HINTERLAND
proximity and productivity
Visentin Alberto 2390278 Thesis Draft
Past architectural projects linked with their historical period that influenced the thesis and the proposal.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.
ABSTRACT
2.
CITY VS HINTERLAND INTRODUCTION
3.
THE ROLE OF THE HINTERLAND
13-18
4.
BREAKING DOWN BOUNDARIES
19-26
5.
LOCALIZING PRODUCTIVITY IN THE HINTERLAND
27-30
6.
THE PLACE OF PRODUCTION AND THE RURAL
31-32
7.
PROXIMITY TO ENHANCE PRODUCTIVITY
33-34
8.
THE PRODUCTIVE PHALANSTERY ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT INTRODUCTION
35-38
RESOURCES
1-4 5-12
40
hinterland
‘’ The countryside is where the radical changes are ’’
Koolhaas 1
1
“Space is not a scientific object removed from ideology or politics. It has always been political and strategic. There is an ideology of space. Because space, which seems homogeneous, which appears as a whole in its objectivity, in its pure form, such as we determine it, is a social product.” [Henri Lefebvre]
From Henri Lefebvre and his theory of space production we have gained important insights into how modern urbanization has led to growing social imbalances and highly conflicting urban spaces that are, as a direct consequence, endangering the environment worldwide. For him difference is a multidimensional concept that arises from the gaps in the fabric of everyday life and from political struggles. It must be therefore understood as an active element for the creation of urban spaces, just as efficiency and identity. We can see from this that the specific quality of an urban space arises from the simultaneous presence of very different worlds as well as value-systems such as of ethnic, cultural, social groups, activities and knowledge. Urban spaces, as stated by Lefebvre, create the possibility of bringing these different elements together, creating in such a way a community based on inter-reliance, cooperation and by providing them the possibility of becoming productive. (H. Lefebvre, 1991) The crucial issue is that urbanity is becoming a universal condition, but it does not represent the totality, which is where social, political and spatial ideas all reciprocate with each other, ABSTRACT | 2
‘’ The fundamental feature of today’s society is the irreconcilable antagonism between totality and the individual
3
Zizek
and this can be clearly be seen in today’s society where, as Zizek states: ‘’ the fundamental feature is the irreconcilable antagonism between totality and the individual ‘’, but we must differentiate the term totality from the term uniformity. While uniformity is a sign of voluntary or involuntary incorporation, and it can be used as a term describing urbanization, totality can be achieved only through a comprehensive understanding of the society’s internal relationships, taking each and every realm it is composed from in consideration and breaking down the inherited conceptions of the urban as a bounded settlement unit. Nowhere does this antagonism play out more explicitly than in the hinterlands of cities, more precisely the areas on which urbanity depend indirectly for economic growth, where their morphological ambiguity, their transitioning from an agrarian landscape to a residential landscape of segregation and consumption, make them ‘’no-places’’, places in between without considering their primary role of urban sustenance. In other words understanding the hinterland as a different, yet productive ‘’urban’’ condition would lead to an understanding of the totality. This thesis aims at analyzing Lefebvre’s argument of socially produced space in order to answer, globally and locally, to relevant social, political and territorial differentiation caused mainly by expanding capitalistic urbanization proposing an innovative ground-breaking view of how hinterlands can act as the “coagulant” among these multiple differentiative factors. The proposal aim, through the architectural scale project, to find alternative working relationships that can sit between agrarian and industrial society, forming a more environmentally responsible, yet fully productive hinterland, demonstrating how ‘socially produced space’ in this era can offer a set of alternative relationships between urban components and between production and consumption. If cities are the apotheosis of mankind’s achievements, can they find a way of operating collaboratively? Can COLLABORATION, EXCHANGE, PROXIMITY and PRODUCTION be an essential part of globality? ABSTRACT | 4
‘‘what makes mass society so difficult to bear with is not the number of people involved but the fact that the world between them has lost its power to gather them together’’
5
Arendt
2
The idea is originally inspired by what Hanna Arendt stated in her publication The Human Condition: ‘’what makes mass society so difficult to bear with is not the number of people involved but the fact that the world between them has lost its power to gather them together’’. (H. Arendt, 1958) Contemporary cities are acting as autonomous entities, with different values, brands, and economies. In them it is possible to encounter brewing differences, overturned standards and formalities and countless cultural mixes. They are places where individual and collective self-expression is formed. Consequently, it is possible to imagine that cities and the encompassing urban environment can be conceived of as a malleable, constantly changing space. If the focus is primarily on the diversification aspects of future cities, track of structural and infrastructural homologies can easily be lost. Whereas cities and urban domain duplicate and urban lives differentiate, there is at the same time a substantial meeting of innovations, information, regulations and courses of actions that shape and amalgamate the way individuals live in these urban realities. CITY VS HINTERLAND INTRODUCTION | 6
Dundee industrial and historical timeline
BIRTH OF DUNDEE PORT
1100 A small port grows at Dundee
1349 Dundee is become a thriving town with a population of 4k people, wool and hides are exported, and whaling industry is emerging
