Conference Proceedings - NUL | Full Papers Session 4 | by Planum n.27 vol.2/2013

SESSION 4

New Urban Metaphors

CHAIRS: ANTONELLA CONTIN, JAVIER RUIZ SANCHEZ

NUL

NUL - NEW URBAN LANGUAGES

BY PLANUM. THE JOURNAL OF URBANISM ISSN 1723-0993 | WWW.PLANUM.NET PROCEEDINGS PUBLISHED IN OCTOBER 2013

Introduction

As pointed out by some of the most interesting contemporary studies define urban complexity and make it visible and clear means trying new epistemological strategies.

Among these the metaphor appears as one of the most common cognitive attitudes and, at the same time, one of the most contradictory and problematic. Not much research has been carried out so far on imaginary urban in Europe, especially as regards the medium and small cities. Urban policies are based mainly on the physical and socio-economic data, and as regards qualitative, look with interest the analysis of the needs of citizens and then use surveys on opinions and attitudes (especially stakeholders). An analysis of urban imaginary and related languages can be resources which, if analyzed, could instead act as a catalyst to allow the urban policies to intercept the needs and aspirations of the people. Using P.Healey words (In Search of the “Strategic” in Spatial Strategy Making, 2010) “Meaning making often gets explored not just through defining alternative designs and options, but by the use of metaphor and analogy. Framing work, like the process of probing the available knowledge about situations and issues, requires an expansive yet integrative, pluralistic yet synthetic, collective imagination.”

SESSION 4

New Urban Metaphors CHAIRS: ANTONELLA CONTIN, JAVIER RUIZ SANCHEZ

Exploring the framework of the strategic spatial planning for the vision ‘Tehran 2025’ Mina Akhavan, Mohammad Ali Behbahani Representing the “cities of difference”. Narratives, perceptions and policies in multi-ethnic environments Paola Briata Pragmatic heterotopias. The redefinition of urban spaces trough street art: the case of Grottaglie Giovanni Caffio Ecological urbanism. The eco-systemic framework of “informal” processes of urbanization Antonia Chiesa Urban Devices. The representation of the urban landscape and scenarios of endogenous transformation Alessandra Cirafici, Caterina Cristina Fiorentino The mapping desiring. A project of a new cartography: patterns of use, spatial experiences and perceptions of the urban environment in the ICT era Antonella Contìn Bahasa Walikan Malangan and the building of Indo-Javanese urban spaces DeAndré A. Espree-Conaway Modernization alignment of Tehran urban symbols with Tehran citizens ways of conceptualizing Susan Ghaffaryan, Hamidreza Rabiei Dastjerdi City and citizen as a text and its author. A semiotic reading Abdollah Karimzadeh, Hamid Rabie, Alireza Khosravi Toward a metropolitan design Sofia Morgado Collective intelligence and cities, more than an urban metaphor Roy Emiliano Nash Understanding urban complexity in the light of asymmetrical warfare.

Topological systems and complex relationship for analyzing the space of urban conflict Inés Aquilué Junyent , Javier Ruiz Sanchez Three images of the contemporary city Marialessandra Secchi Fashion metaphors for the city. The discourse of urban representations by fashion phenomenon Maria Skivko

Exploring the Framework of the Strategic Spatial Planning for the Vision ‘Tehran 2025’ Mina Akhavan

Politecnico di Milano DAStU - Department of Architecture and Urban Studies E-mail: mina.akhavan@mail.polimi.it

Mohammad Ali Behbahani Politecnico di Milano DAStU - Department of Architecture and Urban Studies E-mail: mohammad.behbahani@mail.polimi.it

The focus of this paper is to study and analyze the need for strategic planning, for the capital city of Tehran, and more importantly the process to formulate the vision for ‘Tehran 2025’. Here special attention is reserved to Patsy Healy’s strategic framework and four main dimension of spatial strategy making. Accordingly the paper aims to investigate whether Tehran’s strategic planning is comparable to Healy’s framework; if yes, to what extend and in which administrative organization it is feasible. The paper therefore concludes that despite efforts carried out for proposing and framing the strategic plan in Tehran, nevertheless the planning system and implementation in the large metropolis is still confronting confusion and inefficiency.

Keyword: Spatial strategy making, strategic planning in Tehran, comprehensive planning

1. Introduction While in the Western developed countries the criticized comprehensive planning has been replaced by more efficient models such as the strategic planning, in the developing countries in general, and in Iran in particular, only recently the city governments feel the urge to produce spatial strategies for the future development of the city. In the capital city of Tehran1, since mid-20th century, different factors have 1

Tehran Metropolitan Region (TMR), with approximately 17,000 sq.km has a population of approximately twelve million. The focus of this paper is based on the spatial territory of ‘City of Tehran’, located in the geographical center of TMR that covers about 700 sq.km and the reported population is around seven million (Habibi, S., Hourcade, B., (2005).

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influenced the planning approaches towards a gradual and high-speed development even beyond the city’s institutional boundary. Some of these factors are: rapid growth of population, influx of immigrants; the cohesion of surrounded villages and small cities To Tehran’s main body; Tehran’s inefficient comprehensive plan which resulted in high density construction and therefore increase in land and property prices; uneven distribution of city’s resources among citizens; inappropriate provided services for the city users, and etc. Therefor this research will attempt to study and analyze the current planning approaches carried out in the capital ‘city of Tehran’, with focus the process to formulate the vision for ‘Tehran 2025’ as an important effort towards strategic spatial planning.

Accordingly the paper is structured in three main sections. The first part will briefly study and outline the historical planning phases in Tehran, from the 20th century, with the aim to answer this question ‘what are the deficiencies of the comprehensive planning and why there is a need for strategic planning?’; a literature review is added to this part in order to build a comprehensive base on the terms ‘spatial strategy making’ and ‘strategic planning’. The second part of this paper is reserved to study the process to formulate the vision: ‘Tehran 2025’ and the meaning of the strategic work, in this specific cases, with reference to Patsy Healy’s strategic framework for spatial strategy making. The last part, the conclusion, summarizes the main out come of the study while discussing the effectiveness of such planning and its capacity to be inclusive regarding different actors involved in the city development.

2. Urban Planning of the 20th century in Tehran The capital city of Tehran, has witnessed several planning paradigms since mid-20th century, which led to major physical and spatial transformations. As briefly described below, according to Madanipour, the key planning processes in Tehran can be classified into three main phases from 1930s to 1990s (Madanipour A., 2006).

The first phase (period between the 1930s and 1960s) is considered to be the era of planning through infrastructure and design, with the attempt to prepare a base for further growth. By the year 1932, along with the rising figures in population and the emergence of motor vehicles, city walls of the 1870s seemed to be too restricting and incoherent for this fast growing city. These attempts through re-planning and rebuilding led to major transformations (Lockhart L., 1939); most importantly were the city walls that got destroyed and new boulevards were built, as part of a transport network. Through exploiting Western images and experiences, these physical transformations were part of the major efforts in forming the base for future growth along with modernization. The effects were explicit in the census, with the rise of population from 310,000 in 1932 to 700,000 in 1941 (figure 1). This planning phase was also important from the economic point of view: the new role of the city as a peripheral node integrated in the world market, which in return caused new types of income and wealth inequalities along with socio-economic and cultural polarization [18].

The second phase of planning in Tehran was in the 1960s, with major focus on preparing plans to regulate and manage future change. The comprehensive planning in this era was realized as a tool to confront the growing complexity of the city’s spatial management. By the 1960s, due to the influx of rural dwellers to the city, Tehran grew at a faster rate and the population grew up to 3 million in 1966 from 1.5 million in 1956 and therefore in 1976 rose to 4.5 million (figure 1). From mid-1950s by the revenues gained from oil industry, industrialization started to grow, creating new jobs especially in Tehran and hence attracting new labor force. Affected by these trends, Tehran expanded in all directions, mainly based on under-regulate private sector and speculative development [18]. As indicated by Tehran’s Mayer in 1962, the buildings and settlements in Tehran ‘have been developed by whoever has wanted in whatever way and wherever they wanted’ (Nafisi A., 1964); in fact the city is a combination of towns connected to each other in an inappropriate way. The municipality was enquired to do something but had neither the power nor money.

However, the Urban Planning High Council was established by the Municipality act of 1966, to formulate the land-use planning through comprehensive plans. This act along with other new laws, were considered as efforts of the Municipality and the Ministry of Housing to control and manage the growth of Tehran.

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Accordingly the first comprehensive plan of Tehran was produced in 1968, in which the major problems were high density, pollution, inefficient infrastructure, unemployment and the rising migration of lowskilled workers to Tehran. Hence, the comprehensive plan, proposed by the joint Iranian and American Associations, aimed at changing the physical, social and economic dimension of the city (Farmanfarmaian, A., Gruen, V., 1968). However, the result was mainly physical transformations; influenced by the British and the US planning ideas of new town. Zoning was also used as a planning tool to control the physical and social dimension of the developed areas.

The end of 20th century (1990s onward), the post-revolutionary period, is defined as the third phase of the planning in Tehran that was based on policy development for reconstruction and reform after the war period [18].

The influx of immigrants to the capital grew faster than before and led to a population of 6 million by 1986 (figure 1), producing new challenges to prove the incapability of the comprehensive planning to cope with them. The plans were simply physically based developments having major implementation difficulties. Therefore the need for strategic planning was seen essential; the first attempt was the plan for the period between 1986-1996, prepared by a firm of Iranian consultants (A-Tech), which was approved by the Urban and Planning High Council. One of the major outcomes of this plan, which is still in use today, was the division of the city into 22 districts with their own service center. However the Municipality rejected the plan in 1993, for them to be improbable in expenses and implementation phases. Later on the Municipality proposed a strategic plan for 1996-2001, namely Tehran Municipality’s First Plan (Tehran 80), which is known to be the first plan to focus on a set of strategies and policies instead of land-use planning. The plan’s vision for the future of the city was prepared considering five set of problem: lack of resources, the pattern and speed of urban development, pollution, inefficient public transport and the improper bureaucratic system. Accordingly six main objectives were outlined to guide its strategies: “Clean City: a city in which pollution is under control” “Smoothly Moving city: an efficient intra-city traffic and transportation” “Green city: an expansion of green areas” “A high cultured City: expansion of cultural and educational space in order to enhance the city’s culture” • “Dynamic city: the needs of citizens for administrative services are met as quickly as possible” • “Modern-Traditional texture: the realization of an intermixed urban fabric of traditions and modernism” [4].

• • • •

Figure 1. The Population growth according to the three introduced planning phase. Source: Bertaud A. (2003).

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The new road networks and green spaces were developed as part of the implementation phase derived from both the 1968-masterplan and the plan for Tehran 80. In the period of 1990s onward, the illegal practice of ‘selling zoning variance’2 was a major development strategy that was not envisioned in the planning considerations. Through this practice, the Municipality insured its financial independency3, which in time proved to be beneficial for the developers and unfavorable for the citizens. The result was newly developed high rise constructions which led to rapid expansion of the city boundaries beyond the administrative lines; along with the increase of built-up densities and infrastructure deficits in the declined regions [25].

3. The deficiencies of the Comprehensive Planning in Tehran and the Need for Strategic Planning This section of the present paper shall outline the deficits of the comprehensive planning in Tehran and the need for strategic planning. In the developed countries, the comprehensive approach has been severely criticized from the 1960s onwards, for paying too much attention to details and overemphasizing the framework dimension of the plans (Williams G., 1999). Many studies also reveal the fact that Comprehensive Planning paradigm in Iranian cities, such as Tehran, has not been successful in solving the issues, concerning the rapid population growth and the urban development dilemmas. Criticizing the aforementioned planning approach in Tehran, started with the focus on the legal processes in which the plans were prepared and implemented, however the concerns gradually extended to consider the content and the fundamental theoretical base behind the comprehensive urban planning (Ministry of Housing & Urban Development, 2006). The most important theoretical problems facing the comprehensive plan in Tehran are described as below: • Planning approaches based on top down processes by bureaucratic principles, paying too much attention to various marginal issues that led to inflexible and rigid plans.

• The objectives of the plans and policies related to its supervision and implantation were not transparent.

• Lack of considering the dynamic and complex nature of the city and thus moving towards inability to anticipate future problems.

• Insisting on the physical planning and the lack of attention to socio-economic aspects.

• Less considering ideas and interests of actors at different level (Farhoodi, R., Gharakhlou, M., Ghadami, M., Panahandeh Khah, M., 2009).

In the developed countries, many efforts have been carried out to replace this planning approach, which is based on technocratic and bureaucratic principles which is inflexible and lacking in transparency, by strategic approaches that include participation, flexibility and transparency (Hall P., 2009). Accordingly, to overcome the above-mentioned deficiencies of the comprehensive planning in Tehran, the need for strategic planning seems necessary. This planning encompasses a step-by-step process considering the relationship between different levels of planning and its stages. Further more, the strategic planning emphases on the key issues, avoiding too much attention to the less important masses of detail and also provides the opportunity for the active participation of different actors at different level (Albrechts L., 2004). The table below summarizes a comparison between the comprehensive planning and the strategic

The selling zoning variance, also known as ‘selling densities, was a practice in which the municipality would permit developers, an increase of the FAR, to build in higher densities and alteration of land uses, in exchange for a fee (Zebardastm E., 2005).

3 In some years, about 90% of the Municipality’s total revenues was earned from selling density (Bertaud, A. 2003).

2

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planning in the processes of preparing the plans, considering the goals, participation of actors and the implementation capabilities (table 1).

Table 1. Comparison of comprehensive and strategic planning in different fields of action Source: Farhoodi R., et al. (2009)

4. A brief literature review on terms ‘Strategic Work’ and ‘Strategic Planning’ In the field of planning, as clearly stated by Healy, the term ‘strategic work’ refers to the efforts, both interactive and geared, towards altering the direction, to capacities and possibilities and getting distance from the past situation (Healey P., 2009).

Considering the planning work in a broad context such as the city region, for Albrechts the term ‘strategic’ refers to the set of actions and decisions that are more important than others, since it is impossible to give a high priority to everything that needs to be done. Therefore the difficult task is to make a fair decision in giving priority and importance to the critical problems, challenges and diversity (Albrechts L., Healey P. & Kunzmann, K., 2003).

Back in 1960s, strategy makers tend to follow a more ‘scientific’ approach; a methodological process along with a sequence of scientific analysis to arrive at the so-called strategy. In contrary to the past, the recent approach towards strategy making tends to focus more on the sociological perspective, with emphasis on the control of ‘agency’ with relation to the upper and stronger powers (Healey P., 2006). Current debate over the development in theorizing planning and policy-making activity is extensive, which stresses the importance of understanding the complex interrelation and power struggles among the different actors and agency at different scale.

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In this paper while describing the process of strategic plan for vision of ‘Tehran 2025’, we shall refer to Patsy Healy’s definition of spatial strategy making and the four main dimensions introduced by her, which is considered essential and worth referring (figure 2). The first dimension of the framework, which is ‘mobilising attention’, refers to how and why an urban context becomes the focal matter of concern and attention. The second aspect is ‘scoping the situation’ which focuses on what and where are the main issues and to whom to be addressed in the specified urban context, along with what governance arrangement and power system. The third point, ‘Enlarging intelligences’ refers to the gathering and improvement of knowledge-based resources, which is essential for the strategic plan. The last point, ‘creating frames and selecting actions’, considers about the importance of how visions are framed as key principles to guide the future directions [12].

Figure 2. Dimensions of strategy making - Source: Healey, P. (2009)

5. The Governmental Structure of Tehran; A Fragmented Governance System In this part, the research will briefly illustrate the fragmented governance structure of Tehran Metropolitan Region, by introducing major figures and institutional components and their power and role in the decision-making processes.

Considering the national governance system of Iran on one hand and the urban management organization on the other hand, the spatial interdisciplinary characteristics among different governmental and nongovernmental (public) sectors for TMR can be defined as the table below: As illustrated in table 3, the governmental authorities of Tehran have more legislative power and play a major role in the decision-making processes and the final approval of the plans. The public institutions have only executive powers, which cause conflict and confusion facing the governmental bodies while creating, proposing and approving urban plans at different level.

Since the focus of the paper is on ‘City of Tehran’, therefore the key role of the main organizations (actors) in decision-making processes for proposing and implementing the plans are the followings, ordered with regard to the institutional power hierarchy: • City Council: composed of fifteen members; elected by citizens and hold legislative power. Their main responsibilities are: electing the mayor, approving the plans for the city, approving the local legislation proposed by the mayor, approving the budget and municipal rates, etc.

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• Municipality (Mayor): Elected by the City council, the Mayor has managerial and executive power in City of Tehran4.

• 22 sub-Municipal districts: each district has a Mayor, selected and supervised by Tehran Municipal Mayor, which conducts administrative operations and reports to the City Mayor.

Table 3. General Characteristics of Political Territories and local management Source: Akhoundi A., et al (2006).

6. The Plan for ‘Tehran 2025’ In 2001, the City Council published its own ‘Charter of Tehran’, which in 2005 was used as a base for preparing the vision for ‘Tehran 2025’. The content of the charter was agreed by the council members, non-governmental organizations and urban professionals, which focused on sustainability and democracy regarding urban management; transport, social, cultural and economic issues.

The City council of Tehran, in order to over come deficiencies of previous plans towards a more effective way of integrating and merging different aspects of economic, social and environmental perspectives, intended to translate territorial development into specific investment programmers and regulatory, similar to the concept of Albrechts et al [3], by proposing the Vision, Tehran 2025.

In ‘Tehran 2025’, the relevant territory to be addressed is the national capital and the economic, cultural and social hub of Iran. The following map shows ‘City of Tehran’ along with its 22 districts, which is the matter of concern for the City Council and other institutions in charge for preparing the Vision (Map 1).

4

The Mayer’s main activities are limited to the following areas in the 22 districts: legal, council and parliamentary affairs; social and cultural issues; traffic and transportation; planning and management; financial and administrative sector; urban planning and architecture; ICT developments and etc.

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Map 1: Administrative divisions of ‘City of Tehran’ in 1996 - Source: Habibi S., Hourcade B. (2005), p.47

Table 3: Different sectors in charge for preparing the strategic vision - Source: official site of City Council

At the very beginning of the process a commission, entitled “strategic plan committee”, including experts and specialists of different areas were created to supervise the vision, actions and implementation (table 3).

Each group is concerned with a particular topic. Here the main activities of each group are outlined to understanding how the vision was sketched and finalized.

• Project Team for Literature Review: based on the accumulated experience from planning practice and analyzing the planning literatures, the group creates the base for analyzing the institutional design and mobilization to define a framework for future vision of Tehran.

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• Project Team for benchmarking: the group takes a critical view of the environment in terms of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the context; the external trends, forces and resources available is also studied to develop a long-term vision and set of strategies at different levels of actions.

• Project Team of Visionaries: The team analyzes different strategic frameworks and visions including the economic, environmental, cultural, and social aspects. Within each area of study, the main goal(s) is outlined in a vision statement, set of objectives and implementation strategies.

• Project Team for Interviews and seminars: the team organizes a set of interviews with high-level executive figures, experts and professionals. The interviewees are classified in three main topics: specifying the status quo; illustrating the ideal condition; challenges and strategies regarding the desirable situation for the future. Furthermore, numbers of seminars were held; consisting of experts, scholars and public figures within a particular area of focus, with the aim to accumulate different interests, ideas and relevant strategies.

• Project Team to lead competitive practices: different forms of participation are studying, programming and implementing as intermediary level to increases the level of participation in order to face with environmental decision making socially, culturally, and spatially to extend and adapt personal and social values for different key figures. The team proposes more open, flexible and less prescriptive method to respond the values and the images of what society wants to achieve • Project Team for Study and Analysis: the data and information from the above mentioned project teams were accumulated to outline the primarily draft of the vision and its strategies for ‘Tehran 2025’. The draft was then studies, reviewed and analyzed by a group of professionals to evaluate its capacity and efficiency.

The outcome of the comprehensive study and analysis by the professional groups along with the legislative committee was the vision for ‘Tehran 2025’ which the main concept and image was outlined and framed as, ‘Tehran global city as a center of culture, knowledge, welfare and model for the Islamic world’.

The objectives and strategies introduced in the vision ‘Tehran 2025’ have important and specific capacities and play an important role in directing citizens and diverse sectors, actors and departments at different level. Here some major points are stated: Accordingly the output of the process constitutes a consensus between citizens and public sectors to make official guidelines for implementation, and realistic commitments to action engagement.

The Vision, ‘Tehran 2025’, is proposed with the aim to invite the whole community to intervene in the future of their city by imagining and expressing their desirable condition through a reasonable vision, strategy and direction. The residence of Tehran has big ideas and dreams for their future which is revealed in “Tehran 2025’. Now, the question is, to what extend this plan has the capacity to change the past situation towards the future vision?

7. Conclusion This study critically argued that the outcome of traditional comprehensive planning in Tehran and the critics made against it in the developed world are very much similar. However considering the fragmented governance system in Tehran, the question is to what extent this strategic planning can be effective; while it serves as a replacing tool for the comprehensive planning.

Since 2001, with intention to overcome the implementation and participation deficits of the Tehran Comprehensive Plan, there have been some efforts to introduce the strategic planning approach. The focus of this paper was on the emerging form of document, the Vision for ‘Tehran 2025’. As insisted by Healy [12], this is a fact that a lot of ‘strategies’ have been carried out by those involved in urban development, however, only a limited number of these efforts can be considered as actual ‘work’ to shape the urban context. This is also the case in the Vision introduced for Tehran. Indeed, spatial strategy making is not an easy activity that can be carried out with simple procedures, instead it is known to be “a messy, back-and-forth process, with multiple layers of contestation and struggle” [12].

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With the aim to observe the term ‘strategic’ in the plan, considering Healey’s idea on strategy making [12,] table 4 illustrates the adaption of the Vision ‘Tehran 2025’ to her framework.

Table 4. The Vision of ‘Tehran 2025’ adaption plan in Healey’s strategy making dimensions - Source: Own table

According to the table above, the Vision ‘Tehran 2025’ seems to be effective for the future development however we should insist on the controversial role of the Municipality as one major factor shadowing the preparation and implementation of the plans in Tehran is. Although the city is becoming even more democratic than before, however the central government has the dominant power over Tehran, and the municipality, despite its financial independency has merely an executive power with no control over the preparation or modification of the plans. Even more, in implementation phase, the Municipality has some difficulties in supervision due to lack of transparency in the relations among different level of governance system. Therefore the planning and implementation processes of the large metropolis are still facing confusion and inefficiency.

References Akhoundi, A., Barakpou, N., Asadie, I., Taherkhani, H., Basirat, M., Zandi, G., (2006), Governance of Tehran Urban-Region: Challenges and Trends, EURA conference, Warsaw Albrechts, L. (2004), Strategic (Spatial) Planning Reexamined, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 31, pp.743-758.

Albrechts, L., Healey, P. & Kunzmann, K. (2003), Strategic Spatial Planning and Regional Governance in Europe, Journal of the American Planning Association, 69, pp. 113–129.

Bertaud, A. (2003), Tehran spatial structure: Constraints and Opportunities for Future Development, http://alain-bertaud.com/

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Farhoodi, R., Gharakhlou, M., Ghadami, M., Panahandeh Khah, M. (2009), A critique of the prevailing comprehensive urban planning paradigm in Iran: the need for strategic planning, planning theory, Vol 8(4): 335–361 Farmanfarmaian, A., Gruen, V. (1968), Tarh-e Jame-e Tehran, Sazman-e Barnameh va Budgeh, Tehran Faludi, A. (1973), A Reader Planning Theory. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Habibi, S., Hourcade, B. (2005), Atlas of Tehran, Pardazesh va barnamerizi-e shahri Publicatios, Tehran Hall, P. (2009), ‘Looking Backward, looking Forward: The City Region of the Mid-21st Century’, Regional Studies, Vol. 43.6, pp. 803-817.

Halla, F. (2007). ‘A SWOT Analysis of Strategic Urban Development Planning: The Case of Dar es Salaam City in Tanzania’, Habitat International 31: 130–42.

Healey, P., Upton, R. (2010). Crossing Borders. International Exchange and Planning Practices, Routledge, London.

Healey, P. (2009). In Search of the “Strategic” in Spatial Strategy Making, Planning Theory & Practice, Vol. 10, No. 4, 439–457 Healey, P. (2007). Urban Complexity and Spatial Strategies: Towards a Relational Planning for Our Times.

London: Routledge.

Healey, P. (2006). Collaborative planning: shaping places in fragmented societies London: Macmillan.

Healey P. (2004). ‘The Treatment of Space and Place in the New Strategic Spatial Planning in Europe’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 28.1, pp. 45-67.

Hillier, J. (2011). Strategic planning as strategic navigation. Critica Degli Ordinamenti Spaziali, 1, 25-42.

Lockhart, L. (1939) Famous Cities of Iran, Walter Pearce & Co., Brentford, Middlesex Madanipour, A. (2006), Urban Planning and Development in Tehran, Cities, Vol. 23, No. 6, p. 433–438 Madanipour, A. (1999), City Profile Tehran, Cities, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 57–65 Ministry of Housing & Urban Development. (2006). Strategic Urban Development Planning: Recent World Experience and Its Position in Iran. Tehran: Ministry of Housing & Urban Development (in Persian).

Nafisi, A. (1964) ‘Shahrdari-e Tehran’, In Masael-e Ejtemai-e Shahr-e Tehran, a colloquium by the Institute of Social Research and Study, University of Tehran, pp. 24–34. Tehran University Press, Tehran Schuppe, M. (2007), Coping with growth in Tehran - Strategies of Development Regulation, Research Paper, Druck und Bindung: Books on Demand GmbH, Germany.

Shahrdari-e Tehran. (1996). Barnameh-ye Avval-e Shahrdari-e Tehran, ‘Tehran 80’, 1375–1380, Ketab-e Barnameh, Markaz-e Motale’at va Barnamehrizi, Shahrdari-e Tehran, Tehran Williams, G. (1999). Metropolitan Governance and Strategic Planning: Review of Experience in Manchester, Melbourne and Toronto, Journal of Progress in Planning 52: 1–100 Zebardastm, E. (2005). Do Plans Matter? Managing a Metropolis with Two Directions for more than a Decade: The Case of Tehran City. Proceedings from the International Conference on Life in the Urban Landscape.

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Representing the “Cities of Difference” Narratives, perceptions and policies in multi-ethnic environments Paola Briata University College London Bartlett School of Planning E-mail: p.briata@ucl.ac.uk

The paper is based on a case-study carried out in the Dalston area in London that is part of a broader work aimed at challenging social mixing policies – a mainstream approach to face multi-ethnic environments’ problems. Some concepts used by literature that has rediscovered the potentialities of “segregated” places are mobilized to explore the distinction between the areas’ “internal” and “external” perceptions and representations. As underlined by policy analysis and social sciences, descriptions and problems’ framing are linked with existing tools that decision makers may mobilize to cope with them.

Mixing policies rely on narratives that reflect the external perceptions of multi-ethnic neighbourhoods, based on the problematic aspects of “concentration” of “different” groups in some areas. These narratives are fostered by public debate, but research as well has used a slippery concept as concentration.

A wide range of literature has criticized mixing initiatives arguing that policy agendas should be revised: the Dalston case is used to explore if and how the researchers’ ways of looking at multi-ethnic settlements could be reframed.

Keywords: Representation, Cities of difference, Dalston (East London)

1. Introduction The paper is based on a case-study carried out in the Dalston area in London that is part of a broader work aimed at challenging social mixing policies – a mainstream approach to multi-ethnic environments’ with a particular attention to segregation and “problematic” groups’ concentration (Arthurson K. 2012).

Despite the different patterns of concentration that characterize the different countries, a number of common aspects in conceptualizing and pursuing mixing objectives could be underlined. In particular, social and functional mix are presented as interrelated objectives, and policies aimed at “stimulating diversity” should involve housing, retail business, services and public spaces (Demaris R., Germain A., Baque M.E., Bridge G., Fijalkow Y., Slater T., 2012). In many countries mixing objectives have mainly resulted in policies aimed at promoting mixed tenure, housing price level mix, or building type mix, to attract middle-class residents in deprived and problematic areas (Bolt G., 2009).

Social mix is considered as a key factor to enhance individual and groups’ opportunities for upward social mobility for three reasons (Briata P., 2012):

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• a local development perspective – as social mix may be helpful to change the perception of neighbourhoods “from outside”, counteracting stigmatization, attracting new inhabitants, and stimulating new socio-economic opportunities for people living “inside” these places; • a social upgrading perspective – related to the supposed “civilizing” influence of wealthier residents, whose presence could motivate problematic individuals and groups, thanks to the contacts with role models from a different socio-economic background; • a social cohesion perspective – as the exposure to “the other” can lead to mutual understanding, learning, tolerance.

A growing body of literature has critically analysed these perspectives focussing on policy principles and outcomes. A major critical view sees these initiatives as strategies to change the neighbourhoods’ image in the broader cities’ contexts, establishing a relationship with new development scenarios of post-industrial urban areas, reading mixing policies as forms of public-led gentrification, carrying with them significant threats of displacement for the weaker groups (Lees L., Slater T., Wyly E. (eds.), 2008).

Despite this, mixing policies still remain the main form of intervention in segregated areas, and have progressively been extended to places where social, ethnic and economic mix could already be found [2].

Few interactions between research and policy agendas may be recognized. The paper considers previous research’s critical views, and a number of gaps that may be found in this literature (table 1) as starting points for further studies.

Existing literature’s gaps may be useful to identify two main families of open spaces for further research related to: • the connections between the descriptions of problematic neighbourhoods and the consequent forms of intervention; • the possible role for the public hand in these places.

As underlined by policy analysis and social sciences (Crosta P. L., 1998; Bobbio L., 1998), descriptions (problems’ framing) and policies (“solutions”) are strictly interrelated issues. In this direction, the paper argues that mixing policies rely on narratives that reflect the “external” views of multi-ethnic neighbourhoods, based on the problematic aspects of concentration of different groups in some areas, never exploring in depth that an “absolute” index of concentration does not exist, and concentration is defined both by perceptions and by relationships of the local level with wider levels. These narratives are fostered by public debate, but research as well has used a slippery concept as concentration (Tosi A., 2000). Some concepts used by literature that has rediscovered the potentialities of segregated places (table 1, point 3) are mobilized to explore the distinction between the areas’ internal and external perceptions and representations. This distinction is proposed being aware that what is inside or outside a place is a strategic construction operated by the local and not-local actors (including the researcher) to simplify complex situations, and to prefigure some course of research and action, excluding others. The Dalston case is used to explore if and how the most common ways of looking at multi-ethnic settlements could be reframed, exploring the tensions between the insiders’ and the outsiders’ descriptions of a “city of difference” (Fincher R., Jacobs J. (eds.), 1998) in the context of a global city.

The paper provides an overview of Dalston, summarizes the narratives for this place mobilized by planners and politicians in the context of the local Action Plan and of the London Plan, operates a choice among different “voices” that have been collected from October 2012 to April 2013 at the local level – representatives of traders, residents’ associations, cultural groups, charities and not-for-profit organisations, literature, art, blogs and press – and draws some conclusions comparing the insiders’ and the outsiders’ narratives with a particular attention at how the “diversity” issue is declined. The distinction between insiders and outsiders has been operated thanks to the local voices’ that see unanimously local

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authorities as “otherness” – people that do not understand local needs, or that are following “slavishly” the London Plan’s directions, without caring for its consequences on the local populations.

Literature: state of the art 1. Critical views of principles and outcomes of mixing policies (Raco M., 2003; Kearns A., 2002; Allen C., Powell R., Casey R., Coward S., 2005) 2. Studies that view mixing initiatives as place-focused declinations of security policies: an attempt from the public hand to establish forms of control in these places (Atkinson R., Helms G. (eds), 2007) 3. Studies that suggest reconsidering the potentialities of segregated places where self-regulated spaces of mutual-help and solidarity may be found.

Due to the shrinking capacity of intervention of the welfare state, these relationships have a strong capacity to act and to solve concrete problems, and mixing policies may weaken or brake them (Cattacin S.,

Research gaps These studies maintain a negative image of the immigrants’ and weaker groups’ spatial concentration

Neighbourhoods involved in these initiatives may be characterised by physical decay, and deprivation: the public hand’s will to establish forms of control is far to be illegitimated

The welfare restructuring is a reality, but this does not mean that the public hand couldn’t have any role in these places, for example managing situations of conflict or integrating and/or sustaining existing networks. Underestimating the public hand’s possible role may not be helpful to explore innovative paths of intervention

2006) Table 1. State of the art and gaps of existing literature

2. Dalston: places and contrasts Dalston is located in the East End of London, an area that has been for centuries a bastion of the white working class, and a port of entry in Britain for foreign immigrants. In the last thirty years, the socioeconomic composition of this part of London has seen a number of significant changes due to deindustrialization, gentrification and mixed-tenure policies (Butler T., Hamnett C., 2011). Since the 19th century Dalston’s centralities have developed between Ridley Road, Kingsland High Street and Dalston Lane (fig. 1).

Ridley Road is the heart-beat of the local community due to the presence of a street market six days a week. Established in the 1880s, the market has always mirrored the changes in the ethnic composition of

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the neighbourhood. Nowadays it accommodates over one hundred stalls: traditional East London fruit and vegetable sellers, halal butchers, African-Caribbean food (fig. 2-3). The market draws from a wide catchment area, and it is very important for the local communities due to its affordable prices, but also to its role as place of social interaction for the most deprived groups (Watson S., 2006).

Table 1. Dalston’s main centralities and development sites

Kingsland High Street is a typical Victorian high street where a significant number of Turkish shops and restaurants could be found. Kingsland’s entrepreneurs attracted the media attention during London’s disorders in July 2011, when they decided to fight back the rioters using baseball bats to defend their businesses (The Guardian, London School of Economics, 2012). A number of chain stores, and many smaller commercial activities run by immigrants may be found at the Kingsland Shopping Mall opened in the 1980s.

At the end of the 19th Century, Dalston Lane was the area’s main street. Here the old train station and the Colosseum, a circus capable of accommodating 4000 spectators, could be found. Since 1964 it was converted into the Four Aces Club, run for thirty three years by Newton Dunbar, a Jamaican-born man.

This was a popular venue where international stars were attracted, reflecting the evolution of Caribbean music. It was bought by the Council in 1977 and declared as redevelopment site in 1995. Despite the local communities’ resistance, the theatre was demolished in 2007 to build up Dalston Junction Overground station, and a new development named Dalston Square. This is constituted by 550 flats, reserving 57 for

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social rent. The first phase of this development, including Dunbar Tower, named after Newton Dunbar (without his consent), has been completed in 2011(fig. 3).

Figure 2. Fruit and vegetable seller in Ridley Road Figure 3. One of the multicultural faces of Ridley Road

Figure 3. New developments – Dalston Square’s view from Dalston Lane

When Barratts Homes – one of the largest residential property development companies in the United Kingdom – will complete the project, ten-storey blocks loom over Dalston Lane, with twenty-storey towers behind. The project includes a new bus station, cafés, restaurants and a new square. The London Borough of Hackney (London Borough of Hackney, 2009) has quoted this intervention in its Sustainable Community Strategy 2008-2018 as an example of “mixed community in well-designed neighbourhoods, where people can access high quality, affordable housing” (p. 52).

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Traditionally a working class and immigration area, the middle-classes started to come back to Dalston in the 1990s thanks to the proximity with the City and the affordable prices of its rundown Victorian terraces. This makes Dalston a place of high contrasts. The ward is home to 10.000 people. Almost 30 per cent of the local population is Black, with Caribbean slightly outnumbering Africans, but also significant shares of Turkish and Turkish-Cypriots immigrants have to be mentioned (London Borough of Hackney, 2007). The middle-class represents the 31 per cent of the population, coexisting with high shares of semiskilled and unskilled workers (18 per cent) and of people on state benefit, unemployed and lowest grade workers (20 per cent). More than 35 per cent of the local population has high education level, but the 26 per cent of residents have no qualifications. More than the 7 per cent of the economically active residents are unemployed.

The industrial tradition of Dalston started declining during the 1970s. Some industrial buildings have been acquired by private companies for redevelopment. At the end of the 1990s these factories have become attractive for the creative sector that has contributed highly to transform the image of Dalston: from a stigmatized inner city, despite the middle-class presence, to an epicentre for creativity. The main point of reference of the “cultural quarter” is the former Reeves Colour Paint Factory, where a cluster of small enterprises have settled. Among these, the OTO café that hosts music concerts and the Arcola Theatre guided by the Turkish-born artistic director Mehmet Ergen. Opened in 2000, the theatre – despite its success at the metropolitan level – has been able to strike root at the local level, thanks to a number of cultural activities with the Turkish community. These venues are integrated with others already rooted on Dalston such as the Rio Cinema, established in 1913 and the Vortex Jazz Club, epicentre of the area’s night economy.

