Memory and Urban Landscape

The difficulty of providing for the space of memory is compounded in the context of programming urban landscapes. The program and potentials of site can be combined with the with memory in the form of building, monument, and other physical constructs, which has some relation to previous discourse on historical research, as well as the suggested neighborhood interviews, and it is the intersection of these elements that allows for the most appealing space. At the junction of program and memory, the site acts as a field that receives the broadcast of the neighborhood. In this case the inclination might be to generate a memorial, a museum, or perhaps a community center. However, programmatic imposition conflicts with the advantages of flexible urban space. (Note that a flexible urban space in West Oakland should become ‘democratic’, and democratic does not necessarily imply heterogeneous)

The broadcast of the neighborhood, as superimposed over the site, and rebroadcast out to others can be accommodated by a flexible framework. I had previously suggested the suspended graffiti walls to embrace the culture of resistance that West Oakland has fostered. However, these walls are a temporal and flexible surface upon which any message can be broadcast. In order to preserve past messages and broadcast new ones, the walls can be mobile, track mounted elements that change configuration to display various encoding.

The mobile, changing graffiti walls become the narrative of the present. They are changing in time. On the other hand, the memory of the site is embedded in the ground, partially fixed. This permanent portion of the site might begin to receive assigned meaning, as is suggested in ‘Erasing Traces’. The imprint might suggest the ‘screen’ memories that carry a “new set of association that mask the original associations”, allowing for the ‘greater’ historic memory, or similarly, a return to a ‘golden age’, as suggested by ‘The Necessity for Ruins’. However, while the ‘ruins’ of West Oakland allow for the recreation of history, history does not cease to exist; its fragments are present in the ruins, and should be present in the site.

Alex Wall’s discussion of the manipulation and use of the urban surface as landscape urbanism seems relevant in thinking about our project in the median strip outside of the Cheeseboard. In this instance, as we’ve discussed at length over the course of the semester, what I find especially interesting is the porous boundary of the restaurant, and the subsequent inhabitation of the urban surface that takes place. The median strip, because of the proximity of the Cheeseboard, functions very much as “an active surface, structuring conditions for new relationships and interactions among the things it supports”. Is this a case of a private/public surface (the Cheeseboard) running into the urban surface, or the urban surface bleeding into the restaurant?

I also find it particularly interesting to contemplate our space in terms of Tschumi’s discussion of the relationship between action and space. Tschumi states that one must consider whether the relationship between action and a particular space are symmetrical or asymmetrical. Is this a condition where the space dominates the people, or one in which the people dominate the space? One can make an argument either way, I think. On the one hand, the slow space of the median strip, as perceived from the median strip, is a rather intimidating and thrilling place to be. Cars whizzing by seem to be moving much faster from your position at eye level with the tires and close proximity to them. In this way, the space clearly dominates the people. But then there’s the violence done by the people in inserting themselves in a place where pedestrians are not supposed to be present. This questions the hierarchy and dominance of the car in this space, and no doubt makes the people inhabiting the fast space of the road feel violated in some way. These inversions—of the dominance of the car in the roadway and the inversion of urban surface and private/public space—are what make the space so rich and excite both its users and observers.

Schedule

Just in case you didn't know...

seminar	date	subject			presentations		breakfast
	Oct. 10	suburban landscapes			Shivang		Christina
	Oct. 18	Social. landscapes			Tuan + Sabina		Evan
	Oct. 25	programming urb. Landscapes			John and Evan		Nat/Adr
	Nov. 1	memory and urban landscapes			Adriana and Natalia		James
	Nov. 8	climate change			James		Shivang
	Nov. 16	networks and exchange			Nicolette		John
	Nov. 22	THANKSGIVING
	Nov. 29	landscape art			Yes		Yes
	Dec. 6	integrating site region infrastructure			Matt		Veronica

Insert Live Action “Here”

Contemporary philosophy and new art sensibility begin to influence the architecture of an academic Tschumi and schoolmates used “as ‘live’ insert(s)” to challenge the programming of space. Text used to outwardly respond to the architecture became a structure with which to challenge the visual realm and to realize space. To what extent does the story parallel space? Is it through the nature of event or the sequencing of spaces for programmatic surrealism that we challenge architecture to activate? Once active, what does this exploration in reciprocal information exchange (between event and space with words) offer? Is a diversity of events and the variety of how to represent that shift simply the how-to guide for realizing architecture?