INDUSTRALISATION, URBAN AND WORKS GROWTH
1520 Dundee population is 7k, the wool industry is flourishing and big amount is exported.
1750 Dundee is Known for its linen industry and whaling. Population is 11k.
1861 Populayion over 90k, Shipbuilding and jute are major industries . Dundee bacome an industrial and trading centre.
DE-INDUSTRALISATION AND EXODUS OF INDUSTRIES TO SUBURB OR EVEN CLOSURE
1902 dundee trams are electrified. Dundee known for the 3 J’s: jute jam and jurnalism.
1979 Tatcher economic manouvres Industrial economy start to fell from contributing 40% of uk GDP, to 39% in 1990. Unemployment started soaring from 5,3% to peak 12% in 1984.
1985 Major industrial workers strikes after the closure of many industries.
GENTRIFICATION AND SOCIAL DISPARISON
1990 Industries contribution fell to 20 % of total GDP. Big amount of unemployment.
2018 Dundee Effect: Failure of capitalist regeneration. Communities forced into new peripheries, and fails to tackle endemic poverty levels, embraces exploitative employers and unstable employment and ignores the mounting housing crisis. Similar to ‘Bilbao Effect’: the social and economic fallout of the new Guggenheim museum and gentrification of the surrounding area, in the Basque Country’s largest city in 1997.
fig. 1
Labur, Productivity versus State Understanding cooperative behaviour trends between different realms during time in order to enforce this cooperative behaviour in the proposal.
past
present
future
Global footprint:
productivity
productivity
productivity
state
state
state
most influenced influenced least influenced
fig. 2
Global population growth:
38%
LIVED IN CITIES IN 1960
52%
LIVED IN CITIES IN 2008
75%
WILL BE LIVING IN CITIES BY 2050
fig. 3
7
The advent of industrialization and globalization has deeply changed the urban domain, whose trades, including exchange, culture and strife, have shifted from the local to the non-local dimension. This has resulted in noteworthy consequences for maritime, air, and ground transportation and infrastructural networks. Nowadays, the conscious management of region, including urbanized ones, is not only a matter of civil or national duty, but has grown to be a worldwide social responsibility. Expansive urban scale ventures have become the major drivers of urban recharging in cities, urban and sub-urban domains around the globe. High density, blended employments, mixed uses and travel network are progressively seen as qualities of an average city from social, economic as well as environmental perspectives. At the same time these largescale proposals have been criticized as being excessively topdown in their programs, plans and land management. Some of them are arguably characterized by compartmented and gated mono-utilitarian zones, with substandard open spaces, and in need of spatial and programmatic diversities designed to enhance financial and social interactions. In today’s globalization additional studies on the link between urban and rural and between cities and hinterland must be carried out to solve the problem areas that characterize contemporary urbanity. The reciprocity between countryside and urban realms fundamentally define each other’s meaning. However, nowadays this concept of dialectic between realms has been lost in favour of a focus almost exclusively centered on the urbanity of the cities, on their dense socioeconomic networks and on their powerful agglomeration of economies, using as an alibi the fact that currently 73% of Europe’s population lives in cities and this is projected to increase by 2050 (fig.2-3-4). This contrasting relationship between the various dimensions of the urban system is also exposed by Neil Brenner in his chapter “Uneven Spatial Development”. (N. Brenner, 2019 ) By comparing cities and countryside, centres and suburbs, and metropolis and hinterland, Brenner identifies the main factors that crystallize the uneven socio-spatial urban development and economic inequalities brought by the industrialization as essential axis of the capitalist world. CITY VS HINTERLAND INTRODUCTION | 8
Population distribution (millions): Global
Proportions of total population: Europe 90
6000
73.4 % Population distribution (millions): Global
Proportions of total population: Europe 60
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ulation distribution (millions): 0 bal 6000
Proportions of total population: Europe
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fig. 4
