Joseph Rykwert The Idea of a Town The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, EnglandtA GAGA and to the memory of Michael Ayrton « «& inutile stile se Zenobia sa da clasificare tra le ct ei 0 rlescono a cancellare la ett, 0 ne sono eancellat Talo Calvino, Le Gite IvsbltPreface to the Paper Edition again, When it first appeared, asa special asue ‘of che Dutch review Farum, is editor, Aldo van Eyck, suggested that it Would serve as a reminder to architects of something which they seemed ten: thatthe city was not jut rational solution tthe prob lems of production, marketing, cirulation and hygiene—or an auto- ‘matic response tothe prestre of certain physical and market forces—but also had to enthrine the hopes and fears ofits citizens age of the city responding by some ‘unrefiectively 10 and builtin cities, and the conviction that building was about ‘housing’ and that ‘housing’ inevitably meant point or slab blocks was virtually un ‘questioned. During the great building euphoria ofthe sixties a number of tore of les avant-garde architect (which meant those who drew a lot and built very ltde) produced a plethora of projects which presumed on. ‘an exponential growth of production and technics. The Dutch painter= :n, Constant Niewenhuis, Yona Friedman, who was working in joncered this approach. At wach at Kenzo Tange and Paul Rudolph and laer, even ‘commercial’ offices—did projects inthis realizations would inevitably have called on bricatio, such projects appealed to the b chigram and its followers flooded ha fenzy of drawings for urban complexes put together ou of| capsules. “Plug ‘much at projects. Almost equal wanted the eity-plan to be a programme fora process ofconstant change, asthe name ofthe group implied. They too attempted to reduce dv to the individual capoule; yet in spite ofthat, cheir drawings suggested tunity clustered into arbitrary and almost aggressively shaped structures. All this was heady stuf, and young architects all over the world turned tut great quantities of similar project. nsuch an atmosph wn planning could in any sense be called an ‘ar’ was thought ridiculously pasd, while the notion thatthere might be anything ‘symbolic’ about the fabric of the city seemed almost offensively frivolous. The town was a complicated piece of machinery, producing and functioning in the same way as organisms dlescribedl and studied by some biologists, All those plug-in and robotic ‘mages figueed and represented that vsion exactly Inorder to be ven to work, the city had not only to look like an engine, Dut its diferent functions had to be ordered, classified, parcelled out into ones into which they were separated for more efficient working. Ac- cording tothe most popular of such schemes, devised in che late nineteen {hirtes by the Intemational Congres of Modern Architecture (CI ‘they were dwelling, recreation, working and transport Fallowing this analysis, any number of plans were applied to existing towns with de. vascating results, and many urban projects were built on these lines Curing the nineteen-frses, fifties and sixties in which segregation was achieved mest simply, and therefore most commonly, by stacking the zone of dwellings into highriss while other functions remained on the at dwelling was isolated from public space, with the exception of the high-level corridor-sreet, which was allowed to replace the internal corridors of older housing; while the buildings for work, but above all thote for recreation—which, afer all, meant churches, libraries and even law-courts as well as theatres and swimming pools—were dwarfed by housing. Oddly enough, Le Corbusier, who was one of the main mavers in CIAM and a promoter of the zoning proposals, broke these rues in his famous housing block in Marseilles, for be included a high-level shopping street halfway up the Ineight of the block and placed a nursery schcel and a theatre onthe oof. His were token moves, and isolated —they were not regarded with any sympathy by administrators or by his colleagues. ‘number of disparate events shook these convictions, or at any rate put them to the question, even before the tide of users’ dsllusionment ‘with high-rise public housing reached the present level of discontent. The ‘economic and energy crisis provoked by the June 1967 Six-Day War in the Near East and the fear of energy shortages (which proved unfounded the event did trigger a reaction of distrust in the postive ideology of ‘industrial building and technical improvement as a solution ta the ills of the city. More generally the conviction grew that economic growth was not the unmitigated social blessing it had been believed to be. These sentiments were best summed up in Ernst Schumacher's book Smalls ‘Beata, which fest appeared inthe year he died, 1977. Great