Urban Ethic

Contemporary urban design practice has many sources to draw on but these often
lack a flexible approach to today’s complex urban situations. This book addresses the
current debate surrounding urban regeneration and the contradictions of contemporary
urban life. The author proposes manageable strategies for the creation of sustainable
cities, focusing on the spatial character of the city and looking beyond the style
obsession of urban makeovers to the fundamental elements of city-making.
The book is divided into two parts: Part I presents a survey and analysis
of the history of urban development; from the ancient city through to the industrial
age and the post-industrial age. Part II proposes a methodology for the design
of contemporary urban space through a series of case studies, concentrating on the
relationship of four elements: patterns, narratives, monuments and spaces. The
harmony between built forms (patterns and monuments) and speculative forms of
interpretation and inhabitation (narratives and spaces) allow individual expression to
exist within a general system, thus creating an ethical city.

Eamonn Canniffe teaches Design, Architectural History and Urban Design at

the University of Sheffield School of Architecture. His research into the history and
practice of urban design extends to the spatial development of the Italian piazza, the
urban impact of twentieth century architecture and the implementation of contem-
porary British urban design projects.
Urban Ethic
Design in the contemporary city

Eamonn Canniffe
First published 2006 by Routledge
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by Routledge
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© 2006 Eamonn Canniffe

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For my family
Contents

List of figures ix

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction 1

Part I Processes of Urban Development 7

1 The questions of the city 9

2 The historic city 21

3 The industrial city 38

4 The post-industrial city 56

Part II Elements of the Urban Environment 75

5 The ethic of the city: a fourfold model of urbanism 77

6 Patterns 95

7 Narratives 112

8 Monuments 130

9 Spaces 147

10 The urban future 164

Bibliography 181

Index 186

vii
List of figures

1.1 Piazza Trento e Trieste, Ferrara 10

1.2 Piazza del Campo, Siena 13
1.3 Economist Plaza, St. James’s, London 15
1.4 Piazza SS. Annunziata, Florence from the loggia of Filippo
Brunelleschi’s Foundling Hospital (1419–26) 20
2.1 Temple of Neptune, Paestum (Poseidonia) 24
2.2 Crocifisso del Tufo, Orvieto 27
2.3 The Roman Forum 29
2.4 Piazza IV Novembre, Perugia. 31
2.5 Sluices on the River Ljubljanica (Joze Plecnik 1940–44) 35
2.6 Four Rivers Fountain, Piazza Navona, Rome (Gianlorenzo
Bernini 1647–51) 36
3.1 The Manchester Guide 1817 40
3.2 Model of Sheffield in 1900 44
3.3 Sheffield: a civic survey and suggestions towards a development
plan (Sir Patrick Abercrombie 1924) 44
3.4 Casa Mila, Barcelona (Antoni Gaudí 1905–10) 47
3.5 Une Cité Industrielle (Tony Garnier 1917) 50
3.6 Plan Voisin (Le Corbusier 1925) 52
4.1 Poundbury, Dorset 58
4.2 Eurolille, masterplanned by Rem Koolhaas 60
4.3 Trafford Centre, Manchester (Chapman Taylor Architects 1998) 65
4.4 Imperial War Museum – North (Daniel Libeskind 2002) 66
4.5 Exchange Square, Manchester 67
4.6 New Piccadilly, Manchester (EDAW 2002) 69
5.1 Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (James Stirling and Michael Wilford 1984) 79
5.2 Le Murate, Florence 83
5.3 Sabbioneta 85
5.4 Palazzo della Ragione, Padua 87
5.5 Piazza Sant Ignazio, Rome (Filippo Raguzzini 1727–8) 88
5.6 Winter Garden, Sheffield (Pringle Richards Sharratt 2002) 93
6.1 Trastevere, Rome 97
6.2 Greenbrow Road, Wythenshawe, Manchester 102
6.3 Park Hill, Sheffield 103

ix
List of figures

6.4 Alexandra Road, London 104

6.5 Figure-ground plans of Hulme, Manchester (MBLC) 106
6.6 Sheffield Masterplan 2000 109
7.1 A recumbent André Breton photographed in 1925 in front of Giorgio de
Chirico’s painting The Enigma of the Hour (1914) 114
7.2 Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, Paris (Adolphe Alphand 1864–67) 116
7.3 Place des Vosges, Paris 119
7.4 Symbolic Representation of New Babylon (Constant Nieuwenhuys) 121
7.5 Stalker: the installation L’Amacario at the Stazione Leopolda,
Florence 2002 126
7.6 Community consultation, Devon Gardens, Burngreave, Sheffield, 2004 127
8.1 Altes Museum, Berlin (Karl Friedrich Schinkel 1822–30) 131
8.2 Tate Gallery, Liverpool (James Stirling and Michael Wilford 1984–88) 136
8.3 Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (Benson and Forsyth 1998) 140
8.4 National Centre for Popular Music, Sheffield (Branson Coates 1999) 141
8.5 New Art Gallery, Wallsall (Caruso St. John 2000) 142
8.6 The Lowry, Salford (Michael Wilford 2000) 144
9.1 Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome (Michelangelo 1538–64) 145
9.2 Piazzetta di San Marco, Venice 149
9.3 La Nuova Piazza di Fontivegge, Perugia (Aldo Rossi 1982–) 155
9.4 Parc de La Villette, Paris (Bernard Tschumi 1982–85) 156
9.5 Placa de l’Estacio Sants, Barcelona (Pinon Viaplana and Miralles 1982–3) 157
9.6 Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam (West 8 1996) 159
9.7 Meeting House Square, Dublin (Paul Keogh/Group 91 1996) 161
10.1 Urbis, Manchester (Ian Simpson Architects 2002) 166
10.2 Paternoster Square, London (Sir William Whitfield et al. 2003) 169
10.3 Selfridges & Co. Birmingham (Future Systems 2003) 170
10.4 New York New York Hotel Casino, Las Vegas 173
10.5 Community Consultation Mount Pleasant Park, Sharrow, Sheffield 2004 179

x
Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements to people, times and places.

This book has its origins in various experiences, educational, social and
professional, in which my view of the city was formed. Foremost among these is the
decline and regeneration of Manchester, my native city. Whatever reservations one
might have about specific decisions taken and designs realized, the city’s vibrancy
and energy are evidence of a confidence in urban life, and its influence deserves
acknowledging. However, my untutored perceptions of the city – the skyline of
chimneys and shed roofs, the robustness of the public buildings – required forming if
I was to make sense of them. The veil over my view of the city was lifted by Peter Carl
at Cambridge University School of Architecture. His teaching bombarded the student
with images and thoughts about the thorny relationship between architecture and
urbanism. He also introduced me to Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter’s Collage City, the
first book on urban design I ever read and the first in a long bibliography from Peter
which I am still trying to finish, and for which I would like to thank him.
The presence in Cambridge of Dalibor Vesely, embodying the culture of the
European city, placed my own urban environment in some form of context, where
meaning could be excavated from beneath the apparently utilitarian surface. It
appeared to me when I returned to Manchester after university that the British city
suffered in comparison to its continental counterparts but that aesthetic differences
were superficial. I therefore explored the lesson of Camillo Sitte in a bid to look at
the processes which formed successful urban places. This research on the Italian
square awaits a future book but also helped form the academic background to the
present volume and should be acknowledged, most of all the experience of Rome.
It was during this period of increasing realization of the political nature
of the piazza over the aesthetic value that an event occurred which refocused my
studies closer to home. That event was the damage to Manchester city centre caused
by an IRA bomb and the resulting transformation in the city’s appearance. My dismay
with some of the confused products of that experience, emulated in other urban
regeneration projects throughout Britain, has led to the writing of this book.
Numerous colleagues and students at Manchester and Sheffield
Universities have helped to form my thinking but I want to thank David Britch, Prue
Chiles and Dominic Roberts for reading particular chapters and helping me clarify my
often unarticulated ideas. Finally, I am very grateful to Peter Lathey for his patient help
in compiling the images.

xi
Introduction

In the past quarter century, the physical and social regeneration of British cities has
ascended the political agenda to a status it has not held since the long aftermath of the
Second World War. Issues of deindustrialization, unemployment, depopulation and
the decay of physical infrastructure have become the grounds on which successive
policies and programmes have been developed. The aim has been to reverse this
decline and the sprawl which results and revive the status of cities as desirable places
for homes, workplaces and entertainment. The role of urban design in this process has
shifted also, from having a negative reputation (a product of unsuccessful com-
prehensive redevelopment projects) to being seen as the discipline through which
social aspirations can be realized physically. Yet few examples of urban regeneration
display any consistent quality in urban design. Most consist of discontinuous frag-
ments of rival commercial developments cheek by jowl with the decayed remnants
of previous visions for the city. In a broader perspective, the radical changes to cities
introduced in the twentieth century are phenomena which still affect the urban
psyche throughout the world. However, it is possible to assert that these changes
are themselves only stages in a process which began with the industrialization of
the city in the late eighteenth century. It will be tantalizing to observe in the new
century what urban manifestations recent ideological transformations will have.
Foremost among them are the collapse of Communism, the accelerated globalization
of manufacturing and service industries, and the growing awareness of environmental
consequences. It may become apparent that the commercial and technological deter-
minism of capitalist societies are too powerful to be seriously modified by any notion
of design.
This analysis may appear unduly pessimistic, but arises from the difficulty
of discerning a generally positive picture emerging from a series of apparently
beneficial individual developments. The vision of the contemporary city appears to
me to be somewhat impaired, blinkered by short-term values of commerciality or
fashion. However, as he observes in The Ethical Function of Architecture, one must
acknowledge with Karsten Harries that, in the developed world at least, social
advances have taken root:

1
Introduction

Although countless problems still await a technological solution, who could

deny that technology has helped us lift at least some of the burdens of life?
There is an obvious sense in which we are less limited by our body and by
the accident of its location in space and time than were our predecessors.
It would be irresponsible not to affirm the liberating potential of objectifying
reason.
But such affirmation may not mean the absolutism of pure
reason. For its other side is the often-lamented rootlessness of modern
dwelling. No doubt, science and technology have brought us greater
freedom; both literally and figuratively, we have become more mobile.
Such mobility has made us less willing to accept what happens to be the
place assigned to us by nature or history, more ready to experiment.
Beyond what is, the self-elevation of the spirit has opened up infinite
realms of what might be.
(Harries 1997: 66–68)

Despite recent evidence suggesting that social mobility in Britain has gone into
reverse, it is in this area of potentiality that a positive focus can be nurtured. In a
culture dominated demographically by city dwellers, the response to their needs is
an important impetus for any design discipline. However, design is a Janus-like term,
facing in two different directions but connected to the same motive power. Those
ostensibly opposed directions are function and aesthetics, while their connection
is the intellectual capacity to hold those ideas in balance. Initially it might be proposed
that the balance between function and aesthetics shifts depending on the scale at
which design is operating. So, the design of objects intimately related to the scale of
the human body can easily be seen to be conditioned by forms of manufacture and the
need to perform their function, aesthetics being less significant as a factor. However,
a landscape, notwithstanding the ecological implications of the use of organic
materials, might serve less precise functions and respond far more to the aesthetic
desires of its creators and audience.
Between these two poles, what is design in relation to cities? It shares
the characteristic of scale which one associates with landscape, be that designed or
natural. But its functional necessities are equally significant, an accumulation of
individual and collective functions which might be proposed to be subject to aesthetic
control. It is the ethical accommodation of these different systems of particular order
that establishes the need for a theory of urban design. As Diana Agrest writes:

The city has always occupied a privileged place in the architectural dream
– it is the place where all orders are possible. It is the mythical place where
myriad different orders are projected, an unlimited repository. But the city
is also the concrete place of the accumulation of these orders, which are
superimposed upon, annihilate or support each other. The space of the
myth is simultaneously the record of the myth, a presence and an absence,
a reality and an abstraction. It is this struggle between the city’s position as

2
 Introduction

actual accumulation of conflicting orders – its orderlessness – and its desire

for order that has characterized the development of theories about the
city and architecture.
(Agnest 1991: 109)

The issue of order, how that order is to be represented and what that order represents
is not a universally accepted factor in urban design, split as it is into different dis-
ciplinary fields. There seem to me to be three aspects to the present situation, which
manifest themselves in three different areas, the professional and academic, the
technical, and what might be called the social and educational. My emphasis in this
book will be on the first of those categories (although the other two also receive some
consideration), where the current debate on the appropriate natures for architecture
and the city has taken an increasingly polarized guise. Partly this is the result of an
overemphatic polemic being allowed to obscure objective analysis: whereas most
examples of successful urban complexes are historic and therefore traditional in
character, it is clear to different theorists that a definitive choice should be made
between either a return to traditional forms (perhaps best represented by the
American phenomenon of New Urbanism), or an acceptance of globalizing processes
(as advocated by adherents of what I shall refer to as Neo-Modernism).
In the second area, because Modernism had failed to produce an urbanism
which was not overtly technocratic, a sceptical attitude arose with the cold realization
that it created as many environmental problems as it solved, especially in relation to
the wasteful use of resources. Material failure, coupled with hostile experiences in
major developments, was to deflate the public perception of the professional groups
involved, and fuel the nostalgia for the historic urban environment. Whatever its
socially liberating intentions, Modernism’s profligacy with resources was to become
a particular burden following the Oil Crisis of the mid-1970s. Presently, issues such
as ecological impact still only play a marginal role in most design processes. This is
especially true in those societies which have followed monetarist economic principles
since roughly the same date. Environmental and health damage caused by car
dependency, for example, is ignored unless the impact is directly felt.
And, finally, there is the marginalization of design as a factor in the creation
of urban environments because of short-term economic pressure and the failure of
designs to communicate effectively with communities. Similar insistence on an
aesthetic position characterized the Modernist city of the mid-twentieth century,
initially in project form and latterly in the extensive environments put at the protag-
onists’ disposal through post-war reconstruction. Despite the alienating results, in
recent years the subjective appreciation of the city as a shared space has given way
in the minds of the public, as well as the developers, into a desire to understand the
success of an urban environment solely through its financial value. The consequent
corrosive effect on the aesthetic language through which an urban environment might
be judged is more than outstripped by the narrowing of the range of society for whom
such environments are deemed welcoming.

3
Introduction

History has taught us to be cautious of any moral proposal for an urban

solution, but these issues present an ethical problem for the urban designer. With
the perceived atomization of society into distinct groups with few common values
other than the protection of personal property and privacy, where does that leave the
public arena? Social exclusion is a phenomenon which is very evident in our sup-
posedly transparent contemporary urban environments, and its effects are often
exaggerated under the guise of urban regeneration. Marginal groups such as immi-
grants or the homeless are often the occupiers of city sites which local authorities and
developers identify as failing to yield a suitable profit. In the privatization of the public
realm these groups are removed in favour of a new population with high disposable
income who can support retail developments or have the ability to invest in expensive
residential space. Aesthetics plays its role in the creation of a lifestyle image which
ensures the new occupiers that they have the best or at least the latest desirable
consumer item. The strand of society which this scenario serves is that which
is already well able to provide for itself, the minority of the moneyed, while those
excluded include typical households on average incomes as well as those more
usually identified as the underprivileged. Many of the flagship developments of British
urban regeneration are restricted to commercial and residential developments with no
provision of schools or social facilities where social bonds might be forged. In this
situation, the public realm is that zone where these mutually exclusive groups rub up
against each other, and is manifested either as a border, a zone of conflict or a no
man’s land.
Disappointed with the abundant fruits of urban regeneration, I should state
that my intention in this book is to outline a proposition in favour of the evolution of
cities, and explain a distrust of radical solutions. At present, technologically advanced
societies have the wealth which allows them to achieve great changes in their urban
environments, but it is a luxury of choice which has led to increasing discontinuities.
To return to the first of the three aspects I raised earlier, the polarized debate around
the issue of style has distracted attention from a deeper consideration of how urban
life might benefit city dwellers. On the one hand, by far the most provocative vision
of the city for the twenty-first century is that proposed by the Charter for the New
Urbanism (Duany et al. 2000: 256–261), less for the vehemence with which it is
pursued than for the selective amnesia which erases from consciousness the
technology that supports well-upholstered American society. This is countered by a
Neo-Modernism which has cast off the reformist guise of pioneering Modernism in
favour of subservience to the demands of the market as presented in the Harvard
Design School Guide to Shopping (Chung et al. 2001). Both options seem to me to
be amoral: New Urbanism for its self-righteous restrictions on how urban populations
might live, and Neo-Modernism for its reluctance to address the human cost of the
creation of global cities. The redundancy of this stylistic and economically driven
debate therefore necessitates the outlining of an ‘urban ethic’.
Notwithstanding these reservations regarding the superficialities of
style, the form of urban space is a representation of the ethics of a society, and it is

4
 Introduction

therefore necessary to explore how its mechanism operates if we are to create more
positive models for the city. This book will propose a methodology for the analysis and
design of urban environments intended to put in place an ethos of shared purpose
explicitly opposed to individual rivalries, and to encourage the diversity which is
recognized as a socially beneficial effect of urban life. Part I (Chapters 1–4) will present
an analysis of the present urban situation tracing the strands of urban development
in historic, industrial and post-industrial environments. Part II (Chapters 5–10) will
discuss the elements of the proposed methodology and their synthesis in commu-
nicative and representational urban environments. While what is to follow is to
a limited sense compartmentalized into specific categories, that separation is only a
necessary part of the analytic process. Although the sequence of the early chapters
(Part I) follows chronological order, Part II also refers to historic exemplars within the
particular forms of patterns, narratives, monuments and spaces. This should be
understood as a demonstration of my belief, not in the model of historical progress,
but in a less determinate historical milieu in which we are situated. It is intended that
this balance between analysis and creative manifestations will ensure an interpretative
framework which is adept at dealing with both the concrete and the speculative.

5
Part I

Processes of Urban Development

Chapter 1

The Questions of
the City

This is the way cities were designed in past ages. The forum like a main
hall had a regular form. Its visible open space was designed to produce a
desired effect. Irregularities in the plan, on the contrary, were enclosed in
built-over areas or hidden in walls, procedures both simple and clever. We
follow the opposite course today.
(Sitte [1889] 1945: 56)

Camillo Sitte’s elegiac assertion of the contrariness of contemporary design is all the
more poignant when it is considered that these words were written over a hundred
years ago. His desire to revive the design of cities as sequences of spaces of a clearly
defined and essentially enclosed nature has come to be regarded as reactionary in
the light of subsequent functionalist, urban developments, yet his voice remains one
of the great sources for those who believe that the physical fabric of a city should be
more than the sum of an equation between land values and traffic convenience
(Schorske 1981: 62–72). The cities which Sitte studied and drew, and which we still
today admire, were living entities. They had a commercial life, they functioned in
terms of communications, but neither of these utilitarian necessities dominated over
the life of the city as a social and spiritual entity.
Sitte’s critique, published in 1889 in Der Stadtbau nach seinen kunstle-
rischen Grundsätzen (City building according to artistic principles), was fundamentally
formal and aesthetic, but expressed his concern for social matters. In a set of essays
he castigated contemporary planning methods of rationalism, contrasting the reliance
on the grid of nineteenth-century city plans with the enclosed public spaces of
medieval and Baroque planning. By visiting many small European cities and analyzing
the qualities of those cities, he produced a set of principles regarding the opening of
streets into squares and the placing of monuments. His model for urban development

9
was nostalgic and overtly architectural. What he saw around him in his rapidly 1.1
changing home city of Vienna was the death of the traditional city, signified by the Piazza Trento e
Trieste, Ferrara.
creation of wide boulevards, a uniform spatial vacuum and the isolated monumental Laid out in the
structures of the Ringstrasse. He concluded his book with an application to the centre of the
medieval city, the
context of Vienna of the principles he had deduced, proposing the enclosure of new
space is bounded
public buildings so as to enhance the aesthetic impact of their façades. In this way to one side by
he sought to arrest the free spaces of the traffic-dominated city, and to create recog- the flank of the
Romanesque
nizable places with precise characteristics. These plans were never implemented,
cathedral.
but the publication and translation of his ideas throughout Europe and America were Commercial
to have a significant influence in the early years of the twentieth century. structures, in
the form of a
Sitte’s analytical technique is based on an experiential reading of urban
mercantile loggia,
space, and principally of central places, rather than the overall organization from the complement the
god-like view of the master planner. However, his discoveries, particularly the ‘turbine civic and religious
buildings which
plaza’, indicate a hidden order of use, the results of which are both generally familiar
dominate the
and specific to individual contexts. Yet given the backward-looking direction of his square.
analytical gaze, even in the historicist era in which he worked, the question remains as
to whether his ideas have any relevance to the urbanism of the early years of the
twenty-first century. The significance of his work might be considered in three areas.
First, working within a cultural tradition, Sitte had deduced his principles
from observations of medieval Italian city–states whose representational spaces
embodied Greek political ideas, transcendent planning strategies based on Etruscan
interpretations of celestial patterns, and Roman imperial iconography. The culture of

10
 The questions of the city

the medieval city–state was often cited in the nineteenth century by critics such as
John Ruskin as the model which contemporary urban environments should emulate
(Hunt 2004: 152–168). These city–states, as centres of trade and culture bear com-
parison with contemporary global cities, with their rivalries for economic wealth and
architectural distinction. Second, Sitte was reacting to the immediate context of the
growth of cities which had occurred as a result of industrialization and the utilitarian
environments created by these developments. Where they could be said to be subject
to design, the influence of the engineer held sway in most of these new quarters, with
the work of the architect restricted to the elaboration of public buildings. As we shall
see in Chapter 3, in early industrial Manchester, observers such as Friedrich Engels
described the living and working conditions of the industrial underclass unknown
to the entrepreneurial class which profited from their labour (Engels ([1844] 1987).
The proto-Communist made the connection between the physical character of
urban space, the economic system and the social welfare of the city dweller. Sitte’s
observation, much less politically radical, was to consider the way the form of
contemporary urban spaces led to the same type of social disengagement which
concerned Engels. It is not too remote to see a reflection of this analysis in the
flagships of British urban regeneration, as well as in the new developing centres of
the Far East, admired by some as demonstrations of the vitality of global commerce.
The miserable existence of the under-classes is largely ignored. And, finally, the
Viennese experience of the nineteenth century, as exemplified in the parade of
historicist monuments in the Ringstrasse, prefigures the architectural character
of the contemporary city, with a general order replaced by the individualism of the
landmark building and the discontinuous environment which results. While
historical style at least communicated concepts such as democracy or culture in the
use of Greek or Renaissance forms, the various languages of contemporary archi-
tecture are less easy to interpret, deriving as they do from the personal choices of
the architect. Sitte’s emphasis on the form of the space attempted to overcome this
discontinuity.
The contemporary situation in urban design is in many ways still in thrall
to the wholesale acceptance of Corbusian urban dogma in the period immediately
succeeding the Second World War. Replacing the ground-hugging forms of the
traditional city with the tower block and the urban motorway was a design strategy
which was enthusiastically implemented across the developed world and beyond. The
reductivist, windswept and monotonous urban desert that resulted is the legacy with
which designers are expected to deal, yet the huge task seems insurmountable. Some
of the dereliction is perhaps unavoidable due to general industrial decline, unforeseen
technical failure and unpredictable social changes, but much of it is the product of an
aesthetic blitzkrieg held in the dubious name of progress. That this so-called progress
was only of value to an isolated and carefully insulated elite is merely one of the
many ironies, given the egalitarianism supposedly espoused by its perpetrators.
However, it is important to understand that the current debates concerning the style
of significant urban design projects are also deeply ironic, since the fundamental issue

11
The questions of the city

which unites the protagonists of either New Urbanism or Neo-Modernism is that of

the commodification of space, and specifically the acceptance of the privatization
of the public realm. The generous provision of space under Modernism still adhered
to traditional notions of the public realm, although it was perhaps over-optimistic to
assume that such spaces would only invite benign uses. The consequence of failure
has been the obsessive desire to control behaviour in open space through very direct
methods.
It is precisely the observation of these recent phenomena which have
provoked research into past manifestations of the open and public nature of urban
space. In its different historical manifestations the city–state regarded itself as an
organism, indeed, often identified itself as an expression of the protecting deity. There
was therefore a natural desire to read the people and public space as a single body
whose functioning depended on its unity. As a political and social entity, the ancient
city–state bears little apparent resemblance to the contemporary city. However,
despite the narrow qualifications of citizenship, the acceptance of slavery, or the
restrictions of feudal society in the Middle Ages, these cities were not as susceptible
to the types of division which characterize capitalist concepts of property. In the
contemporary world, populations are much larger, as are the numbers endowed with
political rights. The consequent diversity which a city contains is therefore unlikely to
find expression in the unified forms which we can explore in medieval Siena, for
example, where the urban design, the architecture, the sculpture and the mural
painting serve to underline the dominance of the ruling oligarchs. In the present
situation the dominant political image of a city is the commercial interests in the
office and retail sectors which are ostensibly unrepresented in the common Western
democratic system. Like the beautiful cities of the past, the forms of our cities reflect
a political system, but it is not the system of participatory democracy, symptomatic
of an alienation between population and environment, an environment which might
adopt the dress of public values but is an expression of private interests.
The inconsistencies in this situation provoke questions for the contem-
porary city, questions which are thrown into relief by the study of previous urban
cultures. The purpose of such a study is not to indulge in a nostalgia for vanished
times. It derives from a frustration with the type of contemporary architectural and
urban design which expends a considerable amount of energy on solving unnecessary
problems rather than fundamental ones. The restless need for novelty in form or
materials, the inability to defer appropriately to existing contexts, the desire to fill open
space up with increasing amounts of street furniture, are all symptoms of a lack of
the confidence which comes from even a superficial understanding of how specific
situations developed and the broader historical trends they represent. I would assert
that it is impossible to understand the contemporary city without considering the past.
The following brief consideration of different urban situations will therefore serve to
introduce the chronological subject matter of the next three chapters, the historic,
industrial and post-industrial cities, seen also in the light of contemporary aesthetic and
political structures.

12
1.2 The coherent identity of the historic city was maintained by its compact
Piazza del Campo,
nature. The boundary between city and country was clearly expressed, often by
Siena. The great
amphitheatrical fortifications which put a premium on dense development, and in terms of size the
space of the centre was no great distance from the edge. The whole of the city was therefore
medieval city is
visible and knowable, a level of recognition which was supported by the identifiability
defined around
a sloping brick of the urban pattern within the walls. Planned forms would generally be gridded,
pavement. The with the citizen easily able to interpret the hierarchy of routes and blocks. Conversely,
urban walls are
in more organically arranged cities, the determinant features would generally be
treated in a
consistent manner topographic, which in turn would support the citizen’s requirement for orientation. If
which heightens the general belief was that cities existed through some form of divine agency or at
the unique
least prospered under divine patronage, the form of a city was not really open to
verticality of the
Torre del Mangia question. It simply manifested a fundamental truth, although its specific character
of the Palazzo had pragmatic advantages and disadvantages. The abstract forms of the planned city
Pubblico from
which this
type would encourage the development of normative types of property, while the
photograph was presence of natural features would tend to obstruct this process and represent
taken. the unquantifiable genius loci. While city planning of both the conscious and uncon-
scious variety had this undemonstrative quality, the architectural languages with which
urbanity was embodied were cosmopolitan and sophisticated, evocative of other
locations but communicable to the citizens. Standing within the fabric of the city,
these far from parochial structures expressed a self-confident identity. The prolifer-
ation of such monuments, and their familiarity in different urban contexts, stand as a
witness to the latent power of tradition, where the interpretation of forms and their

13
The questions of the city

evolutionary development tied the citizens to a common meaning of urban life

(Martines 1980). From the reading of the traditional city, we must ask how the
contemporary city responds to the need to be politically representative, to be equitable
to the diversity of its citizens and to be expressive in its architectural languages.
Eschewing the ethical values of the traditional city, values which were
transcendent and considered immutable, from the eighteenth century the normative
nature of the industrial process, the connection between profitability and repetition,
influenced the design of cities. Both through the need to accommodate industrial
sites close to centres of trade and finance, and through the industrialization of the
building process itself, early industrial centres such as Manchester experienced
enormous growth from the end of the eighteenth century onwards, with the new
transport infrastructure of canals providing the means by which raw materials could be
imported, and manufactured goods exported. The process was self-sustaining. In the
town itself, mills and warehouses could be serviced by the growing population
dependent for employment, and also often for their housing, on the new class of
industrial entrepreneur. The financial imperatives of the factory resulted in the creation
of ever larger structures which required larger spaces for the movement of goods,
rupturing the close-knit pattern of the traditional urban settlement. The unfettered
nature of this development was to lead to an environment where the dominant image
of the town was the factories by which its wealth was created, casting their shadows
over both those employed in them and those who profited by industrialization. The
latter group, however, were able to remove themselves to the growing suburban
settlements with cleaner air, leading to an effective pattern of unregulated zoning
(Engels [1844] 1987: 85–87).
Broadly speaking, these processes were allowed to take their course as the
market dictated until the twentieth century when attempts were made to regulate
them. The historicizing bewilderment of the architectural profession in the face of
industrialization which had characterized the nineteenth century gave way to a resolve
to seize the new opportunities. The scale of operation required, and the centralized
control on offer as a result of political developments provoked a series of responses,
among them Tony Garnier’s Cité Industrielle and Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, both
of which will be considered in Chapter 3. These were only the two most celebrated
attempts to synthesize the historic inevitabilities of the urban industrial environment
and contemporary aesthetics. When elements of visionary projects such as these
were implemented, however, the benign intentions of the protagonists came up
against the different aspirations of the populations involved. In the functionally zoned
city, the industrialized building processes, developed to meet the demands of manu-
facture, were ill-suited either to the representational languages sought for public
building, or the hospitable environments required for housing. The very utility of these
methods, their sole raison d’être, was often in doubt, and with the decline in manu-
facturing as the principal livelihood for the populations concerned, their rhetorical
nature became more manifest. With the reduction in the significance of manufacturing
in our urban economy, the question remains as to whether industry’s latent capacity

14
 The questions of the city

1.3
Economist Plaza,
St. James’s, London
(Alison and Peter
Smithson 1964).
This small space,
with its original
ground floor
arcades, owed
much to the
observation of
medieval Italian
spaces. However,
the eclecticism of
its sources (which
also included the
materiality of
Baroque London
churches and
contemporary
skyscraper design)
and the variety
of scale fail to
create any sense
of animated
reciprocity between
the different
components of
the site.

in resources and workforce has the potential to transform the urban environment. Can
the types of technologically derived benefits mentioned by Karsten Harries be seen
to have their counterparts in urban design?
The contemporary reactions to the Modernist city have many causes but
coincided with the collapse of faith in public provision in favour of the belief in the

15
The questions of the city

virtues of the private. In an era characterized by the advocacy of trickle-down eco-

nomics, the bureaucratization of design was no longer an option. While social cohesion
collapsed, the consensus in design also fractured, as the aspirations of the individual
began to take precedence over the collective. Remedies were sought in the benign
self-interest of community, in the example of the historic environment and the
potential of accelerated technology. Essentially the effect of these phenomena was to
create a cityscape of distraction which would obscure the increasing commodification
of urban life which industrialization had produced. Subsequent developments would
also contribute to the overturning of the traditional nature of urban space. Whereas
Modernism had inverted the urban fabric of the traditional city into a landscape of
isolated objects, the void between them, the ‘dead public space’ to which Richard
Sennett refers, might now be deemed to have meaning by virtue of its potential
privatization (Sennett 1986: 12–16). Whether that leads to the creation of gated open
space, available only to those with a perceived right to the space, or in more radical
solutions the disposal of that space for further building, is immaterial. Space is treated
as a commodity from which it is necessary to deter the undesirable, and the surest
way to effect this deterrence is to introduce an economic barrier. We therefore have
the phenomenon that the most common form in which to enjoy public space in the
city is to be engaged in commercial activity.
Ironically, the rhetoric of traditional public space is often used to trick out
exclusively retail zones, to beguile the shopper with the idea that they are engaged in
some form of exclusive commercial transaction through the use of a diverse arrange-
ment of ‘period’ detail masking the standardized retail shed. In such a scenario the
commercial environment needs constant updating to attract customers, so that it is
essentially a detachable surface on a more substantial and heavily serviced structure.
In parallel with these processes, architectural expression has become more
clamorous, as buildings fight for our attention. The eclectic nature of contemporary
culture, and the wide range of choices available are a further demonstration of com-
modification (Chung et al. 2001: 390–401). In more intellectually respectable situations
the signature architect lends his name and reputation to the public profile of the
global city, providing a cultural veneer in tourist market positioning. The question
needs to be asked: does the abandonment of the more profound aspects of planning
in the provision of healthy and representational environments, in favour of the
superficial and often temporary demands of commerce represent a good use of
valuable resources?
While the individual examples which follow will be discussed in relation
to their individual political contexts, it is perhaps worth making a point about the
changing significance of the city’s status, particularly in relation to the heightened
profile of individual cities. The issue of civic identity and independence characterizes
the great examples of urban culture from the European past: Athens, Rome, Florence,
Cologne, Bruges, among many others. In the particular cases of city–states, the
identification between a place and its citizens constituted an almost visceral rela-
tionship. Kinship and loyalty were owed to the known world of the family, the parish,

16
 The questions of the city

the quarter and the city. This helped mutually reinforce the urban identity with a
common set of shared symbols although, for example, in medieval cities a degree of
complexity might be introduced into this continuum by adherence to trade guilds or
charitable organizations.
From our standpoint, in a period dominated by the economic power of the
major nation–states, such civic attitudes might appear limited, with the term parochial
being effectively a term of abuse. The individual city became at best the provincial
city with only the capital continuing to exert the significant power of representing a
state. London, Paris and Berlin each played a significant role in their respective nations
but to the detriment of other cities as status became focused on the presence of the
court or governmental functions. The control of communications through a national
centre was of particular significance.
However, technological and economic change in recent decades has
produced the phenomenon of the global city, which has revived the idea of civic status
and created new opportunities for non-capital cities. Dispensing with the tag of
provincialism these cities avoid the escalating problems of capital cities, replacing
them with an open network of similar cities which crosses national boundaries. This
is a major reason why many of the examples which will be discussed in Chapters
6–9 are not located in national capitals. The city–state is not about to make a come-
back, but the ability of smaller cities to take advantage of opportunities relatively
quickly makes them increasingly cosmopolitan in outlook. While national loyalties
remain, well-travelled citizens make ambitious citizens, whose aspirations force
designers, developers and civic authorities to keep pace with them.
In addition to the influence of a city’s political status, the consideration of
the contemporary city’s form should also take account of the changes in attitudes to
space and its perception and representation: the aesthetic culture in which it is
formed. In Chapters 2–4 the continuity of development of urban form is divided into
three eras: (1) the historic or traditional; (2) the industrial; and (3) the post-industrial. As
well as economic changes, each of these could be characterized by a prevailing
system of spatial representation which, to borrow a phrase from Erwin Panofsky
([1924–25] 1991), could easily be thought of as its ‘symbolic form’. Although Panofsky
is referring specifically to the development of perspective technique in the early
Renaissance, the idea that the retinal reception of the urban scene underscored
the planning strategies adopted is fundamental to many theories of historic urban
design. Examples include Doxiadis’s analysis of the layout of Greek sanctuaries and
Martienssen’s broader consideration of urban planning (Martienssen 1956; Doxiadis
1972). Both these theories are of course heavily conditioned by modernist readings
of antiquity such as that of Le Corbusier (1927: 139–151, 185–207).
When considering later examples, Marvin Trachtenberg’s analysis of
trecento Florentine space suggests an earlier history to the systems of perspective
demonstrated in his two urban perspective panels by Brunelleschi (Trachtenberg
1997). His focus on this subject follows on from the studies on Renaissance per-
spective by Giulio Carlo Argan (1946), Rudolph Wittkower (1953), and Hubert Damisch

17
The questions of the city

(1994), while the manipulation of perspective in the Baroque has also been explored in
the work of Alberto Perez-Gomez (Perez-Gomez and Pelletier 1997). As these and
other disparate sources demonstrate, the physical expression of urban culture was
controlled through the representational values of vision.
With the industrial era, however, the Newtonian model of a fixed and
infinite space meant that the dominance of vision was reduced to a superficial value
against the other values of time, energy and communication. The industrial city’s
purpose was efficiency of production, and the important spatial value was that the city
be extensive rather than intimate. The banality of this quality of spatial extension was
hymned by Siegfried Giedion and others, its origins traced by Perez-Gomez and Dalibor
Vesely, but with the capturing of vision by the camera it is perhaps the theorists of
urban photography and film who provide some of the most telling commentaries
(Giedion 1948; Perez-Gomez 1983; Boyer 1994; Clarke 1997; Vesely 2004).
But what is the spatial paradigm in the post-industrial city? Is it the surface
of the communication in print and electronic format, conveniently replicable, able to be
manipulated, transmittable and ultimately disposable? The protagonists of critical
theory would have us believe so, but the situation remains fundamentally undefined,
although the claims of the virtual world have often been trumpeted in the recent past
(Mitchell 1995). Indeed, the experience of the contemporary city is often referred to in
terms which derive from photography, film and digital animation. The replication of the
retinal image of the city in various media is a limited and controlled phenomenon
which, however, does not have the variety of individual experiences. Its appeal lies in
the marvellous sensations of speed and space which are at some remove from the
humdrum pleasures of daily urban life. Unable to fully replace the physical delights of
the city, the simulation of reality wanes as familiarity undermines its fascination.
This brief list is introduced to demonstrate the profound connection
between urban design and urban representation, as a discipline for design devel-
opment and the analysis of the urban experience. It constitutes a subject of study in
its own right, which can only be touched on in this present book. It should, however,
be borne in mind as underlying the material which follows.
Beyond these aesthetic considerations the phases of urban development
which have been briefly outlined above, their chronological sequence, political struc-
ture and cultural milieu, raise questions concerning the practicalities of urban design.
The economic forces brought to bear in any exercise in urban design often make it
difficult to imagine that aesthetics can have any impact. It is therefore all the more
important to establish a framework which is strong enough to support such a vision,
but supple enough to adapt to diverse circumstances. The traditional, industrial, and
post-industrial urban environments all offer opportunities for the useful appropriation
of formal models, but they have to be understood in their own context so as not
to drain their forms of any meaning, which only results in historicism. These three
contexts will therefore be considered in more depth with a view to extracting lessons
from them, prior to the definition of elements of the contemporary urban environment
through which new situations might be constructed. What needs to be remembered

18
 The questions of the city

is that, despite the apparent paradox, the offer of a prescriptive solution should always
take second place to the development of a significant question.
I suspect that after the introduction of all these issues, two questions still
remain for the reader. First, what role does an ethical framework play in urban design?
And, second, what more specifically do I want from a city? These two questions are
connected because what I have described as my personal frustration with the
contemporary city derives from a belief that ethical values are under-represented.
Commercial values prevail which ultimately serve the need of only a minority of
citizens. The motivations of the democratic representative system remain discon-
nected from the populations they are intended to serve. The views of citizens have
to be actively sought, and their individual aspirations addressed for them to be able
to endorse any shared shaping of the city.
To help consider that first question, in The Ethical Function of Architecture,
Karsten Harries provides a phenomenological reading of architecture which con-
centrates on a succession of historical examples to outline his position. The major
buildings he discusses are largely treated as detached monuments, with little
discussion of their urban contexts. However, in the last pages of his book, briefly
mentioning the contemporary public models of the museum and the shopping mall, he
does raise the subject of the communal nature of urban space and its ability to embody
an ethical conception of the city. This consideration of the urban realm (more diffuse,
more elusive but also more completely enveloping than architecture) is the task
I wish to take up with a view to help define such an ethical framework. However, I
recognize in myself the description Harries applies to an architect: ‘he is a bit like a fool
who says what he thinks needs to be said but can only hope that others will listen’
(1997: 367).
But if I wish others to listen, surely I have to describe what I would
consider to be an ethical urban environment? This brings me to consideration of the
second question. There are many facets to this appreciation of the ethical and accom-
modating qualities of urban form. Do I want a legible overall structure, convenient for
resident and visitor? Do I want the city to permit that, when in a given place, I can
easily find another place? Do I want architecture which has variety and an overall
harmony? Do I want the buildings to have a degree of robustness and a degree of
permeability, even ambiguity? Do I want them to sustain a variety of uses over time?
Do I want them to contain usable public space rather than to repel it? Do I want the
buildings’ functions, public or private, governmental or institutional, religious, secular,
commercial and charitable, resident and tourist-centred to encourage the casual
meeting of different races and classes? Do I want the whole to be made with and
ornamented by the highest quality of design, materials, innovative techniques and
expressions? Do I want it to contain ritual and social functions with equal grace? Do
I want Piazza Santissima Annunziata in Florence? The answer to all these questions
is yes. It is, of course, the type of space which Sitte so admired. In its elegant and
comprehensible form, this space holds in microcosm many aspects of the city as a
whole, both this specific city and the generality of cities. The longevity of such space,

19
The questions of the city

serene when in use or when abandoned, should also appeal to the desire to create a
familiar environment, to develop a sustainable city and to encourage cooperation and
participation.

1.4
Piazza SS.
Annunziata,
Florence from the
loggia of Filippo
Brunelleschi’s
Foundling Hospital
(1419–26). The
space developed
over the period of
the Renaissance to
be surrounded by
graceful arcades
on three sides.
Originally they
housed a variety
of religious
and charitable
functions, and
continue to
accommodate a
wide range of uses.
The fourth side
of the square is
occupied by two
palaces (presently
a hotel and the
headquarters of
the Tuscan regional
government) which
frame an axial
route towards
Brunelleschi’s
dome.

20
Chapter 2

The Historic City

Despite the distance in time and culture, the millennia of gradual urban development
which preceded industrialization established the foundations of our civic life and it
is important to extract themes from the dense sediment of that history. The broad
scope of this period (from the settlements of the ancient Near East until the familiar
cities of the eighteenth century) requires that a selective interpretation is inevitable,
a process designed to support my particular argument. This chapter will therefore deal
with three distinct historical phases within the Western canon of urbanism – antiquity,
the Middle Ages and (perhaps surprisingly) the middle years of the twentieth century
– to trace one strand in the creation of urban form. The major theme which connects
them is how the buildings and spaces of the city represent and support the civic ethos,
rooting the urban identity of the citizens to the highly articulated place.
In assessing the form of traditional cities, it is important to distinguish
how they differ from our own cities and why they continue to exert an influence upon
us despite the social and technological changes of the past three centuries. For
example, from the perspective of the modern city, how are we to understand ancient
conceptions of urban space when contemporary attitudes are governed by a prevailing
cultural paradigm? Given the dramatic power of the archaeological remains of ancient
cities, it is hardly surprising that there has been a tendency to find their meaning in
the disposition of their forms, treating the sites as a species of museum exhibit
or laboratory specifically divorced from the communal life which brought them into
being (Martienssen 1956; Doxiadis 1972). In the development of the historic city the
religious interpretation of the natural and physical world underlay the construction of
urban situations and therefore predisposed the citizens to a reading of the city as a
revealed truth. The legacies of ancient urban cultures to the cities which followed
them are complex and difficult to disentangle, spread as they are on a broad spectrum
between divine sanction and functional convenience. However, these distinctions
which we are able to make today between representation and utility are not
necessarily useful to the understanding of those civilizations, despite their significance
for the analysis of contemporary phenomena. The religious function of cities, their role

21
The historic city

as theatre of the civic cult, has to be appreciated by the contemporary mind if one is
to understand the range of their psychological as well as physical effects. This poetic
life of the city, where ancient peoples viewed their settlements as embodying the
direct intervention of the divine in the mundane, has effectively been superseded by
a combination of utilitarian and formal methods which, being more provisional, are less
firmly anchored in any ancient cultural tradition (Vesely 2004).
Given the extent of its empire, the impact of Rome is especially meaningful
and although Roman thought and practice are closest chronologically to contemporary
forms of urban space, the influence of earlier civilizations interpreted through Rome
was also significant. While the variety of Greek political ideas had a difficult rela-
tionship with the increasingly centralized forms of Roman government, they provided
the language by which later cities could express their systems of authority and
representation. Secondly, however, Etruscan planning practices, both religious
and rational, were adopted by Rome partly as a means of defining a distinct Italian
character to their cities in the peninsula and throughout the empire. And, finally, the
republican and imperial iconography of Rome was to find itself reinterpreted by later
cities as the means by which to express independence, dominion and power.
From these brief assertions it can be appreciated that there is an ambiguity
about the sources of spatial composition in each of these cultures. Greek urban space
has been characterized as generously dynamic (Scully 1969), this dominant mode for
the public areas contrasted with the rational grid method attributed to Hippodamus
of Miletus. Although Hippodamian influence has been observed in later Etruscan
settlements, their principal cities were designed to be both rational and in accord
with a religious interpretation of the cosmos. Similarly, the Forum Romanum, although
developed as an accretion of disconnected structures, achieved the integration of
those individual monuments into a unified, though never static, urban space (Favro
1996). The paradoxes of these distinct aspects combined in particular spaces continue
to be apparent, as we shall see, in later public spaces, for example, the piazzas of
the medieval Italian city. The ambiguity of these forms is precisely the quality which
ensures their longevity of use, in contrast to the disposability of contemporary urban
forms.
This ambiguity had an inclusive character which ensured the engagement
of different groups and strata of society in a common urban scene, notwithstanding
the relatively few individuals who were formally regarded as citizens. The frequent
reiteration of the common identity through the celebration of festivals was often
connected to the narratives of city foundation, which explored the change from nature
to culture through divine intervention. To consider the example of ancient Athens,
the city from which many of our political and philosophical attitudes derive, the
Panathenaic procession celebrated the founding of the city through the agency of
Athena (Hurwitt 1999: 44–47). The significance of this route from the Dipylon Gate to
the Acropolis lay in its traversing the distinct topographies of the city and the creation
of the irregular space of the Agora. This ritual definition preceded the physical fabric of
the city, as the urban pattern accumulated later, along the sacred route (Travlos 1971).

