Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • Static Kinetic Cities

    Uploaded by

    Aarti Chandrasekhar
    4 views17 pages

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    4 views17 pages

    Static Kinetic Cities

    Uploaded by

    Aarti Chandrasekhar

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 17
    OCTHE Rie Ties, OTHER WORLDS URBAN IMAGINARIES IN A GLOBALIZING AGE EDITED BY ANDREAS HUYSSEN Duke University Press Duham and London 2008 CONTENTS. vii Acknowledgments 1 Andreas Huyssen Introduction: World Cultures, World Cities LATIN AMERICA 27 Beatriz Sarlo , ‘Cultural Landscapes: Buenos Aires from Integration to Fracture si Teresa PR. Caldera From Modernism to Neoliberalism in Sto Paulo Reconfiguring the City and Its Citizens 79. Néstor Gareta Canelini Mexico City, 2010: Improvising Globalization AFRICA 99 AbdowMatig Simone “The Last Shall Be Fits: Alrican Urbanities and the Larger Urban World ra Hilton Judi Unsetling Johannesburg: The Country inthe City 147 Okwui Enwezor ‘Mega-exhibitions: The Antinomies of a Transnational Global Form, ASIA 181 Gyan Prakash ‘Mumbai: The Modern City in Ruins 205 Rahul Mehrotra [Negotiating the Static and Kinetic Cities: The Emergent Urbanism of Mumbai 21g Yingiin Zhang . Remapping Beijing: Polylocality, Globalization, Cinema 243, Ackbar Abbas Faking Globalization MIDDLE EAST 267 Farka Ghannam Two Dreams in a Global City: Class and Space in Urban Egypt 289. Orhan Pamuk Hilziin — Melancholy —Trstesseof Istanbul 307 Bibliography 321 Contributors 335. Index Rahul Mehrotra NEGOTIATING THE STATIC AND KINETIC CITIES. THE EMERGENT URBANISM OF MUMBAI ities in India, characterized by physical and visual contra- dictions that coalesce in a landscape of incredible plural- ism, are anticipated to be the largest urban conglomerates ofthe twenty-first century. Historically, particularly during the period of British colonization, the different worlds —whether economic, social, or eultural—that were contained within these cities occu- pied different spaces and operated under diferent rules, the aim being to maximize control and minimize conflict between op- posing worlds, Today, although these worlds have come to share the same space, they understand and use it differently? Massive waves of distressed rural migration during the later half ofthe 19008 triggered the convergence of these worlds into a singular but multifaceted entity. This, coupled with an inadequate supply of urban land and failure to create new urban centers resulted in extremely high population densities, Furthermore, in the 19905, with the emergence of a postindustral, service-based economy, the intertwining of these worlds within the same space became even more intense? Inthispostindustrial scenario, cites in India have become criti cal sites for negotiation between elite and subaltern cultaes. The new relationships between social classes in a postindustrial economy are quite different from those that existed in state-controlled economies and the welfare stato The fragmentation of service and production locations has re sulted in a new; bazaar-like urbanism, which has woven its presence through the entire urban landscape’ It is an urbanism created by those out elite domains of the formal modernity of the state and is thus a “pirate” modernity that slips under the laws of the city simply to survive, without e the any conscious attempt at constructing a counterculture.* This contrasts with the many historic legacies of modernity in India where instruments such as the State Plan (referred to as the Development Plan), borrowed from Soviet socialist planning paradigms, controlled, determined, and orchestrated the built landscape, With the dramatic retreat ofthe state through the 1980s and 1990, the space ofthe “everyday” has become the space where economic and cultural struggles ate articulated, These common spaces have been largely excluded from the cultural discourses on globalization, which focus on elite domains of production and their spatial implications.” ‘Today, Indian cities comprise two components that occupy the same physical space. The firs isthe formal or Static City. Built of more permanent materials such dimensional entity on conventional city maps and is monumental in its pres: cence, The second is the informal or Kinetic Cty. comprehensible as a two- s concrete, steel, and brick, it is comprehended as a two- dimensional entity it is perceived as a city in motion—a three-dimensional construct of incremental development. The Kinetic City is temporary in na- tureand often built with recycled material: plastic sheets, scrap metal, canvas, and waste wood. It consiantly modifies and reinvents itself. The Kinetic City is perceived not as architecture, but