Additionally, the United Nations Division of Financial and Social Issues has long followed the development of urban inhabitants and discovered that the world’s population had come to what could be looked at as a continental division point, in which the full society, having been generally rural for all of human history, had shifted to being mostly urban for the first time. (fig. 4) Among the most prominent misconstructions of urbanization in nowadays society, as Brenner and Schmid stated, is the conception of the urban as a delimited settlement and also the understanding of urbanization as a method pertains solely the cities. The rural is easily neutralized, from the meaning of locality, place and ground, into spaces transformed to mere financial transactions. However, these neutralized spaces are the foundation of worldwide economy as well as sources to support cities and urban realm. In today’s society where the hinterland question is largely underestimated as a no place, an ignored realm, considered secondary or even irrelevant to the study of urbanization, Rem Koolhaas’ thought ‘’[t]he countryside or the hinterland is where radical changes are’’ feels particularly relevant. (R. Koolhaas, 2020) Taking the hinterland’s condition and future into account is as much a priority today as it was in the last century. In fact, the totalitarian European and international regimes tried to improve the hinterland’s accessibility and efficiency by shifting economies from rural to urban and helped the creation of interdependency between them. Additionally, they attempted to endow it with political and ideological relevance as the past ‘’utopian’’ architectural propositions, mentioned in the studio group book. This thesis examines the dynamics between humans and architecture within the idea of Lefebvre’s ‘socially produced space’, and how this interaction can catalyze changes within the urban frame and the propensity of uncontrolled sprawl of cities and urban domains. This can be achieved through the intensification of productive spaces (fig.5) within the underused hinterland realms, co-existing between cities, the enhancement of the distinction between urban and natural environment, and the adoption of sensible arrangements for connecting urban domains, creating a continuous relationship between production, manufacture and import/export
CITY VS HINTERLAND INTRODUCTION | 10
identification of productive area suitable for proposal
15700m
7700m
3700m
1700m
700m
200m
productive hinterland
fig. 5
11
This conceptual collage wants to transmit the radical monumentality and economic shift aimed with the Productive Hinterland proposal. There are references on Palazzo della Civilta Italiana - designed by Giovanni Guerrini in order to celebrate the italian culture during fascism times- and on the Battle for Grain - a manifesto and economic policy undertaken by the Fascists in Italy during the 1920s as a move toward autarky, aiming to boost cereal production to make Italy self-sufficient in grain,reduce the deficit in the balance of trade and lower the necessity of foreign bread imports.
CITY VS HINTERLAND INTRODUCTION | 12
13
fig. 6 courtesy
of BBC.co.uk
3
‘’In recent decades, the field of urban studies has neglected the question of the hinterland: the city’s complex, changing relations to the diverse non- city landscapes that support urban life... the ‘hinterland question’ remains essential, but must also be radically reimagined under contemporary conditions. ‘’ [Neil Brenner and Nikos Katsikis, Operational Landscape]
The driving scheme of this thesis focusses on the hinterland, or the fringe lying between two cities, the uncontrolled urban sprawl and the creation of amorphous urban or rural domains. Hinterland is a resoundingly inadequate term referring to all the territories that are not considered urban, covering an area 50 times bigger than all our cities combined. The empty and isolated state of the planet’s hinterlands is starkly illustrated in the image (fig.6) of the UK nighttime lights, in which brightness is treated as a proxy for “cityness”. Are we heading towards an absurd outcome where the vast majority of mankind lives in only 2% of the earth’s overpopulated surface, or is it feasible to design a better and productive land use and lifestyle in the hinterland or countryside? A complete and more efficient urbanization of the planet can be achieved focusing on the use of local resources, available within the various realms of the hinterland (fig.5), and prioritizing a continuous dialect and interdependency between cities, productive hinterland and their countryside. THE ROLE OF THE HINTERLAND | 14
This concept aim to create a continuous relationship between production, manufacture, consumtion and re-use, curtailing the abandonment of the rural in order to promote industrialisation and urbanisation of the hinterland in a linear organised manner.