22
 The historic city

Therefore the poetic interpretation of cities might be deemed to have primacy over the
broad facts of its form, yet it is the survival of those forms which allow us to engage
with the historic city both intrinsically as a product of the past and as an exemplary
situation for the present. The poetic resonance of urban form is, however, a scarcely
acknowledged component of conventional urban design.
The status given to the boundary as both protector and protected entity
is a clear difference between traditional and contemporary urban situations. The
recognizable physical characteristic of the traditional city was the definition of its
form distinct from the surrounding countryside, embodying the passage from a rural
society to one in which urban centres controlled territories around them. Whether
the city is the result of organic development or a planned layout, the boundary set
a limit on the political identity of the city as much as it determined its form. Early
settlements represent a diverse range of spatial types whose forms often influence
subsequent urban growth until the onset of industrialization. Those built on Roman
foundations, for example, have clear geometrical relationships which relate the cities
to each other, and define an urban type. Other situations are more clearly formed in
relation to topographical conditions which reinforce aspects of individual civic identity.
Greek, Etruscan, Roman and medieval settlements presented a diverse
range of spatial types which require consideration both in their own terms and as the
precursors of the city forms we are familiar with today. The psychology of these
places is as significant as their physical attributes. This interchangeability between the
poetic and the factual is harder to appreciate because of the erosion of the perception
of the natural and urban environment as a phenomenon charged with spiritual
significance, towards the separation of the functional aspects of the city from the
expression of any divine act. To the minds which created traditional urban spaces
there was a correlation, which would normally require expert interpretation, between
their immediate physical situation and the observable phenomena of the wider world
around them.
Within this general belief in the presence of the divine, however, the
religious attitudes of each of these civilizations was quite distinct, despite the trans-
ference of deities and myths between them. The divinities of the Greek world existed
as a magnified reflection of human motives and actions. Ritual activity was frequent,
and the actions of the gods were regarded as comprehensible. The Etruscans,
however, would appear to have had a more intense relationship to their gods, seeking
signs of their favour and disfavour above or below the plane of human inhabitation
(Haynes 2000). For the Romans, as with much else in their culture, religion was a
pragmatic affair of civic and domestic observance to achieve good fortune. In the
Christian world the eschatological character of the city as a reflection of the city of God
informed the dominant position of the church and the iconography of its decoration.
The influence of these religious attitudes might also be traced in the design
of their civic spaces. Greek settlements have been the subject of diverse interpre-
tations, yet the fundamental influence of Greek urban culture underpins subsequent
Western societies, even if an inheritance of the formal architectural language remains

23
The historic city

more problematical. The sheer scale of their expressions of sacred space suggests the
separateness but familiarity of the gods. Roman settlements have clear geometrical
relationships inherited from Etruscan layouts which were the product of divinatory
practices that embodied the human dependence on the other worldly. Drawing
on both these cultures, the Romans combined them to produce a distinct urban
2.1
environment which prized the civic and military significance of the sacred space. While Temple of
early Christianity transformed the precedents of the Roman world in which it was Neptune, Paestum
(Poseidonia).
born, the later medieval period would see a tension develop between the expressions
Dating from the
of religious and civic identities. seventh–sixth
Following these general observations on the cultural background of ancient centuries BC, this
Greek colony in
cities, we can now proceed to consider some examples in detail. The divinatory
Southern Italy was
processes by which the genius loci might be interpreted would in ancient societies rediscovered in the
focus around the choice and definition of a suitable site, particularly in the colonial eighteenth century.
The siting and form
foundations of a mother city. A Greek city in southern Italy, Paestum (founded c.600
of the temples were
BC as Poseidonia), although abandoned for many centuries until its rediscovery in the to be a profound
eighteenth century serves as a form of emblematic example of Greek urban planning influence on
neoclassical
in its relationship to ideas of the city type rather than the specifics of the more architecture and on
obviously charged topography of Athens. the urban theories
The plan of the city, the full extent of which is still unexcavated, is com- of Le Corbusier,
as illustrated in
posed of a series of broad bands which run parallel to the coast, with two bands Towards a New
of modest accommodation framing a monumental central zone running north–south. Architecture.
 The historic city

The clearly defined sacred area holds a relationship between the sea to the west (now
at a greater distance) and the mountains to the east. Here the remains of the great
temples give the present-day visitor an indication of the separation between the
sacred and profane parts of the city. Their size and scale would have overwhelmed
that of the adjacent housing, simulating a topographic character for the houses of the
gods. Divine patronage was therefore at the centre of the urban composition, a factor
which in turn anchored the city to its site (Scully 1969: 58–66).
The religious nature of the central zone was reinforced by ritual activity
which stimulated social cohesion. An agora with civic structures including a chamber
for the assembly of the citizens occupied the space between the two temple
precincts, to be superseded in a later manifestation by a Roman forum. The civic
nature of this zone was further emphasized by the presence of an altar and shrine,
the excavation of which would indicate that it served as the founder’s grave or
symbolic point of origin of the settlement (Carandini and Cappelli 2000: 349–353).
The offerings, including bronze vases and an elaborately decorated amphora indicate
the significance of the cult of civic identity which complemented the more generic
relationship of the temple deities.
The central zone was flanked by tightly gridded areas of housing with four
major streets east–west crossing the principal north–south route. Subsidiary streets
then ran parallel to the north–south route creating six sectors of long rectangular
plots for housing and small-scale cultivation (Pugliese Carratelli 1996: 243–262). The
rationality of this form of layout should not obscure the significance of myth and ritual
in its organization, although the rough adherence to the cardinal points would appear
to be essentially topographic in character. The huge cult structures, defined by their
perimeter colonnades, were accompanied on their eastern sides by altars where great
sacrifices would have been offered, presenting to us the image of the carnage of
ritual slaughter occupying the central space in the city. The offerings were performed
with the supplicants facing the temple porticoes silhouetted against the sea and sky
while the eyes of the cult statues looked past them towards the mountainous horizon.
The city was merely formed in the reflection and replication of these fundamental
relationships.
The contemporary world recognizes religious activity as essentially
a private matter, but what the example of Paestum eloquently reinforces is the
connection between the communal and the sacred in ancient societies. The temple
was the house and treasury of the god, not the enclosure for his communal worship.
That regular activity took place in the public realm, which was therefore sanctified by
association, the sanctity blurring into the civic activities of the assembly and the
world of urban affairs. The public life of the city was sacred and ritual activity formed
a mutually supportive scenario for the embodiment of divine benevolence.
Further north on the Italian peninsula, the rituals with which the Etruscans
pursued the process of city founding through an augury were based on the reflection
of celestial order on the terrestrial plane. Having determined a favourable site a ritual
furrow was ploughed to establish the divinely protected boundary (Rykwert 1976:

25
The historic city

41–71). The foundation rituals involved a series of stages through which the good
fortune of the settlement could be established and human decisions validated by the
reading of signs. So a chosen site would be sanctified by the offerings to the gods
of the underworld, generally in the form of the burial of first fruits, or even earth from
the mother city. This pit would be covered over and the resulting mound used as the
position from which a priest would interpret the augury. Observing the flight of birds
and reading the entrails of sacrificial victims established the benign credentials of the
site and the priest would ‘plan’ the settlement as a reflection of the heavens. This
involved a quadripartite division, left from right and front from back, which defined
the centre of the city and the orientation of the gates, marked by the two routes of the
cardo, running north to south, and the decumanus running east to west to the gates.
These were positioned as profane points of passage by the lifting of the plough during
the cutting of the sacred furrow which defined the limits of the settlement and
brought the foundation ritual to a conclusion.
Actual Etruscan settlements remain a relatively unknown phenomenon.
Our knowledge rests on two sources, first, the reports of ancient authors such as
Vitruvius on Etruscan urban practices and, second, on the transference of forms
between the realm of the living and the cities of the dead through which we are most
familiar with the Etruscans as a people (Vitruvius 1999: 152). Their practice of urban
design was directly connected with their religious view of the world so that two
major features of their cities are spiritual in origin, the first being the partition of the city
in four quarters which reflected the supposed division of the heavens, and the second
being the significance of boundaries, be they the boundaries between a city and its
territory or that between this world and the next.
It has to be stated that the theory of city foundation has only a tenuous
connection to evidence surviving in cities of Etruscan origin (Scullard 1967: 84–168;
Torelli 2000: 291–313). For pragmatic reasons of security, settlements were often
established on hills, the topography of which seldom allowed for such symmetrical
arrangements of space as the foundation rituals demanded. Despite these difficulties,
cities such as Perugia and Cortona conform to a generalized pattern of cardo
and decumanus. In Perugia, these meet in the vicinity of the present-day Piazza IV
Novembre (which will be discussed later in this chapter), which has had an uninter-
rupted religious presence since antiquity. In Cortona, however, from where the cardo
and decumanus meet in Piazza della Repubblica the routes radiate to the city’s gates
in a pattern which is still clearly legible as the product of a combination between
physical convenience (despite the alarming gradient of some of these routes) and an
idealized urbanism.
This centrifugal understanding of space is a phenomenon which does not
appear in extended form. Axial planning, albeit imperfectly applied, related to upright
human physiognomy, with bilateral symmetry and the axis of vision perpendicular
to the spine. This relates to the arrangement of Etruscan building complexes as
rectangular units with central lines of symmetry which are perpendicular to the
enclosing façade (Vitruvius 1999: 234). The spatial morphology of Etruscan buildings

26
 The historic city

reinforces the significance of these boundaries. Unlike the abstracted void-like quality
of Greek space, the Etruscans placed great emphasis on surfaces, in particular,
surfaces which could be entered. In urban situations this reverence for the threshold
conferred positive value on the exterior space adjacent to the elaborated entrance
plane or portico. This close connection between building and immediate urban setting
is a characteristic of traditional urban space which can be seen as an inheritance from
Etruscan practice, as interpreted and disseminated by the influence of Rome.
The necropolis complex of Crocifisso del Tufo, outside Orvieto (c.500 BC) is
2.2
Crocifisso del Tufo, a revealing example of this influence, with its parallel street layout and doorways to
Orvieto (sixth–fifth the individually identified family tombs (Haynes 2000: 145–146). The urban arrange-
centuries BC).
ment which is apparent to the visitor is only the most obvious layer of a domesticity of
Streets of tombs
emulate the city death which would have been supplemented by heraldic symbols on the roofs and the
of the living, with occupation of the houses by sculpted ranks of reclining dead. Although the only means
family names
by which to interpret death is through representations and transformations of
carved in the lintels
of the doorways. life, the creation of streets of houses with doorways in a continuous urban wall
Heraldic motifs suggests the significance of common civic values in all areas of existence.
would have
embellished the
Traditional city forms reflected the code of values through which intangible
mounded roofs social patterns and conventions were expressed. In many city–states a balance of
above the severe power was held between rival political authorities by the citizens themselves, as the
façades, and been
visible from the
medium which legitimized the more overt manifestations of control. The topography
city walls above. of citizenship was read as a series of interlocked and ambiguous boundaries, often
The historic city

identified as subject to the will of the city in a personified form. Despite their domi-
nance by oligarchies, traditional cities evolved an expression of democracy through
their monuments and spaces.
In the Western canon the preservation of these urban processes in myth
finds its most familiar expression in the narrative of Romulus and Remus and the
former’s legendary foundation of Rome in 753 BC, a date from which the ancient city
measured time, ‘from the foundation of the city’. The Romulean demarcation of the
Palatine Hill as a new city, by the ploughing of the ritual furrow, a strategic settlement
safe from flooding by the Tiber, began the long process by which the topography of
the city was formed (Carandini and Cappelli 2000: 272–277). However, spatial division
was only one aspect of establishing the character of the city, since as well as the
physical fabric of the settlement, there was that identity produced by the citizens
themselves, which the Romans distinguished through the terms urbs and civitas.
Adjacent to religious centres, the structures of the assembly provided an alternative
pole around which urban spaces grew. But with the development of Rome’s imperial
system, a visual identity emerges for urban forms which survives to the present,
either from the model of the city itself or the widespread influence of the Roman urban
type through the colonization of subject territories in Europe, Asia Minor and North
Africa (Favro 1996).
At the centre of this empire of cities was the Forum Romanum, where
topographic convenience adjacent to the Palatine was to lead to the development of
this valley as the major public space, sanctified as it already was following its previous
use as a burial ground by the neighbouring populations (Grant 1970). The Roman
Forum had a threefold purpose whose overlapping characteristics were at the root
of a physical complexity formed by the accumulation of monuments. First, it was a
religious place, the home of the city’s most sacred objects guarded by the Vestals.
Second, it was a political space, site of the meetings of the assembly in the Comitium,
a vaguely circular open space overlooked by the Rostra adjacent to the Senate
House. Beneath the Comitium, the so-called Lapis Niger was discovered, a Greek
black marble pavement covering an earlier shrine whose position emphasizes the
connections between the religious and political spheres (Rykwert 1976: 120–121).
And, finally, these roles were supported by the site’s military function, as the scene for
the commemoration of victory through the erection of monuments, the celebration
of triumphs and the holding of gladiatorial games on the pavement of the Forum.
This tripartite function of worship, debate and expression of power was to survive into
later examples in Italy and beyond. In addition, commercial life was also accommo-
dated in the shops which lined the space and were later enclosed within the basilicas.
During the transition from republican to imperial systems of government
the contrast between these distinct elements was reduced by the creation of a series
of three civic structures whose consistent and repetitive treatment did much to unify
the space. Straddling the saddle of the hill between the Capitol and the Arx, the
Tabularium (built 78 BC) was an arcaded structure to house the city records. It survives
as the basement of the later Palazzo del Senatorio, which Michelangelo refaced as

28
 The historic city

2.3
The Roman Forum.
A view from
the arcade of the
Tabularium towards
the floor of the
Forum. In the
foreground are
the columns
of the Temple of
Vespasian, framing
the Arch of Titus
and the Temple of
Vesta. To the left
is the portico of
the Temple
of Antoninus
(San Lorenzo in
Miranda), with that
of the Temple of
Saturn on the right,
with the three
columns of the
Temple of Castor in
the middle distance.

the central building of the renovation of the Campidoglio in the sixteenth century.
The engaged columns and arcades of the Tabularium were complemented by the
similar elevations of two buildings whose impact is harder to imagine, the Basilicas
Aemilia and Julia (the former built in 179 BC and rebuilt in 34 BC, the latter dedicated

29
The historic city

in 46 BC ), which functioned respectively as business and legal centres. Only their

footprints survive, flanking the open space of the Forum (Favro 1996: 68–69).
The significance of the Forum Romanum as an antecedent for traditional
public space is in its ambiguity of functions and their coexistence. Change was a
constant as structures were embellished, either in pious restoration or significant
enlargement and the introduction of new monuments. The general direction of its
urban morphology was towards a continuity of enclosure but the individual rivalries
ensured a variety of expressions which represented the complexity of the civic body
and its functions (Favro 1996: 141). The irregular character of the original forum was
transformed in the luxurious symmetries of the imperial fora which followed,
structures such as the Forum of Augustus (dedicated in 2 BC) which presented a less
ambiguous model of power.
The colonial foundations of the empire referred in an abstract way to the
mother city but took the form of the gridded castrum plan, divided into quarters by
the cardo and decumanus and replicated in numerous centres, so that the overall
familiarity and recognizability of the system reinforced the sense of Roman citizenship
in far-flung outposts. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, the reduction of urban
populations and the retreat within the defensive walls the more haphazard medieval
city grew up. After the spoliation of Roman structures, new forms would develop
on the ancient foundations, and by the thirteenth century a new confidence was
discernible in the city–states of central Italy. The architectural languages with which
this urbanity was embodied were cosmopolitan and sophisticated, evocative of other
locations but communicable to the citizens at a time when literacy was restricted to
an elite. Standing within the fabric of the city, these far from parochial structures
expressed a renewed sense of civitas. The proliferation of such monuments, and their
legibility in different urban contexts, stand as testament to the latent power of tradi-
tion, where the interpretation of forms and their evolutionary development tied the
citizens to a common meaning of urban life (Martines 1980).
The rootedness to antique origins resulted in the appeal to ancient
precedents and the gradual evolution of urban form, whether at the instigation of
democratic processes or absolutist control. The continuity of the city was prized as a
phenomenon which bestowed value on the contemporary situation where spatial
character was determined by myth, ritual and hierarchy, in the desire to form some
representation of cosmic order through the traditional urban types of square, street
and court. Where cities experienced continuous inhabitation, this unbroken history
provided an exemplary situation within which the spaces and institutions of the city
could develop. Perugia, for example, grew from Etruscan origins upon the combination
of strong ritually defined geometry and dramatic natural topography. The centre of
the city, Piazza IV Novembre, is built on that armature, and is formed as a roughly trian-
gular space bounded by the cathedral of San Lorenzo, the focus of civic government in
the Palazzo dei Priori, and a range of private buildings. The medieval city–states such
as Perugia expressed their independence through combinations of iconography which
referred to mythical hero-founders and assertions of contemporary political allegiance.

30
 The historic city

2.4
Piazza IV
Novembre,
Perugia. Diagrams
illustrating the
development of the
medieval space. The
Cathedral of San
Lorenzo occupies
the top of the site,
with the Palazzo dei
Priori on the left.
The space and its
two monumental
buildings evolved
around the Fontana
Maggiore, dated
1278, and carved
In Perugia this found particular expression in the decoration of the Fontana Maggiore
by Giovanni and
Nicolà Pisano. with allegorical representations of the zodiac, the liberal arts, patron saints and political
officers. This decorative programme was intended to draw attention to the engineered
availability of life-sustaining water in the heart of the city, a reaffirmation of the city’s
independence through its ability to withstand siege.
The ensemble which encloses the visitor today is essentially a product
of the trecento although the campaign of urban development extended from the
commencement of the paving of the piazza in 1253 through to the effective com-
pletion of the cathedral in 1487. The complex individual histories of the fountain,
palazzo and cathedral require individual exploration to help expose the development of
this urban image of Perugian society during the period of the city’s greatest power.
The organic nature of this process with each element pursuing its own course results
in a convincingly balanced whole.
The fountain (dated 1278) with its broad circuit of steps and two levels
of basins had been encircled by railings since 1301 to protect a commodity that
was essential to life but had only been brought to this elevated position on the city’s
hill by means of aqueducts constructed at considerable cost to the municipality.
Engineered by Fra Bevignate, the beauty of the ornamentation which adorns the
fountain, the work of Nicolà and Giovanni Pisano, attests to the significance with
which this important amenity was regarded by the populace. The political tensions
between religious and civil powers could be subsumed to the overriding need to
sustain life in the centre of the city, these waters being forbidden for animal and
laundry use. The fountain consists of three basic elements, forming a pyramidal whole.
The lower basin, some 10 metres in diameter has 25 sides, each divided into
two panels, making a total of 50 low-relief depictions of the months, myths, biblical
scenes and intellectual pursuits. Above this, and at two-thirds its diameter is
an open basin which is twelve-sided, including allegorical representations, biblical
figures, saints and contemporary figures such as Matteo da Correggio and Ermanno
da Sassferrato, the chief magistrates for the year 1278. A bronze dish provides the
topmost basin, with intertwined figures of three water-carriers standing above it.

31
The historic city

These were originally surmounted by four beasts, two griffins and two lions, the
Perugian and Guelph symbols (White 1970).
To the south of the fountain the Palazzo dei Priori places its bulging flank
to the Corso Vannucci (the ancient cardo), and turns its entrance to the space between
it and the cathedral. Its fabric is constructed with some refinement, and its sheer walls
and crenellations betray the defensive pretensions of its origins. The ground floor to
the Corso contains the commercial element its lowly position required, with two
generous bands of fenestration punctuating the wall above. Despite the regular and
complete nature of the façades, the organic development of the palazzo between
the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries is evidenced by the irregular profile, the addition
of extra bays to the original façade, and the inclusion of the tower which marks
the opening out of the Corso into the piazza. This important visual marker stands at the
crossing of the Etruscan cardo and decumanus.
The site of the present piazza was at the centre of the civic, religious and
mercantile complex, although the offices of the comune were distributed in various
palazzi in the vicinity. The development of a central administrative building on the
isola della piazza followed the construction of the fountain, and was established next
to the Romanesque church of San Severo di Piazza, the footprint of the church being
included eventually within the curtilege of the new palazzo in 1319. The fire of 1329,
which destroyed the existing administrative centre, the Palazzo dei Consoli, consol-
idated the significance of the new structure which was, however, only occupied by the
Priors, the city magistrates, in 1353 with a further extension to the south constructed
between 1429 and 1443.
To the north of the Palazzo dei Priori, the flank of the cathedral effectively
closes the progress of Corso Vannucci, but the rising ground plane allows the interior
of the church to be entered more easily on the perpendicular eastern façade. Its bulk
and dramatically unfinished appearance throw into sharper relief the few sculptural
elements which decorate it such as the red and white marble diapered surface which
acts as a backdrop to S. Bernardino’s pulpit, from where the Sienese saint sought to
revive the faith of the citizens when he preached in 1425. To the left of the southern
entrance, and on the axis of Corso Vannucci, sits the enthroned figure of Pope Julius
III, his benediction greeting the opening of street into square. The statue was erected
in 1555 by a populace grateful to him for the restoration of privileges removed by his
predecessor, the Farnese Pope Paul III, when he crushed a Perugian rebellion over the
salt tax.
Tradition records that the early cathedral was built on the site of a temple
of Vulcan. By the period in which the piazza begins to take its definitive form, the
area occupied by the present cathedral consisted of a series of individual structures.
The church of Ss. Lorenzo ed Ercolano was adjoined by the chapel of San Ercolano
where the civic patron’s relics were venerated. The saint’s major achievement had
been the averting of a barbarian sacking of the city. Adjacent to this group was an
octagonal campanile, removed in 1375, and the residence of the cathedral canons.
Following an initial project by Fra Bevignate from 1300, the present cathedral

32
 The historic city

developed as a quattrocento Hallenkirche, its new orientation east–west (the reverse

of the typical arrangement) resulted in the occupation of the outline of the previous
church as that of the new transept. A lengthy construction period ensued before the
reinstallation of S. Ercolano’s relics in 1487. Of wider significance though, and the
focus of pilgrimage from further afield, was the relic of the Virgin’s wedding ring which
the cathedral retains.
Around the fountain, however, the political tensions of the period are visible
in the confrontation between the buildings of the rival civic and religious powers. The
cathedral is incomplete, following its enlargement and reorientation. In contrast, the
communal palace, the Palazzo dei Priori, assertively positions itself within the piazza,
having appropriated neighbouring structures as the building was expanded several
times. Its crenellated skyline refers to the fortified aristocratic houses it emulated,
but its extensive fenestration would have denied any effective defensive purpose
and instead serve to connect the seat of civic power to the major public space.
A specific iconography of secular public buildings and spaces therefore developed and
represented the independence of these thriving city–states. This and other splendid
examples of the period such as the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence and the Palazzo
Pubblico in Siena were to be much emulated in nineteenth-century British cities as the
appropriate image of the independently minded progressive municipality.
Despite appearances to the contrary, this organic tradition of a balanced
continuity in urban design survived beyond the formalization of urban design during the
Renaissance and Baroque periods, the shock of industrialization and urban expansion.
The twentieth century contained many examples of the integration of innovative
structures into the historic city and their effects are a profitable area of study
for contemporary urban designers. Camillo Sitte’s analysis of such medieval Italian
spaces as Perugia had a distinct influence upon the Slovene architect, Joze Plecnik
(1872–1957), a pupil of Otto Wagner Plecnik’s work in his native Ljubljana coincided
with Slovenia’s removal from Austro-Hungarian control and its incorporation in the
new kingdom of Yugoslavia following World War One. His appointment as Professor
of Architecture at the new University of Ljubljana effectively included that of City
Architect and Plecnik was to complete many buildings and planning projects there
between the wars, during the Italian and German Occupations, and following the
Second World War under Tito’s regime until the architect’s death. His work as an
urban designer, complemented by the churches and public buildings he was respon-
sible for, serves as a model for the continuity not only of traditional forms but of a
traditional ethos of urban life (Prevlosek: 1997: 267–309; Rowe 1997: 166–191).
Ljubljana had suffered an earthquake in 1895 and a town planning com-
petition was held in which Camillo Sitte participated through the submission of Der
Stadtbau. Plecnik, picking up the commission decades later, was to combine elements
of the winning proposal by Max Fabiani, Sitte’s principles, and English Garden City
ideas. This natural element was to be a profound constituent part of the planning
and infrastructural projects completed bordering the River Ljubljanica along which
the city had developed. The river, of course, had provided a defensive boundary to

33
The historic city

the old town and its castle, but it also served as a trade route, and Plecnik’s urban
work responded to these two ideas, attempting to minimize the visual barrier while
emphasizing the aesthetic qualities of the river itself. His strategy was to create an
overall order and language with allowance made for detailed variety and the elab-
oration of incidents. Infrastructural works were exploited to provide new public spaces
as a continuous promenade which evoke the history of the city and the national myths
of the Slovenes. This strategy resulted in a continuous urban narrative of bridges,
embankments and arcades.
The sequence of elements begins in a suburban situation with the Trnovo
Bridge (1931), which also serves as a setting for a church façade as a broad space,
square in plan, with simple lines of silver birch separating vehicular and pedestrian
traffic. The bridge spans a small river, the Gradascica (a tributary of the Ljubljanica),
which is treated as a linear park. The contained nature of this space is in contrast to the
broad sweep of the main river, where stepped terraces serve a variety of leisure uses.
Heading towards the city centre, embankments were introduced which narrowed
the river width, with another broad bridge-piazza introduced at the Shoemakers’
Bridge (1931–32) to improve connections between old and new towns. From
the Shoemakers’ Bridge, the embankment contains lower arcaded galleries by the
riverside with seats and cafés. In addition, connections through to major existing
spaces such as Congress Square were reinforced by the organization of flights of
steps and promenade galleries (1932–33), decorated with the familiar features
of urns and columns, the often unorthodox form of these elements influenced by the
Slovene national myth that the race was descended from the Etruscans.
The centrepiece of Plecnik’s urban sequence, however, was the Three
Bridges (1930–31), where the existing stone bridge of 1841 was framed by two new
pedestrian bridges with steps down to the riverbank and public conveniences under
the abutments. These additional bridges were splayed so as to funnel the square
outside St Mary’s Church across the river and into the narrower spaces of the old
town. Again the river is spanned by a small square whose elements are carefully
orchestrated, and respond powerfully to the existing topography and urban context. To
one side of the Three Bridges stands a stoa which surmounts a fish market contained
in the embankment (1940–42). This continuous element transforms along its length
into a row of shops the colonnaded fronts of which face a new market area. The stoa
was intended to screen the market from the river, and to frame an unbuilt bridge,
part of a sequence of spaces providing a link across the river to a propylaeum
approaching the castle rock.
The last piece in this sequence is the most extraordinary of all. Completed
only during the Occupation, the Pegrada sluice (1940–44) at a utilitarian level controlled
the river, providing the still reflective surface Plecnik sought. But he celebrated it in the
most romantic way, creating an Etruscan folly, with figurative sculpture, columns,
urns, and blind doorways which were the ancient symbol of the other world. This
provided a suitably picturesque termination to a sequence of urban incidents which
balance pragmatic necessity and civic memory.

34
2.5 Plecnik’s ‘urban sequence’ in Ljubljana is a demonstration to contemporary
Sluices on the River urban designers that even the most utilitarian structures could be enhanced to form
Ljubljanica (Joze
Plecnik 1940–44). part of a more significant urban whole. New value was added to an effective boundary
The last element between the old and new towns by the creation of civic spaces, in the context of the
of the sequence of
historic city a highly unusual combination of centre and edge. This integration of
urban structures
along the river utility and aesthetic expression in this example was to become rare during the process
in the Slovene of industrialization which saw cities divided into distinct zones for production and
capital of Ljubljana.
habitation and the exaggeration of class divisions, as will be observed in the next
Constructed as a
set of neo-Egyptian chapter.
pylons, Plecnik’s Plecnik’s work takes place against a design context where a totalizing
work also refers
vision was shared by the Modernist architects he reviled. In their view the architectural
to Etruscan
precedents, and urban languages of the past had to be abandoned because they could not serve
most especially the purposes of industrial society. Yet Plecnik used concrete both for the structure
in the design of
and the surfaces of his work and was happy to integrate modern services. What he did
the griffin-handled
vases which stand not do was employ the motifs of modernity as rhetorical devices. Essentially the
on the fluted choice to exploit or to abandon historical forms remains a dilemma for urban design.
columns.
Although a direct imitation of historic forms might be unpalatable, the
forms of the historic city remain worthy of study, not least to disinter their meanings
for the society which created them, but also as a comparison to the present situation.
There are three points at issue here if we wish to understand the ethical dimension
of urban design. Foremost among them is the extent to which certain aspects of
physical design are related to the manifestation of political structures and fictions

35
The historic city

(narratives). Then there is the question of the precise methods of representation of

attitudes to citizenship, and the ability of design to provide an adequate and expressive
urban language. And, third, there is the abiding question of what the analysis of
historical forms reveals about the application of similar spatial techniques to contem-
porary situations. Here we might focus on the changes and continuities of urban life.
For example, a significant connection between some of these examples
is the element of water. In contrast to the present situation, in the traditional city the

2.6
Four Rivers
Fountain, Piazza
Navona, Rome
(Gianlorenzo
Bernini 1647–51).
A detail of the
fountain depicting
the personification
of the River
Plate, carved by
Francesco Baratta.
The fountain,
supporting an
Egyptian obelisk,
celebrated the
opening of new
channels for the
ancient Roman
aqueduct, the
Acqua Vergine, by
Pope Innocent X.
 The historic city

provision of water was not only the undemonstrative realm of the engineer. Its
scarcity and preciousness meant that it also became the subject of self-conscious
celebration. Its life-sustaining properties provided the framework on which the
beneficence of divine or human donors could be given form in inscriptions and
fountains. The animation of water therefore found its expression in the animation of
the civic realm, where the necessities of life were inextricably bound to the divinely
supported social system.
The decoration of the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia is explicit in the
messages of its iconography which the citizenry would read. The relief panels of
the months of the year and the liberal arts associate the water with the activities
of daily and intellectual life, while the series of sculptural figures above site the
fountain in a knot of mythical, religious and political narratives. The legal restrictions
on the use of the fountain, and its early protection by railings serve to underline
the sacred character the waters had in the eyes of the medieval comune, as both
guarantor and symbol of the city’s survival.
In Plecnik’s work in twentieth-century Ljubljana, the river landscape is
treated as a symbolic route as much as an infrastructural problem, in common with the
examples from more distant historical times. The articulation of a national myth might
have had other terrible consequences in the Europe of the dictators, but the passing
which is here evoked is that of traditional civilization, particularly in the sepulchral
forms decorating the Pegrada sluice. Far from signalling a revival of the numinous
world of the Etruscans through their supposed descendants the Slovenes, it seems to
me that Plecnik is composing a belated elegy for those dreams of continuity.
That quiescent acceptance of loss, manifested in the water’s surface in
which Plecnik’s embankments are reflected, perhaps reveals him as a more worldly
figure than is usually expressed, conscious of the isolation of his attitudes in
contemporary urban design. For from the point in the eighteenth century when
industrialization initiates profound urban change, water has an enhanced role, as a
source of power for mechanization, as a means of transport through the construction
of canals, and as the site of pollution and disease. The demystification of the element
which the scientific revolution brought about was to lead also to the abuse of the
environment which characterized the industrial city.

37
Chapter 3

The Industrial City

In the mid-eighteenth century the British city became host to a new scale of mech-
anized production which was to provoke unprecedented change, leading to a rapid
expansion in the size and complexity of the urban situation. Manufacturing centres
developed through the proliferation of mechanical processes, and goods were
exchanged through new transport systems. The commodification of urban property, in
parallel with the industrial preference for the production of standardized goods, was to
lead to a revolution in the way the city was conceived. A utilitarian and ostensibly
progressive development was the veil behind which the ethos of the traditional city
discussed in the previous chapter was destroyed. Regardless of the social conse-
quences, urban populations began to increase at the same time as the traditional
urban fabric came under strain from the increase in building size, and the erosion of
the traditional grain through the cutting of canals and then the building of railways.
While these physical changes were to affect the architectural character of cities, it
was perhaps the increased efficiency sought in the area of traffic flow which caused
the most damage to urban continuity. First, manifested through the creation of canals
with their relatively slow pace for the transport of goods, this process accelerated with
the development of railways, and was clearly evident in the second half of the
nineteenth century, but it was the accommodation of the private automobile which
was to prove the most destructive factor for traditional notions of urbanity. This narra-
tive will be traced, first, through English examples and then through the consideration
of European theoretical models.
What private vehicles are, of course, and what the city increasingly
became, were an assembly of objects disposed in the free-flowing void without the
dense spatial connections from which the city had previously been woven, or the com-
pactness afforded by traditional urban boundaries. At first the sites of industrial
development were unconstrained by concepts of aesthetic organization other than
the terrific power and the sublime effects unleashed by flames, smoke and noise
observed by aficionados of the industrial picturesque. However, architects and the
new profession of the town planner began in the middle years of the nineteenth

38
 The industrial city

century to attempt to control the effect of industrialization on towns and to redress the
consequences of increased populations living in insalubrious conditions. This benign
social intent was to have unforeseen consequences due to the scale of the problems
and the drastic solutions offered.
Aside from the physical changes to the urban environment, the industrial
city saw the rise of communications media, the press, photography, film and even-
tually television, with the increasing availability of observations in word and image of
the actual conditions of urban life. The agitation for reform, while tending not to be
as widespread, also made use of these new media to reach beyond the political and
professional elite. The ethos which was promoted focused on issues of common
purpose and the appropriate harnessing of mutually supportive social values.
The early stages of this condition set the pattern for later contexts. In
describing one of the earliest industrial centres, Joseph Aston’s The Manchester
Guide (1804) portrayed this story in graphic terms. The map he provided differentiated
between the medieval and Georgian core of the town up to 1780, and the new zones
which had grown up around it in the intervening two decades, more than doubling
the area. This phenomenon of a traditional dense urban core surrounded by a con-
siderably more expansive ring of industrial activity, which was not even considered
as part of the town either legally or aesthetically, is an early instance of the periphery
dominating the centre. The lack of perimeter fortifications on the typical European
model meant that there were only topographical barriers to be overcome, and water-
courses, either rivers or canals, played a critical role in the provision of power and
transport routes, further encouraging expansion. Aston, while marvelling at the growth
of the new areas of the town, evidently considered them a different phenomenon,
altering the graphic notation in which they were described against the town proper,
to something less easily defined, vaguer and provisional.
By the time of the second edition of Aston’s book in 1817, there had
been a further escalation. In the altered map plate the industrial periphery is treated as
an established fact, its quarters now worthy of precise definition. Huge mills are clearly
identified in the outskirts of the map, their scale distinguishing them from traditional
urban patterns. Indeed, they are often clearly separated from residential districts,
although these were the respectable parts of the town, the density and danger of
the industrial workers’ accommodation defying cartographic representation. These
areas awaited a series of both dispassionate observers and committed social
reformers to reveal their conditions to the public conscience.
Political philosophers visited this urban marvel, but remarked on the
disastrous social fallout of the early industrial experience. Alexis de Tocqueville was
amazed at the conditions of squalor in which goods and wealth were created and
recorded that ‘[f]rom this filthy sewer pure gold flows’ (de Tocqueville [1835] 1988).
The demands of utility were the only aspect of design which impinged on these
environments, indeed, another French visitor described the town as ‘the Utopia
of Bentham’ (Faucher 1844). Leaders of the architectural profession came to witness
the new developments, and were astounded by the absence of any architectural

39
The industrial city

sensibility in the production of entire districts such as Ancoats. Karl Friedrich

Schinkel’s visit to Manchester in 1826 as part of a Prussian delegation investigating
new industrial technologies presented him with a startling vision of the new city, of
utilitarian structures designed only for their owner’s economic purpose, ignorant of
any relationship to one another apart from rivalry, and surrounded by the hovels
of those who worked in the mills and warehouses (Bindman and Riemann 1993).
Seeking elements for a new architectural language he was to create when he returned
to Berlin, Schinkel sketched the technically advanced structures such as the mills
which he had come to study, and also observed the haphazard and overcrowded
dwellings of the workers nestling around them. In Manchester the already alarming
rate of expansion and densification was only quickened by the advent of the railways
in the 1830s.
It was to be another German, however, Friedrich Engels, working for his
father in the textile industry in Manchester, who identified the stratified urban pattern
which emerged through the action of the unfettered market and was to draw
conclusions for politics and society which went beyond the aesthetic. In a further

40
 The industrial city

3.1 development of the concentric pattern which Aston had observed four decades earlier,
The Manchester Engels described a commercial core devoid of residents which was surrounded by
Guide (Joseph
Aston 1817). an industrial belt with adjacent workers’ housing, while wealthy suburbs grew to
Detail of the plan accommodate those with status in the new industrial society. Engels considered it
attached to the
to be inequitable that the workers and wealthy, both dependent on the same industrial
second edition of
the guide to the system, could lead such separate existences with little knowledge of each other’s
early industrial lives:
‘shock city’. The
rapid expansion I know very well that this hypocritical plan is more or less common to
of the city in the
all great cities; . . . but at the same time I have never seen so systematic
previous two
decades around a shutting out of the working class from the thoroughfares, so tender a
the medieval and concealment of everything which might affront the eye and the nerves of
Georgian core is
the bourgeoisie, as in Manchester. And yet, in other respects Manchester
documented. At
the urban periphery is less built according to a plan, after official regulations, is more an
huge new mills and outgrowth of accident, than any other city; and when I consider in this
warehouses are
connection the eager assurances of the middle class, that the working
shown, this growth
being dependent on class is doing famously, I cannot help feeling that the liberal manufacturers,
the development the bigwigs of Manchester, are not so innocent after all, in the matter of
of the canal
network.
this sensitive method of construction.
(Engels [1844] 1987: 87)

Engels’s careful description (not published in English until 1886 when the grim sites
he lingered over had themselves been transformed) would indicate the connection
he saw between urban and building form and social conditions, and the importance
of its moral dimension. His book is, among other things, an early essay in urban
morphology where a scientific and rational observation of the barely adequate
construction methods, the laying out of blocks and of the town itself, is construed as
a vast mechanism of exploitation. The political agenda on which he was to collaborate
with Karl Marx was presented in a raw state, the alienating process of the urban
environment was revealed to be a product of the forces at work to govern industrial
development the immigration of the workforce necessary, their lack of status in their
new situation and the constant threat of unemployment and hence starvation.
But while that extreme case remains shocking, it is the conditions of those
in respectable employment which presents the most abiding critique of Manchester
at this date. Engels recognized that it was a period of transition represented by the
repellent conditions of the Old Town and the New Town. In the former, amidst the
ruinous but occupied buildings built by the polluted rivers he describes an ill-kept
labyrinth of dwellings awash with human excrement and pockets of livestock, mainly
pigs, being reared among the filth (Engels 90–93). In the New Town he describes the
consciously planned workers’ housing, either the early courtyard housing or the later
back-to-back housing in terraces where the occupiers’ degree of respectability could
be measured by their access to ventilation.
Of course, the former situation in the Old Town could be excused as the
unfortunate result of rapid and uncontrolled industrialization, although Engels is

41
The industrial city

scathing on this point, the bourgeoisie seen as being comforted by the historic origin
of the conditions where ‘no hole is so bad but that some poor creature must take it
who can pay for nothing better’. With the New Town, however, he speculates that the
poverty of construction, as well as being of immediate economic benefit, would
ensure that the houses would be in a state of ruin by the termination of the forty-
year lease, facilitating the easy redevelopment of the site. What would come to be
known as built-in obsolescence in the mid-twentieth century was combined with the
system of the tied dwelling:

The working man is constrained to occupy such ruinous dwellings because

he cannot pay for others, and because there are no others in the vicinity
of his mill; perhaps, too, because they belong to the employer, who
engages him on condition of his taking such a cottage.
(Engels: 97)

Engels’s focus on the working-class dwelling, the most widespread building type of
the town, distinguishes him from the earlier observers who had drawn attention either
to the terrific spectacle of the new industrial structures or, to suit a more antiquarian
taste, to the few medieval and Georgian monuments which survived amid the steam,
smoke, pollution and filth. But the wealth generated in the industrial towns would
lead to the construction of new public buildings which in turn would transform
the appearance of the British city and bring issues of urban design, at least where it
related to the narrow matter of architectural style to a broader audience (Hunt 2004:
74–95).
Although from the distant perspective of the early twenty-first century the
development of the industrial city might appear as a consistent progression over
different localities, this was of course by no means the case, as is evidenced by their
surviving architectural and urban forms. Different industries produced different
building forms, for example, textile mills needing the maximum daylight the structures
would allow and thereby encouraging frame construction. Warehouses, however,
required massive fireproof construction, creating more solid forms, while steel
production would lead eventually to the development of the unencumbered shed.
The rationality of these choices should also be considered in relation to the variety
of architectural styles available for the adornment of the developing towns. The
wealth of the towns produced the need for civic structures, and these new cultural
institutions exploited the full range of conventional historicist architectural dress, in
sharp contrast to the sober functionalism of the industrial structures. For instance
Liverpool’s early pre-eminence as a port in the eighteenth century and the subsequent
accumulation of wealth left a legacy of significant Neoclassical structures, the pinnacle
of which (but by no means the last achievement) is the great civic temple of St
George’s Hall (1840). The architectural paradigm of the ancient city to which the city
fathers looked is expressed in the conflation of Greek and Roman forms, and its civic
aspiration condensed in the repeated use of one decorative inscription: S.P.Q.L.
(Salmon 2000: 210–226).

42
 The industrial city

As a slightly later development, after a flirtation with Neoclassicism which

produced the first Royal Exchange (1806–8), the Portico Library (1802–6) and the Royal
Manchester Institution (later the Art Gallery, 1824–35), Manchester’s model of
emulation would be Renaissance Italy, reflected in the increasingly eclectic character
of the public realm, a situation which has changed little since. The robust rectangular
forms of its palazzi, where the pretensions of a new society of merchant princes
adopted cultural dress, dignified otherwise utilitarian warehouse blocks. The very
sobriety of these primary urban forms perhaps precluded the creation of significant
urban spaces as early commentators noted, but did lead to a degree of consistency
in parts of the rapidly expanding town. The latter part of the nineteenth century would
see the city adopt the Gothic language for the new Town Hall (1867–77), deemed to
be a more rational language for the apartments, offices and halls which dignified the
business of municipal bureaucracy.
Sheffield, emblematic of an even later phase of industrialization, is less
easy to characterize around a specific urban typology. The industrial structures which
grew up to house the manufacture of steel, particularly from the mid-nineteenth
century leapt from small-scale cottage production making use of watercourses to huge
settlements dependent on coal power and the expanding rail infrastructure. The
middle classes could take advantage of the town’s proximity to the Peak District to
remove themselves, once regular transport permitted, from the nuisances of industry,
leaving aristocratic estates such as that of the Dukes of Norfolk to encourage the
speculative building of dense working-class neighbourhoods within walking distance
of the industrial sites. As Donald Olsen (1973) remarks, the resulting premises were
not generous but were at least plentiful, allowing for far less overcrowding than that
witnessed by Engels in Manchester. But Sheffield’s mix of vast industrial structures
and densely packed housing had to wait a relatively long time for the types of civic
structures which other cities had in abundance, leading in some part to today’s
relatively impoverished urban scene. Wartime destruction, slum clearance and road
building, and the inadaptability of the industrial structures were, however, a long way
in the future when Patrick Abercrombie attempted the task of giving some sense of
civic order to the city in 1924.
What all these various but typical manufacturing centres exhibited,
however, was a species of urban sublime, the infernal character of which shadowed
much of the literature of the day, and not just the politically radical or socially cam-
paigning. The atmospheric effects of fire, smoke, steam and pollution, the clamorous
noise of engines and hammers, the vastness of industrial structures and the
monotonous anonymity of the residential quarters were the expressions of a new
form of urban aesthetic appreciation, the general tone of which was one of repulsion.
The establishment of this contemporary urban image of squalor called into being the
milder environment of the suburb, although the monotony of placelessness was
perhaps an inevitable concomitant of the scale of the new cities.
Of course, this was hardly a conscious process, the minds which recoiled
from the industrial scene were not the ones which counted the money, those that

43
The industrial city

3.2
Model of
Sheffield in 1900.
Constructed by
diploma students
at Sheffield
University School
of Architecture
1999, the model
captures the city
at the height of its
industrial power
and density, with
structures for steel
manufacturing
forming the core
activity.
Source: Courtesy of
Peter Blundell Jones.
Photograph by Peter
Lathey.

3.3
Sheffield:
a civic survey
and suggestions
towards a
development plan
(Sir Patrick
Abercrombie 1924).
An attempt to
bring the virtues
of civic design
to the industrial
centre of Sheffield,
this project was
the aesthetic
culmination of a
progressive town
planning report
which analysed the
economic situation
of the city in the
aftermath of the
First World War. Its
grand vision of a
sequence of new
public structures
remained largely
unrealized.

44
 The industrial city

planned canals and railways were not those that dug them. And if the aspiration of
reformers was to return some sense of unity to productive activity as an expression
of social justice, there was at least an attempt to give pause for thought among the
more enlightened manufacturers before they calculated their profits. Manchester
liberalism could almost be thought of as a term of urban aesthetic denoting the hard
bright jewels of the Town Hall and the Royal Exchange glistening in the smoke- and
soot-covered red brick of a successful industrial city.
The buildings of the mercantile core denoted a wealth that was not evident
in the majority of the residential stock. Where housing provision was adequate, it
could seldom be described as generous, particularly with regard to sanitation. This
environmental manifestation of Manchester liberalism eventually required legislation
to avert the threat of cholera epidemics. Mid-nineteenth-century British governments
introduced controls for public health and housing which attempted to ameliorate the
urban condition, but a more radical analysis was at hand although it would take
decades before its widespread dissemination.
These early pieces of social legislation, designed to prevent political unrest
and disease, were essentially reactive in character, and among those who associated
urban life with the purely negative were English critics of industrialization who
were concerned with design, such as John Ruskin and William Morris. The utopian
nature of their ideas required nothing short of the complete reformation of society and
the transformation of metropolitan centres to which populations were being drawn.
On a much humbler scale, the amelioration of some of the physical effects of the
mechanical mentality was a project which was more immediately achievable for a
series of benign industrialists in the creation of model villages such as Saltaire (1850),
Bourneville (1879) and Port Sunlight (1888). Less critical of the manner in which British
society was developing, they were eventually to result in the Garden City movement.
The gradual concretization of the various philanthropic and aesthetic
concerns into the idea of the Garden City marks an important shift in thinking between
the generally laissez-faire attitudes of the nineteenth century and the more inter-
ventionist policies to be pursued in the twentieth century. The delusions to which
the Garden City was prey are also significant, not the least the historical coincidence
of the desire to create a healthy yeoman class coinciding with the high point of
imperial expansion. British civic confidence, as expressed politically in the raising to
city status of the industrial town and the provision of municipal services, and
architecturally in the creation of major institutions such as libraries, museums and
colleges, was at its height in the years before the catastrophe of the First World War.
A self-consciousness about civic identity manifested itself not only in the physical
structures of the new institutional buildings but also through the creation of
ensembles of related buildings through the agency of the new discipline of town
planning. However, continental Europe was to be the context in which the designed
industrial city was to progress.
In understanding architectural and town planning responses to the con-
sequences of industrialization, the attitude to the use of urban voids is a category

45
The industrial city

which helps to distinguish the differing intentions of those concerned with the design
of the city. During the initial period of industrialization, largely as a result of economic
pressure, no value had been placed on public open space. Municipal authorities
had little power of patronage and industrialists little interest in the slight leisure time
of their workers. Fear of the radical influence from revolutionary France during this
period meant that the free association of crowds was actively discouraged, although
not always with the savage consequences of the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester
of 1819. However, the public realm of revolutionary Paris, with political turmoil played
out in the streets and regime changes commemorated by ephemeral fêtes and
the erection of permanent markers, was to exert a profound influence. Continuing
the impetus of earlier developments, under Napoleon III’s governor Haussmann, the
revolutionary warren of the historic city was to be pacified by the cutting through of
new imperial boulevards through which sanitary infrastructure was to be introduced,
the barricading of streets prevented and cavalry charges facilitated. The increasing drift
of the industrial city was towards the pragmatic demands of utility, however malign,
rather than civic meaning, which was reduced to the decorative quality of isolated
monuments, and the grand boulevards connecting them.
Without the demands of reifying a national government Ildefons Cerda’s
extension of Barcelona is one of the foremost examples of this pragmatic mentality
produced as the result of a town planning competition held in 1859 (Tarrago 2001).
As an engineer, a social statistician and a utopian socialist, Cerda placed little value
on the historic centre of the city, surrounding it with a rational grid, the uniformity of
which was intended to erase social inequalities. Regular block dimensions of 113.3
metres and street widths of 20 metres were punctuated by small plazas produced by
the chamfered corners of four blocks, designed to facilitate the turning of trams. Social
facilities were then to be introduced at various scales of grid unit. Groups of 25 blocks
would warrant a school, larger units of 100 blocks would be provided with a market,
while groups of 400 blocks would require a hospital.
The proposal by Cerda was innovative in its strategy for integrating
transport into the three-dimensional matrix. Indeed, according to Françoise Chaoy, the
issue of transport governed Cerda’s entire view of urban history:

Better than any other cultural indicator, the primary mode of locomotion
(foot, horseback, draft animals, wheeled vehicles, etc.) and the structure
of the circulation system appropriate to each mode provide a basis for
classifying cities. The mode of locomotion gives meaning to the develop-
ment of urbanization. It functions in Cerdian history in the same way as
the means of production in Marxist history.
(Chaoy 1997: 239)

In his Barcelona plan, a zone of blocks running parallel to but at some distance from
the sea front were to be defined by a series of three railway lines positioned in open
trenches. These lines were then proposed to serve businesses and industrial concerns
on street level with housing above on the conventional model which Cerda advocated

46
 The industrial city

elsewhere in his project. This sectional zoning of city functions bears some similarity
to the separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic which would characterize urban
models in the twentieth century. However, a general attitude to dispersal as a positive
virtue resulted in the combination of manufacturing and residential districts in
multifunctional zones which, had the plans been fully implemented, would possibly

3.4
Casa Mila,
Barcelona
(Antoni Gaudí
1905–10). Gaudí’s
extraordinary
construction, the
subject of much
allusive speculation
as to the sources of
its meaning, diverts
attention from
the rationalism of
its planning. The
building is located
on one of the
characteristic
junctions of
Ildefons Cerda’s
utilitarian extension
to the city,
l’Eixample, first
proposed in 1859.