in terms of spaces which hold associative values and supportive lives, Patterns of occupation determine its form and perception. Its an indigenous urbanism that has its particular “Toca” ogi Irisnot necessarily the city of the poor, as most images might suggest rather itis a temporal articulation and occupation of space which not only creates a ticher sensibility of spatial occupation but also suggests how spatial limits are expanded to include formally unimagined situations in dense urban con- ditions* ‘The Kinetic City presents a compelling vision that potentially allows one to better understand the blurred lines of contemporary urbanism and the Temporary construction fra sta. Photo by Rahul Mehrotra changing roles of people and spaces in urban society. The increasing concen- trations of global flows have exacerbated the inequalities and spatial divisions of social classes, In this contest, an architecture or urbanism of equality in. an increasingly inequitable economic condition requires looking deeper to find «4 wide range of places in which to mark and commemorate the cultures of those excluded from the spaces of global flows. These don’t necessarily le in the formal production of architecture, but they often challenge it. Here, the idea ofa city points to an elastic urban condition —not a grand vision, but a grand adjustment ‘The Kinetic City bazsar-like in form, can be seen as the symbolic image of| the emerging urban Indian condition, The processions, weddings festivals, hawkers, street vendors, and shum dwellers all create an ever-transforming streetscape ~a city in constant motion, where the very physical fabricis char- acterized by the kinetic. The Static City, on the other hand, dependent on architecture for its representation, is no longer the single image by which the city is read, Thus, architecture isnot the “spectacle” ofthe city, nor does it even comprise the single dominant image of the city. In contrast festi- vals such as Diwali, Dussera, Navrathri, Muhharam, Durga Puja, Ganesh Chathuethi, and many more have emerged as the spectacles of the Kinetic City. Their presence on the everyday landscape pervades and dominates the ‘popular visual culture of Indian cities Festivals createa forum through which the fantasies of the subalterns are articulated and even organized into poli calaction. In Mumbai, for example, the popularity and growth of the Ganesh festival has been phenomenal.” During the festival, which occurs in August or September, numerous neighborhoods transform themselves temporarily with lights and decoration, New public spaces are created to house the idols of Ganesh for ten days. During the festival period, family, neighborhood, and city events mark the celebrations. On the last day a large part of the city’s population carries the idols in long processions to the sea, where they are ultimately to be immersed. Each procession carvies tableaux depicting images of both local and global concerns, with Lord Ganesh mediating the outcomes. These representations are not based on formal scriptures or predetermined rules; instead, human ingenuity breaches the boundaries between the local and the global, the his- toric and contemporary. The images convey the hybrid urgencies of metro- politan India" The neighborhood processions weave through predetermined routes in the city, each vying with other neighborhood processions to show- case the intensity of their followers. Set against the backdrop of the Static City, the processions culminate with the immersion of the idols, which the followers bid farewell amid chants inviting Ganesh to resurrect his presence the following year, Immersion becomes a metaphor for the spectacle of the city. As the clay idol dissolves in the water of the bay, the spectacle comes to aclose. There are no static or permanent mechanisms to encode this spectacle. ‘The memory of the city is in this instance an “enacted” process, a temporal moment, as ‘opposed toa static or permanent entity in the form of buildings that contain the public memory" The city and its architecture are not synonymous and cannot contain a single meaning. Within the Kinetic City, meanings are not stable; spaces get consumed, reinterpreted, and recycled. ‘The Kinetic City recycles the Static ity to create a new spectacle ‘This transformative ability of the Kinetic City becomes even more vivid in the events that play out at Mumbai's town hall every year on 15 August, India’s Independence Day: The Public Works Department (pw) subverts the mean ing and symbolism of the architecture of tis classieal building by recontig- uring it for an annual ceremony when the governor ofthe state addresses the lnmmesion ofthe Ganesh idol. Phot by Rahal Mebrots,

    You might also like