Degree Lecture Notes - Theories of architecture & urbanism by Sheilly Tan

Postmodern Architecture Theory

POSTMODERNISM ď °

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL8Mh Yq9owo

ď °

Postmodernism is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism. Postmodernism includes skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism.

Robert Venturi: Architecture's Improper Hero Part 1 ď °

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPuM7 _5QPAg

WHY POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURE?

PRUITT-IGOE HOUSING

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYrMUcT1jP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gRuyhf2opY  “I was born in Pruitt-Igoe and the place was nice at first. There was green grass and lots of janitors to keep the projects clean. White people stayed on one end and blacks on the other and life was good. Then the late 60s came and all hell broke loose. Rape, murder, drugs and the lowest form of people moved in. The police was afraid to come up in Pruitt-Igoe because the criminal elements would shoot atthem so we had no protection. It became a living hell.” revnasteewaters57 

"I never thought people were that destructiveâ&#x20AC;&#x153; - YAMASAKI

Pruittâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Igoe consisted of 33 11-story apartment buildings on a 57-acre (23 ha) site, on St. Louis's lower north side. The complex totaled 2,870 apartments, one of the largest in the country. The apartments were deliberately small, with undersized kitchen appliances. "Skip-stop" elevators stopped only at the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth floors, forcing residents to use stairs in an attempt to lessen congestion. The same "anchor floors" were equipped with large communal corridors, laundry rooms, communal rooms and garbage chutes. The stairwells and corridors attracted muggers. Ventilation was poor, centralized air conditioning nonexistent.

PRUITT-IGOE HOUSING    

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ST LOUIS, MISSOURI 1952-55 MINORU YAMASAKI BLOWN UP ON JULY 15, 1972 @ 3.32 PM AFTER CONTINUOUS VADALISM CRIME RATE WAS HIGHER THAN OTHER DEVELOPMENTS OSCAR NEWMAN, “DEFENSIBLE SPACE” – LONG CORRIDORS, ANONYMITY, LACK OF CONTROLLED SEMI-PRIVATE SPACE IT WAS DESIGNED IN A ‘PURIST’ LANGUAGE AT VARIANCE WITH THE ARCHITECTURAL CODES OF THE INHABITANTS.

PRUITT-IGOE HOUSING http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd7VOz_Wstg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_zFIg8N9Rw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7RwwkNzF68

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WAS CONSTRUCTED ACCORDING TO THE MOST PROGRESSIVE IDEALS OF CIAM (THE CONGRESS OF INTERNATIONAL MODERN ARCHITECTS) WON AN AWARD FROM THE AMERICAN INSTITUTEOF ARCHITECTS WHEN IT WAS DESIGNED IN 1951 ACCUPANTS – BLACK COMMUNITY The Captain Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and The William L. Igoe Apartments : Additionally, Pruitt and Igoe were racially segregated from the start: whites lived in the Igoe Apartments, named for a white Congressman, and African-Americans lived in the Pruitt Homes, named for a celebrated Tuskegee Airman from St. Louis.

Postmodernists 



“The city of modern architecture, both as a psychological construct and a physical model, has been rendered tragically ridiculous... the city of Le Corbusier, the city celebrated by CIAM and advertised by the Athens Charter, the former city of deliverance is everyday found increasingly inadequate”. Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter (1976). Collage City. “The day Modern architecture died." Charles Jencks. Pruitt–Igoe as an example of modernists' hazardous intentions running contrary to real-world social development.

Issues emerged due to Modernism in architecture 

Displacement, loss of place

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Loss of identity

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Loss of sense of community

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Celebration of technology

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User-hostility

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Sterility, loss of human scale

1914 - 1916

Born: October 6, 1887, Died: August 27, 1965

1942 - 1950

â&#x20AC;&#x153;La Ville Radieusâ&#x20AC;?(1924 ) represented an utopian dream to reunite man within a well-ordered environment. Unlike the radial design of the Ville Contemporaine, the Ville Radieuse was a linear city based upon the abstract shape of the human body with head, spine, arms and legs. The design maintained the idea of high-rise housing blocks, free circulation and abundant green spacesproposed in his earlier work. The blocks of housing were laid out in long lines stepping in and 0ut. and were raised up on pilotis. They had roof terraces and running tracks on their roofs.

Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? 1956

"Less is a more."

"Less is a bore."

1958 Frank G. Wells Building, Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, California, 1994-98

Piazza dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Italia (1978) by Charles Moore

Portland Building (1980) Architects

Michael Graves

The Sony Building (formerly AT&T building) in New York City, 1984, by Philip Johnson

Ideals and ideas of Postmodernism – from Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson Why Capitalism? Capitalism is an economic system that is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods or services for profit.

•Capitalism – turning everything into ‘commodity’ or business transaction •- aesthetic production + demand = commodity production – the frantic economy urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods, at ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic innovations and experimentation – indicates the unmediated relationship of architecture and economy • building boom – new postmodern architecture grounded in the patronage of multinational business

Architecture & Postmodernism

- position of architecture radically transformed especially after 1974 - obvious material changes in the shrinking of the market and the abandonment of great building program - emergence of architectural conservation movements - The Society for the Protection of Ancient Building (SPAB), 1877, William Morris - renewed consciousness of architectural history - tends to wallow in a depressing eclecticism, mixing up cultural and historical resources -renaissance of Utopian architecture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ideal environment, new technology for social engineering -should provide solutions to all problem presented in the architecture - have sense of familiarity

Charles Jencks 

Transferred postmodernism from literary expression into architecture

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Architecture as purely aesthetics (rather than meaning)

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Criticizes machine aesthetics ‘house is not a machine’

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Architectural language should be made up of established (traditional) motives, e.g. column types, pitch roofs, pediments, etc which modernism has ignored

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Building as metaphors, successful buildings trigger multiple metaphors e.g. Corbusier’s Ronchamp and Utzon’s Sydney Opera House

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Combination of the popular traditional and traditional with the modern and fast changing, e.g. Charles Moore, Piazza d’Italia, Las Vegas.

Ideals and ideas of Postmodernism What do these essays have to say? 1. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) by Robert Venturi was instrumental in opening readers eyes to new ways of thinking about buildings.

2. Learning from Las Vegas (1972) by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown argues that ornamental and decorative elements â&#x20AC;&#x153;accommodate existing needs for variety and communicationâ&#x20AC;?. 3. Collage City by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter. (1984)This book is a critical

reappraisal of contemporary theories of urban planning and design and of the role of the architect-planner in an urban context. The authors rejecting the grand utopian visions of "total planning" and "total design," propose instead a "collage city" which can accommodate a whole range of utopias in miniature

Complexity and contradiction in architecture, 1966 

Based on the philosophy of 'complexity and contradiction', Robert Venturi has re-assessed architecture to stress the importance of multiple meanings in appreciating design.

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‘Less is more’ was parodied with ‘Less is bore’

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Complexity not simply by sticking on more ornamental details. Rather, Venturi was in favour of a tension bred by perceptual ambiguity which affect the overall character of a design.

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‘Both-and’ approach to architectural elements and meanings “If the source of the ‘both-and’ phenomenon is contradiction, its basis is hierarchy, which yields several levels of meanings among elements with varying values. It can include elements that are both good and awkward, round and square, structural and spatial. An architecture which includes varying levels of meaning breeds ambiguity and tension.



This is reflected in his mother’s house i.e. Vanna Venturi House

Vanna Venturi’s House (1962)

Architects

Philadelphia

Robert Venturi

Employed ‘old clichés in new settings’ and so gave ‘uncommon meaning to common elements by changing their context, or increasingly their scale’.  http://z.about.com/d/architecture/1/0/s/G/vannaventurihouse-ppl.jpg



Communicating a meaning and the characteristic of symbolism. The façade is, according to Venturi, a symbolic picture of a house, looking back to the 18th century. This is partly achieved through the use of symmetry and the arch over the entrance. Venturi combined a handful of basic architectural elements, in this case a gable, door, windows, and chimney, arranging the forms into a simple, inviting design that is plainly modern, yet also a strong expression of traditional ideas of home.

The faĂ§ade had a deliberately deadpan character which disguised the welter of internal complexities and contradictions of the plan. First floor

Ground floor

â&#x20AC;&#x153;This building recognizes complexities and contradictions: it is both complex and simple, open and enclosed, big and little: some of its elements are good on one level and bad on another; its order accommodates the generic elements of a house in particular. It achieves the difficult unity of a medium number of diverse parts rather than the easy unity of few or many motival parts.â&#x20AC;?

"We were calling for an architecture that promotes richness and ambiguity over unity and clarity, contradiction and redundancy over harmony and simplicity." … "As an architect I try to be guided not by habit but by a conscious sense of the past—by precedent, thoughtfully considered." … As an artist I frankly write about what I like in architecture: complexity and contradiction. From what we find we like— what we are easily attracted to—we can learn much of what we really are."

Venturi 1966, Preface in Complexity and contradiction in architecture

Historic design styles and popular culture, including contemporary commercial architecture and advertising.

Eclectic House Series, 1977 Elevations, Robert Venturi Colored plastic film on photomechanical print http://www.arcspace.com/architects/venturi/out_of_the_ordinary/Photo-4.gif

Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery (1991) London

Architects

Robert Venturi

Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown in USA 

Looks for meanings in historic symbols: He was challenging Modernism with the multiple solutions available from history— a history defined as relating not only to the specific building site, but the history of all architecture. He wanted architecture to deal with the complexities of the city, to become more contextual.

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Sources in Pop Art & literature: Eclectic

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Sees architecture as communication or advertisement. 2 kinds of architecture : The Duck and the Decorated Shed

Learning from Las Vegas, 1972 

The sign is more important than the architecture: Signs and meanings over physical makeup of space.



"In the past, signage and storefronts were designed to be seen and read by people walking or riding on horses," he said. "Today those forms of communication would be blurred and unread by drivers and passengers." Messages today must be read from vehicles travelling at high speeds.

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If you take the signs away there is no architecture.

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Buildings can represent meanings in different ways: the decorated shed and the duck: 

“Decorated Shed”: Billboard character of American urban streets.

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Contrasted to “Ducks”: Sculptural buildings of the early 1960s.

SCULPTURE Meaning and building is one

IMAGERY Meaning and sign separate. The building becomes unimportant

"Amid the diversity, the familiar Shell and Gulf signs stand out like friendly beacons in a foreign land. But in Las Vegas they reach three times higher into the air than at your local service station to meet the competition of the casinos."

www.reviewjournal.com/.../photos/arch.html

"A roadway could become a city. A building could become a sign. In no place at all, someplace could be created. That is Las Vegas' genius."

www.reviewjournal.com/.../photos/arch.html

Collage City, Rowe & Koetter 

a critical reappraisal of contemporary theories of urban planning and design and of the role of the architect-planner in an urban context.



rejects the grand utopian visions of "total planning" and "total design,"



Rowe reintroduced the complexities and possibilities of art into urban design

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propose a "collage city" which can accommodate a whole range of utopias in miniature.

Aldo Rossi in Italy 

Rossi criticized the lack of understanding of the city in current architectural practice.

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Key work: The Architecture of the City (L'architettura della città, 1966) –a key text in the study of urban design and thinking

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City as place of collective memories

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Cities exists as whole, not as a collection of individual buildings

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Continuity: new buildings extend existing traditions and histories of the site

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Typology: fundamental forms and types for buildings. Forms persist over time but functions vary over time

ď °

The history of the city is composed by those designs which persist over time to become types. This permanence of memory (meaning) in the city is based on two principles: memory - Urban facts which are permanent; those which withstand the passage of time and eventually become monuments. monuments - These give meaning to the life of the city through memory.

ď °

The transformation of the typologies of the past is a formal reduction of ornament and detail to pure' forms. But it is a stretch to refer to his designs as a transformation, it is potentially more accurate to refer to his process as a translation of the past to a modern setting.