3. From diversity to diversification: planners’ and plans’ narratives This paragraph is based on the directions for Dalston established by the London Plan (Greater London Authority, 2011), on their declination at the local level through the Dalston Area Action Plan (London Borough of Hackney, 2011), and on a number of interviews to local Councillors and planners. In line with the London Plan, Dalston is indicated in the local plan as a Major Town Centre and as an Area for Intensification. The Major Town Centres are places that already constitute a centrality at the local level, but that have potentialities to be “put on the map” of London. Ten Areas of Intensification have been identified in the London Plan. These areas, along with the thirty-three Opportunity Areas – “London’s principal opportunities for accommodating large scale development to provide substantial numbers of new employment and housing, each typically more than 5.000 jobs and/or 2500 homes, with a mixed and intensive use of land and assisted by good transport accessibility (p. 297)” – constitute the backbone of the strategic vision of the London Plan. The Areas for Intensification “have significant potentials for increases in residential, employment and other uses […] but at a level below that which can be achieved in the Opportunity Areas (p. 288)”. As Opportunity Areas are brownfields, the plan will cope with established residents and activities mainly in the Areas for Intensification. For these reasons, Dalston represents a good place to observe how the development scenario of the London Plan is dealing with social cohesion and diversity issues.

In the context of the London Borough of Hackney’s core development strategy, Dalston and Hackney Central are the Borough’s two main existing town centres and will be the focus for new development over the coming years. These areas’ plans capitalize on major new rail infrastructure of the London Overground: “Dalston Town Centre represents Hackney’s vibrant cultural and social mix and further benefits from excellent public transport connectivity. The area is in close proximity to both the City of London and the Olympic-led regeneration area within the Lower Lea Valley (par. 2)”.

Among the major “opportunity sites” of the area, the completion of Dalston Square is mentioned in the plan, and a new eight-storey tower should be realised close to the cultural quarter. This project was presented in 2012 by the private developer Taylor & Wimpey with Transports for London, the public owner of the area, but provoked a strong reaction at the local level due to its “gated community” character. Developers are thus defining a new more open design. Criterian Capital, owner of Kingsland

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shopping centre, is negotiating with the local authorities a redevelopment project for the mall that will go hand in hand with the construction of 600 flats over the former mall. Small businesses’ owners are concerned by the real estate pressure that this intervention will create.

Two projects are related with “Ridley Road Improvement Area”: a “cleansing” intervention based on urban design criteria, as well as on the redevelopment of the last part of the market where the more ethnically diverse activities are located; and the proposal for a “container city”1 on an area that is used as market’s deposit, that will accommodate 51.000 sq. ft. for studios and offices.

Describing the neighbourhood, the plan celebrates Dalston’s diversity (mainly following ethno-racial lines, despite the residents’ differences of class, ways of life, socio-economic and education condition). When prescriptions and projects are introduced, diversity is transformed into diversification, pursued through the attraction of new middle-class residents, offices and commercial activities catering the new populations, as if the “existing diversity” of the place was not the “right one”. Diversification is a keyword for social mixing policies in the majority of Western Societies [2].

4. Counter-narratives: two voices from Dalston Larry Julian, chair of Ridley Road’s Traders Association defines himself as a “market guy”. He started working when he was fourteen, in the post-war ages when Ridley Road was a “family oriented” market: “When I was younger, we all stuck together – all the traders, all the parents, the mums and dads and the kids. And we socialised together”. In the 1950s, the Jewish communities started to move to Hackney, and Ridley Road was dominated by this presence. Then this community moved away, and from the 1980s it started to change into a more cosmopolitan-run market with Asian, Turkish, West-Indian and finally Eastern European traders. Among the market traders there is no longer tight-knit in and out of workhours: “the social side of it is not as friendly as it used to be – but that’s no disrespect to the new traders we’ve got come in. It’s because they have got […] different ways of living”. Larry Julian underlines that “when the traders come to the association, I always say that for me it does not matter if someone is black, white, yellow or blue: we are all market traders, and we need to be cohesive in the pressures on the Council”. There is a common belief in the association that regeneration projects are not based on a real comprehension of the market’s role for the local community: “for these reasons, the association decided to become part of OPEN, an organisation that has a very big backing from the people in Dalston”.

OPEN Dalston – Organisation for Promotion of Environmental Needs2, was founded in 2004 to organise forms of resistance to regeneration proposals. Bill Parry-Davies, an attorney based in Dalston, is one of the group’s founders. OPEN does not have a permanent office and chooses its venues on the basis of focus, nature and places involved in its activities that are related to four main issues: • heritage – to be brought to new life, to protect historical and architectural diversity; • affordable housing – to preserve the area’s social and economic diversity; • green spaces – to create environmental diversity as Daston lacks open spaces; • spaces for cultural aggregation – already operating in the area, but more could come.

OPEN Dalston has used different languages to carry out its forms of resistance to regeneration: • the legal language: giving information to local communities on their rights to react when a development project is proposed (Parry-Davies B., 2012); • sustainable counter-projects; • counter-narratives – meetings in “contested places” with novelists, poets, journalists, musicians, filmmakers narrating the local history, with a particular attention to the neighbourhoods’ internal dynamics (Caless K., Budden G. (eds), 2012).

1 2

http://www.containercity.com/projects/birkbeck-mews http://opendalston.blogspot.co.uk/

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OPEN opposed to Dalston Square development gaining lower densities and more flats for affordable housing; reacted to the “gated community” project leading developers to a new more open scheme; it is working with Ridely Road’s traders to understand threats and opportunities of the forthcoming cleansing initiatives. And yet, these “small gains” do not represent the most interesting aspects of OPEN’s experience. OPEN is an expression of the local middle-classes’ main interests (this is quite evident in the heritage protection objectives), using elitist languages. OPEN activists are fighting to keep their local character and identity, and are frightened by the “pacification by cappuccino” perspective as it is described

by Zukin (Zukin S., 2010). Despite this, different local populations joined to OPEN. An example is given by the campaign to save the Dalston Theatre: if OPEN leadership based the campaign mainly thinking at the protection of a relevant historical building, very different groups joined to the movement – the Caribbean community as the demolition was read as a way to destroy a part of the memory of black culture in Dalston, Arcola Theatre that was looking for a new location and Bootsrap, a local development trust committed in sustaining small businesses and community groups. Bootsrap proposed a counter-project that implied the creation of a new park over Dalston Junction Station, affordable housing (320 new flats), shops, cafes and community facilities. In this scheme the Dalston Theatre was saved and used by Arcola Theatre, a new Four Aces Club and a restaurant. They demonstrate that the project would not cost more than Barratt’s Project to the local Council: that was public land and the only request was giving land for free as it was done with Barratt as well. The resistance to the theatre’s destruction testify the leadership role assumed by locally rooted middle class that has been able to give voice to very different communities, interests, identities and objectives. Other “mixes” may be found in the resistance to the proposed gated community, and in the battles for Ridley Road market involving traders.

5. Conclusions Working on Dalston it has been possible to explore how everyday multiculturalism is practiced in a global metropolis in the 21st Century. A broad idea of culture has been adopted, referring to class, socio-economic condition, entrepreneurial culture and ethnicity. Dalston’s dynamics differ from some common narratives mobilised by research and policy agendas. For example, they may not be read through Smith’s narratives on the different “waves of gentrification” (Smith N., 2002) where the first generation of creative class creates the conditions for the middle-classes’ settlement. Here the middle-class arrived before the creative class, attracted by affordable Victorian terraces and proximity with the City. This area’s characters may be found also in other places at least in East London [15]. The creative class and the “established” gentrifiers have been able to strike root at the local level, and the middle-class is having a leadership role for a diversified local community, becoming a point of reference for resistance to not welcomed regeneration projects.

The social side (or rhetoric) of mixing policies is based on the idea that bringing middle-classes in a place is a core point to stimulate upward social mobility in the weaker groups as wealthier residents that may have a leadership role, helping disadvantaged communities. These theories have been deeply criticized as they tend to reduce people’s problems to “social pathology”, neglecting that social exclusion depends on structural factors, and that exposure to otherness, and the local level initiatives may be not enough to reach socio-economic upgrading (Raco M., 2003). Despite this, here a middle-class with at least an aggregative role could already be found. The market and local shops are as well an outstanding resource for low-income people. Even taking these policies’ narratives seriously, it could be helpful to understand if and how the public hand may capitalize existing resources. Research that has started to study public-led gentrification have been able to distinguish between established middle classes that strike root at the local level, and “new” middle classes who live “parallel lives”, without “mixing” (Davidson M., 2008). Rhys-Taylor’s ethnographic work on Ridley Road’s market’s users reveals similar dynamics with Dalston Square new residents (Rhys Taylor A., 2010).

“Parallel lives” is a recurring issue both in pro and cons narratives of mixing initiatives. On the one hand, the presences of population that do not mix in everyday life is considered as an index of vulnerability for a place (Denham J., 2001). On the other hand, tenure mix practices have demonstrated that these policies

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may result in spatial proximity between different socio-economic/ethnic groups, but that this condition doesn’t necessarily translates into social interaction between people of different background in public spaces, schools, services and shops (Butler T., 2003). And yet, Dalston narratives indicate that the parallel lives issue needs further investigation. As underlined by Larry Julian, when Ridley Road became a cosmopolitan market, it was no more a sort of extended family sharing job and a way of life, but this new condition does not imply disrespect and cohesion when the “traders’ community” feel to be under pressure due to regeneration projects. Some studies underline how policy makers seem asking to “diverse” neighbourhoods’ residents to be at the same time “cosmopolitan”, and able to express a sense of community that, in contemporary metropolises, is not required to middle and higher classes [29]. Community is seen suspiciously when it produces self-help that may bring to self-segregation, but is recalled as a means to contrast social exclusion as well. So there is a bivalent way of looking at community bonds, and maybe only a more locally-rooted planning approach, based on an in-depth observation on how multi-ethnic and multi-cultural forms of coexistence take place in everyday life of specific places may be helpful to understand if and how local resources may be sustained or not.

Dalston’s streets have been often described as a battlefield: Ridley Road’s battle between right extremist and the Jewish community during the Second World War; the battle of Kingsland High Street during London riots in 2011. At the current time Dalston is “under pressure” due to the presence of Hoxton Square – one of London’s post-industrial symbols of creative renaissance – on its south side; gentrified areas in Stoke Newington and Islington on its North and Western side; the Olympic areas on the Eastern side. Centerprise, one of London’s most famous community bookshops and community centres, celebrating since 1977 the contribution made by people of African descent to the Western literature tradition, closed in April 2013 due to raising rents offered by the Council to community outlets, in favour of the commercial establishments which gentrification has brought to the area.

A local writer imagined a “Battle of Kingsland Road” between the fashionistas from Hoxton Square and the gentrifiers from Stoke Newington (Case P., 2012). The novel is set in the future (2020), but public-led gentrification may accelerate such a process. A number of narratives met in this job underline the divergences between a development strategy set up at the metropolitan level, and local resistance to this strategy. This paper has tried to read these resistances as lenses to detect the often hidden resources of multi-ethnic environments. These neighbourhoods fear real estate pressure, as well as a development model based on homologation, not sensible to “differences and diversities” that the local community seem able to decline in a more articulated way. Mixing policies seem not to be able to relate with the “cities of difference” as they were described by Fincher and Jacobs [14]. The paper has tried to suggest that these policies are a product of external narratives of stigmatized places, and that these narratives are not so helpful to individuating locally rooted forms of intervention, adopting a perspective more focused on “managing” individuals’ and groups’ coexistences, rather than creating diversity through often unsuccessful forms of social engineering.

References Allen C., Powell R., Casey R., Coward S. (2005), Mixed Tenure, Twenty Years On: Nothing Out of the Ordinary, York, Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Arthurson K. (2012), Social Mix and the City, CSiro Publishing, Collingwood.

Atkinson R., Helms G. (eds) (2007), Securing an Urban Renaissance, Bristol, The Policy Press.

Bobbio L. (1998), La democrazia non abita a Gordio, Angeli, Milano.

Bolt G. (2009), Combating Residential Segregation of Ethnic Minorities in European Cities, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 24, pp 397-405.

Briata P. (2012), Beyond Social Mix. Looking for a Path to Rethink at Planning in the “Cities of Difference”, in Plurimondi 10, pp. 65-80.

Butler T. (2003), London Calling. The Middle Classes and the Re-making of Inner London, Berg, Oxford.

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Butler T., Hamnett C. (2011), Ethnicity, Class and Aspiration. Understanding London’s New East End, The Policy Press, Bristol.

Caless K., Budden G. (eds) (2012), Acquired for Development By… A Hackney Anthology, Influx Press, London.

Case P. (2012), The Battle of Kingsland Road, in Caless K., Budden G. (eds), Acquired for Development By… A Hackney Anthology, Influx Press, London, pp 83-95.

Cattacin S. (2006), Why Not “Ghettos”? Willy Brandt Series of Working Papers in International Migration and Ethnic Relations, 2, Malmo.

Crosta P. L.. (1998), Politiche. Quale conoscenza per l’azione territoriale, Angeli, Milano.

Davidson M. (2008), Love Thy Neighbour? Social Mixing in London’s Gentrification Frontiers, in Envirorment and Planning A, 42, pp. 524-544.

Demaris R., Germain A., Baque M.E., Bridge G., Fijalkow Y., Slater T. (2012), Social Mix and Neighbourhood Revitalisation in a Transatlantic Perspective: Comparing Local Policies Discourses and Expectations in Paris (France), Bristol (UK) and Montreal (Canada), International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37 (2), pp. 430-450.

Denham J. (2001), Building Cohesive Communities. A Report of the Ministerial Group on Public Order and Community Cohesion, Home Office, London.

Fincher R., Jacobs J. (eds.) (1998), Cities of Difference, New York-London, The Guilford Press.

Greater London Authority (2011), The London Plan. Spatial Development Strategy for Greater London, Mayor of London.

Kearns A. (2002), Response: From Residential Disadvantage to Opportunity? Housing Studies 17, 1, pp 145-150.

Lees L., Slater T., Wyly E. (eds.) (2008), Gentrification, London, Routledge.

London Borough of Hackney (2009), Hackney’s Sustainable Community Strategy, http://www.hackney.gov.uk/Assets/Documents/scs.pdf .

London Borough of Hackney (2007), A Profile of Dalston Ward, http://www.hackney.gov.uk/ Assets/Documents/dalston-ward-profile.pdf.

London Borough of Hackney (2011), Local Development Framework. Dalston Area Action Plan, http://www.hackney.gov.uk/Assets/Documents/Dalston-Area-Action-Plan-pre-sub.pdf.

Parry-Davies B. (2012), The Legalities of Development and its Resistance in the UK, http://opendalston.blogspot.co.uk/p/legalities-of-development-and-its.html.

Raco M. (2003), New Labour, Community and the Future of Britain’s Urban Renaissance, in Imrie R., Raco M. (eds), Urban Renaissance?, Bristol, The Policy Press, pp. 235-250.

Rhys Taylor A. (2010), Coming to Our Senses: A Multi-Sensory Ethnography of Class and Multiculture in East London, PhD Thesis, Goldsmiths University, London.

Tosi A. (2000), L’inserimento degli immigrati: Case e città, in Marcetti C., Solimano N., Tosi A. (eds), Le culture dell’Abitare, Polistampa, Firenze, pp. 63-86.

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Smith N. (2002), New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy, in Antipode, 34 (3), pp. 427-450.

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Acknowledgments This work has been funded by the European Union Under a Marie Curie Action – FP7-PEOPLE-2011IEF

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Pragmatic heterotopias

The redefinition of urban spaces through street art: the case of Grottaglie Giovanni Caffio

Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio” Dipartimento di Architettura E-mail: giovanni.caffio@gmail.com

Street art phenomenon is part of the magmatic forces that shape contemporary urban spaces. Usually fought as vandalism is at once appreciated as artistic expression capable of triggering positive dynamics.

Starting from the guiding metaphor of heterotopia coined by Michel Faucault – places open on other places, spaces of connection and inclusion – this paper principal aim is to illustrate and analyze the forms of collective use of environment and the informal actions through which citizens are reclaiming space through the concrete example of the city of Grottaglie, Puglia, home of the Fame Festival, one of the most important event in the street art world. The interventions analyzed allow us to understand how street art, through individual actions and apparently weak systems of transformation, may innovatively act on the overall image of the city.

Keywords: street-art, heterotopia, city

1. Introduction Street art phenomenon is part of the magmatic forces that shape contemporary urban spaces. Usually fought as vandalism is at once appreciated as artistic expression capable of triggering positive dynamics.

Starting from the guiding metaphor of heterotopia coined by Michel Faucault – places open on other places, spaces of connection and inclusion – this paper principal aim is to illustrate and analyse the forms of collective use of environment and the informal actions through which citizens are reclaiming space through the concrete example of the city of Grottaglie, Puglia, home of the FAME Festival, one of the most important event in the street art world. The interventions analysed allow us to understand how street art, through individual actions and apparently weak systems of transformation, may innovatively act on the overall image of the city.

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2. Street art: re-imaging the city Street art is now considered in all respects an artistic genre that comes from the confluence of many experiences1 and has, as its own characteristic, the ability to incorporate and metabolize the most different instances, from the erudite citations of abstract art to styles coming from the street, from expressions of the local political struggles to global advertisements. It is an artistic practice, son of postmodern society, the concrete and tangible result of the culture that Henry Jenkins calls "convergence" (Jenkins, 2007). This is not a school or a trend, or originates from a theoretical manifesto, but is developed through practice in a constant state of becoming. As a movement, now spread all over the world, it owes much of its strength to the ability of acting in local contexts while turning, at the same time, to a global audience. As with other forms of contemporary expression, it uses all possible media – photography, video, especially the Internet – not only to appeal to an audience of enthusiasts around the globe, but also to document, in an almost extreme way, each work. A requirement mainly linked to the transience and impermanence inherent the intrinsic quality of such works. The language of street art, unlike what happens for graffiti writing, is not autonomous or deliberately cryptic for the uninitiated, but in common with this practice uses artistic raids and real guerrilla actions, which require an organization similar to that of gangs. The artists involved in this movement often refuse labels (in fact, very often they also refuse to be called artists too) and if there is a bond that unites them, is the field of work and exploration: the city.

Since the '90s, the street art phenomenon began to gain more and more space and it has been proposed as a clarification of the illness but also of the hidden dreams of its diverse community of people. In this way, it is able to project on the walls of the city the aspirations hidden in the urban subconscious, a new selfmanaged layer in addition to those governed by the institutions, like the rash of a psychosomatic illness.

Rebecca Solnit (2005) has shown clearly how in the city layers of coexisting consciousness spontaneously arise, some of them clear and awake, some others slumbering and unconscious. They are abandoned spaces, those left to decay and degraded, where unexpectedly practices of street art appear, which bring to light the dark side of the city. What unites such diverse projects is the importance of the city as a place of inspiration and incubation. Whether it is a symbiotic and empathic, or otherwise, confrontational and subversive relationship, artists are never separated from the context of urban life. Their works can be gratuitous gestures that return beauty to degraded areas or alteration of billboards fighting against the overwhelming iconographic power of advertising industry, but the scope of these action remains the city.

A mural that materialises on the wall of a road reveals the importance of the material framework and makes it possible to re-imagine and re-invent the city.

3. The FAME Festival FAME is a festival where international artists are invited in Grottaglie, a small town of southern Italy near Taranto, to put their art in reaction with the local reality then letting the outcome of that encounter leave traces on the walls and in the streets. It was born in 2008 and had five editions, but it was anticipated by an experiment, dating from the year before the first edition. Regarding that experience, the creator and curator Angelo Milano says, "along with some artists that I invited to work on the silk-screen prints in my lab, we started to do a few things around Grottaglie. At that time I realized that these people, from all over the world, fell in love with this place, they noted peculiarities and potentialities that the natives did not know"2 (Caffio, 2012, p. 82). Thus was born the idea of deepening the experiment and see what kind of effects could have on the city. The idea is simple and, from its first edition, has not changed: every year from late April to late September, from ten to twenty artists arrive in Grottaglie, where they spend an artist residency hosted by Angelo and his family. During this stay every artist is invited to use the city as a On the cultural origins of street art and its relationship with the previous art movements see Lewinsohn C. (2008), Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution, Tate Publishing, London.

2 This publication, after a brief recognition of the different perspectives on street art movement, presents detailed descriptions, with original drawings, maps and photographs, of all the works realized in Grottaglie during the last five editions of FAME Festival.

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medium for their work, in most cases with appropriate institutional permissions, in other cases not. The artists are given the opportunity to collaborate with local artisans specialized in ceramic production and to use the space and equipment of Studio Cromie3 for screen printing. In this way, through direct interaction between international contemporary art and traditional crafts of Grottaglie, works of art, produced in a limited edition, are exhibited and offered for sale as part of a group exhibition that at each edition closes the festival in September.

Figure 1. Synthetic diagram of interventions in the city of Grottaglie in the past five editions of FAME Festival. The division of the territory into eight areas is intended to facilitate the visit of the works grouping them by proximity and linking them to their specific urban context.

The festival, with all the interventions available for free in the public space, does not generate any kind of direct income. The economic aspect is committed to the craft production that supports the festival. The sale of ceramics, limited edition prints and other unique pieces that takes place online through Studio Cromie and at the final show, is the sole financial source of the event and economic compensation for the artists. Alongside the public and free works, the production of marketable art objects allows the festival to waive any sponsor and any institutional support only living by self-financing. This system preserves the independence and the opportunity to address critical issues in the works that often highlight problems and deficiencies arising from local administration decisions. The choice of locations and the design of the projects and works, are the result of an intense dialogue between artists and the organizer Angelo Milano who seeks to address the various projects on a local scale considering the specificities of the urban and social reality where they will act.

The works come from the observation of the spaces and architectures in that specific place, with the objective to fill town with ouvres that might really function and dialogue before becoming global, thanks to the Internet, even if the dialogue can be confrontational and the aim explicitly provocative. Although they are always forms of interaction with the urban and public environment, the works of each of these artists are unique expressions, resulting from attitudes and poetics individual choices. So far, more than thirty artists intervened over the city, providing an overall quite heterogeneous framework, which makes the idea of the multitude of trends that have been developing on the walls of towns and suburbs around the world over the last ten years. In addition to Blue, Ericailcane, 108, Lucy McLauchlan and JR, have come and gone, over the various editions, names like Akay, Barry McGee, Boris Hoppek, Escif, Momo, 3

See http://www.studiocromie.org

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Nunca, Bastardilla, Os Gemeos, Sam3, Swoon, Conor Harrington, Vhils and many other, more or less, emerging artists.

Figure 2. Vhils, Via Partigiani Caduti, 2011. Photo courtesy of P. Marino.

4. Pragmatic heterotopias Each piece of street art is a form of spatialized thought and much of the work comes from the selection of the place in which to operate. The idea of artistic intervention as a strategy of spatial resistance is connected to the act of union and fusion of the idea with the place. Each project represents a form of resistance against the use of urban space as a tool for spatial control, which delimits and defines areas.

Each project must be considered as an example of spatialized thought, a conceptual turn which generates new understandings of the geographies of resistance and utopia.

Angelo Milano starts on the assumption that Grottaglie is his home and he is perfectly aware of the changes that are facing the city, but also of how the site can be used as a tool to oppose or denounce the speculative logic of power. Angelo chooses the places in which to work considering the kind of forces they stand for and the categories that led to the their birth and definition: abandoned spaces, blind spots of urban planning. They are spaces lacking of intentional design, sometimes resulting from residual or historical layers of interrupted constructions. The inaccessibility, the closure outward, the marginalization and displacement from urban functions are key factors for their inclusion in the festival. These places are victims of conflicting vetoes from different powers and regimes, those of the state, the municipalities, the private, the advertising economy that saturates every attractive surface. These places become part of the festival because their level of abandonment is likely to take them out of the common interest. As spaces defined and delimited by multiple systems of power, cultural rules and spatial planning logics, their ontological status, highlighted just by artistic interventions, can be considered heterotopic.

The term "heterotopia" was established in 1967 when it was used for the first time by Michel Foucault at a conference entitled Espace Des Autres ('Of other Spaces'). Although the term sounds rather obscure, Foucault explains that a heterotopia is a place outside all of territories, although it may be possible to recognize it in a precise point of the reality. “There are also, probably in every culture, – Foucault affirms – in every civilization, real places, places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society, which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and

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inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias” (Foucault, 1967). In many ways, the actions of FAME fit this description because they are perceptually and physically outside the established rules of local urbanism and, therefore, become pragmatic, tangible and, in other words, geographical expressions of the relations among the forms of power. They live in already marginal spaces in which a deviant behaviour – such as, for example, the artistic intervention on the wall – can produce oppositional phenomena within the space managed by the authority.

Figure 3. Nunca Mas, Via Sant’Elia, 2010. Photo courtesy of P. Marino.

Moreover, in the conference, Foucault introduces the concept that these places can be of two types: heterotopias of crisis and of deviation. While the first ones focus on sites linked to specific times of human crisis – youth, fertility, aging – the second are dedicated to individuals who possess behaviours that deviate from the standard rule. In the case of Grottaglie, street art interventions are located in those parts of the city in which policies are weaker or vacant. Blind walls of buildings (Fig. 4), for example, are nothing more than spaces that deviate from the rule that every domestic surface should be pierced by openings to illuminate and ventilate an interior space. Closed walls are infertile surfaces because lacking the life that takes place behind. They are unnecessary scenes because without any commercial and residential use.

Small cohorts in the historical centre, so small that they can not accommodate moments of conviviality, the makeshift open spaces to accommodate parking lots, abandoned houses, technical cabins, niches and openings in structures: all spaces born by the deviance from urban design and any previous use. Places out from the common interest as unserviceable or no longer useful. The interventions of FAME are in areas that are both open and secluded. Blind alleys and walls are the most common of this type of space: open to all, but rarely used. Fences, gates and shutters (Fig 5), the tops of buildings (Fig. 6) these spaces may not be public spaces in the official sense, but certainly have a big impact on the public visibility regime.

Sometimes difficult to reach but always easy to see.

This feature is, not surprisingly, in line with another of the heterotopic criteria described by Foucault: "Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable." (Foucault, Ibidem).

In the context of economic relations, graffiti adopt those spaces that have little or no value for their sizes and shapes, places forgotten because linked to objects or insignificant architecture. As heterotopias and places that reflect, in the negative, hegemonic power, the works of FAME are places that deviate from normalized use and create a new perception of public space within the city. With their unusual dimensions and their inaccessibility and lack of commercial value (they are not for sale and everyone have access to)

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opposed to a high aesthetic and artistic value, they function as heterotopias – places antithetical to other sites. Through their transformation and the subsequent public recognition, they experienced the transition from neglected to significant space.

Figure 4. Ericailcane, Via Sonnino, 2011. Figure 5: Cyop & Kaf, Via Pacinotti angolo via Mercadante, 2010. Figure 6: Escif, Via Cantore, 2011. Axonometric views of interventions, photos courtesy of P. Marino.

The decision to intervene on the body of the city with street art is therefore never accidental but a powerful combination of three factors that have fuelled the curator choices: the first one is the interest in graffiti writing, a kind of megaphone for those who have no voice as young and underground rebels; the second is the anarchic and provocative attitude inherited from the Italian punk-rock and hard-core music scene4 and, finally, an intuition that the places without identities in the urban landscape have the strong potential to subvert a present hopeless condition because of negligence or voluntary indifference. The recovery process has resulted in an artistic ontological shift of the places, from hidden spaces to destinations of international tourism. The FAME project has succeeded, therefore, in reaffirming the close connection between place and identity, as well as in demonstrating how the graffiti art, in its infinite shapes and forms, can act as a form of re-integration and upgrading of degraded spaces into the shared urban life, as instinctive and pragmatic action that puts into play again the value of the sites and allows them to be "new and alive."

4

Angelo Milano, in fact, collaborates with the post-hardcore/screamo musical band La Quiete.

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Finally, let's refer to another of the features that characterize the idea of heterotopia according to Foucault: "The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible." [9] The murals that appear either on small facades of the old town and on the big ones in the blocks of the periphery (Fig. 7 and 8) open impossible rips towards hidden dimensions. Like theater sets, they show to urban viewers strange places that slowly begin to coexist with the lives of the inhabitants.

Figures 7. and 8. Momo, Via Carducci, 2011; Ericailcane, Via Mattarella, 2012. Photos courtesy of P. Marino

Figure 9. Boris Hoppek, Via Maratoneti, 2010. Photo courtesy of P. Marino

It is no coincidence, in fact, that the works integrated themselves into the local geography becoming part of that oral and informal toponymy, typical of small towns, able to guide you from one place to another without ever using names of streets and squares, but only reference points. But, it is not just the individual works, with the strength of their pictorial illusion to show new possibilities of meanings and hidden potential. It is the entire FAME Festival that brings a new city out of the folds of the existing one. If one of the characteristics related to heterotopia is to create an illusory space that reflects the illusion of its real counterpart, the Festival with its colourful murals complaint the fictitious, stereotypical and touristic image of a city that, like many others in the South, is in a deep economic, environmental and cultural crisis. In Grottaglie the FAME Festival has built a geography that brings locals and tourists to explore the streets with a new focus. Observed under a different perspective from that hegemonic, the city can show its hidden beauty, bring back its forgotten history and imagine new alternative futures.

References

Caffio, G. (2012), Il disegno nella cittĂ , 44 Edizioni, Napoli.

Foucault M. (1967), Of other Spaces. Heterotopias, Translated from the French by Jay Miskowiec and available at http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html

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Jenkins H. (2007), Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York University Press, New York.

Lewinsohn C. (2008), Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution, Tate Publishing, London.

Solnit R. (2005), A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Viking, New York.

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Ecological urbanism The eco-systemic framework of “informal” processes of urbanization Antonia Chiesa Politecnico di Milano DAStU - Department of Architecture and Urban Studies.

E-mail: antonia.chiesa@polimi.it

“Informal” urban processes are increasingly expanding on the scarce fertile ground of the western outskirts of Cairo, populating unsteady waterfronts in Dar es Salaam, filling with pile-work shelters Lagos’s lagoon. Such urbanization of “nature”, raising issues of sustainability, overcomes the traditional urban/rural opposition and produces highly hybridized spaces, which may be interpreted at the scale of landscape urbanism (Waldheim, 2006, 2010) adopting an eco-systemic approach (Kay, 2008) and open ecological models (Odum, 1985).

A spontaneous, self-regulating, non-linear behavior defines the transformative nature of unplanned urban landscapes: rather than relying on a static state, they are constantly informed by fluxes of natural and cultural infrastructures, information and energetic chains structuring a distinct topography (Belanger, 2007). The field of urban action is an open exchange network system whose spatial and temporal dimensions are elastic, semi-stable or unstable, and multi-scalar. The terminological translation of such theoretical shift implies the development of flexible operational and working methods related to the progresses of new parametric and informational technologies (Corner, 2006) to adapt design to the multiscale nature of contemporary urban landscape.

Keywords: landscape urbanism, ecological urbanism, eco-systemic models

1. Introduction My research has been recently challenged by three different yet similar urban narratives facing some of the emerging issues of African cities: a huge increase in population, strong trends of migration towards cities and, in the meantime, severe consequences of climate change affecting urban environments. Triggered by economic pressure, “informal” urban expansion, still not taken in any adequate consideration by local authorities (Sakijege T., Lupala J., Sheuya S., 2012), is neither recent nor provisional: spreading rapidly into any available land, it oft populates inhospitable places where the relation with the environment is dramatic.

Without going into the specifics of the three different situations, this research describes a relatively new

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approach to their extreme complexity and spatial implications, as a support to traditional planning strategies.

2. Three narratives The 17.3 million-inhabitant population of the Greater Cairo Region, increasing at a 2% yearly rate, is by the 63% living in the informal settlements (Sims D., Séjourné M., 2008). Whereas first residential developments may be dated back in the 50s and the 60s (Sims D., 2010; ) (Sims D., Séjourné M., 2008), such trend of transformation, extremely accelerated in the last decades, has filled at a strong peace the gap between the city and small towns once structuring the rural landscape. Real estate perspectives, as compared to incomes form agricultural land use (Séjourné M., 2012),, are valuable to farmers who keep fields under-cultivated, later declare them as no longer arable and sell them to unscrupulous building developers (Gertel J., Samir S., 2000; El Batran M., Arandel C., 1998). Such consolidated practice keeps producing a compact built environment based on solid building techniques, family-based aggregations and successive plot subdivisions.

Yet, when observed at a broader scale and in a long-term perspective, the shortening of limited fertile land, given the geographical and climatic location of Cairo within the regional scale, is extremely concerning and affecting at the national scale dynamics of food-import and water exploitation, which continues to be pumped out of Nile’s decreasing water flow with little supervision (Gertel J., Samir S., 2000). As Belanger underlines “the history of agriculture, that of food production, energy resources, soil and water systems, cannot and should not be read as distinct from the history of urbanization” (Bélanger P., Roth C., 2011).

Dar es Salaam is the core of a 3 million inhabitants urban region, with an exploding growth rate of 4-5% per year in the last decade. The 80% of the population is living in informal haphazardly built settlements where healthy conditions, services, mobility and energy distribution are critical. Low-income dwellers mostly populate unsteady and vulnerable riverfronts, where the effects of climate change determine variations in precipitations and wind flows increasing frequency and intensity of floods. Since about 95% of the city is built on loamy soils of limited absorption and about 45% of the city area has a high water table, rainwater runoff is a permanent problem leading to an increase in malnutrition, diseases and climaterelated injuries. Access to basic infrastructure services such as water supply, sewerage and waste management, storm-water drainage systems is limited [1]. Even so the unplanned city re-appears stubbornly after each flooding, despite of planning regulations.

Lagos is also a coastal city and top destination of internal migration: with a population of 15 million inhabitants, is one of the fast growing cities in the world. As Dar, it is seriously threatened by constant coastal erosion and increasing rainfall, which regularly flood the densely populated areas lying below sea level and cause major injuries. Among other parts of the city, the Makoko 150-year “slum” settlement, structured by shacks built on stilts on the lagoon water, is one of interest. Specific recurring distances and spatial relationships modulate internal logics of the settlement according to the spatial needs of local water-based transportation (Sakijenge T., Lupala J., Sheuya S., 2012). Although raising issues of critical sanitary conditions and questioning the ground-based landlord/tenant concept, Makoko’s specificity deserves a proper effort towards legitimization and integration. Instead, Lagos government recently proceeded with immediate forced evictions to replace them with a megalopolis-style waterfront and therefore revealing an impasse in understanding and managing the “informal” settlements at a large urban scale as de facto parts of the city.

3. Why using ecology to describe the “informal” “Informal” is a category that needs to be unpacked and much has been written about it (Davis M., 2006).

Today it is clear that, given its extended dimensions, durability and target-differentiation, any negative definition does not fit properly such character of contemporary urbanism, which needs to be re-evaluated

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(Gilbert A., 2007). Informal and spontaneous are rather the processes shaping the territory according to a performative use of space: the whole city is an exchange network system, where “fluxes of infrastructures, information technologies, energetic supply chains –such as water, power and fuel-, people and goods” (Corner J., 2006) are traceable. No longer understood as a tabula rasa upon which built forms are displaced, the broader urban context is a multi-dimensional system engaging integrated and hybridized cultural-natural ecologies (Nyamwanza A.M., 2012; Lister NM., 2010). Such state of continuous, various and even subversive transformation –so evident in the informal city- shows some reluctance to be approached traditionally. Given its complex relational nature, multiplicity and multi-layer state of continuous transformation, informal processes of urbanization resemble, and may be interpreted as, ecological processes.

Figure 1. Ecological variables in Cairo’s informal settlements (Antonia Chiesa)

4. From ecological to eco-systemic As mentioned, the recent escalation in severity of seasonal perturbations and large-scale natural hazards focused the attention on the cause-effect dynamics of urban transformation on the territory and, in general, on sustainability of urban growth, which, in the case of unplanned settlements, seems to be particularly crucial.

However, even if in recent years ecological terminology as applied to urban design has been fairly much used, it has rarely meant a rapprochement of environmental science and urban design culture. Yet the work of projective imagination is today challenged by calls for environmental remediation, ecological health and biodiversity to the design of alternate urban paradigms (Waldheim C.; 2010). Firstly triggered towards a shift in contents, urban design has recently considered ecology as a disciplinary field through which renovate terminology and borrow useful metaphors (Lister NM., 2010). In the specifics, through the hybridization with systemic thinking as applied to ecology, a theoretical framework for a better understanding of living systems’ dynamics has supported design culture. Indeed, Odum’s definition of ecosystem (Odum H. T., 1983) frames a community of living organisms - population and species- and the non-living environment as functioning together.