47
The industrial city

have provided an example for mixed use planning in opposition to the ultimately
discredited strategy of zoning.
The intended low density of Cerda’s blocks, however, with shallow
perimeter accommodation, restricted building height and extensive internal gardens
was to prove easy prey to speculative developers, with the result that the density of
building within the blocks is four times Cerda’s projected provision. This was to lead
to a reoccurrence of the health problems the grid plan was intended to eliminate,
and, therefore, the relentless logic of such scientific solutions did not go unques-
tioned. The rational plan had no other control than economics, which was an easy
discipline for the unscrupulous to exploit. Notwithstanding these problems, Cerda’s
replicable modules of city were to accommodate the work of some of the most
creative architects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such as Antoni
Gaudí, the neutral pattern being the perfect foil for idiosyncratic architectural forms.
The boulevardization of cities such as Paris, and the attempt to create a
uniformly designed urban environment in Barcelona were to find their echo in projects
such as Otto Wagner’s Die Großstadt of 1911 (Blau and Platzer 1999). In contrast to
his Viennese contemporary Camillo Sitte, Wagner embraced the engineering neces-
sities of the urban situation to produce a city predicated on the spatial type of the
boulevard. The character of individual buildings was to be suppressed in favour of
the uniform containment of the street, interrupted at intervals by monumental
structures which encouraged travel from one to the next, an inheritance from Baroque
urbanism. Nothing could be further from the contemplative character of enclosed
urban space which Sitte had proposed as an alternative.
Criticizing the rational dominance of the engineer in town planning, Sitte’s
appeal was not just to aesthetic compositional principles. He sought the logic of the
organic spaces he studied in their everyday use, indeed, it was a surprising obser-
vation in the building of snowmen which was to give him a clue to the unconscious
rules which defined the traditional square:

It is significant that when children at play follow unhindered their own

artistic instincts in drawing or modeling, what they create bears a
resemblance to the unsophisticated art of primitive peoples. One notices
something similar with regard to children’s placing of their monuments.
The parallel is to be seen in their favorite winter pastime of building
snowmen. These snowmen stand on the same spots where under other
circumstances and following the old method, monuments or fountains
might be expected to be located. How did this placement come about?
Very simply. Imagine the open square of a small market town in the
country, covered with deep snow and crisscrossed by several roads and
paths that, shaped by the traffic, form the natural lines of communication.
Between them are left irregularly distributed patches untouched by traffic;
on these stand our snowmen, because the necessary clean snow was to
be found only there.
(Collins and Collins 1986:159–160)

48
 The industrial city

The rationale of this process, and indeed the logic of the empirical methods Sitte
used to gather his data are often lost behind the cloak of nostalgia with which his work
is covered (Chaoy 1997: 257). It is simply a paradox that it was the aesthetic rationality
of his opponents which was to eventually gain more currency. Cerda first, and then
Wagner created the theoretical framework for the transport-determined city of the
twentieth century which was to be exploited by the car when it became widely
available. The primacy of the individual within the city, which had been the situation
since cities had first come into being, was superseded by that of the machine, and
the mechanistic metaphor of the city found its first shrill expression in the work
of the Futurists and their appropriation of the effects of rhythm, speed and noise in the
years before the First World War.
The mechanical paradigm of the city was, of course, an echo of the
universe of Newtonian physics, and the rationalism of the scientific revolution which
followed on from it. It is of some significance that architects in their designs of
buildings and cities were somewhat tardy in shaking off the accumulated culture
of tradition. In many respects this demonstrated the strength of an understanding of
the disciplines of spatial design as being implicated in a mediating role between the
perceivable physical world and that of metaphysics. The hermetic character of this role
was to a degree transformed into the role of the architect as saviour of urban society
at large adopted by Le Corbusier in a self-dramatizing way and to a lesser extent by
Walter Gropius in his educational career.
To the minds of this generation of architects, born in the last quarter of
the nineteenth century, the model which industrialization presented to the city was the
productive separation of processes. This would lead with inevitable logic to the
separation of activities in different areas of the city, for reasons of convenience
compounded with the economic requirement of property speculation. The rationality
of this drift in urban development was then adopted as the principle of zoning in the
planning strategies adopted by the architects of C.I.A.M. under the Athens Charter
(1933). But whether in its market-driven or consciously planned form, the zoned city
was to create one of the determining characteristics of the industrial era, the
monotonous environment, of either industry, commerce or housing. The analysis of
the city as a system evident in the aesthetic appropriation of mechanization under
modernism was essentially a reductive one. It was considerably easier to propagate
than the obscure biological metaphor promoted by the likes of Patrick Geddes with
its eclectic strains of medievalism and orientalism (Welter 2002).
Set against these differing rationales, the experience of the city was one of
ferment which political parties interpreted for their own purpose. The liberal estab-
lishment’s benign interpretation of civic values through the beginnings of social
provision and its expression in schools, hospitals and libraries employed traditional
strategies in planning and architecture. The radicalization of industrial populations and
the consequences of the destructive power of the military campaign on the Western
Front were to lead to a series of utopian proposals for the reform of the city, which
sought to harness the aesthetic potential of industrialization. Foremost among these

49
The industrial city

visionary projects were those of Tony Garnier and Le Corbusier, which each expressed 3.5
Une Cité
the political attitudes of their authors. The socialist Garnier’s project, Une Cité
Industrielle
Industrielle (1917), a project which matured over several years, was located in an (Tony Garnier
unspecified site which bore topographic similarity to his native city of Lyons. The 1917). A detail of
the masterplan for
interdependence of its zoned parts implicitly demanded a more corporatist form of city
Garnier’s visionary
government than was then in existence. It was more explicit in its exploitation of the city, showing the
iconography of industrialization to create the visual language of the town, powered separation between
civic, residential
as it was by a great hydroelectric dam.
and industrial
Although Garnier only specified a population of 35,000 (comparable to zones. The proposal
Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City model of 1898), a huge industrial area, specifically was to be powered
by a hydroelectric
for metallurgical production was to be conveniently located for the extraction of raw
dam situated in the
materials from nearby mines and for rail and river transport. Higher up the valley mountains above
overlooking the bend in the river, the residential quarter was suburban in scale but the city.

focused around an extensive series of social and cultural facilities in the design of
which Garnier demonstrated his command of the new constructional language of
reinforced concrete. At an even higher contour still, hospital facilities, were to be
provided which underscored the importance of the motif of hygiene in his project, a
motif which connected Garnier’s pragmatic concerns as chief architect of Lyons with

50
 The industrial city

the aesthetics of modern architecture and urbanism as proposed by Le Corbusier

(Garnier [1917] 1989).
What we witness in Une Cité Industrielle is the emergence of a new
paradigm of urbanity which shifts from the often reluctant accommodation of
new functional systems. An embarrassment at their crudity mixed with wonder at
the visible effects of progress merges towards the symbolization of those processes
in the configuration of the twentieth-century city. Once this aesthetic appropriation
of industrialization commences, we are presented with the divergence of image and
reality, as the motif of utility fails to ensure functional success. The rhetorical nature
of this phase of the industrial city is explained if one considers the void into
which it rushes. The identification of traditional architectural and urban forms with
the totalitarian regimes of mid-century Europe removed them from the previously
available repertoire of forms for city-making. If one considers Tony Garnier’s work,
for example, despite his promotion of innovative technology in construction, the
distinctions remain clear between his industrial structures, the residential planning
and the civic buildings. A hierarchy of formal expression is maintained to aid the
inhabitant in the reading of their urban environment. That clarity, an inheritance from
Garnier’s Beaux Arts education, evaporates in the proposals of those that follow
him, so that the confusion arises where only the architectural and planning elite are
able to read the functionally zoned city, bereft as it is of any comprehensible indicators
to distinguish between the industrial building, the residential block and the public
structure.
More ideologically ambiguous but promoting the role of technocrats in the
political structure, as a young man, Le Corbusier’s interest in urbanism followed
the manner of Sitte in its concern for historic centres, but he was to later abandon ‘the
pack-donkey’s way’ in favour of an idealization of attitudes such as those demon-
strated by Garnier, and on a vastly inflated scale (Le Corbusier 1929: 5–12). His Une
Ville Contemporaine project was intended to provide for a population of three million
inhabitants. The centrepiece consisted of 24 glass skyscrapers for business and
administrative functions surrounding a multilevel traffic interchange. This technocratic
core was surrounded by a green belt with housing for the two distinct classes of
60,000 elite citizens and the lower social class. In a typically provocative gesture, Le
Corbusier applied his abstract urban proposal to the centre of Paris on his Plan Voisin
project of 1925, but it was to be a further ten years before his most considered urban
project was finalized. Although La Ville Radieuse (1935) was influenced by planning
opportunities offered to him in the Soviet Union, its abstract topography changed from
the centralized system employed in the Ville Contemporaine to an anthropomorphic
model. The crystal towers remained as the head of the new urban body, with a spine
lined by the cultural facilities as the heart, and a homogeneous housing type in
generous green space forming the lungs. Heavy industry provided the legs on which
this trunk sat. The geometry of Le Corbusier’s project was intended to be infinitely
expandable and universally applicable, as he demonstrated the superiority of his new
urban pattern to examples from Europe and North and South America. He even

51
The industrial city

suggested that the relatively small size of building footprint afforded increased 3.6
Plan Voisin
protection against the new military threat of airborne war.
(Le Corbusier 1925).
These models found a response in the projects for the reconstruction A model produced
of European cities following the Second World War. To return to the example of for display in the
Pavilion de l’Esprit
the first industrial city, the City of Manchester Plan of 1945 projected the timescale
Nouveau at the
of a century for the demolition of virtually the entire city centre, preserving only Exposition des
a few historic fragments which had survived early industrialization and recent steel Arts-Décoratifs.
The model
and concrete frame structures which had survived aerial bombardment (Nicholas
demonstrated
1945). The liberated groundscape was to be occupied by regularly spaced high-rise the principal
slab blocks and its centre bounded by a generously landscaped inner ring road elements of Le
Corbusier’s Ville
punctuated by large roundabouts. As with other British cities, the implementation
Contemporaine
of these urban visions was to fall victim to long-term industrial decline and a of 1922 applied to
reassessment of the value of nineteenth-century city centres. The prioritization of road the historic centre
of Paris.
transport, however, meant that these elements of the plans were commenced, Source:
entailing considerable demolition as land was cleared of buildings in favour of the FLC/ADAGP, Paris
car. and DACS, London
2005
Although the initial aftermath of the war saw a typically pragmatic com-
bination of native and Scandinavian models, the 30 years between the end of the
Second World War and the economic and energy crises of the 1970s saw much
reconstruction inspired by the Corbusian urban model. When elements of such
visionary projects were implemented (as will be discussed in Chapter 6), however, the

52
 The industrial city

benign intentions of the protagonists came up against the different aspirations of

the populations involved. In Britain, housing produced and controlled by the state
provided the opportunity to clear slum areas and increase the prospects of better
health. Technological developments meant that taller buildings could be constructed
for housing as well as administrative and business functions, encouraging experi-
mentation on the part of the architect, although only lip service was paid to the social
consequences of these visions.
If the benefits of unfettered industrialization and consequent technological
progress drove the erasure of both local differences and those between types of urban
space, the naïve optimism of this position was called into question by the Oil Crisis
of the mid-1970s. Energy was no longer cheap and its exploitation and accumulation
could no longer be seen as apolitical. The radical architects of the 1960s, the late
adherents of the aesthetic–industrial city, groups such as the Metabolists in Japan,
Archigram in Britain and Superstudio in Italy were free to propose urban forms which
had increasingly little prospect of implementation.
In the case of the last group, while their ideology would appear to be one
of hedonism, this suited the consumer culture of the Italian post-war economic miracle
(Lang and Menking 2003). Despite the beginnings of political unrest and violence,
this was a time of optimism where the possibilities of economic growth and social
change seemed limitless. This conjunction allowed them to envision a new type
of urban existence which did not indulge in the technological obsessions of the
Metabolists and Archigram groups, nor the slow retreat into historicism of the post-
modernists and advocates of the vernacular. Instead they proposed an environment
which dispensed with notions of property division, of good design as commodification,
and the restrictions of place.
What further distinguished Superstudio from their contemporaries was the
heroic totality of their vision. Although always keen to provoke, a traditional avant-
garde technique they took from their fellow countrymen, the Futurists, they adopted
an architectural language which they applied to the design of objects, buildings and
cities. Exemplified by the ‘histograms’, the Cartesian forms suggested both the
rationalism of contemporary corporate forms and the global mysticism of the counter-
culture. A good deal of professional skill was required to span this division, through
an easily identifiable production which had learnt the graphic lessons of Pop Art. The
critical position of Superstudio in relation to the consumer culture on which they
depended encouraged them to work on urban projects so vast and provocative that
they could not be commodified as easily as furniture and even buildings, a strategy
which had similar ambitions to contemporary land art. Dispensing with the diversity
of urban traditions, Superstudio predicted a future where accelerated technological
progress and miniaturization could liberate mankind from inequalities by creating a
uniform environment. In the spread of the ‘continuous monument’, for example,
even the corporate skyscrapers of Manhattan were reduced to museum objects,
their individual architectural expressions now redundant. Applied across cities and
wildernesses, the continuous monument’s elemental form was intended to solve

53
The industrial city

the problem of human habitat by spanning the globe with a single environment which
liberated the rest of the earth’s surface to Nature.
However, in the actual 1970s’ cities of the developed world, as progressive
building methods failed technically, and the social fabric frayed as a consequence of
mass unemployment, the industrial city, and the modernist urbanism which had
developed in response to it, became synonymous with inner city decay. Criticisms
were to polarize around two seemingly opposed arguments, the imperfect application
of Modernist principles or their completely misguided character, which were in turn to
lead to Neo-Modernism and New Urbanism, as will be discussed in the next chapter.
The dramatic transformation of the urban environment which had taken place as a
result of industrialization would inevitably be reversed by the cessation of manu-
facturing, and although environmental concerns would feature, the issue of image was
now to play a significant part in the new urban economy.
The aesthetic appropriation of industrial forms, notwithstanding the dismay
it caused among urban populations was itself too weak a gesture to create any
meaningful unity within the city, precisely because it was so superficial. This presents
a difficulty for architecture and urban design, the existence of which as disciplines
are posited on the significance of visual understanding. These concerns have to be
balanced with an understanding of society and, indeed, the pioneers of modern urban
design had an ethical drive which is often sadly lacking today. However, that ethos
was limited by the aesthetic desire to control the experience of the city for the urban
dweller. Ultimately the imposition of those restrictions was to undermine the benign
intentions of the architects and planners to heal the city. As Françoise Chaoy notes:

With Cerda, the urbanist donned the medical whites of the healer, and
has never laid them aside since. The city is sick. It is the practitioner’s job
to find the causes of the malady, make a diagnosis, and apply remedies.
(1997: 244)

With all the evidence of human exploitation which the observers of the industrial city
recorded, the period as a whole saw many moves to spread the accumulated wealth
for the general benefit of the population. Infrastructural projects for illumination and
sanitation led in British cities to the creation of municipal gas and water companies,
and the building of public baths and laundries. Although having a solely pragmatic
intent, the concomitant social amenity which was created had its counterpart in the
public libraries and museums set up to provide access to culture.
This ethos of public provision only increased following the First World
War, and became an accepted element in the design of cities, the basis of which
was now housing provision rather than urban beautification per se, although the
modified forms of the traditional languages preserved the familiarity of the institution.
Following the Second World War, the continuity of aesthetic experience which
modernist architects sought meant that the architectural languages of both housing
and public building became less distinguishable. Furthermore, in the developed world
a generation grew up which had been entirely cocooned by public provision, so that

54
 The industrial city

they were unaware of the long struggle and moral debate which had surrounded the
establishment of the various forms of the welfare state. The technocratic visions
which groups such as Archigram or Superstudio promoted, although owing a debt to
early Modernism, were without their predecessors’ ethical agenda for the reform
of society, which was assumed to be placed on a largely equitable basis. There was
therefore nothing more to offer, in a period of unprecedented material wealth, but
the indulgences of hedonism.
The ethical cul-de-sac in which this resulted was emphasized by the
alienation of human need from the design process, replacing it with autonomous
architecture where self-referentiality to industrial progress was the sole criterion for
assessment. The implosion of these groups when faced with the economic rigours
of the 1970s only serves to underline how shallow their foundations were. It is
perhaps no coincidence that the recent revival of interest in these late avant-garde
groups has occurred during the current period of economic optimism when more
pressing needs are obscured by the availability of new consumer products.
In contrast to this dilettantism, the paternalistic values of the traditionally
minded city fathers of late industrialism seem more benign. Rather than being
passively content with the anonymity which industrialization had produced, they
sought through a comprehensive treatment of the city’s problems at least to amelio-
rate the conditions of existence for those caught in its grasp. The sensibility of such
a civic vision seems all the more remote during a period when the constant motif is
instant personal gratification.

55
Chapter 4

The Post-Industrial City

In the late twentieth century, the urban basis of our culture became the source of a
continuing paradox. If the urban experience is the fundamental mode of existence in
the developed world, albeit for many taking place in the illusory rural idyll of suburbia,
why has that experience with all its abundant facilities become so disaffecting to many
of its inhabitants? As has been mentioned, this is a phenomenon which has its roots
in the reaction to industrial cities when disquiet over potential disorder and the fear
of disease combined to produce the benign reaction of urban planning and control.
However, this sense of urban unease had taken hold at a very deep level, and indeed
only became more profound in the later industrial period when modernist function-
alism, mechanization and capitalist speculation became the principal modus operandi
of the city. The premise of Modernist urban design was that comprehensive planning
and control could be used to create a more egalitarian society in a healthier urban
environment. The perceptions that this optimistic experiment failed might be briefly
said to fall into two categories. On the one hand, the forms used in high-rise devel-
opment, abstract functionalist expression and lack of definition for the intervening
spaces were perceived to be alienating both in terms of scale and in their lack of
identifiability. On the other, comprehensive planning control was perceived to have the
effect of ironing out local and topographical differences and replacing them with
universalist solutions.
The reactions to the Modernist city were many but coincided with the
collapse of faith in public provision in favour of the belief in the virtues of the private,
as will be discussed in Chapter 8. Remedies were sought in the benign self-interest
of community, in the example of the historic environment and the potential of
accelerated technology. From the perspective of a few decades later, the common
aim of these might be seen to be the creation of a cityscape of distraction which
would obscure the increasing commodification of urban life which industrialization had
produced. The faults of the mid-twentieth-century city had become the clichés by
which Modernism as a whole was scorned. However, in the light of the vacuous
stylings of the present situation, it can be observed that at least Modernism’s rational

56
 The post-industrial city

logic was driven by the requirements of manufacture and the provision of amenities to
a broader spectrum of society and that it therefore had an ethical intention.
Two connected questions need to be asked. Why did the Modern urban
vision go wrong, and was it inevitable? The unfortunate alliance of idealism and
bureaucracy allowed for small mistakes to be endlessly multiplied so that easily
rectified technical failures became catastrophic. This was basically a function of the
scale of operation which virtually ensured failure of the whole system, so it probably
was inevitable. Disorientation resulted from the fact that the forms with which these
disasters were created were unfamiliar, merely making it more difficult to persuade
citizens that they were being dealt with as anything other than pawns in someone
else’s architectural and social fantasy. The theory and practice of the reactions to this
situation need close consideration and therefore in this chapter I shall first of all
explore two contemporary theoretical positions before considering an example of
urban regeneration which displays some of their superficial contradictions and simi-
larities. While the theories maintain a form of internal coherence, the discontinuous
nature of actual urban experience tells a different story.
As referred to in the Introduction, at present two apparently theoretical
opposites dominate urban design, New Urbanism and Neo-Modernism. The latter is
part of a tradition which sees humanity inevitably in a symbiotic relationship with
technical progress, and morally governed by its rational logic. On the other hand,
New Urbanism inherits the mantle of those who were always deeply troubled by the
effects of industrialization and sought to counter them. The choice is then offered as
to whether one wholeheartedly accepts the technological paradigm as positive, or
rejects it as unacceptably destructive to human needs.
Of these alternative visions for the city, New Urbanism is a term adopted
by a group of American design professionals to describe their remedy to the zoned city
of Modernism, with its monolith littered centre surrounded by placeless suburbs.
(Duany et al. 2000) The rendering down of the city into these estranged constituent
parts is a process that the Congress for the New Urbanism seeks to reverse, in favour
of a more integrated whole. The work of the leading architects in the group, Andres
Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, is mostly concerned with residential areas and
the creation of neighbourhoods as social and architectural entities.
Influenced by the polemical stance of the European architect Leon Krier,
the American context in which Duany and Plater-Zyberk operate has led them to a
form of development which is suited to the commercial housing market. Although,
like Krier, they are sceptical of the benefits of the presence of cars in towns, they
accept their importance in American society, but try to reduce their impact within
carefully defined and bounded towns. As they write in the ‘The Charter of the New
Urbanism’:

Many activities of daily life should occur within walking distance, allowing
independence to those who do not drive, especially the elderly and
the young. Interconnected networks of streets should be designed to

57
The post-industrial city

encourage walking, reduce the number and length of automobile trips,

and conserve energy.
(Duany et al. 2000: 259)

As exemplified by the major British example of the genre, Poundbury in Dorset

master-planned by Krier for the Prince of Wales during the late 1980s, this pursuit of
the pedestrian-friendly but car-dependent model is only the most obvious example
of the selective process which New Urbanists identify as inherent in their neo-
traditionalism.
The first significant example of Duany and Plater-Zyberk’s work planned
in the 1980s was Seaside, Florida, and demonstrated their belief in the importance
of an urban code to ensure traditional visual coherence. Unlike the statistically
derived or plot-and-parking ratio codes which characterize conventional planning
systems, a New Urbanist building code is highly specific about the physical form
and appearance of the resulting cityscape. At Seaside, as in later examples, the
relationship of the building to the street is a fundamental element from which much
else springs. Five categories determine the range of building types through rules
concerning the yard, the front porch, the outbuilding, parking and building height.
An architectural code specified roof pitches and materials and was responsible
for the uniformity of the housing stock, although Steven Holl’s mixed use Hybrid
building demonstrated that there was flexibility within this system, and provided
relief from the prevailing clapboard folksiness of much of the housing (Mohney and
Easterling 1991).
The five categories of the urban code placed emphasis on elements which
define the boundary between public and private realms, and this strategy was
4.1
Poundbury, Dorset.
A property
development by the
Prince of Wales’s
Duchy of Cornwall
estate which was
masterplanned by
Leon Krier along
the New Urbanist
principles of
density and
neo-traditionalism.
This ‘urban village’
serves as a suburb
of Dorchester,
and one of its
first compromises
was over the
accommodation of
the private motor
car.
Source: Photograph
courtesy of Tom
Jefferies.

58
 The post-industrial city

extended to the urban scale so that the civic focus of the settlement was clearly
distinguishable in an urban hierarchy which extended to form residential quarters. As
further projects were developed which were not new-build resort developments like
Seaside, more complexity was required in the urban codes especially where the
designers were dealing with the social problems of established and very mixed
communities. For example, New Urbanists have identified the size of both buildings
and the open spaces between them as a particular factor in the retrofitting of existing
urban and suburban environments. At a domestic scale this involves the subdivision of
ill-defined communal areas into clear plots associated with individual dwellings, and a
refining of the spatial hierarchy through the characterization of front and backyards.
While the latter is the most private open space, the front yard or garden is adjacent
to the public realm of public spaces and the street. At the scale of the urban centre,
these same strategies take the strong form of the breaking up of large buildings such
as the urban mall, or at least the masking of its large form, as well as the trans-
formation of large undifferentiated parking lots into plots for traditionally scaled
buildings. Incremental application of these proposals allow for the radical trans-
formations to be implemented in an affordable manner without the creation of further
long-term urban blight, as well as the variety which is introduced by encouraging the
work of different architects and developers.
However, Duany and Plater-Zyberk are apparently keen to promote a
thorough application of New Urbanist principles rather than merely an imitation of
traditional forms, and therefore produced in 1999 ‘The Lexicon of the New Urbanism’
as an attempt to reshape architectural and town planning practice and provide a
thorough manual to all the processes they have sought to foster through the previous
work and publications (Dutton 2000: 150–171). Definitions are provided for such terms
as ‘master plan’, ‘guidelines’ and ‘code’, and consideration as to which suggest
voluntary application and which are enforceable by legislation. Highways are char-
acterized by type from rural roads to urban boulevards with specifications given for
dimensions and treatment. Neighbourhoods are defined by the zones ‘edge’, ‘general’
and ‘center’, while ‘core’ is reserved for those districts with no rural aspect and the
most intense business, service or administrative functions. These terms relate to a
spectrum of transect from most rural to most urban, while further definitions consider
the effects of different types of street network and its effect on the typology of the
urban block. Since the prevailing economic model of conventional suburban devel-
opment is the target of their critique, Duany and Plater-Zyberk produce tables to
demonstrate the competitiveness of the infrastructure costs of their model of the
traditional neighbourhood development. This is essential as urban regeneration and
development projects in the United States are developer-led and the public sector is
relatively restricted in its capacity to direct proposals, in comparison to their European
counterparts. The commercial viability of New Urbanist projects as well as the
attractiveness of the neo-traditional environments promised have therefore both con-
tributed to the success of a movement which was born out of despair at the quality
of late twentieth-century urban and suburban environments, yet the rhetoric of

59
The post-industrial city

the protagonists suggests the universal applicability of rules intended to achieve a

semblance of the local.
In contrast, the globalization of a technologically driven economy leads 4.2
other urbanists to very different conclusions. They despise the preservation, conser- Eurolille, France.
Masterplanned
vation and reconstruction policies of the industrially developed urban centres and
by Rem Koolhaas,
embrace the opportunities offered by the fast developing cities of the Far East this node on the
(Bradley 1999). In this dynamic economic and social milieu, new urban centres grow high speed-rail line
was planned to
at an astounding rate as a result of unbridled political will and the transformation
take economic
from a peasant to a digital economy can be seen to take place literally overnight. The advantage of the
ambition to have a contemporary business centre in the manner of Lower Manhattan relative proximity
of populations in
or Canary Wharf is realized in capitals and enterprise zones alike, as these cities mimic
Britain and the
their Western counterparts but simultaneously seek to assert a specific identity based Benelux countries.
on the invention and transformation of the skyline. The aesthetic
choice of a collisive
Such is the speed of construction, theories of these new urban situations
and provisional
must react to situations rather than prescribe them. However, the foremost theorist of architectural
these cities, Rem Koolhaas, made his reputation through retrospection rather than language was
intended to suggest
prophecy, in his book Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan the dynamic nature
which was an alternative narration of the major city of the twentieth century (Koolhaas of the Western
1978). Eschewing the conventions of architectural and urban history, the progress European economy.
Source: Photograph
which Koolhaas followed was that of the urban spectacle itself, through passages on courtesy of Tom
the significance of the entertainment zone of Coney Island to the city proper, and the Jefferies.
 The post-industrial city

competitive scenario of the iconic skyscrapers. Koolhaas sees in the accelerated

pace of the contemporary theatres of consumption in the Far East a vitality which
is supportive of experimentation and the disjunctions which occur as rural sites
mutate into boom towns. Cultures develop which are unlike the bounded form
of traditional settlements, or the zoned districts of the industrial city. Instead sky-
scrapers and paddy-fields coexist and are woven together by an infrastructure which
creates not a conurbation but in Koolhaas’s term a ‘City of Exacerbated Difference’
(Bradley 1999: 10).
The porous nature of the boundaries between cultivated and developed
land is a symptom of the flows which are identified as the prevailing metaphor for
this urbanism. Flows of goods in the globalized economy, flows of information in
advanced communication technology, flows of population from countryside to city
and from country to country, flows between cultural theory and architectural practice
are appropriated as the means by which the urban condition can be represented and
understood, with particular emphasis on the electronic system as a metaphor for the
urban situation. This identification with flow, at once both predictable and seemingly
uncontrollable, allows any event or condition to be seen as consistent with the broad
pattern and therefore suitable for aesthetic appropriation. Inconsistencies and dis-
junctions lose the negative connotations they would have had in traditional and
industrial cities, or the aesthetically uniform visions of the Modernist or New Urbanist
settlement. The passive nature of the flow also dispenses with the need for any
meaning other than economic value, so that the urban dweller is required to find
distraction in the provocatively banal experience of the simulated historic quarter or
the retail/leisure centre.
Despite the desperate struggle for novelty, the similarity of these sup-
posedly unique experiences to other locations, often coupled with the commercial
presence of ubiquitous global brands, are reluctant examples of what Marc Augé
has defined as ‘non-places’, the spectrum of sites of contemporary existence from the
refugee camp to the five star hotel (Augé 1995). Where the traditional meaning of
urban place might suggest specificity of location and perhaps a multilayered historic
reference, non-place is associated with the discrete functions of transport, leisure and
shopping, and the relations people have with those experiences which are conditioned
by signage for advertising and instruction. The banality of non-places can only
be overcome by the temporary satisfaction of consumption, which fertilizes the
processes of globalization and the creation of more non-places. In theoretical terms
this has led, particularly through the work of Koolhaas, to the validation of retail
environments as worthy objects for lengthy consideration, overturning the previously
ascetic tendencies of urban discourse in favour of an immersion in the brand.
While Koolhaas et al.’s collation of urban experiences, particularly in the
Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping is a compelling documentation of contem-
porary trends, its barely concealed air of cynical passivity betrays the danger of
its adoption as a manifesto. Disdain seeps through the dense lines of ‘Junkspace’,
a disdain for the casual dress codes of urban dwellers conditioned by global

61
The post-industrial city

brands, disdain for their failure to recognize the dulling artificiality of the environments
in which they stroll, disdain for the creators of such spaces, disdain for the underclass
who maintain and service them (Chung et al. 2001: 408–421). Where respect is
expressed, it is reserved for the self-consuming progress of capital which gathers
its money from these arenas of delusion. The irony of the gaze with which this
phenomenon is observed creates its own barrier to objectivity. For all the academic
surface of sometimes meaningless data, the de haut en bas tone of mock anthro-
pology internalizes the discussion to one of architectural and urban form, as if the
typology of the shopping mall portrayed anything other than the attention-seeking
and megalomaniacal tendencies of unfettered commerce. The discussion of the
environmental consequences of these spaces of consumption is restricted to
the internal ones of air-conditioning, rather than any contemplation of the pollution and
degradation which follow. Similarly the social conditions of those distant millions
who make the goods to be sold in these places go largely unacknowledged. For all the
internationalism of the perspective, the manifesto reveals that particular species of
American isolationism which fails to think beyond the instant gratification of a can-do
philosophy.
Although the self-fulfilling nature of these attempts to understand rapidly
developing situations appears cynical, they do address very real phenomena which
affect the lives of millions in dramatic ways. The contortions of the arguments used
suggest the hand-wringing of the powerless bystander who can observe but not
intervene in the urban spectacle. Despite the familiarity of the Modernist language
with which these urban proposals are represented, they lack the moral position which
Modernist architects espoused. The facilitation of consumerism is the only goal, and
the plight of the lowest social levels upon which the cities of the East and the
shopping environments of the West lie receives no concern. There a contemporary
Engels would find similar conditions of squalor to those of early industrial Manchester,
but replicated on an unimaginable scale. Similarly, the exotic allure of the red-light
district receives architectural attention but without an acknowledgement of the
conditions of near slavery which make such an industry lucrative and therefore
extremely powerful. While architecture and planning cannot resolve all social ills, it is
possible to take an ethical position regarding exploitation which does not hide behind
a refusal to make public value judgements.
The appropriation of historically radical urban critiques by the conventional
mainstream is a phenomenon of which designers such as Koolhaas are aware, as it
was the fate of international Modernism when it became the preferred architectural
language of bureaucracies and private corporations. Similarly, the intoxicated visions
of the Situationists, those critiques of the corrosive effect of modern urbanism and the
advance of consumerism on the inhabited city (which will be discussed in Chapter 7),
are now promoted by Neo-Modernists as the pragmatic wisdom of a progressive
technocracy, reversing the original intention. The absurdity of the use of a text such as
Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle as a positive endorsement of contemporary
capitalist development is barely acknowledged (Debord 1983).

62
 The post-industrial city

What is surprising is how blinkered some of the critiques of Neo-

Modernism are. Mitchell Schwarzer has observed that Koolhaas

argues that architecture must become a high-stakes player in the game of

building global image-fields, anticipating and directing flows of consumer
desire. In this manner, by branding buildings with companies and
their product lines, architects can help direct campaigns to capture
and focus consumer attention and perception – it’s going to happen with or
without architects, so they might as well join the fray. This idea is, in fact,
a variation of the sort of strategy that Peter Behrens used in his work for
the AEG in Berlin, designing a company’s logo and products as well as
buildings.
(Schwarzer 2000: 19)

Ultimately, towards the end of Behrens’s career those buildings were to be the
headquarters of German corporations intended to line the North–South axis of Speer’s
projected capital of Hitler’s empire, corporations whose economic power had been
greatly enhanced by the availability of slave labour, but this irony passes unobserved
by Schwarzer.
The moral ambivalence of the protagonists of globalization and the
consequent city of flows betray an optimistic over-dependence on the ability of
telecommunications technology to overcome the negative aspects of industrial
modernization and rigid political structures. However, for some perceptive critics, the
potential of these developing urban situations to facilitate positive social change
awaits realization. Mohsen Mostafavi writes:

The city, as the contested site of difference, becomes an important

domain for challenging the essential economic forms of distributive justice.
The city must therefore provide spatially democratic frameworks which
will support its citizens in order to construct new identities based on
difference.
(Mostafavi 1999: 9)

Sadly this emphasis on social equity rarely features in the Neo-Modernist literature,
although the democratic intent of New Urbanism is more explicitly proclaimed (Duany
et al. 2000: 240–243).
So, if these are the theoretical positions of the contemporary city, how
are these currents expressed in practical terms? Although at an international
level and in the published theories the polar divide between New Urbanists and
Neo-Modernists is quite clear, at the local level the implementation of urban design
strategies is often more clouded. I now wish to look at some examples of this
confusion. The ambivalent nature of contemporary urban regeneration policies
is widespread, but in Britain is manifested in Manchester with some very telling

63
The post-industrial city

examples which suggest a degree of compatibility between the superficially opposed

theoretical positions.
It should first be observed that the discontinuities which epitomize the
morphology of the contemporary city and their attendant regions, far from being a new
phenomenon, are a condition with a history that runs parallel with that of industrial
development and decline. In Manchester, as one of the earliest cities to experience
these processes, such discontinuity might even be thought of as a local tradition
with its own aesthetic of strong contrasts of occupation and desolation, new
development and decay. This urban sublime characterizes both its periphery (where
the contemporary observer would expect it) and the city centre itself. This is a result,
then, if not of aesthetic intent, of the unsteady hand of public policy.
Projects of urban regeneration in Britain might be characterized as spanning
the range of possible solutions from the preservation of historic environments for new
uses through to the complete erasure of such historic patterns and their replacement
by more contemporary forms. Often there is a mixture of extremes which are
juxtaposed in a seemingly haphazard manner, creating an incoherent urban envi-
ronment at odds with the totalizing aesthetic of the modern urban project since the
nineteenth century. The preservation of urban monuments and fabric itself creates
a situation where the city centre is seen as a museum environment, within which
new interventions stand as self-conscious intruders. At the same time a city such as
Manchester hosts developments on its periphery which further undermine its
economic stability and social cohesion by attracting people and money to new centres,
where architectural consistency is not an expectation, and, indeed, a certain taste for
the fantastic is to be indulged.
As if in some unconscious reversal of the concentric model of Engel’s
‘hypocritical plan’ discussed in the previous chapter, the contemporary observer might
document similar experiences in relation to both the city centre and its periphery,
and a similar sense of denial with regards to their interconnectedness. To explore the
present situation in detail I shall trace a route through four recent developments,
beginning on the periphery and working towards the centre, exploring their archi-
tectural and urban design. But whereas the first two examples (the Trafford Centre
and the Imperial War Museum North) appropriate either traditional forms or the
methods of architectural significance usually associated with the creation of iden-
tifiable centres, the latter two examples reverse these processes. Instead they
(Exchange Square and New Piccadilly) favour the models of landscape sculpture and
business park corporate design as their precedents to ornament the city centre. From
these examples a process of inversion and reverse coding will be observed, which
demonstrates the city’s continuing attraction as a curious mix of the undifferentiated
and the discontinuous.
Although the first example, the Trafford Centre (Chapman Taylor Architects
1998), might be characterized as a typical project of Thatcherite planning, it only
opened its doors to shoppers and cinema goers long after the Iron Lady had left 10
Downing Street. This delay was caused by the legal challenge mounted by the local

64
4.3 councils of all but the host borough of Trafford, who saw it as a traffic and congestion-
Trafford Centre,
free threat to the retail health of their own town centres. Located on brownfield land
Manchester
(Chapman Taylor adjacent to Manchester’s orbital motorway, the M60, its catchment area was the
Architects 1998). wealthy outer suburbs of Manchester and beyond, and its malls are replete with
An out-of-town
the kitsch iconography eulogized in the Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping.
shopping centre
situated on Courtesy of the replanning and rebranding opportunity provided by the IRA bomb,
Manchester’s Manchester city centre, unlike smaller surrounding towns has not suffered any decline
orbital motorway,
by the creation of this new rival on its periphery. Public transport links between the city
the M60. Promoted
under the planning centre and the Trafford Centre remain inconvenient, ensuring that they serve different
policies of the markets, and the divergence of attitudes to the car reinforced this process. But
Thatcher and Major
although Manchester is conscious to emphasize the virtues of a traditional city core,
governments, the
glazed gallerias are it does so predominantly in an architectural language of polite Modernism. The
dressed externally Trafford Centre, on the other hand, chose a form of ersatz Baroque, and would appear
in a form of ersatz
baroque, with
to be modelled explicitly on St Peter’s Basilica in Rome with the shopper entering
a marble and the embracing arms of the universal church of consumerism (Hyde et al. 2004).
frescoed interior. Profits from the Trafford Centre helped support the very different aesthetic
of metal-clad geometry which informs the second example of peripheral development.
The Imperial War Museum North is the first completed building in Britain by Daniel
Libeskind, who balances his three compositional elements to accentuate their
difference. Opened in 2002, the commission was won in competition in 1997, and
Libeskind’s concept (somewhat simplistic in its realization in comparison to his earlier
Jewish Museum in Berlin) is the contemporary world shattered into fragments which

65
The post-industrial city

are emblematic of the conflicts on earth, water and air. These elements then corre-
spond to the functions of the building, museum space in the earth shard, café and
other functions in the water shard, and observatory in the air shard. In the architect’s
4.4
report the museum’s virtues are also prosaically described as simple construction,
Imperial War
low maintenance costs, efficiency of use, ecological responsibility and sensitivity Museum North
to security awareness. This would appear disingenuous. The canal side relates (Daniel Libeskind
2002). A metal
to its context of large reflective surfaces with its ‘pearly opalescence’. But the
clad abstract
roadside effect suggests rather more the landscape of the billboard, and the silvery composition of
forms which hover above relate in a particularly poor way to the surfaces which the three ‘shards’ to
represent conflict
visitor comes up against at the perimeter of the building. The content of the building
on land, sea and
affords the architect the reasons for these repellent qualities – disorientation which in the air. This
continues into the oppressive ceiling height of the ground floor, the spherical slope design method is
consistently applied
of the first floor exhibition surface and access to the vertigo-inducing volume of the to disorienting
air shard. The building is rather indelicate in communicating its message, through effect in the
the spectacle of its interior projections and exhibits and its function as a new urban interior. Apart from
its function as a
landmark. self-referential
The observation deck of Libeskind’s air shard allows for views toward the sign, this strategy
city centre, where the next two projects, both situated in significant urban spaces is less successful
in dealing with its
can be seen. The first example, Exchange Square, originating in a competition design immediate urban
by the American landscape architect Martha Schwartz, is the principal public space context.

66
 The post-industrial city

of the post-1996 bomb developments. The space is bounded by a collection of

different structures beginning with two relocated timber-framed pubs (The Old
Wellington Inn and Sinclair’s Oyster Bar), the gutted and refurbished former Corn
Exchange (now the Triangle retail centre), the Printworks leisure centre (cinemas and
themed bars), the refaced Arndale shopping centre and the new building constructed
for Marks & Spencer (Building Design Partnership 1999), one half of which is now
occupied by Selfridges and Co. Although a new pedestrian street issues from it, it is
largely closed to traffic and is formed by a series of low walls that serve as seats.

4.5
Exchange Square,
Manchester.
Designed originally
by the American
landscape architect
Martha Schwartz,
the space is
surrounded by
retail outlets.
Ramps negotiate
the difficult change
of level between
contemporary
developments and
a ‘new medieval
quarter’. Further
complication is
added by the
introduction of a
simulated river bed.

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The post-industrial city

Entertainment is provided by a simulated riverbed, and the whole was intended to be

shaded (despite Manchester’s notoriously inclement weather) by tall palm trees,
which had to be humiliatingly abandoned in favour of a row of motorized windmills.
Although ostensibly public space, the commercial nature of Exchange
Square soon began to predominate. The Triangle failed to attract enough customers,
and rather than look at the content which was on offer, the proprietors sought external
causes. Perhaps it was the popularity of the space with crowds of baggy-trousered
teenagers which was keeping the spending public away? The undesirables were
moved on. Perhaps it was the usefulness of Exchange Square’s low walls for skate-
boarders which was creating the wrong ambience? Their activities were curtailed by
the introduction of hundreds of small steel barriers. Perhaps the shoppers were unable
to locate the entrance in the middle of the carefully preserved façade? An ungainly
steel entrance canopy was bolted on to the façade to capture more shoppers, and
then replaced by a larger rupture in the building’s façade and a gratuitous piece of
public sculpture. Finally, a large television screen was attached to the façade broad-
casting 24 hours a day to desperately grab attention. Since the most popular televised
programmes are major football matches, with an audience which few shops would
feel comfortable with as customers, the use of this space remains a source of some
conflict, poised as it is between the need to be commercially attractive and to deter
aberrant behaviour.
The conventional strategy of creating a new central public space and
traditional monument such as the ensemble of Exchange Square and the nearby Urbis
(to be discussed in Chapter 10) has been replicated in the development of another
significant urban space, the last of my four examples, New Piccadilly (EDAW).
However, here the effect has been not the provision of public spaces and facilities
but the loss of open space to commercial interests. Unveiled in plan form in May 1999,
Piccadilly Gardens, the largest piece of green space in the city centre was to be partly
sold to host a substantial new speculative office building. The funds raised for
the city council were then to be used to pay for a new landscape treatment for the
remaining though depleted open space. Piccadilly Gardens had been a site of popular
leisure since the late eighteenth century. The Manchester Royal Infirmary had been
positioned there and patients, visitors and the general public had enjoyed its land-
scaped grounds, including a large ornamental water basin. Joseph Aston wrote about
it in the following terms at the beginning of the nineteenth century:

[I]t will be well to notice the public walks annexed to them, which are open
to the use of all orderly persons, at proper hours. In front of the buildings
is a gravel walk, the whole length of the land, margined with grass and
partially planted with trees. The pool of water in front, adds considerably
to its appearance, and renders it a most eligible promenade.
(Aston 1804)

Following the demolition of the Infirmary building, and the abandonment of plans
to build a new art gallery and museum, the citizens had enjoyed access to

68
 The post-industrial city

well-maintained municipal gardens for the best part of the twentieth century.
However, the fact of an unpleasant bus station, and a gradual decline in maintenance
standards by the council during the 1980s and 1990s meant that Piccadilly Gardens
were an easy target for commercial exploitation facilitated by an accommodating
local authority. Accepting that the physical decline of Piccadilly Gardens needed
halting, opposition from civic groups focused on the loss of open land to a large office
building while many building sites remained vacant in less prominent parts of the
city. The deal between council and developers had already been struck, however,
4.6
New Piccadilly, and the newly refurbished Gardens opened in time for the popular success of
Manchester (EDAW the Commonwealth Games in July 2002, with the office building (Allies and Morrison
2002). A municipal
Architects) ready for prospective office tenants the following year. Those tenants
pleasure garden for
much of the have been slow to appear, perhaps because the sections of the public that returned
twentieth century, to gather in the garden once the building work was complete would not feature
the present
in any corporate marketing strategy. Ferried in by the public transport network,
manifestation of
this space features the large fountain in the new project has proved a popular attraction for families
a walk-through whose economic circumstances deny them access to other aquatic leisure resources
fountain. The edges
are bounded by a
(perhaps redefining Aston’s notion of ‘a most eligible promenade’), while the long
concrete pavilion by and low concrete pavilion designed by Tadao Ando provides an abandoned and
Tadao Ando and a desolate location for a pavement café, the sine qua non of contemporary regeneration.
headquarters office
building (Allies and The issue at stake in these disparate examples, the thread that might
Morrison 2003). be seen to create some form of consistency in this discontinuous fabric, is that of
The post-industrial city

identity, and specifically the role of architectural identity in creating the image of the
city and its region. The theoretical stances of New Urbanism and Neo-Modernism
have little impact on such urban environments, created as they are by commercial
interests and an aesthetic preference for the stand-alone building. Additionally, in the
case of Manchester, the strained relationship between the centre and its peripheral
growth is a historical phenomenon, a symptom of the city’s condition since it became
something more than a small provincial settlement. But in many cities urban identity is
often seen as synonymous with urban identifiability and reduced to the recognizability
of a skyline. This is one reason for the reliance of identity on the uniqueness of a
particular profile, leading to the jostling for attention of various architectural rivals. This
pursuit of profile suits the city councils, publicity-dependent corporations and their
architects each attempting to increase their market share in the competitive global
economy. However, whether this process is of any value to citizens remains unclear.
On the periphery it serves as a form of signage to announce a particular location, but
in the centre it might be thought to only add to the confusion.
The evaporation of traditional civic coherence under the heat generated by
commercial pressures seems all the stranger when compared to the city making
gestures of two of the examples from the periphery. Although the Imperial War
Museum North is effectively a large shed shaped in accordance with the aesthetic
preferences of its architect, his fundamental starting point is an ideal form, the platonic
sphere which he then fragments. At the Trafford Centre the ironic subversion of
references is not necessarily conscious, and is symptomatic instead of an uncultured
excess. These reservations aside, they have both proved to be popular successes,
exceeding visitor expectations from the moment they opened their doors, and
vindicating those who promoted them as ideas. In contrast, despite their contribution
to the urban profile, the two examples in the centre are more problematical, expe-
riencing a mixture of commercial failure and popularity with what are perceived to be
the wrong social groups.
If a social trend can be indicated from observations such as this, it might be
that the urban core of Manchester, despite its newly refurbished appearance, is
undergoing a long-term decline which recent regeneration projects can at best delay.
The economic power of the periphery evident 200 years ago in manufacturing now
persists in the culture of consumption. Each activity can remain insulated from any
other without fear of the inevitable contamination of forms that the traditional city
requires. The trajectory of this trend suggests that the core might find a natural level
of occupation somewhere below the level of the financially lucrative, but where the
difficult virtues of urbanity might be more appreciated.
Aesthetic issues including urban design obviously play a part in this
process, as following the ‘Bilbao effect’ much faith is invested in the creation of new
monuments to define the new urban image. The situation of Manchester as one
node on a motorway network which stretches across northern England from Liverpool
to Hull places this architectural condition within a regional and social context. The
mobility afforded by this infrastructure, in contrast to the congestion evident within the

70
 The post-industrial city

historic urban cores, suggests a further representation of the divisions within British
society, between the average suburban dwelling, car-owning citizen and the less
car-dependent core-dweller (Hulme 2005). The territory of the former is marked by the
out-of-town retail and leisure centre which often tries to imitate in its architectural
language the urban holes in this motor-centred comfort blanket. Those voids, although
subject to massive projects of regeneration, are marked less by a cohesive totality
than by a further subdivision between those trapped in inner-city poverty and those
who have the means to buy into an expensive inner city lifestyle. The irony that this
present division echoes the situation observed by Engels in the 1840s serves to
suggest that Manchester’s condition, typical of many cities, depends less on the
historic existence of manufacturing than on a form of urban amnesia or denial.
To broaden out this discussion and connect its divergent points, memory is
tied as much to the developing situation as to the historic city, the location of our
institutions, our populations, our most complex constructions. The experience of other
urban situations, through increased travel, the availability of mass media, and the
accelerated pace of urban development with its cycle of occupation and obsolescence,
has resulted in the phenomenon of the self-conscious city. An exaggerated expression
of the traditional virtue of civic pride, the concentration on the image of the city
and its promotion as an economic tool through ‘boosterism’ has curious effects such
as the belief in the ability of a landmark building to overturn preconceptions,
simultaneously erasing memories held to provoke a negative response. Both New
Urbanism and Neo-Modernism are conditioned by this aesthetic attitude to urban
design, although their adherents make different interpretations and choices within the
same general urban condition.
These differences between New Urbanism and Neo-Modernism are easy
to detect. However, on closer inspection, the apparently disparate attitudes disappear.
In this light we can see both as in the same essentially millennial tradition, but
responding in different ways, as much at the mercy of contemporary attitudes as
they are shapers of them. In this analysis the issue of urban design is almost irrelevant.
It is perhaps a vehicle for expressing an attitude which is as much philosophical
or political as it is design-based. Its guiding tenet, as described by Colin Rowe, is that
there has been some disaster which only the protagonist can mend, typically by
reuniting society around art and craft or the harnessing of industrial development
(Rowe 1979). In either case, what is held in common is the belief that only radical
solutions are appropriate, resulting in the two theoretical positions of the spuriously
local or the superficially global. Either scenario, whatever its visual coherence, would
appear to be equally unpalatable, with the over-optimism of the laissez-faire attitudes
of Neo-Modernism as undesirable as the over-pessimism of New Urbanism. In one
situation any event which occurs is regarded as positive, capable of appropriation
into the mélange of the urban experience, while in the other situation every individual
expression is seen as a potential threat to the consistency of the urban environment.
Both critiques see the city as the plaything of an electronic and economic
god. In the New Urbanism the paradigm to be addressed is the economic model of the

71
The post-industrial city

American housing market, in Neo-Modernism the more intangible atmosphere

of globalization. The latter is an identifiable target for the critical voices of anti-
globalization, because of its acceptance of both consumerism in the developed world
and the social consequences in the developing world. In parallel the possibilities
of an environmentally and socially sustainable urbanism are unlikely to be fulfilled by
New Urbanism dependent as it is on a potentially exclusive image of community.
Architectural style plays its part in the exclusionary effect of these models of
urbanism, and therefore that aspect of the visualization of the urban realm has to be
treated cautiously if one is to create a flexible language for the city which is both
respectful of the lessons of the past and keen to exploit the potential of the future.
If a city such as Manchester could be said to be subject to a theoretical
imperative, the new paradigm would appear to be essentially a sanitized vision of city
life as lifestyle experience. Spontaneity has to be controlled or removed so as not to
compromise the new image of the city. Furthermore, the exploitation of information
technology in the public arena of post-industrialized capitalist societies inevitably has
the aura of the shop window and the advertising hoarding. It is this purpose which
exposes the new definition of the public realm in a city such as Manchester. This is a
type of urban space which is the necessary support both for the hard commercialism
of the regional retail centre, and the soft commercialism of the leisure experience.
Although this apparent openness of urban space crosses the traditional boundaries
of the public and private domains, it is enclosed by a new species of urban barrier,
the pay threshold of the commercial museum space and the price range of the
designer stores, and guarded by electronic surveillance.
What the disparate examples from Manchester raise is the question posed
to the urban environment by the architectural choice between rootless commer-
cialization and the exposure of the essentially private languages of expression in the
public arena. A recent example of the complexity with which these tendencies are
intertwined is perhaps that of Daniel Libeskind’s project for the Ground Zero site
in New York won in competition in 2003, where the commercial imperatives of one
of the most expensive properties in the world are treated to an urban design regime
apparently created by the personal significance of the architect’s cabbalistic tracings,
a strategy which would appear to impede any authentic memorializing function
of the site. With all the well-publicized difficulties surrounding the project, we will, of
course, have to wait many years before being able to judge the finished design.
In the meantime, and on less contentious sites, the more typically dis-
continuous scenario has its apologists, especially with regard to what might be called
the casualization of the public realm. For example, Lars Lerup in After the City (2000)
writes of the North American metropolis that its great urban voids present new
opportunities for developing ambiguous and dynamic relationships. This blurring of
public and private realms, of cultural and commercial zones, overturns the Modern
urban project with its desire to create distinct monofunctional territories, but to no
great purpose. Such fragmentary productions rest on a peculiar echo of the traditional
strategy of urban beautification where to be at the centre might now mean to be at the

72
 The post-industrial city

edge. In contrast to this counsel of despair, it is therefore necessary to redefine

how a city might be made so that its citizens are able to comprehend and be
accommodated by the environment in which they are expected to live, which is my
task in the next chapter.