ď °

Archetypal forms in an attempt to re-establish a connection with the collective memory of the urban environment where simplified architectural elements give a sense of longing. volumes - cube, cylinder, and prism - and their elemental identities as towers, columns, ...

http://www.etsav.upc.es/personals/tih03/oistat/oistat.htm

ROBERT VENTURI I LIKE ‘COMPLEXITY AND CONTRADICTION’ IN ARCHITECTURE

I LIKE ELEMENTS WHICH ARE HYBRID RATHER THAN ‘PURE’, COMPROMISING RATHER THAN ‘CLEAN’, DISTORTED RATHER THAN ‘STRAIGHT FORWARD’, AMBIGUOUS RATHER THAN ‘ARTICULATED’, PERVERSE AS WELL AS IMPERSONAL, BORING AS WELL AS ‘INTERESTING’, CONVENTIONAL RATHER THAN ‘DESIGNED’, ACCOMMODATING RATHER THAN EXCLUDING, REDUNDANT RATHER THAN SIMPLE, VESTIGIAL AS WELL AS INNOVATING, INCONSISTENT AND EQUIVOCAL RATHER THAN DIRECT AND CLEAR. I AM FOR MESSY VITALITY OVER OBVIOUS UNITY. I INCLUDE THE “NON SEQUITUR” AND PROCLAIM THE DUALITY. I AM FOR RICHNESS OF MEANING RATHER THAN CLARITY OF MEANING, … I PREFER ‘BOTH-AND’ AND TO ‘EITHER-OR’, BLACK AND WHITE AND SOMETIMES GRAY, TO BLACK AND WHITE.

Charles Jencks Post – Modernism is crossing boundaries, crossing species Post – Modernism is operating in the gap between art and life Post – Modernism is Cambozola Cheese (illicit hybrid with the best genes of Mrs Camembert and Mr Gorgonzola) Post – Modernism is the rabbi’s advice to his son : ‘Whenever faced with two extremes, always pick a third’ Post-Modernism revisits the past – with quotation marks Post – Modernism revisits the future –with irony Post – Modernism is acknowledging the already said, as Eco has already said, in the age of lost innocence.

Lecture

Modern & Post-Modern Theory

COURSE

Bachelor of Science (Honours) (Architecture) MODULE

THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC2224) (ARC61303) at

TAYLORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING & DESIGN Centre for Modern Architecture Studies in Southeast Asia (MASSA) dated

18 APRIL 2016 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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CLASSICAL

MODERN

POSTMODERN

Maison CarrÃ©e unknown Architect Nimes, France 2 AD

La Tourette Monastery Le Corbusier Lyon, France 1953-1957

The Sony Building Philip Johnson New York City 1984

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CLASSICAL

MODERN

POSTMODERN

Vitruvian Man as the Perfect Order

Simplicity and Clarity

Addressing the limitations of Modernism

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HOW DOES

CLASSICAL LEAD TO

MODERNISM

? LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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THE CLASSICAL 18TH CENTURY

ROCOCO THE ROCAILLE LINE OF BEAUTY

Analysis of Beauty William Hogarth

LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

Rottenbuch ABBEY CHURCH BAVARIA, GERMANY

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THE CLASSICAL 19TH CENTURY

ECLECTICISM A MIXTURE OF ELEMENTS FROM PREVIOUS HISTORICAL STYLE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION

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THE CLASSICAL

19TH CENTURY (1883â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1926)

ECLECTICISM THE CHURCH OF THE SAGRADA FAMILIA ELEMENTS OF THE GOTHIC STYLE ORIENTAL MOTIFS AND FORMS

GOTHIC INTERIOR LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

ROCOCO COLUMN ffdrt.com/the-blog/

NATURE FORM page 7 of 74

EARLY 20TH CENTURY

MACHINE AGE MASS PRODUCTION ALLOWED FOR ORNAMENTS TO BE

STAMPED OUT QUICKLY AND

CHEAPLY, LEADING TO GOODS OVERDECORATED WITH ORNAMENT.

LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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THE TEXTILE BLOCK SYSTEM AROSE FROM WRIGHT’S DESIRE TO WED PRECAST

“TEXTILE”

CONCRETE BLOCKS REINFORCED BY AN INTERNAL SYSTEM OF BARS

MACHINE-AGE PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES WITH

ORGANIC ARCHITECTURE Alice Millard House Frank Lloyd Wright 1923 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

Arizona Biltmore Hotel Frank Lloyd Wright 1929 ffdrt.com/the-blog/

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MACHINIZED APPROACH COPY CLASSICAL STYLES AT LOW COST. LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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EARLY 21TH CENTURY

COMPUTER AGE DISPLAY AND STYLING TECHNOLOGIES ENABLED

DESIGNERS TO CREATE VISUALLY

RICH INTERFACES,

LEADING TO SKEUOMORPHIC AND

STYLISTIC EXCESSES.

LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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20TH CENTURY

ORNAMENT AS CRIME (1910)

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Adolf Loos 1928 Essay on Ornament and Crime: Evolution is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of everyday use

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TECHNOLOGY

REACTION TO A STYLE

NEW BUILDING TECHNIQUES

ECLECTICISM

MODERNITY

building materials such as iron, steel, and sheet glass.

MIXTURE OF HISTORICAL STYLES

rejection of tradition

The Crystal Palace held the Great Exhibition 1851 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

19TH CENTURY ffdrt.com/the-blog/

SOCIAL

Charles Baudelaire ART CRITIC 1821-1867 page 14 of 74

WHAT IS

MODERNISM

? LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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20TH CENTURY

MODERNISM

CURBED THE ORNAMENTAL

EXCESS OF THE 19TH CENTURY, MAKING DESIGN FIT THE AGE OF MASS PRODUCTION.

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the virtues of an architecture that was the product of the machine age rather than a mimic of historical styles.

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The Original 1920 cover

LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

Architectural Press, London, 1952

Reprint of the 1927 ed.

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2007 version

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(1887-1965)

LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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the pilotis (rc stilts) elevating the mass off the ground allows free plan & free facade

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2 the free plan

achieved through the separation of

the load-bearing columns from

the walls

subdividing the space.

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example of corbu theory the free plan

Maison Cook Le Corbusier, was built in 1926 in Boulogne-sur-Seine,

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the free facade By separating the exterior of the building from its structural function the faรงade becomes free

LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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example of corbu theory the free facade

Masion Domino 1914

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example of corbu theory the free facade

Maison aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Stuttgart le Corbusier 1927

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MVRDV Architects Dutch Pavilion EXPO 2000 Hanover, Germany 2000

LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

David Chipperfield Architect Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cup Pavilion Valencia 2005

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Herzog de Meuron Car Park Miami USA 2008

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the long horizontal sliding window to enable more light

LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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example of corbu theory linear window

Villa Savoye Le Corbusier 1931 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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Guitare verticale Le Corbusier 1920 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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the roof garden the area of ground covered by the house recovering lost space and making a private space for sunbathing, exercising or taking the view.

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Villa Savoye Le Corbusier 1931 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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Villa Savoye Le Corbusier 1931 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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CLASSICAL LEAD TO

MODERNISM

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TECHNOLOGY

REACTION TO A STYLE

NEW BUILDING TECHNIQUES

ECLECTICISM

MODERNITY

building materials such as iron, steel, and sheet glass.

MIXTURE OF HISTORICAL STYLES

rejection of tradition

The Crystal Palace held the Great Exhibition 1851 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

19TH CENTURY ffdrt.com/the-blog/

SOCIAL

Charles Baudelaire ART CRITIC 1821-1867 page 34 of 74

DUE TO

UNDESIGNED MASS PRODUCTION (MACHINE AGE)

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HOW DOES

MODERNISM 1900S

LEAD TO

POSTMODERNISM 1960S

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IS DIVIDED INTO

ARCHITECTURE &

URBAN PLANNING

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POST MODERNISM

ARCHITECTURE

Vanna Venturiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s House Robert Venturi 1962

LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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FORM AND FUNCTION

FORM NO LONGER TO BE DEFINED SOLELY BY ITS FUNCTIONAL

REQUIREMENTS OR MINIMAL APPEARANCE. Vanna Venturi House Robert Venturi 1964 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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POST MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE

CONDEMN QUESTIONED THE BENEFITS OF MODERNISM PHILOSOPHY.

REJECTING ‘PURE’ FORM OR ‘PERFECT’ ARCHITECTURAL DETAIL

CONDONE SENSE OF PLACE COMMUNICATE IDEAS WITH THE PUBLIC SENSITIVE TO THE CONTEXT

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NO SINGLE THEORY DOMINATING ARCHITECTURAL DISCOURSES ffdrt.com/the-blog/

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COMPLEXITY AND CONTRADICTION IN ARCHITECTURE ROBERT VENTURI 1966

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ANTITHESIS TO MODERNISM

I LIKE COMPLEXITY AND CONTRADICTION IN ARCHITECTURE.

I DO NOT LIKE THE INCOHERENCE OR ARBITRARINESS OF INCOMPETENT ARCHITECTURE NOR THE PRECIOUS INTRICACIES OF PICTURESQUENESS OR EXPRESSIONISM.

INSTEAD, I SPEAK OF A COMPLEX AND CONTRADICTORY ARCHITECTURE BASED ON THE RICHNESS AND AMBIGUITY OF MODERN EXPERIENCE, INCLUDING THAT EXPERIENCE WHICH IS INHERENT IN ART.

EXCERPTS FROM COMPLEXITY AND CONTRADICTION IN ARCHITECTURE ROBERT VENTURI LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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HYBRID COMPROMISING

PURE

FORCED SIMPLICITY RESULTS IN OVERSIMPLIFICATION

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DISTORTED

STRAIGHTFORWARD LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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AMBIGUITY

ARTICULATED

MEANING DERIVES FROM INTERIOR CHARACTERISTIC AND ITS PARTICULAR CONTEXT. SUCH TENSION CREATES AMBIGUITY

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“BOTH-AND”

BREEDS AMBIGUITY AND TENSION (DOUBLE FUNCTIONING)

“EITHER-OR” LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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Vanna Venturiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s House Robert Venturi 1962

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CHIMNEY PLACED ASIDE SYMBOLIC PICTURE OF A HOUSE SYMMETRICAL

ASYMMETRICAL

ARCH ENTRANCE Vanna Venturiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s House Robert Venturi 1962

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“THIS BUILDING RECOGNIZES COMPLEXITIES AND CONTRADICTIONS: IT IS BOTH COMPLEX

AND SIMPLE, OPEN AND ENCLOSED, BIG AND

LITTLE: SOME OF ITS ELEMENTS ARE GOOD ON ONE LEVEL AND BAD ON ANOTHER; ITS ORDER

ACCOMMODATES THE GENERIC ELEMENTS OF A HOUSE IN PARTICULAR. IT ACHIEVES THE DIFFICULT UNITY OF A MEDIUM NUMBER OF DIVERSE PARTS RATHER THAN THE EASY UNITY OF FEW OR MANY MOTIVAL PARTS.” Vanna Venturi’s House Robert Venturi 1962 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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POST MODERNISM

URBAN PLANNING

Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City) Le Corbusier 1924 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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PRUITT-IGOE

St. Louis, Missouri

LIVING CONDITION DECLINED 1954

OCCUPATION 1954

POVERTY, CRIME, AND SEGREGATION. LATE 1960S

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DEMOLITION 1972

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IN 1951, AN ARCHITECTURAL FORUM ARTICLE TITLED “SLUM SURGERY IN ST. LOUIS” PRAISED YAMASAKI’S ORIGINAL PROPOSAL AS “THE BEST HIGH APARTMENT” OF THE YEAR

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LOSS OF PLACE LOSS OF IDENTITY LOSS OF SENSE OF COMMUNITY USER-HOSTILITY LOSS OF HUMAN SCALE

LE CORBUSIER RADIANT CITY LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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HONG KONG HIGH RISE PHOTO TAKEN IN 2013 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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LAGUNA PERDANA 2005 ffdrt.com/the-blog/

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POST MODERNIST URBAN PLANNING

CONDEMN URBAN PROBLEM AND SOCIAL ASPECT OF MODERNISM

ZONING REGULATIONS AND URBAN RENEWAL FOR WWII DESTROYED CITIES ERODED URBAN FABRIC, DULL AND DANGEROUS LIVING ENVIRONMENT

CONDONE GORDON CULLEN IN TOWNSCAPES

KEVIN LYNCH THE IMAGE OF THE CITY CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER IN A PATTERN LANGUAGE ROWE & KOETTER IN COLLAGE CITY LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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D 11 EApril R

PART B (Nicholas Ng) Reader 1: Jan Gehl, ‘‘Life Between N I S Buildings UsingM Public Space’’ (1986)

Synopsis 1 10%

Week 3

18 April

Week 4

Lecture 3: Modern & Post Modern Theory (Lam Shen Fei)

Week 5

2 Lecture 3: Semiotics (IDA) Reader 2: Charles Jencks, ‘‘Semiology and Architecture’’, (1969) 2

2 May

Public Holiday

25 April

Week 6 9 May (Last day for subject/module withdrawal with WD grade) Week 7 16 --- 20 May Non-contact Week

2 Synopsis 2 10%

Project Research

Project (PART A) Submission 20%

Project

Mid-semester Break

2 Lecture 5 : Phenomenology: Of Meaning and Places (NHH) Reader 3: Juhani Pallasma, ‘‘The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses’’, (2007), pp40 - 46 2 Project (PART B) Submission 40% 2

Project

2 Synopsis 3 10%

Text: 1. Christopher Norris 3rd ed. , ‘‘Deconstruction’’, (2002) 2. Lisbeth 6 Soderqvist,’’Structu ralism in architecture: a definition’’, (2011) 4 Project

Portfolio

TGC Portfolio

Synopsis 4 10%

TGC Portfolio

20 June

Preparation of TGC Portfolio

TGC Portfolio

Week 12

Week 10 13 June (Online Course Evaluation and last day for Subject/Module Withdrawal with F (W) grade) Week 11

4 Text: 1. Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘‘In the Cause of Architecture’’, (1908) 2. Robert Venturi, et al, ’’Learning From Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form’’, (1977) 4

Lecture 4: Deconstruction, 23 May (Online Student Structuralism and Post Structuralism Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224): Registration) (IDA) March 2016

Week 8 30 May (Last day for Online Student Registration (OSR)) Week 9 6 June

Project

Text : 1. Doreen Massey,’’ A Global Sense of Place’’ (1994)

Lecture 5: Critical Regionalism: Kenneth Frampton (LSF) Reader 4: Kenneth Frampton, ‘‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’’.