Lynch already worked on the idea of an urban ecosystem provided with a set of codified rules –the so called organized complexity (Lynch K., 1981) - and aiming to the state of a final balance; but his vision, as for the reductionist approach to the stability of systems and the climax theory, seems to reduce the level of sophistication and infinite combinations of variables interacting in the urban environment.

Belangèr (Belangèr P., 2010) suggests therefore a re-evaluation of open ecological models, such those by Odum (Odum H. T., 1983), to explain the multiple inputs and outputs contributing to the functioning of the system. Eco-systems deal with a tremendous amount of intertwined variables producing by interaction a multiplicity of results, which may be only partially controlled: a certain amount of unpredictability and

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indeterminacy, together with diversity and complexity (Holling C. S., 1986), is therefore to be considered.

As Kay explains (Kay J., 2008), complex systems self-organize through positive feedback loops, and their openness predisposes them to dramatic reorganizations at critical points of instability caused by selfamplified internal fluctuations.

Figure 2. Re-interpretation of Odum’s open ecological models (Antonia Chiesa)

A self-regulating, non-linear behavior may be observed and acknowledged in informal settlements as response to occurring changes in the system, such as flooding, forced evictions or layout of new highspeed infrastructure. The reaction to disturbance is one of self-adaptation through a buffering capacity (Kay J., 2008): up to a certain threshold ecosystems resist, then the change is abrupt and sudden; later on it reorganizes itself in a very dramatic and often unpredictable way generating new, partially unforeseen, patterns of development. This is the case of recurring migrations to any available, affordable site or also the development of parallel non-institutional, collective means transportation, such as the “dalla-dalla” in Dar and the “tuk-tuk” in Cairo, as efficient bottom-up response to urban challenges. The informal city represents a phase of urban transformation, as one step of the succession of semi-stable states, neither delicate or fragile, but dynamic and evolving. As eco-system approach suggests, a total recovery of all preexisting conditions and former combination of elements is theoretically improbable, when not even desirable: urban management should therefore move towards integration rather then opposition to a supposed temporary phenomenon.

5. Resilience and adaptive design Lister defines resilience as the “ability to recover from disturbance, to accommodate change, and to function in a state of health” (Lister NM., 2010) highlighting the inherent potential for adaptation of ecosystems. The concept has to be framed in Holling’s distinction between engineering and ecological resilience. On the one hand the focus is the resistance to disturbances and the time required for a system to return to equilibrium or to a steady state after a perturbation or a disturbance (Gunderson L.H., 2000): a condition of global stability is therefore assumed as a given fact. On the other hand ecological resilience is concerned with the width of any stable state, and aims to measure the amount of disturbance which may be absorbed before the system changes its conditions. Such resilience, therefore, focuses on the tolerance of the system to perturbations in order to catalyze the evolution into more stable states [12]. Such theory aims to understand adaptive change from one state to another as well as cross-scale interactions – panarchy- and re-organisation after perturbations through adaptive cycles linked across spatial and temporal scales. The concept of adaptive capacity - the ability of a species to be able to live and reproduce in a certain range of environmental contingencies (Gallopin C., 2006) – seems to be suitable for describing

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human-environmental or social-ecological systems; in fact it is a function of resources or assets inherent in and accessible to a given system deriving from natural, physical, human and social capital.

A resilient livelihood should have therefore a high adaptive capacity: a loss of adaptive capacity and therefore resilience would mean loss of opportunity and options during and after periods of stresses and shocks.

Figure 3. Re-interpretation of Holling’s distinction between engineering and ecological resilience (Antonia Chiesa)

6. Implications of eco-systemic approach in urban design In such theoretical context, the agency of design is aimed to the endorsement of ecosystem’s resilience, where a compromised situation is declared and effective intervention is considered as necessary to speed up the recovery and catalyze the system to a more suitable or stable state. As for the case studies, design should move both towards an integration of bottom-up efficiencies (Kipper R., Fisher M., Howeidy A., 2009) and to a wiser human-ecological interaction. As Lister states (Lister NM., 2010), by introducing the concept of adaptive design, “These interventions and their forms must be both adaptive and resilient to sudden, discontinuous environmental change—change that is normal, but cannot be predicted with certainty or controlled completely”.

Moreover, the concept of urban metabolism may be here recalled, since it acknowledges phases of transformation, substitution and maintenance of the urban fabric as processes regularly occurring in the life of a city. Contin interprets urban metabolism both as an analysis of the city and as a projective design catalyzing and triggering transformative operations within the urban fabric (Contin A., Sbacchi M. (eds.),, 2007). Any input, as the layout or re-evaluation of an infrastructure, or the design of an urban park, produces indeed spillover effects in the surrounding landscape, and may trigger spatial regeneration.

In a broader sense the eco-systemic approach provide urban design with a flexible perspective over the city, encompassing the fluidity and flexibility of contemporary lifestyle and overcoming urban-rural boundaries (Mostafavi M., 2010). Moreover, if intended spatially, the eco-systemic approach merges the built and the un-built environments as a unique background to face ecological emergencies. Scarce or abundant, water is the common element to the three case studies, requiring both new and traditional technologies which may link ecological issues with geographical considerations and cultural specificity.

Slope, permeability, drainage, climatic conditions determining evaporation - due to wind and heat – suggest that landscape is one of the privileged field of research to increase urban regeneration in compromised contexts, thanks to its connective, ecological and resilient role. Indeed, historically, ecology, planning and landscape architecture share themes and research within contemporary urbanism.

In particular landscape urbanism, even if considered as branch of landscape ecology (Waldheim C., 2006), represents a significant change to the analytical ecological approach: it indeed overcomes the traditional urban/rural opposition, considering the urbanization of “nature” as an opportunity to investigate highly

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hybridized spaces which are considered as the given context of contemporary urbanism. Besides being a background, landscape becomes therefore the medium for the construction of the expanded city, as a layered multidimensional process influenced by social-cultural and political-economic dynamics.

The last implication is a matter of representation and imaging speculation, as for both the analysis of a site and the implementation of design strategies by subsequent phases: timing of transformation challenges design projects in its appropriateness and efficacy of expression. Yet Corner highlights the development of flexible operational and working methods related to the progresses of new parametric and informational technologies (Corner J., 2006) to adapt design to the multi-scale nature of contemporary urban landscape. Ecological processes inform the project through “a multiplicity of old and new methods, tools, and techniques in a cross-disciplinary and collaborative approach toward urbanism developed through lens of ecology” (Waldheim C., 2006).

7. Conclusions Ecological terminology comes at hand in describing contemporary processes of urbanization, especially in the case of informal settlements. Urban design may benefit from such approach to improve the understanding and the theoretical framing of multiple dynamics, extended spatial implications, limited predictability of cultural and natural adaptation so that unplanned efficiencies and spontaneous phenomena may be better integrated and legitimated.

References Belangèr P. (2010), Redefining infrastructure. In: Mostafavi M, Doherty G (eds.), Ecological Urbanism, University Graduate School Of Design Cambridge, Mass., Lars Müller Publishers, Baden, Switzerland, pp: 332-349 Bélanger P., Roth C. (2011), The agronomic landscape: a brief 8,000-year timeline of soil & plants, techniques & technologies, crops & cultures, industries & ecologies, empires & urbanization. In: GAM 07: Zero Landscape, Springer-Verlag, Wien, pp:166-182 Corner J. (2006), Terra fluxus. In: Waldheim C (ed.), The landscape urbanism reader, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp: 21-33 Contin A., Sbacchi M. (eds.), (2007) Canicattì: Campagne Abitate, Paesaggi d'Arte, Alinea, Firenze Davis M. (2006), Planet of Slums, Verso, London, New York El Batran M., Arandel C. (1998), A shelter of their own: informal settlement expansion in Greater Cairo and government responses. In: Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 10 No. 1, April 1998, pp 217–232 Gallopin C. (2006), Linkages between vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity, Global Environmental Change 16, pp: 293 303.

Gertel J., Samir S. (2000), Cairo: urban agriculture and visions for a “modern” city. In: Bakker N, Dubbeling M, Gündel S, Sabel-Koschella U, de Zeeuw H (eds) Growing cities, growing food: urban agriculture on the policy agenda, Deutsche Stiftung für internationale Entwicklung (DSE). Zentralstelle für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft, Feldafing, pp 209–234 Gilbert A. (2007), The return of the slum: does language matter? In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 31.4 December 2007 pp: 697–713 Gunderson L.H. (2000), Ecological resilience in theory and application, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 31, pp: 425 439 Holling C. S. (1986), The resilience of terrestrial ecosystems: local surprise and global change. In: W. C. Clark and R. E. Munn (eds.), Sustainable development of the biosphere. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp: 292-317 Kay J. (2008), An introduction to systems thinking. In: Waltner-Towes D, Kay J, and Lister NM (eds.), The ecosystem approach Complexity, uncertainty and managing for sustainability, Columbia University Press, New York, pp: 3-13 potentials: facts, voices, visions, German Technical Cooperation, Cairo

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Kipper R., Fisher M., Howeidy A. (2009), Cairo's informal areas between urban challenges and hidden Lister NM. (2010), Insurgent ecologies: (re)claiming ground in landscape and urbanism. In: Mostafavi M, Doherty G (eds.), Ecological Urbanism, University Graduate School Of Design Cambridge, Mass., Lars Müller Publishers, Baden, Switzerland, pp: 508-521 Lynch K. (1981), A theory of good city form, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Mostafavi M. (2010), Why ecological urbanism? Why now? In: Mostafavi M, Doherty G (eds.), Ecological Urbanism, University Graduate School Of Design Cambridge, Mass., Lars Müller Publishers, Baden, Switzerland, pp: 12-51 Nyamwanza A.M. (2012), Livelihood resilience and adaptive capacity: A critical conceptual review. In: Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies 4(1), Art. #55, 6 pages Odum H. T. (1983), Systems ecology: an introduction, Wiley, New York Sakijenge T., Lupala J., Sheuya S. (2012), Flooding, flood risks and coping strategies in urban informal residential areas: the case of Keko Machungwa, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In: Jamba: journal of disaster risk studies 4(1), Art.46, 10 pages Sakijege T., Lupala J., Sheuya S. (2012), Flooding, flood risks and coping strategies in urban informal residential areas: the case of Keko Machungwa, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In: Jamba: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies 4(1), Art. 46, 10 pages Séjourné M. (2012), Inhabitants' daily practices to obtain legal status for their homes and security of tenure: Egypt. In: Ababsa M, Dupret B, Denis E (eds.), Popular housing and urban land tenure in the middle east: case studies from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo & New York Sims D. (2010), Understanding Cairo: the logic of a city out of control, The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo & New York Sims D., Séjourné M. (2008), The dynamics of peri-urban areas around Greater Cairo: concept note.

Egypt Urban Sector Update, World Bank ESW, March 2008 Waldheim C. (2010), Weak work: Andrea Branzi’s “Weak Metropolis” and the projective potential of an “Ecological Urbanism”. In: Mostafavi M, Doherty G (eds.), Ecological urbanism, University Graduate School Of Design Cambridge, Mass., Lars Müller Publishers, Baden, Switzerland, pp.114-121 Waldheim C. (2006), Landscape as urbanism. In: Waldheim C (ed.), The landscape urbanism reader, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp: 35-53

Acknowledgements The current paper finds its origin in the intense team-work of the Laboratorio Misura&Scala, Politecnico of Milan coordinated by Antonella Contin.

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Urban devices The representation of the urban landscape and scenarios of endogenous transformation Alessandra Cirafici Seconda Università di Napoli Department of Architecture and Design ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’ E-mail: alessandra.cirafici@unina2.it

Caterina Cristina Fiorentino Seconda Università di Napoli Department of Architecture and Design ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’ E-mail: caterula@yahoo.it

To understand what urban places are and how they work, Michel de Certeau, in The practice of everyday life (1990), introduces the metaphor of ‘urban tactics’. De Certeau’s perspective is the starting point of this article that aims to investigate the complex relationships between urban spaces and activities, generally of a spontaneous nature, undertaken by citizens. In this metaphorical perspective, the urban space, made of symbols, signals, and linguistic codes, is a book to be interpreted properly and quickly, in order to cope with the multiple strains and unforeseen occasions contemporary city offers, and produce collective actions capable of altering the physical structure and relational components of public spaces. The research concerns the theme of Urban Interaction Design, an appropriate research field for defining the tools and processes of intervention, considered to be the result of negotiation practices and of an analysis aimed at transforming the components of the intervention sites into design proposals and decisions, based on the capacity to ‘identify’ and ‘describe’ the identity of urban contexts as the value that defines the places and their systems of reference. The article will proceed with an application of a specific example - the urban area of Lavinaio in Naples - which will be examined by the authors.

Keywords: Urban interaction design, behavioral design, metropolitan languages

1. Introduction This article examines the abandonment of the notion of space – and, in particular, the space of the city – as a series of places corresponding to functions rather than people, and the adoption of a concept of space as a network of relations and thus in a broad sense as a ‘space for living’. These reflections revolve around

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the contemporary dimension of urban life, its complex connections, and the need to redefine interpretative strategies and representative paradigms.

The focus will initially be on the alterations affecting forms of contemporary living and its own vocabulary, which are leading to a general rethink of the methods and strategies involved in the rigid paradigm concerning the representation of the city and its territory. The visual conventions of the representative processes of urban space have experienced an unstable and turbulent period for a considerbale time. This is not principally due to the major innovations in digital representation systems, but rather due to the fragility they demonstrate in adequately expressing the accumulation of differences and contradictions that characterise the new forms of living and the new tactics of using urban places.

New ways of interacting with the territory are emerging, in which the processes of signification of space multiply and overlap. Unprecedented temporalities regulate individual and collective experience.

Interconnections are intensifying and the processes of globalisation are radically altering the relationship between space and time, leading to a new condition of an elsewhere that is simultaneously everyhere or nowhere. Representing this complex polyphony is a crucial challenge for understanding contemporary life, but also for addressing its modifications with greater awareness. Representations have the power to construct meanings, to institute and shape forms of knowledge, and to transform the collective perception of reality. Galimberti is absolutely right when he argues that “men have never inhabited the world, but only the description that religion, philosophy and science have, in turn, given of the world” (Galimberti U., 1994). One inhabits representations of reality and these “founding tales or maps have the power to construct belonging and relations, stratifying images and common sense, embodying desires and the possibility of control” (Attili G., 2008). In this sense, attention will focus on the practices of the ‘invention of reality’ (de Certeau M., 2001) which interpret the complex relations between places and the activities that take place there. They configure the ‘life space’ of the city, which is a fascinating maze of signs, symbols, codes and metaphors of living. It is a complex system whose signals should be intercepted in order to understand the sense of individual or collective actions. These actions have the power to modify the physical structure and relational components of urban space through a process that often spontaneously activates behavioural strategies that give new possibilities of meaning to inhabiting space1.

2. Intercepting the city. Circumstantial views In this dynamic, which refers simultaneously to ‘representation’ and ‘self-representation’, the contemporary city displays its clearest aspect: the state of belonging simultaneously to multiple collectivities, involved in a permanent flow in which there is a coexistence of local and global, near and far, past and present. These pluralist cities provide anyone interested in grasping its importance and significance with a new perspective: a ‘nomadic’ point of view which is far more capable of prompting a mobile view of a space that is in a constant state of becoming and manifests itself essentially as the space of relations and connections, a space of interferences. The descriptive anxiety that has marked the analysis of urban processes in recent history has adopted a zenithal morphology as its almost exclusive paradigm. This paradigm attributes meaning only to the figures that express themselves in complete form within a two-dimensional surface. According to this paradigm, it is desirable to establish an observation point in an absolute position, remote from the observed object, almost as if the impersonal and synoptic gaze of the observer somehow guarantees the ‘objectivity’ of the process of investigating the city. This kind of visual paradigm finds it hard to recognise that urban reality is not a simple overlap of levels of information, ascribable to flat two-dimensional representations, but rather a “collective way of conceiving 1

It would be more logical, in the case of spontaneous practices of urban planning, to refer to the notion of Interaction Design in a broad sense, not linked exclusively to new technologies, but rather to a wide-ranging concept of interaction as ‘negotiation’.

This could lead to decision-making processes and intervention proposals that stem from the capacity to identify and describe the identity of urban contexts in the sense of “the complex product of a set of circumstances, the overlap of different writings, social relations, paths and conflicts” Cf. Manzione L. (2000). Descrivere il resto. Altri sguardi sulla città, http://architettura.supereva.it/files/20000831.

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space” (Boeri S., 2003). In order to represent it, it is essential to combine different languages, adopt alternative forms of representation, alternative visual conventions and alternative investigative strategies.

Recognising the opaqueness of zenithal representation is the first step towards discussing the relationship between the map and the territory and the need to adopt a circumstantial approach to viewing, a sort of lateral approach to the observation point which makes it possible to create other maps. They are provisional maps which are at times incomplete but capable of expressing subjective points of view. “The map is not the territory” as Bateson reminds us (Bateson G., 1997), but merely a way of interpreting it and codifying it. From this perspective, mapping a city means “organising one’s own spatial experience through highly subjective operations of selective representation” (Attili G., 2008). It is no mimetic seduction nor surrender to a passively descriptive approach, but rather a reinterpretation and transfiguration into image and narrative. From this perspective, maps and territory interface according to relations of sense rather than mimetic analogies. The adoption of an intentionally lateral and circumstantial view means choosing a self-reflexive and, in a certain sense, ‘biased’ condition of a representation that deliberately avoids adopting, as an operational category, the objectivity that ‘leads the observer to keep a distance from the territory and delude him or herself into employing the same impersonal and powerful perspective that he or she uses”(Boeri S., 2003). However, this relational dimension should not be considered as conflicting with the physical dimension of urban reality. On the contrary, physical space and relational space should be explored in dialectical terms because both define the plot that connects humans to their surrounding environment. It is a scheme in which perceived space, conceived space and experienced space are intertwined (Lefebvre H., 1991). Concerning this point, Soja’s observations in his theory of ‘third space’ are particularly illuminating (Soja W., 1996): while the first space is the material space of spatial forms and the second one is the perceived space that derives from mental representations, the third one is the space of experience and practice, a conceptual category in which materiality, perceptions, imaginary worlds, desires and actions merge with each other. It is a space whose representation does not simply involve enriching previous paradigms with ‘new images’ but, instead, involves developing “a new spatial thought made up of interconnections, short circuits, fluidity and dynamic tension” (Attili G., 2008). This form of representation should be sensitive to processes of signification and focus on qualitative rather than quantitative methodologies, examining differences with far more interest than invariant features. What is therefore required is a truly pluralist form of representation.

3. The area of Porta Nolana in Naples. Representation and pluralist thought Exploring the depths of urban reality and examining the variety of worlds and stories within it means, to use the words of de Certeau, “thinking of the pluralist nature of reality and making this pluralist thought effective” (de Certeau M., 2001). This is the spirit that lay behind the analysis of the ‘urban experience’ of ‘Porta Nolana’ and the definition of the narrative strategies and planning actions capable of capturing the spirit and profound link with the sense of place.

It is not completely obvious that an urban plot can generate a coherent narrative.

In the case of Porta Nolana2, which is a market area because it is a frontier zone, this has been clearly confirmed over the centuries. In a period of little more than a hundred years, the urban frontier has 2

The area of ‘Porta Nolana’ is a fragment of the urban fabric of the historic centre of Naples, situated near to the infrastructural junction of the central railway station and the old piazza del Carmine. The area is clearly bounded to the east by the presence of the gate, the traditional access point to the city, and the remaining part of the Aragonese defensive wall system of which the gate was a part, and is closed off to the west by the irregular layout of the road network of Lavinaio – which can be clearly distinguished from the right-angled layout of the late fifteenth century urban fabric. The Lavinaio was an old water course that flowed close to the old Angevin walls and collected the rainwater from the hills of Capodimonte, taking it to the nearby sea.

Over time the area has maintained its ancient nature as a ‘market area’, in particular a fish market. However, it is now crossed by flows of migrants and is marked by distinct alterations in the relational systems between different social and cultural contexts. New interpretations of the sense of places move restlessly in an urban context which, each day, invents and stages strategies and devices for individual and collective survival. This area represented the opportunity to examine the abovementioned cultural assumptions and pre-conditions and rethink the forms of a ‘view’ of the city that can interpret its vocation

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shifted considerably. The marshland to the east – flourishing areas dotted with mills – has witnessed the invasion of the industrial structures of modernity which were unrealistic and have already been dismantled in a squalid landscape. The eastern port has been handed over to Chinese containers. The new social fabric outside the gate is an area of commerce, much of which is of an unmentionable nature. However, the fish market is almost identical to how it was in the past and the activities of the people who crowd the area of Porta Nolana are, now as then, marked by precariousness. There is a sense of precariousness where everything is at the very limit. This is the state of frontiers, a feature of places where the distinction between power and freedom is blurred. There is a precarious balance between law and regulation, of something within bounds that goes beyond bounds. It is both a threshold and customs barrier. This function has been obsolete for a long time and yet it has left an imprint that still remains to this day. This genius loci is perceptible each time one passes through the gate because although one is aware that one is neither leaving nor entering, the imposing stones still reflect a sense of adventure and leave-taking. A gate is a gap in an enclosure, a break in a journey, routes that branch out, warehouses and display counters. The names speak for themselves: Via Soprammuro (‘above the wall’, linked to the larger defensive walls built by the Anjevins) and via Carriera (a street where carriages can pass); via Gabella della Farina (Tax on flour); vico Forno (Oven) e vico Molino (mill) e, poi vico Vetreria Vecchia (old glassworks), vico Ferze (cloth) e via Croce al Lavinaio. If there is one apparently significant alteration to the scene, then it regards the way spaces originally designed as a single urban structure, a busy place for staying within the walls’, have been transformed into a series of places that are rapidly crossed in the chaotic and feverish flow of people.

The large historic market of Naples was located nearby. Piazza Mercato, a large square with the church of Madonna del Carmine, the famous bell tower on the side and the scaffold for executions or hangings in the centre, braziers to keep warm in winter and large tents or marquees to provide shade in summer.

The Mediterranean city preserves many such sites: waterfronts and ancient gateways to the east. These cities have always been home to many different languages. Places for meeting, places with no clear membership of a state, foyers for foreign travellers, free-trade areas, places for prosititution and places of excess for various social orders. They are incertain and contradictory places, full of new anthropological features, linguistic crossovers with surprising accents. In these places, where there is considerably more than just colourful tradition, all references to identity should be tentative because they are places where the rapid acceleration of historical events has brought about change. They are places for experiencing the dynamics of mutual tolerance, getting an initial idea of others, of welcome and betrayal.

With the persistence of the same activities and customs, the inhabitants and activities of the market represent a unique cultural heritage. However, this cultural heritage should not be sought in a single identity. This would only be possible if there were a coherent community which is certainly not the case today.

This is not all. The fish market at Porta Nolana in Naples is a place where fish is sold and where a market is held, not just during the period around Christmas Eve, something which is quite clear to every foreign passer-by or resident.

It is a market that has always thrived and functioned without the area where objects and people are situated being legally recognised by the appointed authorities as a market. This instituional vacuum has led to the use of a degree of discretion, as well as the possibility of blackmail, neglect and abandonment. The people who live here, or merely work here, are not protected by the legal authorities and are not free outside it.

and encourage collective actions. The bibliography on the theme of the biographical approach in the field of social studies and town planning is fairly extensive. For an overview of the subject, see the previously mentioned volume by Attili G. (2008) Rappresentare la città dei Migranti. Other works of interest include Albini, C.(1998) L’intervista qualitativa, in Melucci A. ( 1998) Verso una sociologia riflessiva, Il Mulino, Bologna; Cavallaro R. (2000) Sociologia e storie di vita: il ‘testo’ il ‘tempo, lo ‘spazio, in Maciotti M.I. (ed.) (2000) Biografie, stori e società. L’uso delle storie di vita nelle scienza sociali, Liguori, Naples.

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Figure 1. Naples. Porta Nolana. April 2013

‘

Figure 2. ToLead Nolana, image processing. The images represent the activities in the area of Porta Nolana over a 24 hour period and describe the alternation and overlapping between commercial activities, leisure activities and meetings, together with the “incursions” of tourists. The representation is part of the analysis conducted to design a blog about the inhabitants of Porta Nolana aimed at reestablishing coexistence between people.

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Figure 3. Babelfish, image processing. Spaces and people overlap in an alternation of uses and customs: 4.00 pm, via Sopramuro is empty, the shops are closing and while in the morning there is smell of fresh fish and the cries of fishmongers, in the evening the area is “taken over by foreigners”. There’s a person who says he is Sicilian to explain that women are not welcome where he is going; because it is time for prayers and he is going with other “Sicilians”, dressed in his thobe, felt hat and a western style men’s racket that is slightly too tight for him.

The aim is to recount this multi-faceted situation and recognise the site’s vocation. It is a situation that is chaotic and stationary, surreal and iconic, stratified and anarchic, conspiratorial and circumstantial, multiethnic and a linguistic melting pot, supportive and marginalising ... this existential space has been the subject of narratives in a context where individual ‘stories’ have taken on a special significance and the biographical approach [14] has become a consolidated method.

Figure 4. The map recounts the ‘experience of place’ during surveys in the area of the Porta Nolana fish market. Before creating the map, files were prepared in which some of the data from the ‘sensitive survey’, contributed to defining the map of. The map indicates the areas and itineraries of the market, together with objects, signs, people that are present there.

The aim is not just to explore a context made up of fluid identities and emerging forms of citizenship, but also to ensure that life stories represent a form of dynamic and interactive knowledge where it is possible to trigger processes of sensemaking that can reveal unprecedented imaginary worlds and the potential for change. These micro-narratives are full of meaning and tell the story of people and their relations with the city’s space. The awareness of being inside observers of a field that ‘contains’ and ‘interacts’ strongly with the observer - rather than external observers - has inspired a representative approach that is organised into cognitive maps, infographics and hypermedia products. The perceptive, nominal and biographical dimension is intertwined in a ‘space with different perspectives’, rattling off a pluralistic account of observed reality. It requires an investigation that is careful to recognise systems of objects, sensations, signs, symbols and traces that define identity. Besides creating an effective map of reality, the accurate association between places and objects, places and sensations, places and signs, and places and stories has

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given the observed data the significance of an ‘informative piece of evidence’[16] which is somehow geolocated, from which precious clues can be detected in the process of interpreting the meaning of a place.

Figure 5. Babelfish, the map of objects. The map describes objects in the area of the Porta Nolana fish market as relational devices. The cataloguing of 58 everyday objects was carried out using individual files. Their functional and relational uses were then linked to the places of Porta Nolana in this map, from which it emerges that the practical uses and uses related to urban practices overlap and are repeated in different areas of the market. Indeed, besides its strictly functional use, the same object may be used to mark out a boundary, as a means of defence, or to indicate links.

Figure 5. Babelfish, drawing of one of the possible configurations of the endogenous device.

Babelfish is a sort of “useless machine”, an accumulation of obsolete electronic “devices”, such as cathode ray televisions, old generation computers and inkjet printers. The project aims to orient the user towards the discovery and translation of the code linked to the functional and communication uses of the objects in a place. The information can be consulted, printed, downloaded or uploaded. Anyone can contribute to extending the know-how of installation through audio, video or text files that are added via bluetooth or USB ports.

Babelfish is a device that consists of a computerised system comprising the following elements: video cards; electric generators, the Arduino open-source framework; a series of USB links; processors and a series of peripheral devices: monitors, or video output; loudspeakers or audio output; video cameras; Hello Little Printers (2012). These elements were supplemented by the software and the supports that consisted of materials and objects available in situ such as the following: fruit or vegetable crates, wine barrels, wooden planks, rubbish bags, tyres, chairs and old furniture, cardboard boxes…

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The recurrence of disarming strategies of decontextualisation of use objects gathered in eclectic lists has inspired endogenous devices where the hypermedia aspect of interactive communication has become the medium for the discovery and translation of the authentic urban ready-mades that make up the experience of Porta Nolana. The tendency for self-production in the systems of informative or directional signs, the habit of symbolic as well as physical appropriation of collective space as highly ‘personalised’ space, the gesturing that becomes a ritualised part of the daily mounting of the urban set, have all been transformed into various categories of a ‘collective form of conceiving urban space’.

This approach regards self-production and adaptation as the inspiring feature and underlying idea of a militant design where sense-making and framing operations activate processes of attribution of meaning and define the transition from an analytical approach to an interactive, problem-solving approach.

References Galimberti U. (1994), Parole Nomadi, Feltrinelli, Milan.

Attili G. (2008), Rappresentare la città dei migranti, Jaca Book, Milan, p. 42. de Certeau M. (2001), L’invenzione del quotidiano, Edizioni Lavoro, Rom. Boeri S. (2003), Atlanti eclettici in USE Uncertain States of Europe, Skirà, Milan, p. 430 ff.

Bateson G. (1997), Una sacra unità. Altri passi verso un’ecologia della mente, Adelphi, Milan.

Attili G. (2008), Rappresentare la città dei migranti, op. cit. p. 44.

Boeri S. (2003), Atlanti eclettici in USE Uncertain States of Europe, Skirà, Milan, p. 431.

Lefebvre H. (1991), The production of space, Blackwell Publishers, New York.

Soja W. (1996), Third Space. Journey to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, Blackwell Oxford, New York .

Attili G. (2008), Rappresentare la città dei migranti, op. cit. p. 58. de Certeau M. (2001), L’invenzione del quotidiano, Edizioni Lavoro, Rome.

Acknowledgments D’Uonno M., Babelfish, (degree dissertation, degree course in Fashion Design, SUN 2011/2012, supervisors A. Cirafici, C. C. Fiorentino).

Iavedaia R., Porta Nolana: identità narrate e nuove immagini di città, (degree dissertation, degree course in Design and Communication, SUN 2011/2012, supervisor A. Cirafici).

Saccenti L., Urban Type (degree dissertation, degree course in Fashion Design, SUN 2011/2012, supervisors A. Cirafici, C. C. Fiorentino).

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The mapping desiring.

A project of a new cartography: patterns of use, spatial experiences and perceptions of the urban environment in the ICT era Antonella Contin Politecnico di Milano DAStU - Department of Architecture and Urban Studies1 E-mail: antonella.contin@polimi.it

Such a Big Event as Expo 2015 could be a propeller for some innovative way to build a learning development framework for the metropolitan city, through a new mapping project. Thanks to the design of a device, conservative inhabitants and futurist new nomadic citizens will learn from the city and will return information to the city at integrated scales: a new hypothesis of territory readings and uses.

Innovative approach The relationship between space, memory, and representation in the digital age has undergone a severe increase due to the process of representation, that is rooted into everyday’s cultural experience: that is why the topography for the city exploration requires the development of methods, experiments and especially tools for the recoding of the territory, which do not make use only of the latest technologies, but tools that are able also to bring into being the relationship between the nomadic person who is traveling and the geography of the metropolitan place. The mapping desiring, is the breaking of a consolidation of places obtained through a psycho-cognitive alteration of the deconstructed space. To achieve this, the question is: what will remain of the image that we have established in our mind when we talk about a Metropolis? The goal is to query the space, not in search for something predestined, but drifting from the playful-exploration discovery of the geographical environment, a dowsing technique that investigates and explores the components of the landscape, raising energy flows which fall on the understanding of the territory, which can be mapped to represent the movements stratified in the space / time of the exploration: the way of our being into the desakota space, which will change the anthropological elementary signs of the local space.

In fact, Images of the human being construct the metropolitan maps; the body is a kind of territory because it is the product of an identity, relational/emotional skills and biometric properties that are now computable through wearable technology applications.

Keywords: Metropolitan Management, Mapping Project and communication technologies, Big Events

1

Milan, Italy. This research follows some topic and innovative thoughts born during some debates and studies with Generazione Gomma: Stefano Bovio and Alessandro Musetta

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1. First theme: First part: The city is a story. Focillon, Lynch and Shane For Lynch the meaning of a settlement is clear when it can be perceived and identified easily, and when its elements can be connected to other events or places. This is one of the reasons why the coherent mental representation of time and space, relatable to non-spatial concepts and values, is fundamental. The perception and the knowledge of man pass from the quality of the environment form and from its capability to be connected with other meanings conveyed, for example, by the direct enjoyment of situations intensely perceptible. For all that, according to Lynch the meaning of the form is: "the intentional behavior given in images and the feelings which they convey". The identity of a place, therefore, is closely linked to the personal identity: "I am here" reinforces the simple "I am". The formal structure, moreover, is an essential element of the meaning of a settlement and its chance of being perceived changes depending on the scale of the place. For Lynch: "the import of a place of modest size corresponds to the perception of how its parts are together, while in the case of larger settlements the meaning corresponds to the possibility of orientation: the chance to know where (or when) one is located, which implies to know how other places (or other times) are linked to these places ".

For Focillon: "the sign signifies, the shape means". The meaning, therefore, is the entity which the sign is referring to, and the value is not related to the sign itself, but is associated to the judgment, so to what the sign represents as a value to be pursued (from monument to monumental); the value is not related to the sign. The sign is related to an onto-creative significance. Focillon argues: "Perhaps only because the shape is empty, does it look like a figure wandering in space looking for a number that escapes from it? Absolutely not. It has its own meaning, a particular and original value that should not be confused with the attributes that we require from it. [...]

Identifying form and sign is equivalent to implicitly admitting the conventional distinction between form and content, which could mislead us, if we forget that a "formal" content is the fundamental content of the form. Far from being the random garment of the content, the different meanings of the shape are uncertain and changeable. As the old meanings get obsolete and fall, new meanings are added to the form. [...] The sign becomes form, and, in the world of forms, it generates a series of figures devoid of any relationship with their origin. " Regarding the discipline that studies the urban phenomenon, Lynch gives a definition and outlines a function for the three metaphors that read and communicate the sign, the symbol and the meaning issues.

The metaphors combine into a coherent, synthetic or analogous representation, the three elements that generate the urban form: enclave, armature, and heterotopias. They are powerful metaphors that produce the myth of the city. Through these, considered as literary rethoric figures, Lynch expresses the need for a narration. The history of the city is this: to produce artificially in the context with a human work a change that would not occur automatically. These are rhetoric figures that recall the structure of the space and the forms that organize the practical space, telling the story of the different configurations. They are forms of the culture that binds time to things. They are figures that describe the functional and symbolic reasons of the forms. They narrate the dissolution of the city, of its magical site and the birth of the space of the new metropolitan net city. The metaphors as a technique of communication are represented through highly evocative images.

For Lynch, the three urban metaphors contain the urban values which mark the three ages and the three city models, which identify the good city. Among the recognized values, the historical continuity, a stable equilibrium and the production efficiency stand out. Metaphors have a center that contains several ideas that can survive over time in a coherent story. This fact becomes interesting if compared to Grahame Shane’s reading of the heterotopias concept. Even when the central metaphor of an Era decades, it persists in one of the city layers. The development of the city, in fact, is an in- progress process of increasing competence and consistency and also process of intensification of a sense of belonging to a certain environment in space and time: this is an aspect of the growth. For Lynch: "a settlement is good when it strengthens the sense of continuity of a culture and the survival of the people who inhabit it, when it increases the sense of belonging in time and space, and allows or encourages individual growth: development, within continuity, through the maximum openness and connection"and again: "a place is endowed with qualities when, in a way which is suited to the

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person and his/her culture, it makes the individual aware of belonging to a community, to its history, to the unfolding of life and to the space-time universe that encompasses everything ".

Therefore, talking about the city, every age has to consider that the other old narratives, which constitute the identity of a place, always persist in the collective memory. These are narratives of values that each succeeding age must validate or deny fixing them in the memory or forgetting them. Identity and structure are those aspects of the form that allow to recognize as well as draw, both space and time. The urban metaphor, then, through the structure of the story allows the formation of a mental structure, connected to the values and the concepts on which the settlement (civitas and civilitas) was founded. These values permit the recognition of a significance of the shape so they define the identity of a place, that is, the sense of the place. "Identity is the limit inside which a person can recognize or remember a place as a separate entity from other places – because it has a distinct character of its own, or at least a unique and special one".

The urban metaphors, therefore, combine in a consistent definition the primary causes, the form and the conception of the human settlement and for us today, as for Lynch then, they must describe through a synthetic and strong image, the form of the environment rather than the planning process. The urban metaphors have to give a representation of how the environment should be structured, a description of the form or the process of formation of the shape, which constitute the prototype to follow. They should even tell us not only the growth but also the decline of a city that, as Lynch reminds us: "is as familiar to us as the growth". They are therefore, images that predict the city, they are ideas, intentions.