73
Part II

Elements of the Urban

Environment
Chapter 5

The Ethic of the City

A fourfold model of urbanism

Ill-served as it is by either the physical and visual restraints of New Urbanism or the
ecstatic elitism of Neo-Modernism, the situation of the contemporary city requires a
proposal that is in effect a recovery position for the urban body (Canniffe 1999). Its
motive is the belief in the city’s capacity to articulate a common ethos, to accom-
modate coexisting rival expressions, but also to reflect individual concerns. The ethic
of the city which I will propose has the broad purpose of exploring elements of urban
design which the twentieth century had difficulty in emulating despite the knowledge
of successful historic urban environments. The shared purpose of such an attitude
stands in contrast to the socially and economically exclusive practices of contemporary
urban design, and in their place welcomes a participatory approach with a positive
attitude to different expressions. The sustainability of such an ethic has two sources
in the social and environmental fields respectively. The evolutionary character of
its approach to the physical form of the city ensures transitions through which com-
munities can participate and adapt, while its preference for reuse and small-scale
intervention makes only modest demands on resources. It generally suggests com-
pact city form, discourages car use and encourages travel on foot, an environmental
discipline which has its own beneficial effects in the sociability of urban centres, bound
as it is to a general desire for ethical cohesion (Jenks et al. 1996).
However, the physical form of cities is only one phenomenon worthy of
consideration, a product as it is of social and economic expectations. This rather
more intangible cultural aspect has also to be explored, indeed it might be considered
the first necessary area of research because it is from the mutual accommodations
of urban life that workable environments develop. But, as the foundation of the shared
space of the city, it is important to establish a common culture, of which building can
be understood as a permanent expression. Karsten Harries presents a possible model
for the broader concerns of the city:

77
The ethic of the city

Architecture has an ethical function in that it calls us out of the everyday,

recalls us to the values presiding over our lives as members of a society;
it beckons us toward a better life, a bit closer to the ideal. One task of
architecture is to preserve at least a piece of utopia, and inevitably such a
piece leaves and should leave a sting, awaken utopian longings, fill us with
dreams of another and better world.
(Harries 1997: 291)

If the reader were to replace the word ‘architecture’ in the above passage with the
words ‘urban design’, my purpose in referring to Harries might become clearer.
Harries’s study of architectural theory, of course, presents an attitude to the city
which is conditioned by the narrow concerns of architecture but also those of his
own discipline of philosophy, thereby raising a few problems. His approach through
the calm waters of aesthetics seems removed from the pressing concerns in which
many city dwellers are contained. Furthermore, the groundedness of his work in a
specifically Christian tradition might superficially be seen as excluding many of the
inhabitants of the Western world, let alone a wider sphere. But despite his reliance
on Western philosophy, despite his debt to a figure such as Martin Heidegger, despite
the slightness of his referencing of contemporary architecture, despite his failure to
demonstrate through significant examples the thoroughness with which his approach
is conceived, his book provides a reading of architecture which reaches beyond both
the utilitarian mind set and the aesthetically self-indulgent to provide an analytical
framework in which the broader territory of the city might be considered (Harries
1997: 164–165). Harries has been criticized by Saul Fisher for promoting a ‘continental’
philosophy and his work dismissed by him, along with professional codes of ethics in
architecture, and the artificial construction of an architectural counter-culture through
critical regionalism (Fisher 2000). Yet acknowledging the limits of his world view,
Harries offers to the city, through the microcosm of architecture, a philosophy which
is built on experience and free from the distractions of fashion and form.
An acknowledgement of the long trajectory of urban development
inevitably carries with it an acceptance of the significance of historical memory. As will
be amplified in the next chapter, at a utilitarian level, the historical study of the city
presents a series of transformations over time, which continue to provide useful
lessons. However, such a scientific study can collate factual information but offers
no prescription for future development and is often rather silent on the qualities the
material accumulated represents. Only interpretation of the analytical data can
lead to a positive application, while the synthesis of such forms itself requires analysis
to produce a methodology. Historical remains in the urban context have already
undergone an editorial process where their significance rests in their very survival.
Eschewing the whole problematic area of historical reconstruction, authentic urban
memories can be seen to repose in the surviving fragments of urban form and their
sedimentation by successive layers of transformation. This offers a richness of quality
to the urban experience which is not present in the amnesiac visions of either New

78
 The ethic of the city

5.1
Staatsgalerie,
Stuttgart (James
Stirling and Michael
Wilford 1984).
A detail of this
large visual and
performing arts
complex. The
requirement to
maintain public
access across
the site is resolved
by an urban
route which is
complemented by
the eclectic nature
of the architecture,
providing a series
of incidents and
viewing points.

Urbanism’s historicism or Neo-Modernism’s heedless search for sensation. History’s

meaning for the city lies in what remains and what has disappeared rather than what
might be replicated or what ignored.
Harries questions this attitude, and qualifies the reappropriation of historic
forms:

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The ethic of the city

What does history matter? Genuine community requires both a shared past
and a hoped-for future. Once that future found binding expression in the
ideal architecture of the Heavenly Jerusalem. But we face our future very
much as an open possibility, no longer able to look forward and up to the
Heavenly Jerusalem or to any similar ideal. We might fear that as long
as such an ideal is missing, genuine community is also missing. Still, some
sense of community is granted by a shared past, which remains also a
promise and a ground from which to start building a strong community. The
now often almost desperate concern with the past betrays an anxiousness
that community might be lost altogether, to be replaced with more or less
accidental associations of individuals who find such associations to their
mutual advantage. Preservation of the architectural past is an inseparable
part of any attempt to establish and preserve a genuinely public space
that allows individuals to find their separate places in an ongoing order. The
historical dimension of our environment must be preserved and repre-
sented if we are to keep open the possibility of genuine dwelling. And we
do not preserve or re-present history by just playing with its fragments.
(Harries 1997: 267)

With this rather ambiguous caveat in mind, however, the phenomenological qualities
of urban space have to be placed in relation to its physical facts. Therefore, the thesis
I wish to pursue is that the complexity of the city might be seen to be woven from
quantitative and qualitative factors gathered into a fluid situation. The switching
between subjective and objective modes of exploration, which their differing char-
acters entail results in a repertoire of four elements which provide both structure and
the opportunities for deviation from it. These elements and their brief definitions are
as follows:

• patterns which reappropriate urban territories, and celebrate the richness

and opportunities for connection between different scales of operation;
• narratives which articulate the forms through analogy and meaning and
set the scene for the pivotal role of human action within the city;
• monuments – that is public buildings and structures – that are identifiable
against the more anonymous urban fabric; and
• spaces which provide new value to given contexts through their clear
definition.

In urban situations, all four of these elements are interdependent. Patterns define
the disposition of spaces, monuments and narratives which connect them. Those
narratives, working at the collective public level and the private individual level provide
an interpretative filter through which the physical qualities of the city become vivid to
its citizens. Monuments embody the attitude of the city in a recognizable form for its
citizens while spaces provide the social arena in which the life of the city, both public
and private, is conducted.

80
 The ethic of the city

It is the interdependence of these elements which provides the ‘urban

ethic’ of my title, the common ethos that furnishes the moral grounds for civic values
to be embodied in urban form. Furthermore, the ‘responsive cohesion’ between the
elements distinguishes this model from others by its avoidance of universalist
solutions, as provided, for example, by New Urbanism or Neo-Modernism and their
messianic protagonists. This model can be placed in the broader context of ethics
which have been defined by Warwick Fox in the following terms:

it is those ethical theories that exemplify the principle of responsive

cohesion in their content that reflective judges generally consider to be
the main candidates for being taken seriously when it comes to guiding the
actual ways in which we ought to live, which, after all, is the main point of
ethics.
(Fox 2000: 214)

My statement of the fourfold structure of urbanism is a conscious echo of Heidegger’s

definition of the fourfold structure of his universe (Heidegger [1952] 1971). But,
although patterns, narratives, monuments and spaces are more obviously specific
than Heidegger’s terms (the earth, the sky, the mortals and the divinities), their inter-
connectedness and layering of meaning serve the same purposes in relation to
the particular task of city building. First, each quartet is made up of two pairings of
quantifiable and unquantifiable entities. In the apparently measurable and determinate
category we have patterns and monuments, in comparison to Heidegger’s earth and
mortals. This of course leaves the indeterminate pairings of narratives and spaces
and sky and divinities. Second, in mapping these terms onto one another, notwith-
standing a general terminological vagueness in both instances, it is possible to discern
how individual connections might be made. As we shall see, the correspondence
between earth and patterns seems the most apparent, both terms connected by
aspects of geometry from its origins as earth measuring to the finer grain discipline
of urban morphology. Monuments and mortals have by implication a degree of finite-
ness which determines limits on their potential. Narratives and sky suggest a world
of open possibilities, which the final pairing of spaces and divinities reinforce.
The ambivalence of such a position (possessing a tentative quality which
I would consider a mark of maturity), accepts that urban cohesion might best be
achieved by the acceptance of differences rather than either through the artificial
imposition of uniformity in architectural form or the aggressive assertion of rival
identities. The question of how this might be achieved needs to be approached
cautiously and therefore each of these four elements will be explored more fully in
their own chapters with reference to specific examples. First it is necessary to give
each of them further definition and consider their mutual relationships before adopting
a narrower focus on the individual components.

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The ethic of the city

Patterns

Urban pattern is such a fundamental element of the design of cities that its importance
is often taken for granted. It encompasses the spectrum of consciously planned and
unconsciously formed sites of settlement, everyday convenient transport routes
and service systems, and more symbolically loaded places of passage and arrival. In
the Western canon of urban design the morphology of urban form has featured as a
conscious discipline since antiquity, particularly as was referred to in Chapter 2 in the
work of Hippodamus of Miletus. Conversely, urban environments which had been
the subject of organic growth, had to wait until the researches of Sitte before serious
attempts were made to read their patterns. The resulting discipline of urban mor-
phology has gone to great pains to map the interlocking connections between the
formation of the urban block and its aggregation in quarters and cities. Although often
presented merely as a matter of documentation, it should be evident that the element
of urban pattern, on first consideration a utilitarian product of property divisions and
topography, is subject to intellectual construction and the accumulation of meaning.
This interpretation allows it to be read as a manifestation of an ethos in physical form.
As Indra Kagis McEwen writes in relation to ancient cities, especially the genre of
the gridded colonial town such as Paestum:

if we think of the city in terms of weaving, as I believe the early Greeks did,
the intention made manifest in orthogonal street layouts becomes quite
precise . . . Harmonia, close fitting, can be a feature of the tightly woven
cloth only: a textile with a loose weave is not, so to speak, ‘harmonious’.
It does not, properly speaking, appear at all. And one cannot produce
a ‘harmonious’, tightly woven fabric if warp and weft threads are not
regularly spaced and are not at right angles to one another, perfectly
orthogonal . . . In a textile, skewed or unequally distributed threads produce
a loosely woven fabric full of holes . . . This was the last thing the people
who founded new Greek cities in strange hostile lands would have wanted.
(McEwen 1993: 83–84)

The identification of city planning with the female activity of weaving binds in con-
nections between the physical fabric of the city and aspects of its ancient culture such
as the personification of the city in a female deity. As briefly mentioned in relation to
the traditional city, in the celebration of ancient rituals such as the Great Panathenaia
in Athens, the procession which threaded the city together itself featured a specially
woven cloth with which the cult statue within the Parthenon was clothed (Hurwitt
1999: 44–45). That this motif of weaving, producing a sail, which was also a dress, is
of some significance, rests in the fluidity of its interpretations as city and fabric, the
city expressed as a processional route, the procession represented in the Parthenon
frieze obscurely visible between the massive columns as it bound the perimeter of the
temple. The tightness with which these different interpretations are connected

82
 The ethic of the city

5.2 emphasizes the importance of pattern recognition in the comparison of disparate

Le Murate,
phenomena, and the desirability of a certain level of dense ambiguity in urban form,
Florence. A quarter
of the city adjacent which stands in strong contrast to the all too obvious isolation of the contemporary
to the medieval architectural object. Furthermore, whatever the truth behind McEwen’s speculation, it
church of Santa
bears some echoes to Gottfried Semper’s theory of the origin of building and the
Croce, this figure-
ground plan shows representation of textile traditions in the built form of ancient architecture. At the same
the maintenance time, craft activity has a representational character, underscored by the tradition of
of field patterns in
the surviving street storytelling during weaving, thereby connecting it to myth and narrative. This elevation
network within the of female craft skill, and with it the tightness of urban patterns, are aspects which
fourteenth-century
the twentieth century abandoned, in the latter case equally disastrously in the loose
walls. Dominated
by a series of prison form of low-rise suburbs, or in high-rise estates. In either modern typology the holes
structures, this in the fabric predominate, resulting in a loss of identity for the apparently public spaces
drawing was
produced as an left between private buildings. Attempts to reinvigorate tight traditional patterns in
entry for an urban British cities have yet to fully mature, but present a positive environmental prospect.
regeneration
Sensitivity to historic patterns should alert us to their value as exemplars for
competition for
the area. contemporary practice, but not divert the urban designer from the need to deal with
Source: Andrew more immediate problems. For example, in historic urban environments contrasting
Barnett, Gillian
Scampton and the
types of pattern provide different representations of the city, between the ideal and
author, 1987. universal, and the pragmatic and local, as well as deciphering the history of the city.

83
The ethic of the city

These geometries can therefore be exploited as a conceptual framework, by which a

reconstruction valid on all scales can take place. The ambiguity of urban pattern, the
ability of its horizontal application as plan to support different forms, or of its vertical
application as normative section and elevation to provide visual coherence to a city
create a basis on which the other three elements rest.

Narratives

The relation of meaning and form leads on to the next element of the fourfold model,
for once we assert that the elements and ensembles of the built environment have
meaning, we immediately require to know what those meanings are, and to try to
identify the agency by which these abstract concepts are embodied in buildings, cities
and landscapes.
Representation transforms the intangible into the material, and the imme-
diate into the ideal. Meaning might be characterized by that effect of recognition when
we realize that an object has significance for us, is familiar, comprehensible in some
way. An intuitive response, often despised in twentieth-century architectural discourse
as being inherently irrational, has the ability to span the chasm between the intangible
and the material by the bridge of representation. Traffic across this bridge is two
way: the route from object to concept being that of analysis or criticism, while that
from concept to object is the path of design. In my urban model this bridge of rep-
resentation gathers patterns, narratives, spaces and monuments into a cohesive
system. It is, however, the narratives which animate this system, because of the
alchemical power of representation as a process of transformation, and their ethical
ability to create a shared understanding between groups and individuals.
Narratives are therefore forms of understanding which encourage com-
munication to take place. The reception of these narratives embodied in myth, ritual,
even building will differ, but will appeal beyond the narrow constraints of immediate
temporal function, that is the culture of instant gratification discussed in the last
chapter. The narratives within this matrix of interpretations are often conventional,
but allow for minority and even subversive representations to play their part, creating
a diversity of experience in the understanding of the city. Against this conceptual
framework, physical constructions provide markers for the narrative, most especially
in the form of demonstrations of meaning in the form of monuments. The visual
structure of the city is formed by these primary elements which serve a communal
function, substantial places that have a significance beyond the everyday. When these
elements within the urban fabric are connected by the narrative of collective events
and rituals the life of the city is both meaningful and dynamic.
Of course in our own fractured culture the acceptance of a common
narrative structure is rare, still less (except in totalitarian societies) the definition of
a narrative by a single mind. In the absolutist societies of the Renaissance and the
Baroque, however, the prince had the political ability and the philosophical armoury

84
 The ethic of the city

with which to create complete urban environments to support his power. One such
example, rare in its degree of completeness and state of preservation, is Sabbioneta
outside Mantua (Canniffe 2001). Here the duke Vespasiano Gonzaga created his
own vision of an ideal city. Evoking the urban paradigm of Rome, his palace, his villa
and his castle present both in reality and as painted simulations, memories of Roman
originals. The metaphorical transference between city and theatre found its expression
in the duke’s adoption of the guise of Marcus Aurelius in his own interpretation of
Michelangelo’s Campidoglio. This was overlaid with the distinction between different
components of the piazza, which owed much to Serlio’s portrayal of the Tragic and
Comic scenes. Within the hierarchical model of Renaissance society, this represented
an attempt at an inclusivity which expressed control in elegant cultural dress.
The primordial narratives of dynastic and imperial myth played their part in
the setting up of these social structures, not as a phenomenon removed from daily
experience but as a fundamental part of it. However, as Johan Huizinga observed in
Homo Ludens:

In whatever form it comes down to us, myth is always poetry. Working

with images and the aid of imagination, myth tells the story of things that
were supposed to have happened in primitive times. It can be of the
deepest and holiest significance. It may succeed in expressing relation-
ships which could never be described in a rational way. But despite the
sacred and mystic quality quite natural to it in the mythopoetic phase of
civilization, despite, that is to say, the absolute sincerity with which it was

5.3
Sabbioneta.
A diagram showing
the centre of this
small Renaissance
ideal town (begun
1550s). The collage
refers to the
mural decoration
of Vincenzo
Scamozzi’s
theatre (1588–90)
which features a
representation
of Michelangelo’s
reconfiguration of
the Campidoglio.
The patron
Vespasiano
Gonzaga’s narrative
portrayed
Sabbioneta as
a new Rome.
Source: Drawing and
collage by the author.

85
The ethic of the city

accepted, the question still remains whether the myth was ever entirely
serious. We can safely say, I think, that myth is serious to the degree that
poetry is serious. Like everything else that transcends the bounds of logical
and deliberative judgement, myth and poetry both move in the play-sphere.
This is not to say a lower sphere, for it may well be that myth, so playing,
can soar to heights of insight beyond the reach of reason.
(Huizinga 1949: 129)

The poetic sense of the urban narrative, however, is not the solitary vision of the
Romantic poetic genius. Rather it is the characteristic of it as the story around which
a community gathers, for celebration or commemoration, which makes it significant in
relation to the design of cities. As Harries points out, the inability to share meaning
through communal celebration calls into question the need for architecture as tradi-
tionally understood. To reverse his argument, it might be that an architecture that
was more responsive to the aspirations of a community might itself be a cause for
celebration (Harries 1997: 325).

Monuments

The term monument, from the Latin monere, ‘to show’, derives from the function of
a constructed object or building to display an event to the public, and thereby reify
communal activities. The understanding or reading of a city through its network of
collective monuments is a commonplace throughout history, indeed, our knowledge
of vanished cities largely depends on descriptions of their monuments. Yet these
monuments, inviting interpretation as they do, need not be wholly fixed as the focus
they create can be transitory and remain engaging. Their memories contain other
times, other places which connect to a larger network beyond their immediate
location. In Aldo Rossi’s terms the power of the form, recognized as a repository of
the collective meaning, survives beyond the temporary specificity of a single function
(Rossi 1982).
One example which he cites is that of the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua,
the focus of medieval civic government. Its origins and history embody the transitory
nature of meaning in relation to form. The unusual trapezoidal plan was determined by
the ancient route which formed the spine of the lower storeys, with market stalls
transformed over centuries into the cellular warren of commercial units still in use.
They in turn support the great hall above, for public meetings and the dispensation
of justice, erected in the thirteenth century, and decorated with a great series of
admonitory astrological frescoes. The arcaded exterior which was erected on either
side served to relate the civic monument to the public spaces between which the
palazzo sits. As we saw with the Palazzo dei Priori in Perugia discussed in Chapter 2,
this type of accumulation of different functions over time is not compromised by the
uniformity of the exterior. It rather suggests how that unself-conscious richness of use
is not apparent in the monofunctional building type of the contemporary city. It was, of

86
 The ethic of the city

course, to these civic places which nineteenth-century British city fathers looked
when reifying municipal confidence in their new town halls, although their focus was
on form rather than the often surprising combination of uses. Rossi’s praise for them,
a century later, was more nuanced:

Where does the individuality of such a building begin and on what does
5.4
it depend? Clearly it depends more on its form than on its material,
Palazzo della
Ragione, Padua. even if the latter plays a substantial role; but it also depends on being
Constructed in a complicated entity which has developed in both space and time.
1218–19 and
We realize, for example, that if the architectural construction we are
enlarged in
1306–9. The large examining had been built recently, it would not have the same value. In
medieval hall that case the architecture in itself would be subject to judgment, and we
over commercial
could discuss its style and its form; but it would not yet present us with
spaces features in
Aldo Rossi’s The that richness of its own history which is the characteristic of an urban
Architecture of artifact.
the City as an
example of the
(1982: 29)
persistence of
monumental urban
As an orientation device within the city fabric the monument serves an obvious
forms over time. It utilitarian function, but its presence also creates a unique sense of place. This is
developed as a civic based paradoxically both on its self-conscious difference from its context as well
structure between
two market
as from its integration within that milieu. The association of particular forms with public
squares. functions (in Western classical architecture, for example, the pediment, the dome, the
The ethic of the city

colonnade and the ornamented portal) leads to the recognizability of public archi-
tecture versus private building (Harries 1997: 220). Size, scale and materials play
their roles in this presencing, but it is its quality as a public focus which is the essential
element of the space-occupying monument, and which connects it to the last of the
four elements, the defined space.

Spaces

There is a continuing need for the creation of festal places on the ground of
everyday dwellings, places where individuals come together and affirm
themselves as members of the community, as they join in public reen-
actments of the essential: celebrations of those central aspects of our
life that maintain and give meaning to existence. The highest function of
architecture remains what it has always been: to invite such festivals.
(Harries 1997: 365)

The meaning of urban public space rests in its ability to gather individuals into
a collective entity, with some sense of community thereby expressed. Although
Modernity furnished cities with open space in quantity, for it to be legible to their
citizens it required a degree of containment. Such boundaries, anathema to the free
flowing space of Corbusian urbanism, support the self-identification of the group,
associating the citizen with his or her city. Camillo Sitte had associated the lack of
spatial containment with psychological illness, but this is an extreme comparison.

5.5
Piazza Sant’
Ignazio, Rome
(Filippo Raguzzini
1727–8). Designed
as a commercial
development for
the Society of
Jesus, the piazza
complements the
huge façade of the
order’s church of
Sant’ Ignazio with a
series of apartment
buildings. The
theatrical treatment
of the symmetrical
composition
demonstrates the
primacy of urban
space framed by
architecture.
Source: Drawing by
the author.

88
 The ethic of the city

What one might associate the bounded urban space with is the concept of the room,
familiar even to nomadic peoples, connecting the public realm to feelings of ownership
and repose. The vivid urban walls of Italy provide a strong series of examples, but
the experience of containment in an urban space is often enhanced by a degree of
ambiguity to its edges.
Collective urban meaning finds its purest expression in spaces which have
the type of figural expression normally associated with buildings. Clarity of form
is supported by a welcoming vagueness of margins, the reverse of the precision
with which the functionally specific objects of modernity stand in uncomfortable
rivalry. Spaces which are the fulfilment of routes and vistas through the city bring
both use and visual delight into a reciprocal relationship. Therefore the hierarchy is
re-established which sees the public realm as having more value than the individual
buildings. They serve as elements which define but do not occupy the public realm.
Of the four elements, the one where an ethical purpose is most funda-
mentally present is the last. Community of purpose in the city is represented by its
space. The positive nature of its form is a means of countering the predominant
contemporary urban image of private commercial interests. Therefore, despite the
great exemplars of urban form tending to be the result of cultures which we would
have difficulty in identifying as democratic, the best hope for the expression of
individual identities and differences lie in the collective space. The reappropriation
of the city requires the reintroduction of urban hierarchy, the distinction of public and
private realms, and the re-evaluation of the cityscape. In many respects it is necessary
to exploit the familiar physical forms of the city, the urbs, to represent and underscore
the qualities and values of the community, the civitas. In considering such forms,
however, it is possible to go further than Harries in the simple moves he discussed
(Harries 1997: 199). For example, his Romantic perspective does not allow for the
necessity of the grid city in providing the requisite level of anonymity against which
the special character of a square is revealed.
It is perhaps too much to hope for to arrest the direction of the con-
temporary city. Perhaps it is sufficient to reinterpret its experience and provide
definition so that its ‘ethical function’ could be fulfilled. This fourfold model is a loose
one precisely because it simulates the organic development of cities, with their
coexisting rival expressions and accommodations reached over time. In that sense, it
is a communal activity reflecting individual concerns. This model’s balance between
clear definition in built forms (patterns and monuments) and speculative forms of
interpretation and inhabitation (narratives and spaces) allows individual expression
within a general system. This ensures the creation of an ethical city whose common-
ality resides in its ability to represent individual expressions together on a shared
ground.
A shared understanding of the city is an aspiration which has ancient
roots but would seldom appear to have been realized, one group gaining dominance
and another being effectively excluded. The cities of antiquity, which espoused the
equality of men, generally excluded women and furthermore rested on a structure of

89
The ethic of the city

slavery in which anything that we would understand as human rights were negated.
While Romantic writers saw medieval urban Europe as the home of collective faith
and its expression in the cathedral, this constructive effort was the concern of very
few, principally the clergy and the masonry. Similarly the Renaissance and Baroque
cultures, although witnessing the growth of a substantial middle class, reinforced
the subservience of the state to the will of the prince. Industrialization, when it came,
changed both the form of the city and the composition of its population. Any collective
sensibility was effectively restricted to knowledge of one’s position of servitude and
expendability in the industrial process.
Against this background the prospect of fostering an urban ethic might
appear remote. Despite the beauty of historic examples from all periods, they all
represent some unpleasant social condition of their times. What possibility can we
have of creating an acceptable urban culture while we witness increasing disparities
of wealth, the perceived breakdown in familiar social structures, a marked fluidity
in urban populations, the decline of traditional civic identity and the increasing
sophistication with which individuals are targeted by commercial interests?
The issue of commonality is of particular importance in the urban situation
because of the perception of the increasing dominance of private claims. Aping its
North American counterparts, the image of many examples of the European city has
come to be identified with commercial interests, in contrast to the traditional
dominance of religious or civic structures. As the skyline promotes commercial
messages, so the groundscape loses its common character through the privatization
of public space. The defence of the public realm as an open terrain can be contributed
to by reinforcement of the public image of such spaces, emphasizing their ability to
represent the common ethos. In this scenario, the architectural aesthetic has as strong
a role to play as political and legal codes.
Harries’s distinction between two types of ornament is useful in this regard
(1997: 48). What he designates as decoration, having only an aesthetic function, can
be likened to the tricking out of private spaces with the architectural language of public
spaces. The most extreme example of this is perhaps the use of motifs from the
public image of Piazza San Marco in Venice, one of the richest and most significant
spaces in Europe, as the decoration of a Las Vegas casino and hotel. Although there
are numerous historical precedents for the translation of European forms to an
American context, it can be held with some certainty that despite the accuracy of
reproduction, the various codings of East and West, of Gothic and Classic, cease to
have any publicly instructive meaning when removed from the Venetian lagoon and
attached to a steel skeleton in Nevada.
In contrast, Harries promotes the virtues of ornament, where the aesthetic
language of the architecture, which may be its surface veneer as much as broader
aspects of its form, has a role in the cementing of the relationship between the public
space and the constituent elements that bound it. Harries’s consideration of historical
examples in support of this idea of ornament is an implicit admission of the paucity
of contemporary examples which fulfil this function. He is reduced to having to rely on

90
 The ethic of the city

the unbuilt or the ephemeral for contemporary examples. A bolder strategy would
therefore appear to be necessary.
This category of ornament is pursued by my four elements in the following
ways. Patterns rely on, if not an attitude to the genius loci, at least an understanding
of the specific characteristics of a place in both the abstraction of the plan and the
material realization of its three-dimensional form. Narratives can be employed
to reinforce this connectedness to context through the employment of forms
and elements which have significance for the citizens. Monuments are the product
of this equation in their explicit promotion of public messages, while spaces
engage the public in a subtle but physical way, to represent them as community
rather than solely as individuals. The very need for this commonality of purpose
might suggest a self-effacing and modest aspect to the realization of this particular
urban vision.
In catalyzing such a community of urban purpose, one area of hope
is environmental concern. The prominence with which environmental issues are
discussed by the media suggests a receptivity on the part of the public. This tends
to restrict itself to dismay over threats to the natural world with little evidence
that there is a general awareness that these phenomena are connected to urban
activities. The modification of personal behaviour and the sharing of knowledge about
the effects it might have in the local environment as well as globally could lead to an
increased impact for political activism which supports the ethical use of both the
natural and the built environment. This recognition of the commonality of interest
between the habitat of the world’s human population, both urban and agricultural,
and the wilderness which surrounds it would serve to balance attitudes across the
urban–rural divide.
The present environmental situation, in particular the fears over global
warming and climate change, means that any ethic of the city must concern itself
with the commonly understood aspect of ethics associated with sustainability. The
careful use of resources are implicit in the elements I propose. Ethics in the application
of sustainable technologies have their counterpart in the fields of economics and social
inclusion, as they inevitably impact on issues of employment and the wider distribution
of economic benefits. As Talbot and Magnoli (2000) have observed, the city is both
culprit and victim in environmental degradation. It is therefore significant that aspects
of city form have a role to play in ameliorating the present trends. Car use is one
obvious aspect where trends in suburbanization and the expansion of road networks
have a negative environmental impact which can be countered by the encouragement
of denser car-free or car-averse urban patterns.
Furthermore, although social disparities will inevitably continue (failing
some dramatic political scenario it would be difficult to predict), the encouragement of
neighbourhoods with a diversity of incomes has future benefits. The ‘flight from the
city’ of even moderately wealthy families contributes to the undesirability and decline
of inner city areas. The now commonplace introduction into British cities of ‘loft-
style’ apartments only underscores the problem, as their inhabitants are generally

91
The ethic of the city

short term and childless. The provision of a cultural and social infrastructure which
encourages families to put down roots in a neighbourhood and to mix with their
neighbours has benefits in creating a cohesive environment, the economic benefits
of which underline the importance of built environment ethics.
But where does the distinction lie between these various strands of
environmental and social ethics and my own attempt to define an urban ethic? The
difference lies in the scale and the cohesiveness of the competing ethical demands. In
extreme cases those concerned with environmental ethics hold positions which
are profoundly anti-urban as well as being anti-suburban. Aspects of social issues
such as employment can also sometimes be in conflict with environmental concerns.
How is this potential for conflict to be resolved, the tactical jostling for priority with
the strategic? My own view is that an ethic can be created which, although it uses
descriptors from the language of form, through the delineation of an aesthetic is able
to ensure that even if these conflicts are unresolved, a diversity of common values are
at least represented in the public realm.
The ethics of the built environment have ramifications which stretch
beyond the sometimes nebulous world of environmental responsibility, however.
The ethical attitudes of those who provide services in urban design, to both immediate
client and end user, require balancing. The ethical attitudes of the urban consumer also
require education, especially in the present situation when choices made in one city
can have distant consequences on the other side of the world. It would therefore
appear that any urban ethic worthy of the name might follow some broad outlines.
First, the use of precedent should be considered critically to avoid the replication of
unsuitable social conditions. Second, positive attitudes to social inclusion need to be
integrated into design practices. And, finally, the instructive nature of city building
could be usefully employed to educate the citizen in environmental ethics.
This aspect of participation is significant for weaving together the different
strands of the four elements I have outlined. Each has a role to play in the creation of
an ethic which attempts to make a closer fit between the aesthetic and formal
manifestation of cities and their social function. With patterns, the recognizability of
the relationship between buildings and streets, between areas of dense occupation
and open land is a first step towards ensuring the legibility of city form. This is not to
preclude aesthetic and social innovation in urban design, but to ensure that such
introductions can be given maximum impact by the regularity and normative character
of what surrounds them.
With narratives, of course, I am not suggesting the replication of the
dominating narratives of previous urban forms. In Western cities we at present have
the dominant narrative of capitalism, which many sections of society find unappealing
and excluding. Instead I want to suggest that the representation of different narratives,
perhaps even of rival narratives, in the same space can produce both a more engaging
form and by the same token a more inclusive cityscape.
Monuments have a long tradition of reinforcing the image of the domi-
nating narrative. In the more fractured and diverse urbanity I wish to see represented,

92
 The ethic of the city

5.6
Winter Garden,
Sheffield (Pringle
Richards Sharratt
2002). A new
covered public
space in the centre
of Sheffield takes
the form of a
connector between
conventional open
public gardens
and urban space,
the new Millennium
Galleries (by the
same architects)
and the foyer of
a new hotel.
The diversity
of commercial,
cultural and
social uses is
accommodated in
a simple structural
form.

this argument supports the creation of architectural and urban forms which combine
clarity of purpose and an ambiguity of expression, so that the ethical necessity for
inclusivity and engagement can be fulfilled. Going further than Karsten Harries, while
ephemeral architecture has a role, the significance of permanent monuments and their
expression of inclusive urban values are critical to the revisioning of the city.

93
The ethic of the city

With spaces, these various strands combine. While some might argue
that places would be a more appropriate term, I would like to explain that for me that
suggests a certain geographic specificity which closes down options. In contrast,
spaces holds the ideas of openness and emptiness. Such spaces can only hold these
uses effectively and support those different senses of occasion when spaces have a
clarity of definition and focus that makes them stand apart from the typicality of the
city, distinct from commercial and sectional interests as spaces of liberty and license.
The overlaying of these four elements, the tension between them and the
mutual support they offer to each other, places considerable emphasis on physical
characteristics. It is common now to suggest that such an emphasis shows a limited
perspective, that it concentrates on surface appearance. In contrast, I would argue
that, recognizing the limits and partiality of design, we have no material other than
the aesthetic with which to manifest the inclusive city many would like to see. Despite
the technological sophistication of mankind, our requirement for shelter means that
we continue to be bound into physical forms if individuals want to gather, and this
fact we ought not to escape. The examples which are discussed in the following
four chapters are considered in their physical aspect, even where with ‘Narratives’ the
subject is really that of the interpretation of meaning. If shelter and gathering require
materiality, urban design as a process can produce no change in our cities if it remains
restricted to the conceptual. For all the inconsistencies of their realizations, their
successes and their failures, it is that ambition to transform the urban environment
which unites them.

94
Chapter 6

Patterns

If we wish to represent a historical sequence in spatial terms, we can do so

only by juxtaposition in space, for the same space cannot accommodate
two different things. Our attempt to do otherwise seems like an idle game;
its sole justification is to show how far we are from being able to illustrate
the peculiarities of mental life by visual means.
(Freud [1930] 2004: 9)

The urban pattern is a phenomenon which exists on the spectrum between a passive
response to topography and the active intervention of conscious planning. Its char-
acteristics can often appear neutral, especially when taking the normative form
of the grid, yet it is a highly active presence in the city, controlling the disposition of
elements, their development over time, and the flow of communications between
them. Pragmatically, it determines both the architectural typology of the city and
aspects of the urban environment which form the contextual backdrop to more
localized incident. For example, as well as establishing the character of a district, the
porosity of the pattern can govern how one area of the city is viewed by the population
of a neighbouring area, and determine the degree to which integration is possible.
Although urban patterns can be explained to a significant degree in plan
only, particularly by means of the figure-ground plan, the two-dimensionality of this
representation of a complex three-dimensional reality has to be acknowledged (Rowe
and Koetter 1978: 168–171). The figure-ground plan, exemplified by Giovanni Battista
Nolli’s 1748 plan of Rome, which edits urban space and building to a simple binary
code of absences and presences, of vacant and occupied space and most importantly
of public and private space, codifies other information which can only be read through
familiarity with that particular means of representation. Topographic conditions have to
be inferred through the irregularity of a pattern, but the complex sectional relationships
which result as a function of steep gradients, for example, present difficulties of
expression in simple black or white. Regular patterns, implying a flat or at least a
constant topographical condition also represent the particularities of local building

95
Patterns

typology in a reduced language, and therefore patterns need to be read as rep-

resenting information beyond the clarity of their two-dimensional form. Where
the figure-ground plan’s visual power lies, though, is in the clarity with which it
distinguishes built form and open space, the realms of inside and outside which are so
easily comprehended. This enables the space, the white ‘void’ in conventional usage
to be read as a network which shares a contiguous boundary with the built form. The
buildings themselves are abstracted into forms where individual architectural char-
acteristics are erased, leaving only the most essential information of the building’s
physical footprint. The poverty of this means, however, places emphasis on the broad
facts of an urban pattern.
Notwithstanding the difficulties of cartographic representation, when
subjected to morphological analysis, the variety within irregular patterns can often be
defined by a few distinct conditions (Krier 1979). Reduction to types of geometrical
order, or hybrid forms made by the overlaying or interpenetration of two different
systems of order, are only the most obvious means by which the atypical might
be made to conform to the normative. Conversely, the regular pattern, the grid of the
planned city, can be seen to support a variety of forms and uses. Grid structures
encourage dense activity in both block and street. In the former, increase in block
size allows the range from individual buildings through terraces and perimeter blocks
to superblocks, separating and servicing them by a range of routes from lanes through
pedestrian and vehicular roads to highways. At either end of these ranges, at micro
and macro scales, the specific problems of integration and variability occur. In
particular, the grid pattern, because of its strong legibility, allows aberrations from
the prevailing pattern to be clearly read either in plan or on the ground. The edge of the
grid, where it meets a natural topographical feature, or a different manifestation of
urban grain, can therefore often present the opportunity for ambiguous structures
which help define the essential character of the urban pattern, and provide demon-
strations in architectural ingenuity. Examples of this condition would be the edges of
Cerda’s extension at Placa de la Catalunya in Barcelona, where the regularity of the
grid meets the smaller patterns of the old town, or in Manhattan where the diagonal
course of Broadway creates a set of memorable places, for example, at the Flat Iron
Building, within the regularity of the grid.
The anonymous stuff of the city, the background of repetitive buildings and
spaces which constitutes its individual pattern, has a fundamental role in the creation
of successful urban design. The historic and organic process of the occupation of
field patterns by increasingly dense building, was an unconscious expression
of pattern where traditional land divisions met the constraints of building technology.
What was produced was an urban morphology which conformed to generally
accepted types but was unique in each case. With the development of urban planning
in antiquity, pragmatic concerns for convenient arrangement of buildings and spaces
were overlaid by the intellectual patterns of the emulation of the ideal or at least
the emphasis of the representational elements of city form referred to previously
(Martienssen 1956). Regardless of political changes and gradual developments in

96
 Patterns

technology, these procedures remained largely unchanged until, as we have seen,

industrialization transformed the urban situation radically, and the accelerated pace and
scale of construction offered new potential for city building.
Prior to that era, however, the significance of an historic urban pattern often
lay not in some intentional purpose, but in the accumulation of different utilitarian
features over time, with accommodations and erasures merging towards a typological
norm. Freud’s comparison at the opening of this chapter of a mind to a city suggests
the simultaneous existence of conflicting orders could not be better expressed than by
the study of the morphology of Rome, and therefore I would like to consider one urban
quarter in detail over time to draw out some lessons on the impact of patterns of
development and transformation (Canniffe 2003).
Reading the patterns of a layered city requires the understanding of
the sequence of its forms, as well as the nuances of their embedded meanings.
Distinguishing the principal stages in this process allows the reader to explore the
factor of time in closer detail, so that surviving urban patterns and forms can be
balanced against the absence of elements which were never completed or have been
removed. The privileged position which Rome occupies in the Western imagination, as
an example of the dense layering of patterns of occupation and desertion, exposure
6.1 and concealment, should not blind us to the existence within its walls of areas, the
Trastevere, Rome. history of which are representative of the typical urban experience. Although
Successive plans
the historical centre commands attention because of the vast accumulation of
between the era of
Augustus and the monuments and resonances, the margins of the city are equally fertile territory for
early twentieth the exploration of the morphology of urban types and spaces. One such area is
century, showing
Trastevere where another Rome grew up beyond the river, subject both to the casual
the gradual
emergence of the forces of gradual urban development and to the interventions of different waves of
present urban governmental intervention. The resulting complex, less vertically layered than central
pattern. The quarter
Rome, presents a series of different aspects which nest inside each other in accor-
features the
surviving patterns dance with a specific urban hierarchy.
produced by In the formal terms which we are here considering, processes of urban
ancient Roman
roads, medieval
evolution can be glimpsed in the successive maps of a town which record the physical
field patterns, environment both as an object of perception and as an embodiment of how the city
Baroque is conceived. But through looking at the successive maps of an area, reading the
interventions and
nineteenth-century
patterns and the meanings they contain, it is possible to transcend the purely formal
development. to interpret the social processes that are also represented. Within Rome, Trastevere is

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Patterns

something akin to a heterotopia, largely devoid of the major urban elements which are
the more typical subjects for research in the city. The quarter’s position downriver of
the earliest bridges and on the opposite bank afforded it the functions of an urban port
and leisure zone from earliest times. This marginality meant both that its development
was less dense and that the recording of it was also scant. However, to pursue the
image from Freud, the psychological ability to hold the ancient past and the present
in one space at the same time offers a model of urban evolution which dispenses
with concepts of progress. Trastevere’s ability to accommodate the patterns of the
transgressive is captured in the archaeological map of 1850 where Luigi Canina draws
his speculative positioning of the enclosure of the Augustan naumachia (a temporary
festival structure) cusping with the House of Correction (a contemporary form of social
control built by Carlo Fontana between 1701 and 1704) and both in the picturesque
liminal zone between countryside and medieval settlement. A century later in Lugli and
Gismondi’s 1949 map such poetic combinations of pattern have vanished. Trastevere
was represented as a terra incognita within the walls, only roads, a few fragments on
the Via Aurelia and a few locations are suggested. The utilitarian urban consciousness
was triumphant, fact and function were all that appeared to be required to describe the
city. Yet the visitor would observe that this conceptual vacuum is a false image. The
layers build up during the centuries as Trastevere’s urban morphology is formed by
patterns of infrastructure, of transport, of pilgrimage and occupation (Frutaz 1962).
Continuously inhabited despite periodic inundation, and with a relative
lack of ancient remains, the medieval fabric centred around the pilgrimage route to the
Vatican, and the major religious sites (Sta Maria in Trastevere, San Crisogono and Sta
Cecilia). The small-scale and piecemeal nature of the residential buildings were largely
unaffected by Renaissance and Baroque developments, with the exception of oppor-
tunities provided by infrastructural projects such as the Ponte Sisto (1473–75), the
Acqua Paola (1612), and the creation of Via di San Francesco d’Assisi, a diagonal road
cut across agricultural land between Piazza Sta Maria in Trastevere and San Francesco
a Ripa, as a route between local centre and the river port with its consequent com-
mercial activity. The creation of this road produced the characteristic triangular core
of contemporary Trastevere and the facilitation of urban development in the ostensibly
most medieval of Rome’s quarters, and this history can be traced through the patterns
of maps produced with increasing frequency and unprecedented accuracy from the
Renaissance onwards.
For example, Leonardo Bufalini’s 1551 map of the city shows Trastevere
as consisting of a web of streets defined by the winding course of the Tiber and the
ancient pilgrimage route. Outside of this, the density of streets is much less frequent,
and the quarter is marked by a series of churches and hospices for the sailors visiting
the nearby port. His cartography is simple, but indicates the extant elements which
conditioned subsequent urbanization. However, in Antonio Tempesta’s map of 1593 a
more sophisticated image of the city is presented, with individual blocks and buildings
recognizable in considerable detail. The use of a form of aerial perspective aids the
reading of the conceptual fiction of the map as a series of perceivable places and urban