Typical growth of contemporary human settlament: From radial concentric non organized urban sprawl to linear and circular controlled linear sprawl
Initial Global Pairing-Cities concept
Concept
In a global concept, the pairing of cities and therefore the creation of linear links between them, will avoid the expansion of uncontrolled radial urban sprawl ( main cause of the creation and acceleration of disparision between the modern urban cores and the ever more ‘’disperse’’ suburbs and peripheries where communities are forced to move due to gentrification of the core) . This linear concept will avoid expansion of industries towards the countrysides but will encourage them to be more phisically and socially connected to the paired cities, leaving the countrysides as pure paesants reserves. The system would be no longer dominated by cities, but by productive territorial lines of circulation and production, creating a dual system, where cities will mantain their distinct role and singularity while being connected through linear networks of production, communication and exchange. This concept aim to create a continuous relationship between production, manufacture, consumtion and re-use, curtailing the abandonment of the rural in order to promote industrialisation and urbanisation of the hinterland in a linear organised manner.
Proposal l Pr
Links between major urban settlement : settlement Links between major urbanurban settlement : Links between major :
Typical growth of contemporary human settlament: From radial concentric non organized urban sprawl to linear and circular controlled linear sprawl
Actual and Proposed urban metabolism: from one-way linear metabolism to circular urban metabolism: istribution co nd ns um tio uc
Proposal l
Pr
n io pt
Cities transform raw materials into finished products. They convert food, fuels, forest products, materials, water and human energy in to building, goods, financial and political power and therefore waste. In the one-way flow still leave the soil as food, and yet since the food is consumed far from its origin points, the waste products are no longer returning to the soil as fertilizer but are simply expelled in an un-ecological way.
pr od
actual linear metabolism flow
resourches
waste
proposed circular metabolism flow
resourches
fig. 7
istribution co nd ns um tio uc waste reuse
pr od
one-way linear metabolism to circular urban metabolism:
Proposal
n io pt
The proposed circular flow would try to maximise the re-use of resourches, products and waste created by Perth and Dundee. The proposal, acting as a compacted and productive hinterland will try to sourche and create energy locally, reusing waste as nutriActualments and Proposed urban metabolism: from for agrarian productive areas and connecting different realms of the hinterland with the two cities, therefore creating a linear system that will sustain them while fostering infrastructures, and accomoactualnew linear metabolismworkplaces flow dation. Cities transform raw materials into finished products. They convert food, fuels, forest products, materials, water and human energy in to building, goods, financial and political power and therefore waste. In the one-way flow still leave the soil as food, and yet since the food is consumed far from its origin points, the waste products are no longer returning to the soil as fertilizer but are simply expelled in an un-ecological way.
productive hinterland
resourches
waste
waste reuse
resourches
proposed circular metabolism flow The proposed circular flow would try to maximise the re-use of resourches, products and waste created by Perth and Dundee. The proposal, acting as a compacted and productive hinterland will try to sourche and create energy locally, reusing waste as nutriments for agrarian productive areas and connecting different realms of the hinterland with the two cities, therefore creating a linear system that will sustain them while fostering new infrastructures, workplaces and accomodation.