The discourses, the meta-mitic tale, the symbolic form, then, have the status of foundation, are tales of origin. They always produce a mental/virtual map: this one supports the real map. Consequentely, we speak of onto-creativity of the urban paradigm in times of change of scale. Grahame Shane identifies heterotopias as the institutions that determine self-generated and original configurations typical of every moment in the history of the city. Heterotopias, in fact, are the reference points of a position for the mental maps, then they produce the mental maps themselves. Heterotopias represent a strong communication issue, because they are laid down both in a real and in a virtual/mental map, so they are real and virtual landmarks for the memory. Finally, heterotopias are signs of how to live the city. This is an experience that everybody self-learns moving into the city through the real map interpreted by a mental map.

In The good city form, in the chapter on the specialized centers and facility centers, Lynch introduced the metaphors: (Container), Center, Complex, Garden. Lynch argued additionally that: "even if is not called center, in any case every new thing is called a complex, because integrated complexity fascinates us. The third metaphor to allude to a pleasant space is expressed by the words ‘garden’, ‘estate’, or ‘park’. A complex of garden-centers is the maximum desirable ". These new areas for trade, in fact, were designed, for the most part, in a city with reversed codes. This fact is typical of the ecological city about which Lynch says: "Most people do not refer this type of scenario to the word ‘city’, but in reality today most of the North American cities are made of this kind of urban space fabric ".

On a city scale where social contacts occur more and more only by appointment and depend on the availability of the transport system, the ‘city effect’ is generated by the potential of the places and it is where: "There is no outside, no facade, everything is internal. The prototypes of this gigantic labyrinth can be recognized in the systems of the inter-linked undergrounds, in the large institutional complexes and the indoor shopping malls". The city is then, either an overall complex device of focal points of particular intensity or character that determine a complex city fabric, without arbitrary boundaries; or alternatively, the city fabric can be viewed as a network, with its own shape and size which is now measured in kilometers, with its own degree of interconnection, deeply connected to the context, through the gray and green infrastructure. Usually in the metropolitan city, the two systems complement each other.

The development from one to another city form determines the places called "heterotopias", which define every time a new systematic organization of the codes of the architectural practice, which is the grammatical structure of the architectural language. Medieval and Renaissance heterotopias such as the

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Roman villa, or the convent and the palaces, were matrixes of town. Then, the body measurements regulated the sizes of the space (in scale and/or out of the range of scale, because they were relative to the temporality of everyday’s life) and the representation of the city was unitary. Starting from the city of the machine, however, the representation is given by the integration of landmark sequences. The new big size, then, which is a new way of supply and trade and it is an obtuse quantity, must now be made ‘civil’, so commensurate with human measurements. This huge city’s dimension has to be represented through a language adequate to the contemporary codes of communication.

According to Gandelsonas (Gandelsonas, 1973) "The establishment of the society can be seen as the stabilization of an order through some conventions, or, more specifically, the establishment of a language through symbolic codes." At each stage of development a period of chaos occurs, which is "an infinite field of potential for the manipulation of the individual and collective areas, starting from the verbal style to the sexual attitude". Then a period follows in which "the systematization and the institutionalization of the rules of these domains, the definition of rules and the invention of the social codes for a ‘relational language’ take place" .

The image conveyed by signs, even when we refer to metropolitan maps, is therefore within the study of a structural paradigm that governs the leaps in scale, which are the primary reason of the transition between different models of cities. Then, the architectural image, even at the Metropolitan Architecture scale, is always a constructive montage of images. These are indexes of precise geographic locations and are marks of the leaps in scale from an urban paradigm to another: the images are not just scenes. They are cognitive images and convey a new meaning related to the relationships among the objects.

The purpose of the change from an urban structure to another, is always to produce systematic new codes of practice of architecture and urban planning, to define a number of forms apparently finished and stable, with their new meanings interrelated within a closed system, that is, to create a new language and produce a map of relations among the new urban subjects. But if through the history of architecture and of the city it was possible to recognize a fully constituted language upon which a grammatical structure was based, with Modernism the linguistic organization gets in crisis. Since then, at every scale passage, the codes change and a new symbolic organization aquires shape. Thus, a new way of conceiving and representing the city and its practices starts. The body ceases to navigate the world within the traditional network of symbols through which it has distributed the space, the time and the order of meanings up to that time. The function now explains the origin of the signs, but does not say anything on their possible combination through an urban grammatical structure, which must be re-established. A new project of mapping becomes inevitable.

2. First thema: Second part: The Body Space According to Grahame Shane, Foucault in his article of 1964 described three-space systems. The first of these concerns “how to arrange themselves in a place", the second "the extensions" and the third "the relations among places". By this, we can predict three heterotopic structures: one that deals with moving into a system of emplacement, one that deals with the compression into an extension system and one that deals with an intentional disjunction, with a voluntary servitude and with the disconnection (which reflects and recodes a larger system interlaced with the illusion of freedom and with the connective relationships among the ‘places’).

For Shane, the archi-tecture of the cybernetic present ‘reality’ seems to be the only very true contemporary utopian place. Archi (tecture) gram, the magazine where the archi-tecture - non-tectonic and potentially immaterial - and the medium were already the same thing, foreshadowed this reality in a utopian way.

Then, network architecture and the communication network, is the literary place that allows the unconscious to show itself. The network is the ‘place’ where language osmosis starts. This hybrid and fluid condition between architecture and the network (‘portal’, ‘window’, ’net-architecture’, ’ metropolitan surfing’ ...) is familiar to us now. The transition between The architecture of the first machine Era (Banham,

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1960) and the Architecture machine (Negroponte, 1973) is definitively completed: the computer can represent virtually architecture and the urban planning, the origin of the virtual and telematic current ‘reality’ and the architectural utopia that we live when ‘surfing’.

But the body, then, must re-find its physical location or, better, its site (as Grahame Shane insists on calling it) in which to recuperate its ability to inhabit. The Heterotopias assumed as "the elements of the city that operate in the gray area of the transformations of the form" devastate the normative categories of scientific and stable systems, and determine the new places of metropolitan bodies and their maps. In each moment of passage from one Era to another, in fact, catastrophic points of discontinuity and change are generated in which the meaning of architecture is re-founded by defining a new training track.

Then, in the transition between the city of the machine and the ecological city the formation of a bodyspace structured by a built-landscape emerges. It defines a mental map at the metropolitan scale, as an open space that reverses itself from armature support of an image to an operator of self-shape, which works for the construction of a mental map of the vacuum at the metropolitan scale. This is a map at the scale of the region but it is represented as a field ready for use (so at 1:1 scale). This mapping project will be composed by: a map of prediction (of the place before living it), a field map (to move within a place through the relationships among the elements that define it) and an immersive map (Contin, 2014).

Colin Rowe named the change of the concept of the void as “reversal code”. He represented it throught the Vasari corridor and the Unitè of Le Corbusier. The Medici offices self-represent themselves as a road to the Arno, the vase of a void. For Rowe this project exemplifies an operation of inversion from an open space without figure to a space limit (as a living area) with the figure. The architecture is ‘the vase’ of the empy space. Le Corbusier's Unité, a body with architectural measures, a sculpture into the void, reverses the Vasari code.

At present, the shape of the body space, at the metropolitan scale, is a mental map; it is considered on the basis of its syntactic affordability which comes from its deep territorial structure (Cattaneo’s structure, I would say), made up of water and roads linked to the territory by geography, regimented according to specific domestic laws. The formal paradigm of the metropolitan city, then allows even the recognition of the conventional form of the city, but also provides the potential for a system of contrasts and hierarchies of different rhythmics, sequences and oppositions, which produce different gradations of public, semipublic and private spaces, also in relation to a new functional logic. These different kinds of space enable the architectural signs to express themselves and talk again to the society of citizens. In this way, the perceptual structure of the architectural language, that is, the signs that convey meanings to the imagination, as the Speaking Architecture did in the past, is enhanced.

In this sense, I think, we need to introduce the concept of memory and symbolic intermediary. Shane says: "a symbolic intermediary is anything that facilitates communication in the network". Then he emphasizes that not only the form has a syntactic value, but the semantic game makes it vital.

Memory, therefore, is always in operational connection with the imagination and symbolic issues.

Memory is an intermediary among the activities planned in a diary of events. It is fundamental, then, to equip it with charts and maps in order to reach an appointment with things and with people. Through maps it’ is possible to set an action of flows targeted towards the attractors. The map is the subject of a loading and a deployment of different temporalities, and of memorable symbolic relationships. Memory allows the possibility of re-cognition of a local value which could be saved or lost. It is a very important issue for a map/context that is local, but that changes its scale in order to meet the different; thus, when a local place changes, as a consequence, its historical identity changes too.

This is what Venturi teaches, drawing different maps for Las Vegas and assuming the interactivity between different mental maps. Venturi also introduces the problem of the communicative notion that conveys information through a vertical stratification of times, but above all through linear sequences (by removing the vertical thickness of time) and the overlapping of several parallel readings from a central idea. The

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map, then, is the sign of a structure of the vitality of a place. This vitality is given through the vivid image of the elements which compose it and are explained in the map through their relationships. Inside the map it is also possible to read what happened to the other elements of the city in the past and it is possible to define what these are and to which we have to turn today and tomorrow.

3. First theme: Third part: Memorable and Imagination As architects, then, the question is to determine what drives the ‘making of architecture’ into the reality, i.e. to determine how the work has to be done in context, how to represent it once it is understood, through a mental representation, which allows a relational map to orient the citizens into the new metropolitan body-space. So, according to Lynch: What is memorable? How does the transfer occur from the close concrete issue (the local, the work here and now) to a basic element for patterns or networks at higher scales?

What sign/shape, or form/signal, what image, finally, allows to stimulate the intuition or the knowledge of a subject that can compose so many mental images?

Let's step back. The reflective subject of Roger Simmonds or the aware producers of beauty of Aragon are the subjects of imagination and imaginary. These words both refer to the world of invention and therefore are poverful subjects of a design that expresses intentions. The term imagination derives, especially in the Latin world, from an idea that shapes things from the way in which the reality is represented. Therefore, if the architectural and urban subject identity does not belong to something received or copied, but imagined, conseguentely it must conform to the image created in the mind. The imaginary, therefore, is the effect of the imagination, thus of a mental map. But, especially in the AngloSaxon background, imaginary is also what is apparent, illusory. Furthermore, imaginary is a term that refers to a complex number devoid of the real part. This mood of the imaginary, let’s say the capability to think about something totally unrelated to the reality, is one of the constituent elements of contemporary heterotopias, which Shane defines as H3 or heterotopias of illusion.

In the network of world cities, according to Shane, "the heterotopia of illusion helped to reverse the codes of the heterotopia of deviance, so that rather than rigid rules, segregation and classification, the relationships between actors into networks are transformed into something more liquid and they open, creating links between ‘places’. The heterotopia of illusion has accelerated this process by replacing ‘place’ with ‘site’ [network of ‘sites’]. Some Heterotopias intensify and manipulate the peaks and the exceptional points going towards ‘accelerated virtual connections’, allowing further dispersion; these are the places of disconnection and disjunction, which are interrupted temporarily and amplify the net flows into our systems of communication and transportation". Then, parts of miniaturized types, are generated. They are specialized typologies with syntactic value through compositive forces. The form has a syntactic value, with a great communicative notion, in view of a new semantic game that is the basis of the idea of the internal constitution of the new urban institutions: "The pattern of development around the city is governed by space and time pulsations of development radiating from the original core of the old town ".

The historic center, then, is the place where the time of the metropolitan city still beats. Actually, there is a multipolar network of city centers in which the final phase of the development is a self-organized chaotic system, which switches between the different models, nodes and systems of development, stasis and decreases: "Here the lesson of H3 (heterotopia of illusion) allows both increase of density and low density dispersion. Parts of arches and and cine - città are incorporated into the new city network, which, thanks to its dual structure, allows a feedback from the bottom by those who want to customize their own space and their own narratives, and from the top by the economies of the mass object distribution. The urban elements are combined at each point. The fractal patterns are broken and each element can be customized, giving morpho-typological studies a new importance and flexibility as sources for new hybridizations. Two contradictory spatial conditions appear everywhere: openness and density ". …

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"The second condition is a new compression and unprecedented closure of density. A network of personal fluxes emerges in and out of a gigantic and larger fractal pattern of the city.

Density and compactness allow nodal megaforms within a network to become heterotopic attractors, which contrast the dispersion and the diffusion facilitated by the tele-città. [...] At the center or on the side of the settlements three-dimensional nodes were formed to tie flows and the concentration of information, people and products. These are public realms fitted in a recoded section of town. [...] Formulas of section generate these new heterotopic nodes that emerge in the city territory. The heterotopic nodes of the Netcity attract masses of people revealing the desire of a variety of urban forms together with the city.

The heterotopias enable the conceptual model of the net-city to allow the coexistence of different models as simultaneous layers: each of them presents a system of heterotopias able to adjust their stability and quantity of changes. " Then we will have a Cities of the World network made of: urban morphotypes (building type and urban morphology), as an antidote to a widespread urbanization, and building types composed and recomposed by parts, into natural / artificial landscapes.

Shane, then, solicits the question: “How do heterotopias interact with the cities that surround them, mirroring, working with, and modifying the normative models in which they are embedded?” . Therefore a discussion on the question of the location in the context of the new built form types is required. The context, in fact, is no longer absolute, due to the fact that it interlaces together different scales. The landscape (nature and art), which has always been linked to the visual and the immeasurable distance, as the closest element in the city fabric, becomes the protagonist of the new dimension of scale. Since it belongs to networks, it is connected to the cities of the world by the intrinsic relationship between communication and circulation: we have to define the universal citizenship and rites of identity for a new metropolitan landmark.

According to Shane, urban development is associated with a city that shrinks which appears only in some parts of the territory, thus evolving Wright’s idea about the network nodes. Therefore, Shane introduces: "the idea of a reconstruction of a landscape network (in London and in New York) using the waterfronts, docks, river fronts. [...] an Urban landscape that emphasizes the "reverse city", a quality of the landscape that forms the "fifth facade" that places buildings as objects in a three-dimensional topography. " Finally, what are the new types of signs, memorable signs, able to mark the vastness of the new metropolitan Body Space and to produce a mental map of the metropolitan city?

From history we know that the baroque world played with introversion and extroversion; the Paris of Haussmann was provided with urban equipment that allowed the gradations of the scales; the Chicago of Hilberseimer worked on the detachment of networks from the new types of urban entites, which were autonomous from the soils and the landscapes. For Le Corbusier the new distinctive sign of the contemporary metropolis was the introjection of the whole space, including nature. And for us today, for the space of flows (scale, timing measurements and bigger and bigger fields) the connotative sign consists of an opening to the green and gray networks and the denial of history and geography. The flow, in fact, is not able to measure, it is independent but based on the ground suggesting the importance of being open to the city fabric (history, geography and topography). The opening, in fact, indicates the size of the physically feasible plan of a city and of its architecture.

Until now, the city fabric, in fact, defines the relations among the objects: these are the signs/ indications of a precise geographical location; they define the map of the city.

Therefore, we are speaking about a development model and a mapping, which consist both of a series of patterns that indicate a direction of the settlement growth and a series of maps or networks which suggest a possible configuration and characterization of specific qualifying locations with a gradient of formality: from the centre (new metropolitan morphotypes related to the real estate development) to the countryside (new settlements able to involve inside the urban agriculture). Because of its size, immeasurable in relation to the human measure, in fact, the metropolis can only be imaginable. We can do this through Geography, and Geography is especially history. History of the representations of the territory as consensually recognized, through some correct maps, indicating anything that can interact with us. History that is written on what the settlements made by men return us from the past of a place. Every city, then, arises

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from the representation of its geography so deeply that it is always a matter of the imagination that discovers and represents it (this is a statement that can represent a problem for someone who understands a place, departing for instance only from the economic or social matter). This development model (Ortiz, 2013) through its diagrams is not only a way of representation of a metropolitan area, but it is the territory itself represented as a field of forces.

It is the construction of a new topographic map, which is the device capable of supporting a mental map at the metropolitan scale. It is made up of a continuous and a discontinuous system (one local space within global scale) and by a layered surface of the ground. It moves from a geographical scale to a local geography. Compared to the traditional structural urban paradigm, finally, it still wants to define the possibility of a value of a syntactic and communicative architecture (a cognitive value), through the definition of a statute of the architectural subjects, which is recognized as a tool for the construction and symbolic interpretation of the built environment but at the new scale: a landmark, as a new relay, a hinge point for the interconnections between the scale.

4. Second theme: First part: Imagining / Mapping This research starts from the critical reading of Giorgio Mangani’s text, Moral Cartography, and Giuliana Bruno’s book, Atlas of Emotion.

Imagination for the old European world was the most useful instrument for understanding and for the dialogue among cultures. Their impact (the arrival of Columbus in the Americas was an example) did not take place in a direct way and was not based on cognitive models, but rather came to life from the relation between different imageries (the mental images that each culture formed by the perception of a phenomenon), on the emotional paradigms that founded mnemonic and, in Europe, logic. Mental maps derived from a cultural identity, which at the same time they spread and strengthened. (Giorgio Mangani, 2006) Maps and cartography are produced through a compositive structure of the data selected as significant.

These data, given in figures, are selected by their emotional potential connected with the perceived figures (emotional energhéia). The first maps are made by these data structured in the form of gardens, palaces of memory and routes, or on a mental level like rosaries, theaters of the world, and then atlases and globes.

Every place represented (topos) allows to store a concept. Designing a topography meant to build a system of paths through emotional images capable of providing information (so examples to imitate) and therefore capable of influencing thinking and behavior (the life style).

Then, a narrative was connected to each place. So the mapping constructs a place, before representing it by selecting information. Therefore, like the new media, it is already a delocalized production. Berio in A memory in the future, (Berio, 2006) compares the map to a score that can “ become more and more essential and laconic, it may be sufficient to suggest the case (vuol dire contenitore, ma in questo caso prevarrebbe il senso più significato di “caso”, meglio:cover/container of a virtual form and vaguely descriptive inhabited only by long or short sounds and silences, by rapid interjections or slow reflections, by very acute or very low notes, by pianissimo and very few fortissimo ". Even Shane seems to refer to an idea of hybrid territory composed by elements with different degrees of intensity, and which therefore requires a map that increasingly becomes a dynamic map useful for representing quantity/quality in motion (a sort of weather report that indicates the changes in atmospheric pressure), more than being a static picture of an area. “This reversal of normal processes opens the way for a new hybrid urbanism, with dense clusters of activity and the reconstitution of the natural ecology, starting a more ecologically balanced, inner-city urban form in the void.” (Shane, 2005) The maps then will not mark only places (sites), with their symbols as it was for the patterns of Alexander, but will sign loci: i.e. narratives (an organized body of information, symbols, stories and curiosity, characters and myths) associated with locations shown and used as mnemonic signals. The relationship that the maps establish, then, is not only with the territory, but also with the stories related to it. We do not talk then about itinerary, but about plots through which is possible to orient into unstable territories.

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The cartography then would be based on a rhetorical-persuasive system. In fact, the real space in order to be thought and stored (Lynch) must be structured by narrative forms that change depending on the different Eras as a network of dynamic meanings superimposed on it. And so, a place must be translated into rhetorical forms of narrative, in order to be practiced.

It could be translated into metaphors, for example.

Place / identity. Landscape / body space There is an osmotic relationship between a place and an identity, if it occurs that the maps precede and produce the space (Leonardo): the mental space and the real one. Place, then, which is enriched with narrative and symbolic values, place limited in time and space: the individuality of places, represented in the maps, is a topographic theater (place marked as public scene) for narrative procedures that establish its identity.

According to Shane the landscape, therefore, can also be defined as: Body Space, or physical space, topos and its qualities, set of traditions and values (habitus, that is profound character, lifestyle). This means that there is a kind of somatic localization through a mnemonic grid associated with landscapes, gardens, maps (topography and place, names and stories) that allows to store and redistribute the information constitutive of communities and territories. Every landscape contains its own time.

A first example of map: mapping the temple of Jerusalem Mental prayers have always needed to rely on mnemonic media that dissect (cut/strip) the path in milestones. The liver of the sacrificed animal is an open and interpreted landscape. In the Old Testament an Angel invites Ezekiel to a contemplative measurement of the Temple of Jerusalem: a topographical meditation. " The Future Messianic Kingdom (40.1 to 48.35) 40_ The Vision of the New Temple and its parts. [...] The exterior wall. - So I saw an exterior wall that surrounded the building from all sides. The measurement cane that the person was holding was six cubits long, each one a cubit and a span long. He measured the thickness of the construction: one cane, then the height: one cane.

The eastern gate. - Then he went in the direction of the gate that looked toward the east, he went up the steps and measured the threshold of the door that was one cane deep. Each room was one cane long and one wide, and between the rooms there was a wall five cubits thick; also the threshold of the door, on the side of the porch that the door led into, was one cane. He measured the porch of the gate: eight cubits long, and the pillars: two cubits; …

The rooms of the east gate were three on this side and three on the other, all of them of the same measure [...] " Measuring the temple of Jerusalem becomes, then, an ideal form of meditation, associating mentally figures to the places. Figures with energhéia (vivid and sensual images, said Lynch), linked by an emotional and dreamlike chain, figures able to get into memory. Measuring the temple means to think, to imagine it.

The new temple, then, with its brick of the soul, was built already in the consciousness of man: it was a pre-vision. As Francis Yeats has taught us, the ‘mental’, in fact, is the true meaning of the word ‘virtual’.

The Map as a project Since ancient times images have been talismans. Written on a map (as on a magic card) images are imprinted in memory. They turn on a reflective mental process, through which information penetrates the heart (such as the map of Madeleine de Scudery) and they penetrate into the mind and act on the behaviour, through the eyes (Leonardo and Micheangelo). A map, such as the medieval world maps, is not a mimetic copy of reality. It is a project, a mechanism that acts through the mind on the future. The

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ancient atlases that led the English and Spanish explorers to the sea describe a territory (to plot and to plat), before its discovery. When we talk about Atlases, large maps drawn on one side of the sheet and a detailed description sometimes fantastic on the other side, we refer to something that anticipates the telescope and the microscope but that looks like a wunderkammerer ...

It is not a coincidence that John Dee, author of maps which were the basis of the English voyages of exploration, as Bruno well describes, considered Kelly’s crystal ball like a map: it mentally produced figures that allowed to see far away. The crystal ball to look for treasures becomes Stevenson’s map .....

The context. A mnemonic and communicative device In the medieval world, the landscape and the garden, which is the countryside built by men (the real and the represented) accompany the meditation and prayer: they mark the places and the times of places and they result into the interior construction of the new citizenship. The context becomes a mnemonic and identifying device.

Thus a system of places linked to memory and future construction was created. To read the landscape also meant to understand the moral identity of that place (Life Style). And the landscape of the paintings, before the real visit or before the project for the new city (image of the heavenly one), worked as a mnemonic image synthesizing strategic information, preparing the reading of the reality through what was a memorable one. The use of urban scenes, throughout the history of Western painting and of Leonardo in particular, reveals the strong character of identity of those landscapes, the ability to grasp this identity by the citizens and the emotionally dynamic value of mental maps made of maps and scenes, creating the common sense through collective and shared images. Since maps recall a familiar landscape, they are the screenplays for three-dimensional images of a future project and enrich the real perception of the landscape with an intentional connotation. Maps are a dramatization of the topographic perception connected to a design intent, and act as a vehicle for storytelling. They produce an identity of the territory and of individuals (movie set). This is the secret of the Leonardo’s maps.

Maps are a cultural project Atlases of 1500 with their maps, rich in symbols and symbolic figures (imagines agentes), imprinted themselves into the minds of the readers. The text, usually a description of itineraries, and the images were merged as in a theater. According to Yeats, the descriptions of physical places and the narratives were generated by a vision. Therefore, the journey that followed moved as inside an atlas, so along a route that was based on a sequence of images. As in a baroque theater designed by the Bibienas, in fact. Vision and science got closer and closer, as evidenced by Galileo Galilei’s texts and maps in his Sidereus Nuncius.

But the Atlas, an invention of Ariosto who came from Ferrara (one of the first cities that produced maps) was actually the owner of a haunted castle, completely transparent and deceptive. It was possible to cross it believing to see what in reality it was not: eye-catching and seductive images, that drag on into a journey through the unknown.

5. Second theme: Second part: A new mental conception for the mapping project At the new urban scale a process of complex interactions and mutual influences involves, through different fields of knowledge, new instruments of analysis, interpretation and design project, new techniques of representation and construction technologies as products of original ways of thinking. This movement of ideas, energy and matters, produces a shift of paradigm, new meanings, and finally, a shift in the mental conception of the reality. According to a metabolic vision of the urban transformations, a new meaning rises from the negative meaning of the concept of “crisis”: a sudden change emerges which brings a stable system to a condition of instability.

However, the change of urban paradigm happens both through total turnovers and morphological catastrophes (tabula rasa) and through a gradual and relatively slow contraposition between Slow Cities

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and Fast Regions (there is an interplay between slow and fast processes); that trasformation slowly changes a part of the consolidated systems and brings it toward a progressive adjustment. For this reason it is fundamental - in particular this was the fundamental theoretical debate of the Milanese post Second World War School - to consider the important dichotomy between crisis and continuity.

The problem of how the part is integrated into the whole emerges again.

The new Public Realm requires the construction of a narration that is able to tell stories about who we are and what a city wants to be. For this reason, every urban and architectural design project is done with an archive and a diagram (Derrida, 1967), but above all, with new sensibilities and vivid and sensual images (Lynch). This renewed sensitive experience (Dewey, 1948) marks a new meaning of the body, which is not only a measure (beyond historical sense). It introduces, above all, a symbolical dimension. Therefore, the architectural project needs to use formal archetypes, which are able to evoke a new meaning in the global culture. The new project originates from local scale, but afterward it transcends the local dimension to a global one.

Today we are in front of a sudden increase of the scale dimension of the urban settlement. A huge growth of the infrastructural system and an important functional and formal complexification of the terminals of the infrastructural net are the consequences of that. This fact drastically reshapes the landscape. The Metropolitan Net-City consists now of ‘epicentres’. Every epicentre is different from the other, but they are related altogether. They no longer occupy only one node of the net: they occupy a big portion of territory. They are phenomena of a huge work on the city that transforms, not only in a generic and strategic way, these infrastructural huge terminals (centralities at different scales), but more diffusively they renovate the whole region and its big areas of landscape. This is the current way of the contemporary city changes.

As described by some studies which explain growth in biology (Marturana and Varela), new nucleuses interact and create linear entities, which are able to determine new phenomena of attraction/repulsion: epicentres organized in a net. Due to this re-orientation, old poles change their use and acquire an emblematic meaning: they become symbolic mediators between generations, and communities re-orient themselves under their influence. So the Metropolitan city is the result of a widespread and unstable state that evolves through polar phenomena differently distributed on the territory. These phenomena, at the scale of the city-territory, can aggregate important urban functions and regenerate the area in which they are localized Moreover, according to Grahame Shane, there is another question that we have to analyse very well. It is the problem of the Exchange Networks. Today we are involved in the bigger scale of the Metropolis, Megalopolis or Network-Cities. Grahame Shane says: “Lyster specifies that traces of past system shape the present conditions even in ex-urban sites... The idea of the shift from singular place to exchange flows across plural sites is a nice metaphor for the shift to the network city. The Megalopolis model is constituted by a city connected to the physical and virtual global nets; it is non-uniformly ‘exploded’ on the territory, but it is definitively related to the landscape; it is non-homogeneous, it is the emblem of capitalism, finally it is un-planned and its intensity is not constant”.

Due to its structural definition, the megalopolis now is a net of processes and relations (net-work) and it doesn’t have a physical model anymore. Moreover, it must be rebuilt punctually at the local scale, on which the global one develops its influences. This is the scale of the Metropolitan Architecture. Actually, the Metropolis is a Network-City, it has an adaptive eco-logical structure that is able to transform itself through recombinant logics of elements and “rizomatic” assemblage (Shane). Essentially, the metropolis is the archetypical city of the complexity: its inner relations and also the shape of its open and close spaces, public and private, are complex.

The urban organism has to be sustainable for various reasons: surely for an economical and ecological one, but, above all, for a cultural purpose that means, generically: society, policy, institutions and people’s conviviality. The feeling of adequacy that ties the body of a person to a place, because it is just where

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his/her time is intensified, arises from the renewed need to attribute a value and a meaning to the new relations among persons, places and things.

With the achievement of the Bigness scale, theorized by Rem Koolhaas in the 90’s, we passed over the paradigm of the sustainability of the finite urban form, so the question that emerges is related to the definition of a new paradigm for the Metropolitan Architecture. We have to consider the urban growth phenomena through critical thresholds and paradigmatic transformations, which remove, replace, incorporate by selection, the pre-existing structures of the city which now are not able to support the new scale and complexity of the contemporary city; due to that, they could decay and be abandoned.

So the project of a vision is absolutely essential. It starts from a methodological study that is able to recognize places and their transformations through the recovery of topography, of memory and through an ideal extended sensitiveness. This vision defines a new dynamic map of the territory. Only an analysis, based on dynamic and sensitive maps, is able to start a real process of sustainable development.

The contemporary metropolitan architectural project, according to a metabolic methodology, is a sort of urban-genetic graft that is able, at the same time, to be the place where the territory scale increases and also where the fundamental importance of the biological regulation and the environmental knowledge take place at the local scale. Being the place of the scale increase, in an architectural sense, means referring to the idea of a multi-layered structure, or a multi-layered machine. Therefore, the new eminent places of the Metropolitan city are able to link many different infrastructural layers superimposed on them and at the same time, are able to become an index of position of geographical places of the territory, at the local and regional scale. The new regional landmark solves local problems of linkage with the city through a complex and layered groundmark-basement rooted into the local context. A good local project develops the idea of pursuing human feelings of adequacy, wellness and security; these are all values that invest the space and time dimensions of the project.

Just now, new instruments are able to measure, to map and to project the different parts of the contemporary city and its complexity. But these efficient tools measure quantities and generate forms of thinking, or as Panofsky called them: symbolical forms based on a predominantly scientific culture, not humanistic; new sensibilities and phenomena perception not related to a cultural or social-identity issue, a fact which increases the problem of global homologation.

According to the Milanese Polytechnic tradition, the Measure and Scales of the Contemporary City Laboratory wants to develop the definition of a methodology of metropolitan architecture and urban design and its representation which conceives new technologies not only as the most efficient instruments to project and represent the reality but also as contemporary tools which are able to re-define the historical canons of the city and its architecture.

Therefore, we use new technologies both to design in a more efficient way and to optimize the production process. But, above all, we try to find new urban and architectural forms and structures. The mental conception and the consequent representation of the urban and architectural entity are deeply changed.

Consequently an important question arises: what would be the relation between new technologies (which cannot be considered anymore as representation techniques but as design instruments) and environmental knowledge. According to Francoise Choay, in the Communication Era, this relation is the support on which it is possible to try to re-define an inter-somatic relation between the body and its many contexts.

The specific Milanese contribution in the dialogue among cities is a thought on the definition of an image conceived as symbolic propeller: a structure of meanings that is able to refer the visible matter to something that is not possible to see. We have to build a metropolitan movie set, a new theatre, a spatial machine, which could be able to present in situation (now and here), what has been planned (the virtual) at the new scale dimension. According to Aldo Rossi, master of a Milanese approach that re-formulated the aesthetic city criterion, the Citta Analoga is a museum analogous to the cities of the past (according to Quatremere), the Città ‘come’ Museo is the archetype image of the city, it is an idea: a stimulus for images.

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Rossi stresses the contradiction between a composition as a simple sticking operation – a conventional and easy way to manipulate objects, which are, in reality, ‘time figures’- and the poietic action (poetic reaction) that distinguishes between the goals of the artistic knowledge and the way of the artistic work.

Several temporal Eras and related human generations, which never knew each other (so we are talking about an archaeological, and not historical, relationship), I mean, subjects which are not bound by an event that they can tell each other, can definitely converse through analogous meta-historical images.

Nowadays these images have the same function to allow the meeting of several different cultures and populations. It is a semantic issue.

So we are speaking about an image that has to fix in the citizens’ memory a place and its proper situation/event; let’s say, it is possible to have an intense experience through it. So the image can reactivate a culture, because it is able to strike a deep symbolic and rooted place of the soul: a mark of identity and an index of personality and character. Therefore, an identity in progress must be expressed through a very new language.

The new technology then, spreads the effect of ancient inner landscapes, urban or not, but also those of the new urban works. It constitutes an incredible possibility to increase our perceptual capabilities. New technology consists of a permanent relation among times and spaces, therefore, it shapes new figures, linked to today’s infrastructures, destabilizing the usual logic of the present ones and of those which are connected to the ancient figures, linked to the antiquity stereotype. This fact determines a formidable image: vivid, sensual and memorable.

That is modernity. Actually, we have to deal with: Form and Expression

Construction and Figure

Communication _ Inter somatic_ Meanings

Signs

Immaterial

Technology Sociology Functionalism Zoning

Our question, then, is about Immaterial and Communication, through new signs, new kind of figures and constructions. How can we introduce the immaterial expression into a common sense (communication), in relation to the art and the science of the metropolitan city, and in particular, in relation to a representation system for a metropolis that is growing very fast?

6. Openings: Mapping desiring. A project of a new cartography Satellite images and digital maps reveal that maps are made by men; they are a mosaic of abstract signs that take on a meaning only when they are contextualized in a cultural context and when they identify a space. The map is a text that involves the representation of an identity; it contributes to the representation of some infinite worlds affecting the memory: history, geography, subjective experiences and emotions are combined in a different way.

Creating / reading a map means to be able to compose / read an image. From a theoretical point of view, an image is comparable to a text because they share a complex grammatical and composition structure synthesized through a set of symbols. Actually, a digital image (a map), however, is a text, which is a code

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editable in an editor device that alters the language transforming it into a desired medium (image, sound, animation, to mention some traditional media) .

The collective image that photographs the situation of the planet, is made up of complex texts altered according to the most appropriate media. This matter affects the processing of the aesthetic-computing metadata available right now. The maps should not avoid this: we have a connective intelligence and an artificially created one; both have made all of us unaware producers of maps.

The key of the transformation, then, is detectable in the growth of the number of devices able to ensure an unprecedented access to information. Personal technology is an extension of our body; personal computer, mobile phone, glasses, cars, hearing aids, and an endless variety of tools that accompany us during our daily life constitute it. The first machine age signalled that direction for the human evolution.

This intuition was also one of the most interesting aspects of Futurism.

We are immersed in an era that could be called neo - digital Baroque ( De Kerckhovev, 1995 ). In fact this Era, like Baroque, translates each sensory element: from touch to vision and vice versa; and now it more and more tries to explore all the ways in which it is possible to translate the possibility to feel with all the senses: for example now we want to explore virtually the space. Therefore, the life of contemporary man getting away from Nature becomes more and more an abstract life.

The same procedure applies to the field of mapping, because the images are intended to be the maps for the world, which has become a sort of screen. In fact, we trust in the accurate visualization that the giants of communication offer us through their services : it is the expression of a hyper -nomadic voyeur desire, or let’s say it is a mapping desiring.

This medium has broken down the value of scale, turning into reality the intentions of Eames in The Power of Ten (Eames, 1977). It made it through a kinetic and performative map such as those of the pre modern age, where the relationship between a place and a context extended to the universe emerges, and where every pixel / place has a communicative value .

Today more than before the cartographer absorbs materials from any source regardless of the language and the style in which it is expressed.

Our virtual presence consists of information uploaded in the form of photographs, texts and semantic information on how they have been loaded/constructed; these are privileged sources because of their geolocation. To juggle the enormous mass of data that we send to the machines is not easy: in 2010, for example, The Economist told us that with our 4 billion telephone devices ( 12 % are smartphones) we sent a quantity of data sufficient to fill 60,000 Libraries of Congress , and the number of devices has an annual increase of 20%.

This forces the cartographer to be big data manager himself and express skills in the selection and development of media and communication channels.

The huge amount of material accumulated in few years by servers around the planet, is a factor of production and a detailed picture of the consumers, but mostly it is a social capital from which cartographers and scholars can extract information to contextualize their research, or to produce analysis as usual in the research market milieu.

New media and new aesthetics will be created by the transformation of the sources, of the media/viewers and of the direct forms of display. In the future it will be possible and affordable for all of us, to work on the development of our technology devices. This matter is already indicated by the fabrication laboratory of the manufacturing and technological field (this is the first symptom of the third industrial revolution).