“There is no space without events, no architecture without program.”

(Ten years later) inside the space, the event as body, through movement, violates architecture as space. Here we're confronted with an uncomfortable if not masochistically painful relationship, our relationship to architecture as intensity. Must all constructed space be psychologically traumatic?

Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill (or Programming Urban Landscapes)

vi·o·lence vahy-uh-luhns

1. swift and intense force: the violence of a storm
2. rough or injurious physical force, action, or treatment: to die by violence.
3. damage through distortion or unwarranted alteration: to do editorial violence to a text.

In ‘Violence of Architecture’, Tschumi seems to think of violence mostly in this last sense, and suggests, or rather advocates for its presence in architecture as “it contains the possibility of change, or renewal”. He categorizes violence into two types, formal and programmatic. He describes formal violence as the collision of objects and the disruption of site. Programmatic violence is described as evil or destructive program. In his earlier work, ‘Spaces and Events’, he argues the importance of collisions of program, which also suggests violence, or disjunction.

The value of program that is suggested in Tschumi’s work has multiple readings when juxtaposed with ‘Programming the Urban Surface’, which argues for “non-programed use" as a strategy for addressing the surface. It might be suggested that such a strategy takes Tschumi’s argument one step further in that it advocates the elimination of program in order to allow for variation and juxtaposition. However, a lack of programmatic enforcement may simply allow for nothingness, an empty void. In addition, providing a space for the user to develop program may permit a dominant group to exclude a weaker one. However, some of the examples provided are more specifically in the realm of what Tschumi suggests. The OMA Yokohama Design Forum project “invents new programs and provisions”, and “shows a more heterogeneous mix of functions”. This is also true in the Yokohama Port Terminal.

In the end, Alex Wall and Tschumi are advocating for the same result (heterogeneous space) through different methodologies. While Tschumi argues for the designed, violent juxtaposition of program, Wall argues for an undesigned surface that will inevitably become heterogeneous. In the end the absolute is inconclusive: heterogeneity cannot be designed nor can it be anticipated. This leads us back to questions the class has already been asking. Is 'good' or 'successful' urban space heterogeneous? Can it be exclusionary? Can it be designed?

Landscape Urbanism and the Event

POINT1: In Tschumi's first article, he analyzes of architecture and event begins with the declaration that "there is no space without event." Later, he amends this academic preconception with the idea that Architecture is no longer the backdrop for events, but rather becomes the event itself.
POINT:2 Alex Wall, discussing a more urban condition - specifically the urban surface - proposes that the urban surface unfolds events in time. He references OMA's Yokohama Design proposal as a project that designed a heterogeneous mix of functions and activities throughout the day. "The space of form is here replaced by the space of events in time."
POINT3: Tschumi's second piece, and more developed thesis, talks about spaces and actions (events) as being qualified by each other. "One does not trigger the other, they exist independently. Only when they intersect do they affect one another."
So which point of view most accurately portrays the relationship between Landscape Urbanism and Event? I think Wall's urban examples are most similar because he is discussing an complex and chaotic scape where event is probably inherent, unavoidable even. When design involves flows, connections, and networks, it is hard to imagine a space that exists separate from an associated event. The definition of event will always be another important aspect of this debate. Is the Hoover Dam an example of architecture/landscape urbanism or event?

As promised, Oakland Archeology

Social responsibility and design as “aesthetization”.

In this seminar’s readings, social responsibility is a keynote. All four articles acknowledge the need for designers and the discipline in general to step beyond the traditional lines of design in order to really make a difference and influence in a community. In this respect, the social, cultural and political situations, laws and policies become primary factors to be taken into consideration.