productive hinterland
15
fig. 8
This prompts the following objectives: envisioning a flexible and profitable urban interface between cities, that can maintain their distinct roles, and the associated productive hinterland, and the re-distribution of the power, which since the de-industrialization period moved from the labor force to the capitalistic state. The primary efforts focus on the research of methods that can act politically with respect to providing structure to the links between cities without essentially getting to be an instrument of politics. An example is given by the contemporary phenomenon of international tokenistic partnerships among cities, known in the UK as ‘city to city pairing’, which is built on the idea of the value of global exchange, where a symbolic link is established to develop close political, economic and cultural relations between cities or regions. Through international urban cooperation, cities and regions across UK and Europe have entered into partnerships on sustainable development with counterparts from around the globe. This bilateral cooperation, facing sustainable development challenges, is supported to share knowledge and best practices among different realities in order to tackle some of today’s most pressing challenges regarding rapid urbanization. The proposed intervention represents an alternative and more concrete way of pairing urban realm (fig.7): cities in close proximity are paired through a different understanding of ‘exchange’, building up inter-reliance on shared resources, energy and outcomes. This replaces a linear resources’ flow with a circular metabolism (fig.8) flow between cities, maximizing the re-use of supplies, products and waste. This pairing concept can expand to create a global network of exchange and achieve a total urbanization. As the urban theorist Melvin Webber states in his ‘’The Urban Place and the Nonplace Urban realm’’ publication: “cities and urban realms have been characterized as places of economic and social interchange” (M. Webber, 1964). Such interchange characterizes the city, which is thereby directly connected to its suburban surroundings and can not be conceived in isolation. This process of interchange has undergone various developments in time. The flows of labor, natural resources, construction materials, food, financial capital, information and technology that these exchanges THE ROLE OF THE HINTERLAND | 16
17
facilitate used to be conceived within a distinct city-hinterland logic. Increasingly, with the expansion of such flows across larger distances, territorial boundaries have slowly faded (Brenner and Schmid, 2015). Flows of all goods or information are today defined by the interdependence between economic principles of exchange and their enabling infrastructures. Examining the links between the social and physical elements in cities and the urban domains has become pivotal for half of the earth’s population living in cities. ‘’City and non-city landscapes are dialectically co-produced under modern capitalism’’(Brenner and Schmid, 2015), therefore the aforementioned urban problems can only be solved through a systematic approach that connects urban and non-urban realms at the same time both in social, political, infrastructural and ecological terms. Rural and agrarian domains can now be seen not as being remote, leftover or anachronistic. They are pivotal territories for worldwide capitalism and urbanization processes. The hinterland, acting as the place between cities, must be recognized as the crucial location for the solution of both rural and urban issues related to social, political and economic boundaries.
THE ROLE OF THE HINTERLAND | 18
19
4
fig. 9
Urbanization is described by Neil Brenner as something entailing the universal diffusion of cities, the elementary units of human settlement. Units that, over time, have assumed diverse morphological forms through a broad array of institutional, sociopolitical, economic, and environmental forces and have been articulated depending on their surrounding territories, landscapes and ecologies. This term is typically conceived as spatially bounded settlement units, that consequently creates a duality between city and non-city, even though these rural realms primarily support the urban with their ecosystem, watersheds, rivers, seas, and oceans by continuously supplying cities with labor, fuel, materials, water, food. This form of urbanization is based only towards site specific interventions rather than unifying different realities. As a result it create more and more physical, social and political boundaries and therefore an uneven spatial development, articulated with its division within places, its spatial division of labor and the differentiation among types of places (city/non-city, production/ manufacture, work/leisure). BREAKING DOWN BOUNDARIES | 20
fig. 10
21
These boundaries, even though invisible and imperceptible, have profound and different implications in regulations and planning and can prevent people and society from living to their full potential. The creation of these geographical boundaries between urban developments, as Harvey Molotoch indicates in his publication ‘’The City as a Growth Machines: Toward a Political Economy of Place’’, started since the maturation of the nineteenth century industrial city, where these spatial regulations channeled towards certain types of development into specific locations, within and among metropolitan realms. (H. Molotoch, 1976). This duality can be easily seen as a result of an uneven capitalistic urban development, where city to city relationships over long distances come to overshadow the local relationship of the city to its hinterland, they distance one from the other, rendering a symbiotic relationship into an antagonistic relationship in which the countryside is the first casualty, where people or activities situated in this non-city realm may suffer from more inaccessible facilities, hostile urban wastelands and rural isolation. Brenner describes the uneven spatial development’s articulation as a result of a mix of factors such as place making, territorialization and network formation issues, all having in common inequalities. (Brenner and Schmid, 2015). Inequalities that span from differentiation among types of places to differentiation among types of territories (cores vs peripheries and metropoles vs hinterlands). One can also argue that the main reasons behind these social inequalities, and therefore of the housing crisis, could lie within these division lines, and that these, control and dictate how we perceive and live in different areas of the urban realm. The term boundary or dividing line is often related to terms such as borders or walls and thus as something divisive and unhelpful, something that separates people and places, but the concept seems however ambivalent, because they are part of our everyday life: from tangible lines that we experience in our day by day life to intangible territorial boundaries down to the micro boundaries between different realms such as between urban, suburban and hinterlands. (fig.9) BREAKING DOWN BOUNDARIES | 22
undee
The scale of the linear proposal depends on scale of the paired cities, future expansion predictions and minimum industrial/agricolar area to sustain the proposal and the linked cities.