SEMIOTICS & STRUCTURALISM PHENOMENOLOGY (COMMUNICATION THEORIES) CRITICAL REGIONALISM LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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LESS IS MORE SEAGRAM BUILDING MIES VAN DER ROHE NEW YORK 1958

LESS IS BORE TEAM DISNEY BUILDING MICHAEL GRAVES BURBANK, CA/USA 1986

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IRONY & PARADOX

PIAZZA Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ITALIA NEW ORLEAN CHARLES MOORE 1978

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SCULPTURAL, ANTHROPOMORPHISM

THE SONY BUILDING PHILIP JOHNSON NEW YORK CITY 1984

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ORNAMENTS

RMIT BUILDING 8.

EDMOND AND CORRIGAN SWANSTON STREET, MELBOURNE 1993 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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“THIS BUILDING RECOGNIZES COMPLEXITIES AND CONTRADICTIONS: IT IS BOTH COMPLEX

AND SIMPLE, OPEN AND ENCLOSED, BIG AND

LITTLE: SOME OF ITS ELEMENTS ARE GOOD ON ONE LEVEL AND BAD ON ANOTHER; ITS ORDER

ACCOMMODATES THE GENERIC ELEMENTS OF A HOUSE IN PARTICULAR. IT ACHIEVES THE DIFFICULT UNITY OF A MEDIUM NUMBER OF DIVERSE PARTS RATHER THAN THE EASY UNITY OF FEW OR MANY MOTIVAL PARTS.”

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Jencksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Theory of Evolution 2000 LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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FOOD FOR THOUGHTS

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CLASSICAL

MODERN

POSTMODERN

Vitruvian Man as the Perfect Order

Simplicity and Clarity

Addressing the limitations of Modernism

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Design Aftermath

SOULLESS DE-HUMANISING

living

Villa Savoye Le Corbusier 1931

Falling Water Frank Lloyd Wright 1936

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? LECTURE.BY.SHEN.FEI

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EARLY 21TH CENTURY

COMPUTER AGE DISPLAY AND STYLING TECHNOLOGIES ENABLED

DESIGNERS TO CREATE VISUALLY

RICH INTERFACES,

LEADING TO SKEUOMORPHIC AND

STYLISTIC EXCESSES.

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REFLECTION

20th century architects

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WHATS NEXT IN 21ST CENTURY ?

20th century architects

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21ST century architects

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MONUMENTAL, FUTURISTIC, SCIENCE FICTIONAL ARCHITECTURE ?

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peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s space ?

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“If we challenge the past we shall learn that ‘styles’ no longer exist for us, that a style belonging to our own period has come about; and there has been a Revolution.” Le Corbusier 1927

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Urbanism as a Way of Life Louis Wirth The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 1. (Jul., 1938), pp. 1-24. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9602%28193807%2944%3A1%3C1%3AUAAWOL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B The American Journal of Sociology is currently published by The University of Chicago Press.

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T H E AMERICAN

JOURNAL O F SOCIOLOGY

VOLUME XLIV

JULY 1938 URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE LOUIS WIRTH

ABSTRACT The urbanization of the world, which is one of the most impressive facts of modern times, has wrought profound changes in virtually every phase of social life. The recency and rapidity of urbanization in the United States accounts for the acuteness of our urban problems and our lack of awareness of them. Despite the dominance of urbanism in the modern world we still lack a sociological definition of the city which would take adequate account of the fact that while the city is the characteristic locus of urbanism, the urban mode of life is not confined to cities. For sociological purposes a city is a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of heterogeneous individuals. Large numbers account for individual variability, the relative absence of intimate personal acquaintanceship, the segmentalization of human relations which are largely anonymous, superficial, and transitory, and associated characteristics. Density involves diversification and specialization, the coincidence of close physical contact and distant social relations, glaring contrasts, a complex pattern of segregation, the predominance of formal social control, and accentuated friction, among other phenomena. Heterogeneity tends to break down rigid social structures and to produce increased mobility, instability, and insecurity, and the affiliation of the individuals with a variety of intersecting and tangential social groups with a high rate of membership turnover. The pecuniary nexus tends to displace personal relations, and institutions tend to cater to mass rather than to individual requirements. The individual thus becomes effective only as he acts through organized groups. The complicated phenomena of urbanism may acquire unity and coherence if the sociological analysis proceeds in the light of such a body of theory. The empirical evidence concerning the ecology, the social organization, and the social psychology of the urban mode of life confirms the fruitfulness of this approach. I. THE CITY AND CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION

Just as the beginning of Western civilization is marked by the permanent settlement of formerly nomadic peoples in the Mediterranean basin, so the beginning of what is distinctively modern in our civilization is best signalized by the growth of great cities. Nowhere has mankind been farther removed from organic nature

THE AMERICAN JOURNAL O F SOCIOLOGY

than under the conditions of life characteristic of great cities. The contemporary world no longer presents a picture of small isolated groups of human beings scattered over a vast territory, as Sumner described primitive society.' The distinctive feature of the mode of living of man in the modern age is his concentration into gigantic aggregations around which cluster lesser centers and from which radiate the ideas and practices that we call civilization. The degree to which the contemporary world may be said to be "urban" is not fully or accurately measured by the proportion of the total population living in cities. The influences which cities exert upon the social life of man are greater than the ratio of the urban population would indicate, for the city is not only in ever larger degrees the dwelling-place and the workshop of modern man, but it is the initiating and controlling center of economic, political, and cultural life that has drawn the most remote parts of the world into its orbit and woven diverse areas, peoples, and activities into a cosmos. The growth of cities and the urbanization of the world is one of the most impressive facts of modern times. Although it is impossible to state precisely what proportion of the estimated total worldpopulation of approximately 1,800,000,000 is urban, 69.2 per cent of the total population of those countries that do distinguish between urban and rural areas is urban.' Considering the fact, moreover, that the world's population is very unevenly distributed and that the growth of cities is not very far advanced in some of the countries that have only recently been touched by industrialism, this average understates the extent to which urban concentration has proceeded in those countries where the impact of the industrial revolution has been more forceful and of less recent date. This shift from a rural to a predominantly urban society, which has taken place within the span of a single generation in such industrialized areas as the United States and Japan, has been accompanied by profound changes in virtually every phase of social life. I t is these changes and their ramifications that invite the attention of the sociologist to the study of the differences between the rural and the William Graham Sumner, Folkways (Boston, 1go6), p.

12.

9. .V.

Pearson, The Growth and Distribution of Populatiom (New York, 1935), p. 21 I.

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE

urban mode of living. The pursuit of this interest is an indispensable prerequisite for the comprehension and possible mastery of some of the most crucial contemporary problems of social life since it is likely to furnish one of the most revealing perspectives for the understanding of the ongoing changes in human nature and the social order.3 Since the city is the product of growth rather than of instantaneous creation, it is to be expected that the influences which it exerts upon the modes of life should not be able to wipe out completely the previously dominant modes of human association. To a greater or lesser degree, therefore, our social life bears the imprint of an earlier folk society, the characteristic modes of settlement of which were the farm, the manor, and the village. This historic influence is reinforced by the circumstance that the population of the city itself is in large measure recruited from the countryside, where a mode of life reminiscent of this earlier form of existence persists. Hence we should not expect to find abrupt and discontinuous variation between urban and rural types of personality. The city and the country may be regarded as two poles in reference to one or the other of which all human settlements tend to arrange themselves. In viewing urban-industrial and rural-folk society as ideal types of communities, we may obtain a perspective for the analysis of the basic models of human association as they appear in contemporary civilization. 11. A SOCIOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF T H E CITY

Despite the preponderant significance of the city in our civilization, however, our knowledge of the nature of urbanism and the process of urbanization is meager. Many attempts have indeed been made to isolate the distinguishing characteristics of urban life. Geographers, historians, economists, and political scientists have in3 Whereas rural life in the United States has for a long time been a subject of considerable interest on the part of governmental bureaus, the most notable case of a comprehensive report being that submitted by the Country Life Commission to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909,it is worthy of note that no equally comprehensive official inquiry-into urban life was undertaken until the establishment of a Research Committee on Urbanism of the National Resources Committee. (Cf. Our Cities: Their Role i n the National E ~ o n o m y[Washington: Government Printing Office, 19371.)

T H E AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

corporated the points of view of their respective disciplines into diverse definitions of the city. While in no sense intended to supersede these, the formulation of a sociological approach to the city may incidentally serve to call attention to the interrelations between them by emphasizing the peculiar characteristics of the city as a particular form of human association. A sociologically significant definition of the city seeks to select those elements of urbanism which mark it as a distinctive mode of human group life. The characterization of a community as urban on the basis of size alone is obviously arbitrary. I t is difficult to defend the present census definition which designates a community of 2,500 and above as urban and all others as rural. The situation would be the same if the criterion were 4,000, 8,000, ~o,ooo,25,000, or ~oo,ooopopulation, for although in the latter case we might feel that we were more nearly dealing with an urban aggregate than would be the case incommunities of lesser size, no deficition of urbanism can hope to be completely satisfying as long as numbers are regarded as the sole criterion. Moreover, it is not difficult to demonstrate that communities of less than the arbitrarily set number of inhabitants lying within the range of influence of metropolitan centers have greater claim to recognition as urban communities than do larger ones leading a more isolated existence in a predominantly rural area. Finally, it should be recognized that census definitions are unduly influenced by the fact that the city, statistically speaking, is always an administrative concept in that the corporate limits play a decisive role in delineating the urban area. Nowhere is this more clearly apparent than in the concentrations of population on the peripheries of great metropolitan centers which cross arbitrary administrative boundaries of city, county, state, and nation. As long as we identify urbanism with the physical entity of the city, viewing it merely as rigidly delimited in space, and proceed as if urban attributes abruptly ceased to be manifested beyond an arbitrary boundary line, we are not likely to arrive at any adequate coiiception of urbanism as a mode of life. The technological developments in transportation and communication which virtually mark a new epoch in human history have accentuated the role of cities as dominant elements in our civilization and have enormously ex-

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE

tended the urban mode of living beyond the confines of the city itself. The dominance of the city, especially of the great city, may be regarded as a consequence of the concentration in cities of industrial and commercial, financial and administrative facilities and activities, transportation and communication lines, and cultural and recreational equipment such as the press, radio stations, theaters, libraries, museums, concert halls, operas, hospitals, higher educational institutions, research and publishing centers, professional organizations, and religious and welfare institutions. Were it not for the attraction and suggestions that the city exerts through these instrumentalities upon the rural population, the differences between the rural and the urban modes of life would be even greater than they are. Urbanization no longer denotes merely the process by which persons are attracted to a place called the city and incorporated into its system of life. I t refers also to that cumulative accentuation of the characteristics distinctive of the mode of life which is associated with the growth of cities, and finally to the changes in the direction of modes of life recognized as urban which are apparent among people, wherever they may be, who have come under the spell of the influences which the city exerts by virtue of the power of its institutions and personalities operating through the means of communication and transportation. The shortcomings which attach to number of inhabitants as a criterion of urbanism apply for the most part to density of population as well. Whether we accept the density of ~ o , o o opersons per square mile as Mark Jefferson4 proposed, or 1,000, which Willcoxs preferred to regard as the criterion of urban settlements, it is clear that unless density is correlated with significant social characteristics it can furnish only an arbitrary basis for differentiating urban from rural communities. Since our census enumerates the night rather than the day population of an area, the locale of the most intensive urban life-the city center-generally has low population density, and the industrial and commercial areas of the city, which 4 "The Anthropogeography of Some Great Cities," Bzdl. American Geographical Society, X L I ( ~ g o g ) ,537-66. 5 Walter F. Willcox, "A Definition of 'City' in Terms of Density," in E. W. Burgess, The Urban Community (Chicago, 1926), p. I 19.