movements in the ‘ouside’ world coincided with a rejection of| the planners’ efforts by the very liens who were deemed to have bene- fixed fom them. The mechanicjorganic model had implied a det dlimissal of history as irrelevant co th planners’ busines; they worked, alter all, with the conviction that methods of statistical and other social enquiry allowed them to project the citizens’ present needs into a forese- able future. The assumption that social functions could be studied ‘mechanically, or at any rate ‘modelled’, was based on the premise that ‘needs were a function of, were ‘fl by, the whole social body. In fact, feeds which are ‘el can only be known as part of the individual experience of each citizen, Nov such experience can only be described narratively, it cannot be usefully tabulated or seized in diagramm: form. And the narration is always, however small the narrator's eal historical. The rejection of history asa method for the study ofthe urban fabric, and the postulation ofan efficient, confitless city, was projected inca historical furure tense, in which th experience of pain and distess, the inevitable common fate of human kind, found no accommodation oF acknowledgement in the zoned and smoothly running city.” ‘Among the profesional, Christopher Alexander's paper “The City Is [Not a Tree’ showed the law of considering urban complexity in terms of simplistic mathematical modelling. The research directed at Cambridge by Lionel March demonstrated that the choice of high-rise over low-rise housing was bated on 2 mistaken assumption about the saving in space ‘which could be obtained by concentrating housing in high-rise accom- :modation. Kevin Lynch began to investigate the image ofthe town which nhabitants formed, as it were, ntersubjetively. The study’ of archi tectural typology and’ urban morphology—terms and endeavours as sociated with Aldo Rossi—concentrated on the detailed study of the invariant configurations of the unis in which citizens lived, and on the texture which these units made up in ther cities, but did not consider the tension between the edge ofthe city and its centre. A number of socio~ such as Pecer Wilmoc in England and later, but much more Erving Goffman in the United States, were concerned about All such ways of criticising the present urban peared the more glaring the more integrated and ‘hi had one disadvantage: they were all descriptive and analyte. They were ‘oriented towards explaining where the city failed to work and what its ‘drawbacks were. There was no mediation, however, no rational discourse which would allow the planner to proceed from ps sucoess. The writer who did actempea general and pos iveaccount ofthe whole complex urbanistic phenomenon were very rare and very depres 1mi—who had better remain nameless here—complained in «much ofthe literature on ety form is outstanding fori J, he added, ‘City another prominent theorist had written twenty Dustles, but it does not advance’ in part at last, to theoretical abstraction—or perhaps more accurately, o-4 detachment which concealed the sense of| incurable impotence, For several decades, during the fife, sixties and seventies (the custom may sill persist here and there) designers ofthe ‘most anal urban complexes would lecture on their projects—which ‘were usually produced by merely manipulating commercial and ‘market’ pressures with more or les skillet in the course of the lecture shove Slides of ideal’ ortimelea urban situations St Mark’s Square in Venice, Dubrovnik or any one of number of Italian hill towns or Greek island villages (all places where townsplanners often repaired for their vaca ‘ions justify some aspect of ther plan or procedure. There was no wayof either acceding to or dismissing such parallel, since the planner’ language was made up entirely of platitudes, which could (inevitably) apply to both their own projects and ta the examples which they chose to illustrate. Contradiction or dispute seemee absence of any agreement about how to the physical fabri dullnes complained of in my quotations. A much more serious pro was the planners conviction that planning was not only an ehistoical but aso an apolitical proces. Inescapably, the growth of the physical fabric over ea ee ing the planner problems against which he ‘The greatest change of approach in urbanism developed from a grow= that the physi any long figuration in ‘Thisaspect of thee hhad been recognized by designers for some had not entered theoretical discourse, Le Corbusie schemes, notably the huge project for Algiers was approached more explicitly by Louis Kahn in his various schemes ‘or Philadelphia. Hans lle and his Viennese colleagues were inspired by the enigmatic and sinister metaphoric power of large landscape. Several attempss were made to con 2 team