Cities beyond Now

by Stefan Lazarevski

Unlike the American or Asian continent, Europe does not feature large cities (aside from London or Paris). Over the time, a series of small or medium-sized towns, each with their own history and important cultural or political establishments have proudly resisted the hegemony of the bigger cities (primarily capital cities). Even today, says Bernardo Secchi, “political and cultural importance of the European towns doesn’t strictly relate to physical or demographical size”. Globalization has acted therapeutically for some medium-sized European cities to establish themselves as global players, but, even so, they could not maintain such position on long terms relying on the traditional forms of overall development.

In order to remain competitive, many of the European cities understood and enforced the knowledge-economy concept of economic and social development. What is more, European Union in 2000 reached the so-called “Lisbon Policy Brief” which stated: “The development of a modern knowledge economy reflects a larger transition from an economy based on land, labor and capital to one in which the main components of production are information and knowledge. Because of that, the most effective modern economies will be those that produce the most information and knowledge – and make that information and knowledge easily accessible to the greatest number of individuals and enterprises”. One of the most important aspects of this document was recognition by the leading European countries that further progress does not rely, anymore, on competition with countries that offered low-skilled work at low wages, but rather production and implementation of knowledge within their own societies.

The trigger for transition from conventional to knowledge-economy based societies was different for different cities. For some it was economic crises, decline of economic bases or fleeing of the knowledge base, whereas for others improvement of level of competitiveness, rise of the economy or strengthening of the current network balance. In any case, Knowledge-Economy centers such as Helsinki, Dortmund, Rotterdam, Munich, Zaragoza or Manchester have proven, over the years that investments in stronger education, R&D areas, stable organizational structure, investments in clustering and diversification of the economy, can worthwhile step in building up stronger societies. What is more, they have shown proactive behavior in upgrading the knowledge foundations, strengthening the knowledge activities and applying sophisticated strategies to attract the knowledge capital of the region.

In terms of urban planning this meant strategic approach based on the knowledge foundations and knowledge activities. The pillar foundations: knowledge and economic base are essential in upgrading the urban diversity, social equity, accessibility and thus overall quality of life. Additionally, the cities need to undertake number of actions to become stronger in the knowledge economy. This is an on-going process which is based on four types of “knowledge activities”: creating new knowledge, applying new knowledge, attracting knowledge workers and developing new growth clusters.

Naturally, not all cities have similar prerogatives to initiate, much less to develop knowledge-economy based society. According to van Winden and van der Berg from the European Institute for Comparative Urban research and based on the size of the labor and cultural diversity there can be isolated: Metropolitan and non-Metropolitan cities. While the first group anticipates primarily big cities with solid knowledge foundations and stable position in number of global networks, non-Metropolitan cities are of smaller scale, they have weaker knowledge foundations, but have strong organizing capacities, low level of crime and congestion and strong local leadership. This category also differs within, and therefore stretches over to: star techno-towns, techno-towns in transition and university towns. However, there is a thin line that separates these cities especially if they are engaged in polycentric networks and alliances. It is generally accepted that non-metropolitan cities have more difficulties in applying knowledge economy. The common thing for all of them, however, is that they all are formulating comprehensive and explicit strategies to attract and retain KE activities by utilizing their own strengths and resources, founded on education, technology and research as well as designing sustainable housing policies and city marketing.

The cities today, aim to become international destination known for the high quality of life provided to its inhabitants and to be sustained by a vital public realm rich in cultural and social opportunities. Knowledge-economy concept, for many of them, has turned out to be the next step forward.

Reference:
― Van Winden, W. and van den Berg, L., 2004, Discussion paper - Cities in the knowledge Economy: New Governance challenges, European Institute for Comparative Urban Research
― Calthopre, Peter, 1993, The Next American Metropolis – Ecology, Community and the American Dream,Princeton Architectural Press, New York
― http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/11/36278531.pdf, 19.04.2009

Transformation of Urban Public Space

by Biljana Spirkoska

Most current debates concerning the Public Space, are dealing with the different transformations that the public spaces are undergoing in/under the new urban conditions, among which the Virtualization and Privatization of the public space are most discussed.

Ideally and traditionally conceived, the public spaces were seen as "a part of the urban territory that is supposed to be accessible to everyone". They were representing the political authorities, and at the same time they represented "a place of sociability and interaction".