T H E AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

contain the most characteristic economic activities underlying urban society, would scarcely anywhere be truly urban if density were literally interpreted as a mark of urbanism. Nevertheless, the fact that the urban community is distinguished by a large aggregation and relatively dense concentration of population can scarcely be left out of account in a definition of the city. But these criteria must be seen as relative to the general cultural context in which cities arise and exist and are sociologically relevant only in so far as they operate as conditioning factors in social life. The same criticisms apply to such criteria as the occupation of the inhabitants, the existence of certain physical facilities, institutions, and forms of political organization. The question is not whether cities in our civilization or in others do exhibit these distinctive traits, but how potent they are in molding the character of social life into its specifically urban form. Nor in formulating a fertile definition can we afford to overlook the great variations between cities. By means of a typology of cities based upon size, location, age, and function, suchas we have undertaken to establish in our recent report to the National Resources C~rnmittee,~ we have found it feasible to array and classify urban communities ranging from struggling small towns to thriving world-metropolitan centers; from isolated trading-centers in the midst of agricultural regio;s to thriving world-ports and commercial and industrial conurbations. Such differences as these appear crucial because the social characteristics and influences of these different "cities" vary widely. A serviceable definition of urbanism should not only denote the essential characteristics which all cities-at least those in our culture-have in common, but should lend itself to the discovery of their variations. An industrial city will differ significantly in social respects from a commercial, mining, fishing, resort, university, and capital city. A one-industry city will present different sets of social characteristics from a multi-industry city, as will an industrially balanced from an imbalanced city, a suburb from a satellite, a residential suburb from an industrial suburb, a city within a metropolitan region from one lying outside, an old city from a new one, a

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE

southern city from a New England, a middle-western from a Pacific Coast city, a growing from a stable and from a dying city. A sociological definition must obviously be inclusive enough to comprise whatever essential characteristics these different types of cities have in common as social entities, but it obviously cannot be so detailed as to take account of all the variations implicit in the manifold classes sketched above. Presumably some of the characteristics of cities are more significant in conditioning the nature of urban life than others, and we may expect the outstanding features of the urban-social scene to vary in accordance with size, density, and differences in the functional type of cities. Moreover, we may infer that rural life will bear the imprint of urbanism in the measure that through contact and communication it comes under the influence of cities. I t may contribute to the clarity of the statements that follow to repeat that while the locus of urbanism as a mode of life is, of course, to be found characteristically in places which fulfil the requirements we shall set up as a definition of the city, urbanism is not confined to such localities but is manifest in varying degrees wherever the influences of the city reach. While urbanism, or that complex of traits which makes up the characteristic mode of life in cities, and urbanization, which denotes the development and extensions of these factors, are thus not exclusively found in settlements which are cities in the physical and demographic sense, they do, nevertheless, find their most pronounced expression in such areas, especially in metropolitan cities. In formulating a definition of the city it is necessary to exercise caution in order to avoid identifying urbanism as a way of life with any specific locally or historically conditioned cultural influences which, while they may significantly affect the specific character of the community, are not the essential determinants of its character as a city. I t is particularly important to call attention to the danger of confusing urbanism with industrialism and modern capitalism. The rise of cities in the modern world is undoubtedly not independent of the emergence of modern power-driven machine technology, mass production, and capitalistic enterprise. B'ut different as the cities of earlier epochs may have been by virtue of their development in a

THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

preindustrial and precapitalistic order from the great cities of today, they were, nevertheless, cities. For sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals. On the basis of the postulates which this minimal definition suggests, a theory of urbanism may be formulated in the light of existing knowledge concerning social groups. 111. A THEORY OF URBANISM

In the rich literature on the city we look in vain for a theory of urbanism presenting in a systematic fashion the available knowledge concerning the city as a social entity. We do indeed have excellent formulations of theories on such special problems as the growth of the city viewed as a historical trend and as a recurrent process,' and we have a wealth of literature presenting insights of sociological relevance and empirical studies offering detailed information on a variety of particular aspects of urban life. But despite the multiplication of research and textbooks on the city, we do not as yet have a comprehensive body of compendent hypotheses which may be derived from a set of postulates implicitly contained in a sociological definition of the city, and from our general sociological knowledge which may be substantiated through empirical research. The closest approximations to a systematic theory of urbanism that we have are to be found in a penetrating essay, "Die Stadt," by Max Weber,s and a memorable paper by Robert E. Park on "The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment."g But even these excellent contributions are far from constituting an ordered and coherent framework of theory upon which research might profitably proceed. In the pages that follow we shall seek to set forth a limited number of identifying characteristics of the city. Given these characteristics we shall then indicate what consequences or further characteristics follow from them in the light of general sociological theory and 7 See Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, et al., The City (Chicago, 1925), esp. chaps. ii and iii; Werner Sombart, "Stadtische Siedlung, Stadt," Handworterbz6ch der Soziologie, ed. Alfred Vierkandt (Stuttgart, 1931); see also bibliography. 8 Wirtschajt und Gesellschajt (Tiibingen, 1 ~ 2 5 )Part , 11, chap. viii, pp. 514-601. 9 Park, Burgess, et al., op. cit., chap, i.

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE

empirical research. We hope in this manner to arrive at the essential propositions comprising a theory of urbanism. Some of these propositions can be supported by a considerable body of already available research materials; others may be accepted as hypotheses for which a certain amount of presumptive evidence exists, but for which more ample and exact verification would be required. At least such a procedure will, it is hoped, show what in the way of systematic knowledge of the city we now have and what are the crucial and fruitful hypotheses for future research. The central problem of the sociologist of the city is to discover the forms of social action and organization that typically emerge in relatively permanent, compact settlements of large numbers of heterogeneous individuals. We must also infer that urbanism will assume its most characteristic and extreme form in the measure in which the conditions with which it is congruent are present. Thus the larger, the more densely populated, and the more heterogeneous a community, the more accentuated the characteristics associated with urbanism will be. I t should be recognized, however, that in the social world institutions and practices may be accepted and continued for reasons other than those that originally brought them into existence, and that accordingly the urban mode of life may be perpetuated under conditions quite foreign to those necessary for its origin. Some justification may be in order for the choice of the principal terms comprising our definition of the city. The attempt has been made to make it as inclusive and at the same time as denotative as possible without loading it with unnecessary assumptions. To say that large numbers are necessary to constitute a city means, of course, large numbers in relation to a restricted area or high density of settlement. There are, nevertheless, good reasons for treating large numbers and density as separate factors, since each may be connected with significantly different social consequences. Similarly the need for adding heterogeneity to numbers of population as a necessary and distinct criterion of urbanism might be questioned, since we should expect the range of differences to increase with numbers. In defense, it may be said that the city shows a kind and degree of heterogeneity af population which cannot be wholly ac-

THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

counted for by the law of large numbers or adequately represented by means of a normal distribution curve. Since the population of the city does not reproduce itself, it must recruit its migrants from other cities, the countryside, and-in this country until recentlyfrom other countries. The city has thus historically been the melting-pot of races, peoples, and cultures, and a most favorable breeding-ground of new biological and cultural hybrids. I t has not only tolerated but rewarded individual differences. I t has brought together people from the ends of the earth because they are different and thus useful to one another, rather than because they are homogeneous and like-minded.'" There are a number of sociological propositions concerning the relationship between (a) numbers of population, (b) density of settlement, (c) heterogeneity of inhabitants and group life, which can be formulated on the basis of observation and research. SIZE OF THE POPULATION AGGREGATE

Ever since Aristotle's Politics," it has been recognized that increasing the number of inhabitants in a settlement beyond a certain limit will affect the relationships between them and the character I0 The justification for including the term "permanent" in the definition may appear necessary. Our failure to give an extensive justification for this qualifying mark of the urban rests on the obvious fact that unless human settlements take a fairly permanent root in a locality the characteristics of urban life cannot arise, and conversely the living together of large numbers of heterogeneous individuals under dense conditions is not possible without the development of a more or less technological structure. I1 See esp. vii. 4. 4-14. Translated by B. Jowett, from which the following may be quoted : "To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too [A] state when small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled. . . composed of too few is not as a state ought to be, self-sufficing; when of too many, though self-sufficing in all mere necessaries, it is a nation and not a state, being almost incapable of constitutional government. For who can be the general of such a vast multitude, or who the herald, unless he have the voice of a Stentor? "A state then only begins to exist when it has attained a population sufficient for a good life in the political community: it may indeed somewhat exceed this number. But, as I was saying, there must be a limit. What should be the limit will be easily ascertained by experience. For both governors and governed have duties to perform; the special functions of a governor are to command and to judge. But if the citizens of a state are to judge and to distribute offices according to merit, then they must know each other's characters; where they do not possess this knowledge, both the election to

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE

of the city. Large numbers involve, as has been pointed out, a greater range of individual variation. Furthermore, the greater the number of individuals participating in a process of interaction, the greater is the potential differentiation between them. The personal traits, the occupations, the cultural life, and the ideas of the members of an urban community may, therefore, be expected to range between more widely separated poles than those of rural inhabitants. That such variations should give rise to the spatial segregation of individuals according to color, ethnic heritage, economic and social status, tastes and preferences, may readily be inferred. The bonds of kinship, of neighborliness, and the sentiments arising out of living together for generations under a common folk tradition are likely to be absent or, at best, relatively weak in an aggregate the members of which have such diverse origins and backgrounds. Under such circumstances competition and formal control mechanisms furnish the substitutes for the bonds of solidarity that are relied upon to hold a folk society together. Increase in the number of inhabitants of a community beyond a few hundred is bound to limit the possibility of each member of the community knowing all the others personally. Max Weber, in recognizing the social significance of this fact, pointed out that from a sociological point of view large numbers of inhabitants and density of settlement mean that the personal mutual acquaintanceship between the inhabitants which ordinarily inheres in a neighborhood is lacking.'The increase in numbers thus involves a changed character of the social relationships. As Simmel points out: [If] the unceasing external contact of numbers of persons in the city should be met by the same number of inner reactions as in the small town, in which one knows almost every person he meets and to each of whom he has a positive offices and the decision of lawsuits will go wrong. When the population is very large they are manifestly settled at haphazard, which clearly ought not to be. Besides, in an overpopulous state foreigners and metics will readily acquire the rights of citizens, for who will find them out? Clearly, then, the best limit of the population of a state is the largest number which suffices for the purposes of life, and can be taken in at a single view. Enough concerning the size of a city."

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relationship, one would be completely atomized internally and would fall into an unthinkable mental condition.^

The multiplication of persons in a state of interaction under conditions which make their contact as full personalities impossible produces that segmentalization of human relationships which has sometimes been seized upon by students of the mental life of the cities as an explanation for the "schizoid" character of urban personality. This is not to say that the urban inhabitants have fewer acquaintances than rural inhabitants, for the reverse may actually be true; it means rather that in relation to the number of people whom they see and with whom they rub elbows in the course of daily life, they know a smaller proportion, and of these they have less intensive knowledge. Characteristically, urbanites meet one another in highly segmental roles. They are, to be sure, dependent upon more people for the satisfactions of their life-needs than are rural people and thus are associated with a greater number of organized groups, but they are less dependent upon particular persons, and their dependence upon others is confined to a highly fractionalized aspect of the other's round of activity. This is essentially what is meant by saying that the city is characterized by secondary rather than primary contacts. The contacts of the city may indeed be face to face, but they are nevertheless impersonal, superficial, transitory, and segmental. The reserve, the indifference, and the blas6 outlook which urbanites manifest in their relationships may thus be regarded as devices for immunizing themselves against the personal claims and expectations of others. The superficiality, the anonymity, and the transitory character of urban-social relations make intelligible, also, the sophistication and the rationality generally ascribed to city-dwellers. Our acquaintances tend to stand in a relationship of utility to us in the sense that the role which each one plays in our life is overwhelmingly regarded as a means for the achievement of our own ends. Whereas, therefore, the individual gains, on the one hand, a certain degree of emancipation or freedom from the personal and emotional controls '3 Georg Simmel, "Die Grossstadte und das Geistesleben," Die Grosssfadt, ed. Theodor Petermann (Dresden, 1go3), pp. 187-206.