led by Geoffrey Copcutt, hey have ni ‘of mover seems to me that this isthe realm where the ‘This book was fist conceived in the nineteen-fites, atthe height ofthe postwar building boom and of the planners professional arrogance. Teset ‘out polemically to provide some rational account of the structure and ‘wavelogue and over-contrasty photographs. It was to have been part of| amuch larger i Coulanges’ La Cit’ Antique, which wa frst published in 1839, later attempt had been made to develop and understood by ts itizens, That time I happened also to read Tries T also came across John Holy Man of the Oplals say atthe way in which power by making they were cutoff from the health and 1m the harmony between their physical sut- roundings and thir circular wo like the ness of birds, and these were always hoop, a nest of many nest, where the: Our tepees were round attempt a kind of historical economy of symbol thing about the way we understand our own bodies—and how understanding, and indeed every acceptance and construing of a lin- ‘gistc or any other message, is conditioned by the way we perceive our Tolein a social context, Jean Baudrillards books? though written from an ‘entirely different point of view from mine, raised many issues for me about Symbols are not signs . . . their interpretations are not mean ings... The data an individual uses in learning symbolism do ‘not constitute a sample of a fixed set similar to the sentences of a language ofthis cognitive nature is that there i 00 ‘mult-symbolism analogous to multling symbolic daa,tir origin, integrate themselves into a single system within a given individual Sperber’s view ofsymbolism, that ii both cognitive aud evocative at the same time, yet closed to any semiotic eading, i the view taken in tis Tas not here concemed with how their plant might have failed partially or even totally Inevitably perhaps, the city in ancient literature had no better press than in the modern. And thar has always been a part ofthe urban ethos! God the fist Garden made, and the frst City, Cain. Like Cain, Romulus wasa fratrcide, and the founders erime was only the first of the many with which the city was ever exemplar to make two disclaimers need to remind the readers that to Roman poets and moralists smelly, nosy, violent, corrupt. ce the modern city af Iierature. Cicero, Horace, Ovid, ‘the Vounger, Juvenal, Martial, descant on this theme constantly. Ie because the ancient city is being presented as an ideal environment that ancient urbanophobia has no place in this book. That was not my aim at all the ancient city wa fall of pai the book does not advocate a aware that the gap between the ancient order. Tam qui of antiquity and the ‘open’ one of my own time is unbridge- able. Lam definitely a consenting citizen of the open city, and my view of the matter isnot very different ftom Harvey Cox’ theologically justified the desacraized society of our time.!® therefore surnmarize here what the reader wll find clearly (i ted in the last paragraph of the book, since some of my critics inevitable the urban experience; and vogue. Studies of inert ‘types’ and motiveless morphologies are multi= plying. Books on history abound in architectural bookshops. However, the history which is being presented forthe use of architects and urbanists is not of the kind which historians make and read. history, devoid of marr object without reference tothe rexture ofthe town the grid oppressed and emasculated the object. In the seventies and eighties the unruly objec is deforming and eroding the grid pattern and Such a suggestion can only be advanced here for further discusion. ‘This book was primarily concerned with ancient Rome and some recent ‘excavation and research has modified some of the emphasis of my state- ‘ments. The most important excavation has been that ofthe archaic sanc~ tuary by the old church of St Ombono near the Roman Foru has now been identified as Foreuna, founded, according Servius Tullius (who reigned 547-594 8.c.) and reconstructed more splendidly by Tarquin the Proud (who reigned 534~509 ..). The radio- carbon examination ofthe wood on the site hae vindicated the annalet dating. ‘Almost as important has been the re-examination of che remains ofthe Regia on the Roman Forum, the reputed house of King Numa, by its excavator, Frank Brown, who has indeed modified the picture of thetofig. 