98
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experiences. In the century between Tempesta’s map and its updating by Giovanni
Giacomo De Rossi in 1693, Trastevere’s suburban appearance is effectively main-
tained save for the introduction of Strada di San Francesco (today’s Via di S. Francesco
d’Assisi). Its gradual construction between Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere and San
Francesco a Ripa can be observed through a succession of maps by other hands. In
1625 a map by Giovanni Maggi shows a diagonal route between the two churches,
although in 1630 Godfrey van Schayck only includes this feature at its southern end,
that of San Francesco. However, in Giovanni Battista Falda’s map of 1667, the new
road, lined with urban buildings, can be seen emerging from Piazza Santa Maria, then
continuing as a track through the fields. In 1676 Falda shows the urban route as
complete. The planning and regularization of streets brought attention also to their
destinations, Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere in particular receiving the attention
of Pope Alexander VII as part of a broader strategy of urban beautification (Krautheimer
1985). In 1659 the fountain was repositioned and fed with water from the Acqua
Paola, while a new canonry was built adjacent to the basilica’s façade with a fine
new palace on the opposite side of the square. A further fountain was planned for
the port beyond San Francesco, to be fed by the surplus water from Piazza Santa
Maria’s fountain by the most direct route, which was to become Via di S. Francesco
d’Assisi.
From this early modern period onwards, the transgressive nature of
Trastevere required it to accommodate substantial new institutions such as the House
of Correction referred to earlier, the hospital of San Gallicano (Filippo Raguzzini,
1724–29), and in subsequent centuries the papal tobacco factory (1859–63), the
Ministry of Public Instruction (1913–28) and Luigi Moretti’s Casa del Gioventu
(1932–37) for the Fascist Party. The introduction of these buildings, examples of new
architectural typologies, radically altered the morphology of the previously medieval
quarter. Unusually for Rome, however, the autonomy of these individual buildings
determined by internal circulation is characteristic of modern planning solutions, and is
in contrast to the amplification of Baroque strategies pursued elsewhere in the city in
the modern period. Trastevere, in both its medieval and modern manifestations, is
therefore an embodiment of utilitarian urban values, located adjacent to one of the
most rhetorically loaded urban environments, and it is the pragmatic nature of Baroque
urbanism which is pivotal in providing the continuity of pattern between public
monuments and the functional city (Giedion 1948).
As has already been briefly mentioned, Nolli’s map of 1748 clearly
distinguishes in his graphic method between the urban forms of late Baroque Rome,
its streets and squares, and the suburban areas within the city walls. In Trastevere
his cartography includes two substantial new structures which are evidence of the
Church’s influence in social affairs. Inserted into the heart of the quarter, running
perpendicular to Via Lungaretta there are the long ranges of the Ospedale di San
Gallicano, while overlooking the port in a more prominent location is the vast bulk of
the House of Correction, San Michele. While the different functions of these early
examples of rational planning had been advertised by the playful stucco work of the

99
Patterns

former and the external severity of the latter, they essentially served a more profound
common purpose, to introduce modernity into Rome through control of the diseased
and the socially deviant.
This less than salubrious area and Trastevere’s relative lack of ancient
remains protected it from the attentions of cognoscenti during the height of the Grand
Tour. However, the closing years of papal control over the city under Pius IX saw the
erection in Trastevere of an industrial building to control the papal tobacco monopoly.
The structure for the Manifattura dei Tabacchi surrounded the Renaissance church of
Santa Maria dell’ Orto, but was provided on the other side of the new urban block with
a square, Piazza Mastai, to ornament its broad neoclassical façade.
From the time when Rome became capital of the Kingdom of Italy,
Trastevere’s strategic position was reinforced by new infrastructural projects linked to
the modernization of the historic centre. As unrestricted movement was the new
imperative, the accreted fabric of the quarter was subject to two apparently contra-
dictory surveys, first, for preservation and archaeological salvage, and second, for
demolition to facilitate new embankments, the creation of new bridges and the
symptomatic nineteenth-century urban intervention the boulevard, Viale del Re
(now Viale Trastevere). Maps of this period of destruction and reconstruction, such
as that from 1895 by Carlo Marré Antonelli, display a coarsening of the grain of
urban representation as large blocks are presented rather than individual plots, and
the turning circle of trams leads to the proposal to demolish the Baroque structures
in Piazza Santa Maria. Antonelli’s map also tentatively indicates the extension of
Via di San Francesco northwards from Piazza Santa Maria to connect to Via della
Lungara, a work of urban evisceration which four centuries of popes since Julius II had
failed to achieve and was not achieved now by increasingly impotent democratic
governments.
The control of Trastevere, and particularly the future of Trastevere as
represented by its youth, would continue to attract the attention of the new state,
through the building of the Ministry of Public Instruction and later by Moretti’s Casa del
Gioventu. Fascism’s appropriation of sport found its urban expression in his elegant
forms, but the antiseptic character of his utopian architecture might be seen as alien
to Trastevere as its present-day neglected state indicates.
For what this consideration of the urban patterns of Trastevere exhibits is a
form of urban process where the contemporary image for the tourist of the gentrified
quarter is the result of the overlay of successive regimes of urban advance, in the
provision of sanitation, the easing of transport for goods and the structures necessary
for social control, be they the instruction of youths or the maintenance of state
monopolies. In reaction to this coercive character manifested on a substantial scale,
the transgressive quality of its context seems to be reinforced. The ‘otherness’ of
Trastevere would appear to fulfil Michel Foucault’s characterization of a heterotopia as
real and simultaneously outside all places, and introduces a healthy question mark over
what we might know from the study of urban patterns (Foucault [1967] 1998). The
dual layering of a city in physical and psychical terms is of such complexity we might

100
 Patterns

acknowledge the methodological poverty of using, to borrow a phrase from Freud,

‘visual means’.
From this highly detailed discussion of such a long developing example
we can observe that the reading of an urban pattern takes place in a milieu which
incorporates the dimension of time. Every urban pattern is the product of historical
processes and contains within it the memories of urban ambition. This is true both
for those cities which are the product of a slow build-up of layers and erasures from
some distant urban origin, and perhaps more surprisingly also for those cities which
are the product of comprehensive planning on a virgin site. These latter examples
contain within them the traces of other ideal models or of successful exemplars which
the designers are seeking to reinterpret. They therefore speak of a broader metro-
politan network which crosses the boundaries of place and time, in contrast to the
dense layering of ancient cities which speak more of the specificity of a genius loci.
Naturally, these are not absolutes but only tendencies which help us contextualize our
perceptions of the physical evidence before us as we walk through a city and they
require a relatively sophisticated sense of form and history.
This is not to suggest that the understanding of such patterns leads to the
projection of ‘correct’ urban forms, as if the processes of urban pattern were some
form of automatic mechanism which validated the choices of the contemporary
designer (Hillier 1996). Such deterministic models treat the city as a quantifiable entity
which can be subject to scientific analysis, whereas my advocacy of the creative
employment of patterns in urban design is that they present the designer with a wide
variety of potential models, obviously so if the location concerned is one of historical
richness. Rather, a thorough exploration of urban patterns is merely a prelude to their
creative interpretation, providing the foundation for subtle interventions within that
historical context which add to the continuity of the urban story.
Turning our attention now to more local examples, the application of
urban patterns as a design tool is not without its negative aspect. Perhaps the most
dramatic examples in Britain would be their broad scale use for social housing
provision during the period 1945–79, where there was a curious mismatch between
the benign intention and the living patterns of the inhabitants. In this period, one strand
of urban design saw the architectural possibilities of housing development as urban
composition, what might be compared with Georgian housing, as the justification for
large-scale design with strong patterns. This was overlaid with a strand of thought
which saw working-class housing as the means of improving insalubrious areas of
the industrial cities. In Britain a cross-party consensus took the initial form of the
bowdlerization of Garden City ideas from Parker and Unwin, although there was some
attempt to adopt more radical continental ideas (Unwin 1909). For all their apparent
casualness, the pattern of the Garden City model, and the suburbs derived from it,
were as codified as the workers’ housing it was used to supersede. The importance of
garden provision, for allotment cultivation and for leisure, dictated a low density but
added the elements of the private garden to the hierarchy of generous landscape
verges for roads and greens between groups of houses, as well as larger local parks.

101
Patterns

The severity of the terraced street, with its straight urban wall was replaced by the
gently curving garden hedges of semi-detached houses, although the apparent variety 6.2
thus produced was a carefully planned product of a highly complex pattern. Greenbrow Road,
Wythenshawe,
Following the Second World War, the new generation of British architects Manchester.
were inspired with an essentially Corbusian vision derived from the projects discussed Masterplanned by
Parker and Unwin,
in Chapter 3, which saw the possibilities of wholesale redevelopment as being within
Wythenshawe is a
the Georgian tradition, although the inhabitants were no longer the middle classes and southern extension
their servants, but the working class. The desire to prevent further suburban sprawl of Manchester
planned in the
could only be achieved by higher densities, forcing the height of structures up while
inter-war years.
in the best examples allowing generous landscape provision. Where the belief in the It is an example
Virgilian mode of the largely unbuilt Corbusian examples from the 1920s and 1930s of the municipal
application of
initially seemed total, with the later fashion for equally dense lower-rise projects the
Garden City
architects were intent on moulding a sense of community often derived from a principles, with
superficial reading of medieval hill towns. What these different patterns of devel- semi-detached
houses and
opment represent are points on a spectrum between the city of objects and the city of
individual gardens
texture, with quite dramatic shifts in pattern. to front and rear
Against a background of largely modest and non-rhetorical public building arranged around
curving estate
there were three distinct periods with flagship housing projects of an heroic status roads.
produced by local authority architects. First, during the early period, there was a Source: Manchester
direct application of Corbusian methods at Roehampton completed in 1959, with point Library and
Information Service:
blocks and slab blocks in a parkland setting. Here the abstraction of the pattern, Manchester Archives
leading to a non-supervisable and alienating void between the blocks, was coupled and Local Studies.
 Patterns

with an over-regulated regime for the occupants which soon broke down. The second
phase, exemplified by Park Hill in Sheffield, tried to address the problems of alienation
by making connectivity the key morphological element, in some respects inflating
the typological precedent of the beehive (Rossi 1982: 85–86) The dominating power of
the blocks on the skyline of the city and the permeability of the ‘streets in the sky’
based on models by members of Team X (which will also be referred to in Chapter
9), however, meant that despite the attempt to maintain a sense of community and
identity, the estate soon became associated with social problems. The high-rise nature
of these two models meant that a large proportion of the area was unoccupied and
designated in an ill-defined way as landscape, but in the final phase density of

6.3
Park Hill, Sheffield.
Designed by
Sheffield City
Architects and
completed in
1961, this large
development of
municipal housing
realized the
concept of ‘streets
in the sky’ as the
generator for its
pattern of high
interconnected
blocks around
open communal
space. This estate
has been listed
for preservation,
although adjacent
point blocks have
been demolished.
Source: Photograph
by Peter Lathey.

103
relatively low-rise occupation became the preferred pattern. An example of this phase 6.4
Alexandra Road,
is Alexandra Road in North London where a pedestrianized street over a parking and
London. Completed
service deck was flanked by two long repetitive blocks which followed the gentle in 1979 by Camden
curve of the neighbouring railway line. The resulting complex, despite its size, was Borough Architects,
Alexandra Road
more closely suited to its context than the previous examples, although the historical
took an attitude
direction of such benevolent social and communal provision was halted by the election to pattern of dense
of Margaret Thatcher’s government in the same year as its completion, 1979. urban coverage
either side of
What these dramatic instances have in common is a vastness to the scale
a pedestrian
of pattern employed, creating a certain anonymity in the products, and a replicability of street. Essentially
pattern which was ultimately driven by the economies of mass production. The a megastructure
bordering a major
left-leaning architects of this period of the Cold War saw the application of industrial
rail line, the
techniques to the construction process as a means of turning the capacity of individual flats
armaments provision into social provision, improving the working conditions within the and balconies are
articulated by the
construction industry, and romantically celebrating working-class life. The scale of insistent rhythm
operation that was thus undertaken meant that, in addition to the social problems of the concrete
created, the material failures which occurred did so on an enormous scale, leading to structure.

a discrediting of the architectural profession in Britain from which it has only recently
recovered. Furthermore, what the production of these estates share is an attitude
which monumentalized urban patterns, failing to protect their essentially supportive
role in the urban scene and instead placing them in the foreground.
Culturally, this was a period which saw the apparent democratization
of high cultural forms in literature, theatre, film and the growth of the new media of

104
 Patterns

television and pop music. Anything which spoke of old values, especially in class-
bound Britain, was regarded as an embarrassing anachronism. However, although a
new vitality was introduced, a sense of realism, in many respects this was a veneer
of novelty in a situation which was still largely controlled by conventional figures
exploiting a commercial opportunity. This ‘realism’ became just another form of
expression among a group of alternatives. Where such tenets had been applied in
the public realm, in architecture and planning, it was less easy to revert to previous
forms, as the aggressive impact of rough-cast concrete was more terminally
substantial.
The desire to create new urban patterns dispensed with traditional hier-
archies of public and private realms, and, because of the political exercise of extensive
land purchases and systematization of the construction process, produced an effective
loss of identifiability. Appeals to ideas of community and place had perverse
by-products in, for example, the eulogizing of the communal habits of the urban
inhabitant, and the intellectualization of these patterns in search of a supposed
authenticity. However, urban issues are less easily resolved, particularly the accom-
modation of the car, the morphological relationship of new complexes to the existing
urban fabric and the subtle world of social interaction. Because of the application of
theories of high-rise housing solutions, large areas of traditional close-knit urban
texture were replaced by voids containing fewer larger units with little relation to one
another, and it was the fracturing of this urban continuity which caused the damage.
The disengagement of such developments from the ground plane and the increase
in free space resulted in the erosion of a recognizable public realm. At the simplest
level, these free spaces ceased to be controllable.
Despite the faults which these examples contained, their intention was
a positive one, since each attempted to present an alternative to the apparently
inevitable sprawl of cities which continues to be so environmentally destructive.
Largely driven by commercial development, suburbanization and the socially isolated
patterns of development it creates were identified as problematical in the late
nineteenth century. Yet its march continues, spread first by the new connections
of the railway network. As a pattern it is articulated only by its individual unit, unlike
the broader social pattern of the Garden City for which it is sometimes mistaken. The
social foci which now arise in the patterns of sprawl, though, are the ubiquitous
industrial sheds, served by large car parks, in which can be accommodated with
the application of the appropriate signage the leisure centre or the shopping centre.
Against this essentially insulated experience, sealed within the double-glazed semi-
detached domestic interior, the family car or the air-conditioned public interior, the
attempts to create a new form of public realm by the proponents of modern housing
schemes seem all the more heroic if ultimately futile.
At Hulme in Manchester there is a celebrated demonstration of the
significance of pattern, in both its positive and negative aspects (Canniffe 2000).
Occupied in the middle of the nineteenth century by a tight grid of terraced housing
to serve the growing industrial centre just to the north of it (Engels [1844] 1987:

105
Patterns

98–99), the deterioration of these properties and their slum clearance as proposed in
the 1945 City of Manchester Plan resulted in the literal erasure of its pattern in the
1960s. What replaced it was indebted to a highly self-conscious application of pattern
crossing the Pennines from Sheffield. The combination of a sensibility concerning
the repetitive quality and grandeur of scale of Georgian housing, and as at Park Hill the
availability of prefabrication technology resulted in the creation of the soon notorious
crescents. The new, heroically scaled residential buildings, named with no hint of
irony after eminent British architects such as Robert Adam and Charles Barry, sat in an
ill-defined open landscape. New arterial roads prescribed in the 1945 Plan effectively
disconnected the area from other neighbourhoods and discouraged pedestrian
use which was replaced instead by ‘streets in the sky’ in the form of deck access
balconies. The hostile environment thus created was generally agreed to be worse
than the landscape-deprived terraced streets it had replaced, and within a quarter of
a century these prototypes of new urban form were themselves replaced. Again a
pattern was implemented which reintroduced street connections for both vehicle
and pedestrian use. Housing took the form of perimeter blocks on a European model,
with clear definition to street frontages and enclosed gardens. While much of the new
housing stock is modest in terms of its design ambitions, the caution of this approach
will probably ensure that the present incarnation of Hulme survives longer than its
immediate predecessor. The pattern which brought this transformation about was
sufficiently flexible to encourage variety within the general system, in contrast to the
small-scale monotony of by-law housing or the large-scale total environment of
the megastructure in the landscape.
6.5
The needs of urban regeneration also shaped my next example, the
Figure-ground
proposed Sheaf Valley e-campus in central Sheffield, in the shadow of Park Hill. The plans of Hulme,
site is currently occupied by the city’s major bus station, but was an element of the Manchester,
showing the
latest Sheffield Master Plan produced in 2000 by Koetter, Kim and Associates (KKA)
successive
for Sheffield 1, the government regeneration agency set up in the aftermath of the developments of
nineteenth-century
by-law housing,
mid-twentieth
century
megastructural
crescents and late
twentieth-century
urban regeneration
project. The
masterplan
envisaged the
reintroduction of
a porous street
pattern which the
zoned separation
of housing and
traffic had erased.
Source: Copyright
MBLC Architects
and Urbanists.

106
 Patterns

Urban Task Force report (Rogers et al. 1999). It is intended to link the neighbouring
railway station and Sheffield Hallam University campus through the creation of a
business district. This project was intended to be the major physical manifestation of
a four-point strategy to establish a new economic base for the city, integrate cultural
and educational activities within the city, create a new transport strategy and invest
in the public realm.
The reputation of Koetter Kim as master planners and urban designers was
built on the academic work of Fred Koetter through his co-authorship with Colin Rowe
of Collage City in 1978. Concerned with the formal qualities of urban design, and in
particular the patterns of urban solid and void, Rowe and Koetter held to a deliberately
ambiguous line, which treated object and space as elements of social organization
divorced from political context:

it is here proposed that, rather than hoping and waiting for the withering
away of the object . . . it might be judicious, in most cases to allow and
encourage the object to become digested in a prevalent texture or matrix.
It is further suggested that neither object nor space fixation are, in them-
selves, any longer representative of valuable attitudes. The one may,
indeed, characterize the ‘new’ city and the other the old; but, if these are
situations which must be transcended rather than emulated, the situation
to be hoped for should be recognized as one in which both buildings and
spaces exist in an equality of sustained debate. A debate in which victory
consists in each component emerging undefeated, the imagined condition
is a type of solid–void dialectic which might allow for the joint existence of
the overtly planned and the genuinely unplanned, of the set-piece and the
accident, of the public and the private, of the state and the individual.
(Rowe and Koetter 1978: 83)

One example they cite in support of their argument is Erik Gunnar Asplund’s unbuilt
Royal Chancellery project for Stockholm from 1922. The massive administrative
building was to be fractured in Asplund’s submission into a series of similar but
not identical buildings enclosing courtyards which inclined down to a waterside
promenade. This strategy then mediated the gap between the long medieval block
pattern of its context and the desire for a strong representational presence. Repetitive
elevational treatments served as a backdrop to a variety of entrance porticoes and
colonnades which lined the major public route that bisected the project. The influence
of this example, particularly Asplund’s figure-ground plan, can then be detected in
Koetter’s subsequent design projects (Koetter Kim 1997).
For the practice of Koetter Kim, speculative design projects followed for
central Boston before the commissioning of University Park at MIT in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, in 1988. Their strategy was to occupy 30 acres of derelict land by a
densely structured series of buildings which defined a street network around a college
green. A mix of uses including commercial and retail spaces and residential apart-
ments support the principal buildings. These buildings (the first two of which had

107
Patterns

Koetter Kim themselves as architects – the Clark and Richards office buildings
completed in 1990) were intended to be adaptable to a variety of uses as either
corporate headquarters or laboratory spaces, their ‘loft’ character also implying their
potential retrofitting for residential use. The sustainability of this long-life, loose-fit
strategy, with the buildings designed around a matrix of interchangeable uses and
patterns of occupation, is complemented by the urban patterns to which they
conform. Creating both an identifiable sense of place and integrating into the broader
urban landscape, the determining patterns exist not just in plan to govern the
relationship to the street, but also in section to indicate standard heights, setbacks and
elevational treatments. The uniformity of this approach, and the constraints placed
upon different designers, have the virtue of preventing individual buildings distracting
from the primacy of the public realm.
In Sheffield, KKA proposed a similar introduction of dense urban pattern
into the low-lying land adjacent to the station. Poor orientation and visual connections
between the station and the city centre were to be overcome by a strong matrix of
routes through a network of new buildings and public structures which negotiated
the significant level change between valley floor and the datum of the major public
buildings. Similar to the buildings for MIT, these new buildings were to adopt the same
sustainable form adaptable to a variety of high technology or residential uses and were
to be relatively anonymous in character. A large open space was intended to provide
a degree of identity, while its orientation encouraged the main connections necessary
in particular towards the Sheffield Hallam University campus. However, to provide
this relatively recessive business development with some public presence from a
distance, one of the buildings was extruded above the common cornice line to create
a landmark tower.
Although this proposal appears relatively modest, and is indeed only one
element in a larger strategy, its concentration on raising the quality of the infrastruc-
tural building environment of the city is a response to previous strategies for Sheffield
which have placed reliance on the building of landmark monuments, as we shall see in
Chapter 8. KKA instead proposed a backdrop pattern of building which might support
the more obviously flagship structures, which could foster the economic life of the city
through a variety of uses, and thereby contribute to long-term sustainability. It was
therefore disappointing to see the urbane character of this proposal replaced by a more
typical office campus development in a subsequent refinement of the masterplan.
Although this element of the Sheffield Masterplan was phased, each
element depended on the completion of the pattern, which of course demands long-
term commitment. In an economic context where only short-term gain is valued, this
strategy represents a greater risk. The flagship office building standing alone in its
dedicated car park (or as we saw in New Piccadilly, Manchester, dominating an
ambiguous landscape) is an easier vision to sell to executives insulated in a top-of-
the-range company car. Patterns of atomization and rivalry still have the economic
edge over models which propose some form of co-dependency, integration and the
ambient security which comes from social use.

108
 Patterns

6.6
Sheffield
Masterplan 2000.
A sketch of the
proposal to connect
Sheffield rail station
to the city centre
by means of new
routes and the
development of a
densely patterned
business district,
the e-campus.
Replacing a bus
station, this campus
featured large
loft-style buildings
around a communal
space.
Source: Courtesy
of Koetter Kim
Associates.

Observers of urban patterns and advocates of their sensible employment

come from a variety of positions, and not solely from those who study traditional
models. Acknowledging the political significance of the urban grid, far from its
supposed neutrality, Albert Pope in his (1996) book Ladders attempts to present a
formal theory of the North American contemporary city. While expressing a certain
nostalgia for the diversity possible within the common nineteenth-century grid iron
plan, Pope criticizes those theorists such as Mumford and Benevolo whose ideological
position in the mid-twentieth century blinded them to anything other than a dystopian
reading of the developing industrial cities as a tragic prelude to the achievement of the
modern ideal (Pope 1996: 25–28). Pope details the erosion of that permeable grid
and the emergence of the ladder form referred to in his title, as the displacement of
a permeable circulation network into a set of enclaves connected by linear routes.

109
Patterns

What then emerges in this system in the North American context in particular is the
node represented by the new types of private and internal public space, the mall and
the atrium. Of course, there are precedents for such new urban types in the com-
mercial architecture of the nineteenth century, the arcade and the department store,
but they worked within the conventional street network. Deriving from a separation of
vehicle and pedestrian, the street frontage ceases to be necessary other than as set
dressing for enormous new climate-controlled internal environments.
This erosion, or at best transmutation, of urban patterns has its own logic
despite its apparent arbitrariness because it is a demonstration of ‘the ideology of
the void’ (Pope 1996: 231). The unimpeded flow of space favoured both by archi-
tectural and urban theorists and required by transport engineers combined with the
lateral expansion of cities through suburbanization leads to the implosion of the urban
core and its transformation into a zone of corporate domains. While the beginnings
of this story had been recounted by Jane Jacobs four decades ago, Pope has also
speculated that the recent revival of urban cores might not be the sign of a growing
resistance to such processes but an indication of the decay reaching a terminal stage
(Jacobs 1961).
Urban pattern is an element of the design of cities most subject to
economic determination, as methods of construction, the valuation of land and the
search for maximum profitability are among the controlling factors. This can lead to the
assumption that the urban pattern is neutral. Although formally it is a background to
more explicit urban figures, it is never a neutral element, as the experience of urban
sprawl indicates. Highlighted by the increased scale of environmental degradation, the
direction of this process can be traced back through the critics of urban form to Engels.
His observations, dealt with in Chapter 3, described the social effects of different
types of pattern at different scales. The verminous labyrinth of the Old Town of
Manchester was in many ways less shocking than the consciously planned packing
of humanity in the new urban grids. And if here the medical state of the city dweller
was conditioned by their location in the concentric pattern of commercial core,
industrial ring, slum areas and new suburbs, in the contemporary British city the
pattern merely becomes more complex, its rings made of more discrete pockets:
commercial core, regenerated urban quarter, light industrial remnant, inner city estate,
peripheral retail zone, down-at-heel area, attractive suburb, each with its own recog-
nizable and sometimes surprisingly similar pattern.
The corrosion of the urban pattern is a phenomenon which has occurred
at the same time as that of the shrinking city but, among other critiques, Pope’s weary
resignation at the apparent inevitability of the process does not present a positive
prognosis for future development. The numerous social, financial, and political factors
which have led to urban implosion are beyond immediate reversal by any group as
powerless as designers. This should not obscure the significance of a successful
pattern in the anchoring of the city to its location and economy. The application of
strong comprehensible patterns can at least ameliorate the disorienting effect these
processes have on citizens. The apparent modesty of such a strategy as that of

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 Patterns

Koetter Kim, however, conceals quite a profound purpose: to alter the perception of
the urban environment away from the thrills and perils of novelty towards the comfort
of understanding. The prevailing inversion of urban hierarchies which encourages
large-scale car-dependent development on the periphery can be addressed by the
revival of that figural public space which characterizes traditional urban structures, so
that the public space and the private realm form a unity of clear opposites. In this
symbiotic relationship the urban grain must take the subsidiary role so that the public
realm can be supported on the firm foundation of a sustainable pattern. Despite the
fact that the particularities of urban form play a fundamental part in the ethical matrix
of the city, their lessons sometimes fail to reach non-professional audiences. We must
turn therefore to the element of narrative to provide that common understanding.
The network of the city, expressed in the physical rhythms and dimensions of its
streets and blocks embodies the intangible qualities which make each location unique.
Entering into the urban pattern it becomes a labyrinth, not the maze of disorientation
and confusion, but the choreographed route which expresses in ritual repetition the
mythic life of the city, interpreted to us through its narratives.

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Chapter 7

Narratives

Narratives have played their part in the construction of our cities since antiquity.
Through the medium of built form, they reflect back to urban populations the images
of divinely sanctioned settlements, of well-ordered urban societies, of the wealth
that came from imperial exploitation. Yet today pluralistic democratic societies present
no confident image (least of all confidence in political systems) and the creation
and manipulation of urban images are left to commercial interests, for marketing,
services, or the ambiance of the city itself. Against this background of market-led
regeneration, where every city’s unique selling point seems strangely similar to every
other’s, the narrative reconceptualization of the city provides the political route
of engagement between people and their place, between the environment and its
interpretation.
Among the characteristics narrative shares with urban design are the
dimensional qualities of time and space. The temporal dimension, whether finite and
linear (with beginning, middle and end), or cyclical and repetitive, or synchronous
and multilayered, reinforces the significance of memory in providing a means of
explanation. Of course, in the oral tradition, memory and narrative were essentially
coterminous. Spatially, the narrative provides for a specificity of location which builds
on the associative power of memory to tie the physical properties of a space into the
structure of a place. Where these factors of space and time, narrative and environ-
ment connect is in the journey, the epic of the mythical hero or the mental map of
the city dweller (Lynch 1960). It should therefore be no surprise that the typical form
of the reading of an urban narrative should be in the guise of a journey across the
city, combining both familiar and unfamiliar experiences.
Transcendent societies subsumed themselves to the prevailing myth of
the power elites, the overarching narratives of religious observance, of the civic cult,
of dynastic ambition and empire. It is a more problematic process of construction to
invite the narratives of democratic societies rather than accept those of the upper
social stratum, whether ideological or financial. But it also subverts the power of
preconception to produce formulaic ‘solutions’ to urban problems, to stitch up the

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city for the benefit of the few rather than weave an equitable urban fabric for the
many. In short, there is an ethical purpose to the claim that the objectively quantifiable
structure of the urban pattern requires a subjective counterpart, provided by urban
narratives. In functional terms narratives can be exploited for both analytic and
synthetic purposes. Explanations may be sought in the analysis of the development
and form of the city, or alternatively existing narrative structures might be reinter-
preted and recombined. In both scenarios, the narrative of the city is extended and
perceptions of the urban environment amplified.
Despite the apparent dominance of functionalist methods of urban design
throughout the modern period, a subversive strain of thought has continued to grow
in opposition to accepted norms. The role of literary interpretations should not
need establishing (Hunt 2004: 35–56). Because, while narratives might be fictions,
they might usefully as well be histories. In the industrial era, Dickens’s description of
‘Coketown’, the setting of Hard Times, was an amalgam of different actual envi-
ronments but portrayed an image which was essentially true. Joyce’s Ulysses records
in its interwoven stories and parodic literary styles the Dublin of 16 June 1904.
Metaphorically the journey across the topography of the modern city stands for the
wandering of the ancient exiled hero, but it is itself reconstructed from memory by
its exiled author at his various outposts in Trieste, Zurich and Paris. The novel’s relation
to the political situation is nicely subversive of the prevailing meta-narratives, both that
of imperial Britain and that of nationalist Ireland. For all the atypicality of having a Jew
as the hero of a Catholic city, Leopold Bloom’s story interprets the life of the city as
something which will survive political conflict and change. The depiction of the Dublin
of a century ago steps beyond the boundaries of its highly nuanced literary form
to recast the city in a different interpretation. Similarly, in various artistic forms the
political agenda of the avant-garde has focused on the city as the location where
a different expression of reality could be exposed to the masses. In particular, the
Surrealists emulated the methods by which ancient priesthoods revealed primordial
myths through urban ritual and narrative, sharing with Joyce a belief in the significance
of ancient stories in a modern setting.
In their search for the fabulous within the everyday, Paris, for the
Surrealists, meant much more than a neutral location in which an avant-garde could
operate. In Louis Aragon’s Paris Peasant, the poet appropriates the city, its arcades,
parks and advertisements as provocations for extended reverie (Aragon [1926] 1994).
Rejoicing in the physical experience of the city, the Surrealists saw that the city could
be transformed. However, unlike contemporary political reformers, or architectural
visionaries such as Le Corbusier, the Surrealists’ transformation did not require
dramatic physical changes to the urban fabric. For them a change of perception was all
that was necessary:

New myths spring up beneath each step we take. Legend begins where
man has lived, where he lives. All that I intend to think about from now
on is these despised transformations. Each day the modern sense of

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Narratives

7.1
A recumbent
André Breton
photographed
in 1925 in front
of Giorgio de
Chirico’s painting
The Enigma of the
Hour (1914). The
Surrealists adopted
de Chirico’s images
of urban disquiet as
manifestations of
the contemporary
psyche interpreted
by Freud.
Source: © Man Ray
Trust/ADAGP, Paris
and DACS, London
2005

existence becomes subtly altered. A mythology ravels and unravels. It is a

knowledge, a science of life open only to those who have no training in it.
(Aragon [1926] 1994: 10)

Aragon’s prose is far from the automatism favoured by some of his fellow Surrealists.
His precision in Paris Peasant about both the cityscape and the mental landscape of
his narrator is a conscious strategy to situate the observer in the city. The public
spaces of the modern metropolis, the arcades and public parks, inventions both of
the nineteenth century, are subject to the gaze of an observer who reads a hidden
significance in every advertising poster, in the gesture of shop girl or the outline of an
artificial hill. There is also evidence that in relation to the arcades, and certainly for
the audience to whom he first read the work, Aragon was evoking a recently vanished
world, thereby creating a melancholy sense of loss.

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 Narratives

For Aragon and the other Surrealists, the urban situation was rich with
meaning and its apparently haphazard juxtaposition of sensation and experience
formed a dream landscape through which the terrain of the unconscious could be
mapped. For André Breton, specific places in the city had a gendered character which
reinforced the anthropomorphic connection between the city and the mind. At the
most banal level, the ithyphallic isolation of the Tour St Jacques and the vaginal
geometry of the Place Dauphine make the city a great hermaphroditic body charged
with an eroticism for the pleasure of the aroused Surrealist.
But while this anatomizing of urban space presents one strand where
corporeal images lend themselves all too readily to the visual arts, the city could also
be psychoanalyzed, read like a mind, and in this reading, the metaphor of the labyrinth,
the path through the unknown pattern, came to the fore. As Roger Cardinal writes:

The final ambition of Surrealism is to realize all the latent potentialities

of man – to reinstate primitive thinking in the mentality of the civilised,
to liberate the faculties of dream and imagination which are chained by
reason, and so on. In terms of the city, the ambition is transposed into
a vision of connectedness and correspondence. In its apotheosis the city
becomes the solved labyrinth, the literal space in which flourish all sorts
of analogically-linked discoveries.
(Cardinal 1978: 148)

The labyrinth features both in myth, as the work of the first architect Daedalus (to
provide a haven for the Minotaur, a product of the unnatural union between woman
and beast) and is itself through its concretization of a journey a highly specific narrative
in physical form as both adventure and dance, mystery and warning (Rykwert 1976:
144–153). The path through the labyrinth as a familiar example of esoteric knowledge
set with traps and surprises for the initiate would tend to suggest that the Surrealist
revelations of the city were intended only for a priestly caste. Their understanding
of the banalities of urban life, walking, shopping, loving, provided them with a secret
key to existence which served as the ritual structure of their cult of the city.
In their advocacy of the personal appropriation of the urban experience, the
literary Surrealists had been prefigured in the visual arts by Giorgio de Chirico and his
disquieting visions of the contemporary city. More than three-quarters of a century
later it is hard to understand the impact of his often reproduced work on the minds
of those whom they moved viscerally. Yet one need only recall that Breton first
noticed one of de Chirico’s paintings while travelling in an open top bus. The juxta-
position of a scenario of urban mass transit and the poetic vacancy of metaphysical
painting was itself an example of the dreamlike coincidence to which the Surrealists
were sensitive. Taking their cue from Freud, they actively sought opportunities for
the manifestation of the unconscious, and the city with its many conflicting scenarios
was a fertile territory for its expression.
The dream state required for optimum receptivity of the unconscious
carries with it a certain passivity in the face of urban and architectural production and

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therefore instances of the creation of environments are slight if not completely

ephemeral. The response to the city which the Surrealists’ work projected, however,
did find a parallel in the work of Le Corbusier, particularly, in the design of the
penthouse apartment of Charles de Beistegui (1930). Here a private salon complete
with its own cinema screen counter hung from a chandelier was enclosed in a series
of terraces which provided carefully framed views of the major Parisian monuments,
Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower and the Sacré Cœur. Trimmed
hedges in electrically operated boxes could be adjusted to frame elements of the
city, while a panorama was provided through the device of a camera obscura. The
individual perception of the city, de Beistegui’s personal narrative, could therefore be
revealed to his guests through the orchestration of real, optically projected and
cinematic spectacles (Vesely 2004: 343–344). Indeed, the photographic documen-
tation of the project in its own way disciplined the perception of the city. This beguiling
but highly personal vision of the city as the playground of the haute bourgeoisie,
however, could not be further from Art in the Service of the Revolution which the
Surrealists had proposed and a sharper social analysis would be brought to bear by
later groups.
In the Paris of the 1950s, after the traumas of Occupation and Liberation,
the Situationists were one of many avant-garde groups which expressed disillusion-
ment with the two phenomena which were conditioning the post-war reconstruction
of European cities, functionalist modern planning and consumerism. These two
developments, representing the organizational powers of the state and capitalism,
were, in the eyes of the Situationists, merely spectacles which dulled the senses
of urban populations and masked the processes of exploitation. In Society of the
Spectacle (1983) Guy Debord produced a manifesto of the Situationist critique,
couched in neo-Marxist language:
7.2
Parc des The spectacle is the existing order’s uninterrupted discourse about itself,
Buttes-Chaumont,
its laudatory monologue. It is the self-portrait of power in the epoch of its
Paris (Adolphe
Alphand 1864–67). totalitarian management of the conditions of existence. The fetishistic,
Constructed purely objective appearance of spectacular relations conceals the fact that
during the urban
they are relations among men and classes: a second nature with its fatal
campaigns
conducted by laws seems to dominate our environment. But the spectacle is not the
Haussmann for necessary product of technical development seen as a natural develop-
Napoleon III, this
dramatic man-made
ment. The society of the spectacle is on the contrary the form which
landscape became chooses its own technical content. If the spectacle, taken in the limited
a favourite site sense of ‘mass media’ which are its most glaring superficial manifestation,
of reverie for the
Surrealists. In Paris
seems to invade society as mere equipment, this equipment is in no way
Peasant, Louis neutral but is the very means suited to its total self-movement.
Aragon described (Debord 1983: 24)
its plan form as
being that of a The spatial technique which the Situationists developed as their method of under-
nightcap, a suitable
image for a dream standing the city is the dérive, the drift around the city. In many respects it might be
landscape. regarded as a reconnaissance operation in preparation for some future direct action

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Narratives

in the revolutionary seizure of the streets. The psychogeographer was encouraged to

wander the streets in an unconscious or at least unplanned manner so as to discover
the character of quarters which were marginal to the functionally appropriated
structure of the city. The experiences gained and material or data gathered were
then to be represented, generally in the form of maps, which expressed an alternative
character of the urban environment. As cartographers the Situationists recorded the
magnetic attraction of certain streets through the drawing of arrows which described
a form of emotional terrain across the city.
This landscape of sensation was quite distinct from the commonly repre-
sented layout of the city, whether in the form of street maps or that of the Paris Metro,
with those of the Situationists reorienting street-patterns to encourage drift. For them,
the undifferentiated neutrality of objective cartography was replaced by a preference
for specific locations where the available sensations were regarded as most potent.
These plaques tournantes, or places of exchange, were paradoxically the destinations
of the drift, where the visitor could experience a revelation of the city’s life. Les Halles,
the central market area, with its nocturnal life, traditional forms of exchange, and
cheap rents, was the epicentre of the Situationist topography of Paris. The admiration
of the avant-garde, however, failed to prevent the destruction of the market halls
and the transformation of the area into a dismal retail mall, the very epitome of
consumerist spectacle which the Situationists denounced.
What remains curious is the fascination held by Debord and the
Situationists, with their passion for the everyday, for images and places which
represented the high culture of the times in which they were produced, two
seventeenth-century examples being the seaport paintings of Claude Lorrain and the
Place des Vosges in central Paris. The paintings of Claude, (also an influence on those
constructors of fantastic journeys, the English landscape gardeners) represented for
Debord an invitation to drift on the open sea of the city and create an imaginary
cityscape. In contrast, the topiary world of the Place des Vosges used natural ele-
ments to construct a geometrical environment, the calm of which also induced reverie
in those retreating from the nearby boulevards. As Simon Sadler observes in The
Situationist City:

Those drifting through the city backwaters would enjoy a sense of

encounter with the city, while those being swept along by the crowds in
the grand boulevards were bound by an artificial imperative of speed,
making savings on capitalized time, rushing towards sites of alienated
production or consumption.
(Sadler 1998: 91)

Sceptical of the claims of technological and economic progress, the unapologetically

hectoring tone of Situationist texts was intended to provoke new perceptions of the
causes and effects of the rapidly changing urban environment and was coupled with
images which projected a different reality for the city. Beginning with the process of
détournement or inversion, members of the group such as Debord and Asger Jorn

118
7.3 produced collages which ironically subverted the consumerism of the advertisements
Place des Vosges, they used as raw material. These techniques were also applied to the remapping of
Paris. Constructed
between 1605 urban environments which manipulated the conventions of cartography and the image
and 1613 at the of the familiar city quarters. Representation and content were therefore used to create
behest of Henri IV
a new narrative of the city which was opposed to the neutralizing orthodoxy of
of France, this place
royale held great contemporary architectural functionalism. Indeed, their maps of a reordered Paris,
allure for the isolating and displacing particular quarters and applying images of historic soldiery
Situationists.
graphically tied together by large arrows, evoke the 1870 Commune, the German
Its fascination
was partly in Occupation of 1940–44, but more specifically are contemporaneous with the political
the complete context of the French colonial wars in Indo-China and Algeria.
artificiality of its
In the hands of the Dutch architect Constant, these perceptions of the
environment, but
also in its total city were to take physical form through his project New Babylon (Wigley 1998). Taking
removal from the its cue from the existing contexts, Constant’s proposals made use of contemporary
commercialized city
megastructural technologies to connect key locations within the city, producing new
Paris was becoming
in the 1950s. networks both of movement and inhabitation. Hierarchies of space and function in the
conventional city were to be replaced by an egalitarian structure, the labyrinthine
character of which owed much to the narrative of journeying across a city. However,
the similarities between Constant’s work and the proposals of more conventional
architects such as the members of Team X, especially Alison and Peter Smithson
and Aldo van Eyck, would appear to suggest that the ossification of fluid social
patterns into static architectural form would have had a negative effect on the qualities
of the urban environment had they been implemented. Constant was aware of the

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Narratives

potentially dystopian consequences of his proposals and justified the experiences they
would have produced if implemented in ‘The Principle of Disorientation’:

An attempt to realize a dynamic labyrinth in the current social set-up can

at best lead to the design of an experimental space aimed at provoking
spontaneous reactions from visitors. It must be remembered, however,
that the experimental space will be a fairly unsophisticated enclave within
a utilitarian environment, and that the experimental subjects, recruited
from the working population, will be too strongly conditioned by their
utilitarian background to be capable of switching suddenly to creative
activity. Genuine interventions in the spatial structure will be few and far
between. The main point of such experimental spaces is the opportunity
they afford for gathering comparative material on people’s reactions to their
environment. It is important to realize, however, that the people involved
are not free, are creatively inhibited, and find themselves in a situation
which does not make for easy communication.
(Constant, in Wigley 1998: 225)

The immediate stimulus for New Babylon was Constant’s observation of a gypsy
camp at Alba in Northern Italy where he encountered a utilitarian but temporary
settlement put at the service of highly sophisticated nomads (an influence that will
recur in the work of Stalker to be discussed later in this chapter). The very antithesis
of conventional urbanism, the nomadic encampment, ready to be struck before the
next section of the continuous journey, contained within it a restlessness which
Constant saw as more appropriate for contemporary conditions of life than the
technocratic formalism of International Style modernism.
However, the laboratory conditions which Constant suggests in the above
text, particularly the reliance on surveillance, raise ethical questions. Indeed, the
ephemeral qualities of the nomadic settlement, intimately connected with an oral
rather than a written cultural tradition, immediately evaporate when frozen into
a technically detailed megastructure, with its geometrically determined nodes of
encounter. Separated in a conventionally zoned manner above the plane of transport
infrastructure, the designated space for inhabitation would appear to the contem-
porary observer to militate against the spontaneous manifestations of life which
Constant desired. The prescription of the experiences to be had in New Babylon
even pervaded the description of sectors and individual buildings within them as he
described in his ‘Description of the Yellow Sector’:

The two labyrinth-houses are formed by a great number of irregularly-

shaped chambers, spiral staircases, distant corners, wastelands,
cul-de-sacs. One goes through them adventurously. One can find oneself
in a quiet room, clad in insulating material; the loud room with its vivid
colours and ear-splitting sounds; the room of echoes (radiophonic speaker
games); the room of images (cinematic games); the room for reflection
(games of psychological resonance); the room for rest; the room for erotic

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7.4 games; the room of coincidences, etc. An extended stay in these houses
A Symbolic has the tonic effect of a brainwashing and is frequently undertaken to erase
Representation
of New Babylon the effects of habits.
(Constant (Constant, in Wigley 1998: 122)
Nieuwenhuys). An
image of Constant’s In this furious invention of forms, the transformation has occurred from critical
visionary urban
scepticism regarding the commodification of the urban experience, as evidenced by
proposal, but here
the usual process the increasing dominance of advertising in the cityscape, to the proposal for an
is reversed. In individual brand of technological optimism. Others associated with Situationism
place of the typical
retained the lighter touch of either the recording of the experiences of the dérive, the
superimposition of
linked structures creation of manifestoes or for example, Ralph Rumney’s 1957 photographic essay, A
over an existing Psychogeographic Map of Venice (Blazwick 1989: 45–49). Specific locations such as
terrain, here
the Arsenale, the Ghetto and the Rialto are encountered on a walk through the city
a tabula rasa
supports a structure with their attractive or repellent qualities noted. Aspects of play within this envi-
created from ronment, one of the most sacred sites of Western culture, are remarked on as if to
fragments of
diffuse too reverential a treatment of this subject. A correspondingly ludic intention
other cities. Source:
© DACS 2005 pervades Ivan Chtcheglov’s 1953 Formulary for a New Urbanism:

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We know that the more a place is set apart for free play, the more it
influences people’s behaviour and the greater is its force of attraction.
This is demonstrated by the immense prestige of Monaco and Las Vegas
– and Reno, that caricature of free love – although they are mere gambling
places. Our first experimental city would live largely off tolerated and
controlled tourism. Future avant-garde activities and productions would
naturally tend to gravitate there. In a few years it would become the intel-
lectual capital of the world and would be universally recognized as such.
(Blazwick 1989: 24–25)

