URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY 1
RE-THINKING DEATH IN THE CITY The ceremonious burial of the dead in graves marked by a cairn, a tree, or a tall rock, formed perhaps the first permanent meeting place for the living….(Mumford, 1961: 85) INTRO More than anything else, death, as omnipresent as the religions themselves, has shaped and reshaped cities. At first glance, this is not topic for urban studies. French sociologist Jean Baudrillard wrote that modern civilization strives to move away from death, place it outside of your attention, to get rid of her presence every minute. We use to talk about cities in terms of live matter. Cities attract people to enrich, develop and reproduce itself. And more citizens come, the more death will be. In other words, a death is also inherent part of the urban environment. The
cemetery is certainly a place unlike ordinary cultural spaces. It is
a space that is however connected with all the sites of the city, state or society or village, etc, since each individual, each family has relatives in the cemetery.
ALTERI LOCI Cemetery is other place, it compresses centuries in one space. It has strong reference to Heterotopias by Foucault. Heterotopia, literally meaning «other places», is a rich concept in urban design that describes other places with respect to normal or everyday spaces. He highlighted the cemetery’s profound spatio-temporal disruption, a place that encloses an «absolute break with traditional time». For Foucault, the cemetery is the prime example of a «fully-functioning» and «highly heterotopian» site in its enclosure of «temporal discontinuities» [découpages du temps]. Although not mentioned by Foucault, it is also noteworthy that the cemetery is a major example of a space that marks a «crossing» or a rites of passage and an emplacement that paradoxically incorporates both extremes of a «heterochronia», an utter break with time as well as an accumulation of time through its formation as a kind of «museum» of the dead.
2 URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY FROM CORE TO OUTSKIRTS In Christian religion cemetery has always existed. But it has undergone important changes. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the cemetery was placed at the heart of the city, next to the church. These places were important centers of culture and activity for the societies thy served. This cemetery housed inside the sacred space of the church considers the death as worth end of terrestrial life and transition to celestial one. It was time of real belief in the resurrection of bodies and the immortality of the soul, overriding importance was not accorded to the body’s remains.
Père Lachaise Cemetery. Paris
On the contrary, from the moment when people are no longer sure that they have a soul or that the body will regain life, it is perhaps necessary to give much more attention to the dead body, which is ultimately the only trace of our existence in the world and in language. As a result, cemetery has become an arena for the display of wealth. But on the other hand, it is only from that start of the nineteenth century that cemeteries began to be located at the outside border of cities. Also cemeteries displacement from the city was caused by epidemics, e. g. In 1771, due to a plague epidemic, the Senate forbade burial Muscovites who died of the plague on all Moscow cemeteries. Outside Moscow, in the same year there were opened more than ten cemeteries: Armenian, Danilovskoye Dorogomilovskoye, Kalitnikovskoye, Miusskoye, Pyatnitskoye, Semenovskoye, Transfiguration and Rogozhskoe and later Jewish, Muslim, etc. In correlation with the individualization of death and the bourgeois appropriation of the cemetery, there arises an obsession with death as an «illness». The dead, it is supposed, bring illnesses to the living, and it is the presence and proximity of the dead right beside the houses, next to the church, almost in the middle of the street, it is this proximity that propagates death itself. This major theme of illness spread by the contagion in the cemeteries persisted until the end of the eighteenth century, until,
URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY 3 during the nineteenth century, the shift of cemeteries toward the suburbs was initiated. The cemeteries then came to constitute, no longer the sacred and immortal heart of the city, but the other city, where each family possesses its dark resting place.
Cemetery on the outskirts. Norilsk
After 1917, many cemeteries were destroyed in Russia. On the 7th of December 1918, Decree «On cemeteries and funeral» was adopted by the Council of People’s Commissars, after which the Orthodox Church and other denominations were removed from the funeral sphere. By 1920s, there were «Sanitary norms and rules of design and maintenance of cemeteries» that restricted closeness the cemetery to public buildings, to life.
COST OF DEATH The more city grows the more acute is
the question of death. Moscow is very
remarkable in this case. On the one hand, to die in Moscow is comparable with 3 months of life, or even more. The city constantly faces the shortage of place for oblivion. Every year Moscow needs 15 - 17 hectares of land. Taking to account average market land price,100,000 $ per hectare, for Moscow administration it costs about 1,700 000 $ a year, and it is without taking to account an improvement. Moscow owns 71 cemetery, which occupy 1.800 hectares of land which is equivalent to the territory within Garden Ring. Moreover, it put restrictions on the character of the built environment: no housing, no schools, kindergartens, no public facilities 300 m around.
Cemeteries=Garden Ring. Moscow
4 URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY On the other hand, closeness to the cemetery reduces the real estate and mental value of
surroundings. Subconsciously people tend to avoid settling
near death. From a marketing perspective the presence near the residence of the cemetery can be seen only negatively. And there is no difference, it is a new or an old cemetery. The only exception I could call churchyard near Novodevichy Cemetery, which is already considered not as a burial place, but as a historic landmark.
Cemeteries location & real estate prices. Moscow
In most European countries place in cemeteries is for rent. Minimal period is 10 years. Then the term can be any extended. Cemeteries became part of the urban space, frequently have been used as parks. This happened with above mentioned Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow and Lazarev Cemetery in St. Petersburg. Being actually in the center of the city, the cemetery is completely integrated into everyday urban space. Thus, the practice is not associated with death, committed in contrast to a place that was originally intended for a very different. They are part of a kind of paradoxical dialogue of life and death. These practices, whether consciously or not, erase the image of death, where it would seem there as anywhere else.