Dolores states, “ buildings, tens of millions of them-can be surveyed, identified, and classified according to shape and function, but a larger sense of their political meaning is necessary” (dolores30). In parallel, Ananya Roy, in her book “Urban Informality”, talks about segregation, and more specifically on informal settlements in developing countries. She states the following: “ Seeing squatter settlements as primarily built environment has crucial implications. For example, it would imply that the upgrading of such settlements should primarily entail package of environmental reforms. And it would further imply tat the form of such upgrading should be determined by aesthetic considerations- specifically by the aesthetic desires of professional as they interpret informality and poverty […] this is not to say that the provision of physical infrastructure or the aesthetic upgrading of slums is not necessarily unimportant or unwelcome […] However such an aesthetic evaluation is clearly different from other social criteria that could have been used to gauge the project’s success: upgrading of livelihoods, the upgrading of housing rights, the upgrading of political participation” (Roy, 298).

Up to what point can deign really make a difference? What are the boundaries we need to traverse in order to really impact and truly improve the life of others? Although good design may temporarily improve the quality of life and as a result empower/incite certain actions and behaviors from it’s users, if it does not touch on the core of social, political and economic conditions, it becomes a simple “aesthetization” of place without providing any real long term opportunities or change.

With this said, the essays suggest awareness regarding design’s social responsibility, but at the same time, lack any suggestions as to how to improve our approach to design. Apart from higher involvement with communities in order to perceive their real needs and desires, there is no suggestion of a solution. how can design help eradicate segregation, and in parallel how can it be used to alleviate poverty and address the needs of all minority groups?

On American traditions of homogeneity and private property:

“Rediscovering an African American Homestead” serves as a telling of the carving out of community public space, from a historical example of racialized space. An urban site in need of economic renewal, not populated by commerce or an ethnic community, is a parking lot turned public exhibit. This project memorializes a historic example, but does it support “residents;” meaning, how does it share the tools with which to establish homestead. Residential space (physically built into the land) has the potentiality to become a source of appreciating value. Rather, is there room for our disenfranchised urban residents to participate within the “larger conceptual framework” of single-family living and suburbia?

I have questions as to whether we can reach beyond race, gender, and class, to larger themes of migration and family structures. Are either of those enough to establish a larger cultural identity?, because our history is not shared. What do we do with the American Cultural Landscape given the trend toward “Generic City” and capitalist space at the price of identity? Would asking this country to give up homogeneity be as unpatriotic as giving up private property?

Still Breaking the Chains...

Readings: "The Racialization of Space, and the Spatialization of Race" by George Lipsitz.
"Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of Space." by Henri Lefebvre.

These readings bring to light an ongoing struggle and challenge implicating race and space that have been cultivated and perpetuated throughout our American history. Although these readings rely on poignant references of past discrimination in housing, planning, education, and opportunity, it becomes all too easy to relate the discrimination of those times to very similar struggles today. Although these skeletons of an all-to-recent past continue to haunt us, it remains entirely crucial that we continue to challenge these historically discriminate constructed attitudes, in an effort to not only to 'repair the past' but even more importantly, to invest in a better future. To quote Lipsitz, we must "disassemble the fatal links that connect race, place and power, ...creating new spatial imaginaries by helping build communities characterized by racial and class heterogeneity, inclusion, and affordability." p20.
I interpret this in numerous ways: 1) For the Federal government and us citizens to recognize housing as a human right, and as the responsibility of the government to ensure each citizen has a place to legally call home. 2) De-criminalize homelessness, and begin to understand diverse social inclusion as a means of community investment and opportunity. (i.e. design parks that celebrate social and cultural heterogeneity, self-regulation, and true democracy in design. 3) ensuring that urban planning and urban design are public, participatory, democratic, and transparent. 4) continue to challenge and deconstruct our priveleged spatial imagination, with a prioritized focus on those people with the least resources for upward socio-economic mobiliity.
More specifically, I really think that a great next step for designers is being proactive about the importance of democracy in planning, community development and design. This includes challenging discriminatory zoning, pressing for sustainable and healthy design practices, advocating for well-designed affordable housing, and most importantly, making sure that we do not become the part of the machine which perpetuates the oppression we see and study today. As priveleged, educated designers, I believe it becomes our civic responsibility to ensure that we do not passively perpetuate the all-too-relevant discriminatory history that gave birth to our wonderful generation.