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of intimate groups, he loses, on the other hand, the spontaneous self-expression, the morale, and the sense of participation that comes with living in an integrated society. This constitutes essentially the state of anomie or the social void to which Durkheim alludes in attempting to account for the various forms of social disorganization in technological society. The segmental character and utilitarian accent of interpersonal relations in the city kind their institutional expression in the proliferation of specialized tasks which we see in their most developed form in the professions. The operations of the pecuniary nexus leads to predatory relationships, which tend to obstruct the efficient functioning of the social order unless checked by professional codes and occupational etiquette. The premium put upon utility and efficiency suggests the adaptability of the corporate device for the organization of enterprises in which individuals can engage only in groups. The advantage that the corporation has over the individual entrepreneur and the partnership in the urban-iiidustrial world derives not only from the possibility it affords of centralizing the resources of thousands of individuals or from the legal privilege of limited liability and perpetual succession, but from the fact that the corporation has no soul. The specialization of individuals, particularly in their occupations, can proceed only, as Adam Smith pointed out, upon the basis of an enlarged market, which in turn accentuates the division of labor. This enlarged market is only in part supplied by the city's hinterland; in large measure it is found among the large numbers that the city itself contains. The dominance of the city over the surrounding hinterland becomes explicable in terms of the division of labor which urban life occasions and promotes. The extreme degree of interdependence and the unstable equilibrium of urban life are closely associated with the division of labor and the specialization of occupations. This interdependence and instability is increased by the tendency of each city to specialize in those functions in which it has the greatest advantage. In a community composed of a larger number of individuals than can know one another intimately and can be assembled in one spot, it becomes necessary to communicate through indirect mediums and

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to articulate individual interests by a process of delegation. Typically in the city, interests are made effective through representation. The individual counts for little, but the voice of the representative is heard with a deference roughly proportional to the numbers for whom he speaks. While this characterization of urbanism, in so far as it derives from large numbers, does not by any means exhaust the sociological inferences that might be drawn from our knowledge of the relationship of the size of a group to the characteristic behavior of the members, for the sake of brevity the assertions made may serve to exemplify the sort of propositions that might be developed. DENSITY

As in the case of numbers, so in the case of concentration in limited space, certain consequences of relevance in sociological analysis of the city emerge. Of these only a few can be indicated. As Darwin pointed out for flora and fauna and as Durkheim14 noted in the case of human societies, an increase in numbers when area is held constant (i.e., an increase in density) tends to produce differentiation and specialization, since only in this way can the area support increased numbers. Density thus reinforces the effect of numbers in diversifying men and their activities and in increasing the complexity of the social structure. On the subjective side, as Simmel has suggested, the close physical contact of numerous individuals necessarily produces a shift in the mediums through which we orient ourselves to the urban milieu, especially to our fellow-men. Typically, our physical contacts are close but our social contacts are distant. The urban world puts a premium on visual recognition. We see the uniform which denotes the role of the functionaries and are oblivious to the personal eccentricities that are hidden behind the uniform. We tend to acquire and develop a sensitivity to a world of artefacts and become progressively farther removed from the world of nature. We are exposed to glaring contrasts between splendor and squalor, between riches and poverty, intelligence and ignorance, order and chaos. The competition for space is great, so that each area gen'4

E. Durkheim, De la division d t travail ~ social (Paris, 1g32), p.

248.

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erally tends to be put to the use which yields the greatest economic return. Place of work tends to become dissociated from place of residence, for the proximity of industrial and commercial establishments makes an area both economically and socially undesirable for residential purposes. Density, land values, rentals, accessibility, healthfulness, prestige, aesthetic consideration, absence of nuisances such as noise, smoke, and dirt determine the desirability of various areas of the city as places of settlement for different sections of the population. Place and nature of work, income, racial and ethnic characteristics, social status, custom, habit, taste, preference, and prejudice are among the significant factors in accordance with which the urban population is selected and distributed into more or less distinct settlements. Diverse population elements inhabiting a compact settlement thus tend to become segregated from one another in the degree in which their requirements and modes of life are incompatible with one another and in the measure in which they are antagonistic to one another. Similarly, persons of homogeneous status and needs unwittingly drift into, consciously select, or are forced by circumstances into, the same area. The different parts of the city thus acquire specialized functions. The city consequently tends to resemble a mosaic of social worlds in which the transition from one to the other is abrupt. The juxtaposition of divergent personalities and modes of life tends to produce a relativistic perspective and a sense of toleration of differences which may be regarded as prerequisites for rationality and which lead toward the secularization of life.'S The close living together and working together of individuals who have no sentimental and emotional ties foster a spirit of competition, aggrandizement, and mutual exploitation. To counteract irresponsibility and potential disorder, formal controls tend to be resorted to. Without rigid adherence to predictable routines a large compact 15 The extent to which the segregation of the population into distinct ecological and cultural areas and the resulting social attitude of tolerance, rationality, and secular mentality are functions of density as distinguished from heterogeneity is difficult to determine. Most likely we are dealing here with phenomena which are consequences of the simultaneous operation of both factors.

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society would scarcely be able to maintain itself. The clock and the traffic signal are symbolic of the basis of our social order in the urban world. Frequent close physical contact, coupled with great social distance, accentuates the reserve of unattached individuals toward one another and, unless compensated for by other opportunities for response, gives rise to loneliness. The necessary frequent movement of great numbers of individuals in a congested habitat gives occasion to friction and irritation. Nervous tensions which derive from such personal frustrations are accentuated by the rapid tempo and the complicated technology under which life in dense areas must be lived. HETEROGENEITY

The social interaction among such a variety of personality types in the urban milieu tends to break down the rigidity of caste lines and to complicate the class structure, and thus induces a more ramified and differentiated framework of social stratification than is found in more integrated societies. The heightened mobility of the individual, which brings him within the range of stimulation by a great number of diverse individuals and subjects him to fluctuating status in the differentiated social groups that compose the social structure of the city, tends toward the acceptance of instability and insecurity in the world a t large as a norm. This fact helps to account, too, for the sophistication and cosmopolitanism of the urbanite. No single group has the undivided allegiance of the individual. The groups with which he is affiliated do not lend themselves readily to a simple hierarchical arrangement. By virtue of his different interests arising out of different aspects of social life, the individual acquires membership in widely divergent groups, each of which functions only with reference to a single segment of his personality. Nor do these groups easily permit of a concentric arrangement so that the narrower ones fall within the circumference of the more inclusive ones, as is more likely to be the case in the rural community or in primitive societies. Rather the groups with which the person typically is affiliated are tangential to each other or intersect in highly variable fashion. Partly as a result of the physical footlooseness of the population and partly as a result of their social mobility, the turnover in group

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membership generally is rapid. Place of residence, place and character of employment, income and interests fluctuate, and the task of holding organizations together and maintaining and promoting intimate and lasting acquaintanceship between the members is difficult. This applies strikingly to the local areas within the city into which persons become segregated more by virtue of differences in race, language, income, and social status, than through choice or positive attraction to people like themselves. Overwhelmingly the city-dweller is not a home-owner, and since a transitory habitat does not generate binding traditions and sentiments, only rarely is he truly a neighbor. There is little opportunity for the individual to obtain a conception of the city as a whole or to survey his place in the total scheme. Consequently he finds it difficult to determine what is to his own "best interests" and to decide between the issues and leaders presented to him by the agencies of mass suggestion. Individuals who are thus detached from the organized bodies which integrate society comprise the fluid masses that make collective behavior in the urban community so unpredictable and hence so problematical. Although the city, through the recruitment of variant types to perform its diverse tasks and the accentuation of their uniqueness through competition and the premium upon eccentricity, novelty, efficient performance, and inventiveness, produces a highly differentiated population, it also exercises a leveling influence. Wherever large numbers of differently constituted individuals congregate, the process of depersonalization also enters. This leveling tendency inheres in part in the economic basis of the city. The development of large cities, at least in the modern age, was largely dependent upon the concentrative force of steam. The rise of the factory made possible mass production for an impersonal market. The fullest exploitation of the possibilities of the division of labor and mass production, however, is possible only with standardization of processes and products. A money economy goes hand in hand with such a system of production. Progressively as cities have developed upon a background of this system of production, the pecuniary nexus which implies the purchasability of services and things has displaced personal relations as the basis of association. Individuality under these

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circumstances must be replaced by categories. When large numbers have to make common use of facilities and institutions, an arrangement must be made to adjust the facilities and institutions to the needs of the average person rather than to those of particular individuals. The services of the public utilities, of the recreational, educational, and cultural institutions must be adjusted to mass requirements. Similarly, the cultural institutions, such as the schools, the movies, the radio, and the newspapers, by virtue of their mass clientele, must necessarily operate as leveling influences. The political process as it appears in urban life could not be understood without taking account of the mass appeals made through modern propaganda techniques. If the individual would participate at all in the social, political, and economic life of the city, he must subordinate some of his individuality to the demands of the larger community and in that measure immerse himself in mass movements. IV. T H E RELATION BETWEEN A THEORY OF URBANISM

AND SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

By means of a body of theory such as that illustratively sketched above, the complicated and many-sided phenomena of urbanism may be analyzed in terms of a limited number of basic categories. The sociological approach to the city thus acquires an essential unity and coherence enabling the empirical investigator not merely to focus more distinctly upon the problems and processes that properly fall in his province but also to treat his subject matter in a more integrated and systematic fashion. A few typical findings of empirical research in the field of urbanism, with special reference to the United States, may be indicated to substantiate the theoretical propositions set forth in the preceding pages, and some of the crucial problems for further study may be outlined. On the basis of the three variables, number, density of settlenient, and degree of heterogeneity, of the urban population, it appears possible to explain the characteristics of urban life and to account for the differences between cities of various sizes and types. Urbanism as a characteristic mode of life may be approached empirically from three interrelated perspectives: (I) as a physical structure comprising a population base, a technology, and an eco-

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logical order; (2) as a system of social organization involving a characteristic social structure, a series of social institutions, and a typical pattern of social relationships; and (3) as a set of attitudes and ideas, and a constellation of personalities engaging in typical forms of collective behavior and subject to characteristic mechanisms of social control. URBANISM I N ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Since in the case of physical structure and ecological processes we are able to operate with fairly objective indices, it becomes possible to arrive at quite precise and generally quantitative results. The dominance of the city over its hinterland becomes explicable through the functional characteristics of the city which derive in large measure from the effect of numbers and density. Many of the technical facilities and the skills and organizations to which urban life gives rise can grow and prosper only in cities where the demand is sufficiently great. The nature and scope of the services rendered by these organizations and institutions and the advantage which they enjoy over the less developed facilities of smaller towns enhances the dominance of the city and the dependence of ever wider regions upon the central metropolis. The urban-population composition shows the operation of selective and differentiating factors. Cities contain a larger proportion of persons in the prime of life than rural areas which contain more old and very young people. In this, as in so many other respects, the larger the city the more this specific characteristic of urbanism is apparent. With the exception of the largest cities, dhich have attracted the bulk of the foreign-born males, and a few other special types of cities, women predominate numerically over men. The heterogeneity of the urban population is further indicated along racial and ethnic lines. The foreign born and their children constitute nearly two-thirds of all the inhabitants of cities of one million and over. Their proportion in the urban population declines as the size of the city decreases, until in the rural areas they comprise only about one-sixth of the total population. The larger cities similarly have attracted more Negroes and other racial groups than have the smaller communities. Considering that age, sex, race, and ethnic

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origin are associated with other factors such as occupation and interest, it becomes clear that one major characteristic of the urbandweller is his dissimilarity from his fellows. Never before have such large masses of people of diverse traits as we find in our cities been thrown together into such close physical contact as in the great cities of America. Cities generally, and American cities in particular, comprise a motley of peoples and cultures, of highly differentiated modes of life between which there often is only the faintest communication, the great'est indifference and the broadest tolerance, occasionally bitter strife, but always the sharpest contrast. The failure of the urban population to reproduce itself appears to be a biological consequence of a combination of factors in the complex of urban life, and the decline in the birth-rate generally may be regarded as one of the most significant signs of the urbanization of the Western world. While the proportion of deaths in cities is slightly greater than in the country, the outstanding difference between the failure of present-day cities to maintain their population and that of cities of the past is that in former times it was due to the exceedingly high death-rates in cities, whereas today, since cities have become more livable from a health standpoint, it is due to low birth-rates. These biological characteristics of the urban population are significant sociologically, not merely because they reflect the urban mode of existence but also because they condition the growth and future dominance of cities and their basic social organization. Since cities are the consumers rather than the producers of men, the value of human life and the social estimation of the personality will not be unaffected by the balance between births and deaths. The pattern of land use, of land values, rentals, and ownership, the nature and functioning of the physical structures, of housing, of transportation and communication facilities, of public utilities-these and many other phases of the physical mechanism of the city are not isolated phenomena unrelated to the city as a social entity, but are affected by and affect the urban mode of life. URBANISM AS A FORM O F SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

