Richard Sennett

The Open City

A human settlement in which strangers are likely to meet.

There is also a structural conflict between how people want to live, how they are obliged to live,
and how cities are built. Meeting strangers is a civic duty.Consistent, throughout, is the notion
of the city as a place where we tolerate those who are different. Cities should open up
opportunities, connect people to new people, free us from the narrow confines of tradition in a
word, the city should deepen experience. How individuals and groups make social and cultural
sense of material facts about the cities in which they live and about the labour they do. He
focuses on how people can become competent interpreters of their own experience, despite
the obstacles society may put in their way. The city brings together people who differ by class,
ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference, in an open system, the city is to a degree incoherent.

The open system "marks the city in modest ways, using simple materials"
An open system requires people to cope with complexity and changes.It says a city should not
be user-friendly. It should be a place where you learn how to deal with a difficult situation and
with other people. That is what makes a city really open.An open city is a democratic one which
sometimes has to be opened in undemocratic ways. Yet closed cities can also often be desirable
to live in. we understand how to gradually open a city in a way that keeps it desirable for
dwelling, instead of gratifying people’s will for closed cities.we look at the different and
conflicting possibilities which each stage of the design process should open up; keeping these
possibilities intact, leaving conflict elements in play, opens up the design system.

“Democratic Space”
Democratic space means creating a forum for these strangers to interact.when the city operates
as an open system incorporating principles of porosity of territory,narrative indeterminacy and
incomplete form- it becomes democratic not in a legal sense,but as physical experience.he
explains in the past,thinking about democracy focused on issues of formal governance,today it
focuses on citizenship and issues of participation.Participation is an issue that everything has ro
do with the physical city and its design.Todays city is big filled with migrants and ethnic
diversities, in which people belong to many different kinds of community at the same
time-through their work families consumption habits and leisure pursuits.

Thinking about the city as an open system, the more open it is, the more this peculiar, urban
condition of neighbourliness can develop.
An open system is used for exploration, whereas a closed system is used to test a theory.. A non
-linear process of research which as in a rolling experiment vs a predictable path of incomes.
Just like Bayesian logic of mathematics which uses terms like 'maybe’ or ‘certain’ are used, the
city shows a pattern of non linearity at every node. Every node becomes something for
exploration. It brings a system that allows failure. Trial and error approaches can be used in the
same way that a city grows organically. The concept of removing a problem is more important
than the outcome. He also compares the city to a Levinasion relationship. Although strangers
live together, you make an attempt to get to know one another while preserving personal space
and distance and without crossing boundaries.

Edge conditions, incomplete form and arbitrary markings in design.

The border is more firm, as if it were a solid object. It also reduces activity and engagement
between various species groupings. As borders grow more open, they serve as a meeting site
for various species. Interaction, involvement, and coexistence are all encouraged in this space.

Closed cities are homogeneous and presented as"gated communities”

The cities everyone wants to live in should be clean and safe and posses efficient public services
be supported by dynamic economy,provide cultural stimulation and also do their best to heal
society's division of race,class and ethnicity.these are not the cities we live in.cities fail on all
these counts due to government policies irreparable social ills and economic forces beyond local
control.the city is not its own master. Still something has gone wrong in our conception of what
city should be.
A025 KASHISH KUKREJA
A042 ANNIRUDH SAHANI
A043 DRASHTI THAKKER