Race and Policy by Example

'The Racialization of Space and the Spacialization of Race' presents a thourough history and analysis of race and space in the United States. However, the conclusion stops short of anything truely inspiring or generative. Lipsitz tells an amazingly informed, insider's account of the New Orlean's Allison "Tootie" Montana story and then closes with the advice that Landscape Architects and others concerned with the built environment need to be aware of racial implications of space when designing. He breifly mentions planning policy and land use measures, as if a second thought, and name drops Walter Hood and Randy Hester without citing any specific examples of their strong work.

Confronting the issue of race and space in design involves a collection of experts adressing deep-rooted political agendas. As a timely example, Architecture for Humanity's Cameron Sinclair talked about his involvement in New Orleans, post Katrina. His organization not only designed and built housing for the displaced residents but found the loop-holes in FEMA's (and supporting insurace companies and banks) loan and mortgage system. They found discriminatory policy written into the housing applications and rewrote and reworked their own "forgivable" loan policy. They raised their own funds, involved local citizens in design, and are currently affecting over 38% of the Biloxi neighborhood. Through citizen participation and experts who "gave a damn," they were able to re-zone/plan Biloxi with previously segregated and unrepresented minorities ultimatley present and vocal.

Which comes first...

"Skeptics may argue that the nation lacks the political will to implement fair housing practices, that they fly in the face of the direction that land use and tax policies have been going for decades. But this inverts cause and effect. It is not that suburban whites are innately racist and consequently favor land-use policies that have increased the racial gap, but rather that prevailing land use policies provide extraordinary inducements, incentives, and encouragement for a system of privatization that has drastic racial consequences."

-Lipsitz (p. 19)

In last week's discussion of the Edge City, sprawl, New Urbanism etc., the automobile loomed large. I believe it is not just the utility or marketability of cars that gives them such a large role in the way spaces are organized and planned -- it is the way the spaces are planned that makes cars so appealing. In a similar inversion of cause and effect, some suggest that land use policy weighted toward better roads and highways is a democratic response to a demanding public; the notion that the policy might be designed to create market demand in the first place should not go unconsidered.

The passage above introduces Clarence Lo's observations on "forced busing," and it is worth noting the automotive connection. The spatial imaginary extends very clearly into transportation, infrastructure, and land/city-scape. I still find it hard to move beyond the chicken and egg conundrum -- can we say with any certainty whether latent attitudes about race, class, and ownership follow from morally bankrupt policy, or vice versa? Does it really matter?

New Orleans offers a compelling example of how divergent spatial imaginaries can make legible the true degree of inequality of access to housing and government resources. "Working-class blacks in New Orleans were resource-poor but network-rich," says Lipsitz (p.21). The causality of the first of these conditions is much easier to grasp than the second. The statement seems to imply that the white, suburban elite is network-poor -- that the importance of social networks in maximizing access to resources is a novel and seldom exploited idea. I agree that a real attempt to "rebuild" New Orleans should prioritize the reconnection of informal social networks. This won't happen (or won't happen soon or completely enough) precisely because the frailty of those networks, linked as they are to a frail infrastructure and fabric, is a fact that has been made nearly permanent (like the car) by the self-serving and cynical deployment of other, more robust ones.