Therefore in the future, mapping will not only be done by the choices/data analysis and representation methods, but it will have to extend to the construction of appropriate devices for each field of research.

According to Freud this is a spontaneous process: "Writing was in its origin the voice of an absent person ".

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References Measure and scale of the contemporary city Banham Peter Reyner, Architettura della prima età della macchina, Marinotti, Milano 2005 Contin Antonella, in Innovative technologies in urban mapping; built space and mental space, curated by Antonella Contin Paolo Paolini Rossella Salerno, Springer Innovation, München 2014 (on Going) Choay Françoise, l’Orizzonte del Posturbano, (a cura di) d’Alfonso Ernesto, Officina Edizioni, Roma 1992 Farinelli Franco, Geografia. Un’introduzione ai modelli del mondo, Einaudi, Torino, 2003 Foucault Michel, Les hétérotopies. Les corps utopique, ed. INA, Parigi, 2004, Ed. italiana (a cura di) Antonella Moscati, Utopie. Eterotopie, ed. Cronopio, Napoli, 2008, pp.12-13 Foucault Michel, Des espaces autres, in Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, n.5, ottobre 1984 (conferenza al Cercle d’études architecturales, Tunisi, 14 marzo 1967), pp. 46-49, traduzione italiana (a cura di) Pino Tripodi, Spazi altri, in Michel Foucault, Spazi altri. I luoghi delle eterotopie, (raccolta di testi a cura di Salvo Vaccaro), Eterotopie (collana diretta da Ubaldo Fadini, Paolo Ferri, Tiziana Villani), Edizioni Mimesis, Milano, 2001 Grahame Shane David, Recombinant urbanism. Conceptual Modeling in Architecture, Urban Design, and City Theory, Wiley-Academy, West Sussex 2005 Koolhaas Rem, Mau Bruce, S M L XL, The Monacelli Press, New York 1995 Koolhaas Rem, Delirious New York. Un manifesto retroattivo per Manhattan, Ed. Italiana di Marco Biraghi, Electa, Milano 2001 Koolhaas Rem, Junkspace. Per un ripensamento radicale dello spazio urbano, Ed. italiana Quodlibet, a cura di Gabriele Mastrigli, Macerata 2006 Lynch Kevin, A theory of good city form, MIT press, Cambridge, 1981, Ed. Italiana (a cura di) Melai Roberto, Progettare la città. La qualità della forma urbana, Etaslibri, Milano, 1996 Lynch Kevin, L’immagine della città, Ed. italiana (a cura di) Ceccarelli Paolo, Marsilio, 2006 Rowe Colin, Koetter Fred, Collage city, MIT press, Cambridge, 1984 Sassen Saskia, Una sociologia della globalizzazione, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi Scienze sociali, Torino 2008 Soja Edward W., Postmetropolis: critical studies of cities and regions, Blackwell Publishing, Los Angeles, 2000, Ed. spagnola (a cura di) Hendel Veronica, Cifuentes Monica, Postmetropolis. Estudios criticos sobre las ciudades y las regiones, Traficantes de sueños, Madrid, 2008 Venturi Robert, Scott Brown Denise, Izenour Steven, Learning from Las Vegas, Ed. CittàStudi, Milano 1985 Paradigm, instrument, technique Berio Luciano, Remembering the Future, Harvard University Press, 2006 Cattaneo Carlo, Notizie naturali e civili su la Lombardia ; La città considerata come principio ideale delle istorie italiane (1858), Oscar Mondadori, Milano, 2001 Derrida Jacques, De la grammatologie, 1967; trad. it. di R. Balzarotti, F. Bonicalzi, G. Contri, G. Dalmasso, A.C. Loaldi, Della grammatologia, Jaca Book, Milano 1968/2006.

Dewey John, Esperienza e natura, Torino, Paravia, 1948; Milano, Mursia, 1990.

Gregotti Vittorio, Architettura, tecnica, finalità, Editori Laterza, Bari, 2002 Yates Frances Amelia, L’arte della memoria, Einaudi, Torino 2007 Kuhn Thomas S., The structure of scientific revolutions, The university of Chicago, Chicago, 1962, Ed. Italiana (a cura di) Adriano Carugo, La struttura delle rivoluzioni scientifiche, Einaudi, Torino, 1969 Maturana Humberto R.; Varela Francisco J., Autopoiesi e cognizione. La realizzazione del vivente, Editore Marsilio (collana Saggi. Critica), Venezia, 2001 Ortiz Pedro, The art of Shaping the Metropolis, Mc Graw Hill, NY 2013 Negroponte Nicholas, The Architecture Machine: Toward a More Human Environment, The MIT Press 1973 Simmonds Rogers, Bichester Village, in Contin A., Atlante, Clup Milano 2003 Mapping Desiring

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Blissett Luther, Totò, Peppino e la Guerra Psichica 2.0, Einaudi, Torino, 2000 de Kerckhove Derrick, The Skin of Culture, Somerville Press, Somerville, 1995 Eames Charles and Ray, Powers of Ten, 1977 Freud Sigmund, Civilisation and its Discontents, The Standard Edition, New York, 1930 Flusser Vilem, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Reaktion Books, London, 2000 Suchman Lucy, Connection: the Double Interface and Constructing the Cyborg Body, MIT press, Cambridge, 2009 Jaffé Hans L.C., De Stijl 1917-1931. The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956 Representation and architectural drawing Ackerman James S., Architettura e disegno. La rappresentazione da Vitruvio a Gehry, Electa, Milano, 2003 Aragon Luis, Le paysan de Paris, 1926, trad. di Paolo Caruso, Il paesano di Parigi, Il Saggiatore, Milano 1960, n. ed. a cura di Franco Rella, 1982 Bruno Giuliana, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film , Verso Books, United Kingdom, 2007.

Frampton Kenneth, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture, MIT press, Cambridge, 1995, Ed. italiana (a cura di) De Benedetti Mara, Tettonica e architettura: poetica della forma architettonica nel XIX e XX secolo, Skira, Milano, 1999 Gregotti Vittorio, L’identità dell’architettura europea e la sua crisi, Einaudi contemporanea, Torino, 1999 Mangani G., Cartografia morale, (2006) Cosimo Panini, Modena.

Panofsky Erwin, La prospettiva come” forma simbolica”, Carte d’artisti, Abscondita, Milano, 2007 Rossi Aldo, L’architettura della Città, CittàStudiEdizioni, Torino, 1995 Rossi Aldo, Autobiografia scientifica, il Saggiatore, Milano, 2009 Syntax of urban space Alexander Christopher, Ishikawa Sara, Silverstein Murray, A Pattern Language, Oxford University Press, New York, 1977 Choay Françoise, Espacements. Figure di spazi urbani nel tempo, Parigi, 1969 Ed. Italiana (a cura di) D’Alfonso Ernesto, Skira, Milano, 2003 Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, Semiotics and Architecture: Ideological Consumption of Theoretical Work, in OPPOSITIONS 1, September 1973

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Bahasa walikan malangan and the building of indo-javanese urban spaces Deandré A. Espree-Conaway

The University of the South, United States of America.

E-mail: espreda0@sewanee.edu

Language expresses people’s social experience while also creating that social experience in itself. Bahasa Walikan Malangan—whose name literally means the “Reversed language of Malang”—used only in the city of Malang (the second largest city of East Java)—pulls from both the Indonesian and Javanese lexicon, flipping around their pronunciation so that the Indonesian mobil ‘car’ becomes libom and Javanese arek ‘child’ becomes kera. This mixed language functions not only to express the experience of the world “through the eyes a Malangese”, its use is also the performative creation of urban identity. People transmit and speak this language in certain culturally bounded urban spaces—places of ‘national culture’ that are tightly tied to the local community. Here, I explore these spaces understanding more largely current Indonesian cultural ideologies of language and landscapes.

Keywords: Mixed Language, Indonesia, Urban Spaces

1. Introduction Bahasa Walikan Malangan speakers—originating from the city of Malang in East Java—reverse the pronunciation of words primarily from the lexicons of Indonesian (bahasa Indonesia) and Javanese (bahasa Jawa), creating a language that is an expression and, moreover, an imagined social construction of the urban center and urban identity of Malang. How does a Malangese person, through the use of bahasa Walikan, create the urban spaces from which this urban identity is born? A Malangese places himself or herself within an urban center which he or she considers in three contexts: 1) the individual context, 2) the national context, and 3) the international context. Before continuing, I must state that this is a work in progress. Albeit a substantial understanding, there is still a need for further field investigation. This paper touches on those concepts that are beginning to emerge.

The individual context serves as “foundation” for constructing Malangese identity—it is that upon which all other contexts can be built. This context guides how a Malangese understands the base of Malang as a city in the construction of the identity born from this urban social space. The national context is the meeting place where Malang participates in “national” culture—that is, aspects that are overarchingly “Indonesian” and part of the way the nation constructs itself, part of which construction Malang dialogically plays a role. The international context is where Malang considers itself in the context of a nation-constructed world. All of these contexts are the materials that construct the identity of the

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imagined Malang urban social space and the speaking of bahasa Walikan, with its vocabulary, grammar, and ideologies, is a practice of this constructing act of imagined identity. While speakers use bahasa Walikan to express the everyday concerns of the city, the nation, or the world through the eyes of a Malangese, it is more so the expressed creation of a social entity and experience—that which is Malang.

People refer to bahasa Walikan by several names which include: (the more Indonesian) bahasa Malangan and bahasa Ngalam, and (the more Javanese) boso Malang, osob Ngalam, osob Ngalaman, and osob Kiwalan. Bahasa Walikan, the most popular of them all and the one employed in this paper (Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A., 2012), derives from walik of Javanese, meaning “to invert” and the Indonesian word for “language or tongue” bahasa, rendering its name’s meaning as “inverted language” (Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A., 2012). Malangan or “Malangese” may also be added to distinguish this language from a similar language known as bahasa Walikan spoken in Yogyakarta in central Java.

As mentioned before, the bahasa Walikan speaker inverts items from the Indonesian and Javanese lexicons; however English words are also employed and inverted. There is also a number of lexical items that are specific to the city of Malang of which some are reversed while other are not. A few examples are as follow: Indonesian sepatu ! utapes “shoe” sepeda ! adapes “bicycle” Malang !

Ngalam “city of Malang”

Javanese boso ! osob “language” arek ! kera “young boy/girl” osi!iso “can, be able to”

Malangese ojir ! raijo “money” ebes “parent”

English relax ! skelir

naskin “eat”

orang kaya ! ayak men “rich people”

slow ! woles

Table 1. Examples of formations of bahasa Walikan’s vocabulary

As for the structure of the language, bahasa Walikan follows a base work order of subject-verb-object (SVO) like Javanese and Indonesian. While the language pulls from Javanese (specifically the Malangese dialect of it) and Indonesian for its vocabulary, its grammar—that is, its system of morphology and syntax—is primarily based on the Javanese language (Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A., 2012). Its system of discourse, as research has revealed thus far, is primarily from Indonesian (Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A., 2012).

In its historical relation to other languages of world, as it is an extension of Javanese and Indonesian, linguists classify bahasa Walikan as an Austronesian language, belonging to the same linguistic family as languages like Tagalog, Malagasy, Ilocano, Maori, and Tahitian. In the same way that English, French, Spanish, Gujarati, Persian, and Russian and many other languages from Europe to Northern India share a common ancestor through Proto-Indo-European, so do these languages share a common ancestor through Proto-Austronesian. The Austronesian language family is the world’s largest in terms of the number of languages and in terms of indigenous geographical extensiveness.

Although bahasa Walikan is Austronesian through Javanese and Indonesian, its social birth is much more recent. The language began in the 1940’s as a form of secret code speech created by the Gerilya Rakyat Kota (GRK) “the [Malang] City People’s Movement” during the independence war against Dutch colonialism.

Bahasa Walikan functioned to conceal the Malangese resistance group’s messages during that war. This language of war for liberation becomes the language of solidarity for those who are born and live in the city of Malang. It is the “special language” of the Malangese, the language of an arek Malang “a child of Malang” (Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A., 2012). The situation is as Dukut Imam Widodo mentions in his writings:

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[A]rek-arek Malang…saat bertemu,…kami...menggunakan bahasa Walikan....Ada suasana romantisme tersendiri ketika berbicara bahasa Walikan. Di samping itu juga untuk menjaga identitas sebagai arek-arek Malang sejati!

The children of Malang, when we meet, we use bahasa Walikan. There is a distinct atmosphere of romance when speaking bahasa Walikan. Furthermore, it is also to preserve the identity of the true arek-arek Malang! (Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A., 2012; Doea, Djilid, Dukut Imam Widodo et al., 2006) The Malangese use this language to express matters about the world from their perspective as an arek Malang, but much more this language is the practice of an urban identity that constructs the urban spaces that reinforce it. This urban spaces and identity is predicated on the individual context, the national context, and the international context that surround and compose it.

2. The making of a malangese As mentioned before, the individual context is the way in which a Malangese understands the primary socio-cultural source of Malang as a city. This is the “foundation” on which all other contexts can be built in the formation of the social identity generated from this urban space. This first context touches on the “formation of the Malangese citzen” as a subjectivity. The Malangese are the agents who create and reinforce through practice this urban identity. Although not completely fixed, this subjectivity is imagined ethnically/racially as Malay. This aspect of the imagined citizen most clearly arose, as most identities do, in opposition with another—not only in the fight against the Dutch, but also more recently in opposition with the ethnic Chinese population in Malang as one informant discusses: kalau mereka orang tuanya pendatang, anaknya mungkin tidak begitu bisa bahasa walikan.

Yang pendatang, imigran, mereka tidak begitu bisa bahasa walikan. […] Karena yang kebanyakan memakai adalah orang Malang asli, bukan dari etnis Cina. Dari etnis Cina jarang bergaul dengan anak-anak Malang, mereka membentuk sosial sendiri.

If their parents are immigrants, the children are not likely to speak bahasa walikan. The newcomers, the immigrants, they do not speak bahasa walikan. [...] Most of the ones that employ it are native Malangese, not of the ethnic Chinese. The ethnic Chinese rarely interact with Malangese children, they formed their own social scene.

The Malangese person is also Javanese. He or she is a member of a larger culture that consumers the island of Java and that could be considered one of the major cultures of Indonesia. The Javanese language forms that grammatical foundation of bahasa Walikan and is at the base of intimate Malangese-Javanese life.

This aspect of intimacy in the Malangese subjectivity is especially important as it plays a role in the “home” as a social space. Many people with whom I spoke mentioned that Javanese was a more intimate language, especially used the home (Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A., 2012). In order to achieve a feeling of “closeness” (akrab) people speak Javanese. This emotion of akrab is also that which surrounds the use of bahasa Walikan (Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A., 2012). Rarely do people use Indonesian, an aspect of strictly national culture, at home. At home in Malang, there is only Javanese and bahasa Walikan. This Javanese aspect with its role in the Malangese home is foundational to the individual context constituting the Malangese social space. However, this is not the only constituent of this context.

The history of Malang itself, in the protecting of “home” so to speak, is a source for forming this individually Malangese context. In recounting this history, one informant says:

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ketika period kolonial belanda jadi banyak mata-mata … [dan] banyak mata-mata orang Indonesia juga,…ketika [pejuang Indonesia] berbicara mereka mengerti…seperti operasi atau rencana…jadi mereka pikir harus ada seperti bahasa khusus.

[D]uring the period of Dutch colonialism, there were many [Dutch] spies… and many Indonesian spies [for the Dutch side of the war] as well…when [the Indonesian fighters] speak, they [the Dutch] understand the operations or plans so they [the Indonesian fighters] felt they had to have a special language (Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A., 2012).

All of these aspects of subjectivity form the Malangese person and play a role in his or her identity, but what does this mean in the given social contexts that structure the imagined city? This begins with the individual context centered in the home and connects to the formation of a Malangese history through Indonesia’s revolutionary era. The home, drawing on Javanese/Malay aspects of subjectivity, and the history are the foundation of Malangese social space and urban identity. However, there is also a national context that surrounds the Malangese person which is centered on the Indonesian national school system and the inter-city soccer league.

3. The creation of urban social spaces The Indonesian school system and soccer league are places of national culture. These are the social milieu where overarchingly “Indonesian” aspects of culture are transmitted. In a country composed of over 13,000 islands and hundreds of languages and cultures, “Indonesian” references no single ethnic group.

Even the language bahasa Indonesia (literally, the “language of Indonesia”) is almost no one’s native tongue.

Most people learn the national language in school and use it as the lingua franca throughout the archipelago for matters dealing with national society. The system of education and the soccer leagues are institutions of that national society.

The school system of Indonesia is composed of five principle parts: Taman Kanak-kanak (TK) or kindergarten where students attend from ages 4-5, Sekolah Dasar (SD) or elementary school from ages 6– 11, Sekolah Menengah Pertama (SMP) or middle school students from 12-14, Sekolah Menengah Atas (SMA) or high school from ages 15-17, and Kuliah or College/University education from 18 and beyond (EspreeConaway, DeAndré A., 2012). School is not only where the Indonesian language is learned, but it is also where bahasa Walikan is acquired. During SMP, although this occurs sometimes earlier during SD, many students get their first real exposure to the language. Before this time students may or may not hear much of it, but by the time they reach this level of schooling, students with more experience teach the others through conversation until everyone knows the language. Due to bahasa Walikan’s transmission in a national culture and because the language is based on Indonesian—an artifact of the national culture—, it is clear that the national context plays a role in the identity formation of the Malangese.

The other aspect of that national context is the realm of sepak bola or inter-city soccer. Whether on the field or in the stands, bahasa Walikan is being spoken as a performance of team spirit and identity while Malang fights against other city teams. Along with wearing Malang’s team color blue, in rival city Surabaya, it is said to be slightly “chancy” to speak bahasa Walikan (Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A., 2012). Bahasa Walikan’s use in institutions of national Indonesian culture under the national context plays a formative role in Malangese urban identity.

4. Language ideology of prestige and landscapes There is an international context—the context of a nation-constructed world—within which the Malangese imagine themselves. One key language ideology, that envisions the prestige of languages hierarchically based on the extent of the geographic landscape of usage, reveals part of this context.

Although regional or local languages (bahasa daerah), may carry prestige of their own based on singular

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histories, from an international view, they are alloted the lowest prestige. Therefore, from the perspective of Malang in an international context, Javanese carries the lowest prestige. Indonesian comes in strong second, even tied for first in most cases, because it is the language of the nation as one informant discusses: Karena bahasa Indonesia adalah bahasa nasional, bahasa yang mempersatukan seluruh rakyat Indonesia. Jadi saya berbicara dengan orang Jogja, dengan orang Bali, menggunakan bahasa Indonesia mereka mengerti, tapi kalau saya menggunakan bahasa Jawa , orang Bali tidak mengerti. [it is] because Indonesian is the national language, a language that unites all people of Indonesia. So [whether] I talk to people in Jogja [or] to people in Bali, [if] I use Indonesian, they will understand, but if I use Javanese, a person from Bali would not understand.

A Malangese person can travel across the entire archipelago and use Indonesian. Indonesian is also tightly linked with education so that it is viewed as a language of erudition. English, however, is emerging as the first in the hierarchy. This is predicated on its status as a world language. Not only is it the national tongue of many nations, even in places where it is not, English is commonly spoken in various degrees. English also is another language of education, a fact that contributes to its prestige. A Malangese can travel the world with English and thus it merits first in prestige.

When Bahasa Walikan is placed within this framework, it has a liminal position because it is a mix of all of these languages. The result is that it forms a context for Malangese identity as a linguistic reflection of a Malangese person’s place in the world.

5. Urban space and identity How does a Malangese person, through the use of bahasa Walikan, create the urban spaces from which this identity is born? These social spaces such as the home, the soccer stadium, and the school yard in Malang are conceptualized through the individual, national, and international contexts that compose Malangese identity performed in the speaking of bahasa Walikan.

The individually Malangese context as the “foundation” of Malang as a city is formed through the ethnically Malay and culturally Javanese aspects of Malangese subjectivity as it is surrounded by the spatial area of the home and the temporal area of the Indonesian anti-colonial revolution. The Malangese identity is composed of a national context by way of the acquisition and performance of bahasa Walikan in Indonesian national institutions and through its utilization of the national language. The history, while focusing individually on Malang, is plays a part, in many ways, in the national liberation narrative. Thus there is overlap between the individual context and the national one built upon it. The international context where Malang imagines itself within a nation-constructed world, through the language ideology of hierarchy predicated on the geographic extensiveness of usage and the embodiment of its parts as a liminal mix of tongues, creates a linguistic reflection of Malangese identity in a wider world. All of these contexts are the materials that construct the identity of this imagined urban social space. The speaking of bahasa Walikan is the performance of this formative act of envisioning Malang.

Examining bahasa Walikan as a “new urban metaphor” allows for a constantly pertinent understanding of urban spaces as social spaces. Fainstein and Campbell write that: [u]rban space gains its meanings as a consequence of the activities carried on within it, the characteristics of the people who occupy it, the form given to it by its physical structures, and the perceptions with which people regard it. Consequently, such space does not simply exist; it is, instead, a social creation. Yet, although the product of creative

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activity, spatial relations once formed take on a seeming fixity, a life of their own” (Fainstein, Susan S. and Scott Campbell., 2011).

This example shows how symbolic practices of spatial relations take on “a life of their own” in the formation of urban identity—specifically, in this case, Malangese identity.

By understanding and making connections with such metaphors, scholars and researchers can begin to answer important questions such as, “how can visibility be given to the new forms of interactions between citizens and urban spaces?” and “how can dialogues be formed between opposed physical and geographical identities belonging to the same metropolitan region?”. Patsey Healey writes that “meaning making often gets explored … by the use of metaphor and analogy. Framing work, like the process of probing the available knowledge about situations and issues, requires an expansive yet integrative, pluralistic yet synthetic, collective imagination” (Healey, Patsy., 2009). Trying new epistemological approaches will be key to new analyses in the pursuit of apprehending urban complexity. Reflections on language and culture, such as this one, could provide another pertinent approach to urban studies.

References Doea, Djilid, Dukut Imam Widodo et al. (2006), Malang Tempo Doeloe. Bayumedia, Malang.

Espree-Conaway, DeAndré A. (2012), Language Attitudes, Acquisition, and Usage of Osob Kiwalan Ngalam: An indo-javanese language of malang. Biehl International Research Scholarship —The University of the South, 1-22.

Fainstein, Susan S. and Scott Campbell. (2011), Introduction: Theories of Urban Development and Their Implications for Policy and Planning. Readings in Urban Theory, eds. Susan S. Fainstein and Scott Campbell, 3rd edition, Blackwell Publishing, Malden.

Healey, Patsy. (2009), In Search of the “Strategic” in Spatial Strategy Making. Planning Theory & Practice, 10, no. 4, pp.439-57.

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Modernization Alignment of Tehran Urban Symbols with Tehran Citizens Ways of Conceptualizing Susan Ghaffaryan

University of Kashan Department of Humanities E-mail: susan.ghaffaryan@gmail.com

Hamidreza Rabiei Dastjerdi Politecnico di Milano DAStU - Department of Architecture and Urban Studies - PhD Student E-mail: hrrd_h@yahoo.com

This study investigated whether urban symbol modernization in Tehran was in line with the modernization of citizens’ ways of conceptualizing. For this reason, Tehran citizens’ conceptual metaphors toward two important Tehran urban symbols, Azadi and Milad towers, were analyzed. Azadi tower is a traditional and a memorial symbol while Milad tower is a symbol of technology and modernity.

It was intended to find out if old and young citizens differed in their ways of conceptualizing. The result indicated that both young and old citizens showed a disinclination toward the urban symbol of Modernity; Milad Tower. In this regard, the study suggested a Tradernization model to reconciliate tradition and modernization in the city of Tehran and in fact to summon for the homogeneity of development patterns between Tehran urban symbols and Tehran citizens’ ways of conceptualizing.

Keywords: Urban symbol, Metaphor, Modernization

1. Introduction The construction and deconstruction of urban symbols within cities are directly involved in a particular process of signification which gives meaning to some specific symbols but not others (Nas, P. J., 2011).

There are different forces and influences involved in the shaping of urban space and in the signification of urban symbols. Obviously, the more powerful these actors are the more successfully is their hand revealed in these dialectics. These actors and policy makers of the urban symbolism in all countries are increasingly trying to be in line with the rapid change of information age related symbols in the cities bringing the Globalization, technological and organizational development all in this alignment process (Dochtermann, A., 2000). However, the alignment process has made the cities to lose their identities and be transformed

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to similar and monotonous masses around the world. Walter Bor (Bor, W. G., et al., 1967) mentions that the extraordinary similarity among cities in today’s world is a serious danger to the cities’ identities.

According to many researchers such as Dutton (Dutton, W. H., Kraemer, K. L., & Blumler, J. G., 1987) and Sui (Sui D. Z., 2003) this transformation of identity has been accompanied by technological optimism.

However, this has to be admitted that some of themodernized symbols in the cities are not so welcomed by the urban citizens particularly in Middle Eastern cultures. This is because the technological advances try to shape the ways that citizens implement their traditions. As Mumford (Mumford, Lewis., 1938) believes the main concern in modern urbanization is the “lost of urban identity”. There is even a negative relationship between urban symbolism and identity in a city, resulting in more or less ‘wounded cities’ (J.Schneider & I.Susser, 2003). In this regard, the citizens also have been meant to reshape and adapt to the changes. This reshaping process is conceptual and takes place within the citizens’ minds. Since this process is entirely abstract and within citizens’ minds one good way to observe how this conceptual adaptation to the information age symbolism has occurred is through the language used by the citizens.

One of the recent cognitive linguistic theories in analysing individuals’ conceptions is conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M., 1980). Lakoff and Johnson explained that the locus of metaphor is no longer confined to language, but extended to thought as well.

2. Review of Literature There are some significantly related studies that will be mentioned here. Arbak in Turkeystudied the transformation of urban identity in Bodrum, a fisher town in Turkey which later in 1970s became more of a tourist town. The analysis of the study used development plans, reports, base maps from four periods, old photographs and written sources about the previous condition of the area. The reasons behind the changes, the purposes, and roles of the local municipalities, public authorities were taken into consideration. This study revealed what was lost and what was gained instead in Bodrum. With the help of Lynch in his outstanding book, The Image of the City and his theory of the city image, concentrating on the city’s “environmental image” and its three components: identity, structure, and meaning, the outcome of the study revealed that after 1990s tourism became a dominant economic activity all around the area with many destructive impacts.

Another study by Xiangzhan (Xiangzhan, Ch., 2008) suggested that environments can be divided into natural and constructed environments. This study also was supported by the Lynch’s theory of the city image. Traditional Chinese city-design philosophy emphasizes the harmonious relation between city and natural order. However in the light of the global urbanization, it was realized that the modern man has lost the dimension of nature, the paper thus indicated that the citizens have been alienated from the natural world, living in the forest of high buildings of concrete and iron.

In another study, Marková and Tichá (Marková, B., &Tichá, I., 2011) focused on the impact of Globalization on cultural policy in the city of Ostrava. They found that the city of Ostrava is a place whose socio-spatial structure has been heavily influenced by the totalitarian political regime in Communist period. The Velvet revolution brought the involvement in global structures which required a strategy to promote the image of the city of Ostrava on a global scale. Thus the city participated in the competition for the title of the European Capital of Culture to improve its image, stimulate urban development and attract visitors and investment.

Up to now the images and symbols of the cities were under the analysis of a comprehensive theory of Lynch [10], however this study tends to have a more specific look at the urban image and symbolism through conceptual metaphor theory. Some significant studies have been done in this area too, Dutton and a group of international experts (1987) invented a contemporary metaphor of the city with the publication of an outstanding book named Wired Cities: Shaping the Future of Communications. In that book they developed the Wired City as conceptual metaphor which was optimistic toward technology and modernization. The wired city metaphor could blend the communication and information technique with a deeply Modernist utopian vision of the city.

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Another study by Sui [5] suggested The Technopolis metaphor that has put one more step forward to see the city as a collection of the Modernist commitments to Utopian Ubanism blended with the postmodern investments of cyberspace and the information age. Sui [Ibid]goes on to mention that the Ecumonopolis metaphor emerged after the Technopolisfor the city. Here the environmental destruction that has become associated with urban growth has led to a rethinking of the almost irresponsible policies of Modern urbanism. The metaphor continued to influence throughout the twentieth century, and today is embodied in the notion of the Sustainable City. Simply put, the sustainable city tries for the harmonious urban community and natural environment (Haughton &Hunter, 1994; as cited in[5]).The assumptions of the Ecumonopolis stood against the motivating assumptions of the Technopolis. In fact, many of the problems that the Ecumonopolis identifies in the contemporary city are because of the unchecked progress of technology in the Technopolis. In particular, the designs and plans of the Modern growth lack the tradition and subordinate the environment to the logic of the Modern City.

Another experts' identification of conceptions of the contemporary city can be identified as The Anthropopolis, a city of and for the people[2]. The ultimate success of the Anthropopolis city is offered by the satisfaction of human needs in the contemporary and modernized world. It is the Anthropopolis aspect of today’s city that has tried to distinguish itself from the paradoxes of the modernized world. Here the city reveals its significant meaning and provides a clear picture of the origins of things; this is called contemporary city’s ’authenticity’ (Appleyard, D. & Jacobs, A., 1982). The development of the city’s authenticity is the city’s key answer to the isolation and departure associated with the Modernization.

All of these studies have performed a great effort to suggest the modernized conceptual metaphors of the cities, whether negative or positive, however these metaphors of the cities around the world were suggested by experts and not by the citizens. The current study therefore has the interest to put on the citizens’ glasses and analyse the new and old urban image and symbolism through their suggested metaphors. As for the case of the city of Tehran, it is also observed that the Tehran symbols are moving fast to jump on the bandwagon of the global technological revolution. However it is hypothesized that this rapid change is not happening with the same rate in the citizens’ cultural thought patterns, for instance citizens look at these modernized symbols in their city as what Marc Augé (Augé, M., 1995), calls Non-places. Augé [Ibid] believes if a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity becomes a non-place.

In this fashion, the question of whether these modernized urban symbols are welcomed by the citizens or not has not been explored thoroughly and answered experimentally. Hence, this study aimed at finding out whether Tehran citizens’ cultural thought patterns have changed in line with the modernized urban norms and symbolism or not, trying to figure out why if not and proposing a suitable pattern for their alignment. Hence this study bridged the gap between the modernization of urban symbolism and the modernization of the citizens’ conceptualization in the city of Tehran with the help of conceptual metaphor theory [8].

3. Research Question What are the Tehran citizens’ conceptual metaphors toward the two outstanding urban symbols in Tehran, the Azadi Tower and Milad Tower?

Bearing in mind that Azadi Tower is a traditional and memorial symbol while Milad Tower is a symbol of technology and modernity. It was also intended to find out if old and young citizens differed in their conceptual metaphors.

4. Methodology Participants and Materials

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Data were collected from 100 citizens in Tehran in March 2013. Tehran citizens were asked to participate in a small survey answering to two questions and suggest their own metaphors toward the each of the Azadi and Milad Towers in the city of Tehran.

5. Data Analysis and Results: Part A (qualitative analysis) Here Prototype theory (Lakoff, G., 1987) under the support from Grounded theory (Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A., 1965, 1967) was employed. Cognitive psychologists (Clair,f. St. R. N., 2002) think that people do not categorize their experiences of the world by the traditional logic. Instead humans create their own logics for building categories for things, places, events, and experiences. For example, the category of bird is represented by an ideal bird, which in North America, is the robin. In Australia, it may be the canary and in Brazil, parrot. These ideal examples are called prototypes. Although one would like to believe that these categories refer to the real world, they do not. Categories are phenomenological. They reflect the perceptual structure of the perceiver and what constitutes a prototype is usually culturally defined (Clair,f.

St. R. N., 2002).

In Grounded theory (Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A., 1965, 1967) the theory is built at the end of the analysis from the data. Grounded theory involves the process of constant comparison. As Glaser and Strauss [Ibid]put it, by comparing the similar or different features, we can generate new categories. So in this regard, first an attempt should be made to observe salient features, common elements, and similarities among the metaphors until some general conceptual categories representing citizens’ beliefs emerged (Turunen P., 2003). This process involved three levels of coding, first was, ‘open’ coding to assign the features identified from the data, the second was ‘axial’ coding to identify relationships between the features and third was ‘selective’ coding to ensure that main available features were associated with an emerging core category. Eventually, a situation of theoretical saturation was attained where no new categories or properties could emerge from the available data. Thus according to the applied analytical methods in this study, grounded theory and prototype theory, the final categories from the citizens’ metaphor are represented in the figure below:

Figure1. Conceptual metaphors driven from data analysis.

According to the figure1, the plus and minus symbols indicated positive and negative metaphors of the citizens toward each of the Azadi and Milad Towers in general.Azadi Tower created a better mental image for citizens because it is unique, there is no similar monument and tower for that neither in Iran nor in any city all over the world, while Milad Tower is a parody of other communications towers in terms of shape and architectural design such as communications towers in Dubai and Toronto. Azadi Tower to those who suggested positive metaphors was a symbol of a female character, a hugging and trustable friend, a strong and old mentor or a patient mother who encourages, comforts and empowers. These

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features were categorized under a character called a Fairy Godmother. Azadi Tower to those who suggested negative metaphors was a symbol of a Lost Fairy Godmother who had all of the above features of a Fairy Godmother,but she was lost, extremely missed and craved.

Milad Tower to those who suggested positive metaphors was a symbol of fashion, money, nice appearance and development.From the other hand, Milad Tower to those who suggested negative metaphorswas symbols of Alien and Ignorant. These two symbols were classified ina dichotomous status of enemies.

Alien is an enemy from outside while Ignorant is an enemy from inside.The prototypical metaphors mentioned in the figure1 were thus the sum of the features found in the citizens’ suggested metaphors.

6. Part B (quantitative analysis) In the next step (part B of the study), an analysis ofpercentages, chi-square and P-valuewas run to investigate which conceptual metaphor was referred to with the most frequency (whether positive or negative) towards the symbols of Azadi and Milad Towers in Tehran by its citizens. Table1 shows the frequencies in percentage for different metaphors retrieved from figure1. The Azadi Tower has gained 89% positive conceptual metaphors which were categorized under the Fairy Godmother metaphor and 11% negative conceptual metaphors which were categorized under the Lost Fairy Godmother metaphor.

However, Milad Tower has gained 28% positive conceptual metaphorswhichwere categorized under the Modernity metaphor and 40% negative conceptual metaphors which were categorized under the Ignorance and Alien metaphors each of which with the same frequencies. The rest of metaphors for Milad Tower were scattered and with low frequencies so they were not considered significant and thus not included.

From the data available intable1, two tests of chi square were runto find out whether the differences between positive and negative metaphors for both Azadi and Milad Towers were significant or not. Based on the results, chi square and P-value for Azadi positive metaphors and Azadi negative metaphors indicated that their difference is considered to be extremely statistically significant.The chi square for Milad positive metaphors and Milad negative metaphors indicated thattheir difference is considered to be not statistically significant. These analysesrevealedthat a vast majority of citizens looked positively at the Azadi because their P-value was extremely significant, however the P-value for Milad Tower was not considered significant, therefore it was revealed that positive and negative perspectives were given same significance.

Crosstab Analysis Tower Azadi Group Milad Total

Positive Count 89 % within Group 89% Count 40 % within Group 58.8% Count 129 % within Group 76.7%

Negative 11 11% 28 41.1% 39 23.2%

Total 100 100.0% 68 100.0% 168 100.0%

Table 1. Percentage Analysis Azadi/Milad by Positive/Negative

7. Discussion In this study the prototypical metaphors driven from citizens’ suggested metaphors approved that Tehran citizens, both young and old, showed a clear inclination toward the Azadi Tower which is considered a traditional urban symbol and also a neutral inclination towardMilad Tower, a modernized urban symbol

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which was because of not finding a statistically significant relationship between positive and negative metaphors toward this symbol. Thus it was revealed that there could not be found any alignment between the modernization of Tehran urban symbols and Tehran citizens’ ways of conceptualizing. In this regard a pattern was offered which was to reconciliate modernity to tradition that could work in a Middle Eastern city like Tehran.

With the inspiration from the conceptual metaphor theory [8]the features of both information age related and traditional related urban symbolism were put together to find a pattern for reconciliation. The fairy godmother for Azadi Tower indicated sacredness and spirituality while the ignorance and alien for Milad Tower indicated animosity, there was also the metaphor of modernity for Milad Tower which indicated development and progress. Spirituality and sacredness were in opposition to alien and ignorance. They represented goodness versus evil. Now the main question was raised for designing the pattern that how one can reconciliategoodness to evil. The history of religions gave the answer to this questionaccording to all the Abrahamic religions that there is no way of reconciliation between the two. However, symbolizing Milad Tower as modernity here came to help for the reconciliation pattern. A modern fairy godmother was identified as the ideal pattern. The features of modernity metaphor found in the citizens’ suggested metaphor are put together with the features of fairy godmother found in the citizens’ metaphors.