With the benefit of a half-century of hindsight it may seem ironic that Chtcheglov could
consider casino cities as possible models for a benign urbanism. The naïveté of the
position that they represent individual freedom rather than a fundamentally rapacious
capitalism is only the most obviously blinkered aspect. And yet the spectacle of
architectural development at Las Vegas would seem to appropriate a Situationist
analysis of such environments. In particular, the adoption of a prevailing narrative to
theme decor, food and entertainment in the hotels from Caesar’s Palace onwards
elevates illusionistic urbanism to a level where traditional notions of place disappear.
It is, of course, no paradox that these manifestations of the spectacular society should
also erase the specific ambiance of place in favour of a commercially engineered
fantasy environment.
In less glamorous and lucrative urban locations, communication through
narrative is at the root of the work of groups which seek to change perceptions of
the city, and among those groups are the contemporary practitioners of psycho-
geography, a discipline which expresses through mental mapping the effects of the
environment upon the perceptions of the individual. The often nostalgic tone of
psychogeographic texts, a passivity it shares with Surrealists and some Situationists,
has resulted in the association of the discipline with opposition to the standard forms
of commercial redevelopment, and indeed its connections to anarchism and a certain
tendency towards the occult underline its general disdain for contemporary capitalism,
although it frequently expresses a perverse admiration for abandoned industrial
locations, the early manifestations of the economy they reject.
Psychogeography combines elements of objective recording with sub-
jective experience and is therefore a somewhat contradictory method of inquiry. The
collective revelation which psychogeographers seek adds to the fractured nature of
this mixture, since the personal sensation and the physical facts of the city have to
be bridged by a common acceptance. Essentially urban in context, the foremost
exponent of psychogeography in Britain is the writer Iain Sinclair whose walks across
and around London make connections between the rapidly changing contemporary
urban environment and the traces of history those changes obscure and reveal. In
Lights Out for the Territory, for example, the London of the mid-1990s is viewed
through the jaundiced eye of an observer who sees the city being sold to the highest
bidder (Sinclair 1998). While never descending into sentiment, his writing is a potent

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critique of the condition of the contemporary city, although he offers no solutions to its
problems. Here he writes on the Millennium Dome in Sorry Meniscus:

So there it was, meaningless and magnificent, a pale intruder on the

downriver mud. Alien plunder washed ashore on a rogue tide. Blocking
out the memory of discontinued industry, the Dome is a blob of congealed
correction fluid, a flick of Tipp-Ex to revise the mistakes of 19th century
industrialists. What could not be revised, and what drifted across the water
on a light breeze, were the ancient stinks, the ‘corrosive vapours’ that
made East Greenwich infamous: molasses, guano, bad sugar. Borges’
famous description of the Falklands War had been turned inside out: here
was the bald head that the two men had been fighting over, tines of a steel
comb buried in silvery scalp. But that didn’t invalidate the symbol, the
cosmic ring. The problem was that the circuit of the Dome covered nothing
and meant whatever its sponsors said that it meant. It abducted poetry and
pressed it into service for a form of debased copywriting. The chemically
enhanced skin of the Dome was as tight as a repeat-order facelift. Trump’s
bump.
(Sinclair 1999: 12)

This quotation gives a good flavour of his work, where literary allusion, urban history,
political events and poetic forms collide. Sinclair’s London Orbital follows not the
unconscious drift of the Situationist but the deliberate journey on a specific course,
in this case a walk around London’s perimeter motorway, the M25 (Sinclair 2002). It
is couched in the frustrated rage of one who has seen political promises unfulfilled, be
they those of Thatcher, Major or Blair. All he is able to do is record the consequences
with a sceptical eye. His book underscores the connectedness of periphery and centre
as if in some ancient city foundation ritual where the concentric patterns of the post-
industrial city is revealed to wash up the projects of the powerful on the margin, safe
from observation in a crowded anonymity. A landscape of down-at-heel towns caught
between ancient significance and the heritage industry alternates with executive
housing estates built on the sites of abandoned Victorian asylums. Whereas formerly
their inmates were safely out of respectable view, now a spurious seclusion can be
sold to those who require access to the motorway network. The narrative is peopled
with eccentric characters, from the ageing bachelor party of the walkers, Sinclair and
his companions, to the cast of philanthropists and criminals each working on the route
to their own utopia, and those marginal figures caught in the outer metropolitan
net. Sinclair’s misanthropy can offer no solutions to the urban malaise he identifies
but muses on the significance of the celestial pattern of the orbit traced across a
commodified earth. The reader is tantalized with a few glimpses and references to
some broader narrative, beyond the detail apparent to the eye, the author beating the
bounds of a vaster public realm:

We hadn’t walked around the perimeter of London, we had circumnav-

igated the Dome. At a safe distance. Away from its poisoned heritage. Its

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bad will, mendacity. The tent would consider itself exorcised. This was a
rare quest for me, one that reached a fitting conclusion. Here at last was
the grail. Up-ended on a swamp in East London. Glowing in the dark.
(Sinclair 2002: 457)

Sinclair’s acerbic pen offers little clue as to how narrative might be used constructively
within the public realm. There is a distance between the recording of the emotions and
histories associated with the places he and his companions visit and the prescription
of how a more satisfactory environment might be created. What is apparent is
the alien nature of many of the new impositions on the landscape, their complete
disconnection from the places they occupy, but also the futility of their erasure of
previous histories. To a certain extent, the discontinuous nature of the present urban
condition might facilitate its own future erasure, and the re-emergence of patterns
of occupation which represent a more enduring narrative. But London Orbital and
Sinclair’s other writing do evoke a starting point from which an alternative urbanism
might be imagined, one that grows from the actuality of a given situation rather than
the introduction of profit-yielding off-the-peg structures. Beyond their inhabitation of
the same territories centuries apart, attempts to explain the connections between,
for example, the Knights Templar and recent gangland bosses strain the imagination
into creative speculation, an open-ended process which encourages a wealth of
possibilities that stretch beyond the limited aspirations of the commercial exploitation
of real estate.
The employment of narrative as a generative device in urban projects
has been a frequently encountered feature of postmodern architecture. It has been
used both as a means of distancing the architect from the utilitarianism of previous
generations and to situate the individual project within a larger urban context. The
work of John Hejduk in the United States, and the N.A.T.O. group in England are two
instances. Hejduk’s work employed a narrative construction of an often self-conscious
poetry which created an esoteric world of private formal meaning acted out against
a highly prescribed rhythm of ritual activity (Hejduk 1985). N.A.T.O. (Narrative
Architecture Today), led by Nigel Coates, was influenced by Situationism and
projected an alternative London at odds with the commercial development of the
mid-1980s, rejoicing in the juxtaposition of avant-garde fashion and down-at-heel areas
to describe a unique atmosphere of alternative urbanity (Coates 2003). While Hejduk’s
vision remained an essentially personal narrative of sometimes alarming dramas, the
mannered bohemianism of N.A.T.O. suggested both a more optimistic approach to life
and a subversive attitude to the process by which urban spaces were constructed.
Neither of these narrative strategies, however, engaged the sustained interest of a
wider public beyond the architectural coterie.
More conceptual in their use of form, the contemporary architecture and art
group Stalker also use psychogeographic techniques to question perceptions of the
city, particularly contemporary Rome. Occupying abandoned land, or recording a walk
across the urban margins, a ‘transurbance’, Stalker’s work could be mistaken for social

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 Narratives

activism. Francesco Careri describes the group’s intention to search for meaning in
these wastelands in the following terms:

It is important to emphasize the self-representative character of the fractal

archipelago form: our civilization has constructed it on its own to define its
own image, in spite of the theories of architects and town-planners. The
empty spaces that define its figure are the places that best represent our
civilization in its unconscious, multiple becoming.
(Careri 2002: 183)

As with the Situationists, the figure of the nomad, the apparent antithesis of the
contemporary citizen, comes to the fore, often with an echo in the life of the migrant
or exile. This is used as a critique of the urban territory as property and everything
that flows from it, contrasting with an existence with less physical impact in the
environment:

The aim is not to encourage architects and landscape architects to leave

their drawing boards behind, shouldering the backpack of nomadic transur-
bance, nor is it to theorise a total absence of paths to permit the citizen to
get lost, although often errare could truly be seen as a value instead of as
an error. The aim is to indicate walking as an aesthetic tool capable of
describing and modifying those metropolitan spaces that often have a
nature still demanding comprehension, to be filled with meanings rather
than designed and filled with things.
(Careri 2002: 26)

Unearthing a complex narrative woven from observations, memories and metaphors,

individuals like Sinclair and groups like Stalker undermine the image of both the
confident corporate city and the tourist destination. Such potential strategies impinge
on the phenomenon of play, both as game and as theatre. The understanding of city
as theatre (which will be further explored in Chapter 9) should encourage the
contemporary urbanist to use narrative as a tool to delve beyond the surface of
the everyday and tap into the roots of the imagination in the great stories which
explore primordial themes (Vesely 2004: 318–352). The communication of those
themes through metaphor and allegory serves to diffuse too ponderous a reverence
for thematic explorations and allows them to be treated in a creative manner. This
paradox of interpreting truth through fiction runs counter to the attitude which sees
urban centres as having only a functional purpose for the convenience of trade. It is
surely the representational function of cities and urban places that forms their deeper
purpose. Be it the Athenian Acropolis or the Twin Towers, the urban backdrop to
human dramas is as much a participant in the action as it is a witness to it.
However, as well as the relatively structured play of theatre, there is the
relatively unstructured or at least non-predetermined phenomenon of play as game,

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Narratives

and it is this aspect which holds the potential to engage a response from a population 7.5
Stalker: the
increasingly sceptical of traditional languages of symbol and rhetoric (Huizinga 1949).
installation
Play, as an activity which is fundamental both in nature and in culture, might contribute L’Amacario at the
to the resolution of different narratives within the field of possibilities. The fact that a Stazione Leopolda,
Florence 2002.
game is unable to function without the willing acceptance of equitable rules and
Stalker’s work
judgments provides a model of how rivalries could be harnessed to produce a greater questions
whole. A balanced game always provides more interest, indeed excitement, than the conventional
perceptions of the
dominance of one participant or team over another, and the creation of a variety of
city. Here a type of
experiences within the game of the city could produce a similar effect on the urban urban hammock
scene. What this suggests, of course, is that boundaries be pushed rather than for- invites participation
in a form of oneiric
mulas meekly followed. And in the erasure and reinforcement of such boundaries a
urbanism.
new territory might be perceived which is recognized as common ground between the Source: Photograph
different participants. courtesy of
Alessandro Lanzetta.
Forms of play often feature in participation strategies for community and
urban regeneration, precisely because an understanding of play is a commonplace
which lay and professional groups are able to share. Its ability to disarm precon-
ceptions also counters the elite defence that only those with serious money should be
major players in deciding the future scenarios for cities. Forms of play which allow

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 Narratives

7.6 inter-professional boundaries and those between professionals and public to be

Community
crossed are of immense value in constructing a community of interest. Representing
consultation,
Devon Gardens, a diversity of desires within the city is the fundamental aspiration of urban narratives.
Burngreave, These attempts by Surrealists, Situationists and psychogeographers to
Sheffield, 2004.
construct alternative narratives for the twentieth-century city, often unsuccessful in
A study combining
the gathering of terms of the creation of physical spaces, have succeeded in creating a legacy of
conventional interpretation in which the quotidian facts of urban life are imbued with new meaning.
survey data about
The mythologizing of avant-garde groups in art-historical discourse has added
spatial use with
more visionary resonance to the highly personal reflections of marginal individuals. This validation of
possibilities of their research finds its echoes in cultural productions in other fields which reinforce
change in the
the significance of the psychological reading of the city as a means to tell its story
urban environment.
Source: Courtesy of anew. To return to an earlier example I used, the Dublin of Leopold Bloom, traversed
the Bureau of Design by its highly receptive inhabitants, describes an environment which lives within the
Research, University
of Sheffield School of
shell of the Edwardian city but remains curiously detached. Joyce’s intention was to
Architecture. tell the story of that June day but he succeeded in transforming the experience of
the city for subsequent visitors. His observations paralleled the physical city but did not
seek to change it, observed the mores of the citizens but largely eschewed the great
political cause of the day, and this ambiguous relationship presents a useful lesson in

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Narratives

maturity to the proponents of a narrative urbanism. This gap between the structure
of the city and its narrative interpretation adds to the potency of the connection. The
effect of the city upon the mind is an individual and personal experience, whereas
ostensibly the city is a collective entity. An urban narrative will inevitably be a personal
expression in the face of a collective reality, and therefore an acknowledgment of
that separation is required. The recognition of the urban narrative as an animating
rather than a determining phenomenon is therefore a prerequisite of its useful
integration into design.
Narrative’s relationship with the other elements of my quartet is one
of providing meaning to a system which is largely concerned with form. While the
social aspect of space provides a fluidity within what might appear to be an overly
rigid construct, narrative provides a larger time scale of memory and aspiration which
might make even the ostensible permanences of patterns and monuments seem
ephemeral. The major questions remain, however, whose narrative is it?; and how are
they to be used in urban design? Any answer, no matter how provisional, must of
course involve multiple narratives. If our society’s aspirations to democracy are to have
any immediate relevance within the public realm, they must be presented not only
by collective interests but also by the personal.
Narrative’s effect in engaging an audience in the world it creates is the
key to understanding how the transformation of perceptions might be achieved. This
might require a willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience, but in
its application in urbanism need not descend into acceptance of the illusory. The
current phenomenon of the marketing of cities, their rebranding to facilitate some new
means of survival in the global marketplace of trade and tourism, has aspects
of narrative, but rests on an ethos of advertising which is besotted with the form of
the message rather than the authenticity of the story it tells. Urban narratives might
employ artificial structures as well as the self-consciously factual to tell their stories,
but at a fundamental level, beyond form and structure, they rest on a foundation of
perceivable truth.
In particular, Surrealism’s claims to the narrative territory are worth
exploring. Rooted in the experience of the city, Surrealism’s proponents found them-
selves both at one and at odds with their environment. But this reactive sensibility (not
to say reactionary attitude regarding their lauding of nineteenth-century Paris over
contemporary twentieth-century developments) would need to be transformed into
an active urban methodology. The search for contemporary myth might be a starting
point in this field. Its animating motive is the means by which a narrative releases
urban design from the cul-de-sac of functionalism. The opportunity to weave together
disparate narratives into the physical fabric of the city bridges the personal, the
collective and the urban. Functionalism’s claims rest on the exploitation of the lowest
common denominator of use, and its convenience for capitalist development is
deemed to be expressed through the immutable and intangible laws of the market-
place. Alternatively, the narrative in urbanism presents the argument for the place of
memory and desire in the design of the city, so that the useful and flexible pattern is

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 Narratives

laced through with the anticipation of its citizens for the collective spatial experience
more typically identified in the urban monument. As Graham Livesey has observed in
relation to Surrealism:

the city may be understood as a collection of stories that have been

recorded and continue to be written over time. The city becomes analo-
gous to a book, a repository into which events are written. Architecture is
vital to the recording and writing of the narratives of the city. Nevertheless,
it is the individual and collective stories that provide the enduring legacy, for
buildings come and go.
(Livesey 1994: 110)

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Chapter 8

Monuments

The narrative of the contemporary city, as a collective experience, is inscribed in

the form of its monuments. The term monuments focuses both on buildings and on
objects which attract communal activities. However, if the metaphor of the book of
the city has any validity, then one has to consider the events which distinguish one
story from another and on which the course of a narrative turns. Such events point
out the general structure of a story or city, but have very little meaning on their
own when removed from the context with which they have a mutually supportive
relationship. Although the objective factuality of an event or monument is its most
obvious characteristic, the subjective qualities of its interpretation are what bring it to
life. It is so in stories, and it is the same in cities.
Although the reading of a city through its collection of monuments is
a familiar phenomenon, such monuments need never be finite, the meanings they
acquire can be ephemeral and still significant over long periods. Their memories
connect to a larger topography beyond immediate boundaries, yet their integration
represents one of the most difficult ethical aspects of urban design. The architect’s
professional role is to serve the needs of his or her client, and to create both a usable
building and an appropriate image to represent its purpose, and furthermore the
accumulation of these individual desires is also expected to form a coherent urban
image.
These issues are not necessarily always a source of conflict, but in the
hands of the unskilled they can become an obvious point of tension between buildings
and their context. Conversely, it could be observed that the reciprocal enhancement
which occurs between a building well situated within its context and a context
complemented by buildings of strong quality is the ideal. For this scenario to develop,
some sense of common value has to be accommodated in individual constructions.
This may seem obvious in the case of public buildings but since there is
no shared view on what public architecture should be, they become exercises in
personal styling. Every aspiring city therefore requires its building by Richard Meier,
Frank Gehry or Daniel Libeskind in the way no high street can be without a Starbucks

130
8.1 or a Gap. Cities of the past had their internationally influenced buildings but they
Altes were identified less with the individual artistry of the architect than with the general
Museum, Berlin
(Karl Friedrich regard for the meanings of the Gothic or the Classical.
Schinkel 1822–30). In this chapter my intentions are to discuss some of the defining char-
The ante-type of the
acteristics of monument and to illustrate them with four contemporary examples.
nineteenth-century
civic monument, A century ago Alois Riegl’s classification of monuments as those with memorial value,
this neo-classical historical value and age value provided a critique of the monuments of his own time
structure combines
through a more than superficial reading of those of the past (Boyer 1994: 143–146).
precedents from
antiquity to serve But this was only a by-product, a stage in the process towards a recapturing of the
a new purpose. The continuity of the physical and social life of cities which he discerned in ancient and
immense portico
medieval cultures. His distinction between intentional and unintentional monuments
served a reciprocal
function as public assumed that the disregarded contemporary artifact would have future significance.
image and elevated Monuments, therefore, in my use of the term encompass not only the attention-
platform from
demanding centrally placed public building but also shade off into the backdrop which
which to view
the city and its supports it, larded as it is with its own clues to context and meaning.
monuments, many In my characterization of the phenomenon, and despite the intriguing and
of which were also
designed by
plausible researches of George Hersey, monumentality is not solely dependent on the
Schinkel. associational character of form (Hersey 1999). Singularity and the expression of
geometry in structure are some of the common characteristics between architectural
and natural form which derive from physical laws. But suggestions of incompleteness,
poised between growth and decay, are pregnant with the sort of narrative possibilities
which are bound up with the very idea of the monument, and the biomorphic

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Monuments

examples which Hersey discusses promote the time-dependent and therefore

fragmentary qualities of the monument. These levels of ambiguity expressed in
meaning and form are among the qualities which might be said to define a successful
monument, an urban artifact which engages but does not dominate.
Memory and history also play their part in this layering of meaning. As
briefly discussed in Chapter 5, Aldo Rossi’s discussion of a ‘theory of permanences’ in
The Architecture of the City separates out the constituent elements of function and
form to reveal the independence and adaptability of historic form, with successive
functions being accommodated within the massive structures of the Roman city or
added on to the armatures of medieval buildings (Rossi 1982: 57–61). The organic
character of this urban appropriation, obscuring clarity of original intention with
the contingencies of use, creates a patina which often denotes the absorption of the
separate nature of the monument into the everyday life of the city. This aspect of
ambiguity is often related to the ambivalence of the boundary between building and
space, which works to the root of its context. While awe and wonder can often attend
the enormity of scale and symmetry of form which might at first be thought typical
of the monument, a situation where the mind and body are encouraged to interpret
the environment in a creative manner is facilitated by the successful integration
of the monument in the cityscape.
The historic association of monuments with civic functions, with cele-
bration, memorialization and even diversion, produced a language of architecture
which provided a form of public spectacle in a highly codified form. The specific
functions of the temple, the theatre, the cathedral or the museum were represented
in architectural forms of accumulated meaning derived ultimately from cosmological,
theological and historical sources. The size and elaboration of this monumental
language are what distinguished it from its backdrop and gave it public presence. In
the contemporary city the challenge is how to represent that public presence in a
context dominated by the commercial realm. For this reason, the examples to be
discussed later in this chapter will come from the recent wave of cultural buildings in
British cities.
Despite the dominance of commercial structures in a contemporary urban
image, they are unsatisfactory as monuments because they serve a purpose which
is essentially monocultural in the aspects of both function and time. No matter what
their function, the purpose of their existence does not have the memorial function
which characterizes the traditional monument, whether that is an intentional or
unintentional component. This is true of great historical examples and also, I would
contend, of recent examples of the genre. As catalysts of urban form, contemporary
monuments provoke a response both within the pattern and the narrative of the city,
creating new events. Their introduction expresses the optimistic but somewhat
questionable belief that the world can be remade anew by architecture. Often the
guises which such monuments assume are very different from their contexts. It is a
paradox that these structures, dependent on the various strains of contextualism,
should simultaneously be so alien within their given situations. In this respect they are

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 Monuments

‘both/and’ buildings in Robert Venturi’s definition, ambiguity being a quality he prized

in architecture (Venturi 1966: 30–38). Often they are eclectic in their sources, from
vernacular, academic and modernist traditions but they tie these different strands
together with boldness and resolution. They are contextual within a wide-ranging
interpretation of townscape and are unashamed in their invitation of public engage-
ment and use. These qualities could hardly be described as revolutionary, but their
achievement has been won against a background which was often unpromising
aesthetically and economically.
Falling, then, within such a broad canon, the difficulty of categorizing these
structures arises. The aesthetic and material characteristics of monumental buildings
are often conservative, using established architectural forms that echo both modernist
archetypes and attempt a synthesis with vernacular forms. They re-appropriate various
heritages without becoming stifled by any of them. Other buildings are more exper-
imental in their forms and self-conscious in their expressive signalling of novelty, but
the four examples to be discussed later in this chapter do not abandon the comfortable
structures of architectural hierarchy. Although as we shall see, the examples do
not support the idea that interesting silhouette alone creates a successful monu-
ment, they produce a sophisticated combination of forms which are overtly complex
but intrigue the visitor to discover more. In function, they are traditional public
buildings, and in their recognizability cast doubt on the belief that the need for such
monumental structures has been bypassed by more contemporary and isolating forms
of diversion and entertainment. In a haphazard way, and after the attempt to reduce
the public domain within cities by classifying them as entirely commercial zones, the
recent crop of new British monuments re-identify the urban significance of civic
values, and express the changing political and social situation of which they are the
fruit.
The difficulty with which they have been achieved owes its origin to the
prehistory of contemporary architecture. The associations of the monument with
modern architecture have been problematic, split between overt political propaganda
and the inappropriate application of monumental strategies to domestic architecture.
Associated as it has become with architectural expressions of totalitarianism, the term
monument enjoyed some unexpected favour among the exiled cultural figures of the
Second World War who saw monumentality as a field of battle in the war against
Fascism. Distancing themselves from the specifically American anti-monumentalism
of the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright and Lewis Mumford, with their emphasis on
dispersal and Garden City principles, the collaborative position of Josep Lluis Sert,
Fernand Léger and Sigfried Giedion outlined a strategy for contemporary civic design
in their ‘Nine Points on Monumentality’ (1943). A product of wartime utopianism,
these three significant figures understood the political nature of post-war plans and
that the rhetorical appeal of totalitarian urban strategies could be undermined by the
collaboration of architects, artists and thinkers to explore new possibilities. In their
brief manifesto they affirmed the deep roots of the need for public expression and
the disservice done to such a need by the architecture favoured by the dictators.

133
Monuments

Their optimistic call was for the harnessing of modern materials and techniques to
create dynamic and attractive environments, not just functional ones.
In their argument, their seventh point was key to outlining their attitudes to
the social and political context in which contemporary architects and artists saw
themselves.

The people want the buildings that represent their social and community
life to give more than functional fulfillment. They want their aspiration for
monumentality, joy, pride, and excitement to be satisfied. The fulfillment of
this demand can be accomplished with the new means of expression
at hand, though it is no easy task. The following conditions are essential for
it: A monument being the integration of the work of the planner, architect,
painter, sculptor, and landscapist demands close collaboration between
all of them. This collaboration has failed in the last hundred years. Most
modern architects have not been trained for the kind of integrated work.
Monumental tasks have not been entrusted to them. As a rule, those who
govern and administer a people, brilliant as they may be in their special
fields, represent the average man of our period in their artistic judgments.
Like this average man, they experience a split between their methods
of thinking and their methods of feeling. The feeling of those who govern
and administer the countries is untrained and still imbued with the pseudo-
ideals of the nineteenth century. This is the reason why they are not able to
recognize the creative forces of our period, which alone could build the
monuments or public buildings that should be integrated into new urban
centres which can form a new expression of our epoch.
(Sert et al. 1943: 16)

In the authors’ somewhat arrogant view, an arrogance born of their temporary

impotence, the art and design disciplines understood the demands of society but were
hindered by ill-equipped political leaders. The convenience of this point is that the
posture of the misunderstood genius (who is none the less ‘of the people’) can be
adopted to explain both the failure to create a new monumental language thus far,
and also to pre-empt criticism of any proposals which might achieve implementation.
As events would show, the inability of Modernism to provide a public language
recognized and accepted beyond the cultural elite would prove as damaging to the
culture of the monument as its misappropriation by historicism in the nineteenth
century and by totalitarianism in the twentieth century. However, the work of these
authors in this and other scenarios was to influence the post-war debates on the
integration of architecture and planning in new and historic centres. This was
the cultural context the post-modern reaction to which eventually produced the
examples to be discussed later. In situating those British examples in their specific
context, it is worth briefly explaining the history of attitudes to public architecture, so
that it is easier to see what has changed and how the present impetus for urban
regeneration has emerged.

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 Monuments

In the past three decades the British city has become an ideological
battleground over which politicians, capitalists and community groups have fought in
what often appears to be a futile struggle. The post-war consensus, where a generally
positive economic climate encouraged an acceptance of comprehensive redevelop-
ment, gave way, particularly after the energy crises of the early 1970s, to scepticism
in the face of often baffling urban visions. Perhaps the prospect of another night’s
shadow play during the frequent power cuts reinforced a nostalgia for comprehensible
environments, and created a rupture between the professional classes and the
broader society. The material failures of contemporary design which then began to
accumulate brought further discredit on architects and their clients, the private
developers and local authorities.
The practices of architecture and urban design were clearly identified as
part of the problem by politicians in both major parties. To the Conservatives, coming
to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, the decaying state of the urban environ-
ment could be blamed on paternalistic Labour local authorities responsible both for
its commissioning and stewardship, and on the Labour government nationally for the
spending cuts imposed under the terms of agreement with the International Monetary
Fund in 1976. To the Labour Party, as municipal power weakened, the public domain
was under threat from the unscrupulous private developer intent on turning public
assets into quick profits.
While the evidence of decline was undisputed, it took more serious events
to force the issue of regional regeneration on to the national political agenda. During
1981 riots in a series of deprived inner city areas, often with significant ethnic
minorities, produced the first response from the Conservative Government. Initially
under the aegis of Michael Heseltine, the Merseyside Development Corporation was
established in imitation of that already established in London Docklands. Its role
was to facilitate the regeneration of the disused dock area of Liverpool, reaching over
the heads of the Liverpool City Council which had the reputation of being the most
left-wing in the country. Public investment was successfully employed, most notably
at the regeneration flagship of the Albert Dock, but substantial private investment was
scarce. However, at the height of the Thatcher boom in 1987, following her third
successive election victory, it was this model which was extended to ten other
locations as Mrs Thatcher resolved to regenerate ‘those inner cities’, a phrase redolent
of her distaste both for the environments themselves and the interventionist policies
with which they were to be transformed.
Contemporaneously, suffering an economically enforced idleness the crisis
of confidence in British architecture was tellingly contrasted with the developments in
continental Europe, where economic and political will was re-envisioning major
European cities. It was a point of considerable frustration that several major projects
in continental Europe had British architects, denied the same opportunities at home.
In reforming the image of cities, for example, the grands projets of the Mitterand
presidency continued the modernization of the image of Paris which had begun under
Pompidou. The Louvre pyramid, the Grande Arche at La Défense and the Institut du

135
Monde Arabe among many other projects saw the reification of the French State in the 8.2
Tate Gallery,
appropriation of a sleek modernism suitable to the classical organization of the city
Liverpool (James
(Fierro 2003). German economic power meanwhile saw the need to clothe its hard- Stirling and Michael
earned wealth in a cultural veneer through the construction of a series of major Wilford 1984–88).
Constructed in a
regional and civic museums which encouraged a high degree of architectural exper-
section of Jesse
imentation. The transparency of the competition system, and the relative openness Hartley’s massive
of the museum programme meant that a roster of international architects were warehouses at
the Albert Dock
invited to build signature structures that became cultural icons beyond their urban loca-
(1846), this modest
tions, for example, Hans Hollein’s museum in Mönchengladbach, James Stirling’s refurbishment
Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart and Richard Meier’s Kunsthandwerkmuseum in Frankfurt was one of the
first examples
(Lampugnani 1990). This programme faltered following German reunification, but
of cultural
resumed with the rebuilding of central Berlin. Finally, in Spain the death of Franco regeneration in
and the desire to represent the newly democratic and regional structure of the country depressed British
cities. It was
meant that the identity of cities such as Barcelona became associated with contem- fortunate in being
porary architecture and design through the international recognition of a group of able to adopt the
Catalan architects (Sola-Morales 1986). Entry into the European Union and the hosting monumental
character of
of the 1992 Olympiad meant that the range of scale of urban and architectural the industrial
interventions inflated rapidly from the local project to the monumental reorganization architecture for
in a relatively short time, reinforcing the association of new political realities with its new public
function.
new architectural form.
From the perspective of the British architectural profession, these con-
tinental developments exposed the gap in thinking between Europe and the United

136
 Monuments

Kingdom. Sharp decline in manufacturing, often euphemized as ‘restructuring’, and

the distrust of public bodies led to the principal architectural outlets of the period being
in the commercial and service sectors. The City of London’s financial might meant
that the regions were slow to regenerate and the most telling architectural creation
was the importation of American corporate style for the development of Canary Wharf.
Setting this primacy of the private commercial sector over the decline and abandon-
ment of public sector values exemplified the political priorities of the period, although
influential voices were to be raised on both sides of the debate.
In architectural terms, with the exception of the commercial boom of the
mid-1980s, the period 1975–95 produced very little construction in comparison to
the 30 years of post-war recovery. The controversy around postmodernism in archi-
tecture could therefore take place against a background safe from implementation.
A planning system which actively promoted the inoffensive, and thereby controlled
what was built, has to be considered in the context of an architectural profession
which seemed self-indulgent. In 1983 the President of the R.I.B.A., Owen Luder, even
attempted to promote Richard Rogers’s proposal for the National Gallery extension
by remarking positively that it said ‘sod you’ to the public (Appleyard 1986: 310). Into
this arena of declining workloads and confusion as to what to build stepped an unlikely
voice of architectural authority. The following year the Prince of Wales aimed a few
barbs at some easy targets and immediately placed the entire architectural profession
under scrutiny. Ostensibly reactionary in tone, it would not be stretching credibility too
far to portray the Prince’s intervention as the elite expression of popular resistance
to the decline of the contemporary public realm. The Prince was broad in his scope,
attacking the orthodox modernism of senior figures and the contemporary post-
modern experiments of a younger generation. In retrospect, this had the curious effect
of uniting these disparate groups, curtailing internal disputes in the face of external
scrutiny, and imbuing them with a new-found sympathy and self-regard.
However, the procurement and funding process for public buildings also
changed during this period. The Conservatives had extended their policy of com-
petitiveness to the architectural sphere, indeed, the Prince had only been afforded
his opportunity for intervention by the public nature of the competitions process for
the National Gallery extension. With the decision to fund significant new cultural
buildings from the proceeds of the National Lottery introduced in 1994, John Major’s
government embedded competition and public scrutiny at the design stage, increasing
opportunities for architects to demonstrate their talents but always at the risk of
displeasing a public increasingly vocal in expressing its opinions on architecture. For
the British public, this release of money was manifested in the creation of a series of
cultural landmarks whose forms have been seen as indicating moves toward a revived
and confident civic realm and which play a significant role in strategies for urban
regeneration.
As the bodies charged with delivering that urban regeneration, during
their ten-year existence, the development corporations set up by the third Thatcher
government had to face the harsh economic climate of the early 1990s. Infrastructural

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Monuments

work consumed most of the budgets available from government and the European
Union, with the consequence that the presence of the development corporation was
hard to distinguish following their demise, yet their influence was fundamental to the
revival of inner cities which has taken place in the last few years (Williams 2002:
166–169). Urban regeneration was further consolidated at the top of the political
agenda with the election of a Labour Government under Tony Blair in 1997. Richard
Rogers was appointed to chair an Urban Task Force charged with drawing up a
strategy for regeneration. A modernist advocate was therefore placed at the centre
of government policy, although the proposals produced in his report Towards an Urban
Renaissance relied heavily on traditional urban models, thereby producing a design
equivalent of the Clinton/Blair agenda of the ‘Third Way’ (Rogers et al. 1999).
The complexity of the situation outlined in the preceding brief history
underscores the overlapping nature of these influences which can be seen to have
had a considerable effect on the present architectural scene in Britain. Architects,
however, did not have the commanding role they had previously enjoyed and
therefore had to adapt their personal and professional preferences to the new
situation, in which the public had to be courted rather than educated in an unfamiliar
aesthetic language. The recognition of the economic benefits of culture also meant
that, however erroneously, the initial costs of building were seen as promising future
returns. The legacy which these projects had to overcome was the arrogance exem-
plified by Sert, Léger and Giedion’s statement. The benign intentions of architectural
visions were no longer simply going to be passively accepted by its audience. Those
intentions had to be demonstrated, argued for and shown to be responsive to broader
influences.
Completed in the past few years, the four arts buildings to be discussed
as examples of contemporary monuments have all became icons of the urban
regeneration process. The Museum of Scotland (architects Benson and Forsyth,
completed 1998) has been identified as the harbinger of a revived political capital
in Edinburgh. The National Centre for Popular Music (architects Branson Coates,
completed 1999) was intended as a flagship of the Cultural Industries Quarter in
Sheffield. Walsall Art Gallery (architects Caruso St. John, completed 2000) provided
a new civic focus for a Midlands town. And, finally, The Lowry (architect Michael
Wilford, completed 2000) is a major attempt to change the centre of gravity of the
depressed city of Salford. The differing scales and forms of these structures display
a desire by their architects to explore referential languages to evoke a response in their
intended audiences.
The first of these, the Museum of Scotland, layers a highly articulated
stone skin over a Corbusian white concrete core, thereby combining the necessary
contextual deference with the personal language favoured by the architects. This had
been expressed in their early work as municipal architects on large-scale housing
estates in London in the 1970s, such as Alexandra Road, where the interpretation of
Le Corbusier’s architectural forms could be demonstrated on a broad canvas. (It need
hardly be recalled that such Modernist applications were at the root of popular

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disaffection with contemporary architectural practice.) In Edinburgh, however, such

preferences had to be masked because of the national status of the new museum
extending the Royal Scottish Museum, and the protected status of the architectural
heritage of the Scottish capital. Given the furore over the extension to the National
Gallery in London which had only recently been brought to a close by the construction
of Venturi’s Sainsbury Wing, the abstracted nature of Benson and Forsyth’s internal
and external language seems all the more daring, yet the severity of each of its forms
in isolation is tempered by the sheer number of contextual gestures (Benson and
Forsyth 1999). Shifts in wall alignments refer to the broader pattern of the urban grain,
but allow room for the creation of a corner drum, which acts as a civic landmark, and
apparently also contains the memory of the form of the Scottish tower house. Slots,
gashes and rents in the refined stone façade attempt to connect the interior world
of the museum and its collection to the city in which it sits, and a dramatic view of
Edinburgh Castle is afforded from the roof garden which terminates the architectural
promenade. Yet this roof garden is itself an architectural reference distant in space
and time, as if the vehicle of a magic carpet ride, since its form is clearly reminiscent
of the roof garden of Le Corbusier’s unbuilt Governor’s Palace at Chandigarh. Indeed,
the internal articulation of the museum adopts a modernist clarity at odds with the
picturesque puncturing of the exterior.
In distinct contrast to the solidity and sobriety of the Edinburgh building, the
National Centre for Popular Music (NCPM) by Branson Coates was intended to provide
a landmark for Sheffield’s Cultural Industries Quarter. The demise of the city’s
fortunes through the unemployment brought about in the traditional steel industry had
forced the municipal authorities to attempt a rebranding of a derelict area of central
Sheffield to house the newly identified cultural industries on which future employment
was deemed to depend. An archetypal ‘Cool Britannia’ project, the provincial location
of the NCPM was deemed appropriate because of the lively music scene which
Sheffield had enjoyed from the heyday of punk in the late 1970s. Bands such as
Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League and latterly Pulp had spanned a range from the
electronic avant-garde to mainstream chart success, and it was this connection
between the popular imagination and popular music that the NCPM was intended to
monumentalize. Nigel Coates, the former protagonist of the N.A.T.O. group referred
to in the last chapter, designed an extraordinary building with many resonances. The
associational value of local industry was evoked in the creation of four steel clad
drums to house the exhibits (Coates 2003: 154–156). The canting of each at four
degrees, and their crowning by revolving wind cowls were more explicit references to
the Bessemer convertor’s role in the steel process. Yet the quadripartite plan derived
from the Palladian villa’s relationship with its landscape, and Coates’s building was
intended to function as the meeting point of paths across the landscape of the newly
designated Cultural Industries Quarter. This internal groundscape supported the
exhibits above on mushroom-headed columns, but sealed itself from the outside
world by fretted frameless glazing. As a landmark on the city’s skyline the NCPM (or
the ‘Pop Centre’ as it was colloquially known, quickly established its presence, if for

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Monuments

8.3
Museum of
Scotland,
Edinburgh (Benson
and Forsyth 1998).
The journey
through this
museum
follows the
accumulated layers
of Scottish history.
It culminates in
the roof terrace
where the visitor
is able to survey
the monumental
skyline of the city,
centred on the
silhouette of
Edinburgh Castle.

no other reason than, despite its apparently native materials and forms, the alien
quality of its appearance among the converted industrial and commercial buildings and
recent neo-vernacular office buildings. But a little after the first anniversary of its
opening the ‘Pop Centre’ closed due to its failure to attract enough visitors, and now
serves as a student union for Sheffield Hallam University as a consequence of the
proposal of the Sheaf Valley e-campus discussed in Chapter 6.

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 Monuments

8.4 Rather more traditional in its cultural uses, the New Art Gallery at Walsall
National Centre has a formidable presence, chiefly as a result of Caruso St. John’s decision to express
for Popular Music,
Sheffield (Branson this substantial addition to the humdrum Midlands town as a massive cubic block
Coates 1999). towering over its post-industrial landscape. Representing something of a generational
A Lottery-funded
shift in the creation of public architecture in Britain (the architects were still in their
project of cultural
regeneration, this thirties at the time of its completion), the austerity of its form, however, distilled a
contemporary series of different possible sources. The board-marked concrete of the interior bore
monument failed
the smack of Scandinavian hair-shirt Brutalism imposed on the British provinces at the
to attract sufficient
visitors. The close of the 1950s. Externally its gaunt form bore comparison with that of de la Sota’s
quadripartite contemporary Gobierno Civil in Tarragona, while the closely packed complexity of the
building has been
interior volumes referred even further back to Adolf Loos’ concept of ‘Raumplan’
converted into
Sheffield Hallam where a labyrinthine route through a series of spaces was packed into a tightly
University’s student organized volume. These references were at the service of a substantial private
union.
art collection, generally of a domestic scale, which had been donated to the town,
and the desire to have substantial temporary exhibition galleries, an art library and
publicly accessible facilities (Jenkinson et al. 2002). No compromise was sought
with the immediate context. Instead a double-height cantilevered corner offers a
sombre alternative to the adjacent shops. Timber-boarded staircases lead up through
the concrete-beamed ceiling to the double-height space at the centre of the perma-
nent collection, the Garman-Ryan Collection. More than anywhere else, this room
betrays the education of the architects in the 1980s, as the cubic room with corner

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Monuments

8.5
New Art Gallery,
Wallsall (Caruso
St. John 2000).
This monumental
cubic building has
given a new sense
of civic presence to
this Midlands town.
The tight austerity
of its exterior is
continued into the
interior, but is
characterized by
the generosity
of the volumes
packed within
the relatively
inexpressive box.

balcony and semi-concealed staircase was a ubiquitous motif in projects of the time.
Furthermore, the architectural heroes evoked in the art gallery’s composition are
prominent figures from the first half of the twentieth century who provided an
alternative modernism to the technocratic determinism which dominated British
architecture in the 1980s and 1990s. The terracotta tile-hung exterior of Caruso St.
John’s building might steal the clothes of the functionalist tradition but its knowing use
of the nostalgia of Modernism reveals the complexity of its origins.

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 Monuments

Finally, a compositional classicism informs the design of our next desti-

nation, The Lowry in Salford, which had a long gestation period from its origins in one
of the last projects designed by James Stirling before his untimely death. The practice
of Stirling Wilford had completed many arts projects in Germany and the USA but the
task here was not only the production of a complex for the visual and performing arts,
but also a new image for the northern city in the vastness of the desolate docks area
on the Manchester Ship Canal. A symmetry of functional organization rather than the
interior’s exuberant decoration sets out the building’s strategy. What was eventually
produced by Michael Wilford was not only the galleries for permanent and temporary
exhibitions, a traditional lyric theatre and a smaller flexible theatre, but a sequence of
generous public spaces which provides a continuous promenade connecting all
elements of the building. This route presents constant contrasts as a blue terrazzo
meets vivid orange carpet, the floor slopes down to generous bar spaces, and stair-
cases lead up to the theatre balconies. Escalators flow up to a run of galleries on two
levels in white walls, before colour resumes at the entrance to the smaller theatre. The
route continues down past the restaurant to ground level with the space opening out
and up, steel cladding giving way to the purple wall of the lyric theatre punctured by
orange balconies (Sudjic 2000). Externally the dynamism of the internal sequence
is marked by the complexity of the geometrical composition, with cylindrical and
hexagonal towers, cubic fly-tower, upturned truncated cone of the lyric theatre, glazed
drum of the rehearsal room and segmental section of the entrance canopy, but
with these various forms treated uniformly in steel cladding, steel mesh and glazing.
This combination of forms creates the kind of civic presence necessary to replicate
traditional urban space, yet its isolated location and its subsequent swamping by
over-scaled commercial development have created more problems as a result of the
building’s success. However, the inventiveness of its form and the generosity of its
objectively functionless spaces give hope for a revived architecture of the public realm.
How do these examples I have outlined respond to the interpretations
which might justify their aesthetic choice as monuments? Of course, the reader
might object that the examples I have chosen are poor examples of monuments as
repositories of changing memory, being all new build structures. Part of their sig-
nificance lies in their overt character, but one could find more introverted models
which play a sensitive game with historical layers. The Great Court at the British
Museum (Foster and Partners 2000) at one level was merely a refurbishment of
an interstitial space in the existing complex of museum and library. Yet it creates
a memorable event on any visit to the building and aids not only the functioning of
the circulation but also the sense of occasion. It is the self-consciously eclectic
combination of fluid glazed roof and new Ionic portico which provides the necessary
degree of ambiguity. The restraint of its general treatment leads to a certain chilliness
but the dramatic qualities of the space itself are a suitable prelude to the stories told
by the museum’s treasure.
Only one of my four examples, the New Art Gallery in Walsall, adopts the
traditional monumental strategy of the austerely separated singular form, the potential

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Monuments

impenetrability of its cubic mass is scored with the different fenestrations of its inner 8.6
The Lowry,
spaces. In addition, the hollowing out of the double height entrance area and the
Salford (Michael
raising of the restaurant at the topmost floor suggest that the platonic solid is expe- Wilford 2000).
riencing a process of change along the boundary between public exterior and public Constructed as the
cultural centre of
interior, creating a degree of ambiguity. The articulations of the other three examples,
the regenerated
in contrast, suggest that their monumental characteristics reside in the complex Salford docks, this
combinations of their different spaces and routes leading to highly variegated external eclectic monument
brought a new civic
forms. These forms, with expressions of internal function expressed volumetrically
identity to a partly
and materially (more dramatically in the other three but present in the shallowest derelict/partly
inscription at Walsall) make a show of their attempt at public communication of their developed urban
landscape. Its
function and design features. Despite the exaggerated nature of some of these
success has
gestures, they result from a desire to articulate the architecture rather than the wilful been followed
form making that characterize other celebrated contemporary monuments such as by large adjacent
commercial and
Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao or the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. residential
The effect the buildings have had on their context also underlines the developments.
qualities of their monumental strategies. Although at Edinburgh it may recently have
been usurped by the Scottish Parliament, the Museum’s principal impact has been
on the rearticulation of the skyline, the urban context of each of the three others has
been transformed since the building’s completion, even in Sheffield where the build-
ing itself was a failure. Walsall and Salford have seen the commercial appropriation

144
 Monuments

of these new monuments as the centrepieces of new residential and retail devel-
opments, although at The Lowry the scale of its success has dwarfed the flagship
building and robbed it of the opportunity to command its attendant public space.
Among a range of new cultural facilities produced at this time, these
buildings received relatively little attention outside the professional journals and local
media, perhaps as a result of the distraction of the national brouhaha surrounding
Richard Rogers’ Millennium Dome at Greenwich. Yet their non-metropolitan locations,
despite the vagaries of some of the commercial developments which have followed
in Walsall and Salford, will receive more normative long-term development, in com-
parison to an environment whose precedent would appear to be the ephemeral
festival architecture of a Baroque princeling emerging as a ‘Millennium Village’. As
catalysts of regeneration they have provoked a range of responses, from a general
revival of confidence in a tightly controlled situation such as historic Edinburgh, to
accelerated commercial and residential development in the wastelands of Salford
Docks. The guises which these buildings assume, however, are very different from
the restrained modernism which characterized the British inheritance from nineteenth-
century architectural moralists.
Of course, the tradition of public monuments in British cities itself often
had an eclectic character, a heady mix of historical forms, new material techniques and
idiosyncratic local patronage. Their intention was to represent the cultural aspirations
of the middle class and to instruct the deserving poor. If their forms supported
a certain social exclusivity, they were not as unwelcoming as the public buildings of
the post-war period. These contemporary examples, even the ill-fated ‘Pop Centre’
seek to engage an audience and are among the signs of benign cultural provision
which the urban historian Tristram Hunt identifies (2004: 362–365). The open nature of
their atria and lobbies is of a different character to the privatized public space of the
commercial city, and reinforces the positive value of urban spaces.
Whereas the traditional architectural languages relied for the communica-
tion of their monumental status on applied and integral decoration, the contemporary
monument is much more dependent on other aspects of form and materiality.
However, while the latter feature is generally still limited to the use of honorific or
precious materials, the burden of expression falls on form which in many ways leads
to the pursuit of the extraordinary and the eye-catching. The breakdown in confidence
in traditional architectural languages and the discrediting of the orthodox modernist
alternative, coupled with the growth in city branding following on from Paris, Frankfurt
and Barcelona and the emergence of the signature architect, all have had their part to
play in the growth of this phenomenon. The polarization of views which occur around
major national projects, be it Colin St. John Wilson’s British Library in recent decades
or Enric Miralles’s Scottish Parliament, show that even the most exalted of projects
are open to dispute, often triggered by financial problems, but soon focusing on the
representational qualities of the design.
Of course, the emotional power of a monument is tied up with this ability
to provide a representation. Aspects of memory and also of aspiration inhabit the

145
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image of the monument. It is therefore of significance that their forms have to be

comprehended by, or at least hold the curiosity of, its audience among the urban
population. The familiar association of urban location with a prestigious landmark is
only the most banal manifestation of this phenomenon. In the popular imagination,
however, the recognizability of a building’s form is a key factor in its acceptance
by citizen and visitor alike. The siting of the monument also has a part to play in its
emotional impact. The central location inherited from the Baroque by Beaux-Arts
compositional technique served, as Sitte observed, to isolate the monument from its
context and from its users. In many respects this was a result of the misreading of the
desertion of ruined ancient sites as representative of the idealized life of the city.
When translated into the modernist architectural idiom, the links of association
became strained or severed, as a certain compositional sterility came to the fore. The
element which was lacking was the very necessary one of ambiguity, where the
temporary and the ephemeral rub up against the permanent. The contrast in scale
which results, and the framing of the monumental with the everyday and vice versa
create a reciprocity within the urban environment which compositional technique finds
hard to mimic except in the subtlest of hands. I might even go so far as to say it should
not be designed, but rather allowed to happen. Material choices and aspects of scale
and rhythm are significant factors in this integration, but it is the apparently casual
care with which setting is handled which determines the success of a monument,
the narrow glimpse of a more ample structure, the continuity with which a route is
framed by a portico, the sense of arrival in a generous interior and the view back to a
public space.