The distinctive features of the urban mode of life have often been described sociologically as consisting of the substitution of sec-

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ondary for primary contacts, the weakening of bonds of kinship, and the declining social significance of the family, the disappearance of the neighborhood, and the undermining of the traditional basis of social solidarity. All these phenomena can be substantially verified through objective indices. Thus, for instance, the low and declining urban-reproduction rates suggest that the city is not conducive to the traditional type of family life, including the rearing of children and the maintenance of the home as the locus of a whole round of vital activities. The transfer of industrial, educational, and recreational activities to specialized institutions outside the home has deprived the family of some of its most characteristic historical functions. In cities mothers are more likely to be employed, lodgers are more frequently part of the household, marriage tends to be postponed, and the proportion of single and unattached people is greater. Families are smaller and more frequently without children than in the country. The family as a unit of social life is emancipated from the larger kinship group characteristic of the country, and the individual members pursue their own diverging interests in their vocational, educational, religious, recreational, and political life. Such functions as the maintenance of health, the methods of alleviating the hardships associated with personal and social insecurity, the provisions for education, recreation, and cultural advancement have given rise to highly specialized institutions on a community-wide, statewide, or even national basis. The same factors which have brought about greater personal insecurity also underlie the wider contrasts between individuals to be found in the urban world. While the city has broken down the rigid caste lines of preindustrial society, it has sharpened and differentiated income and status groups. Generally, a larger proportion of the adult-urban population is gainfully employed than is the case with the adultrural population. The white-collar class, comprising those employed in trade, in clerical, and in professional work, are proportionately more numerous in large cities and in metropolitan centers and in smaller towns than in the country. On the whole, the city discourages an economic life in which the individual in time of crisis has a basis of subsistence to fall back

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upon, and it discourages self-employment. While incomes of city people are on the average higher than those of country people, the cost of living seems to be higher in the larger cities. Home ownership involves greater burdens and is rarer. Rents are higher and absorb a larger proportion of the income. Although the urbandweller has the benefit of many communal services, he spends a large proportion of his income for such items as recreation and advancement and a smaller proportion for food. What the communal services do not furnish the urbanite must purchase, and there is virtually no human need which has remained unexploited by commercialism. Catering to thrills and furnishing means of escape from drudgery, monotony, and routine thus become one of the major functions of urban recreation, which at its best furnishes means for creative self-expression and spontaneous group association, but which more typically in the urban world results in passive spectatorism on the one hand, or sensational record-smashing feats on the other. Being reduced to a stage of virtual impotence as an individual, the urbanite is bound to exert himself by joining with others of similar interest into organized groups to obtain his ends. This results in the enormous multiplication of voluntary organizations directed toward as great a variety of objectives as there are human needs and interests. While on the one hand the traditional ties of human association are weakened, urban existence involves a much greater degree of interdependence between man and man and a more complicated, fragile, and volatile form of mutual interrelations over many phases of which the individual as such can exert scarcely any control. Frequently there is only the most tenuous relationship between the economic position or other basic factors that determine the individual's existence in the urban world and the voluntary groups with which he is affiliated. While in a primitive and in a rural society it is generally possible to predict on the basis of a few known factors who will belong to what and who will associate with whom in almost every relationship of life, in the city we can only project the general pattern of group formation and affiliation, and this pattern will display many incongruities and contradictions.

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URBAN PERSONALITY AND COLLECTIVE BEIIAVIOR

I t is largely through the activities of the voluntary groups, be their objectives economic, political, educational, religious, recreational, or cultural, that the urbanite expresses and develops his personality, acquires status, and is able to carry on the round of activities that constitute his life-career. I t may easily be inferred, however, that the organizational framework which these highly differentiated functions call into being does not of itself insure the consistency and integrity of the personalities whose interests it enlists. Personal disorganization, mental breakdown, suicide, delinquency, crime, corruption, and disorder might be expected under these circumstances to be more prevalent in the urban than in the rural community. This has been confirmed in so far as comparable indices are available; but the mechanisms underlying these phenomena require further analysis. Since for most group purposes it is impossible in the city to appeal individually to the large number of discrete and differentiated individuals, and since it is only through the organizations to which men belong that their interests and resources can be enlisted for a collective cause, it may be inferred that social control in the city should typically proceed through formally organized groups. I t follows, too, that the masses of men in the city are subject to manipulation by symbols and stereotypes managed by individuals working from afar or operating invisibly behind the scenes through their control of the instruments of communication. Self-government either in the economic, the political, or the cultural realm is under these circumstances reduced to a mere figure of speech or, at best, is subject to the unstable equilibrium of pressure groups. In view of the ineffectiveness of actual kinship ties we create fictional kinship groups. In the face of the disappearance of the territorial unit as a basis of social solidarity we create interest units. Meanwhile the city as a community resolves itself into a series of tenuous segmental relationships superimposed upon a territorial base with a definite center but without a definite periphery and upon a division of labor which far transcends the immediate locality and is world-wide in scope. The larger the number of persons in a state of interaction with one another the lower is the level of communication and the greater is

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the tendency for communication to proceed oil an elementary level, i.e., on the basis of those things which are assumed to be conlmon or to be of interest to all. I t is obviously, therefore, to the emerging trends in the communication system and to the production and distribution technology that has come into existence with modern civilization that we must look for the symptoms which will indicate the probable future development of urbanism as a mode of social life. The direction of the ongoing changes in urbanism will for good or ill transform not only the city but the world. Some of the more basic of these factors and processes and the possibilities of their direction and control invite further detailed study. I t is only in so far as the sociologist has a clear conception of the city as a social entity and a workable theory of urbanism that he can hope to develop a unified body of reliable knowledge, which what passes as "urban sociology" is certainly not a t the present time. By taking his point of departure from a theory of urbanism such as that sketched in the foregoing pages to be elaborated, tested, and revised in the light of further analysis and empirical research, it is to be hoped that the criteria of relevance and validity of factual data can be determined. The miscellaneous assortment of disconnected information which has hitherto found its way into sociological treatises on the city may thus be sifted and incorporated into a coherent body of knowledge. Incidentally, only by means of some such theory will the sociologist escape the futile practice of voicing in the name of sociological science a variety of often unsupportable judgments concerning such problems as poverty, housing, city-planning, sanitation, municipal administration, policing, marketing, transportation, and other technical issues. While the sociologist cannot solve any of these practical problems-at least not by himself-he may, if he discovers his proper function, have an important contribution to make to their comprehension and solution. The prospects for doing this are brightest through a general, theoretical, rather than through an ad hoc approach. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903) in Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, eds. The Blackwell City Reader. Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002.

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Co ntent_store/Sample_chapter/0631225137/Bridge.pdf

Chapter 1

The Metropolis and Mental Life Georg Simmel

The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life. This antagonism represents the most modern form of the conflict which primitive man must carry on with nature for his own bodily existence. The eighteenth century may have called for liberation from all the ties which grew up historically in politics, in religion, in morality and in economics in order to permit the original natural virtue of man, which is equal in everyone, to develop without inhibition; the nineteenth century may have sought to promote, in addition to man's freedom, his individuality (which is connected with the division of labour) and his achievements which make him unique and indispensable but which at the same time make him so much the more dependent on the complementary activity of others; Nietzsche may have seen the relentless struggle of the individual as the prerequisite for his full development, while socialism found the same thing in the suppression of all competition ± but in each of these the same fundamental motive was at work, namely the resistance of the individual to being levelled, swallowed up in the socialtechnological mechanism. When one inquires about the products of the specifically

modern aspects of contemporary life with reference to their inner meaning ± when, so to speak, one examines the body of culture with reference to the soul, as I am to do concerning the metropolis today ± the answer will require the investigation of the relationship which such a social structure promotes between the individual aspects of life and those which transcend the existence of single individuals. It will require the investigation of the adaptations made by the personality in its adjustment to the forces that lie outside of it. The psychological foundation, upon which the metropolitan individuality is erected, is the intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli. Man is a creature whose existence is dependent on differences, i.e. his mind is stimulated by the difference between present impressions and those which have preceded. Lasting impressions, the slightness in their differences, the habituated regularity of their course and contrasts between them, consume, so to speak, less mental energy than the rapid telescoping of changing images, pronounced differences within what is grasped at a single glance, and the unexpectedness of violent stimuli. To the extent that the metropolis creates these psychological conditions ± with every crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social

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life ± it creates in the sensory foundations of mental life, and in the degree of awareness necessitated by our organization as creatures dependent on differences, a deep contrast with the slower, more habitual, more smoothly flowing rhythm of the sensorymental phase of small town and rural existence. Thereby the essentially intellectualistic character of the mental life of the metropolis becomes intelligible as over against that of the small town which rests more on feelings and emotional relationships. These latter are rooted in the unconscious levels of the mind and develop most readily in the steady equilibrium of unbroken customs. The locus of reason, on the other hand, is in the lucid, conscious upper strata of the mind and it is the most adaptable of our inner forces. In order to adjust itself to the shifts and contradictions in events, it does not require the disturbances and inner upheavals which are the only means whereby more conservative personalities are able to adapt themselves to the same rhythm of events. Thus the metropolitan type ± which naturally takes on a thousand individual modifications ± creates a protective organ for itself against the profound disruption with which the fluctuations and discontinuities of the external milieu threaten it. Instead of reacting emotionally, the metropolitan type reacts primarily in a rational manner, thus creating a mental predominance through the intensification of consciousness, which in turn is caused by it. Thus the reaction of the metropolitan person to those events is moved to a sphere of mental activity which is least sensitive and which is furthest removed from the depths of the personality. This intellectualistic quality which is thus recognized as a protection of the inner life against the domination of the metropolis, becomes ramified into numerous specific phenomena. The metropolis has always been the seat of money economy because the many-sidedness and concentration of commercial activity have given the medium of exchange an importance which it could not have acquired in the commercial aspects of rural life. But money econ-

omy and the domination of the intellect stand in the closest relationship to one another. They have in common a purely matter-of-fact attitude in the treatment of persons and things in which a formal justice is often combined with an unrelenting hardness. The purely intellectualistic person is indifferent to all things personal because, out of them, relationships and reactions develop which are not to be completely understood by purely rational methods ± just as the unique element in events never enters into the principle of money. Money is concerned only with what is common to all, i.e. with the exchange value which reduces all quality and individuality to a purely quantitative level. All emotional relationships between persons rest on their individuality, whereas intellectual relationships deal with persons as with numbers, that is, as with elements which, in themselves, are indifferent, but which are of interest only insofar as they offer something objectively perceivable. It is in this very manner that the inhabitant of the metropolis reckons with his merchant, his customer and with his servant, and frequently with the persons with whom he is thrown into obligatory association. These relationships stand in distinct contrast with the nature of the smaller circle in which the inevitable knowledge of individual characteristics produces, with an equal inevitability, an emotional tone in conduct, a sphere which is beyond the mere objective weighting of tasks performed and payments made. What is essential here as regards the economic-psychological aspect of the problem is that in less advanced cultures production was for the customer who ordered the product so that the producer and the purchaser knew one another. The modern city, however, is supplied almost exclusively by production for the market, that is, for entirely unknown purchasers who never appear in the actual field of vision of the producers themselves. Thereby, the interests of each party acquire a relentless matter-of-factness, and its rationally calculated economic egoism need not fear any divergence from its set path because of