I Just Want to Make Pretty Buildings (Seminar 7)

The Racialization of Space / Spatialization of Race is a challenging piece to discuss, as it is so completely loaded in terms of race, politics and design. I am sure my personal experiences bias my analysis, just as the bias of the author comes through in his writing. Many of the claims do not offer citations or examples, and a dispute might simply come to a difference of opinion. For example, the claim that “people of different races in the United States are relegated to different physical locations by housing and lending discrimination”, etc, may in fact be true in some, or even most places. However, when I walk out the front door of the home I own, I see Asian, Hispanic, and Black homeowners. I am aware of exclusively black and / or exclusively white neighborhoods, both rich and poor. At any rate, it would be beneficial to have examples or statistics to substantiate these claims in order to have a productive discussion.

Parts of the writing are unclear. The white spatial imaginary, while not participated in by all whites, is of benefit to all whites. The black spatial imaginary, while not participated in by all blacks, is something all blacks are subjected to. One would presume that this subjugation is something imposed by the racially discriminating, repressive white establishment. However, it is also suggested that black spatial imaginary is based on public expenditures over public needs (as opposed to financial gain). It would seem that the moral high ground has been achieved, independent of white oppression and money. Should the black spatial imaginary become rooted in the soulless material consumerism of whites? Should whites be subjected to a black spatial imaginary in order to repossess their souls?

In the end, accepting all claims at face value, I have my doubts about the power that is finally ascribed to urban, landscape and other designers. The ability of designers to incorporate “racial and class heterogeneity, inclusion, and affordability” is not achieved by design alone. An education must also be provided to policy makers, as well as owners and occupants of designed environments. While the designer can offer some lessons, they cannot offer a complete education alone.

The ideas and case studies presented Dolores Hayden in both Urban Landscape history and Rediscovering an African American Homestead give a better sense of the incremental influence that can be understood and designed, as well as the broad understanding of history and politics that is required to drive change. The value of minorities and historically underrepresented classes should be better understood in the study and evaluation of urban landscapes. A careful analysis of such contributions can provide insight and possible avenues for creating an informed public space. I found the final example of the homestead of Biddy Mason, and in particular the exhibition wall that was built, very successful. It does not call for sweeping reform, but offers an example of a small, humble intervention that can have broad consequences.

City Independent: Agrarian or Urban

There’s a confusion of the Edge City condition as an individualist and new city, stemming from the return to the agrarian context but with the density of population. The Edge City’s interior programs are tied to urban progress in conflict to the nature of the picturesque in aping the rural. What is it we love more: the land or our car, freedom or ownership, the machine or the frontier, city or landscape? As it were, the polls report a desire for both.

Is individualism in conflict to collection? Suburban repair sounds similar to the return of the industry-inviting city, at least in terms of pedestrian community with narrowing and connected streets, sidewalk accessibility, and corner stores. However the populace would like to maintain the feel of the romantically rural with porches, nighttime starscapes, countrysides—the reminders of when work is done. Is it not disingenuous to maintain a system reconciling symbolic independence and dependent realities of the car (oil and import), home ownership (debt or conversely a financial security rarely procured from farming), or nightlife (where the refusal to sleep is supported commercially).


“And into these places, these special places in the city, Ben's is one of them, there's drawn this very urgent cross-section of people who have somehow committed the first rebellious act that a man can perform; refusing to sleep.” (Leonard Cohen, from Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen (1965))

youtube.com/watch?v=sO09vWvaetc&mode=related&search=

Towards a New Eden?

I find the dichotomy of center and periphery to be problematic, and thus I question the fascination with the Edge City phenomenon. The split implies clear definitions, boundaries, walls... these have ceased to exist since our cities lost the need to be physical centers of defensible space. Cities as centers of finance and commerce is also fallacy, as the means by which we exchange money, goods, etc. have dispersed across a vast informational/geographic landscape. Those fascinated with Edge Cities will point to this trend and say "See, people have moved out from the center, and now they live on the edge". So what happens with the center, are there not voids created, and do not the voids constitute edges within the city? Couldn't all the definitions of 'Edge City' be met by inner city gentrification with their live/work lofts and glorification of a garden city ideal, a desire of the city to reclaim Eden?