Therefore the suggested reconciliation pattern became a mingled metaphor as a “modern fairy godmother”. This metaphor amalgamated symbols of modernity and spirituality, a symbol from the welcomed tradition and culture inside the country amalgamated with a symbol from the welcomed modernity and progress outside of the country. This new conceptual metaphor was found to be in harmony with Spiritual Progressive theory of lakoff (Lakoff, G., 1995). In fact, Lakoff believes that spiritual progressives have a Nurturant form of religion, which in turn implies that they have mixed science with spirituality.

8. Conclusion The world in which we live isbeing updated, and thus the way we act think believe, etc. should be up dated as well. The industrial age has become the information ageand thus the meaning we attach to the terms, symbols and concepts should change. However these changes should be evolutionary not revolutionary so that individuals gain feeling for the change and welcome it. The challenge remains for policy makers and power handlersto incorporate the information-age mindset into the cultural thought patterns.However, power relations change over time and dominant actors will be replaced by others. Hence it is of significance to mention that what urban citizens think of symbols and rituals is not static and independent of the passing of the time.

References Arbak, A. S. (2005) An Analysis of the Transformation of Urban Identity: Case Study of Bodrum. Middle East Technical University.

Appleyard, D. & Jacobs, A. (1982) Toward an Urban Design Manifesto. Berkeley: Institute of Urban and Regional Development, University of California.

Augé, M. (1995), Non-Places. Introduction of Anthropology of Supermodernity. Verso, London/New York.

Bor, W. G., et al. (1967) Planning and architecture. New York: Wittenborn.

Clair,f. St. R. N. (2002) The Anatomy of Social Metaphor. Retrieved March 21, 2013, from http://epistemic-forms.com/FacSite/Articles/Anatomy-metaphor-stclair.html Dochtermann, A. (2000) Metaphors of the City in the Information Age, Retrieved March 21,2013, fromhttp://math.stanford.edu/~anton/city_metaphors.pdf.

Dutton, W. H., Kraemer, K. L., &Blumler, J. G. (1987) Wired cities: Shaping the future of communications. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.

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Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. (1965, 1967) The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine.

J.Schneider & I.Susser(eds) (2003) Wounded Cities: Destruction and Reconstruction in a Globalized World Berg Publishers,( hardcover and paperback), p. i-xv, 1-31.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, G. (1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. The University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, G., (1995) Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals in the Dust.Social Research, 62 (2).

Lynch, K. (1960) The image of the city (Vol. 1).MIT press.

Markovรก, B., &Tichรก, I. (2011) The Impact of Globalization on Cultural Policy: A Case Study of the City of Ostrava. University of Ostrava, ISBN 978-80-7368-963-6,Retrieved April 11, 2013, from http://conference.osu.eu/globalization/publ2011/207-212_Markova- Ticha.pdf Mumford, Lewis.(1938) The Culture of Cities. New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co. Nas, P. J. (2011) Cities full of symbols: a theory of urban space and culture. Amsterdam University Press.

Sui, D. Z. (2003) Urban Forms, Urban Processes, and Urban Policies: Toward a New Conceptual Framework and a New Research Agenda for Metropolis in the 21st Century, Retrieved March 16, 2013, fromwww.ncgia.ucsb.edu/conf/BALTIMORE/author s/sui/paper.html.

Turunen P. (2003) Metaphorical expressions used by university students about themselves and about their teachers.

Retrieved March 21, 2013, from https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/bitstream/handle/123456789/7290/G0000254.pdf?sequence=1 Xiangzhan, Ch. (2008) Urban Image and Urban Aesthetics: Urban Aesthetics in Cross-Cultural Perspective.Journal of Faculty of Letters (25).

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City and citizen as a text and its author: A Semiotic Reading Abdollah Karimzadeh

University of Bergamo Cultural Studies in Literary Inter-zones E-mail: abdollah.karimzadeh85@gmail.com

Alireza Khosravi Università degli studi di Milano E-mail: alireza.khos@gmail.com

Hamid R. Rabie Dastgerdi

Politecnico di Milano DAStU - Department of Architecture and Urban Studies E-mail: hrrd_h@yahoo.com

Semiotic reading of a text is a new academic tool for exploring potential meanings of a text. It is meant to shed light on the mechanisms of production, exchange and reception of meanings in texts. Given that according to Semioticians any chain of signs constitutes a text, the central argumentation of the current paper is that a city also can be read as a text, because city is a structure consisting of sign systems. Also, it is argued that the citizens as the authors translate their identity into the text of the city which is decodable by semiotic tools. Accordingly, semiotic reading of the city can contribute to the urban planners in finding the potential meanings produced by the urban sign systems by means of establishing intersystemic relations. Based on this argumentation the present paper sets out to apply Roman Jakobsonian and Walter Benjaminian readings to read the city. In Jakobsonian reading urban landscapes will be decoded by means of phatic, expressive and conative signs as used in applied linguistics, indicating how the citizens as authors translate their identities into the text of the city. In Benjaminian reading, Benjamin’s own reading of the city will be discussed.

Keywords: Semiotic reading, sign system, urban landscapes, phatic, conative and expressive signs of identity, flâneur

1. Introduction A text according to the Semioticians (see Hjelmslev 1943, Barthes 1964) is defined as a system of signs which produces meanings through establishing syntagmatic/ paradigmatic and diachronic/synchronic relations. Saussure (1966, p.67) defines it as a system of “signifiers” which make a reference to a set of “signifieds”. Discovering the relations between the signifiers and the signifieds constitutes the core theme

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of semiotics. In fact, Semiotics is the academic study of the mechanisms of production, transfer and reception of meanings. To put it in a simple way, semiotics is a means to semantics. Semiotically, man can be defined as a sign-producing entity for the simple reasoning that all his gestures and outputs are meaningful and can be read as a text. As a construct by man, cities also can be read as a text to discover their hidden meanings. In view of the fact that in order for a text to be formed, linguistic signs should be juxtaposed in chains according to syntactical rules, the text of the city also should be governed by syntactical rules. In this metaphor, the urban landscapes stand as an equivalent for signs (words) and urban planning stands as an equivalent for the syntax. It seems that this text is co-authored by the citizens and thus can be regarded as a multi-authorial text. What comes following is an attempt to decode it through a semiotic reading.

2. A Jakobsonian Reading of the city In his introduction to the language functions, Jakobson (1960) defines three main functions for linguistic signs 1) expressive 2) conative 3) phatic.

The expressive signs according to him enable the producer of the message to express his emotive states and attitudes. The conative signs persuade/dissuade the receiver of the message to do a specific action or to show a specific behavior. The phatic sign on the other hand establish or facilitate communications between people. Here an attempt has been made to decode some urban landscapes by means of these conceptual tools as propped by Jakobson. Our core argumentation is that the citizens as the authors translate their identity into the text of the city and that this translation can be decoded by means of Jakobsonian conceptual tools. This kind of decoding according to Jacobson is called “intersemiotic translation” which is defined by him as follows: “Intersemiotic translation is the interpretation of verbal signs by means of non-verbal signs and vice versa” (Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, p.220). According to this definition, what we are doing in this paper is an intersemiotic translation, because we interpret the visual signs of the urban landscapes by means of verbal signs of an academic discourse.

3. Phatic Signs of Identity Jakobson describes phatic signs as those that are oriented toward contact. In language this includes phrases which facilitate communication. For example, “It’s a nice weather!” is not a statement, but an invitation to a conversation. Other examples include questions like “You know what I mean?”

Which function as tests of the connection between the addresser and addressee. Applied to visual signs of urban landscapes, phatic signs can be those that serve as an inducement to social interaction. They are the indicators that this neighborhood or urban space belong to us that our socio-cultural practices are acceptable here.The following examples show the semiotic function of some urban landscapes which serve as phatic signs of identity: Restaurants The supply of ethnic foods in restaurants signals identity information about the people using these spaces.

They signify the urban neighborhoods as belonging to certain ethnic groups. This means that food operates as a phatic sign of ethnic identity. Food shops and restaurants tend to advertise products that are in demand by the local community. For example, presence of Turkish food shops and restaurants supplying “Döner Kebab” in German cities can be the signifier of the fact that those neighborhoods belong to Turkish imigrants.Although “Döner Kebab” is becoming a popular street food in global cities with Muslim populations, such restaurants still signify immigrant spaces. Also the ubiquity of “Döner Kebab” shops in global cities offering Döner for non-Muslims can be the signifier of hybrid identities and of the co-existence of globalization and localization (glocalization). It’s just like home cooking’ – a message seemingly oriented toward those for whom Turkish dishes would be their home cuisine.

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Immigrant services Presence of certain kinds of businesses may signify the neighborhood as belonging to immigrant neighborhoods. Examples are some shops advertising calling cards or telecommunication services for Arab countries in Arabic alphabet and this phatic sign can tell us who the potential costumers of this business are and by whom the local market is attended. “Western Unions” also which supply money transfer services play the same semiotic function, because the costumers of the “Western Unions” are generally immigrant users transferring remittance to their families in their home countries. Pakistani groceries and Chinese shops function in the same way.

Dress style The style of dress by the citizens in particular headscarves serves as a phatic sign for their Muslim identity .The observers of the neighborhoods weather they themselves are Muslims or not would be able to recognize the semiotic function of the style of dress (without being aware of it as a semiotic function), and in a sense to whom the neighborhood belongs.

Alphabets and signage of shops Using foreign alphabets on the signage of the shops is a signifier of who lives here.For example, the shops which offer “Halal” meat for Muslim costumers tend to advertise “Halal” brand on the signage of their shops with an emphasis on Arabic Alphabet. This sign concurrently can be expressive, phatic and conative. It is phatic, because it signals the message that they feel at home in that city and that they are free to offer foods acceding to their own rituals. It is expressive, because it expresses the message that they belong to Muslim community and that their customers are of Islamic identity and that possibly in that area Muslim immigrants are living. On the other hand, it functions as a conative sign, because as will be discussed later it persuades the addressees (who are Muslims, or Muslim diaspora) to buy from those “Halal” shops.

Street vendors Phatic signs can also signify social class identity. For examples the street vendors are identified as belonging to lower class strata.

4. Expressive signs of identity Jakobson describes expressive signs as those that are oriented toward addresser. They enable the addresser to express his emotive states and attitudes. Following are examples of the urban landscapes functioning as expressive signs of identity.

Mosques According to the above definition, mosques in European cities function as expressive signs of religious identity. Mosques signify not only the faith community, but also immigrant status. The buildings of mosques use Islamic architecture as well as Arabic alphabet to announce themselves. Both the Signage and the function of the building are expressive signs. They further signify the neighborhood as home to Muslims who live in the surrounding blocks.

Buskers and Artists Artistic performances can function as expressive signs. For example, street music groups and buskers in the global cities have semiotic functions.

Socio-political Activists Collective action can be expressive sign of identity. For example, seeing a group of protestors in the street carrying their national flags and placards with slogans in their native alphabet and language against the

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political system of their home country can impart identity information about them, signaling the message that they are belonging to the community of asylum-seekers in that city.

Upscale and Downscale Districts Upscale and downscale district can function as expressive sign of class identity. All things upscale are signs of upper middle class status and all things downscale are expressive signs of lower class identities.

5. Conative Signs of Identity Conative signs according to Jakobson are those that are oriented toward addressee. They are meant to persuade or discourage the addressees to do something or to show a specific behavior or to change their behavior. Accordingly, any message encouraging, discouraging or warning the addressees can function as conative signs. Following are some examples of urban landscapes showing how they can serve as conative signs of identity.

Native Alphabets Alphabets on signage and the façades of the buildings are conative signs of identity. For example seeing bilingual and multilingual menus in the restaurants signals the message that it is an invitation for the international tourists persuading them to order their favorable foods in a lingua franca.But seeing the menu monolingual is a disincentive for those lacking literacy in the language. Native alphabets are generally signifiers for the nationalistic orientation of the citizens and can signal the message that the people of that city are nationalist. The local alphabets in global cities can also be conative sign of ethnic identity. For example, when travel agencies or telecommunication services or restaurants in Milan advertise in Arabic alphabet, it is the signifier of an invitation only for Arab or Muslim communities and that those centers are possibly run by Arab immigrants and that those centers are possibly belonging to immigrant neighborhoods.

Slums Socio-cultural landscapes also can operate as a conative sign. For example landscapes like slums are usually interpreted to be a sign of danger to outsiders. They signal the class identity of the residents in those areas.

Graffiti and Advertisements The commercial advertisements, slogans and graffiti on the walls of the buildings are among the urban landscapes which have semiotic function. They function as conative signs, serving as incentives or disincentives of people in a bid to make a change in their behaviors or encourage them to a specific act, say participating in elections, supporting a political party, etc.

6. A Benjaminian Reading of the City The philosophical ideas of German cultural critic Walter Benjamin regarding the concept of city are of significance for urban studies. To elaborate on the relation between city and citizen, he proposes his theory of language and subject-object dialectic. In his theory of language, he argues for an object language, a language of things as saying: “objects have their own proper language and through this language they communicate with us and with other objects (Benjamin, In Selected Writings,Vol.1,pp.62-74).And the central idea in his subject-object dialectics is that the identity of the subject is in part constructed by the object world (Benjamin, In Selected Writings,Vol.1,pp.62-74).Based on this dialectics and his concept of interpretation, or criticism( which according to him is the translation of the object language into human language),he comes to analyze the mutual interaction between city and city-dweller as saying: “The act of interpretation should be understood as a translation of the object language into human language and that the object itself determines this translation. (Benjamin, In Selected Writings, Vol.1, p.59)

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Benjamin’s point is that the object world determines subject formation. The object world determines the way we act and even what we think and thus the object world impact the formation of our identities.

Based on this argumentation he comes to the conclusion that it is the city that shapes the identity of the citizen.

In his “A Berlin Chronicle”, Benjamin employs the metaphors of memory and dreaming to read the city.

By means of these metaphors he sheds more light on his subject-object dialectic as following: “The material space not only exercises a decisive influence over the subject’s identity, but also continues to affect the subject by shaping memory. The citizens of Berlin are Berliners, because the city of Berlin exerts its influence over all of its inhabitants, affecting both identity and memory of its subjects.”

(Benjamin, In Selected Writings, Vol.2, and p.609).In this argumentation he introduces his theory of memory as saying: “People by using a space inscribe their dreams, their memories in that space. The space in turn impacts one’s memory or dreams that occurred within that space. Once again the dialectic of materiality and subjectivity asserts itself. (Benjamin, In Selected Writings, Vol.2, p.445).

Employing the metaphor of “flâneur” and the above-mentioned metaphors, Benjamin embarks on reading the cities of Rome and Paris as following: “Rome burdened by the weight of its history leaves no space for dreaming of the flâneur. Rome has too many dreams of its own. The city itself cannot allow the passer-by the freedom to dream. Rome is marked by sheer weight of its history. Rome dominates the relation between the subject and object, compelling the subject to follow only its patterns, denying the subject agency. Paris allows the flâneur to dream.

During the 19th century, when flâneur emerges, Paris underwent a massive reconstruction. Buildings were torn down and modern buildings were built, but the scars of this transformation remained visible. The process of modernization while attempting to destroy the past left history behind as ruins and this destruction reaffirms the eternity of these ruins.”( Benjamin, In Selected Writings, Vol.2, p.470) So unlike Rome, Paris was filled with disjunctures between modern and traditional retaining the traces of its history as a remainder/reminder of the past. These very traces give freedom to the flâneur. This freedom to dream means that the flâneur is able to construct a new and imaginative relationship with the city. The city still determines the range of the dreaming, but in Paris as opposed to Rome, this range is a broad boulevard rather than a narrow alleyway.

7. Conclusion Initially the concept of the text was problematized and defined according to its semiotic function. Based on this definition, the city was introduced as a text which is consisting of sign systems. Then Jacobson’s triple linguistic signs including phatic, expressive and conative were applied to some urban landscapes and a semiotic reading of the city was provided and finally Walter Benjamin’s philosophical reading of the city was discussed.

References Baker, M. (ed.) (1988), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London/New York: Routledge.

Jakobson.(1960),Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics, In T.A. Sebeok,(Ed),Style in Language,Cambridge,MA:MIT press.pp.350-370.

Marcus B., and Michael J. (eds.)(1996), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume 1, 1913-1926, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, PP. 62-74.

Michael J., Howard E., and Gary S., (eds.)(1999), Walter Benjamin: Selected Essays Volume 2, 1927-1934, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, PP. 117-21.

Saussure.(1966). A Course in General Linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans.), New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Acknowledgments Hereby, we extend our gratitude for Dr. Ingrid Hotz-Davies, the head of the department of literary Studies in the University of Tubingen who provided us with her insightful guidelines and revised the paper.

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Towards a metropolitan design Sofia Morgado Technical University of Lisbon CIAUD, Faculty of Architecture E-mail: smorgado@fa.utl.pt

More than attempting to bring to the fore issues of a social nature or pertaining to the civitas, a set of questions regarding the condition of the urban element - the urbs - on the physical and spatial aspects of the post-industrial European metropolis phenomena are to be addressed. For that matter, a debate on the production and design of metropolitan space was envisaged by addressing the following topics: • the epistemological dimension of metropolitan morphology, urban fabrics - rural, or natural environments; • the idea of a Metropolitan Design, rooted in the industrial Urbanism, but including multilevel aspects of planning through the need of large-scale projects; • open space as the functional element with the highest capacity for shaping contemporary cities.

Keywords: open space; metropolitan design; urban theory; contemporary city A Metropolitan Morphology The issue associated to a definition of morphology of the contemporary metropolis came up in the last decades due to the need to adjust concepts, vocabulary, and techniques to the specification of territories, which have become more diverse in terms of configuration and rationale.

The development of approaches aiming to systematise and introduce methodologies appropriate to the constitution of the morphology of post-industrial metropolitan territories contribute, and in this context offer, an opportunity for research on the epistemology of contemporary urbanism.

By following the various trends that reacted to the modern model, and an attempt to recoup the understanding of development of the city over time –by identifying patterns and elements that would allow to systematise and represent the city in time and space, i.e., its morphologies - were particularly advanced in the 1960s, and, above all, in the 1980s.

Urban morphology lies basically on a morpho-typology of urban fabrics’ basic elements– plots, roads and blocks – and on their relationship with public spaces, particularly consolidated ones, from a cultural perspective. Nonetheless, present day cities are formed by distinct and dynamic situations, which require critical answers and adequate evaluation methodologies.

Accordingly, other authors have systematically drawn attention to the need to align the concepts of form,

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morphology, and typology with the circumstances of today’s cities, avoiding the privilege once offered to erudite urban fabrics or those considered heritage. They propose that studies should be extended to the entire territory, and accept the existence of very dissimilar situations, which have been observed and studied with the help of comparable design techniques (Oswald & Bacini; Viganò, 2001; Secchi, 2005; Tatom, 2009).

In the study of the current metropolis, nowadays extended to practically all cases of the urbanised world, the territorial understanding of the phenomena that transform and configure the city is most appropriate (McHarg, 1969; Dematteis, 1999), and often leads to extremely innovative approaches (Busquets, 2005).

It must equally be mentioned that studies recognised internationally as seminal, in terms of the urban morphology and design, had already been carried out at Laboratório de Urbanismo de Barcelona1 (Barcelona Urbanism Laboratory). The work of Manuel de Solà-Morales Las formas del crecimiento urbano (published later, in 1997) deserves special mention due to its very innovative approach typifying transformation processes that opposed a more static stance relying on an urban typology, and portraying distinct types of urbanisation from an understanding of its core elements – parcelling, infra-structuring and buildings.

These approaches represent well the need to interpret emerging metropolitan morphologies – urban, rural, and more ambiguous ones that are fast forming in areas more peripheral to consolidated urban centres, both in terms of time and space. These works are considered to be pioneering in their innovative approaches, and contribute towards a culture of European planning.

In what concerns the morphogenesis of metropolitan spaces, more recently, authors such as Antonio Font (et all 1999) and Carles Llop (1995 and 2009) must be mentioned for insisting on the importance of landscape and on the need for a Project for the Metropolis. These works introduced a systemization of occupation forms of the metropolitan area of Barcelona, and extended this comparative study to thirteen metropolises in Southern Europe. La Explosión de la ciudad/The Explosion of the City posed questions regarding the condition of the contemporary metropolis, in the search for a lexicon of configurations, and pointing to a future systematisation of morphologies that are larger in scope (Font et all, 2004).

In this light, the traditional city is understood in the wider context of the metropolis, and its morphologies are identified in parallel and without distinction to those pertaining to suburbanisation or atomisation of more recent metropolitan territories. The progressive urbanisation of territories on the edge of more recent urban fabrics has also been taken into account. In the approach to metropolitan morphology, tools from the urban morphology - parcelling, buildings, infrastructure and public space - were considered valid as well. However, adjustments had to be considered: differences in levels and scales and the need to introduce other aspects such as large physiographic elements, functions and socioeconomic dynamics as drivers of development. This allowed, also acknowledging the importance of the open space system in a metropolitan morphological approach.

In fact, this stance proposes an equitable vision of the space of the metropolis. It confers importance to open space, and marks the temporal stratification of the metropolis, which had become dissociated from the urban element as a result of spatial disjunction and of the functional specialisation proposed by the Modern City.

Various studies on Landscape Ecology have led to interpretations also systemised around morphology, although they did not have a symbiotic view (between urban and non-urban) of metropolitan territories.

This line of thought has its origins in the beginning of the 20th century German Landscape Planning and Design tradition, later recouped by Forman (1995); however, a one tier focus in the ecology of the natural and rural landscapes failed, to some extent, to explore the interface between different fabrics – ranging from urban to rural -, where the main questions regarding contemporary metropolises are believed to lie.

These various references offer a wide spectre of knowledge on the current metropolitan phenomena but miss crucial issues such as how to develop new concepts to designing it at different levels.

1

DUOT, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona, Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña. (School of Architecture of Barcelona, Polytecnical University of Catalonia).

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Urbanised landscape, whose origin often results from a rural-based anthropization, has progressively developed as a consequence of territory and modern city infrastructuring. Even quite specific geographical situations, where the natural environment predominates, are affected by the dynamics of the urbanised world, creating synergies and complementarities of a metropolitan nature.

However, it was the profound changes starting in the middle of the 20th century, peaking with the oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s, which led to a rupture that had widespread impact on several features of contemporary society. These circumstances account for increasingly complex changes that are already paradigmatic, both in terms of territory and of the challenges posed by its planning.

Due to shifts in aesthetical and cultural values, and to the development of new social and economic practices, the city is changing its face and in scale, and is increasingly perceived as territorial, tending to become metropolitan.

Metropolis is now a reality in the form of a landscape that includes not only what is urban, in its distinct facets, but also rural and natural environments, in rapidly changing multifaceted functional structures.

Something several authors had already envisaged this developments, in almost prospective manner from the beginning of the 20th century (Geddes, 1915, and Webber, 1968).

The period known as post-industrial basically saw the emergence and maturity of a culture relying on analysis, planning, and project. It privileges interconnection and holistic approaches that are natural to an urban environment undergoing permanent transformation and readjustment to new conditions – challenges and risks.

Towards a Metropolitan Design The post-industrial period is characterised by fundamental changes in the renewal of the concept of urban, and in the innovation of choices and strategies regarding their spatial and urban planning and design. On the one hand, it has a critical component of major impact in terms of socio-cultural conceptualisation and an architectural-based approach to a territorial design. On the other, the functional dynamics that the developing of new planning approaches indicates already consistent trends: 1. Configurations and morphologies indicating the definition of models and concepts, from a design and cultural perspective. In addition to identifying the distinct metropolitan configurations and phenomena (such as extensive city, Portas; diffused city, Indovina), the literature review has highlighted the need for suitable intervention, and proposed a definition of the Project for the Metropolis (Font, 2004) or of Landscape Urbanism (Waldheim, 2006). The emergence of the concept of Metropolitan Urbanism (Tatom, 2009) has equally contributed to the advance of research and practice.

2. Dynamics and phenomena that bring about functional issues, in terms of regional and urban planning.

Territorial dynamics marked by polycentrism, (Faludi, 2008), shrinkage (Oswalt, 2006), and a fracture between major infrastructures and rustic or urban configurations (drosscape, Berger, 2006) are also of major importance, as they propose forms of mitigating and combining distinct situations by resorting to multilevel policies, planning and projects.

At this point, a research line gains stronger evidence towards the practice scope: 1) Urbanism is a two tiered discipline - architecturally based on morphology and on design - born from the effects of industrialization in the form and development of the city, and 2) metropolitan morphology is generally acknowledged (however not yet clearly identified as a systematized line of thought as urban morphology is already), then, beyond urban and regional planning, a Metropolitan Design concept is gaining consistence and legitimacy, with a peculiarity since it is specially addressing the open space system in its close interrelationship with the urban, specifically by reinventing the range and qualities of the public space realm.

After the identification of this new field called Urbanism in late 19th century and with some roots in a

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classical past, Urban Design would emerge as a separate professional activity, in Europe and America, after the Second World War (Shane, 2011: 9). This term (coined by Abercrombie and Forshaw, cfr Shane) would fill in the need to face the damaged cities and new agendas that would transform the urban world, such as the automobile. Abercrombie would develop one of the most important metropolitan spatial elements that may already refer as pertaining to a metropolitan design idea: the green belt – an open space tool of urban containement.

The planning of open space, in metropolitan terms, has essentially played the role of containing urban growth and avoiding the fragmentation of natural and agricultural coherences, contributing to a clear definition, albeit negative, of urban delimitations. It was in this light that the English greenbelts came into being, the London one deserving special mention, and where this specific issue was explicitly pinpointed

by Abercrombie as early as 1945. After 1931, the initial ideas advanced by Raymond Unwin and the London Society were published in the Report on Open Spaces, published by the Greater London Regional Planning Committee. The LCC had the merit of promoting the Green Belt Scheme in 1935, which became a law when the Green Belt Act was passed in 19382.

More recently, besides aspects related to containment, and, later, to environmental and ecological preservation concerns, it has become clear that, in terms of a project for a metropolis, large open spaces have moved away from a strictly functional zoning. Indeed, they start to denote qualities of a design nature, recouping urban concepts after the major elements of composition of open space, like the ones Olmsted introduced in American cities such as Chicago or New York at the end of the 19th century.

As a result of industrialisation, European cities have experienced increasing urban growth, which rapidly rose above the area, structure, and configuration of conventional cities. This led to the emergence of previously inexistent forms of urbanisation, such as suburbanisation, which were either highly dense (e.g.

Grands Ensembles in some French cities, such as Muraille de Chine, in St Étienne, demolished already) or low-density landscapes (e.g. Sun Valley in the USA).

This situation, generally addressed as sprawl, albeit its local peculiarities, became more complex with the decline of Fordism, the introduction of the just-in- time models, and the development of a knowledgebased economy, which, from the 1970s, started to expand in the urbanised world. More recently, a creativity-based economy is being called for as a means of intervening in more qualified urban spaces. On the one hand, the activation of rural patterns within the metropolitan territory, on the other, population and functional decline leading to central areas becoming obsolete and deserted, contribute to the proliferation of residual areas – no longer merely rural – in-between historical zones, compact suburban areas, and major infrastructures.

Identical phenomena, even though with distinct configurations, occur in Europe, particularly in Southern metropolises, such as Lisbon, Barcelona, and the Veneto region (Portas, Font, Indovina, 2007), and transnational metropolises like Øresund (Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmö in Sweden), Basel (France, Germany and Switzerland), which have experience of urban management and planning based on international institutions.

However, and for the time being, the study of configuration, structures and rationales, from a large scale morphology perspective lies on what is metropolitan, a condition that surely will be soon overcome.

It is in this context that interpretations and interventions associated to the phenomenology of the metropolitan territory arise, such as Zwichenstadt (the city in- between, Sieverts, 1997) or Netzstadt (network city, Oswald and Baccini, 2003), referring, respectively, to the German and Swiss examples, forming a spatial-based concept applied to the contingencies of an urbanised territory.

Against a passive idea of a readymade metropolis which will inevitably correspond to a mosaic of urban, rural, natural, and boundary components, in which predominantly built or open areas alternate, a metropolitan design approach would, clearly, make the difference.

2

The first draft project for the Green Belt was established by the Home Counties Greenbelt Act of 1938, with the purpose of controlling metropolitan growth in the outskirts of London. The need to preserve countryside landscape areas was a result of an initiative of several associations such as the Garden Cities Movement.

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The open space system as a key to designing the metropolis In several European cities, one notices that metropolitan interventions converge into a combination of scales and projects – in space and not by resorting to mere schemes – towards what was referred to as the need for a notion of a Project for the Metropolis. In these circumstances, it may be interesting to have a territorial definition of the Project [or Design] as the main tool for the materialization, in terms of space and from an architectural base, of strategies and intervention trends, in which the regeneration of forms of occupation and use are fundamental in a metropolitan structure context.

These types of instruments have expanded and been updated, the most important examples being the English, French, and German planning systems (Greater London Plan, Plan d’Urbanisme of Lyon and IBA Emscherpark, among others). They find that qualifying open space as an essential instrument, both in terms of planning at a metropolitan scale, and of intervention in the actual city. Examples include planning based on agricultural and metropolitan parks in Barcelona (Clos, 2008; Llop, 2009), and the concept of Metropolitan and Regional Design, set up at the School of Architecture of the Technical University of Delft in several projects, or at a national level, such as the programme Dutch Delta Design (DDD-2012).

Additional examples include the interventions fostered by the agency Design for London from 2004, as well as various studies by Secchi and Viganò, with a special reference to Paris (2009). In France, the tradition of an urbanistic trend was even reinforced by the changes in the law, which introduced the concept of GPV/ Gran Project de Ville. In Portugal, more precisely in the Metropolitan Area and in the city of Lisbon, identical issues have been tackled in recent planning reviews (CML, 2010 and CCDRLVT, 2009).

In this light, it has been possible to consolidate the perception that, between the middle and the end of the first decade of the 21st (Morgado, 2010), there has been a change in paradigm regarding planning and management, in which the following have become evident: 1. Effective integration of open spaces in city projects, namely by including the urban element, infrastructures, and ecological networks in the same instruments; 2. Acknowledgement that functional and strategic planning lacking the necessary spatial component is not appropriate to a variety of distinct situations undergoing permanent transformation, and in which the public realm has a leading position in the links among the various agents intervening in the city; 3. Coordination between diverse types of plans, levels, and hierarchies in metropolitan space is essential.

These concerns point to the need to clarify requirements that comprise distinct qualities of an urban, infrastructural, rural, and natural type, and to the necessary capacity to intervene. In this light, intervention normally means adjusting – or updating – in terms of instruments and lexicon, the morphology of the metropolis, for which classical urban morphology lacks the necessary arguments and vocabulary.

The circumstances of the actual transformation must also be taken into consideration, for which a study of the morphogenesis of places is more appropriate than morphology in itself, as the latter is relatively static in terms of the temporality of the object of study. The same applies to the analysis and methodologies, and to the need for specific references beyond those pertaining to the canonical city. This means an on-going epistemological challenge that contributes to our understanding of the extensive city based on a duly founded architectural approach.

Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, there has been a considerable evolution regarding the definition of the major elements of the Project for the Metropolis. This is based on open space and on new urban concepts of recognition of the metropolitan landscape, and not just on derelict and residual spaces in accordance to the determinism of urbanization associated to the terrain vague in obsolete industrial areas, as pointed out by the critics in the 1980s and the 1990s.

Production on the metropolis is beginning to show new approaches to dealing with discontinuous metropolitan spaces, winning over the views that somehow conveyed the aesthetics of the banal and the ugly, and portrayed it in an exhaustive and nihilist manner. Besides identifying the raw material of the territory and the ways it evolves, at last projects for the metropolis, or, at least, for the contemporary metropolis, are finally starting to appear.

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The adaptive nature of actual plans and the need to integrate programmed projects at successive scales shows the need to plan a territory according to distinct intensities and origins. It also points to the need to bring together the actual possibilities for metropolitan space planning, and to align national interests (such as the national ecological and agricultural reserves, coastal planning projects), national plans, and the role of urban projects within municipal urban plans.

We can even conclude that one of the main topics in the regional plans of those cities was always the issue of urban containment, or its opposite, control of human occupation, and a clear definition of functional open space as opposed to a duly infrastructed and equipped urban area.

In Portugal too, a more spatial-based approach to metropolitan planning has been emerging, addressing a somehow lack of instruments at a national level. Examples of the latter include REN/Reserva Ecológica Nacional (National Ecological Reserve) or RAN/Reserva Agrícola Nacional (National Agricultural Reserve), which, generally speaking, did not translate into appropriately programmed and designed areas at a local level. Contrary to previous documents, the introduction of the Rede Ecológica Metropolitana (Metropolitan Ecological Network) in 2002 brought some innovation and is more efficient, at municipal level, in the reviews of the PDM-Planos Directores Municipais/Municipal Master Plans (CCDRLVT, 2002). In this case, the progressive integration of 1990s Green Plans in municipal planning has been achieved, from an ecological and environmental perspective, and also as a key feature of municipal land use planning and design, and part of a project of an idea for the city. With regard to Regional Plans, another innovation was the study of the delimitations of land use patterns (CCDRLVT, 2002 e 2009), which introduced the morphological and spatial dimension of the metropolitan territory. This approach takes into account a landscape ecology perspective, and sees the territory as a land mosaic, regardless of its urban or rural nature. This is the basis where REM/Rede Ecológica Metropolitana (Metropolitan Ecological Network) stands and finds its spatial development characteristics and subsequent implementation through the Municipal Ecological Networks, which have now been incorporated as qualified open spaces in their Municipal Master Plans. The reassessment of the Lisbon Municipal Master Plan is an example of this (CML, 2009).

Similar issues were addressed at the PROTAL (Algarve) and PROT in the North – based on a designed view of metropolitan space in which open space has a major role, the same as in other European cities, like Barcelona (PEMB, 2008). The PEMB/ Plano Estratégico Metropolitan de Barcelona (Metropolitan Strategic Plan of Barcelona) establishes several priorities and offers a model identical to that of Lisboa 2020 uma estratégia de Lisboa para a Região de Lisboa/ Lisbon 2020 a strategy from Lisbon for the Lisbon Region (CCDR-LVT, 2007). PEMB strategically advances several proposals, including the Plano director de corredores verdes (Master Plan for Green Belts) (2007) and Parque Agrário Llobregat/ Llobregat Agrarian Park (2004). In this case, planned projects reflect issues that show the cleavage between urban and non-urban, by qualifying derelict areas (urban reform of Besòs and its linear park), or introducing new metropolitan forms of interface between infrastructures and residential areas (e.g. the agrarian park and the Mediterranean Highway, Santa Maria de Gallecs). There are also authors who propose a cohesive project between the distinct types of open spaces, suggesting a garden of the metropolis (Battle, 2003).

This trend is relatively recent and occurs as a result of a time marked by some conflict between the urban, the natural, and the rural, whose objectives, in regional terms, often opposed each other.

The recognition of environmental values in the metropolis and the actual need for spatial planning help promote the complementarities between open spaces, urban fabrics, and large infrastructures.

Examples include the emergence of agrarian and metropolitan parks (Barcelona, Milan), and the clear definition of roles in an extremely infrastructured conurbation around a green heart (Groene Hart) with major limitations, in terms of landscape, and with water and drainage related problems, such as Randstad Holland.

This is a form of containment, inverted with regard to the greenbelt concept, which was introduced in Holland’s first regional planning policy in 1960. It has been coordinated alongside more recent policies, particularly in new residential locations (Vinex, from the mid-1980s) or through the development of multiple centres according to models pioneered by Sweden introduced at the end of the 1990s.

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More recently, the Randstad 2040 strategy, integrating the Randstad in the context of several European policies, aims to encourage the protection of open spaces, especially those connected to water, and considers the possibility of including more houses in the Groene Hart. Several examples followed suit, which modern urban models have considered, after all, to be issues of a metropolitan nature, given that the urban always happens in a wider territory marked by specific landscapes. Nonetheless, they were only developed in part, and always favoured urban expansion at the cost of the rural, in detriment of a global and metropolitan approach.

So far, it is getting quite clear the prime importance of the open space in the Design of the Metropolis.

However, the most immediate appropriation of the production of city space – where the main social and cultural values and economic forces are concentrated – reduced the importance of open space, relegating it to a state of absence or scenery, of residual importance compared to the major role played by the built environment. Until now, its cultural, landscape and environmental worth had not yet been clearly acknowledged. This acknowledgment gave it back the leading role in the transformation process and project of the metropolis.