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the imponderability of personal relationships. This is all the more the case in the money economy which dominates the metropolis in which the last remnants of domestic production and direct barter of goods have been eradicated and in which the amount of production on direct personal order is reduced daily. Furthermore, this psychological intellectualistic attitude and the money economy are in such close integration that no one is able to say whether it was the former that effected the latter or vice versa. What is certain is only that the form of life in the metropolis is the soil which nourishes this interaction most fruitfully, a point which I shall attempt to demonstrate only with the statement of the most outstanding English constitutional historian to the effect that through the entire course of English history London has never acted as the heart of England but often as its intellect and always as its money bag. In certain apparently insignificant characters or traits of the most external aspects of life are to be found a number of characteristic mental tendencies. The modern mind has become more and more a calculating one. The calculating exactness of practical life which has resulted from a money economy corresponds to the ideal of natural science, namely that of transforming the world into an arithmetical problem and of fixing every one of its parts in a mathematical formula. It has been money economy which has thus filled the daily life of so many people with weighing, calculating, enumerating and the reduction of qualitative values to quantitative terms. Because of the character of calculability which money has there has come into the relationships of the elements of life a precision and a degree of certainty in the definition of the equalities and inequalities and an unambiguousness in agreements and arrangements, just as externally this precision has been brought about through the general diffusion of pocket watches. It is, however, the conditions of the metropolis which are cause as well as effect for this essential characteristic. The relationships and con-

cerns of the typical metropolitan resident are so manifold and complex that, especially as a result of the agglomeration of so many persons with such differentiated interests, their relationships and activities intertwine with one another into a manymembered organism. In view of this fact, the lack of the most exact punctuality in promises and performances would cause the whole to break down into an inextricable chaos. If all the watches in Berlin suddenly went wrong in different ways even only as much as an hour, its entire economic and commercial life would be derailed for some time. Even though this may seem more superficial in its significance, it transpires that the magnitude of distances results in making all waiting and the breaking of appointments an ill-afforded waste of time. For this reason the technique of metropolitan life in general is not conceivable without all of its activities and reciprocal relationships being organized and coordinated in the most punctual way into a firmly fixed framework of time which transcends all subjective elements. But here too there emerge those conclusions which are in general the whole task of this discussion, namely, that every event, however restricted to this superficial level it may appear, comes immediately into contact with the depths of the soul, and that the most banal externalities are, in the last analysis, bound up with the final decisions concerning the meaning and the style of life. Punctuality, calculability and exactness, which are required by the complications and extensiveness of metropolitan life, are not only most intimately connected with its capitalistic and intellectualistic character but also colour the content of life and are conductive to the exclusion of those irrational, instinctive, sovereign human traits and impulses which originally seek to determine the form of life from within instead of receiving it from the outside in a general, schematically precise form. Even though those lives which are autonomous and characterized by these vital impulses are not entirely impossible in the city, they are, none the less, opposed

GEORG SIMMEL

to it in abstracto. It is in the light of this that we can explain the passionate hatred of personalities like Ruskin and Nietzsche for the metropolis ± personalities who found the value of life only in unschematized individual expressions which cannot be reduced to exact equivalents and in whom, on that account, there flowed from the same source as did that hatred, the hatred of the money economy and of the intellectualism of existence. The same factors which, in the exactness and the minute precision of the form of life, have coalesced into a structure of the highest impersonality, have on the other hand, an influence in a highly personal direction. There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which is so unconditionally reserved to the city as the blaseÂ outlook. It is at first the consequence of those rapidly shifting stimulations of the nerves which are thrown together in all their contrasts and from which it seems to us the intensification of metropolitan intellectuality seems to be derived. On that account it is not likely that stupid persons who have been hitherto intellectually dead will be blaseÂ. Just as an immoderately sensuous life makes one blaseÂ because it stimulates the nerves to their utmost reactivity until they finally can no longer produce any reaction at all, so, less harmful stimuli, through the rapidity and the contradictoriness of their shifts, force the nerves to make such violent responses, tear them about so brutally that they exhaust their last reserves of strength and, remaining in the same milieu, do not have time for new reserves to form. This incapacity to react to new stimulations with the required amount of energy constitutes in fact that blaseÂ attitude which every child of a large city evinces when compared with the products of the more peaceful and more stable milieu. Combined with this physiological source of the blaseÂ metropolitan attitude there is another, which derives from a money economy. The essence of the blaseÂ attitude is an indifference toward the distinctions between things. Not in the sense that they are not perceived, as is the case of mental

dullness, but rather that the meaning and the value of the distinctions between things, and therewith of the things themselves, are experienced as meaningless. They appear to the blaseÂ person in a homogeneous, flat and grey colour with no one of them worthy of being preferred to another. This psychic mood is the correct subjective reflection of a complete money economy to the extent that money takes the place of all the manifoldness of things and expresses all qualitative distinctions between them in the distinction of how much. To the extent that money, with its colourlessness and its indifferent quality, can become a common denominator of all values, it becomes the frightful leveller ± it hollows out the core of things, their peculiarities, their specific values and their uniqueness and incomparability in a way which is beyond repair. They all float with the same specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money. They all rest on the same level and are distinguished only by their amounts. In individual cases this colouring, or rather this de-colouring of things, through their equation with money, may be imperceptibly small. In the relationship, however, which the wealthy person has to objects which can be bought for money, perhaps indeed in the total character which, for this reason, public opinion now recognizes in these objects, it takes on very considerable proportions. This is why the metropolis is the seat of commerce and it is in it that the purchasability of things appears in quite a different aspect than in simpler economies. It is also the peculiar seat of the blaseÂ attitude. In it is brought to a peak, in a certain way, that achievement in the concentration of purchasable things which stimulates the individual to the highest degree of nervous energy. Through the mere quantitative intensification of the same conditions this achievement is transformed into its opposite, into this peculiar adaptive phenomenon ± the blaseÂ attitude ± in which the nerves reveal their final possibility of adjusting themselves to the content and the form of metropolitan life by renouncing the response to them. We see that the self-

THE METROPOLIS AND MENTAL LIFE

preservation of certain types of personalities is obtained at the cost of devaluing the entire objective world, ending inevitably in dragging the personality downward into a feeling of its own valuelessness. Whereas the subject of this form of existence must come to terms with it for himself, his self-preservation in the face of the great city requires of him a no less negative type of social conduct. The mental attitude of the people of the metropolis to one another may be designated formally as one of reserve. If the unceasing external contact of numbers of persons in the city should be met by the same number of inner reactions as in the small town, in which one knows almost every person he meets and to each of whom he has a positive relationship, one would be completely atomized internally and would fall into an unthinkable mental condition. Partly this psychological circumstance and partly the privilege of suspicion which we have in the face of the elements of metropolitan life (which are constantly touching one another in fleeting contact) necessitates in us that reserve, in consequence of which we do not know by sight neighbours of years standing and which permits us to appear to small-town folk so often as cold and uncongenial. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, the inner side of this external reserve is not only indifference but more frequently than we believe, it is a slight aversion, a mutual strangeness and repulsion which, in a close contact which has arisen any way whatever, can break out into hatred and conflict. The entire inner organization of such a type of extended commercial life rests on an extremely varied structure of sympathies, indifferences and aversions of the briefest as well as of the most enduring sort. This sphere of indifference is, for this reason, not as great as it seems superficially. Our minds respond, with some definite feeling, to almost every impression emanating from another person. The unconsciousness, the transitoriness and the shift of these feelings seem to raise them only into indifference. Actually this latter would be unnatural to us as immersion into a chaos of unwished-for

suggestions would be unbearable. From these two typical dangers of metropolitan life we are saved by antipathy which is the latent adumbration of actual antagonism since it brings about the sort of distantiation and deflection without which this type of life could not be carried on at all. Its extent and its mixture, the rhythm of its emergence and disappearance, the forms in which it is adequate Âą these constitute, with the simplified motives (in the narrower sense) an inseparable totality of the form of metropolitan life. What appears here directly as dissociation is in reality only one of the elementary forms of socialization. This reserve with its overtone of concealed aversion appears once more, however, as the form or the wrappings of a much more general psychic trait of the metropolis. It assures the individual of a type and degree of personal freedom to which there is no analogy in other circumstances. It has its roots in one of the great developmental tendencies of social life as a whole; in one of the few for which an approximately exhaustive formula can be discovered. The most elementary stage of social organization which is to be found historically, as well as in the present, is this: a relatively small circle almost entirely closed against neighbouring foreign or otherwise antagonistic groups but which has however within itself such a narrow cohesion that the individual member has only a very slight area for the development of his own qualities and for free activity for which he himself is responsible. Political and familial groups began in this way as do political and religious communities; the self-preservation of very young associations requires a rigorous setting of boundaries and a centripetal unity and for that reason it cannot give room to freedom and the peculiarities of inner and external development of the individual. From this stage social evolution proceeds simultaneously in two divergent but none the less corresponding directions. In the measure that the group grows numerically, spatially, and in the meaningful content of life, its immediate inner unity and the definiteness of its

GEORG SIMMEL

original demarcation against others are weakened and rendered mild by reciprocal interactions and interconnections. And at the same time the individual gains a freedom of movement far beyond the first jealous delimitation, and gains also a peculiarity and individuality to which the division of labour in groups, which have become larger, gives both occasion and necessity. However much the particular conditions and forces of the individual situation might modify the general scheme, the state and Christianity, guilds and political parties and innumerable other groups have developed in accord with this formula. This tendency seems to me, however, to be quite clearly recognizable also in the development of individuality within the framework of city life. Small town life in antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages imposed such limits upon the movements of the individual in his relationships with the outside world and on his inner independence and differentiation that the modern person could not even breathe under such conditions. Even today the city dweller who is placed in a small town feels a type of narrowness which is very similar. The smaller the circle which forms our environment and the more limited the relationships which have the possibility of transcending the boundaries, the more anxiously the narrow community watches over the deeds, the conduct of life and the attitudes of the individual and the more will a quantitative and qualitative individuality tend to pass beyond the boundaries of such a community. The ancient polis seems in this regard to have had a character of a small town. The incessant threat against its existence by enemies from near and far brought about that stern cohesion in political and military matters, that supervision of the citizen by other citizens, and that jealousy of the whole toward the individual whose own private life was repressed to such an extent that he could compensate himself only by acting as a despot in his own household. The tremendous agitation and excitement, and the unique colourfulness of Athenian life is perhaps explained by the fact that a

people of incomparably individualized personalities were in constant struggle against the incessant inner and external oppression of a de-individualizing small town. This created an atmosphere of tension in which the weaker were held down and the stronger were impelled to the most passionate type of self-protection. And with this there blossomed in Athens, what, without being able to define it exactly, must be designated as `the general human character' in the intellectual development of our species. For the correlation, the factual as well as the historical validity of which we are here maintaining, is that the broadest and the most general contents and forms of life are intimately bound up with the most individual ones. Both have a common prehistory and also common enemies in the narrow formations and groupings, whose striving for selfpreservation set them in conflict with the broad and general on the outside, as well as the freely mobile and individual on the inside. Just as in feudal times the `free' man was he who stood under the law of the land, that is, under the law of the largest social unit, but he was unfree who derived his legal rights only from the narrow circle of a feudal community Âą so today in an intellectualized and refined sense the citizen of the metropolis is `free' in contrast with the trivialities and prejudices which bind the small town person. The mutual reserve and indifference, and the intellectual conditions of life in large social units are never more sharply appreciated in their significance for the independence of the individual than in the dense crowds of the metropolis, because the bodily closeness and lack of space make intellectual distance really perceivable for the first time. It is obviously only the obverse of this freedom that, under certain circumstances, one never feels as lonely and as deserted as in this metropolitan crush of persons. For here, as elsewhere, it is by no means necessary that the freedom of man reflect itself in his emotional life only as a pleasant experience. It is not only the immediate size of the area and population which, on the basis of world-historical correlation between the