In Bruegmann's piece, the split between downtown and suburb has productive potential. For example, downtown centers (I think of Los Angeles' Bunker Hill and the Bonaventure Hotel) built large, expansively landscaped ground to mimic the success of suburbs, and vice versa, suburban towns looked to build a center where people felt as though they lived in an old city center. This exchange is healthy, and it also blurs the distinction between the two. It's simple a matter of scale and time. One is just a larger version of the other, and one has more layers of previous development than the other. Proximity to center and edge is irrelevant; it is all one syrupy, viscous (not necessarily vicious) landscape. Bruegmann agrees with this view in his view of suburbia and the city as one continuous, 'celestial' body.

The 'Edge City' is really a phenomenon of time, not space. It is born from the quickness at which we build, the rapid movement of people both out from and back into the center, an artifact of our increasingly transitory habits. It is the uppermost crust of our desire to cohabit; only recently has this manifested as towers around the periphery, big box stores, and tract home developments. It's a swelling of scale, an amplification of the past, not an obliteration of it. Nothing is destroyed without leaving its mark on the destroyer. Even an Edge City must grapple with the frontier, and the way previous human traces upon the landscape have changed it or been changed by it. The West was not discovered as it is often romanticized: a virgin landscape. Rather, it was landscape inhabited by a human society hundreds of years old. Well, that's a discussion for another time.... I just disagree with the notion that Edge Cities have no history; they just choose to ignore it.

whose axe is it , anyway?

Garreau posits that the edge city of today is like the Venice or London of yesteryear. While I see his logic, I must respectfully disagree. Obviously great cities of the world—Rome, New York, London—were created by dynamic processes dictated by mercantile and residential needs and few, if any, planning codes. But I think that an important distinction is that these cities weren’t created at the expense of other, immediately proximate, cities of equal or greater size. They were perhaps built atop such cities, which one might argue was at that original city’s expense, but it was a gradual re-building, much like that old story about your great-grandfather’s axe—if you replace the handle, and then the head, and then the handle again, is it still your great-grandfather’s axe? Well, yes, by name you might still say it is.

I think that Harvey nails it when he says that New Urbanists privilege spatial forms over spatial processes. Whether or not you might call these Edge Cities New Urbanist, they most definitely are guilty of the same sin. The process that creates a successful place to live—whether it be a mountain hamlet or a thriving city—is one that takes generations of slow growth, and because of that slow growth, is capable of adapting, in time, to the new and varied pressures exerted on it by the economy, new social orders, etc. Successful communities of the type that most Americans are seeking, consciously or not, are not disposable. They aren’t shams of community built for the profit of a few individuals. Or maybe they were. Whatever. At least the de’ Medicis had good taste.

It was difficult for me to dicern the connections between these two articles while reading them. But after further inquiry it seems that that they are both taking oppostie stances on a method of design. Rem is provacative and controversial on his stance of the contemporary city. What some may see as a glorification of homogenization he describes as efficiency and a reality. His premise is that if something is so prevelant then there should be an attempt to understand it. He continues to say that it could even hold value. "What if we are witnessing a global liberation movement: "down with character!" What is left after identity is stripped? The generic?" Important to this conversation is identity. His critque of present urban planning is its attempt to give identity and difference to cities by conceiving of history as a generator of that identity, resulting in "insulting" propositions. In contrast to this method the Generic City has ability the to adapt. "The great orginality of the Generic City is simply to abandon what deoesn't work - what has outlived its use - to break up the blacktop of idealism witht he jasckhammers of realism and to accept whatever grows in its place." In terms of planning he states "The Generic City presents the final death of planning...But its (the Genric City) most denegerous and most exhilarating discovery is that planning makes no difference whatsoever...expectations change with the biological intelligence of the most alert animal" In this sense, there is no reason to plan because life is too complicated to plan for. The intense network of systems that the world is composed of is too difficult to try to domesticate, but perhaps study of those systems is more important.
In "The Public Domain as Pespective" Maarten and Arnold, take the opposite position. The question that they seek to answer unlike Rem is how can the profession be capable of creating public spaces. The inquiry is one of trying to understand/define the systemic logic (if there really is one) in order to implement it and create spaces of cultural exchange. In order to answer our pivotal question about the role of design and strategy in the development of public domain, we must first seek out what constitutes publicness now. Do the large public spaces in the city actually function as public domain? We I find problematic about such statements is that this premise does not take time into consideration. What this view doesn't take into account is that places that may seem horrible public domains right now may in the future be the centers of cultural gathering? They say they consider the "flux" of design but the farther future is not present in their thinking.