As the contemporary metropolis includes several levels of land use, the consolidation of some key aspects for the understanding of the various forms of urban transformation and production, and in which open space assumes growing importance: 1. for the environmental issues associated to the preservation of nature and risks connected to climate change, 2. for the critique and innovation of the projects proposed, of a larger scale, and the potential darning of the distinct pieces of metropolitan landscapes and 3. for the potential explanation regarding the forming of the actual metropolitan fabrics, resorting to the definition of a metropolitan morphology.

From the viewpoint of urban intervention models and ideas, one notices that the more persistent ones focus on the relationship between urban and open space, at a metropolitan scale, and are often more suitable to better define areas. In the case of the latter, one should mention the major elements of territorial composition, or the Project for the Metropolis for purposes of containing urban sprawl, such as the paradigmatic English Greenbelt or the Dutch Groen Hart/Green Heart.

With regard to a critique of urban planning, one cannot but notice the existing dissociation between urban and open space in planning and management instruments, and that the urban has prevailed over the remaining territory. This has contributed to the proliferation of residual open areas with deficient protection, unless the open space was, in itself, a relevant economic activity.

This situation has taken place essentially in modern times, whereby productivist models allied to largescale agricultural production have contributed to the maintenance of vast exclusively open spaces, in addition to a zoning perspective of city. The city models with the highest impact on urban fabrics have caused conflict and stiffness in their integration with the open space, concurring for discontinuity and fissures in the morphological and functional coherence of the most fragile areas.

Above all, this was the result of a progressive view that was particular to the mid-20th century, and of special needs in terms of housing, which privileged urban growth according to zoning and functional specializations in detriment of a correlation between urban patches and an idea of the whole for a city of metropolitan scale and inclusive of larger open spaces.

In addition, the presence of a metropolitan governance structure lacking the capacity for direct execution and with a weak relationship with municipal authorities, gave origin to inefficacies in terms of metropolitan planning.

In Europe, priority has been given to issues related to coordinating several levels of planning, and to the recovery of a better informed type of planning, from the viewpoint of the territorialisation of phenomena, thus complementing more strategically oriented perspectives.

Following a type of physical planning marked by zoning and a strategic approach, particularly after the 1980s, which did not favour spatial views of the whole, it is particularly interesting to notice the

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emergence of new practices, which, due to the fact they are still in progress, cannot yet be evaluated.

From in-between to a designed open space system On a wider scale, the main areas of concern focus on transition areas between dissimilar situations. On the one hand, it addresses the ambivalent characteristics of its fabrics, and, on the other, the need for a disciplinary approach that, in terms of projects, answers trans-scale situations and allows working in areas with scientific and conceptual borders that simultaneously encompass urbanism and landscape architecture.

Accordingly, and in the light of recent works, we are probably looking for designs that instead of attempting to mend urban splinters aim to reinvent a fabric composed of many distinct pieces, conveying the city a territorial coherence through a public realm oriented structure of metropolitan characteristics.

These concerns raise the need to clarify the nature of current metropolitan fabrics, as they hold different qualities - from urban and infrastructural to rural and natural - and the indispensable skills to intervene in them. In this process, the growing importance of the space in-between cities is highlighted. As a result, literature and practises keep on emphasizing the same topics: Open space is a key element for the full understanding of current metropolitan and urban morphogenesis and The most flexible design component in the articulation of different and scattered elements (infrastructures, buildings) in the metropolis. After privileging an urban expansion that granted wealth, through often, overrated real-estate urban developments – a comfortable certainty, recent events in the US and America economic and financial crises made crumbled as a castle made of cards.

Research should now focus on a multi-scarcity conjuncture of people, resources, and tools. This is when the rural grows over what once used to be urban, inverting planning and design agendas.

How to address a recessive city when the known tools are prepared to tackle with growth, if not by resorting to a designed open space system?

References Abercrombie, Patrick, 1945, Greater London Plan 1944, London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Battle, Enric, 2002, El Jardí de la Metropoli. Del paisatge romàntic a l'espai lliure per una ciutat sostenible.

Dissertação de doutoramento, Barcelona: Universidad Politencia de Cataluña.

Busquets i Grau, Joan, 1974, Las Coreas de Barcelona, Dissertação de Doutoramento em Urbanismo, Barcelona: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

Busquets i Grau, Joan, 1999, La urbanización marginal, Barcelona: Edicions UPC. Busquets, Joan, 2005, Barcelona, the urban evolution of a compact city, Harvard University Graduate School of Design CCDRLVT, 2002, PROT-AML. Plano Regional de Ordenamento do Território da Área Metropolitana de Lisboa, Lisboa: Ministério do Ambiente e do Ordenamento do Território.

CCDR-LVT, 2007, Lisboa 2020; uma estratégia de Lisboa para a Região de Lisboa, Lisboa: CCDR-LVT. CCDRLVT, 2009, PROT AML, Plano Regional de Ordenamento do Território da Área Metropolitana de Lisboa. Proposta Técnica Final apresentada para discussão da Comissão Consultiva, Novembro. Lisboa: Comissão de Coordenação e Desenvolvimento Regional de Lisboa e Vale do Tejo.

12 | New Urban Languages Int. Conference, Milan, Italy, 19-21 July 2013 | Sofia Morgado Towards a metropolitan design working document only Clos, Oriol (ed.) 2008, Barcelona, Transformació Plans i Projectes, Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona.

CML, 2010, Revisão do PDM. Relatório da proposta de plano, Março, Lisboa: DMPU- Departamento de Planeamento Urbano. Disponível em http://pdm.cm-lisboa.pt Faludi, Andreas (ed.) 2008, European Spatial Research and Planning, Cambridge: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Font Antonio ed., 2007, La explosión de la ciudad. Transformaciones territoriales en las regiones urbanas

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de la Europa Meridional=The Explosion of the city. Territorial Transformations in the South Europe Urban Regions, Madrid: Ministerio de Vivienda (1a edição 2004).

Forman, Richard T. T., 1995, Land Mosaics. The ecology of landscapes and regions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Geddes, P., [1915], 2009, Ciudades en evolución, Oviedo: KRK pensamiento.

GLA, 2008, The London Plan, Spatial Development Strategy for Greater London. Consolidated with Alterations since 2004. London: Greater London Authority.

Llop, Carles, coord., 2009, Paisatges en transformació. Intervenció i gestió paisatgístiques. (Estudis) Territori/6, Barcelona: Diputació Barcelona.

Morgado, Sofia, 2010, Projectar com a ausência. O espaço desocupado como fundamento da morfologia e projecto urbanos na Lisboa metropolitana, unpublished post-doctoral report available at the Faculty of Architecture (FCT) Lisboa & Barcelona: FA/ UTL & ETSAB/ UPC. McHarg, Ian L., 1992, Design with Nature, New York: John Wiley & Sons. Primeira edição 1969.

Oswald, Franz & Baccini, Peter, 2003, Netzstadt, Designing the Urban, Basle: Birkhäuser. Rasmussen, Steen Eiler, 1934, London: the unique city, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1967.

Shane, David Grahame, 2011, Urban Design since 1945 - a global perspective, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd Seixas, João, 2008, Estruturas e dinâmicas do capital sócio-cultural em Lisboa. In Villaverde Cabral, Carreira da Silva e Saraiva (org.), Cidade e Cidadania. Lisboa: ICS-Imprensa de Ciências Sociais.

Sieverts, Thomas, 1997, Cities without cities. An interpretation of the Zwischenstadt, London/ New York: Routledge.

Solà-Morales i Rubió, Manuel de, 1997, Las formas de crecimiento urbano, Barcelona: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Tatom, J.; Stauber, J. (ed.), 2009, Making the Metropolitan Landscape, Nova Iorque: Routledge.

Vernez-Moudon, Anne, 1997, «Urban morphology as an emerging interdisciplinary field» Urban Morphology I, ISUF, Internacional Seminar on Urban Form.

Viganò, Paola, 1999, La città elementare, Milano: Skira Webber, Melvin M., 1968, «The Post-City Age» In LeGates and Stout, ed, 1996, The City Reader, [Daedalus], London/New York: Routledge p. 536539. Waldheim, Charles (ed.) 2006, The Landscape Urbanism Reader, New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Acknowledgments FCT, Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia; SFRH/BPD/26276/2005. CIAUD, Faculty of Architecture, Technical University of Lisbon

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Collective intelligence and cities more than an urban metaphor Roy Nash Politecnico di Milano DAStU - Department of Architecture and Urban Studies E-mail: r.nash@p-u-r-a.com

If cities are complex adaptive systems (J. Holland, 1995), their functioning and all interactions among their own internal structures could use as possible models plural examples, starting from our neuronal system till the immune one. This comparison has to deal with the complexity, which those systems have in common, but it is also based on their prompt responsiveness to stimulations coming from external context that systems must metabolize in order to evolve and mutate into “something else”.

Success of cities and languages (meaning survival and an optimized way of functioning and developing) is therefore crucially based on the capability of reacting to a constant changing environment whether this is shaped by social, economical, ecological and cultural agents. The next challenge should be then to “identify and build new common goals” safeguarding pluralism and heterogeneity as basic elements of a “collective intelligence”, our greatest resource.

Keywords: Collective intelligence, Urban adaptive systems, Responsiveness

1. Introduction “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody... only when they are created by everybody”. - Jane Jacobs In this paper cities will be associated to other complex adaptive system not only to clarify and explain their functioning, but in order to discover - looking to a series of natural and artificial systems - how to implement the quality and the synergy among people who resides in them, strengthening the interaction among city users to create a better social, economical and ecological environment thanks to our capability of connecting our “minds” and working together gradually but exponentially also through the use of new technologies.

2. Urban adaptive systems and CAS (Complex Adaptive Systems) In 1995 John Holland in his book “hidden order”, has highlighted many correspondences among certain systems, which he defined complex and how important is their tendency to change and mutate, through adaptability.

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He clarified that those systems work as a whole, an unique entity despite they are composed of an enormous amount of elements, capable at the same time to maintain a certain degree of coherence.

“The human immune system,” he declared, “is a community made up of large numbers of highly mobile units called antibodies that continually repel or destroy an ever-changing cast of invaders called antigens.

The invaders - primarily biochemical, bacteria, and viruses - come in endless varieties, different from one to one as snowflakes. Because of this variety and because new invaders are always appearing, the immune system cannot simply list all possible invaders. It must change or adapt its antibodies to new invaders as they appear, never settling to a fixed configuration. Despite its protean nature, the immune system maintains an impressive coherence. Indeed, your immune system is coherent enough to provide a satisfactory scientific definition of your identity. It is so good at distinguishing you from the rest of the world that it will reject cells from any other human” (Holland J., 1995).

The above definition, founds a profound connection with the way cities work, it is therefore evident that the comparison of those “invaders” to the continuous “stimulations” that cities have to stand, starting by accepting new fluxes of population and ending by dealing with economical crisis or luck of infrastructures or services, evokes many similarities.

And “the mystery deepens when we observe the kaleidoscopic nature of large cities. Buyers, sellers, administrations, streets, bridges, and buildings are always changing, so that a city’s coherence is somehow imposed on a perpetual flux of people and structures. Like the standing wave in front of a rock in a fastmoving stream, a city is a pattern in time. No single constituent remains in place, but the city persists.

What enables cities to retain their coherence despite continual disruptions and a lack of central planning?”

(Ivi, p.1) Certainly a lot has to do with the capability of the single elements (which are people, institutions, classes of professionals and so on) not to act following purely their own goals (which is also necessary for survival) but most of all interacting with their “neighbours” targeting common interests in the fastest and most performing way.

If we “consider the mammalian central nervous system (CNS),…it consists of a large number of component cells, called neurons, that occur in a wide range of forms.

Even a simple CNS consists of hundreds of millions of neurons, of hundreds of types, and each neuron directly contacts hundreds, even thousands, of other neurons to form a complex network. Though the activity of an individual neuron can be complex, it is clear that the behaviour of the CNS aggregate identity is much more complex than the sum of these individual activities. The behaviour of the central nervous system depends on the interactions much more than the actions. The sheer number of interactions – hundreds of millions of neurons, each undergoing thousands of simultaneous interactions in thousands of a second- takes us well beyond any of our experience with machines” (Ivi, p. 3).

It is because of this great communication and the faculty of responding to different stimulations, providing fast answers, that our brain has granted us survival.

Cities are not so far from our CNS and actually they recall an even greatest challenge: pull together an enormous amount of humans and a galaxy of different neuronal systems and let them work together in a very tight space. New spaces of interaction will be the test for all physical and non physical connections, and if in the past those connections where much weaker cause we used to live more separated from each other if not almost disconnected, today our ability to handle problems should be faster establishing a “very oiled connection system” mostly “instantaneous” because developed through the “network”.

3. Mutation and responsiveness to stimulations The comparison among different “living systems” such as cities, “organisms” and “urban ecosystems”, takes into account the complexity which those structures have in common and the fact that any successful system in order to evolve and mutate into “something else”, must be based on its prompt responsiveness to stimulations coming from external context and a very effective process of metabolism.

“The city - or at least many of its traditional manifestations– today tends to "explode," scattering over a

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distance, and this explosion appears to impact –with greater or lesser force and density– our surroundings, thus affirming this increasingly ambivalent, heterogeneous and dynamic state of progressively entropic growths. (…) They are not, strictly speaking, (stable) forms but (evolutionary) formations: open trajectories that –like the societies linked within them– fluctuate, change, shudder and alter, therefore manifesting an uncertain character: their movements synthesize, in effect, infinite interactive processes of dynamics and distortions, systems and contingencies, global logics and local situations, growing in complexity –and in diversity– just as they grow in and deal simultaneously with mobility, communication and exchanges between multiple levels of information”1.

But are the above only “metaphors, or is there quantitative and predictive substance in the implication that social organizations are extensions of biology, satisfying similar principles and constraints? Are the structures and dynamics that evolved with human socialization fundamentally different from those in biology? “ Many characteristics of the city behaviour and data collected with time demonstrate that is possible to “provide a framework for the construction of a quantitative theory of the average city, which would incorporate, for example, the roles of innovation and economies of scale and predictions for growth trajectories, levels of social and economic development, and ecological footprints” (Bettencourt L. M. A., West G. B. et al., 2007) and that presumably as fast a city is capable to front certain problems and answer to them, as fast is capable to satisfy and offer certain services, starting from the ability of solving different emergencies in the street like car crashes or fire explosions (that might create a collapse on the transportation system) , or differentiate activities for all the different ages of population, as much the city is successful.

This is not based only on the amount of resources we have but in the capacity to organize them in the best way, even what might seem a waste, often in reality, is simply not properly used or taken into consideration.

Examples are different and we could start from the fascinating way of approaching recycling matters, and reuse of materials, buildings or energy, till the majority of social issues such as the integration of elderly people, that should not be seen just as a problem but as a great resource to help, for example, young working couples in need of assistance for their children, or simply as a “factor of control for public spaces”.

Prompt responsiveness does not mean just solving problems on real time, but learn from them and act in long term like an organism (mammalian nervous system) able to store, elaborate information, and define new strategies to avoid again most dangerous situations or eventually being able to handle them in the best way.

From this perspective, complex adaptive systems have the capability to collect information and “learn from them”. Those systems, like cities, are eventually “self-organizing”, meaning being able to make the most of the complexity of the infinite information gathered from all different elements, which are partially responding to singular stimulations but at the same time transferring to the entire system (that we said works as a whole) the information granted in order to spread such information to all the other parts, so that “local information can lead to global wisdom”(Johnson S., 2001).

All the other “parts” make the same so that the continuous exchange and feedback among all the “components” creates a sort of consciousness in the organism and a simultaneous evolution of the system based on billions of data collected.

Such approach overcomes primordial instincts or basic singular senses, because is granted and realized by a common intelligent attitude to share all records, evaluating them through a series of statistics based on a constant flow of information granted by individuals (or in general agents) who act independently for their own good but also collectively in order to achieve certain results in short and long terms (Cfr. Kosslyn S. M., 2006).

So the best cities of today in terms of efficiency, quality of life, etc…are for example those which have differentiated in the last decades transports, and that, starting from streets, have built contemporarily an 1

Gausa M., Multi-cities, geo-urbanities, hyper-territories, in http://architettura.it/files/20030831/index.htm

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efficient systems of undergrounds and over grounds, of buses independent lanes and cycle paths. This has something to do with a reasonable way of developing more sustainable means of transport, but most of all (at least at the beginning with undergrounds) the need of differentiating a way to distribute lymph to the cities in a most efficient way before letting them collapse on their own traffic jam.

It is plain to the eye of everyone that cities without an efficient public transport system are destined to implode into themselves. This does not mean to delete cars, closing streets to stop the traffic, but simply demonstrates what “prompt responsiveness” to needs is meant to be.

This has a lot to do with economical factors regulated on the efficiency of movement in the city fabric, but also with many others like the health of inhabitants who needs to live in a less polluted environment, or the assistance to certain groups of population like elderly or teenagers that are the most incapable to move with their own car.

The majority of those cities “capable to face all different people needs, integrate different groups, prompt to change their infrastructures and built fabric, able to welcome new inhabitants” are turning into Metropolis or Mega-conurbation colonized by millions of “users”, and has been demonstrated that their “knowledge spillovers drive growth, that such spillovers in turn drive urban agglomeration, and that larger cities are associated with higher levels of productivity. Wages, income, growth, domestic product, bank deposits, as well as rates of invention, measured by new patents and employment in creative sectors all scale superlinearly with city size, over different years and nations with exponents that, although differing in detail, are statistically consistent. Costs, such as housing, similarly scale superlinearly, approximately mirroring increases in average wealth”(Bettencourt L. M. A., West G. B. et al., 2007).

4. Knowledge spillovers and collective intelligence Based on those premises and observations, it appears correct to consider cities as the most important places where the future of humanity will have to deal with coming changes and challenges, and it is even more understandable that the competence to face those transformations are strictly related to our aptitude to collaborate with each other and connect our intelligences in order to solve problems and increase the quality of our lifestyle.

But if it is true on one side that many qualitative elements improve with the agglomeration, on the other side “super linear” phenomena concern also an increase in “urban crime rates, rates of spread of infectious diseases such as AIDS, and even pedestrian walking speeds” (Ibidem).

Following recent studies (Ibidem) and the fact that those phenomena can be definitely modified and adjusted, we can set a series of “common goals” in order to create a better social, economical and ecological environment.

We should look up to the stated problems and use our collaborative approach to decrease bad habits and implement good attitudes, safeguarding our differences and giving each other all the possible means to fight and overcome them. After all we have been doing it in the past and teamwork has given us best chances of survival, starting when we joined our forces in hunting bigger preys and culminating in the differentiation and specialisation of disciplines that improves the speed of research fighting diseases or implementing communication through the globe to predict weather catastrophes and support our “neighbours”.

Today, thanks to information technologies, our potential is raised exponentially so we have very powerful tools that a new social and cultural revolution should warmly support.

Finally we can cultivate the flourishing age of a real global "collective intelligence”, "a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time, and resulting in the effective mobilization of skills… No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity… New communications systems should provide members of a community with the means to coordinate their interactions within the same virtual universe of knowledge. This is not simply a matter of modelling the conventional physical environment, but of enabling members of delocalized communities to interact within a mobile landscape of signification… Before we can mobilize skills, we have to identify them. And to do so, we have to recognize them in all their diversity… The ideal of collective intelligence implies the technical, economic, legal, and human enhancement of a universally distributed intelligence that

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will unleash a positive dynamic of recognition and skills mobilisation" (Lévy P., 1994).

A serious and complex approach to cities and human problems capable to elaborate the infinite amount of data we have, organising and filtering them, is needed in order to promote a constant and updated knowledge able to provide tangible results: politically, economically and socially.

But implementation is not based as explained previously just on the promptness of solving problem but, especially on long terms, on the ability to ameliorate gradually our way of acting and living.

The most contemporary researches from IBM explain: “today’s cities can collect and analyze data to monitor, measure and manage the complex systems that facilitate life in urban environments.

They can understand how transportation, water and energy systems interact, and optimize their operations, individually or collectively. They can predict the impact of changes to the public safety system on adjacent systems, such as education, healthcare and social services. In doing so, they can make confident, informed decisions that will reduce costs and improve living conditions citywide.

In particular, we are seeing the most advanced cities focus on three areas of expertise: • Leveraging information to make better decisions, which means that using advanced analytics solutions, both structured and unstructured data can reveal insights that make it easier to understand and to act at every level of city administration, from the mayor’s office to the subway train conductor; • Anticipating and resolving problems proactively, with the chance to spend funding effectively on time where is most needed; • Coordinating resources to operate more efficiently (for example, a simple lack of coordination may result in the city and private enterprises digging up the same road twice within the same week. At times, this lack of coordination can be even more expensive and inconvenient, such as when flooding waste water systems cause electrical outages that shut down traffic lights and require public safety intervention)”(IBM, 2012).

5. Conclusions All above issues are just a small amount compared to the relevant number of topics that we may consider and start to work on.

Certainly all the instruments that are at our disposal should not remain simple utensils to be passively used, but become smart devices to inform all the vital processes of the city and life in general.

At the same time governments should profit from the information that city users can spontaneously put at their disposal. When for instance we travel with our smart phones in our pockets and these are activated to send signals to “transport government headquarters” showing the level of traffic in the streets, it could be useful on one hand to users in order to find alternative path to their destination and on the other to dedicated public structures -in order to manage flows of traffic during different hours of the day- to prevent problems or simply reduce the traffic. There are loads of others examples in which the communication of information can institute virtuous processes that can help administrations and inhabitants.

The strong interconnections among all cities, humans, technologies, has never been so tight and capable of stimulating all the other disciplines at the same time. Technology is not merely a mean to communicate but actually is a real extension of our neuronal system.

This way of looking at it holds much further implications considering our instruments a way to overcome our physical and mental limits, but also the “place where our brain spreads out” and creates new possibilities pushing the boundaries of new objectives.

Internet is a new tool and a powerful door as well, able to give us access to all the other human knowledge.

So virtually, our brain, memory, way of learning and support others, extends till the furthest periphery of the network.

As S. Kosslyn mentioned on “the role of social prosthetic systems” “we rely on other people as extensions of ourselves. Specifically, we rely on other people to extend our cognitive and emotional capacities. Others help us formulate alternatives, evaluate options, and make decisions; others also help us interpret and control our emotions. Evolution has allowed our brains to be configured during development so that we are “plug compatible” with other humans, so that others can help us extend ourselves”(Kosslyn S. M.,

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2006).

Such synchronized and complex approach, inclined to show what collective intelligence means, combined with the speed of dialog through Internet, is one of the most powerful instruments we ever had.

This way of exploiting our new tools and the new web language can lead humanity, if well structured and developed, to an higher degree of consciousness and knowledge; and this will constantly happen all the time stereotypes or faulty forms of functioning of existing systems will be criticised and revised with the perpetual support of individual and plural intelligence. This likely will not turn into past conformism, but contrary to this will give humanity many different perspectives creating an open process of innovation and research evolving increasingly.

One of the implications of this idea is that “diversity is not a luxury, but rather is essential in many walks of life. Think about why a carpenter has many different devices in his toolbox. It's impossible to know in advance what challenges the environment will produce, and what abilities will need to be marshalled - and if you need abilities you don't possess, you'll need to draw on others as prosthetic devices. Variety is more than the spice of life - it’s the essence of life”(Ivi, p. 549).

References Bettencourt L. M. A., West G. B. et al. (2007), Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities, PNAS published online Cfr. Kosslyn S. M. (2006), On the Evolution of Human Motivation: The Role of Social Prosthetic Systems in Evolutionary cognitive neuroscience, S. M. Platek, T. K. Shackelford & J. P. Keenan, MA: MIT Press, Cambridge, p. 541-551 Holland J. (1995), Hidden Order. How Adaptation Builds Complexity, Helix Books, Addison-Wesley Reading, Massachusetts, p. 2 IBM (2012), Smarter, More Competitive Cities. Forward-thinking cities are investing in insight today, published online in http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/ Johnson S. (2001), Emergence: The Connected Lives Of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, Scribner, New York, p.79 Kosslyn S. M. (2006), On the Evolution of Human Motivation: The Role of Social Prosthetic Systems in Evolutionary cognitive neuroscience, S. M. Platek, T. K. Shackelford & J. P. Keenan, MA: MIT Press, Cambridge, cit., p. 546 Lévy P. (1994), L’Intelligence collective. Pour une anthropologie du cyberespace, La Découverte, Paris

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Understanding urban complexity in the light of asymmetrical warfare Topological systems and complex relationships for analyzing the space of urban conflict Inés Aquilué Junyent

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Department of Urban and Territorial Planning E-mail: ines.aquilue@upc.edu

Javier Ruiz Sánchez Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Department of Urban and Territorial Planning E-mail: javier.ruiz@upm.es

Beyond any metaphor, urban complexity is the strongest defensive weapon of a city that faces unpredictable challenges. This can be extremely well exampled through the analysis of the effective role of complexity in recent urban warfare. By representing complexity as a topological system of complex spatial relationships, this paper introduces a tool for analyzing this role in some recent conflicts, where complexity has proved to be a key agent, forcing modern and developed armies to change or adapt their tactics and strategies after being defeated by far less equipped forces, allied with the complex urban setting. This confirms the hypothesis of the importance of urban complexity in situations of incertitude and its ability to anticipate a wide range of futures. Urban planning history has always been closely linked to military strategy history. Although it is not well known, this link is still ever-present.

Therefore, while we may think that war is no more than an extreme aspect of (uneven) social and economic conflicts, it can be used as a powerful instrument to understand urban behavior.

Keywords: urban complexity, asymmetrical warfare, topological systems, graph theory, urban self-organization

1. Introduction This paper summarizes the methodology used in a more extensive study, which seeks to reinforce the link between representation of urban complexity and conflict in cities. Here, we propose to introduce a new language for the city, through modelling and representation of its complexity. This new language conceptualizes urbanity and other related areas, aiming to stress the importance of spatial connectivity. As a result, we will see how this connectivity reveals itself as a defining value in the complex functioning of a city.

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Such representation of urban complexity allows us to sequence several urban battles. This way of reading the urban environment could also be useful for understanding urban behaviour in different phases.

According to this regard, this new urban language can be transferred and applied, not only in description, but also in planning of any type of relationships that are already established or might occur in the city.

In this study we have analyzed urban warfare in three urban sceneries over the last twenty years. The first battle was in Mogadishu, during the intervention of the U.S. Special Forces (Task Force Ranger) against the urban militia of General Mohamed Farrah Aidid, on 3th October 1993. The second and third battle took place in the West Bank, during the Second Intifada, in April 2002, in the Palestinian cities of Nablus and Jenin, during the intervention of the Israeli Defense Forces against Palestinian militia (Amnesty International, 2002). We will not expose how each battle developed, since our focus is on the relevance of urban complexity during a conflict, and by extension, on the 'normal' functioning of the city, through topological representation of urban space.

2. Complexity and urban conflict Foucault, quoting Moheau, claims that interventions on the environment lead to an alteration of the human species itself. Bases of population are altered with the implementation of a project aimed at the environment, including projects regarding both creation and destruction. In Jenin, the devastation led not only to the lossing of urban structure, but also to the breakdown of underlying societal structures rooted in the refugee camp. And that is how, according to Foucault, security and control mechanisms interfere on the perpetual intrication of a geographical, climatic, and physical milieu with the human species (Foucault, Michel, 197778).

From an (eco)systemic perspective, precisely complexity is the mechanism by which any evolving system protects itself against uncertainty and chance. It is imperative to point out that we refer to open systems that exchange flows of matter, energy and information with the environment. Accumulation processes, carried out through history, have produced a complex order in the cities. This complexity should be interpreted in informational terms, according to the classical model of Shannon and Weaver. An urban system is nothing more than a communicative system that consists of relationships. The multiplicity of relationships – opportunities to establish communications – increases as time progressively makes internal processes of spatial differentiation more complicates. This progressive differentiation involves the gradual conformation of a fuzzy structure as a basis of possible and effective relationships among multiple and diverse agents.

In other words, the adaptability of the system, this is to say, its ability to reach different states according to demands taken place in the system environment (broadly defined; including individual decisions of agents in this notion of the environment, whose interactions constitute the urban system itself) necessarily implies some kind of diffusion of the structure of power. A complex system is undoubtedly difficult to govern while it is equally difficult to comprehend it. Understanding and deciphering complexity of the system with self-organizing capacity is not a question of estimation capacity, but requires a sea change in viewpoint: it involves dealing with chance and probability and banishing any hint of certainty and assurance.

We are facing a fascinating paradox: the city refines its adaptive capacity through the same mechanism which hinders its government and planning - complexity. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that hegemonic power structures, afraid of uncertainty, have constantly tried to reduce complexity. Urban planning history is a story of complexity reduction mechanisms and it is always linked to imposition of superstructures of power upon the "unbearable" fragmentation or dispersal of implicit decision-making capacity in a mature city. The multiplicity of links and the complexity of the network they create, involve a wide range of possibilities and individual decisions. Ultimately, there is a certain idea of citizenship as an active and responsible insertion in a complex network of decision-making mechanisms. The imposition of hegemonic superstructures has appeared to be peaceful (Baron Haussmann´s Paris is the epitome of this

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model) but what we are really facing is a forceful infliction, whose legitimacy depends on the very legitimacy of the government. Similarly, under the pretext of functionalist efficiency or mass housing provision, behaviorist discourse has legitimized building of new peripheries or radical renewal of urban centers by demolishing complex, "resistant" (and unruly) consolidated urban structures. A military conflict is an extreme type of conflict. It is unsurprising that many armies have been traditionally avoiding urban settings. In a conventional war, symmetrically designed armies face each other in an open battlefield.

When it comes to incorporating a city in a conflict, the siege or, if war techniques allow it, the urbicide, are more likely to occur.

In modern asymmetric conflicts at least one of the sides is organized in an equally diffuse hidden structure. The same informational mechanism that links citizens with urban complexity also links the apparently less organized side with the complexity of urban warfare setting. The same adaptive capacity of urban structure, faced with a situation of uncertainty, becomes a weapon of defense even against the most powerful enemy, especially if he ignores the complexity of the setting and acts as if he was faced with something banal. It is no coincidence that the defeat of U.S. troops in Mogadishu has much contributed to a strange (and again paradoxical) enrichment in urban studies.

We find it important to part from the analysis of these extreme conflicts, hoping to develop an urban analysis methodology that would allow us, in turn, to illustrate, both topologically and spatially, evolutionary processes triggered by conflict of any kind.

3. Topological representation of urban complexity during conflict Reading the city through the prism of systems theory, developed by a German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, helps us understand that it actually is a complex open system that exchanges entropy with its environment (Luhmann, Niklas, 1984). When system functions normally, entropy flows are negative. In other words, the system gives out disorder to the environment, building increasingly complex structures.

In order to analyze three urban battles from the perspective of complexity, we will use two agents: system and environment. The first one will be identified with the system of each city, including its physical, energy and communicative [informational] elements. The environment is everything that remains outside the system. The system boundary is not stable and it depends on the system alterations caused by environment. We shall consider that boundaries are found in those points of the system where the influence of the environment is negligible.

We understand the city not only as an urban system, but also as individuality, since the city tends to maintain its identity beyond physical and energetic transformations that happen therein. This concept, called persistence phenomenon (Ruiz Sรกnchez, Javier, 2001), is key to understanding processes the city is undergoing during conflict. Therefore, in order to preserve its individuality, the city must maintain its identity beyond any action that occurs between its system and the environment (Wagensberg, Jorge, 2010).

3.1 Topological comprehension of urban warfare The more links there are between the elements of the system, either through an increase in the number of elements or their relationships, the more complex urban space becomes. In urban systems that we have studied, we tried to show that the complexity of urban space is partly determined by the complexity of its network.

In this research, the representation of these battles is focused on the link between private and public space. The connectivity within each space and also between them, determines the course of the battle, its strategies, and consequently, control over the adversary and urban space.

It is important to understand that urban system is not only composed of physical, but also of social and sensory elements and urban militias themselves. In that sense both Palestinian and Somali militia operate

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within the same system, known militarily as ‘swarm’ (set of semi-autonomous or autonomous units that conduct convergent attacks against targets in a determined place) (Edwards, Sean J. A., 2000). Taking into account the topological relationship that keeps individuals in a “swarm”, as well as the concept of complex urban system, we propose to analyze the spatial system of the city from a topological and relational point of view.

Building a topological representation of an urban warfare involves understanding the city through the connectivity and compactness. The importance of this relational field in a complex construction of the city is manifested in an extreme way when the uncertainty of a system and its elements is increased by environmental factors. In our case studies, this vast increase of uncertainty is caused by an external military incursion, whether by the U.S. Special Forces or by the Israel Defense Forces.

In order to represent these urban conflicts as relational fields, we will apply the graph theory – a theory of topological character – to the battle development, representing a city fragment as a graph.

As graph theory has many applications and a great development in the research of connected components, graphs, as a tool to assess the degree of connectivity of a system, are used quite excessively. We find this theory appealing, since it is easy to relate the connectivity of a graph with the connectivity of urban space by using topological abstraction. Given that we intend to assess the complexity of the system as a key for guerrilla action, we believe that understanding the connectivity is the appropriate approach to tackle the relational field of urban complexity, although we are aware that we can not encompass all aspects of urban complexity.

3.2 Construction of the urban system graph A graph G is a pair of ordered sets [V, A], in which the elements of A are 2-element subsets of V. Elements of V are called vertices and those of A as edges. As we will see, graphs are diagrams with nodes and lines, where nodes are vertices and lines are edges connecting the corresponding vertices. If a and b are two vertices of G, and [a, b] is an edge, this is represented as a-b. One of the inherent characteristics of the vertices in a graph is the adjacency; two vertices, a and b, belonging to graph G are adjacent if a-b is an edge of the graph G. Similarly, two edges are adjacent if they have a common vertex. The degree of a vertex is the number of edges is the incident to it (Harary, Frank, 1969).

The creation of each graph follows the exhaustive research of three battles we analyze, Mogadishu, Nablus and Jenin. Narratives we drew from each battle, allowed us to understand that the link between public and private space relational fields was crucial for development of each conflict. Using these parameters, we have elaborated three graphs for each one of the cities.

The first graph represents a part of Wardhiigley neighborhood in Mogadishu, where the battle of October 1993 took place. The graph G is created from a set of vertices V, marked as vi, that correspond to public space between two city blocks in each street section [see Figure 1]. A total of nine blocks are represented in the graph G. Each vertex of set V characterizes the space belonging to public road between each pair of blocks [v1, v2, ..., v24]. Each vertex is adjacent to six others, i.e. the degree of each vertex is six. We have established this degree of connectivity isotropically, since each street section connects with two consecutive street sections within public space and to four perpendicular sections in both directions. We have designed the graph G´ [see Figure 1], isomorphic to the graph G, to avoid a predetermined grid. It will serve us as a public space connectivity representation.

The second graph explains the microscopic scale of the battle. Using the graph G' as a starting point, we have extracted the subgraph G'', which consists of the set of vertices V’’ = (v2’’, v5’’, v6’’, v9’’, v12’’, v13’’, v16’’).

This set represents public street sections, limited by two blocks [see Figure 2].

The subgraph G'', extracted from the graph G', shows connectivity of only few street sections.

Nonetheless, this subgraph is used to describe the connectivity of public spaces with private spaces inside each city block. Therefore, we have introduced a new graph H, which consists of a set of vertices U. This graph represents spaces and internal connections of each building bounded by the set of vertices V''. For example, the graph H, which connects with the vertex v9 of subgraph G'', represents a building with an

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access to the street section v9, containing several private spaces connected within the sequence u1, u2, u5, u10 and u11. This sequence shows circulation area of a building [corridors, stairs, etc.], and other spaces, represented by vertices of degree one, whose role in the connectivity of interior is less important [see Figure 2].

Figure 1. Isomorphic graphs G and G‘: connectivity between streets of nine city blocks in Wardhiigley neighbourhood. [Source: the authors].

Figure 2. Graph H and subgraph G’’: connectivity between private and public space, two blocks. Conceptual model of two city blocks in Wardhiigley neighborhood. [Source: the authors].

Finally, we introduce a type of edge that will convert the subgraph G'' in a multigraph1. All edges in the previous graphs were showing physical connectivity, i.e. the possibility of moving through public and private spaces. The type of edge introduced in this last graph refers to the visual relationship between interior spaces and vertices V''.