8. Tenow ef ‘were buried towards the end of the seventh century, after a flood. A radiccarton examination ofthe wood gives a date of about 680 nc. for the cutting of the trees. This within the traditional reign of King Numa (715-679 8c.) accord the chronicles. After the food, there fllow four stages of the building lunder the Monarchy when the Rega seems to have held a double sanc sough not one rigorously orientated (apart from itssauthern wal ‘The great circular hearth was indeed placed in its present position at the begining of the Republican perio, when the Rg was completly out 510 Bc. from the Regia itself, a number of changes inthe realignment of certain buildings on the Forum Romanum! have been sdy by Filippo Coarelli ‘The Lapis Niger, whieh T ty a8 one possible ‘Tomb of Romulus, i named ‘hough, since any tomb’ of Romulus had to be ree that after his disappearance he was ified as Quirin ‘The paving of che Lapis Niger, which was probably put d ime of Sulla, was contemporary the Roman Forum, a The fragments of re ly datable to 570-560 8.) provides a date ante gum for the setting up ele shrine in che form buried under the Laps” ‘Theres much comparative material discovered since my publi ‘The site of the twelve altars at Lavinium, where Roman mat foem of circular umulus probably laid down 675~850.8.¢., ofthe kind {have discussed in Paestart and Kyrene. Tt may well be the hoon of Aeneas, 1 which Dionysius of Halcarnasvs had alluded." An ge- ‘aca, more impressive than the agmentary one at Co, was found st Bani near Venosa in Lucania). and the of the Roman augur’ eyrie of lopli have been tentatively Hill Tenow seems tha the poins ofthe augur" inked to definite landmark, and that thre were several ‘ome, pethaps all placed without the gomserium, which compass wer such eyries bounded the plan of Cosa has been given a much more definite form, and the develop- ‘ent ofthe own traced by Frank Brown, whom Ihave already mentioned asthe excavator ofthe Roman Forum." ig new to report on the larger issues: Etrusean origins, the Enruscan language, the relative debt of the Romans to the Greek and ‘ofsyntax, the grammar remains obscure, Ie is clear that its neither an | | | | Indo-European nor a Semitic language. Itseems to belong Mediterranean group of languages-—of which precious known! Until more is discovered, the linguistic question will nt help ‘withthe problem of Eeruscan origins. ‘Although the Greek contribution to Rome was grea, the excavation report about one ofthe ear Megara Hiyblaca north of Syracuse, shows that ci Iayout was not quadrats; centered as itis from the outset on an explicit ‘agora, and fa and Esrusean layout methods into ‘The Greek and Latin languages make this dstintion the very word wbsis probably of Etruscan origin, and itis only obliquely to cists, which isthe coll translated, quite righty as ‘citizen’, ‘man, the head of a household. Urdrindicates the way in which the cty was physically, ritually and legally made. The Greck word poi, on the other hand, means a defensible place, and polit are those who live within the wall The words for city and citizen are therefore quite different related Jn Greek and Latin: and that is partly due to the way the Etruscan ‘erived ars eeplaced the older Indo-European word, ta fr city, which survived inthe neighbouring Oscan language ‘The relation between Roman and Greek city foundations and their founders remains one mest interesting question which ist outstanding. Ah tity= (ar at any rate colony] founders are well-known, they are not revered, and never heroized. It is almost aif the founding and re- founding of the Greek city was the work of an independant divinely inspired figure whereas tha of the Roman city was always a substitution, 8 vicarious action.™ Every Roman town-founder wa always a stand-in for Romulus: because every own, every foundation, was a reiteration of Rome, Had Plutarch devoted one of his Roman Questions to this cons undrum, we would probably not have been very much the wiser, but though he may not have enlightened us fully, he could a least have given alead, Were Ito write the book now, it wauld, I dare say, have been better, for at lease beter informed, but T doubt ifit would be very difere spiteof my rics. Tmight have been much more acutely aware of the role land appreciation of cunning as a technical accomplishment, even in ritual and divination, for instance, but my approach would still be synchronic, since throughout the sovial and economic changes of the ‘Republic and Empire certain religious notions, transmitted through ritual behaviour, suffered litle change although they were pu tociffeent political and even social uses As with myth, so with ritual —~is origin i bout of reach; tists transmission which matters. The way myth and rita] shape, even create, the man-made environment and the way in which “they rationalize and explain i are what concerns me here. 4Contents one ” "7 20 ‘The New Community ° Planning Technique: Rational and Teatonal s ‘The Choiee of Ste = ‘The Founder and the City Es Recording the Foundation 2 Orthogonal Panaieg and the Surveyors ‘The First Farrow ‘Tze Square and CrossWlustrations $6 Forum Romazum 57.38 The Saline moving the ania