"cool"haas

One of the biggest questions I take away from the Koolhaas reading regards the determination of blandness or Genericness. The process of a once-historic city becoming Generic is well documented (he gives the example of Barcelona… especially interesting because in the next article they use Barcelona as an example of a city with unique features), but he states that the reverse is never true; that a city which has started its life as Generic never becomes a place of identity and history. But I find myself wondering; is this always the case? Does a place’s Genericness not constitute an identity in and of itself? He makes clear, and I agree, that history and its relics cannot sustain identity making into the future. When, though, does the switch flip between history and the present? In a place like a Generic city, which actively is re-defining time, compressing into the span of a few years that which once took centuries (the creation of a city), does the line between history and the present, between character and characterlessness, not become a bit blurred?

While Koolhaas uses obvious hyperbole and cynicism in discussing generic cities, it seems a strangely fitting manner for this phenomenon to be discussed. It is so easy to throw up one’s hands and declare against such cancerous growth and heedlessness for the specific identity of place taking off around the world, as is done constantly by anti-globilizationists and, often, me. However, in the flippant way in which Koolhaas discusses these issues of the Generic, I would argue, is rooted in anything but flippancy. I read this piece as a more cynical and more self-consciously cool version of the arm waving taking place in other quarters. While he’s certainly not advocating for the development of cities that try to be like Paris, or even for Paris itself, I think that he is advocating for an alternative to the Generic and a greater understanding of the factors that drive the creation of such cities.

Send More Architects That Nobody Has Ever Heard Of

While I find Rem Koolhaas writing compelling in its’ fervent argumentation and colorful language, it falls short when in the attempt to build a convincing case for operating in the so-called ‘Generic City’. This collection of declarative statements are suggested to be absolute truth without any real substance to back them up. We are supposed to take it all on his word, the authority perhaps granted by celebrity or notoriety. There is no detailed breakdown of a specific observation or a case study in the writing. Perhaps we can extract this from the material content of “S,M,L,XL” although it can be argued that it is not made very clear in the body of the book either. At any rate, I am left wondering how to qualify terms such as beauty, uninteresting, and even “generic”.

In the work by Hajer and Reinjndorp, there is an attempt to quantify and analyze the characteristics of what they, and other designers, consider great space. It is an introduction to what appears to be an analysis and documentation of desirable qualities of public places. It suggests that this will be backed by empirical research and data.” However, this still does not seem to consider the realities of “public”, or perhaps as Margaret Crawford suggests, multiple “publics. It is more of a top down approach, that suggests the designer knows what is best for everyone, their knowledge to be bestowed upon the masses, like it or not.

Both pieces suffer from a god complex that is disconcerting when glancing around at what has been 'granted' to the city to date. Rem seems to make an argument for embracing what has been inherited, even allowing for it to continue. But will he himself attempt to perpetuate it? No. In the end, neither the cynicism of the Koolhaus, nor the arrogance of Hajer and Reinjndorp, offer real solutions to our urban dystopia.

anomy & taxonomy

The Generic City is our contemporary habitat, without identity, without center or periphery, minimally referencing geography, useless to unionize by the nature of history that has no home within the generic. How do we call upon the empowering fraternity of identity without a shared common ground, or story for? Except with the shopping mall that provides city-dwellers with destination, route, and idle conversations—much like the airport. Neither of these models however, includes the necessity of food production if green space is residual, “immoral lushness compensates for the Generic City’s other poverties.” Koolhaas’s sidewalkless, skyscraped world does not suggest a system dependent on outside resources of petroleum or peri-urban farming as that would interrupt the generic by the nature of physical rootedness. The requirement of at least the latter is unavoidable and unrepresented in this waiting room, post-modern condition.