Productive bundle
reclaimed pure nature
new linear future sprawl
existing fields
reclaimed pure nature
fig. 11
Productive Hinterland phalamteries: from miso scale to architectural scale:
Cities to pair
Cities to pair
Cities to pair
Cities to pair
growing for consumption
Perth
Perth
Perth
Linear lik through theRealms hinterland subdivision 1
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the linearity of the proposal will emphasize the distinction between urban and nature, in the site just a linear belt of nature is reclaimed, but in a global 7 scale this would 5aim to6 reclaim the8 5 6 7 8 majority of the unproductive hinterland.
2
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Productive boun 4
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Productive boundle for each realm
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Linear lik through the hinterland Realms subdivision 1 2
Productive boundle for each realm
Productive boundle for each realm 3
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on the between associated realm is for urban expansion Boundle size and form vary depending on the associated realm Boundle size and form vary depending The linearity the cities is for future urban expansion The linearity between the cities Creation offuture a circular productive metabolism between cities
Creation of a circular productive metabolism be Productive boun
is for urban expansion on the between associated realm Boundle size and form vary depending on the associated realm Boundle size and form vary depending The linearity the cities is for future urban expansion The linearity between the cities Creation offuture a circular productive metabolism between cities
Creation of a circular productive metabolism be Productive boun
The linearity between Creation the citiesof isafor futureproductive urban expansion circular metabolism between cities
is for urban expansion Creation offuture a circular productive metabolism between cities future urban expansion The linearity between the cities
23
Dundee
to sustain the proposal and the paired cities tidal and biomass plants are proposed: biomass one will be in close proximity to the agrarian realms using mainly their waste material to generate electricty while tidal plant will be adjacent to the proposed docks area.
Realms subdivision 3
Linear lik through the hinterland Realms subdivision 1
power generation Dundee
Dundee
Perth
Linear lik through the hinterland Realms subdivision
Linear lik through the hinterland Linear lik through the hinterland
Dundee
two kind of crops are proposed: one for the exclusive use of the inhabitants that will run in proximity to the public area, another extensive one for commercial and industrial purposes.
ndee
ure urban expansion
linear infrastructural system between two cities
urban factory conceptual collage
Creation of a circular productive metabolism cities Productive boundlebetween to test on architectural scale
Creation of a circular productive metabolism between cities Productive boundle to test on architectural scale
Productive boundle to test on architectural scale
Productive boundle to test on architectural scale
fig. 12
Through the creation of an interconnected archipelago of intensified production areas in a sea of wilderness the proposal aims to find a way to erase all the hinterland’s variety of boundaries, creating and enhancing a single division line: that between the intensified productive areas, supporting the linked cities, and the reclaimed wilderness. (fig.10) ’’In contrast to the usually integrative apparatus of urbanization, the archipelago envisions the city as the agonistic struggle of parts whose forms are finite...and yet in constant relationship with the sea that frames and delimit them’’. (P. Aureli, 2011) Aureli, revisiting Unger’s definition of Archipelago, better describes what is the envision and role of these productive islands in the sea of wilderness; while for Ungers the parts that compose the city are meant to oppose each other, and are thus ‘’ bound to the dialectical principle that something is unite by being separated’’ (O.M. Ungers,1977), Aureli argues that the differences between these islands is difference in itself, where variations can unfold infinitely without affecting the general principle of linking and supporting the paired cities’ need. The proposed archipelago would be a collection of different productive ‘’islands’’ (fig.11-12), sharing proximity and local resources, and even in their absolute separation, they would be moved by ‘’absent centers’’ (linked cities imagined as economic nodes or control points), toward which each island, in communication with the others, is oriented without claiming possession of them, but supporting their needs. The creation of these productive islands linking and supporting cities will originate an organic interdependency between people and their living and productive space. In regard to this concept Rem Koolhaas describes his project ‘’The city of the Captive Globe’’ as ‘’a city of exacerbate difference to the point that the state of exception contained by each plot becomes the norm of the urbanity itself’’ common ground then is found on what is proposed: the more different the productive islands (productive phalanteries) are based on, the more the urban order (hinterland) that maintains them is reinforced and supported. BREAKING DOWN BOUNDARIES | 24
fig. 13
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The challenge may consequently be to find possible ways in which the design and management of land use alleviates the boundaries between different realms and does not exacerbate income, social and economic inequalities. (fig13) How can these division lines between cities and non-cities create spaces of inclusion instead of seclusion? Can these division lines link urbanity, and therefore create a balanced society with balanced social and political relationship, therefore redistributing, the now unconnected, urban rural and productive hinterlands through the creation of a productive archipelago linking and supporting locally, socially and economically the paired cities? And finally can this concept be applied globally creating a network of productivity between major global cities enhancing the boundary between productive islands, cities and the then reclaimed wilderness while disrupting the trend on which hinterlands are now shaped by forces beyond the local?