146
Chapter 9

Spaces

Nothing is more simple than a piazza, culminating point of the fusion

between architecture and city, centre and suspension of a town – as a
vowel, a clear and full Italian vowel, is the centre and suspension of the
language.
(Lombardo 1984: 31)

The task of describing and understanding the qualities of buildings is a relatively easy
one in comparison to the subject of this chapter, urban space. However, the difficulty
of transferring attention from physical objects to equally physical spaces becomes
easier if one considers them as absences. As Patrizia Lombardo implies above, this
is in many ways a matter of formal structure. To extend her linguistic metaphor, the
consonants of the city are incomprehensible without the relief provided by its spaces;
the urban sentence remaining unintelligible without the punctuation of the pause and
the rest. The city, buildings and spaces, has a social meaning which is implicit in its
forms. Lombardo’s poetic image provides an analytic tool even if it fails to account
for the numerous roles a contemporary urban space is expected to fulfil. Such spaces
are required to attract an audience, to accommodate different (sometimes competing)
functions and to provide a form of public expression which buildings have often
abandoned in the pursuit of an anonymous modernity.
The morphological character of the contemporary city is one where the
individual identity of buildings dominates, with the surrounding space subservient to
their forms, be they private or public. The relationship between these buildings is often
so attenuated as to make the space between them redundant, either as a functional
entity or as a form of intangible matter to bind urban forms together. It can therefore
be initially observed that quantity of space is not the issue for concern, rather, the
quality of open space available. In contrast, the ambiguities of space in traditional
cities represented a positive civic value which was implicitly eclectic, because,
however the spaces were developed or designed, they made some form of reference
to the rich tradition of the European public square. From the Greek agora onwards, the
overlapping religious, civic and memorializing functions of urban space have led to its

147
Spaces

manifestations accruing collective meaning often despite the limitations of the political
systems which brought such spaces into being. Their equivocal nature as realizations
of the individual and the collective, and their appropriation by citizens for shared
activities reinforced the structure of a society. Space in the contemporary city
9.1
struggles to fulfil those roles.
Piazza del
This collective meaning found in vessels of urban space such as those in Campidoglio, Rome
Italian cities is often supported by edges which integrate commercial and other (Michelangelo
1538–64). The
activities into a greater whole. This integral model of urban space stands opposed to
epitome of the
the vacuum within which the monofunctional objects of modernity withdraw from theatrical urban
mutual contact into uncomfortable rivalry. To fulfil the ethical potential of con- spaces of the
Renaissance,
temporary urban space, should the public realm have more value than the individual
Michelangelo’s
buildings. In effect, urban buildings should serve as elements which define but do work redefined
not occupy the public realm, becoming the architectural backdrop to the life of the the ancient and
medieval fragments
city lived in its public spaces.
on the Capitoline
Naturally it is in the changing life of urban spaces that the metaphor of Hill into the centre
the city as theatre has its most profound expression. There are two distinct parts of Roman civic
government,
to the working of this metaphor, which is more than an elegant poetic image through the careful
(Sennett [1977] 1986). On the one hand, the use of urban spaces for public display use of perspective
in historic urban societies led to a blurring of the boundary between daily and effects around the
(absent) equestrian
celebratory activity. Architectural languages too developed their permanent forms statue of Marcus
from the temporary structures needed for the performance of civic rituals and for the Aurelius.
 Spaces

accommodation of spectators, binding building and space into a common origin in

display.
The staging of the Roman triumph is one such example where the tem-
porary arch adorned with military iconography became a permanent marker in the
9.2
cityscape and was transposed, particularly during the Renaissance into the façade
Piazzetta di
San Marco, motifs of a whole variety of building types not directly associated with military victory.
Venice. Jacopo The attitude to display remains in monumental form long after the particular meanings
Sansovino’s library
have evaporated.
(begun 1537) with
the loggetta of the Extending this tradition into urban space, consider the example of the
campanile (1537–45) Piazzetta of San Marco in Venice, the threshold of the great civic space of the Piazza
serve to support
and the site of significant public displays by the ducal court. Sansovino’s library reflects
the space’s function
as a ceremonial the arcading of the Doge’s Palace opposite by the creation of serial ranks of triumphal
gateway into forms which both dignify a major public room but also frame the observing spectators
the city, and to
with associations of Roman imperium. Renaissance Venice’s explicit assumption
transform it into
the stage on which of the role of Rome was a form of theatre played on the grandest of stages, that of
Venetian civic ritual politics.
could be performed.
The explicit
As an architectural element in this ensemble, Sansovino’s Loggetta at the
references to base of the Campanile is more explicit in the elaboration of the triumphal motif, but
Roman architecture itself stands in the tradition of Italian urban logge, arcaded urban structures that
allude to Venice’s
pretensions to
developed from commercial premises to places of public display and the dispensation
imperium. of justice. Prominently positioned in a public space, their simple function as a meeting
Spaces

place was extended into structures, such as the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, where
the mutually supportive activities of seeing and being seen could take place with the
sanction of the civic authorities.
It was of course also at this point in history that the Western theatre as a
building type developed from court structures which imitated the public realm of the
city, as shown in Serlio’s tragic and comic scenes, and where the political meaning
of contemporary civic structures provided the context for the theatrical narrative
(Canniffe 2001). But as Serlio’s images eloquently display, the relationship of city
and theatre was not only of concern to the leaders of society with their triumphal
gateways, grand palaces and pretensions to antiquity, but also to the lower strata of
society.
The enclosed square is not the only type of space on which the attention of
urban design needs to be focused, as spaces which are the destination of routes
also serve specific activities which reinforce the identity of the social group. Their form
often depends both on the identification of shared aspirations and the distinction
from other groups and desires. Streets, avenues, gardens, playgrounds and parks
create the web of spatial activity which maps ambiguously on to the social network.
The very unconscious arrangement of these urban spaces might appear more
organically related to everyday life in contrast to the rhetorical character of the
designed public space. In the contemporary British context this is a result both of
the abandonment of political expression to the communications media, but also the
typically undemonstrative character of urban form.
Although the focus of this chapter is the hard-surfaced urban square of
the European continental tradition, it should be acknowledged that Britain’s unique
contribution to urban space is that of the urban park and garden square. London’s
development during the eighteenth century, as outlined in particular in Steen Eiler
Rasmussen’s book London: The Unique City (1937) balanced the grand houses of
the well-to-do in terraces soberly unified by palace fronts with formal gardens which
provided settings for genteel diversion and display. Drawing a conscious distinction
between the continental view of landscape as a territory of control, the association of
nature with liberty and the prevailing narrative provided by poets such as Pope
onwards saw the English gentleman at one with ‘nature’ in the form of the garden.
Therefore the creation of green spaces with tree canopies, lawns and parterres was
an appropriately tamed frontispiece to the Englishman’s townhouse. That the by-
product of this arrangement was the sharing of this green space physically and visually
with the other strata of society was a fortuitous occurrence which formed much
of London’s special character. The development of these arrangements in Bath,
Edinburgh and in London’s Regent’s Park helped establish an enduring image of the
British city which survived the assaults of coming industrialization discussed in
Chapter 3.
Acknowledging this background, the prehistory of the contemporary
situation will be explored to establish some form of context, after a brief consideration
of some experiments in urban space. When the new aesthetic and material pos-

150
 Spaces

sibilities of industrialization could be appropriated by architecture and urban design,

the twin obsessions of early urban modernism (the mechanization of life and the
overthrowing of traditional forms of architectural expression) meant that it was
not until the period of post-war reconstruction that urban space began to figure
prominently in debates. The range of possibilities on offer, from urban repair to
complete new cities, meant that the representational value of urban spaces could
be given new stature. A sense of collective identity had been reinforced by the
experiences of war, and traditional forms of urban expression had been compromised
by their associations with totalitarianism. The ambition to recreate urban experience
for city dwellers was optimistically intended to express a complete cultural trans-
formation.
To take, for example, the series of Amsterdam playgrounds by Aldo van
Eyck such spaces worked on a number of levels (Jaschke 2003). Ostensibly merely a
product of benign social provision, their purpose was to cater for a new generation
recovering from war. However, the use of bomb-damaged sites awaiting redevelop-
ment meant that the changed topography of the city could be transformed through a
change in perception from urban war wound to neighbourhood focus. And, finally,
the appropriately ludic qualities of the structures themselves referred to the work
of Surrealist artists, most notably Giacometti, who were responsible for defining the
cultural image of post-war existentialist Europe. These marginal spaces then became
symbolic of new urban possibilities.
In Britain, the pages of The Architectural Review produced by Gordon
Cullen, responding in part to the subtle nationalism of the Neo-Romantic movement,
promoted ‘townscape’ initially as a form of aesthetic assessment of the quiet values
of local materials and naïve design (Cullen 1961). This expression of the urban
unconscious then became the basis of design strategies which sought to ameliorate
the utilitarian qualities of Welfare State design in a form of a modern urban
picturesque. Such thinking influenced not only the architectural establishment but
also the self-appointed avant-garde such as Alison and Peter Smithson. Their plaza at
the Economist Group, sitting above the ubiquitous parking and service deck, was a
fragment of their Haupstadt Berlin transposed to London’s clubland. Although the
dominant motif of the design was the replication at different scales of a tower form
indebted both to Miesian corporate architecture and the tradition of the English
Baroque, the space between them was also an active element in the composition
(Smithson 2001). The ground floor arcades in particular indicated that the informal
piazza of an Italian hill town was the urban model they and other Team X architects
(van Eyck among them) were following. However, it should be noted that this type of
plaza, much emulated during the following two decades, was essentially an early form
of the privatized public space which has become increasingly familiar.
What architects of this then young generation were reacting to was
the type of urban space best exemplified by Le Corbusier’s Capitol at Chandigarh.
Here the symbolic representations of the components of the constitution, the legis-
lature, the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the executive (in the unbuilt form of the

151
Spaces

governor’s palace) were arranged across a vast space like pieces on a chess board,
with little spatial definition other than the dramatic relationship to the Himalayas. The
evocation of this strategy, however, was not the mechanized city of Le Corbusier’s
early urban projects discussed in Chapter 3 but the genius loci of the ancient
city where the continuity between the landscape, the architectural monument and
the deities was exposed. Although Le Corbusier’s sketches indicate the Indian origin
of much of his iconography, the source of the plaza at Chandigarh is the ancient
Greek city and the ruins which he had explored as a young man and always remained
the measure against which he judged the contemporary city (Le Corbusier 1927:
165–180). In this scenario, urban space plays a neutral supportive role between
landscape and architecture, a neutrality reinforced by the dissipating effect of the
distances between the buildings. Similar problems attended the design of Brasilia, but
in the developed world a monumentalized vacancy often substituted for the design
of urban space in new public complexes (for example, Boston City Hall) and residential
districts (such as Park Hill in Sheffield and the Hulme crescents in Manchester).
While with some foresight the architects of Team X had been critical of
the acontextual application of Modernist architectural form to the historic city, the
wholesale reaction to Modernism from the 1960s onwards witnessed much con-
centration on public space. If one strand of criticism saw the forms of Modernist
architecture as impenetrably unwelcoming to the visitor, then the setting of the
building and its relationship to urban space also attracted renewed scrutiny. A product
of this period, Robert Krier’s Urban Space adopted the tradition of Sittesque analysis
of space (Krier 1979). Krier’s emphasis on the geometrical definition of space and its
framing by continuous ranges of buildings provided a model of civic space which
superficially was acceptable to the aesthetic preferences of postmodern architects.
Yet its strategy of seamless continuity between interior and exterior forms is deeply
indebted to Modernism, and is not entirely dependent on the classically proportioned
façades appropriated to dress the buildings. The radical lesson of the book was in the
reversal of priority from buildings toward spaces. As I suggested at the beginning of
this chapter, the realization of the significance of the form of a space, in and of itself,
rather than being considered merely a gap between buildings, represented a complete
change of attitude to the citizen’s relationship with his or her urban context. An urban
totality was proposed that might be characterized as one of enclosure and interiority
against the alienating exposure of the modern city.
The messianic quality of the various urban strategies of Robert Krier (and
even more so of his brother Leon) sometimes obscure the sophistication of their
arguments and their reaction against a modernism which they were prone to
caricature but which they nonetheless understood. A more self-consciously ambiva-
lent pose was struck by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter in Collage City, referred to
previously in Chapter 6 (Rowe and Koetter 1978). In their elegantly wrought argument,
the Modernist revision of the city, particularly in the projects of Le Corbusier, could not
be overturned. Instead relief from the sterility and monotony of the cities created by
his followers was to be provided by the playfulness which characterized his own

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architectural work, with its ambiguous juxtapositions, poetic use of materials, motifs
and formal economy. Sharing with the Kriers an interest in the figure-ground reversals
inherent in the manipulation of the Nolli plan, Rowe and Koetter praised the continuity
of urban environments where buildings could be simultaneously ‘space occupier’ and
‘space definer’. The Kriers’ European situation meant that their work was always to
be seen as a critique of the post-war Western European consensus, attacking it
simultaneously from the Left and Right. The American context of Rowe and Koetter,
however, depoliticized their argument, bestowing a degree of formalism on their work
removed as it was from any social agenda (unlike, say, that of Jane Jacobs) (Jacobs
1961). The autonomous architecture of the period therefore had its counterpart in
their autonomous urbanism, with their manifesto ending teasingly not with projects
explaining Collage City as a technique but with a series of historical exemplars.
A third position which emerged during this period was that which took
Aldo Rossi’s The Architecture of the City, first published in Italian in 1966, as its key
text (Rossi 1982). Growing from the specific context of post-Fascist Italian architec-
ture, Rossi invoked the ‘rational’ classificatory procedures of the Enlightenment but
combined this approach with a distinctive graphic language and these two aspects
appealed to two different audiences. While Rossi was taking the researches of
the Italian school of urban morphologists and defining a series of architectural types,
his images also evoked a series of urban atmospheres where scale disjunctions
attempted to link the domestic and the urban. Rossi himself recognized the split
between intentions and experiences in his discussion of the Roman Forum:

it is appropriate to distinguish between locus and context as the latter is

commonly understood in architectural and urban design discourse. The
present analysis approaches the problem of the locus by attempting
to set out an extremely rational definition of an artifact, approaching it
as something which is by nature complex but which it is nonetheless
necessary to attempt to clarify as the scientist does when he develops
hypotheses in order to elucidate the imprecise world of matter and its
laws. Locus in this sense is not unrelated to context; but context seems
strangely bound up with illusion, with illusionism. As such it has nothing
to do with the architecture of the city, but rather with the making of a
scene, and as a scene it demands to be sustained directly in relation to its
functions. That is, it depends on the necessary permanence of functions
whose very presence serves to preserve forms as they are and to immo-
bilize life, saddening us like would-be tourists of a vanished world.
It is hardly surprising that this concept of context is espoused
and applied by those who pretend to preserve the historical cities by
retaining their ancient facades or reconstructing them in such a way as to
maintain their silhouettes and colours and other such things; but what do
we find after these operations when they are actually realised? An empty,
often repugnant stage.
(1982: 123)

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Rossi’s text distinguishes surface from context, the atmosphere of a city being appar-
ently replicable without any comprehension of the typology from which it was built.
Although this division would be a phenomenon which would bedevil the reception
of his own work that was decades in the future. Mistrustful of the subjectivity of
proponents of contextualism, his Rationalism sought an architecture and urbanism
which was less apologetic about its presence, but which acknowledged that time
would transform it, that it would, as it were, domesticate the urban intervention
through use. The ambiguity of this position in relation to the temporal dimension
contrasts with the fixity with which contextualists appropriate a past point in history.
If Rossi’s theoretical attitude to urban space is best exemplified by The
Architecture of the City, his testament in the practice of urban design is probably
La Nuova Piazza at Fontivegge, Perugia, designed at the height of his influence
on the European architectural scene (Rossi 1984: 36–74). Its form can be seen to be
a translation of the precedent of Piazza IV Novembre (discussed in Chapter 2) into a
contemporary idiom. The resulting space, as yet incomplete, evokes in built form the
language of the city which De Chirico painted at the start of the twentieth century,
the shadowed space, the silent arcade, the solitary figure looking for shelter. The
familiarity of these forms to the contemporary eye, and the resonances they create
in the psyche suggest that the forming of an urban space in this unprepossessing
context has been successful despite the material poverty of its construction, but
undeniably with echoes of a cold theatricality Rossi had identified in the work of
others, recalling that phrase ‘an empty, often repugnant stage’.
Yet Rossi’s built work is at least being true to his theoretical position of 20
years earlier in that his referencing of Piazza IV Novembre is itself at some remove
from mere imitation. The buildings do not pretend to be the structures of a dynamic
medieval comune. If anything, their forms speak of the ‘bureaucratic inertia’ which
characterizes contemporary Italian public administration. They struggle to define a
public space which mediates between their familiar but rigid types.
It might reasonably be objected that this selection of major figures in
relation to urban space is rather partial, and that significant contemporary figures
with a different attitude have been ignored. I would answer that the equivalent figures
of the period (say, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi) had in their disparate ways
an agenda which saw the city as a territory of play but pursued a quasi-Modernist
agenda of blurring the distinction between building and space which contradicts my
support for clear definition but mutual support between building and space. The
literary analysis they employed to construct their architecture removed the human
figure from space as a formal object.
Consider a celebrated example such as Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette in
Paris, designed and completed during the 1980s, and hailed as representing a new
type of urban space. The urban strategy is that of the landscape as an immense form
of dissipated architecture, with the famous red follies demanding attention from the
visitor. The neutrality of the grid creates at best a series of vacancies and at worst a
sequence of alienating disengaged experiences (Tschumi 1987). While the project is

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9.3
La Nuova Piazza di
Fontivegge, Perugia
(Aldo Rossi 1982–).
An attempt to
create an urban
space on derelict
urban land, the
space features the
typical emblematic
forms of the
architect. This
photograph shows
the fountain and
the public building,
the broletto,
intended to evoke
the arrangement of
Perugia’s Piazza IV
Novembre.

a highly conceptual design, there is no spatial idea (certainly none supplied by the
combination of Cartesian points, lines and planes) pursued with the same degree of
success as the formal architectural manipulation of the follies. Urban space is
presented as a vacuum between buildings and we are asked to adopt the same ironic
attitude to this as the architect. The isolation from the experience of the city this
represents is a product of the autonomous mind games which brought about
the design.

155
 It should be emphasized that the issue here is not one of architectural 9.4
Parc de La Villette,
language, or of abstraction per se. It is that the space is simply reduced to a set of
Paris (Bernard
dimensions which the user of the park is expected to inhabit. The architect has, as Tschumi 1982–85).
it were, nothing to say on the subject. Now such reticence might be regarded as a Commissioned as
one of Mitterand’s
positive virtue, but this silence has to be contrasted with the furious rhetoric of the
grands projets,
follies. As we shall see in some of the examples to be discussed later, abstraction the winning
can create interesting spaces which accommodate use, but in this instance human competition entry
featured a series of
activity between the follies is merely tolerated rather than welcomed.
follies positioned
Inheriting the legacy of these debates in the past quarter century, respond- through the park
ing to the impoverished public realm bestowed by Modernism and the unsuccessful at 100-metre
intervals. The
attempts to redress this deficit associated with Team X, European architects have
leisure activities
sought to recover civic space for use and pleasure by the citizen. In the following three of the park are
examples, different urban contexts lead to the adoption of strategies which reflect then required
to accommodate
those conditions and offer a variety of languages for contemporary civic space. Three themselves to this
examples, from Spain, Holland and Ireland, will be discussed which address their self-referential
different urban and political contexts in unique ways, beginning with Placa de l’Estacio Cartesian logic.

Sants from post-Franco Barcelona, and followed by the Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam

and Meeting House Square in Dublin. In each instance they represent attempts at
urban regeneration, although the political context of the Catalan example contrasts
with the more conventional situation of the other two examples. As flagships of
regeneration, they have a marginal quality which distinguishes them from the historic
centres of each of the cities. Energy therefore has to be expended on attracting use to

156
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the spaces themselves, in addition to the ambient use associated with their attendant
buildings. This is amply demonstrated by the first example.
Primarily, one should note the paradox that the creation of such a generous
provision of open space as these squares depends on an apparently extreme density
of use and inhabitation. Suburban models which dominate the developed world place
a value on unoccupied space which is determined by the distance which can be
9.5
Placa de l’Estacio preserved between one citizen and another. Conversely these open spaces function
Sants, Barcelona by encouraging proximity, the contamination of one purpose by another, the variable
(Pinon Viaplana and
flow of activities during a day. The possibilities that occur from these planned and
Miralles 1982–3).
A family of skeletal fortuitous contacts then fertilize these small patches of urban space so that they
public structures assume the specific and sophisticated characteristics of place.
built over
The site of Placa de l’Estacio Sants (1982–83) was an awkward design
submerged railway
tracks, this space problem for its architects Helio Pinon, Alberto Viaplana and Enric Miralles, not least
attempts to define because it straddled the underground tracks of Sants railway station and could only
a new sculptural
support the lightest load (Sola-Morales 1986). It is very wide and comparatively
language for public
space. A series featureless, the station being a low structure, and the nondescript surrounding
of formal buildings being twenty-storey slab blocks. Nor did the boundary have any obvious
compositional
games are played
geometry, so that possible connections to context, even if it were desirable, would
with scale and have been awkward, allowing the architects to exploit abstract compositional devices.
perspective to The designers’ first strategy was to extend a grid across the site which was
give some identity
to this immense derived from the rhythm of the station platforms, with a principal axis centred on the
space. station. This axis marked the highest level of the treatment of the granite paving. To
Spaces

the north it falls away at a gentle incline, while to the south a short descending flight
of steps is followed by a gradual swelling of the pavement. On this subtly undulating
terrain each object is then treated as an independent sculptural object which reacts
to this new tabula rasa.
For example, the northern section is bounded by a sinuous line of benches,
whose constant height contrasts with the falling ground plane. At the western end,
and closest to the station, the paving breaks into a series of troughs which, with lines
of upright steel posts, form a walk-through fountain. The central axis is marked by a
level area shaded by a long mesh canopy supported on slender steel columns. Arrayed
beneath were a series of polished granite gaming tables, incised with boards for chess
and backgammon. The desire to make usable pieces of public furniture was laudable,
but their positioning and construction fail to invite use and the benches function more
successfully as a sculptural counterpoint to the swooping canopy.
The southern boundary is marked by a series of elevated, curved mesh
screens, but the main feature of this section is the large square canopy, the palio
which dominated the entire composition and provides its principal element, if such
a thing could be said to exist in this dispersed landscape. The canopy is supported
on 16 slender columns which march across the swelling ground and poise on curiously
mounded feet. A series of variously sized empty plinths, a curvilinear bench and a
whimsically drooping station clock complete the repertoire of forms.
But what does this family of emaciated elements indicate? The single
uniting feature (apart from the limited palette of materials) would appear to be a series
of simple formal contrasts. Sinuous canopy against horizontal ground, horizontal
canopy against bulging surface, sinuous bench against sloping pavement, straight
bench against swelling ground. To this extent the square can be read as sculptural,
although the empty plinths suggest a memory of a more traditional form of urban
expression which survives through these fragmentary remains. In this contemporary
scenario, the architect of a public space can at best hope to play the role of ironist
turning the tyrannies and inconsistencies of urban life to playful creative effect. In its
location in Barcelona, this is related to the ludic qualities of Catalan modern art and the
transformation of the discarded fragment into a work of new value by means of play.
It is possible therefore to construct a lineage for this puzzling urban space which
places the architects’ apparent disdain within a cultural tradition.
The architects were afraid neither to challenge the users of the space, the
commuters and other travellers, with an unfamiliar experience, nor to employ
apparently tentative forms to do so. The typical features of a Mediterranean plaza,
the arcade, the fountain and the statue are present, but in forms which respond
to the immense size and open quality of the site. This was a considerable achievement
and one of the reasons why this space became the object of much attention in the late
1980s, leading to its imitation in other locations.
The second example is the Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam (1996) where
Adriaan Geuze of the Dutch planning and landscape practice West 8 designed a space
surrounded by shops and flanked by the City Theatre and the City Concert Hall.

158
9.6 A resolute project for the void in the city structure creates a panoramic and interactive
Schouwburgplein, public space, flexibly responding to different uses, and changing during the day and
Rotterdam (West 8
1996). A new public
the seasons (Molinari 2000). The metaphor for the design is the Port of Rotterdam
space over a itself, so that the square is intended to be read as some form of urban microcosm,
parking deck, which appropriates existing images, plays with their scale and recontextualizes them.
different materials
are used as surfaces
Furthermore, the gesture of elevating the square creates an ambiguity between its
to accommodate a reading as an absence and as a positive stage upon which the citizens can act, a
variety of uses. The conscious acknowledgement of the theatrical use of public space.
crane-like elements
add an architectural Orientation and aspects of different use throughout the day and night
animation to that condition the way the activities and surfaces are organized. A collage of materials,
provided by the
such as a pored epoxy floor containing silver leaves, perforated metal panels and
people attracted
to the square. timber decking creates a decorative effect. The mosaic of materials then encourages
Source: Photograph different uses, such as skateboarding and socializing especially by local youth,
courtesy of Tom
accentuated by the dramatic use of fluorescent lighting. This introduces an element of
Jefferies.
mechanical animation. LED displays form a digital clock of the ventilation towers and
four huge elements evoke the cranes of the port and were intended for the public to
alter the lighting and perceptual configuration of the space.
The individually expressed surfaces of the Schouwburgplein are layered
over an underground car park, and as with the previous example, these ambiguities
in the Schouwburgplein are explicitly manipulated by West 8 to create an urban
space which invites contemporary uses. Not content with the tradition of static

159
Spaces

monumentalism, a dynamism is introduced to the space through the differential use

of materials and animated elements which dramatize the life provided by the inhab-
itants. This independent life of the square, combined with the flow of people provided
by the adjacent public buildings, and the relationship to the skyline of Rotterdam,
confirms the intention of the designers to create a new type of representational public
space.
However, this space relies on technology, particularly for the illumination,
to animate it through attracting an audience who are also the performers. In a rather
less benign climate than Barcelona, ambient use cannot be depended on, and every
effort in materials and expression is employed to create an engaging urban expe-
rience. Where this has a negative aspect is in the determinism of the square’s various
zones, and the likelihood of technological failure to produce a negative effect. The
designers achieve a considerable feat in integrating its various pragmatic and aesthetic
aspects, but appear to require complete engagement with the space and its elements
rather than the more common passive appropriation of the public realm.
Very different in scale from the previous two examples, Meeting House
Square, Dublin (1996), was designed as part of a sequence of small public spaces
in the regeneration of the Temple Bar area. Reprieved from demolition to make way
for a planned transport interchange, the historic fabric of this blighted core area of
the city was already pitted with vacant sites and disused buildings (Quinn 1996). The
masterplan for the area was won in competition by a group of architects who styled
themselves Group 91, and proposed permeability and a new attitude to public open
space as the central concepts. A group of three new squares, serving commercial,
performance and market uses was designed to encourage pedestrian movement
through the area and across the River Liffey by means of a new footbridge. The central
element of these new urban perambulations was Meeting House Square designed
by Paul Keogh for Group 91 and surrounded by new cultural institutions introduced to
Temple Bar.
The immediate previous use of the site had been surface car parking,
and its back lot location did not immediately suggest its suitability for public uses.
However, new cultural uses and new connecting routes meant it was suitable for
development as a space which could serve both as a punctuation in the urban fabric
and as a multipurpose external space for performance. The first structure to be
completed was the Ark (Shane O’Toole and Michael Kelly) a children’s theatrical centre
housed in the carcass of a partially demolished nonconformist meeting house. The
back wall of the stage area was designed so as to open up to the new square as an
external auditorium, with the proscenium created in the centrepiece of a new quasi-
industrial brick façade. Adjacent to the Ark, a new Gallery of Photography (Sheila
O’Donnell and John Tuomey) was created between the Square and the same archi-
tects’ earlier Irish Film Centre. The new façade features a large aperture which can
be screened to frame a projection surface for external film performances.
Rather less animated in its architectural appearance, but housing animating
functions, the next building defining the square is the Gaiety School of Acting (Paul

160
9.7 Keogh). Mixed in use, the studio spaces occupy the upper floors above a double-
Meeting House
height café space, the glazed façade of which addresses the square. Finally, and rather
Square, Dublin
(Paul Keogh/Group more robust in its brick defensive character is the National Photography Archive (Sheila
91 1996). A small O’Donnell and John Tuomey) which converses with the Gallery of Photography
public space
opposite by the same architects as an upper window provides a projection booth for
surrounded by
public functions the screen on the Gallery façade. Carpeted in Wicklow granite, and furnished with
which serves trees and mobile furniture, Meeting House Square revives the idea of place through
in different
the tradition of the urban room. In this instance, the buildings and space form a
configurations
as an external consistent composition. The architectural language is relatively muted, allowing the
auditorium. The positive qualities of the space to be more clearly understood. The robustness of this
building with the
strategy means that with very little apparent effort, the square can be adapted
openable façade
is The Ark (Shane between different types of formal performance use and the casual theatricality of the
O’Toole and everyday.
Michael Kelly
The diversity of these three examples should dispel the distracting issue
Architects/Group
91 1996). of style from consideration. The attenuated forms from Barcelona, the self-conscious
Source: Temple Bar metaphors of Rotterdam, and the contextual layerings of Dublin represent distinct
Properties Ltd.
attitudes. Each adopts a specific architectural language to express the characteristics
of place, a unified series of forms in Barcelona, an exaggerated palette of different
materials in Rotterdam and a careful mix of old and new in Dublin. Yet, in recognizing
these differences, whether attempting to create a new monumental urban landscape,

161
Spaces

an engaging environment or an apparently more modest architectural repair, they all

relate to the morphology of their contexts and assert the positive potential of space.
The commodification of culture tends towards the devaluing of space in
favour of the self-evident attractions of the architectural object, as the skyline of any
developing city attests. Therefore, the stance that these recent examples assume
stands in the way of the drift of urban space towards residual void between dominant
buildings, to its conceptualization as the negative realm of the vehicle. In parallel with
this tendency at the macro scale, in the life of individuals in the developed world, the
functional necessity of the public forum has been superseded by the availability of
virtual communication and information through electronic media. The home therefore
takes on the aspect of site for the expression of communal values, an overturning of
the traditional hierarchical relationship of the public and private realms. Acknowledging
this context, however, it should be asserted that these cultural developments liberate
traditional public spaces to be more overtly rhetorical in the expression of the ethics of
a community.
These three squares are new elements of Barcelona, Rotterdam and Dublin
where the values of their respective cities are potently expressed through space,
diversely appointed examples of contemporary urban practice which share an overt
assertion of the theatrical aspects of the civic realm. The root from which urban
theatricality springs is representation, and combined with its political dimension it
reinforces the importance of such defined public spaces as an urban phenomenon,
uniting the present day with the ancient origins of the city. The positive nature of these
urban spaces counteracts the predominant urban image of private commercial
interests. In addition, the study of the morphology of the spaces of the historic city
continues to provide a resource through which contemporary urban culture can be
sustained (Janson and Burklin 2002). As can be observed in Rossi’s piazza in Perugia,
however, the results can often be dubious. The appropriateness of traditional forms
used by contemporary urban designers requires an understanding of both the historic
city and a sympathy for present-day problems and possibilities. The value of historic
examples perhaps lies in their transformation over time rather than the notion of
permanent form. The daily life of the urban dweller was also a theatrical subject and
its accommodation within civic spaces is of enhanced importance in democratic
societies.
In this regard commercial display has an important function in the con-
figuration of urban spaces, both as a magnet which attracts people and, in our
environment of branding, market share and built-in obsolescence, it provides a
changeful aspect over time. The ambient show this provides to the city underscores
the latent theatricality of the city against which the activities of shopping, relaxation
and people-watching can be read as the admittedly humdrum contemporary expres-
sion of the urban drama. That only a simulation of this phenomenon is provided by
privatized public space should not need stressing. The life of public spaces grew up
organically with the juxtaposition of commercial and civic activities rather than being
solely the product of commercial ambition.

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The metaphor of the theatre, of course, designates the roles of actors and
spectators which the urban population play. However, this form of civic engagement
is only facilitated by the patrons, designers and managers of clearly defined space. The
history of urban space affords many examples of the manipulation of populations
in urban scenarios especially by tyrants who have found an eager audience for the
appropriation of the iconography of power. Despite the apparent failure of the use
of precedent as demonstrated by the example from Aldo Rossi, there is a tradition of
democratic space such as those of the city–states of medieval Italy which the other
examples from contemporary Europe evoke in their dramatic attempts to celebrate the
amenity of civic space.
In trying to draw conclusions to this most vital component in the urban
matrix, it is possible to conclude that the most successful of urban spaces show the
same three characteristics, that they are genuinely open and permeable, that they
are relatively unadorned, and that they are clearly defined. To consider the first of
these aspects, openness is significant as a guarantor of the public nature of such
spaces. This sounds banal, but it has to be contrasted with the twin contemporary
phenomena, the privatization of public space and the simulation of public space in
the private sphere, particularly for commercial purposes. These tendencies, corroding
the tradition of public space from opposite sides, obscure the subtleties of distinction
between public and private realms which help form social habits. Therefore, although
public spaces have traditionally been sites of licence, an important safety valve in any
open society, they also help form conventions which hold the collective and the
individual in balance. Such permeability leads to social benefits in the ownership of
spaces being assumed by a diverse local population as we see in the Shouwburgplein.
The second aspect, is a plea for respite from the invasion of street furniture
and material elaboration which increasingly obscures the principal quality of such
spaces, that is, their generosity of space. A certain severity and robustness of mate-
rials such as those used at Meeting House Square, far from deterring activity, ensure
that a variety of uses are possible within such a space and that variety encourages a
dynamic social occupation which an over-prescriptive arrangement might prevent. In
a paradoxical way, the aspects of use and of representation of use are often confused
and a calmer treatment of a space allows its qualities to be explored in an ambient
way, the extent of which few designers could fathom. As with Riegl’s definition of
monuments, the unintentional has a high degree of significance.
Finally, the clarity of definition reinforces the specificities of place and
identity by distinguishing itself from other parts of the city as exemplified by Placa
del’Estacio Sants. This aspect of form contrasts with the social manner of openness
to create spaces which engage the visitor with experience of the place itself. This
haptic appropriation of space precedes any intellectual comprehension just as, to
return to Patrizia Lombardo’s metaphor, the developing sense of hearing can early
distinguish between one vowel and another.

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Chapter 10

The Urban Future

The task of providing a conclusion to the various themes explored in the preceding
chapters is a complex one. Each of the elements considered might appear rather
discrete, dealt with as they are under such specific categories. Furthermore, the detail
of these phenomena may emerge as being at odds with the historical sweep of the
early chapters and their emphasis on the broader picture. Yet since I believe in
the interconnectedness of the general and the particular and the historical and the
contemporary (not always in conscious or deliberate ways), I want to reverse the
hitherto narrowing focus of my thoughts. I shall broaden out from the specific
circumstances of particular urban ensembles to more general aspects of theory
and design, and finally to speculations grounded in the direct experience of urban
societies. In this direction we move from examples of urban regeneration through
the relationship between urban aesthetics and ethics toward the social purpose of
urbanism.
First, I want to return to a consideration of my own urban environment
as discussed in Chapter 4, where familiarity makes the energetic spectacle of
regeneration less beguiling. In the mid-1990s economic and political conditions
created two competing visions for Manchester. The first was that of the regenerated
post-industrial city transformed through the repair of the urban environment into a
sustainable city. The second was that of the ruined city, devastated by the 1996 IRA
bomb, ready to seize the commercial opportunity political violence had offered, and
to construct an exclusive retail, leisure and residential environment. While the first
vision was the official aspiration of the city council, economic realpolitik has ensured
that it is the second vision which has been fulfilled.
As has been previously mentioned, Manchester’s urban development
tradition has been one of short-term economic exploitation with little concern for
long-term consequences. There is therefore a certain native inevitability to recent
developments, but also a tradition of amelioration of the environment into which the
promotion of sustainability fits (Manchester City Council 1997).

164
 The urban future

Flexibility of building form, its adaptability and durability, were specifically

identified as aids to the creation of a sustainable urban environment, yet would appear
to have been abandoned in practice in the reconstruction of the city centre. Designed
by the multidisciplinary practice BDP, the huge new Marks & Spencer store, the
economic lynchpin of the redevelopment, has proved to be too large for its struggling
owners, but its utilitarian form has enabled its subdivision and part occupancy by
Selfridges & Co. This potential flexibility is harder to perceive in the later flagship
buildings, the raking residential slab No. 1 Deansgate, and the twisted boomerang of
Urbis, both designed by Ian Simpson and both dramatic glazed structures which rise
self-confidently above the roof line of the Victorian city.
Urbis opened in the historic centre of Manchester in the summer of 2002,
an element of regeneration caused by the 1996 bomb. Occupying a long vacant
block, the building has an ambiguous relationship to its urban context which includes
medieval fragments, nineteenth-century transport and trade structures, and con-
temporary retail environments. Its aggressive form as space occupier is combined
with a recessive role as a space definer for a new urban park, while conceptually the
reflective nature of Urbis as a museum of the modern city provides a fitting fusion of
its form and content, but raises questions about the city’s attitude to its historic
environment, which is worth exploring in detail.
In the masterplan produced as a result of a competition in the autumn of
1996, and won by EDAW with Ian Simpson, the rational strategy of reconnecting
pieces of the urban tissue was coupled with the introduction on this still vacant site
of a new ‘millennium building’ which was predicted to reflect on the rapidly rebuilt city
centre. In sketch form this had a spiral organization, indicative of its aspirational
programme, but itself poorly related to the complexity of its context. This proposal
evolved into Urbis and a building was commissioned from Ian Simpson after a further
architectural competition. However, this museum of the modern city finds itself in an
urban environment which is in effect a museum.
Formally, Urbis is delicately poised between tradition and modernity. Of
all the elements of the new city centre it is the most carefully resolved, and complex
in its scale. Its footprint is traditionally urban, clearly defining its street edges and
opening out a semi-enclosed space which is welcoming and mediates with the public
ground floor interior. Despite its appearance of novelty, Urbis is a conventional urban
monument, although the relationship to its context is enigmatic. Making great claims
for broad connections to urban geography and social history respectively, it con-
sciously separates itself from its immediate environment. Partly this is a result of the
technical demands of its exhibition, but since the design of the building predates
the detailed design of its content, itself the subject of severe criticism, this would
appear to be fortuitously functional. Rather, it represents a deliberate attempt to
create separation, disorienting the visitor for little good purpose and frustrating the
commonplace desire to make connections between interior and exterior. At Urbis
the ostensible strategy is to follow Modernist theory and expose structure and
circulation, the staggered floors revealing the layers of space and the exposure of the

165
funicular lift and its structure providing animation on a large scale to the building. The 10.1
result of these expensively produced gestures could not be described as clarity, Urbis, Manchester
(Ian Simpson
however, coupled as they are with layers of obscured glass, the tortuous imposition Architects 2002).
of a prescribed route and the cacophonous signage of the exhibits. Its technical A ‘museum of
the modern city’,
sophistication affords no satisfaction.
Urbis sits at the
The metaphors of travel are combined in Urbis with the prosthetic exten- edge of a new city
sion of our sensory equipment to embody the relationship between the extended park adjacent to
the historic centre
body and the fluid collective experience of the contemporary city. While the ostensible
of Manchester.
function of Urbis is to reveal urban processes, the opacity of the building’s form and Its translucent
detachment from its surroundings suggest an alternative reading. Far from acting as glazed exterior
contains layered
a transparent filter between content and context in the tradition of Modernism, it
exhibition spaces
stands as a self-sufficient entity which removes the visitors from an authentic and rich and an exclusive
urban context, three-dimensional and tangible, and deposits them in a realm of two- restaurant where
diners view the
dimensional simulations. But this disengaged object, trading on the commodification
city below.
of the urban experience, itself engages with the tradition of Manchester liberalism and
the principles of the laissez-faire economy it once pioneered. For this site, in the ‘Old
Town’ was the focus 160 years ago of Engels’s scathing description of industrial
Manchester. The elevated view of the city’s history is thus sanitized for the diners at
its exclusive rooftop restaurant.
At ground level, however, a different urban narrative pervades the new café
society. Here the new instruction from the city fathers is delivered, ‘make the right

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decision. Turn and walk away.’ This refers to the unpleasant and unforeseen conse-
quences of another municipal campaign, the promotion of the night-time economy,
the ’24-hour city’ and the positive attitude to the opening of licensed premises, which
accrue in the rise in drink-related street violence which is damaging the expensively
wrought image of the reborn city. A city centre management strategy has developed
which, rather than create the sustainable environment promised, relies on CCTV to
protect the occupants of the new glass prostheses on the urban body, suggesting that
the electronically secured city has a more positive future than the contemporary
lifestyle promoted in the sales literature. It does not require a new species of
Mancunian haruspex to read the liver of the urban drunk to determine the prospects
of the city.
These are among the results of trickle-down urbanism. The highly
visible division between these different social groups is not a benign product of the
creation of mixed use developments, a picturesque contrast of glitter against dirt.
Rather it represents a fault line in the cast list of urban regeneration, between those
whose presence and income are desired to make the projects viable and those whose
presence is at best to be tolerated as passive spectators.
Moving on from the specific context of a northern English post-industrial
city to the more general scenario of contemporary architecture and urbanism, one is
similarly presented with a situation composed equally of the optimistic and the
worrying. Cities compete to be considered as positive examples of design not only
for historic splendours but also contemporary wonders. The tendency is to prize the
global over the local but careful designers continue to bring fresh readings to different
locations. The optimism with which cultural projects are invested in terms of
the ‘Bilbao effect’ has many local precedents. Tristram Hunt makes the following
observation:

As it was for the Victorians, it is again suggested that culture is the pillar
of an urban civilization. But there is a difference. Whereas nineteenth-
century middle-class civic culture was more often than not the indigenous
product of a Nonconformist conscience, the culture of today’s cities
appears more of a branding and marketing tool than a reflection of civic
identity. It is frequently the work of quangos and urban regeneration
consultants rather than the organic outcome of any home-grown civic
sentiment.
(Hunt 2004: 346)

This form of detachment in cultural expression might be accepted for the failure of
some of the recent major projects. But the aspirations for Greece and Italy which
inspired the patrons of Victorian culture were undeniably foreign to the majority of
the British urban audience. What existed though, before the full development of the
mass media, was a consensus that such cultural precedents were of universal
significance. The personal architectural languages in which today’s cultural mon-
uments are formed require explanation, even justification, from their designers. This

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The urban future

identifies them as being essentially a personal vision which the wider public can safely
ignore.
While the language of public architecture, often the very symbols by which
a city’s identity is fixed, remains the subject of fierce debate, other aspects of the built
environment appear to develop almost unconsciously although their impact is greater
on everyday life, namely, housing and commercial building. In the British situation, the
application of market-driven principles to the supply of housing during the past quarter
century has resulted in a slow burning crisis. The family home’s status as a social
asset has been converted into a financial asset for which buyers are expected to
compete. Rising incomes help fuel this market. But cities depend for the functioning
of their public amenities on the key workers whose low wages exclude them from this
rising market. Social divisions are thereby reinforced.
The problem has been identified at the result stage, with respite apparently
at hand through the form of migrant labour, assumed to be grateful for the privilege
of living in conditions the indigenous population will no longer tolerate. Nor are they
expected to participate in the climb up the housing ladder. Projections of expected
development are produced in the confidence that policy makers will have moved
on before serious problems occur. The use of brownfield land is painstakingly slow
to achieve, dependent as it is on the first step of detoxification and therefore
the greenbelt becomes prey to more immediate development. This leaves the urban
policies of densification and compact cities in tatters as motor use increases
and the environmental situation weakens. As this situation proceeds, with one
or two honourable exceptions, design talent is expended in the creation of exclu-
sive lifestyles rather than the provision of innovative responses to changing social
patterns.
In parallel with the domestic and cultural spheres, contemporary com-
mercial spaces often represent provocations to a sense of civic values. Appearances
are only one aspect which requires consideration, but tend to dominate debate as
they are more diverting to discuss than the often inflexible content. For example, the
recently completed Paternoster Square in London adjacent to St Paul’s Cathedral is a
telling demonstration of recent urban practices. In a new masterplan by Sir William
Whitfield, the relationship to the monumental presence of St Paul’s was combined
with a desire to approximate the footprint of the buildings which existed on the
site prior to the Second World War and German aerial bombardment. The resulting
development, however, is a series of larger buildings with varying degrees of classical
dress around a central ‘piazza’ from which views of Wren’s dome can be taken. The
apparent variety of façades masks a monoculture of financial office content which
renders the efforts of the individual architects to distinguish themselves on this
prominent site as rather redundant. To add to the aesthetic difficulties, but serving
almost as a sign of the authors’ pretensions to classical urbanity, a colonnade attempts
to unite the disparate buildings. The compromised quality of the completed project,
with its historical ambitions unfulfilled and the opportunity to provide a new setting for
St Paul’s missed as well, serves as a warning against the attractions of nostalgia.