THE METROPOLIS AND MENTAL LIFE

increase in the size of the social unit and the degree of personal inner and outer freedom, makes the metropolis the locus of this condition. It is rather in transcending this purely tangible extensiveness that the metropolis also becomes the seat of cosmopolitanism. Comparable with the form of the development of wealth ± (beyond a certain point property increases in ever more rapid progression as out of its own inner being) ± the individual's horizon is enlarged. In the same way, economic, personal and intellectual relations in the city (which are its ideal reflection) grow in a geometrical progression as soon as, for the first time, a certain limit has been passed. Every dynamic extension becomes a preparation not only for a similar extension but rather for a larger one, and from every thread which is spun out of it there continue, growing as out of themselves, an endless number of others. This may be illustrated by the fact that within the city the `unearned increment' of ground rent, through a mere increase in traffic, brings to the owner profits which are self-generating. At this point the quantitative aspects of life are transformed qualitatively. The sphere of life of the small town is, in the main, enclosed within itself. For the metropolis it is decisive that its inner life is extended in a wave-like motion over a broader national or international area. Weimar was no exception because its significance was dependent upon individual personalities and died with them, whereas the metropolis is characterized by its essential independence even of the most significant individual personalities; this is rather its antithesis and it is the price of independence which the individual living in it enjoys. The most significant aspect of the metropolis lies in this functional magnitude beyond its actual physical boundaries and this effectiveness reacts upon the latter and gives to it life, weight, importance and responsibility. A person does not end with the limits of his physical body or with the area to which his physical activity is immediately confined but embraces, rather, the totality of meaningful effects which emanates from

him temporally and spatially. In the same way the city exists only in the totality of the effects which transcend their immediate sphere. These really are the actual extent in which their existence is expressed. This is already expressed in the fact that individual freedom, which is the logical historical complement of such extension, is not only to be understood in the negative sense as mere freedom of movement and emancipation from prejudices and philistinism. Its essential characteristic is rather to be found in the fact that the particularity and incomparability which ultimately every person possesses in some way is actually expressed, giving form to life. That we follow the laws of our inner nature ± and this is what freedom is ± becomes perceptible and convincing to us and to others only when the expressions of this nature distinguish themselves from others; it is our irreplaceability by others which shows that our mode of existence is not imposed upon us from the outside. Cities are above all the seat of the most advanced economic division of labour. They produce such extreme phenomena as the lucrative vocation of the quatorzieÁme in Paris. These are persons who may be recognized by shields on their houses and who hold themselves ready at the dinner hour in appropriate costumes so they can be called upon on short notice in case thirteen persons find themselves at the table. Exactly in the measure of its extension, the city offers to an increasing degree the determining conditions for the division of labour. It is a unit which, because of its large size, is receptive to a highly diversified plurality of achievements while at the same time the agglomeration of individuals and their struggle for the customer forces the individual to a type of specialized accomplishment in which he cannot be so easily exterminated by the other. The decisive fact here is that in the life of a city, struggle with nature for the means of life is transformed into a conflict with human beings, and the gain which is fought for is granted, not by nature, but by man. For here we find not only the previously

GEORG SIMMEL

mentioned source of specialization but rather the deeper one in which the seller must seek to produce in the person to whom he wishes to sell ever new and unique needs. The necessity to specialize one's product in order to find a source of income which is not yet exhausted and also to specialize a function which cannot be easily supplanted is conducive to differentiation, refinement and enrichment of the needs of the public which obviously must lead to increasing personal variation within this public. All this leads to the narrower type of intellectual individuation of mental qualities to which the city gives rise in proportion to its size. There is a whole series of causes for this. First of all there is the difficulty of giving one's own personality a certain status within the framework of metropolitan life. Where quantitative increase of value and energy has reached its limits, one seizes on qualitative distinctions, so that, through taking advantage of the existing sensitivity to differences, the attention of the social world can, in some way, be won for oneself. This leads ultimately to the strangest eccentricities, to specifically metropolitan extravagances of self-distantiation, of caprice, of fastidiousness, the meaning of which is no longer to be found in the content of such activity itself but rather in its being a form of `being different' ± of making oneself noticeable. For many types of persons these are still the only means of saving for oneself, through the attention gained from others, some sort of self-esteem and the sense of filling a position. In the same sense there operates an apparently insignificant factor which in its effects however is perceptibly cumulative, namely, the brevity and rarity of meetings which are allotted to each individual as compared with social intercourse in a small city. For here we find the attempt to appear to-the-point, clearcut and individual with extra-ordinarily greater frequency than where frequent and long association assures to each person an unambiguous conception of the other's personality.

This appears to me to be the most profound cause of the fact that the metropolis places emphasis on striving for the most individual forms of personal existence ± regardless of whether it is always correct or always successful. The development of modern culture is characterized by the predominance of what one can call the objective spirit over the subjective; that is, in language as well as in law, in the technique of production as well as in art, in science as well as in the objects of domestic environment, there is embodied a sort of spirit (Geist), the daily growth of which is followed only imperfectly and with an even greater lag by the intellectual development of the individual. If we survey, for instance, the vast culture which during the last century has been embodied in things and in knowledge, in institutions and in comforts, and if we compare them with the cultural progress of the individual during the same period ± at least in the upper classes ± we would see a frightful difference in rate of growth between the two which represents, in many points, rather a regression of the culture of the individual with reference to spirituality, delicacy and idealism. This discrepancy is in essence the result of the success of the growing division of labour. For it is this which requires from the individual an ever more one-sided type of achievement which, at its highest point, often permits his personality as a whole to fall into neglect. In any case this over-growth of objective culture has been less and less satisfactory for the individual. Perhaps less conscious than in practical activity and in the obscure complex of feelings which flow from him, he is reduced to a negligible quantity. He becomes a single cog as over against the vast overwhelming organization of things and forces which gradually take out of his hands everything connected with progress, spirituality and value. The operation of these forces results in the transformation of the latter from a subjective form into one of purely objective existence. It need only be pointed out that the metropolis is the proper arena for this type of culture which has outgrown every

THE METROPOLIS AND MENTAL LIFE

personal element. Here in buildings and in educational institutions, in the wonders and comforts of space-conquering technique, in the formations of social life and in the concrete institutions of the State is to be found such a tremendous richness of crystalizing, de-personalized cultural accomplishments that the personality can, so to speak, scarcely maintain itself in the fact of it. From one angle life is made infinitely more easy in the sense that stimulations, interests, and the taking up of time and attention, present themselves from all sides and carry it in a stream which scarcely requires any individual efforts for its ongoing. But from another angle, life is composed more and more of these impersonal cultural elements and existing goods and values which seek to suppress peculiar personal interests and incomparabilities. As a result, in order that this most personal element be saved, extremities and peculiarities and individualizations must be produced and they must be over-exaggerated merely to be brought into the awareness even of the individual himself. The atrophy of individual culture through the hypertrophy of objective culture lies at the root of the bitter hatred which the preachers of the most extreme individualism, in the footsteps of Nietzsche, directed against the metropolis. But it is also the explanation of why indeed they are so passionately loved in the metropolis and indeed appear to its residents as the saviours of their unsatisfied yearnings. When both of these forms of individualism which are nourished by the quantitative relationships of the metropolis, i.e. individual independence and the elaboration of personal peculiarities, are examined with reference to their historical position, the metropolis attains an entirely new value and meaning in the world history of the spirit. The eighteenth century found the individual in the grip of powerful bonds which had become meaningless ± bonds of a political, agrarian, guild and religious nature ± delimitations which imposed upon the human being at the same time an

unnatural form and for a long time an unjust inequality. In this situation arose the cry for freedom and equality ± the belief in the full freedom of movement of the individual in all his social and intellectual relationships which would then permit the same noble essence to emerge equally from all individuals as Nature had placed it in them and as it had been distorted by social life and historical development. Alongside of this liberalistic ideal there grew up in the nineteenth century from Goethe and the Romantics, on the one hand, and from the economic division of labour, on the other, the further tendency, namely, that individuals who had been liberated from their historical bonds sought now to distinguish themselves from one another. No longer was it the `general human quality' in every individual but rather his qualitative uniqueness and irreplaceability that now became the criteria of his value. In the conflict and shifting interpretations of these two ways of defining the position of the individual within the totality is to be found the external as well as the internal history of our time. It is the function of the metropolis to make a place for the conflict and for the attempts at unification of both of these in the sense that its own peculiar conditions have been revealed to us as the occasion and the stimulus for the development of both. Thereby they attain a quite unique place, fruitful with an inexhaustible richness of meaning in the development of the mental life. They reveal themselves as one of those great historical structures in which conflicting lifeembracing currents find themselves with equal legitimacy. Because of this, however, regardless of whether we are sympathetic or antipathetic with their individual expressions, they transcend the sphere in which a judge-like attitude on our part is appropriate. To the extent that such forces have been integrated, with the fleeting existence of a single cell, into the root as well as the crown of the totality of historical life to which we belong ± it is our task not to complain or to condone but only to understand.

Life Between Buildings

Using Public Space : Jan Gehl

Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

In Search of the Human Scale: Jan Gehl TED x KEA

Source: https://youtu.be/Cgw9oHDfJ4k?list=PLmo4BD7uwHo5bjgryY-Qn1OQI--uIoxBX

In the Search for The Human Scale : Key Points

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

•

People and architecture: Why is there a disconnection between architects and people? - Interplay between life and form = architecture

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What is a good habitat for homosapiens? - Important element for making good urban habitat: The Human Scale

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space

Three Types of Outdoor Activities • Necessary activities - compulsory, ex.- going to school or work, running errands etc. • Optional activities - pursuits that are participated voluntarily and / or if the time and place make it possible • Social activities - all activities that depend on the presence of others in public space and occurs spontaneously

Necessary activities

Optional activities

Social activities

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space Three Types of Outdoor Activities:– necessary activities • everyday tasks, majority related to those walking, participants have no choice • activities will take place all year long, under nearly all conditions

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space Three Types of Outdoor Activities:– optional activities • activities takes place when exterior conditions are optimal (weather and place are inviting) • when outdoor areas are optimal, wide range of optional activities occurs, people stop to sit, eat, play etc. • when outdoor areas are of poor quality, only necessary activities occur, people hurry home

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space Three Types of Outdoor Activities:– social activities • activities include children at play, greetings and conversations, communal activities etc. • spontaneous effort, indirectly supported whenever necessary and optional activities are give better conditions in public spaces • to see and hear each other, to meet, is in itself a form of contact, a social activity

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space

p. 11 (Gehl)

An ordinary day on an ordinary street. Pedestrians pass on the sidewalks, children play near front doors, people sit on benches and steps, the postman makes his rounds with the mail, two passerby greet on the sidewalk, two mechanics repair a car, groups engage in a conversation.

p. 16 (Gehl)

… we can see how necessary, optional, and social activities occur in a finely interwoven pattern. People walk, sit and talk. Functional, recreational, and social activities intertwine in all conceivable combinations. … Life between buildings is not merely pedestrian traffic or recreational or social activities. Life between building comprises the entire spectrum of activities, which combine to make communal spaces in cities and residential areas meaningful and attractive.

Image source: http://www.publicspace.org/app/webroot/files/bucharest.JPG

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space Need for Contact

Opportunities for meetings and daily activities in the public spaces of the city, enables one to see, and hear others, to experience other people in various situations. High Intensity

Close friendship Friends Acquaintances Chance contacts

Low Intensity

Passive contacts (“see and hear” contacts)

Life between buildings represents primarily the low-intensity contacts located at the bottom of the scale.

Image source: http://www.yorokobu.es/manual-para-observar-el-humano-en-laciudad/

Opportunities related to “meet, see, and hear” others include: • contact at a modest level • a possible starting point for contact at other levels • a possibility for maintaining already established contacts • a source of information about the social world outside • a source of inspiration, an offer of stimulating experience

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space Low-intensity Contact

p. 21 (Gehl)

First prerequisite: Being in the same place. Meeting.  How play activities among children get started. Generally, play is not arranged. When children are together, when they see each other play, when they feel like playing and “go out to play” without actually being certain that play will get started.

Image source: http://architectureireland.ie/the-city-the-shrinking-play-ground-of-dublin-the-1950s-versus-now

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space Need for Stimulation

p. 23 (Gehl)

p. 25 (Gehl)

… experiencing people, who speak and move about, offers a wealth of sensual variation. … Living cities, therefore, ones in which people can interact with one another, are always stimulating because they are rich in experiences, in contrast to lifeless cities … … in city centers, in recreational areas, and so on - it is generally true that people and human activities attract other people.

People attract people

Image source: https://traythoughts.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/img_44383.jpg

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Cambridge, MA: Harvard Square Image Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/ c/c0/Harvard_square_2009j.JPG

Case Study

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Philadelphia: Rittenhouse Square Image Source: http://drexel.edu/~/media/Images/coresite/ backgrounds/Home/April2016/Rittenhouse.ashx

Case Study

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Boston: Newbury Street Image Source: http://www.adams-center.com/wp-content/ uploads/2012/09/DSC_0010.jpg

Case Study

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

New York: Meatpacking District Image Source: http://www.nycgo.com/articles/must-seemeatpacking-district-slideshow

Case Study

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Chicago: Riverwalk Image Source: http://www.sasaki.com/media/files/riverwalkrecent-press_hero.jpg

Case Study

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Seattle: Pine Street Image Source: https://sherrlock.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/easton-pine-now1.jpg

Case Study

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

San Francisco: Market Street Image Source: http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/ 2009/09/CRW_6260-copy.jpg

Case Study

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Local Site Case Study: 1

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Local Site Case Study: 2

Discussion on “Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space” - Jan Gehl Theories of Architecture and Urbanism (ARC61303/ARC2224)

Contact Points

People attract people

How Public Spaces Makes Cities Work: Amanda Burden TED Talks

Source: https://youtu.be/j7fRIGphgtk?list=PLmo4BD7uwHo5bjgryY-Qn1OQI--uIoxBX