BREAKING DOWN BOUNDARIES | 26
‘’ The greatest change we need to make is shifting from consumption to production.
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Bill Mollison
5 “agricultural production has lost all its autonomy in the major industrialized nations and is part of a global economy. It is no longer the principal sector of the economy, nor even a sector characterized by any distinctive features. Even though local and regional features from the time when agricultural production dominated haven’t entirely disappeared, it has been changed into a form of industrial production, having become subordinate to its demands, subject to its constraints. Economic growth and industrialization have become self-legitimating, extending their effects to entire territories, regions, nations, and continents. As a result, the traditional peasant life has been transformed. Absorbed or obliterated by larger units, it has become an integral part of industrial production and consumption.” [ Henri Lefebvre, The urban revolution]
In these days globalization has many down sides such as the waste of natural resources, acceleration of climate change, insecurity of people’s self-identification due to a lost sense of a communitybased belonging that is replaced by the need to ’belong’ by means of acquiring marketed products... and its solution: intensifying productivity and its localization. What is crucial to understand, as Lefebvre points out, is that space is not a container that simply needs to be filled but is itself an active designer of our social relations. Space needs to be thought of as an entity to be governed locally and self-autonomously, establishing behaviors according to those thoughts which will ultimately lead to the creation of facilities suitable to our respective needs and making them part of a global matrix (network of productive archipelagos). LOCALIZING PRODUCTIVITY IN THE HINTERLAND | 28
Situationist collage linking in a linear way all different productive realms lying on the hinterland between Perth and Dundee.
29 fig. 14
Localization is a forward-looking alternative to multinational capitalism; it is about creating more sustainable and responsible economies by producing what the paired cities need close to the urban realms: the hinterland. In an economy of local production, consumers pay less while producers’ earnings increase, in addition the local production system would benefit the environment.It is intrinsically linked to the revitalization of the diversity of the land: when producers sell to a global-market they are forced to specialize in a very narrow sector of standard products. By selling and supporting local markets it is in their economic interest to increase the variety of their products. Paradoxically, the most effective ideas for rebuilding the local production’s economy come from large cities such as London, Sydney and San Francisco where government policies require public institutions to rely on local food providers that mostly produce from the adjacent hinterland. Keeping the locality as a key driving factor for the productive hinterland, how can the idea of globally ‘’urbanized’’ and locally sourced market be applied to the hinterland realm? The twentieth century of Fordist and Keynesian capitalism have seen the introduction of economic, social and planning policies affecting the extension of the urban fabric, resulting in the ever more visible physical, social and economic fragmentations of the land use. In order to propose a sustainable and cohesive social and economic link between these fragmented communities, the project focuses on the bonds that reunite these realms such as local workplace and local sources. City and countryside are subsequently redefined by the industrial logic of capitalistic production and accumulation, creating a duality able to maintain a division line and emphasize the difference between the urban, such as cities and the productive hinterland described by Lefebvre in his publication ‘’the right of the city’’ as the place of production- and the pure natural rural, which should be preserved and no longer exploited. (H. Lefebvre, 1968) LOCALIZING PRODUCTIVITY IN THE HINTERLAND | 30
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fig. 15
6 How can a boundary that promotes spaces of inclusion instead of seclusion be created? Can boundaries be imagined as assembly lines linking urbanity and creating a society with balanced social, political, economic and productive relationships, while tackling the ever more present issue of uncontrolled urban sprawl, and redistributing the now unconnected urban rural and productive hinterlands? The concept of a production line, linking and pairing cities through their productive hinterland, creates a continuous linear urban land use and proposes an alternative city expansion which tackles radial urban sprawl and the recurrent displacement of different production realms (i.e. the different production, manufacture, import export and administrative realms that are mostly not physically connected, but positioned in an archipelago way with long distances between them). In an urban planning approach this concept needs to be looked at as a line of land designation (fig 15) and not as a continuous built line. This would create an alternation of different productive bundles, geographically arranged according to the area’s constraints and typology (e.g. maritime, aerial, agrarian and logistic realms), and the reclaimed wilderness as pure peasant nature free from capitalistic exploitation. This concept promotes, in a Fordism way, a production line, that instead of having scattered locations, creates a physical and social link between the paired cities and the new linear productive hinterland, while enforcing the boundary between urban and rural area, thereby reclaiming the countryside as wilderness, no longer considered for any further exploitation. Can the massive social and technical capacities of the hinterland somehow be harnessed to support more culturally vibrant and ecologically sane forms of collective and productive existence? Are there alternative forms of urbanized hinterland to city and country conditions? THE PLACE OF PRODUCTION AND THE RURAL | 32