If the discrepancy between the classical and the generic cities are their centeredness, what do we understand the meaning of the city generic, as “center” to be? Are we offered any real hope for meaning or iteration along the continuum of city development? Do we look to industrialization as responsible for our economic metabolic rift, welcoming the arrival of the general?

&

“age-old distinction between the Same and the Other” (Foucault)
The Analytical Language of John Wilkins, by Jorge Luis Borges
Certain Chinese encyclopaedia, in which animals are divided into:
(a) belonging to the Emperor,
(b) embalmed,
(c) tame,
(d) sucking pigs,
(e) sirens,
(f) fabulous,
(g) stray dogs,
(h) included in the present classification
(i) frenzied,
(j) innumerable
(k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush
(l) et cetera,
(m) having just broken the water pitcher,
(n) that from a long way off look like flies

From the Generic to the Specific

Koolhaas' Generic City is a city of smoothness, good weather, successful people, and complex, anti-historical identity. Hajer et al. call for a new language capable of describing public space, the complexity and temporality of its use, and the highly specific interactions among its users. Koolhaas' description of the Generic City also seems to illustrate the difficulty of speaking in broad, collective terms about users of urban public space -- there is no room for the anomalous. The airport becomes the primary public space, a major symbol of identity. Everything is in constant flux, defying easy classification.

Conceiving of public space in the broader sense of the public domain – of cultural exchange and surprise among individuals forced to confront new possibilities – seems to emphasize the specific. Public space becomes a heterotopian realm where convention is inverted and one is forced to reconsider identity and the relationships among parts. The Generic City, then, seems like the stage or tabula rasa on which such encounters may occur, but escape description or understanding. Because urban identities are formed through change itself, through the massive speed and smoothness of culture, the ability to encounter and study the minutiae of urban life eludes us. Could Koolhaas, in effect, be making the same point about the inadequacy of finding language that can describe the specifics of this situation?

The generic as a symbol for modernity?

Not too go off on too much of a tangent, but seeing that I have been reading quite bit on China for last couple of weeks, Koolhaas’ “Generic City” made me think of the large urban developments now happening in most large and small cities in the country. In great part, due to globalization, cities have become a commodity, competing with each other to become a symbol of modernization, and thus attract foreign investment, etc. As a result, the “city image” has become predominant. Foreign celebrity architects are brought in as part of the market scheme in order to creating landmarks and an “identity” for the city, most of the time only thinking of the new and disregarding the old/history/culture. The problem is that, with this abundance of symbols (airports, and business centers have become a key factor), the exaggeration of variety, the increase of verticality and of ”mega projects” (with a lake or waterfront of some sort) has seemed to create the “same” city all over…a “theme park city”, a “generic city”. Has this obsession with the global image, technology, and the NEW (and thus the disregard for history and culture) become our symbol of modernity?


The kinetic public...

This article brings us back to the discussion of what is constitutes a public space and what exactly constitutes success for them. Basing my thoughts on it, a completely open space to the public does not mean that it will a place of “exchange”, or a part of the “public realm”. With the arrival and high integration of technology and mobility in society, and new factors such as the importance of security, etc., public spaces have to be redefined. With this said, a public space is not necessarily a static one. This makes me think of my experience of the metro and gondola (ski lift) systems in Medellin, Colombia. To quickly describe the latter, the metro reaches south to north (rich to poor), the gondola service connecting to the metro in a depressed area North of the city. I am not sure if it is the location of the system (allowing accessibility to all) or simply the novelty of it, which has permitted and thus created a non-exclusive space, where on finds a mix and exchange of social classes, thoughts, and ideologies. Depending on ones situation, the reasons for utilizing the system may vary (be it entertainment, an only means of transportation, etc), nevertheless the care and pride for the city is present throughout… I guess I consider this a highly successful public space.