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 The urban future

10.2 History provides valuable lessons for the contemporary city but they go beyond the
Paternoster Square, surface effect. The encouragement of a variety of uses would have provided the
London (Sir William
Whitfield et al.
changeful aspects thought desirable, without the need to resort to over-complex
2003). The eventual material and proportional games which betray a poverty of confidence. Wren’s
product of a long masterpiece would instead have benefited from a simpler frame in which its Baroque
planning process,
this sensitive exuberance could be appreciated anew.
site stands in Equally dependent on surface impact the new store for Selfridges & Co.
the shadow of St
in Birmingham by Future Systems expends much energy on an elaborate curving and
Paul’s Cathedral.
Relatively low-rise nippled façade which serves both as an icon for the company and for the redeveloped
buildings for the city centre. Confusingly for an architectural practice devoted to the new, historic
City of London,
precedents from Baroque architecture and 1960s fashion are cited by the architects to
the building shown
is 10 Paternoster justify this alluring carapace. Although there are moments of spatial drama within the
Square, now the interior atrium, it would appear clear from the difficulty with which the architects deal
London Stock
with the junction with the ground and the entrances that penetration of this building
Exchange
(Eric Parry with is only reluctantly to be allowed. Nothing could be further from the celebration of the
Sheppard Robson doorway in Baroque architecture with its delaminating frames. The building’s image
2003) with the
is its surface, a wrapping for the undifferentiated floorplates of commercial space as
ground floor
colonnade by Sir surely as those more classically inspired elevations which form Paternoster Square.
William Whitfield. Long denied as architecture’s guilty secret, and castigated by Adolf Loos a century ago
in his naming of Vienna as a Potemkin-stadt, the contemporary fascination with the

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10.3 architecturally superficial has recently developed its own archaeology (Leatherbarrow
Selfridges & Co. and Mostafavi 2002). The inconsistencies of the present situation are therefore not
Birmingham
(Future Systems between different stylistic and spatial choices, but between the self-consciousness of
2003). The major the surface appearance and the banality of the content.
‘anchor’ store of
In this discontinuous scenario, in housing, commercial and public archi-
the rebuilt Bullring
development in tecture, some degree of order would be welcome, an order to accommodate the
Birmingham, inconsistencies of contemporary culture and which is less socially exclusive than
the discs of the
the polar opposites of New Urbanism and Neo-Modernism. The fourfold model I have
building’s curved
façade have proposed balances within its loose structure prescriptive and subjective elements,
become an icon the weaving together of which can be identified in the existing urban environment.
of commercial
What to varying degrees the elements of this model espouse is that it is possible to
regeneration,
identifying the city rediscover the tradition of the European city and its cultural continuity. Implicitly, this
with a single retail calls not for the imitation of historic forms but a deeper development of the values
presence.
they represent. The possibilities of this reappropriation of continuity are not as remote
Source: Photograph
courtesy of 0111. as it might seem. As the Victorian city demonstrated, the careful study of historical
precedent did not produce a replica of the past. Familiar and legible forms were
adapted to contemporary technologies with no obvious conflict. What presents the
greater obstacle to this form of cultural revival today, however, is the materialism of
a society whose only cultural foundation is that of the instant gratification of product
consumption. As has been observed in the recent past and is documented by the
examples cited above, architecture, once the greatest manifestation of a grounded
culture, can easily become the mere veneer of an image-obsessed, time-conscious
society where value resides in the latest, largest and loudest. As late as the 1960s
there was some confidence that cities could be remade with some degree of con-
sistency. Now even that certainty has deserted the urban scene, as all interventions
are seen as provisional.
The proliferation of unorthodox architectural form in the past decade has
many causes, among them the availability of digital modelling techniques which
support the projects’ potential credibility and realizability. In addition, a double reaction
against the ‘rappel à l’ordre’ of postmodernism and its mistrust of modernist urban
abstraction has encouraged a series of radical architectural proposals which only
exaggerate this discontinuity. In a recent lecture Jorge Silvetti anatomized this
tendency into four distinct parts: programism, thematization, blobs and literalism
(Silvetti 2003). These various strands situate themselves on a spectrum between, on
the one hand, an apparent passivity on the part of the designer to the pressures of
commercialization and functionalism, to an active mode which foregrounds individual
expression and private, often arcane, meaning. What these various manifestations
have in common is a belief in the sustainability of the avant-garde strategy of shock,
the value of strangeness. In many respects this tendency’s relationship to the marvel-
lous is all the more telling. As I touched on in the Introduction, the pursuit of temporary
visual sensation frustrates the designer’s ability to engage with more genuine urban
issues. The juvenile character of this attitude against the severity of urban environ-
mental problems should need no commentary. As an ethical position it swings

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The urban future

effortlessly from total acceptance of the political and ecomic status quo to the belief
that it might be overturned by a work of self-conscious architectural genius. However,
Silvetti’s offered alternative, a renewal of the Baroque, seems equally effete, sug-
gesting that his critique is based solely on aesthetic criteria. Whatever the undoubted
power of Baroque urban ensembles, and their poetic embodiment of a culture, in the
social sphere it presents no model to the contemporary world unless one is to
advocate autocracy.
Far from advocating such a form of historical return, and against the visual
cacophony of recent urbanism, the ambiguity of my model might appear rather vague,
reluctant as I am to simplify it any further. The temptation to condense my fourfold
model into a diagram has been easy to resist. Although such a diagram could be
serviceable in explaining the interrelationship between each of the four categories,
it would also separate them into distinct zones which would subvert the ambiguity
of the boundaries between them. I would assert that each of the elements, familiar
in their own terms, has more in common with its neighbours than points of separation.
To this might be countered the usefulness of such a diagram as a bridge between
analysis and design, the academic and the creative. Yet such a diagram would exert its
own fascination, a tendency to need refinement and then the introduction of further
layers which would further obscure the clarity of the initial idea.
And the reductive quality of the diagram has further dangers, the tending
towards a totalizing quality where classification leads to rigidity of interpretation. My
aversion to universal systems of design, as exemplified by the fundamentalists of New
Urbanism or Neo-Modernism, should be clear to the reader. But nor is this to support
a laisser-faire attitude, which ultimately favours the wealthy urban elite at the expense
of other citizens. The visible consequences of the trickle-down economics of much
development encourage the idea that there should be a measure of control and
balance the responsiveness of which to local circumstances it would be futile to
attempt to diagram. Indeed, the adherence to a diagrammatic structure would act as
a destructive filter on the process of design because it has to be acknowledged that
there is a huge gap between the theory and the practice of most areas of design.
This has many causes, indeed some would argue that it is an expression of a general
cultural condition (Vesely 2004). But at the more immediately perceivable level it
can be seen both that the economic pressures on design frustrate the application of
theoretical models, and that the isolation in which those theories are developed often
removes them from any prospect of being realized.
The accelerated drift from the space of urban encounter being the cross-
roads, to the shopping centre at the motorway junction, to the insulated lair of the
internet shopper can reduce the traditional urban centre to a form of built illusion.
The concept that the contemporary urban condition can be characterized as a situation
of ‘non-place’ seems to neatly define two sets of complementary spaces (Augé 1995).
The acceptance of the necessity of sites for transport and exchange in peripheral
locations and the consequent isolation of historic centres as ‘places of memory’ seem
to reduce the developed environment to one of uniform sterility, the experientially

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10.4 unsatisfactory actual space, while we have the increasing availability of simulations
New York which might suggest a more exotic experience of place.
New York Hotel
Casino, Las Vegas. As private entities seek to extend their control over urban space and public
A contemporary bodies surrender management to commercial concerns, the iconography of the
example of the long
public realm, its direct expression of meaning is increasingly replaced by commercial
tradition of the
appropriation of advertising as the overt ideological messages of the past evaporate. The role of the
urban imagery as fantastic in encouraging participation in commercial activity, its subtle coercion of
the iconography for
spending, is a feature of the work of a new type of urban designer (Anderton 1999).
another location.
The attempted Even an apparently benign gesture of providing an illuminated canopy over the street
disorientation, blurs the distinction between the commercial interior and the external world. The
continued through
threshold disappears as the spectacle of participation becomes all the more enticing,
the theming
of the interior a participation that requires nothing more from the visitor than their cash.
experience, is part The contemporary city is full of expensively appointed places for ambient
of the process by
which visitors are
encounters and the consumption of global brands. Drinking a decaffeinated macchiato,
encouraged to wearing clothes designed in Milan, but made in Macau, one can knowingly observe
spend. the discontinuities between the renovated but eviscerated nineteenth-century
Source: Photograph
courtesy of Jonathan heritage site, and the paradoxically minimalist retail experience. Visual interest is
Drage. provided by a relocated medieval structure and an artificial riverbed marking a medieval
The urban future

street line, while one dimly recalls that these advances in urban living were facilitated
by an act of terrorism one saw on television. An evening is spent watching a subtitled
Hindi film in a cinema complex that simulates the newspaper building which formerly
occupied the plot, before one returns to a modest, but reassuringly expensive
interpretation of a Manhattan loft, and drifts off to sleep secure in the sustainability
of one’s lifestyle as part of a new government-sanctioned vision which has replaced
urban decay and political strife.
This urban experience is full of contemporary paradox, a result of the
rival commercial origins of many of the elements of these familiar scenarios, while
other apparently consistent urban environments are also subject to novel inter-
pretation. New Urbanism, the most regulated of contemporary alternatives for the city,
has the visual effect of its apparently natural growth produced by a highly prescriptive
series of rules. In contrast, but equally curiously, Neo-Modernism abandons such
comprehensible systems of control in favour of a dynamic environment wholly
dependent on the unseen hand of the market. Although these are extreme positions,
against this unconscious cultural drift it is all the more necessary to attempt to resist
the glowering monotony of large-scale commercial and residential developments
and the impoverishment they bring to our sense of identity and place. The dialogue
of architecture and environment must have roles in the development of the city. This
resistance can be subtle and exploit the permissive character of the city, for as David
Harvey observes: ‘cities that cannot accommodate to diversity, to migratory move-
ments, to new lifestyles and to economic, political, religious and value heterogeneity,
will die either through ossification or stagnation or because they will fall apart in violent
conflict’ (Harvey 2001: 22).
Although political structures have a role in the validation of urban
development, in the contemporary Western city commercial imperatives are the
factors which determine growth and change. In this context, stasis spells death,
the sober evaluation of an extant situation being unsellable in the face of the vision
of new market opportunities. This results in a form of development feeding frenzy
where a particular sector of the market, now commercial, then residential, then
leisure, etc. is pursued to the exclusion of other sectors. The results in the urban
environment lead initially to the inflation of property prices and then their collapse
through overprovision, the driving out of middle income groups, creating a chasm
between the haves and have-nots. Opposition to this attitude can only come from
an active and engaged citizenry, an increasingly unlikely situation in a consumerist
society.
The issue of architectural and urban style, and the methodologies proposed
to affect change are themselves narrow and insular fields of debate, although their
consequences are felt by many city dwellers. Progress in the built environment often
seems painfully slow in a culture where technological change is positively embraced.
The assertion is frequently made that the increasing variety and availability of digital
media provide an alternative virtual world and possibly sound the death knell for
the urban environment with which we are familiar. Transactions which required

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physical human encounters can now be performed electronically without the need
for direct contact, reducing the economic need to construct environments in which
those exchanges can take place and boosting the importance of the home as the site
from which information can be received and sent. Distribution devoid of human
presence assumes primacy, with the resulting privatization of the former public spaces
of the city.
The passivity of such a model of the city, perhaps the ultimate destination
of the surface environments discussed earlier, exists at some distance from the
reality of most urban situations, where environmental problems are not obscured by
commercial spectacle. Sustainability, the aspiration of many urban thinkers goes
beyond the constraints of environmental responsibility. It surely requires strategies
which deal with social exploitation as well as social exclusion, and which understand
that ethical investment needs to become a feature of the developed urban world
as much as that of the economies of the developing world. If an intensified urban
existence is to benefit the ecology of the planet, the populations within cities must
have their rights reinforced as well as their responsibilities. As Harvey continues:

high density urbanized living and inspired forms of urban design are the
only paths to a more ecologically sensitive form of civilisation in the twenty-
first century. We must recognise that the distinction between environment
as commonly understood and the built environment is artificial and that
the urban and everything that goes into it is as much a part of the solution
as it is a contributing factor to ecological difficulties. The tangible recog-
nition that the mass of humanity will be located in living environments
designated as urban says that the environmental politics must pay as much
if not more attention to the qualities of those built and social environments
as it now typically does to a fictitiously separated and imagined ‘natural’
environment.
(Harvey 2001: 22)

The context from which this present situation has developed contains within it
the possibilities of a new agenda. A change of perception would be sufficient to
reappropriate those elements for future use, aware as we are of the environmental
and social consequences of previous attempts to re-envision the city. The traditional
city represents the contemporary aspiration for the compact city, dense in its use
of resources, relatively self-sufficient in its economy and clear in the identity it
encourages in its citizens. The attractiveness of examples which have survived
into the present day reinforces the importance of a limited aesthetic coherence in
the scale and organization of buildings and spaces. In addition, the industrial city
reminds us of the wealth-creating potential of manufacturing, the harnessing of
resources for productive ends and the sophistication of infrastructure to keep the
complex urban mechanism in operation. Finally, the eclecticism of the contemporary
urban environment provides a model for the co-existence of a diversity of communities
within the city and the fostering of tolerance and respect which urbanity requires.

175
The urban future

If these elements are to be held in balance, so that diversity rather than

domination can be ensured, then a structure needs to be provided. Patterns of
settlement and inhabitation are demonstrable tools for the creation of urban
environments which are seen to be practicable and equitable. This requires the mutual
appreciation of differing narratives, as cultures and lifestyle aspirations develop
adjacent to one another. The sharing of common or at least mutually respected values
finds embodiment in monuments whose function and meaning punctuate the quo-
tidian backdrop of urban life. And, finally, resonant spaces allow individuals and groups
to gather and meet in the public domain, in a territory to which everyone has a claim.
These elements – patterns, narratives, monuments and spaces – which
have been outlined constitute a system of principles for an inclusive urban design,
a methodology for an ethical city. This fourfold model forms a network which can span
between traditional urban environments and new peripheries, between the regen-
eration of decayed areas and the definition of new quarters. The details of the
architectural languages are not specified as this avoids the negative conditions
associated with either the New Urbanism and its implicit reactionary agenda, or the
Neo-Modernism favoured by adherents who seem unaware of the extent of central
control required to fulfil their visions, or indeed the unpleasant social consequences
which have resulted from their previous application. Cultural representations require
us to use, or rather inevitably bind us into, a system of expression which we know is
tainted and inarticulate, but if we wish to speak of the city we have to use words
which others understand. If not, the public nature of urban design and what it
communicates will dissipate into the gruntings and mutterings of the uneducated
and the cynical, closed world of the elite. Between these two equally repellent poles
a form of clear, direct and articulate representation must be our goal.
In the Introduction I raised three issues relating to the city: the stylistic
polarization of the debate, the issue of sustainability and the role of participation and
education in overcoming the marginalization of design. Thus far in this chapter I have
concentrated on the first two issues, the strategy of the model I have proposed being
intended to encourage a stronger consensus on the city, and to implicitly promote
sustainable attitudes. It is now the point at which to address the third issue. To be
more precise, rather than being content with traditional forms of patronage, further
participation has to be encouraged in the creation of the built environment. While
public consultation processes are commonplace, they often take the form of an
adversarial debate between a highly focused professional team and a reluctant public.
This only results in the tentative modification of an initial proposal so that a commercial
deadline can be met. What historic examples show is that longer-term strategies
produce more satisfactory results.
Participation in design procedures take two distinct forms: community-led
and agency-led. If the former represents the optimistic ideal of local empowerment,
the latter represents a more effective compromise. Although it surrenders control to
some form of independent authority, it ensures professional treatment for community
aspirations and balances the potential conflicts between different groups. Such a

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system will remain as just a bureaucratic model, however, if it is unable to harness the
energy of an active citizenship. Participatory procedures should begin at a fundamental
level, and the elements I have described can also be employed. The analysis of historic
patterns can be thoroughly conducted while individual narratives of urban life are
gathered and woven into a collective story of the city. Where patterns and narratives
share a significant resonance, design professionals can then locate monuments and
spaces which represent a continuity with the physical and psychological history
of the city. What is described is, of course, an evolutionary method which accepts that
the complex functional, social and aesthetic demands of the city require time for
creative proposals to emerge. It therefore has to be fostered by public bodies rather
than private ones since the latter often have only short-term solutions in mind. What
this essentially artificial method cannot be seen to replace is the dynamic processes
by which cities change in an often unconscious and incremental manner. That activity
is rightly in the realm of the private sector, but the primary role of the planned
development of the city belongs in the hands of groups who will pursue public value
rather than private profit. The facilitation of development as the sole criterion of urban
design therefore needs to be seriously questioned.
The contradictions which characterize the physical properties of civic space
and the social conditions of urban living can only be bridged by the development of
an ethos which has more profound confidence in its urban location. As the site of our
institutions, our populations, our most complex constructions, the city continues as a
developing phenomenon to which human destiny is tied. This self-confidence is not to
be confused with the superficial image of urbanity with which we are familiar from
the media. As Tristram Hunt’s recent history of Victorian urban aspirations outlined,
for all the paternalism of the times, there were attempts during the industrial age to
make an ethical city. The impetus was not just the amelioration of dangerous social
conditions, but the creation through educational initiatives of a cultured and engaged
citizenship. In contrast, in the present times, the experience of other urban situations
through increased travel, the availability of mass media and the accelerated pace of
urban development with its cycle of occupation and obsolescence has led to the
growth of the self-conscious city. An exaggerated expression of the traditional virtue
of civic pride, the concentration on the image of the city and its promotion as an
economic tool through ‘boosterism’ has curious effects such as the ability of the
landmark building to overturn preconceptions. A building such as Urbis inverts this
trend by adopting as its content as a museum the urban experience itself, so that the
simulated exploration of a Far Eastern or a South American city can be conducted
distantly from a Northern European post-industrial urban monument. It is a further
paradox that a city creates as a symbol of its renewal an image based on the reading
of other places, as cities once aspired to be Athens, Rome, Jerusalem. As Hubert
Damisch asks:

What is the nature, indissolubly, of the city as reality, as image, and as

symbol? What is this object of desire, at once near and ungraspable,

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fascinating and repulsive, attractive and intractable, necessary and unbear-

able, intimate and impenetrable, available and inaccessible, that it is for
itself as well as for the man of the crowd, for the man in the street,
for the man of the city, for those who inhabit it and those merely passing
through it, for anyone who knows that it is a labyrinth but nonetheless
allows himself to remain trapped in it?
(Damisch 2001: 19)

However, to turn to the idea expressed by Rykwert that urban space might be
regarded as being as much in the mind as it is on the land, we might be forced to
admit that dreams about the city, even the shallow fantasies of ‘lifestyle’ develop-
ment, are as powerful as direct physical experiences in the production of particular
forms (Rykwert 1976: 24). Yet the awareness of the psychological life of cities which
typifies twentieth-century thought would, if anything, only appear to encourage the
attempt to define the physical qualities of place so that they can be applied to new
situations. The quest for some form of validation of the urban experience in the
application of history to the present is itself a symptom of contemporary conditions.
It is as if against the bewildering process of urban change which has characterized
the last century, the attempt to carve out a physical identity, quite typically portrayed
as an anchoring in the past will inevitably prove futile. The achievement of the dream
of place seems all the more illusory.
If the city is as much in the mind as on the land, do the physical forms of
the city require metamorphosis or solely the transformation of the mental readings we
make? This is an appealing thought, especially at a time which places such emphasis
on personal liberty. It would be very convenient to pacify the urban disaffected with
the injunction to imagine a better place. However, the satisfaction to be gained from
such an attitude would only be short-lived. If a change of identity is to have any
substance, it needs to be a shared experience, which is best achieved by change in
the physical environment.
We come, then, to the different strata of identity which constitute the
city, the societal, the communal, the individual, those of the inhabitant and those of
the visitor. Whereas the individual perceptions of the city have perhaps the most
profound influences on one’s engagement with the urban environment, it is in the
realm of the collective that communication takes place on an urban scale. The
reciprocal relationships between the individual and the collective in society have their
counterparts in those between the perceptual and the physical. Therefore the
transformation of urban perceptions ought to be seen as a process with its parallels
in the transformation of the actual situation.
While the developing world continues to provide spectacles of apparently
instant identification and urbanization emphasizing the vertical axis, the developed
world presents one where the dominant dimension is the horizontal. The dispersal of
cities, the spread of their forms along transport routes leads (with a declining birth rate
and a proliferation of households) to an urban landscape where traditional patterns of

178
 The urban future

10.5 urbanity come into question. The conventional neighbourhood or quarter metamor-
Mount Pleasant phoses through the development of out-of-town facilities close to motorway junctions.
Park, Sharrow,
Sheffield 2004. We know that the energy consumption on which this sprawl depends is finite.
A participatory Furthermore, the phenomenological experience for the inhabitant of such environ-
exercise to develop
ments swing between seduction and alienation, between the diversion created by
a design strategy
for the regeneration consumerism and a sense of its artificiality. Jane Jacobs identified the effects of this
of a central urban process in the USA in the 1960s, yet it has not abated despite strategies for urban
park, as the initial
regeneration.
stage in the
preparation of a What was identified then and still remains true is that established urban
masterplan with centres have networks of infrastructure and building ready for conversion and
the support of local
reoccupation. Furthermore, they have established patterns of governance which
people.
Source: Courtesy of should ensure that democratic control is exercised rather than serving the commercial
the Bureau of Design and governmental interests which tend to dominate newly developing inter-zones. The
Research, University
complexity of life in an established urban centre militates against the reductivism of
of Sheffield School of
Architecture. the isolated gesture.
There is an undoubted aesthetic appeal to the clarity of motor-dependent
territories. Indeed, viewed as part of a self-conscious avant-garde position which
stretches back a century to the Futurists and their nihilistic attraction to speed, they

179
The urban future

have become comfortable environments. The change which has occurred is that
commercial and industrial life has caught up with their aesthetic vision to fulfil the
requirement for an environment which complements the sensation of movement,
but still provides little consolation at the point of arrival.
Often this environment provides an ethical escape for the designer as the
immutable laws of the market, of popular aspiration, and of population movement
are cited as the unconscious drivers of urban dispersal. What moral authority could
credibly stand in the way of such progress? Surely an audit of environmental and social
effects of such developments would be greeted with more than bored indifference
by designers? To base urban strategies, as many contemporary authorities do, on
the needs of the independently mobile is to abandon the young, the elderly and the
poor to an impoverished existence. Their lack of independence or resources should
present no moral impediment to having their needs and aspirations served by urban
design, despite the aesthetic and social compromises which might ensue. For, in our
image-saturated environment aesthetic choices are the icons of commercial ones.
An urban and suburban realm which presents the image of a monoculture, socially,
ethnically and financially is unlikely to represent a diverse urban ethos.
The pursuit of the Gesamtkunstwerk still bedevils issues of urban design,
whether in areas of preservation or redevelopment. The urban culture of the West
has many diverse exemplars. Those precedents feature a catalogue of totalizing
environments, Imperial and Baroque Rome, Schinkel’s Berlin, Nash’s London and
L’Enfant’s Washington among them, where a single mind appears to be at work in
controlling the hands of others and informing the image of the collective whole.
However, another tradition exists, the examples of which might be Renaissance
Florence, seventeenth-century Amsterdam and nineteenth-century Paris (despite
Haussmann’s best efforts) where the position of the individual within the collective is
more visible. It is these cities which provide the richer vein of precedent for the future.
It seems extraordinary that the idea of an ethos which promotes diversity
should be so unusual and so under-developed in design theory. The arguments which
are used to support concepts in urban design are often bent to validate an aesthetic
prejudice which invokes the erasure of any element seen as discordant. Yet the
achievement of common goals, which an ethic supports, implicitly recognizes the
balancing of differences rather than the imposition of a unifying order. Urbanity
requires toleration, both of the ‘other’ by the dominant group, and accommodation of
the values of the majority by the minority groups.
This book has largely been concerned with analyses and descriptions of
precise and recognizable urban spaces and forms, the tradition of place, and an
attempt has been made to account for their forms in relation to the social, political and
aesthetic conditions of their day, with a view to synthesizing a model for future cities.
This task has had only limited intentions, with admiration maintained for those who
overcome the difficulties of building in cities. However, for our environment to be
transformed, it requires urban dwellers to become more demanding of their designers,
and, first, more active in their critical thinking about our cities.

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Index

Page numbers in italics denote illustration Benevolo 109

Benson, G. 138, 139
Abercrombie, Patrick 43 Berlin 17, 136; Altes Museum 131
AEG (Berlin) 63 Bevignate, Fra 31, 32
aesthetics 3, 4, 18, 43, 48, 51, 53, 54, 151 ‘Bilbao effect’ 70, 167
Agrest, Diana 2–3 Birmingham: Selfridge & Co. 169, 170
Alexander VII, Pope 99 Blair, Tony 138
Alexandra Road (London) 104, 104, 138 blocks 96, 102, 103, 103, 104
allegory 125 ‘boosterism’ 177
altars 25 Boston City Hall 152
Altes Museum (Berlin) 131 boulevardization of cities 48
Amsterdam 180; playgrounds 151 boundaries 88–9; historic cities and status of 23;
anatomizing: of urban space 115 significance in Etruscan settlements 26
ancient cities 82, 89-90, 152; see also historic Bourneville 45
cities Branson Coates 138, 139
Ando, Tadao 69 Breton, André 114, 115
Antonelli, Carlo Marré 100 Britain 11; history of attitudes to public
Aragon, Louis: Paris Peasant 113, 114, 117 architecture and urban regeneration 34–8;
Archigram group 53, 55 social housing provision 101–4, 168; urban
architects 16, 19, 49, 138, 145 parks and garden squares 150; see also
Architectural Review, The 151 individual cities
Argan, Giulio Carlo 17 British Library 145
Asplund, Erik Gunnar 107 British Museum 143
Aston, Joseph 41, 68, 69; The Manchester Guide brownfield land 168
39 Bruges 16
Athens 16, 22, 82 Brunelleschi 17
Athens Charter (1933) 49 Bufalini, Leonardo 98
atria 110, 145 buildings see monuments
Augé, Marc 61
axial planning 26 canals 38
Canary Wharf 137
backyards 59 Canina, Luigi 98
Baratta, Francesco 36 capital cities 17
Barcelona 136, 145; Casa Mila 47; extension capitalism 92
of 46–8, 96; Placa de l’Estacio Sants 156, Cardinal, Roger 115
157–8, 157, 161, 163 cardo 26, 30, 32
Baroque 18, 33, 48, 84–5, 90, 169, 172 Careri, Francesco 125
Basilica Aemilia (Rome) 29–30 cars 38, 49, 52, 57–8, 91, 105, 168
Basilica Julia (Rome) 29–30 Caruso St. John 138, 141
BDP 165 Casa Mila (Barcelona) 47
Beaux-Arts 146 casino cities 122

185
Index

Central China Television headquarters (Beijing) 63 Debord, Guy 118; Society of the Spectacle 62,
centre-periphery relations 64, 123; Manchester 117
64–70 decumanus 26, 30, 32
Cerda, Ildefons 46–8, 49, 54, 96 dereliction 11
Chaoy, Françoise 46, 54 dérive 117–18, 121
Charter for the New Urbanism (Duany et al) design, urban: and balance between aesthetics
4, 57–8 and function 2; characteristics of narratives
Chtcheglov, Ivan: Formulary for a New Urbanism shared with 112; connection between urban
121–2 representation and 18; employment of
CIAM 49 patterns in, 101; ethical dimension of 19,
city: ethic of 77–94; future of 164–80 35–6; gap between theory and practice of
city-states, Italian 10-11, 12, 16-17, 27, 30, 163; 172; marginalization of as factor in creation
see also Perugia of urban environments 3
civic identity 16–17, 45, 90 détournement 118–19
civic status 16–17 development corporations 137–8
civitas 28, 30, 89 Devon Gardens (Sheffield) 127
Coates, Nigel 124, 139 Dickens, Charles: Hard Times 113
Collage City (Rowe and Koetter) 107, 152–3 digital media 174–5
collective 16, 148, 178 digital modelling techniques 171
Cologne 16 Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles) 144
commercialism 12, 19, 173, 174, 177 Doxiadis, C.A. 17
commercial building 168 Duany, Andres 57–8, 59
commodification 16, 56, 90 Dublin: and Joyce’s Ulysses 113, 127; Meeting
commonality issue 90, 91 House Square 156, 160–1, 161, 163
communications media: industrial city and rise
of 39 ecological impact: role in design processes 3
Communism: collapse of 1 Economist Group 151
Conservative Party 135, 137 Economist Plaza (London) 15
Constant 119–21 Edinburgh 139; Museum of Scotland 138–9, 140,
consumerism 62, 72, 117, 179 144
contemporary cities, 63; compared with city-states education 3, 176
11, 12; differences between historic cities Eisenman, Peter 154
and 23; and discontinuities 64; prevailing of energy crisis (1970s) 53, 135
commercial values 12, 19, 177; and space Engels, Friedrich 11, 40–2, 64, 71, 110, 166
147, 148; under-representation of ethical environmental concerns 1, 91, 92
values 19; understanding through considering ethic of the city 77–94
of the past 12; see also post-industrial cities ethical dimension of urban design 19, 35–6
contextualism 153–4 Etruscan cities/settlements 22, 25–7, 34, 35
Corbusian methods/model 11, 52, 102 Eurolille 60
Corso Vannucci (Perugia) 32 Exchange Square (Manchester) 64, 66–8, 67
Cortona 26 Eyck, Aldo van 119, 151
craft activity 83
critical theory 18 Fabiani, Max 33
Crocifisso del Tufo (Orvieto) 27, 27 factories 14
Cullen, Gordon 151 Falda, Giovanni Battista 99
Far East 11, 60, 61
Daedalus 115 festivals 22
Damisch, Hubert 17–18, 177–8 figure-ground plan 95, 96
de Beistegui, Charles: apartment of 117 First World War 54
de Chirico, Giorgio 114, 115, 154 Fisher, Saul 78
de la Sota 141 Flat Iron Building (Manhattan) 96
de Tocqueville, Alexis 39 ‘flight from the city’ 91

186
 Index

Florence 16, 180; Founding Hospital 20; Logia dei Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping 4, 61,
Lanzi 150; Le Murate 83; Palazzo della 65
Signoria 33 Harvey, David 174, 175
Fontana, Carlo 98 Heidegger, Martin 78, 81
Fontana Maggiore (Perugia) 31, 31, 37 Hejduk, John 124
Forsyth, A. 138, 139 Hersey, George 131, 132
Forum of Augustus 30 Heseltine, Michael 135
Forum Romanum see Roman Forum heterotopia 98, 100
Foucault, Michel 100 hierarchies 89, 105, 111, 148
Founding Hospital (Florence) 20 high-rise development 56, 105
Four Rivers Fountain (Rome) 36 Hippodamus of Miletus 22, 82
fourfold model of urbanism 80–9, 171, 172, 176 ‘histograms’ 53
Fox, Warwick 81 historic cities 13–14, 17–18, 21–37, 46, 147, 152,
Frankfurt 145 162, 171, 175; ambiguities of space 147–8;
Freud, Sigmund 94, 97, 98, 101, 115 and boundary status 23; continuity of form
front yard 59 into twentieth century 33–5; differences
functionalism 113, 117, 119, 128 between contemporary cities and 23; and
Future Systems 169 expression of democracy 27–8; influence
Futurists 49, 53, 179 of 21; influence of on indusrial cities 42–3;
influence of religion and ritual on 21–6;
Garden City movement 45, 50, 101, 102, 105, maintaining of coherence of identity by
133 compact nature of 13; and perspective 17–18;
garden square 150 poetic life of 22, 23; and provision of water
Garnier, Tony: Une Cité Industrielle 14, 50–1, 50 36–7; and space 147–8
Gaudi, Antoni 47, 48 historic form: Harries on importance of
Geddes, Patrick 49 reappropriation of 79–80
Gehry, Frank 130, 144 historic patterns 83–4, 97, 177
Germany 136 historical memory 78
Gesamtkunstwerk 180 history 79–80
Geuze, Adriaan 158 Holl, Steven 58
Giacometti 151 Hollein, Hans 136
Giedion, Siegfried 18, 133 [Sigfried on p, 133?] homeless 4
Gismondi 98 housing 14, 54; provision in Britain 53, 101–4, 168
global cities 11, 17 Howard, Ebenezer 50
global warming 91 Huizinga, Johan: Homo Ludens 85–6
globalization 1, 61, 63, 72 Hulme (Manchester) 105–6, 106, 152
Gobierno Civil (Tarragona) 141 Hunt, Tristram 145, 167, 177
Gonzaga, Vespasiano 85 Hybrid building 58
Great Panathenaia (Athens) 82
Greek cities/settlements 17, 22, 23–4; and immigrants 4
Paestum 24–5, 24 Imperial War Museum-North (Manchester) 64,
Greenbrow Road (Manchester) 102 65–6, 66
grid structures 22, 46, 48, 95, 96, 109 industrial cities 38–55, 109, 175; architectural
Gropius, Walter 49 styles and influence of historic cities on 42–3;
Ground Zero site (New York) 72 attempt to control effect of industrialization by
Group 91 160 architects and consequences 39; becomes
Guggenheim (Bilbao) 144 synonymous with inner city decay 54; and
gypsy camp (Alba) 120 Corbusian urban model 52; efficiency of
production as purpose of 18; and ethos of
Harries, Karsten 15; The Ethical Function of public provision 54; and fear of disease and
Architecture 1–2, 19, 77–8, 79–80, 86, 88, potential disorder 45, 56; and Garnier’s Une
89, 90–1, 94 Cité Industrielle 14, 50–1, 50; growth of 11,

187
Index
14; image of squalor 43; and Le Corbusier
51–2; post-war reconstruction 52; producing
of different building forms by different
industries 42; and rise of communications
media 39; andSuperstudio 53–4, 55; and town
planning 45–6; and transport 38, 46, 49, 52;
utopian proposals for reform of 49–50; and
zoning 35, 46–8, 49, 50, 51, 57; see also
Manchester
industrialization 11, 14, 35, 45, 90, 97, 151
information technology 72
inner cities 135, 138
International Monetary Fund 135
International Style 120
Italy 53; city-states see city-states; Superstudio
53–4, 55
Jacobs, Jane 110, 153, 179
Japan 53
Jorn, Asger 118
Joyce, James: Ulysses 113, 127–8
Julius III, Pope 32
Kelly, Michael 160
Keogh, Paul 160–1
Koetter, Fred 107, 152
Koetter, Kim and Associates (KKA) 106–8, 111
Koolhaas, Rem 60–1, 62, 63; Delirious New York
60
Krier, Leon 57, 58, 152, 153
Krier, Robert 153; Urban Space 152
Labour Party 135, 138
labyrinth 115, 119, 120
landmark building 11
Lapis Niger 28
Las Vegas 122
Le Corbusier 17, 24, 49, 50, 51–2, 117, 138, 139,
152; Capitol at Chandigarh 51–2; Plan Voisin
project 51, 52; Une Ville Contemporaine
project 51, 52; La Ville Radieuse 14, 51–2
Léger, Fernand 133
Lerup, Lars: After the City 72
‘Lexicon of the New Urbanism, The’ 59
Libeskind, Daniel 65–6, 72, 130
Liverpool 42, 135; St Georges Hall 42; Tate Gallery
136
Livesey, Graham 129
Ljubljana (Slovenia) 33–5, 35, 37
Lloyd Wright, Frank 133
locus: distinction between context and 153
Loggia dei Lanzi (Florence) 150
188
Lombardo, Patrizia 147, 163
London 17, 137, 138, 150; Alexandra Road 104,
104, 138; Docklands 135; Economist Plaza
(St James’s) 15; National Gallery 137, 139;
Paternoster Square 168–9, 169
Loos, Adolf 141, 169
Lorrain, Claude 118
Los Angeles 144
Lowry, The (Salford) 138, 143, 144, 145
Luder, Owen 137
Lugli 98
Lyons 50
M25 123
McEwen, Indra Kagis 82, 83
Maggi, Giovanni 99
Magnoli, G.C. 91
Major, John 137
Manchester 14, 39–42, 40, 45, 63–71, 72, 164–5;
building of mills 39, 42; centre-periphery
relations 64–70; competing visions of 164;
conditions of Old Town and New Town 41–2,
110; economic exploitation and urban
development 164; and Engels 11, 40–1, 166;
Exchange Square 64, 66–8, 67; expansion
of 39, 40; Greenbrow Road 102; growth of
14; Hulme 105–6, 106, 152; Imperial War
Museum-North 64, 65–6, 66; IRA bomb
(1996) 164, 165; New Piccadilly 64,
68–9, 69, 108; Plan (1945) 52, 106; promotion
of night-time economy 167; Renaissance Italy
as model of emulation 43; stratified urban
pattern and separate existence of workers
and wealthy 11, 40–1; Trafford Centre 64–5,
65, 70; and urban regeneration policy 63–4;
Urbis 68, 165–6, 166, 177
Manchester Guide, The (Aston) 40
Manhattan 53, 96
manufacturing: decline in 14, 54, 137
Martienssen 17
Marx, Karl 41
medieval urban Europe 90
Meeting House Square (Dublin) 156, 160–1, 161,
163
Meier, Richard 130, 136
memory 112; historical 78; monuments and 132,
145–6
Merseyside Development Corporation 135
Metabolists 53
metaphor 125
Michael Wilford 143
Michelangelo 28–9, 148

migrant labour 168
Millennium Dome 123, 145
mills 39, 42
Miralles, Enric 145, 157
MIT 107–8
Mitterand, François 135
mobility, social 2
model villages 45
Modernism 3, 4, 12, 15–16, 56–7, 134, 152
monuments 81, 86–8, 91, 92–3, 130–46, 176,
177; correspondence between Heidegger’s
mortals and 81; creation of unique sense of
place 87–8; definition 80; emotional power
of 145–6; history of attitudes to public
architecture in Britain 134–8; levels of
ambiguity expressed in meaning and form
131–2; The Lowry 138, 143, 144, 145; and
memory 132, 145–6; Museum of Scotland
138–9, 140, 144; National Centre for Popular
Music 138, 139–40, 141, 145; New Art
Gallery (Walsall) 138, 141–2, 142, 143–4;
and ‘Nine Points on Monumentality’ 133–4;
problems with association of with modern
architecture 133; Riegl’s classification of 131;
siting of 146
Morris, William 45
Mostafavi, Mohsen 63
motorcars see cars
motorways 11
Mount Pleasant Park (Sheffield) 179
Mumford, Lewis 109, 133
Murate, Le (Florence) 83
Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh) 138–9, 140, 144
myth 84, 85–6, 113, 115
narratives 36, 81, 84–6, 91, 92, 111, 112–29, 177;
characteristics shared with urban design
112; and Constant’s New Babylon 119–21;
correspondence with Heidegger’s sky 81;
definition 80; employment of as a generative
device 124; as forms of understanding 84;
and labyrinth metaphor 115, 119, 120; and
memory 112; and psychogeography 118,
122–4, 127; recognition of as an animating
phenomenon 128; and representation 84; role
in construction of cities 112; and Situationists
117–19; and Surrealists 113–15
National Centre of Popular Music (NCPM)
(Sheffield) 138, 139–40, 141, 145
National Gallery (London) 137, 139
National Lottery 137
NATO (Narrative Architecture Today) 124, 139
Index
neighbourhoods 57
Neo-Modernism 3, 4, 12, 54, 57, 60–3, 70, 71, 72,
77, 81, 171, 174, 176
New Art Gallery (Walsall) 138, 141–2, 142, 143–4
New Babylon 119, 120–1, 121
New Piccadilly (Manchester) 64, 68–9, 69, 108
New Urbanism 3, 4, 12, 54, 57–60, 63–4, 70,
71–2, 77, 81, 171, 174, 176
New York 60–1; Ground Zero site 72
New York Hotel Casino (Las Vegas) 173
‘Nine Points on Monumentality’ 133–4
Nolli, Giovanni Battista 95, 99, 153
nomad 125
non-capital cities 17
‘non-places’ 61, 172
North American contemporary city 109–10
Nuova Piazza de Fontivegge (Perugia) 154, 155
O’Donnell, Sheila 160, 161
oil crisis (1970s) 53, 135
Olsen, Donald 43
ornament 90–1
O’Toole, Shane 160
Padua 86, 87
Paestum (Poseidonia) 24–5, 24, 82
Palazzo dei Priori (Perugia) 30, 31, 32, 33, 86
Palazzo del Senatorio (Rome) 28–9
Palazzo della Ragione (Padua) 86, 87
Palazzo della Signoria (Florence) 33
Palazzo Pubblico (Siena) 33
Panofsky, Erwin 17
Parc de la Villette (Paris) 154–6, 156
Parc des Buttes-Chaumont (Paris) 116
Paris 17, 145, 180; boulevardization 48;
modernization of under Mitterand 135–6; Parc
de la Villette 154–6, 156; Place des Vosges
118, 119; revolutionary 46; and Situationists
113, 118, 119
Park Hill (Sheffield) 103–4, 103, 152
park, urban 150
Parker 101, 102
Parthenon (Athens) 82
participation: role in overcoming marginalization of
design 176–7
Paternoster Square (London) 168–9, 169
patterns 80, 81, 82–4, 91, 92, 95–111;
correspondence between Heidegger’s
earth and 81; definition 80; employment of
in urban design 101; erosion of 109–10; and
figure-ground plan 95, 96; and grid 96, 109;
historic 97, 177; and Hulme (Manchester)
189
Index
105–6, 106; identification of city planning with
weaving 82; importance of 82; need to be
read beyond two-dimensional form 96; as
product of historical processes 101; regular
95–6; and Sheaf Valley e-campus (Sheffield)
106–8, 109; and social housing provision
in Britain 101–4; subject to economic
determination 110; and Trastevere (Rome)
97–100, 97; value of historic patterns as
exemplars for contemporary practice 83–4
Paul III, Pope 32
Pegrada sluice (Ljubljana) 34, 35, 37
Perez-Gomez, Alberto 18
periphery-centre relations see centre-periphery
relations
perspective 17–18
Perugia 26, 30–3, 37, 154, 155
Peterloo Massacre (1819) 46
photography, urban 18
Piazza del Campidoglio (Rome) 148
Piazza della Repubblica (Cortona) 26
Piazza IV Novembre (Perugia) 26, 30–1, 31, 154,
155
Piazza San Marco (Venice) 90
Piazza Sant Ignazio (Rome) 88
Piazza Tento e Trieste (Ferrara) 10
Piazzetta di San Marco (Venice) 149–50, 149
Pinon, Helio 157
Pisano, Giovanni 31, 31
Pisano, Nicolà 31, 31
Pius IX, Pope 100
Placa de la Catalunya (Barcelona) 96
Placa de l’Estacio Sants (Barcelona) 156, 157–8,
157, 161, 163
Place des Vosges (Paris) 118, 119
Plan Voisin (Le Corbusier) 51, 52
planning control 56
Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth 57–8, 59
play 125–7
Plazza del Campo (Siena) 13
Plecnik, Joze 33, 34–5, 37
political structures 174
Pope, Albert: Ladders 109
Port Sunlight 45
post-industrial cities 14-15, 17, 18, 56-73; see also
contemporary cities; Neo-Modernism; New
Urbanism
post-modernism 53, 137, 171
post-war reconstruction 3, 52, 117, 151
Poundbury (Dorset) 58, 58
private 56, 89, 137
privatization: of public realm 12, 90, 175
190
psychogeography 118, 122–5, 127
psychological: and cities 178
public health 45
public provision: collapse in faith in 56; ethos of 54
railways 38
Rasmussen, Steen Eiler: London: The Unique City
150
rational grid method 22, 46, 48
red-light district 62
religion: influence of on historic cities 21–4, 25, 26
Renaissance 17, 33, 43, 84–5, 90
residential areas 57, 59
retail environments 16, 61-2; see also shopping
malls
RIBA 137
Riegl, Alois 131, 163
ritual 84; and Etruscan cities 25–7; and Greek
cities 25
Roehampton 102–3
Rogers, Richard 137, 138, 145
Roman Forum 22, 28–30, 29, 153
Romans 23, 24, 30, 149
Rome 16, 28–30, 99, 124; adoption of Etruscan
planning practices 22; Four Rivers Fountain
36; Noili’s plan of (1748) 95, 99, 153; Palazzo
del Senatorio 28–9; Piazza del Campidoglio
148; Piazza Sant Ignazio 88; and Romulus and
Remus 28; Trastevere 97–100, 97; see also
Roman Forum
Romulus and Remus 28
Rossi, Aldo 163; The Architecture of the City 86,
87, 87, 132, 153–4
Rossi, Giovanni Giacomo De 99
Rotterdam: Schouwburgplein 156, 158–60, 159,
161
Rowe, Colin 71, 107, 152
Royal Chancellery project (Stockholm) 107
Rumney, Ralph: A Psychogeographic Map of
Venice 121
Ruskin, John 11, 45
Rykwert, J. 178
Sabbioneta (Mantua) 85, 85
Sadler, Simon: The Situationist City 118
St Georges Hall (Liverpool) 42
St Paul’s Cathedral (London) 168
Salford 144–5; The Lowry 138, 143, 144, 145
Saltaire 45
San Lorenzo Cathedral (Perugia) 30, 31, 31, 32–3
Sansovino, Jacopo 149
Schayck, Godfrey van 99
 Index

Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 40, 131 163; and post-war reconstruction 151; and
Schouwburgplein (Rotterdam) 156, 158–60, 159, Rossi 153–4; seeking to recover civic space
161 for use and pleasure by the citizen 156–61;
Schwartz, Martha 66 significance of 147–8, 152; and Tschumi
Schwarzer, Mitchell 63 154–5; unadornment of 163
scientific revolution 49 Spain 136
Scottish Parliament 145 square, urban 150
Seaside (Florida) 58 Staatsgalerie (Stuttgart) 79
Second World War 54, 133 Stalker 120, 124–5, 126
self-conscious city 71, 177 stand-alone building 70
Selfridge & Co. (Birmingham) 169, 170 status, city’s 16–17
Semper, Gottfried 83 Stirling, James 136, 143
Sennett, Richard 16 Stirling Wilford 143
Serlio 85, 150 Stockholm 107
Sert, Josep Lluis 133 Stuttgart 79
Sheaf Valley e-campus (Sheffield) 106–8, 109, 140 suburbia/suburbanization 43, 56, 57, 59, 101, 105,
Sheffield 43, 44, 139; Cultural Industries Quarter 110, 157
138, 139; Devon Gardens 127; Mount Superstudio 53–4, 55
Pleasant Park 179; National Centre for Popular surfaces: emphasis on by Etruscans 27
Music 138, 139–40, 141, 145; Park Hill 103, Surrealists 113–15, 117, 127, 128, 129, 151
103, 152; Sheaf Valley e-campus 106–8, 109, sustainability 91, 175, 176
140; Winter Garden 93 ‘symbolic form’ 17
shopping malls 62, 65, 110
shrines 25 Tabularium (Rome) 28–9, 29
Siena 12; Palazzo Pubblico 33; Plazza del Campo Talbot, R. 91
13 Tate Gallery (Liverpool) 136
Silvetti, Jorge 171, 172 Team X 103, 119, 151, 152, 156
Simpson, Ian 165 telecommunications technology 63
Sinclair, Iain 122–4, 125; Lights Out for the Tempesta, Antonio 98
Territory 122; London Orbital 123–4; Sorry Temple of Neptune (Paestum) 24
Meniscus 123 temples 25
Sitte, Camillo 9–11, 19, 33, 48, 49, 51, 82, 88, 146 Thatcher, Margaret 104, 135, 137
Situationists 62, 117–19, 121, 124, 125, 127 theatre: city as 125, 148–50, 162, 163
skyscrapers 51, 53, 61 Three Bridges (Ljubljana) 34
Slovenia 33 Towards an Urban Renaissance report 138
slum areas 53 Towards a New Architecture 24
Smithson, Alison and Peter 119, 151 tower blocks 11
snowmen: Sitte and building of 48 town planning 45–6, 48
social exclusion 4 ‘townscape’ 151
social inclusion 92 Trachtenberg, Marvin 17
space(s) 81, 83–4, 91, 94, 147–63, 176, 177; traditional city see historical cities
changes in attitude to 17; characteristics of Trafford Centre (Manchester) 64–5, 65, 70
successful 163; and clarity of definition 163; transport: and industrial cities 38, 46, 49, 52
and collective meaning 148; and commercial transport routes 178
display 162; commodification of 12, 16; and Trastevere (Rome) 97–100, 97
community of purpose 89; consideration of Trnovo Bridge (Ljubljana) 34
them as absences 147; containment in 88–9; Tschumi, Bernard 154–5
and contemporary city 147, 148; definition 80; Tuomey, John 160, 161
devaluation of through commodification of ‘turbine plaza’ 10
culture 162; and historic cities 147–8; and
Krier 152, 153; and metaphor of city as unconscious 115, 117
theatre 148–9; openness and permeability of underclass, industrial 11

191
Index

Une Cité Industrielle (Garnier) 14, 50–1, 50 Vienna 10, 11

Une Ville Contemporaire (Le Corbusier) 51, 52 Ville Radieuse, La (Le Corbusier) 14, 51–2
University Park (Massachusetts) 107–8 virtual world 18
unorthodox architectural form: proliferation of vision 18
171–2 Vitruvius 26
Unwin 101, 102
urban code: and New Urbanism 58–9 Wagner, Otto 33, 49; Die Gro_stadt 48
urban development: phases of 18–19 Wales, Prince of 137
urban future 164–80 Walsall 144–5; New Art Gallery 138, 141–2, 142,
urban morphology 82, 96 143–4
urban patterns see patterns warehouses 42
urban regeneration 1, 4, 57, 59, 63–4, 134, 137–8 water: and historic city 36–7; and industrial city
Urbis (Manchester) 68, 165–6, 166, 177 37
urbs 28, 89 weaving: identification of city planning with 82
Whitfield, Sir William 168
Venice 90, 121; Piazza San Marco 90; Piazzetta di Wilford, Michael 138
San Marco 149–50, 149 Wilson, Colin St. John 145
Venturi, Robert 133 Winter Garden (Sheffield) 93
vernacular 53 Wittkower, Rudolph 17
Vesely, Dalibor 18 working-class housing 101
Viaplana, Alberto 157
Victorians 167, 177 zoning 35, 46–8, 49, 50, 51, 57
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