RETHINKING THE DEATH: LIVING What is the cemetery about: death, grief or something more? ÂŤA cemetery is not only to be a place for the dead, but also a place for the livingÂť (Kienast 2002). Dieter Kienast is talking about the cemetery as a dual terrain. Functionally, it is the place where we lay those who do not leave among us; therefore it is a place for the dead. But, a cemetery also provides a place where we address our grieving; therefore it is a place for the living.
URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY 5 By contrast, cemeteries could become the places where life begins, e. g. City of the Dead in Cairo. More than five million Egyptian live in these cemeteries, and have formed their own enterprises. In modern times, because of Egypts housing crisis, a lack of satisfactory and affordable housing for a rapidly growing population, many poor Egyptians have made these rooms their permanent homes. People come to live in these cemeteries because they are inexpensive and practical for a starting point.Egyptians have not so much thought of cemeteries as a place of the dead, but rather a place where life begins.
City of the Dead. Cairo
Taking a look to the countries with shortage of territories there is another attitude to death and burring process, mainly through cremation. There are the tightly packed cemeteries around Hong-kong juxtaposing the two parallel worlds of the living and the dead, and the environments in which they must co-exist. «Hong-kong amphitheater» confronts the idea of cemeteries as important public spaces and remembrance. RETHINKING THE DEATH: ANOTHER PLACE Return to the subject of heterotopia, D. Graham Shane In his book «Recombinant Urbanism» gives the following description: «A heterotopia is a place that mixes the stasis of the enclave with the flow of an armature, and in which the balance between these two systems is constantly changing. Its function is to help maintain the city’s stability as a self-organizing system.» In the present book, Shane adheres to this description in his discussion of the way in which recent heterotopias of illusion (themed environments, art centers, malls) facilitate the shift towards a more performative, flexible and mobile urbanism of ‘sites’. In his analysis heterotopias are specific places, which work according to specific spatial mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and are thus able to accommodate specific social transformations.
8 URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY Cemeteries, whether located within cities, on their outskirts, or completely separated, have the potential to create connections with the urban and cultural fabric. Rather than being a source of disease and corruption, this space for the dead
combines physical protection with moral and aesthetic
cultivation.Park of Remembrance on Baykovoye Cemetery in Kiev is an example of bareness of human memory.
It was created by group of sculptors, Ada
Rybachuc and Vladimir Melnichenko from 1967 for 15 years. The main its content is about the topic of Transition (passage) from life to nonbeing, or in other words heterobeing. was understanding
They tried to create Park-memorial: «There
that people came here with their grief, surrounded by
memories, remembrance, need another: a story about life». In order to safe existing burialsthey used principles of barrows and terraces. Moreover, it was need to rethink the way of burial, through fire — return to cremation. That meant stepping over moral reasons:in Europe after the Second World War cremation decreased from 75% to 30% because of concentration camps and mass people destruction.
Park of Remembrance. Kiev
Recently architects and designers have been involved into Re-thinking the death topic. The main goal is to change the attitude to deathcare: green deathcare, rituals (e. g. deadbook), wrappings of mortality, final farewell, memorials.
Cemetery it is not about graves but about breaking down the
boundaries of space between the living and the dead, and connection to the city it belongs to. Of cause, naturalizing the death as a part of daily life is not so simple task.
URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY 9
POST COMMUNITY. Austria
CONCLUSIONS There’s a myth that many people repeat: it’s taboo to discuss death. The exact opposite is true — we discuss death and dying all the time. What we don’t always discuss is our own personal death. For many, burial is a show of respect for the dead. And when one believes in an afterlife, burial is as a necessary step to reach that. Then the growing secularism and disbelief have changed the way we perceive death. Re-think the death means the same as rethinking the industry, industrial zones within the city. Death is not «illness», but it’s part of our daily life, urban routine.
10 URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY References: Dehaen, M. and De Cauter L. (2008) Heterotopia and the city: public space in a postcivil society, London and New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1986) «Of other spaces: utopias and heterotopias», Lotus 48(9) (1985/6):9G. Sancristoforo. Kselman, T. (1993) Death and the Afterlife in Modern France, Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press. Project International,Vol. 19 (2009) «Other spaces: heterotopias», Moscow: Project Russia. Shane, D. G. (2005) Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual Modelling in Architecture,Urban Design and City Theory, Chichester: Wiley-Academy. Yerofalov-Polipchak, B. (2010) Architecture of Soviet Kiev, «The wall of remembrance», Kiev: A+C. «Manuel Alvarez diestro documents dense Hong Kong cemeteries» http://www.designboom.com/art/manuel-alvarez-diestro-documents-dense-hongkong-cemeteries-11-0-2013/ «Design for death competition» http://www.designboom.com/competition/design-for-death-architecture/ http://retromap.ru/mapster.php#right=122010&zoom=10&lat=55.749216&lng=37.6196 92&lang=ru http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D1%81%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%BD%D1%83%D0%B2 %D1%88%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%B8_%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%87%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0 %BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0%BA%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%89%D0%B0_%D0%9C %D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B2%D1%8B http://stat.cian.ru/