The subgraph G'' represents the underlying scenes of Mogadishu battle, in which both hiding capability, enhanced by good comprehension of public and private space, and situational aptitude of militia, were decisive for the course of the battle. This subgraph represents the space of insurgency.

1

A graph that may have more than one edge between two vertices is called a mulitgraph.

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Figure 3. Subgraph G’’: connectivity between streets of nine city blocks of Wardhiigley neighborhood, connectivity between private and public space and visual connectivity. [Source: the authors].

Both spatial relationships and visual connections allow us to understand manoeuvres and spatial occupation during the battle of October 3, 1993, in the Somali capital. In case of Jenin and Nablus, we will reproduce this scheme through a couple of graphs that visualize two battles in which the militia have succumbed to counterinsurgency.

3.3 Topological representation of urban conflict.

After designing graphs of urban systems for three cities, we will represent the sequence of each battle. The subgraph G’’ allows us to understand how different adversaries occupied the space using its connectivity.

Figure 4 represents the advance of the U.S. Special Forces, which followed the isotropic grid of public space, while the Somali militia moved through all kinds of space, both public and private. The militia occupies the space in subgraph G'' as a swarm, using the adjacencies between spaces, represented by black vertices in the graph [see Figure 4].

Figure 4. Subgraph G'' showing the battle. The U.S. Army Raid and self-organization and redistribution of the Somali militia, phases 1, 2 and 3. [Source: the authors].

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These graphs, as well as the ones representing the battles of Nablus and Jenin, are used to highlight the importance that occupation through spatial connectivity has on the course of the battle. In that sense, it is understood that the richer the spatial relationships, the easier the self-organization of an urban system.

The urban system, a mix of physical-energetic system and social or communication system can interconnect through the vicinity of its vertices, spatial grid and sensory grid. This organization is presented as a complex network, containing real and other possible relationships that are materialized under the threat of uncertainty.

It is important to understand that militia subsystem is a part of urban system. That is why the link established between connectivity of urban system and militia, allows militia to occupy space by selforganization. On the contrary, Special Forces failed to control some areas of public space. And here is where the debate on the importance of the profusion of relationships between public and private space begins.

By the use of graphs, the language of urban system allows us to understand the evolution of relational fields intertwined with that system. Graphs reveal the functioning of the social system, so they are a tool that models the urban system, a system that is characterized by overlapping physical, energy, and information structures.

4. Case studies We mentioned earlier that the investigation was through examination of three urban battles. In this paper, we wanted to briefly expose a small part of the methodology. However, we also wanted to expose some of the peculiarities of complexity of those battles that we have stumbled upon throughout this research.

While in the first case study, the Battle of Mogadishu, the Somali militia, deeply rooted in the urban system, achieved to defeat foreign military incursion. In other two cases, the situation is reversed. In the case of Nablus, the Israeli Defense Forces managed to intervene in connectivity and the relational field of the urban system. To accomplish this, they had to override the existing system by the implementation of a new network. They opted for the use of a spatial connectivity strategy: avoiding public space and intervening in the city through private space. Therefore, they used tactics of ‘walking through walls’ of private homes and creating tunnels through Nablus (Weizman, Eyal, 2007). The implementation of a new system over the primary system caused its hypertrophy. The intruder took control over urban space and militia subsystem. In this study, this spatial control sequence is represented by a set of graphs, proving that one network can control another.

In the case of Jenin, the Israeli Defense Forces acted similarly. However, they discovered that the urban system of the city was closely linked to the military subsystem, so the resistance was very hard. Therefore, they proceeded with the destruction of the system, demolishing buildings and streets, which is known as the ‘Jenin Urbicide’ (Graham, Stephen, 2010). The Israeli army destroyed the structure of the urban system since its strategy of “walking through walls” was not complex enough to defeat the militia. Faced with the complexity of Jenin, the intruder has chosen the destruction and eradication of its relational field.

Reading the city as a system, as a complex relational field, allows us to discover and model the most relevant structures during a conflict. Furthermore, we understand that these structures and relational fields, currently not very common, can unveil new aptitudes of a complex city.

This new urban language – the topological representation of urban conflict – aims to highlight the importance of the complexity as a defining factor in the self-organization of the urban system and its physical and sensory elements. We understand that claiming the proliferation of connectivity and urban subsystems provides the city, forced into a state of uncertainty, an effective self-organization capacity.

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References Amnesty International, (2002), ‘Shielded from Security: IDF Violations in Jenin and Nablus’, Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Executive Summary, 4th november 2002, <http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE15 /143/2002>.

Edwards, Sean J. A., (2000), Swarming on the Battlefield: Past Present and Future, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica.

Foucault, Michel, (1977-78), Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France. 1977–1978, Seuil/Gallimard, Paris [published in 2004, post mórtem].

Graham, Stephen, (2010), Cities under Siege, Verso,London–New York.

Harary, Frank, (1969), Graph Theory, ReadingAddison-Wesley,Massachusetts.

Luhmann, Niklas, (1984), Soziale Systeme. Grundisse einer Allgemeinen Theorie,Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.

Ruiz Sánchez, Javier, (2001), Sistemas urbanos complejos. Acción y comunicación, Ci[ur]num.32, Instituto Juan de Herrera, Madrid.

Wagensberg, Jorge, (2010), Las raíces triviales de lo fundamental, Tusquets Editores, Barcelona.

Weizman, Eyal, (2007), ‘Across the Walls: Military Operations as Urban Planning’,Hollow Land, Verso, London–New York.

5. Acknowledgments In conclusion, we have developed a tool for dynamic visualization of conflicts, based on design of spacetopological graphs. This fact results in a new paradox: the graphs are not intended to represent the complexity as a static structural construct, but through its dynamic behavior because, ultimately, any action leading to self-organization of a system, is responsible for its evolution. The city is a system of both rivalry and mutual support. But the conflict of interests is at the base of the evolutionary nature of the urban system. Our hypothesis goes even further. Urban complexity remains a threatened value. Our contribution to its understanding claims this value: while offering tools for representing evolutionary processes, we advocate that uncertainty and chance should not be seen as the enemy to suppress but as a value to promote.

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Three images of the contemporary city Marialessandra Secchi Politecnico di Milano DAStU - Department of Architecture and Urban Studies E-mail: marialessandra.secchi@polimi.it

Three comprehensive and synthetic images of the contemporary city: the polycentric metropolis, the archipelago city and the generic city, seem to be pervasive in a vast panorama of narratives and discourses.

The aim of this paper is to investigate these three prevailing images considering them as real “influential metaphysics”, underlying the way urban territory is perceived, conceptualized and designed and to discuss their pertinence in empowering the project on the contemporary city.

The paper perspective is that these three pervasive images have worn out much of their heuristic value.

They are actually empowering the design process but, at the meantime, hindering a different understanding of the contemporary urban territory, its specificity and the demand for change. They are discussed as three hypothesis concerning the project on contemporary city referring stressing different features of urban territories and fostering diverse project themes.

Keywords: polycentric city, archipelago city, generic city

1. Introduction Three comprehensive and synthetic images of the contemporary city: the poly-centric metropolis, the urban archipelago and the generic city, seem to be pervasive in a vast panorama of narratives and discourses ranging from the geographer account to the spatial-development policy document, from the architectural criticism to the design summary. The aim of this paper is to investigate these three prevailing images considering them as real “influential metaphysics”, underlying the way urban territory is perceived, conceptualized and designed and to discuss their pertinence in empowering the project on the contemporary city.

The transformations of European urban territory have been the object of a variety of descriptions and mapping operations in the last decades. This description effort has resulted in the production of a large number of images, trying to represent and interpret the character of contemporary urban territory.

The role of images in condense and conceptualize the space of the city has been recently analysed, within design disciplines, mainly from the point of view of their “external efficiency” (Söderström O., 2000).

The focus of attention has been their performance in the reception of the project: how a project involving complex processes can be condensed in powerful images, which can communicate the space of

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the city, as it is interpreted or as it is transformed by the project, in a way to facilitate the process of negotiation, enabling people to participate in the transformation process (Gabellini P. 2006).

However, powerful images and description of the contemporary city can be considered also for their “internal efficiency”: how they inform the perspective and instrumentality of the design process, how they conceptualize land as territory and define problems to be addressed and finally how they state project priorities and themes (Söderström O., op. cit.).

The paper perspective is that the three more pervasive images: the poly-centric metropolis, the archipelago city and the generic city have maybe worn out much of their heuristic value.

A specific characteristic of all the three images is that they are comprehensive and synthetic: they refer to the entire urban territory. Nonetheless, they can be better considered as complementary images rather than alternatives, as they are usually found in diverse contexts describing relations between “parts” of the urbanized territory at different scales. Parts are here meant in an extended meaning as parts of the European urbanized space, thus referring both to settlements in large urban areas as well as small citycentres captured in a rather large urban dynamic.

A second, rather salient, common feature, is that all of them are descriptive and normative images, which is why they are considered with preference in this paper: it is precisely the unapparent shift between description and the project (and normative) use of the image what is at stake.

2. The poly-centric metropolis Maybe the oldest of the synthetic images of contemporary European city, it is still the most influential as it is actively proposed as a substantial normative tool in the European Spatial Developement Perspective (European Commission. Committee on Spatial Development, 1999).

When confronted with large scale transformations of European urban territory, the preponderance of the “poly-centric city” image seems to affect without frictions the European spatial development policies, as well as the definition of priorities in design themes and the affirmation of hierarchies within the concerned territories. As a result, projects and policies strictly depending on the poly-centric image are superimposed to a frequently reluctant territory, avoiding an investigation of its pertinence facing the variety of European territorial situation but also of European planning traditions. The ambiguity of its meaning is partly responsible of the wide extension of its reception (Waterhout B., 2002). In different contest, it has been interpreted to foster different policies loosely linked to the goal of a “sustainable, balanced competitiveness” and regional network cooperation. Here, I am mainly interested in the poly-centric city as an idea of urban territory in its physical and morphological matter.

The poly-centric city-region can be described as a new form of megalopolis which can be observed mostly in Eastern Asia. It consists of a series of 10 to 50 cities functionally networked and clustered to one or more core centres, even if physically distant (Hall P, Pain K., 2006). The net gains strength and economic performance due to an internal functional subdivision of labour. This new form of megalopolis derives from a large process decentralizing activities and populations from major centres to small surrounding cities. The hypothesis, which P. Hall and K. Pain propose, is that European metropolitan regions are behaving in the same way and that they are growing more and more poly-centric. Indexes of this phenomenon are the ever increasing part of population and workplaces which are moving out of majors central cities, as well as the reality of small cities becoming increasingly networked, with a large flows of information exchange bypassing large central cities (Hall P, Pain K., op. cit.).

This reading of the territorial dynamic is strictly related to the interpretation of society and its relation with the territory as a “network society”, an interpretation focused on the relevance of “the space of flows” and information exchange as an index of territorial reorganization of society (Castells M., 1989). However, the relation between the hypothesis of the poly-centric structure of decision making, economic flows and information exchanges on one side, and the actual morphological consistency of territory is not really questioned.

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The data models used for the purpose of mapping the poly-centric structure, for example, consider with preference direct connections: flights and direct trains between city centres, avoiding to consider indirect links between cities or urbanized areas. This choice is strictly dependent on the hypothesis of urban territory working as a net of “point cities” (Koolhaas R., 1995): a land where well defined centres are linked by pipe like connections between them.

At the meantime, the image provided and the analytical tools deployed hinder the possibility to grasp a more articulated structure of smallest connection internal to large urbanized areas, and to map urban areas which can not fit any more in the model of the “point city", as is the case of north Milan region and the Po river plain. Milano is immersed in an urbanized land of numerous million inhabitants which was virtually not existing in one of the first maps produced during the process of construction of the ESPD, representing Europe as a net of city centres1.

As a result, the key question is whether functional and morphological polycentricity come together (Hesse M., 2007).

The polycentric-city is much more than a functional scheme to investigate processes reorganizing European market economy. It is, at least since a decade, a driving principle and normative image designing European space, focusing on the attractiveness of centres and their connectivity, moreover it is a synthetic and comprehensive idea of what the city is and how urban territory should be organized in space.

The stated goal of ESDP is a balance between the centre and periphery of the European space, the means are an extension of infrastructural network, the effects are a potential and paradoxical draining of resources from “periphery” to “centre”.

A strong dichotomy is introduced in European space between land and territories which are connected to the infrastructural network - configured as a system of “channels” linking centres - and territory which are bypassed. At a local scale, this dichotomy is producing new and more complex “centre/periphery” relations, raising issues about spatial (and social) inequalities.

Moreover, the poly-centric image is affecting the way territory is designed at an urban scale, where the poly-centric image is applied through the policy of “sustainable concentrated de-concentration”. This policy has gained consensus without any precise elaboration of its pertinence in relation with the scale and specificity of the diverse European urban territories and appears to be derived from a scaling down of the poly-centric model considered as an abstract principle not affected by scale.

The smoothness which characterize the reception of the poly-centric image at the planning level is probably due to its coherence with driving principles to be found in planning traditions confronting with large scale and territorial projects.

Two main references are evident in the poly-centric model. The first is the “central place” theory, which was the result of Christaller investigation of an agricultural context in southern Germany, during the '30, and was soon shifting from an interpretative model to a normative one, becoming a well rooted large scale design principle.

Secondly we can consider the policy of “concentrated de-concentration” as strictly linked to the tradition of the garden city and its evolution in the idea of the “new towns” which has been a long lasting guiding principle in the British but also in the German planning tradition. A tradition which has been revitalized in the last two decades under the label of the “sustainable city” or more sustainable neighbourhoods, through a range of realized projects of new urbanization usually outside the existing city centre, with an accent on densification along the transit system.

Of course at a larger scale, the idea of a poly-centric Europe is also grounded on a historical reference to European small size competing cities of medieval origin. The European city, in its confined figure and 1

the making of the ESPD and the difficulties in finding consensus on 'mapping' the European urban territory are discussed in: Faludi A. Waterhout B., (2002) The making of the European spatial development perspective: no masterplan, London, Routledge.

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with its surrounding land, as it is portrayed in the Georg Braun atlas of 1572, is still a remarkably strong prototypical idea of what a city is or should be, and despite the pre-eminence of large urban areas, Europe is still rich of small to medium size cities which can recognise themselves in this prototypical model.

However this is only a part of the truth, and even small city centres would be better investigated in relation to a much more complex set of relationships between urban territories characterized by very diverse density, and settlements criteria (and a large part of European agricultural land is here included), which cannot be considered under the exclusive umbrellas of “point city ” or “generic” metropolitan areas Koolhaas R., 1995).

3. The generic city One of the most persistent idea about the contemporary city, is that the process of globalization of the market arena, and the increasing fast urbanization of large “new” territories are giving place, nearly everywhere through the same modalities of space production, to an anonymous, homogeneous and isotropic urban mass.

This is an image shared by many studies about the form of the metropolis and well spread in the architecture culture but also in the sociological and economic literature. The main narrative description of its content is maybe the “generic city” (Koolhaas R., 1995).

The basic principle defining the generic city, which is also the lens through which the actual contemporary city is described and interpreted, is the idea that the most recent parts of the city could be positively reevaluated if they can be liberated of the necessity of an identity. The quest for identity is seen in the context of Koolhaas text as something negative. Identity is the rhetorical instrument through which large parts of the contemporary city have been secluded and deprived of the consideration of architecture as they “lack of identity”. The city centres, have capitalized all of the value of identity, and the whole rest of the contemporary city is thus deprived. Identity is -in the context of the generic city- the expression in the space of the city of the past we share; it is a sort of built capital, an asset that can be exploited until it is exhausted.

In this rhetorical and almost caricature description, architecture and urbanism are only able to preserve and reinforce the stated identity, until the complete falsification. But the process of city construction that happens largely outside the concern of architecture gives place to the “real” city which is generic, and avoid any specificity: here is where most of the population actually lives, a city which is large enough for everyone.

This plea for the “generic”, as a basic feature of the contemporary city, which means homogeneity and recalls egalitarianism, could be seen as an effort to shift the attention of architecture on the value of the “actual city” the “reality” of the contemporary city and its values as they are the voluntary product of society, thus making clear the ever increasing distance between architecture and the city.

From this point of view, the image of the generic city had an impact in proposing and moreover in divulging project themes concerning contemporary urban territories.

The generic city as an image of social critic internal to architecture is fascinating: the marginal role of architecture in defining the space of the everyday life is thus depending on the poverty of its internal cultural and social project. The generic city promises to liberate the city from the tyranny of identity, stating the generic, the lack of an identity as a positive principle: this is why the generic city, we are told, is the first form of the city that is multicultural and multiracial. Nonetheless, the hypothesis of a higher degree of egalitarianism in the generic city, comparing with modern city, is not verified.

When reconsidering the American eastern coast megalopolis, first described in 1961 by Jean Gottman, five decades after his studies, geographers found that patterns of social and economic differentiation were grown more and more complex. The ethnic composition too was becoming more complex. But in the same time span, and despite the passing of fundamental civil right legislation, the indexes which statistically refer to social and ethnic segregation did non change much (Vicino T.J., Hanlon B., Short J.R., 2007).

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In the production of the generic city - as we know it – the issue of spatial justice does not seem to be addressed, conflict for identity recognition and exclusion are no less significant even if we avoid any discourse regarding the past. The bottom up development of the generic city - which is maybe the only implicit normative aspect in a prevailing descriptive image- is no guaranty of the higher democratic level of its physical space; and the identification of public space with the residual can hardly be considered as liberation. The “over demanding” public space of the modern city, has left its place in the “generic city” to the “residual”, which in a Colin Rowe terminology is the natural outcome of the Modern Movement's “green space” full of “good intentions” and lacking attention to the needs of associated life (Koolhaas R., 1995). But the characterization of open space as the “residual” is probably hindering a more complex reading of processes of space production within large urbanized areas. Residuality could be better considered not just as an intrinsic characteristic, or value, but as an index of an undergoing process of space restructuring which acts on different space and time scales (De Carli B., 2011). A range of processes which are in the making and whose formal instability should be regarded, in a long period perspective, as a potential opening for the project on the city.

However, considering the contemporary city as an homogeneous urban mass, has fequently resulted, whithin architecture and urban planning literature, in describing it as pure extension. The city is thus reduced to its bi-dimensional figure perceivable from the satellite as a stain on the ground, where the only differentiating principle is the floor area ratio, which also become a crucial control tool as recent researches about “density” seem to suggest. This neutral extension becomes the perfect background for individual aims and desire and, even more, for the individual architectural object, able to recover the identity content which was first expunged: the corporate identity of the generic architecture.

4. The urban archipelago The image of the contemporary city as an archipelago of urban islands has gained a certain success in recent years as an interpretative image of the urban condition as well as a normative one. The archipelago has been seen as a metaphor able to condensate what the city intimately is: the place where we live separated (Soja, E. W., 2000); and the direction which the city could take: defined parts avoiding the destiny of an indistinct mass of urban material2.

The 1977 project of Berlin as a green archipelago by the group led by Oswald Mathias Ungers in the summer academy of Cornell University, which is probably the more influential project built upon the archipelago image, is organized as a manifesto through eleven thesis delving into the idea of the “cities within the city” (Ungers O.M, et al, 1978).

In the first thesis, we find a recall of the demographic reduction of Berlin population and the acknowledgement of the impossibility of a complete “repairing” of the previous state of dense urban fabric. A phenomenon of reduction of the population living in the central urban areas and dismissal of vast portions of the urban fabric was at that moment the social and political reality of Berlin. This was a phenomenon of abandonment of the city centre towards the rather peripheral areas which was later investigated as the “shrinking cities” phenomenon.

Confronting with this phenomenon the proposed hypothesis is a clarification of the residual urban structure to achieve a number of “cities within the city” (Ungers O.M, et al, 1978, p. 86). Parts of the city which can be recognized as urban islands are subject to a process of clarification: they “will have an identity in keeping with their history, social structure and environmental characteristics”. Having lost their link with the previous urban structure the islands could be defined as objects of autonomous projects of densification, relying on the richness of the architecture tradition in urban design (Ungers O.M, et al, 2

In 'towards an archipelago' Aureli P.V. (201?) ' delve into the concept of the urban archipelago as the (only) possibility to reinstate the formal and the political value of space, recovering architecture as a mean to build the 'city' seen in opposition to the prevailing 'urbanization'. Aureli P.V. 'Toward the archipelago. Defining the Political and the Formal in architecture ' in Log, 11, 91-120.

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1978, p. 88). What is outside of the urban islands is subject to the effects of time and will be progressively transformed so that the islands will find themselves in a green archipelago in the long run. The “sea” of this archipelago is described as the place where we can find infrastructure, parks and sports ground, large commercial surfaces, industrial parks and suburban zones it is the space of the contemporary city under construction (Ungers O.M, et al, 1978, p. 90).

If we confront this image with the image of Roma, Arcipelago Frattale, by the group Stalker3, which was produced twenty years later, we can see that urban islands can only be perceived and defined if we cancel (without erasing it from the map) the reality of that space in between which is the problematic part of the city. This overlooked space is not quite “empty” but devoid of any structural meaning, even if this 'blue' sea of the image is supposed to be the focus of iterest4.

Recalling the idea of the urban archipelago frequently means to focus on a range of features of the contemporary city: the diversity of parts within an urban area and their internal rules, the relations between parts,but also their reciprocal exclusion.

The interest of the archipelago image resides in the way the 'island' is defined as part of the city. However, the 'sea' of the metaphorical archipelago and the way it characterized should be better scrutinized. In other world, the relationship which is imagined between the diverse parts of city is a qualifying feature of the metaphor and cannot remain undefined. I would like to suggest that while the focus on relationships between parts is frequently fostering the use of the archipelago metaphor as a descriptive image of the contemporary city, it become less explicit when the archipelago image is used in a design perspective. This lack weakens the possible usefulness of the archipelago metaphor as an interpretative image whithin architecture discourse.

Moreover, the original narrative about the contemporary city, which is described in the Berlin “cities within the city” is apparently extremely distant, due to the radicalism of its argumentation, from the current process of production of urbanized space; while a more domesticated version of this image has produced a number of design strategies legitimating a market oriented kind of fragmentation within the urban fabric.

Each urban operation, if large enough, can aspire to be considered as an urban island, drifting in an unspecified sea, without any need to make clear the condition of its own existence in a larger structure.

However, the “sea”, remain the most problematic part of the city: it host the infrastructure network, residual agriculture plots, space for recreation and large commercial surfaces and a great amount of scattered productive units. Removed from the attention of architecture, it can works indifferently as a connection between given islands or as a whole range of barriers between them. This understanding of the very structure of the city does not enable architecture to face a crucial issue that is precisely the way parts of the city are arranged together, which results in the impossibility to question the degree of openness or enclosure of the city towards its inhabitants. In this perspective, the risk that 'urban islands' are just an image legitimating a city of enclaves (and ghettos) became more decisive than their possible value in emphasizing the specificity of a city which is made of highly different parts.

5. Conclusions Three images: the poly-centric metropolis, the generic city and the urban archipelago have been considered for their heuristic value and for their long time influence on the discourse on the city. They are currently still empowering the design process but, at the meantime hindering a different understanding of the contemporary urban territory and its specificity. They have been discussed, in this context, as three 3

Stalker – Careri F., Rome, archipel fractal, voyage dans les combles de la ville, in "Techniques & Architecture" n° 427, Paris 1996, pp. 8487.

4 The image was produced as the result of a trekking along the fringes of Rome urban periphery. Stalker – Careri F., op cit.

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hypotheses concerning the project on the contemporary city referring to diverse urban planning traditions, stressing different characters of urban territories and fostering diverse project themes. Confronting with the current state of European urbanization process they appear to leave some crucial issues undefined.

The actual correspondence between the polycentric image and urbanization morphologies seems to be unresolved. The concept of the “residual” appears as a simple leftover hindering the possibility to address the structure of contemporary urban space recalling the relevance of open space. Relationships between parts are not fully addressed, preventing the questioning of enclosure of space towards inhabitants. The hypothesis suggested is that a complete revision of this three prevailing images is necessary in order to discuss the form of the contemporary city and the processes of space production.

References Castells M., (1989) The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban Regional Process., Blackwell, Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA. De Carli B. (2011) Between permanence and change. Decoding and reframing residuality: a case in Milan.

Unpublished PhD thesis, Milano, Politecnico di Milano.

European Commission. Committee on Spatial Development. (1999). ESDP-European Spatial Development Perspective: Towards Balanced and Sustainable Development of the Territory of the European Union: Agreed at the Informal Council of Ministers Responsible for Spatial Planning in Potsdam, May 1999. Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

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Fashion metaphors for the city The discourse of urban representations by fashion phenomenon Maria Skivko Weimar, Germany.

E-mail: maria.skivko@gmail.com.

In the search for new urban identities it is possible to use the help of codes and metaphors provided by language structures; thus the city can be described and represented within the instrument of coding and interpreting. One of the possible options to make it is to consider the phenomenon of fashion placed in the contemporary urban environment; fashion obtains its own language as well as social agents to create, diffuse and interpret the metaphors of the urban. Moreover, fashion provides certain techniques and instruments for representations which can deliver certain understandings and codes for the city and urban spaces.

In the proposed paper my aim is to consider the interconnections between the city and fashion in the context of its possibilities to represent each other through certain metaphors. Thus, for instance, in order to represent the urban fashion as a social phenomenon introduces metaphors concerned: i) on the brands and fashion names associating with and symbolizing the cities or urban spaces, so called “branded city” where its image directly depends on its fashion content; ii) on the components of the “city look” representing concrete urbanity, certain place, certain lifestyle and system of values; iii) on the concrete “urban garment” describing the fashion cases where a product influences the image of a city in a certain way. Interpreting the interaction between the city and fashion in the proposed way it is possible to create certain fashion and urban discourses aimed to understand urban spatiality metaphorically performed by the fashion tools. Furthermore, as far as fashion is understood not only as clothing but as a social phenomenon participating in the varied social processes in the contemporary society it is possible to determine its influence on the city fragmentations, on the process of getting new information from the urbanity and on the citizens’ perception of the urban. The fashion representations provide visual understanding of the contemporary urbanity formed by different social issues and aimed to construct common urban identity for the city dwellers.

Keywords: fashion representations, urban identity, metaphors

1. Introduction In a search for new urban identities it is possible to use the help of codes and metaphors provided by language structures; thus a city can be described and represented within an instrument of coding,

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comparison and interpreting. One of the possible options to make it is to consider the phenomenon of fashion placed in a contemporary urban environment; fashion obtains its own language as well as social agents to create, diffuse and interpret the metaphors of the urban. Moreover, fashion provides techniques and instruments for representations which can deliver certain understandings and codes for the city and urban spaces.

In the proposed paper my aim is to consider the interconnections between the city and fashion concerned fashion metaphors produced for the urban representations. As far as a metaphor is understood here as a tool for description an object by the analogy and comparison using specific characteristic of the object, a representation being a creation of understanding of one through another can easily uses metaphors for the construction of notions. In other words, metaphors can work in the process of representation as one of the main instrument highlighting important features of the performed objects. There are several metaphors for the representation of the city through fashion here explained, so called: i) the “branded city”; ii) the “city look”; iii) the “urban garment”.

Fashion as a social phenomenon obtains social agents for creation metaphors and representation objects.

Such agents work in the physical space as designers, stylists, fashion journalists, models, and merchandisers or in the symbolic space within the fashion media obtaining power to work internationally and to cover varied geographical volumes online.

2. Fashion and the city under the theoretical perspectives In order to construct a discussion about the concepts of fashion and the city within a discourse of representations it is necessary to mention briefly the perspectives under which in sociology fashion and the city can be analyzed. Fashion can be considered dually, as clothing, dress and appearance as well as a social phenomenon both connected varied theoretical concepts. Thus fashion can become a way of imitation and differentiation within society in order to share commons or distinguish from others (Simmel, G., 1957), it can regulate the disposition of social structure and reflect the social statuses (Bourdieu P., 1984; Veblen T., 1960). Furthermore, it can express certain identity through the choice of garments (Blumer, H., 1969; Craik J., 2009); under the fashion dimension the age and gender as well as the characteristics of the time can be reviewed (Barnard M., 1996; Crane D., 2000; Lurie A., 1981). Moreover, fashion can be considered as a cultural phenomenon (Craik J., 1994; Breward C., 1995; McRobbie, A., 1997), as an instrument of communication within clothing codes (Davis F., 1992) and finally, as a symbolic system to exchange semiotic codes within dressing (Barthes R., 1983).

In the same way the city is understood as an urban area with its geographical characteristics and organization of spaces as well as a social institution arranging city life and urban behavioral patterns, city rhythms and attitudes. Thereby the city can be considered in the framework of dominance and space competition (Miles, M., Hall T. and Borden I., 2004; Park R. E., Burgess E.W., McKenzie R.D., 1967), within the concept of the city growth and social, economic, cultural changes accompanied (Sassen S., 1991; Simmel, G.,1980). Moreover, the city is researched as a regulating mechanism of human life within the growth of population and its social influence (Wirth, Louis., 1938) as well as a symbolic system providing social organization patterns and schemes of urban interactions (Miles S., Miles M., 2004). The city represents the time and space dimensions by economic and technical development, progressive ideas and city rhythms (Miles, M., Hall T. and Borden I., 2004) and even gender by determining spaces for males and females and providing identities by the social differentiations (Bridge, G. and Watson, S., 2000; LeGates, R.T. and Stout F., 2011). Finally, the city is researched in the cultural paradigm with its symbolic capital, cultural heritage and multiculturalism (Mumford L. 1938; Zukin S., 1995).

3. First metaphor: “Branded city” The first metaphor refers to a city “covered” by the presence of fashion in it; the city here mentioned is defined as a geographical area and fashion is concrete garments and brands there located. In this case there are important diversity of shopping areas situated as well as a variety of fashion brands presented in

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an urban area, also the branded urbanites and tourists demonstrating and diffusing trends around.

Furthermore, as the social phenomenon, fashion brings within conglomeration of brands differences in social and economic statuses (luxury or casual style, for instance), gender dimension presented by correlation of female and male shops as well as cultural component (varied styles and subcultures performed) of the urban space and expressing the cultural capital of the social institution of the city.

The urban representations are based on the references to certain fashion names which construct symbolic value of the city by certain fashion dimension and provide symbolic value to a fashion capital. As far as brands incorporate fashion tendencies, the characteristics of such fashion trends can be extrapolated to the cities establishing an authenticity of a place.

Agnes Rocamora in her book “Fashioning the city: Paris, fashion and the media” connects a representation of Paris with a notion of woman and fashion supported particularly by fashion media today: the fundamental role of French fashion in the whole industry is highlighted by innumerable variety of fashion boutiques and designers in Paris oriented on their main consumer group of glamorous women (Rocamora A., 2009). Thus within the construction of symbolic fashion space surrounding the French capital there is also a representation of physical space of the city where the image of fashionable women placed in Paris is conceptualized by mass media. According to Rocamora, it is possible to consider the city as a discursive reality within words and images that is why Paris discourse can be decoded by fashion representations, especially provided by fashion media. In other words, the city as a social organism organizes its space concerning a social status but at the same time the concept of prestige and luxury sets the social hierarchy and the social life in the city as well.

All of these mentioned above reflect on the social, economic and cultural status of the city, its image within the country and the world providing certain understanding of the urban spaces by fashion branding. Thus fashion names become associating with and symbolizing the concrete cities, where its image directly depends on its fashion content. Fashion media, articles and advertisement and even designers use quite often the big cities in order to promote a product by linking it with the actuality of fashion and culture placed in a certain city or with the image of a place enlarging its symbolic value (for example, the brand “DKNY”- Donna Karan New York, “L’Oreal Paris”). The most obvious example in this case can be the capital of France which is assimilated with haute couture, luxury and famous designers, firstly, with the brand of Chanel; the media by promoting Paris as a centre of fashion was highlighting the huge variety of the best shops and department stores there, in such way constructing a city discourse based on the consumption dimension. In other words, within the media the city can be fashioned in different styles.

4. Second metaphor: “City look” The second metaphor is concentrated on the representation of the “city look” through the constructed fashioned image belonging to certain urbanity with appropriate lifestyle, consumer practices, ways of urban mobility etc. This metaphor characterizes the city through the outfits of urbanites and constructed by them visuality of an urban reality.

The city look produces and diffuses urban identities covered under the fashion production and fashion trends: any urban space can obtain certain codes and patterns of visual presentation and performance.

Thus the fashion capital Paris provides certain French or even “Parisian chic” expressed in clothing style, dressing norms and lifestyle; the other fashion capital London also performs typical “British look” based on elegancy and traditions supported by the fashion industry and designers. Nevertheless, a notion of the “city look” can become contradictory considered in the framework of a real geographical location where such style is adopted and in the framework of exported and diffused standards of dressing and fashioning subscribed to a fashion place.

In other words, fashion as clothing compiles from different consumer garments certain look which refers to certain location; at the same time it characterizes the city as an institution constituting certain fashion standards and rules to be accepted by citizens (the processes of imitation and differentiation of trends are

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quite allowed yet). Moreover, fashion as a social phenomenon plays a role of symbolic component of the city expressing its cultural capital.

The interconnection and interaction in fashion the global and local segments provides a problem of definition: on the one hand, there are certain brands related to certain country or location, on the other hand, under the globalization process these brands can be easily fabricated and approached anywhere. The globalization mixtures cultural specialties, nations, localities and spread it onto different spaces providing changes and influences. Moreover, the consumers have free preferences between global mass-popular trends and local authentic design achieving metaphorically certain place or location.

For instance, under a notion of “true Brit” we understand not only concrete fashion garments and British brands but also reference to rainy London, English pubs, conservatism, elegancy etc. These characteristics are constructed as well mostly by the media promoting certain English fashion as specific only to the Great Britain citizens [26].

The image of “La Parisienne” as an icon of femininity, described and used in literature, cinema, arts, fashion media, of a typical French woman with faultless knowledge of fashion and its creation consists not only of dressing and accessories but of innate style, authentic simplicity and culture or even talent for choosing appropriate clothes. This understanding of “La Parisienne” is provided by certain discourse expressed in many cultural representations of her image where media plays particular role of its provider [25]. The image of “La Parisienne” is strongly connected with the notions of independency, elegancy, sophistication and urbanity where Paris is performed as a perfect stage of action for such women.

Visualization of the image of Parisian woman by art and media, especially fashion magazines, strengthens the connection between Paris, fashion and women in general.

5. Third metaphor: “Urban garment” The third type represents fashion cases where a consumer product influences the image of a city in a certain way; thus fashion as clothing works for representation of the city as a location where it appeared or was produced as well as of an institution which manages or regulates such fashion. Such urban garment as a symbolic object manages to represent the urbanity delivering as well social differences for those who purchase it or not, for instance, or possibility for consumer to identify with certain urban characteristics.

The cultural component of an urban garment also reflects the culture of the place and correspondent cultural patterns; for instance, the garments which tourists buy in a certain touristic places obtain much symbolic value for them not depending exactly from which brand, quality or price is this product.

One of the examples can be the Chanel’s little black dress which was created by the French designer and referred always to Chanel’s fashion, anyway became a world pattern of perfect style and part of a certain look allowable anywhere but representing fashionable elegant women placed in the city. Moreover, the detailed characteristics (shape, material, length, decoration etc.) of little black dress are not as important as the visual representation of style and fashion patterns connected with the city lifestyle and urban environment of the contemporary fashionable women.

Another example is the case of jeans which were firstly produced in Italy but then became popular as workers uniform in the USA and from there got a world fame and acceptance as a universal garment for any kind of look, purpose and style [5]. Moreover, jeans as common clothes at the same time delete all social inequalities but by its designer, quality and price construct social, economic, cultural differences and provide representations of the urban and the city.

6. Conclusions In the contemporary society it is possible to consider the city aside from the social, cultural, economic and other approaches under the perspective of fashion representations: by producing expressive metaphors as comparative descriptions of objects fashion emphasizes different characteristics of the cities and urban spaces. Such metaphors can construct the image of a city by highlighting brands’ names connected with and placed in the city area with symbolic fashion space created, by describing the images of urbanites with

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certain outfits, lifestyles, value systems attached or by providing the cases of urban garments transforming the understanding of the city and urban spaces within its functions or symbolic meanings.

Moreover, the perspectives under which as the city as fashion are investigated can be extrapolated to each other within the common representations. The most important social agent for creating and diffusing such metaphors is the mass media which constructs and diffuses such representations and delivers city images and identities as far as fashion trends to the consumer audience.

For the further investigations it makes sense to take into account the opposite dimension where the city can represent fashion and fashion trends. For instance, the possible research perspectives might be certain metaphors on the global and local levels, metaphors concerned the fashion establishment and institutionalization in the city space or metaphors onto locating and hosting certain fashion events.

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