New Brutalism 45,101 New Earswick 204 New Lanark 202 new towns 206-9,212-13 Neiv Urbanism 105,186, 202,206, 209-13 New York 58,78,103,141,201,204 Newcastle 152-3,187 Newman, O. 80, 82-3 Newton, I. 5, 20, 22, 52 North America 141,151,186,196 Northampton 139 Northern Ireland 206 Nouvel, J. 14

objectivity 15, 57, 74, 78-9, 87, 93,110-16, 135,165

Olympia & York 142 . Orange County 60, 200 order 73, 75-8, 83-5, 87,185,194, 205, 213,

217

Owen, R. 202

paradigm 183 paradox of architecture 13-14 Paris 41,77,180,188-90,199 Parsons, T. 52 Peirce, C. 69 perfectibilism 185 Perry, C. 204-5

240 Index Index 241

Pevsner, N. 39, 43-5 phenomenology 18, 65-6, 74 Piaget,]. 65 Picturesque 45,100-1 place 23-6 planning and design 158-82, 219 planning process 100,163 planning system 156-8,171-7,181, 219 Plater-Zyberk, E. 210, 213 Plato 75 pluralism 168,179,193,202 political economy 19,29,56-60, 70, 75, 87,

122,155-6,158,167,182 Portland, Oregon 179 positivism 56-7,66 post-Fordism 48,193 post-industrialism 193 post-modernism 9,11,15-16, 22,27,47-8,

60, 75-6, 96,158,167,169,184,192-6, 216 post-structuralism 70 power 36,57,148,156,188,201,220 privatization 137,144-54, 218, 220 product 93,104-6,215,220 public participation 177,194, 219-20 public realm 95,107,144,146,148-9 public sphere 148-9 pyramid 13-14,216

Radburn 197,213 reason/rationalism 13-14,19, 29,75-6,93,

110-16,134-5,148-9,158,164,167,185, 194, 221

Redditch 209,212 redevelopment 1 9 1 ^ regulation 155,162,184, 220 relativism 168,217 Relph, E. 99 Renaissance 17, 20, 22,42,185, 204 RIBA, Royal Institute of British Architects

160,172 Richmond 173 Rome 75 Royal Fine Arts Commission 121 RTPI, Royal Town Planning Institute 93, 95,

155,172,175 Runcorn 209 Russia 200-1

Sack,R. 15,22 San Diego 178 Sant'Elia, A. 21 scale 94,96,104,152,161,172,176,192, 220 Schmarsow, A. 9 Schutz, A. 18,69,79,80 ScoOand 199,202 Scruton, R. 9,167

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,

34-5,39-40,44,55, 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 4-7,12,15,215 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 ,12,15,215 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

sprawl 186, 198,205,209,212 St Paul's 9 standardization 116,137-41,154,218 state 155-8,181,219 Stein, C. 205 Steiner, G. 186 Stevenage 208 stranger 19,68,78-80,82^,146 structuralism 16,19,55,57,70,132 structure and agency 132-5,137,157,183,

218, 221 subjectivity 15,57,74,87,93,110-16,135,

160,165,182 suburbs 85-6, 105,141, 150-2,174,180, 184,

186,188,192,196-200,202,204-6, 209-10,212-14,220

Sumer 9 superblock 205,208-9 Surrealism 13-14,16 Switzerland 69

Tafuri, M. 41-2 taste 164-5,167-9,172,193 technical process 113,216 Tehran 36 theory of relativity 20, 23 Third World 201 Tibbalds, F. 93,95,146 time 5,14,16,20-3,27,30,126,153,215,

217-18 topography 36,175 townscape 32,100-1,139,174-5 Townscape movement 45,216 Traditional Neighbourhood Development

210 traffic congestion 189,191, 200, 211 Transit-Oriented Development 212 Tschumi, B. 7,8,13,15

United States 42,51 -2,58, 67,69, 80, 82,84, 87, 96,103,105,142,163,177,179,186, 188,197, 199,202,204-5,209-10

Unwin, R. 204-5

urban design education 103-4,108 Urban Design Group 107-9 urban form 31-5 ,40 ,42 ,47,49, 51, 53-4,70,

87,134,135,142,169-70, 209 urban land theory 50-1 urban regeneration 107,192,212 urban region 105 urban structure, classical models 49-50 urbanism 19, 73,103,184,186,188-96,

211-14, 218 use value 101,130-2,139-40,154,157,161,

216, 218-19, 221 Utopia 169,183,185-6,199

Van der Laan, D. 7 Vance, J. 47 Victorian 187,191 Vietnam 201 vision 169,175,190,192,194,197, 211 visual communication 99,117,221 visual management 109,159,175,177,182 void 7-10,216

walkways 144 Walzer, M. 146 Washington 209 Watford 139 Watkins, D. 40 Welwyn 204 Westminster 173 Whitehand, J. 138-9 Wilde, O. 185 Williams, R. 26 Wilson, E. 80,84 Wirth, L. 19, 78 women 64,83-7 Woolwich 86 worid cities 58 Worid Trade Centre 76, 79 Wright, H. 205

Zevi, B. 7, 8 Zukin, S. 193

27796925 ali mad ani pour s design of urban space an inquiry into a socio spatial process

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