“The level of the productive forces is not measured by the degree of technological progress, but by the degree of revolutionary consciousness of the working class. [...] In this sense, the contradiction between the level of the productive forces and the social relations of production is only the external expression of that other contradiction, which lies entirely within the social relation of production: between the sociality of the process of production and the private appropriation of the product, between the individual capitalist who tries to break down this sociality and the collective worker who recomposes it before him, between the master’s attempt at economic integration, and the political response of worker antagonism.” [Mario Tronti, Classe Operaia]
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7
City dwellers highly benefit from the tied-up, neighborhood like relationships, as well as from a great abundance of facilities, which is not to be found in rural areas. Such environment, relying on proximity of goods, services and human connections, does not necessarily represent an advantage in terms of self-sufficiency and financial dynamism of the realm. Proximity must be organized and controlled to enable complex relationships of interdependence between people, activities, places, buildings, cities on a global scale. This blend of diversities, merging distinctive social classes to diverse working-living conditions, creates a more dynamic, vibrant, attractive and productive environment while offering a political and economic autonomy to the society. This generates greater and diversified local opportunities, focusing on more extensive local infrastructures and consequently reducing the need for travel and reliance on private transport means. As a final result the interrelation between proximity and diversities within production realms generates an autonomous society, benefitting from increased quality of life and enhancing working opportunities. Besides, such urban environment enables workers to acquire consciousness of their political and economic power. Enhanced productivity, benefitting from proximity and interrelation of different realms, must be recognized as the fundamental relationship between the mutually supportive working and the capital classes. ‘’Productivity is a process occurring within the factory, but extending to the entirety of social life, pervading the whole spectrum of social relationships’’. (M. Tronti, 1964) PROXIMITY TO ENHANCE PRODUCTIVITY | 34
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Productibe Phalanstery explosion showing how different productive areas interact with eachother.
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The architectural and urban approach to the proposal is a product of the social, economic and political conditions affecting the hinterland globally and locally, as between Perth and Dundee, land at the moment not productive or dissociated to be reconsidered as a pivotal resource. The basis of this thesis and the related project aim at producing a proposal able to react to the social and labor needs of the cities linked to their hinterlands whilst providing a viable and environmental route for economic and demographic growth. In other words what the proposal is aiming to achieve is extending the idea of industrial and agrarian production beyond the factory to the social forms and spaces generated by this new collaborative working methods that are effectively the Lefebvrian production of space and therefore creating a self-sustainable and work orientated socially produced space. By identifying nodes across a coordinated transport network, it will be possible to establish a nexus of productive realms in the city and hinterland, allowing then to link and create associations between them bringing these groups back to be an active part of urban settlements, creating visible nodes of people creating, working and acting together in order to sustain urbanity at its fullest. The architectural project will attempt to respond to Lefebvre thesis testing an urbanized-hinterland alternative to city or country conditions, proposing a productive community that demonstrates ideas of alternative working relationships sitting between agrarian and industrial society, where the fundamental feature will be the total cooperation between the individuals and the totality. ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT INTRODUCTION | 36
Isometric view of the Productive Phalanstery sitting on the hinterland.
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ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT INTRODUCTION | 38
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