In the contemporary city the public spaces are undergoing fundamental change. It is argued that, in its most immediate material sense, the public spaces are facing the same fragmentation and separation as the overall post-urban space. The debate continues that the public domain even "no longer resides in parts of the city, but it has been displaced to the realm of the mass media and has sprawled through the global networks of communication technologies". The traditional material urban spaces of streets, squares, shops, cafés, and clubs are no longer the primary places of public debate, but as Marc Augé remarks have "often became no more than a transitional space which is being used in traditional sense only by outcasts".

Not only that the public space has in a way been dematerialized by the various media and communication technologies, it has also been physically and materially threatened by economic and social privatization processes. In the recent debates a new category of space standing in-between the public and private space has been introduced. "Collective space", as Manuel de Solà-Morales explains, „refers to those meeting-places in the city which, though privately owned and hence in some respect exclusionary, continue to form the scenes for various public activities: places like the shopping mall, the sports stadium, the theme park, or the grand café". Those spaces are neither public, nor private, but "public spaces that are used by private activities or private spaces allowing a collective usage". The introduction of the new term, according to Solà-Morales, is a result of the processes of privatization, collectivization and separation of public spaces by diverse groups in a multicultural society. The urban public spaces of today, he argues, are subdivided into sections, taken over by particular group, whether we are talking about street gangs using spray paint or homeowners associations using neighborhood signs, and avoided by other groups.

Among the most obvious examples of appropriation of public space are those of the park, the atrium and the shopping mall.
Historically speaking, the parks have for a long time been an exclusive domain of the urban upper classes. They became open to the general public at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today, however, the urban parks are again more and more exclusionary. As a result of the growing presence of unwanted visitors (drug addicts or homeless people), in an answer of the middle classes demand for safety actions, different measures are undertaken, ranging from: not providing public toilets, seen as magnets for transients, to fencing, the gates of which are closed after dark.

The desire for shielded, constantly monitored public environments goes even step further in the skyscraper’s atriums. The atriums are not only revamped to keep unwanted visitors out, but they also simulate urban totality. By attracting selective parts of population, "skyscrapers tend to become cities-within-cities", but as more exclusionary they become, the more they weaken the essence of the traditional downtown: „its messy condition, its complexity, its irregularities, its densities, its ethnicities".

The last example can be found in the shopping malls, the suburban phenomenon, which found its way into city centers. Not only that the malls became urban, but by including facilities like hotels, fitness clubs, banks and medical centers, entertainment industries, they become in a way new type of downtown. But, what differs them from the traditional metropolitan downtown, beside being privately owned and privately run, is that by being exclusively design to respond to the demands of the middle-class, they "reject many of the activities of a true center- controversy, soap boxing, passing and leaflets, impromptu entertaining, eccentric behavior- harmless or not".

The three given examples represent only a part of the adapted forms of urban public spaces. The fragmentation and appropriation of the contemporary metropolis continues in various forms and directions. The New phenomenon of BID’s (Business Improvement Districts) is another example of the further administrative and managerial fragmentation characterizing the contemporary metropolis.

What all those examples have in common is that they are all working on the principle of inclusion and exclusion on different segments of the urban population. Because of the exclusionary politics, they face a subsequent loss of possibilities for interaction, which make them "lack the socioeconomic reaches and diversity of the traditional metropolis".

Reference:
Ghent Urban Studies Team, 1999. The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam.

Shaping the Society through the Public Sphere

by Nora Arsovska

“High columns and domes in antique-roman style. This is the description for the new building of the Constitutional Court, legislative organ of greatest importance in Macedonia. .. Zivkovski (the author) sais that this building will raise the consciousness of the Macedonian nationality for their own cultural heritage.” Quotation from a short column written and announced by the magazine Kapital.

Antique-roman style/raising the consciousness of the Macedonian nationality for their own cultural heritage. The above quotation represents the current state of conducted public opinion, which actually is an image of non-existing productive critics or an instrumentalized public thought.

What is actually happening with the public sphere in countries in transition? Where is it positioned in the state constellation? The public sphere, according to Habermass is a category that should intermediate between the society and the state and it should shape the public opinion. It is public information for which battles had been fought against the hidden politics of monarchies. The public opinion has enabled the democratic control of the government activities.
On contrary, the situation in countries like Macedonia is different. The public opinion is not a democratic tool for controlling the government activities. It is easily bribed and corrupted, especially for the cost of identity.

During the 18th century, the bourgeois public sphere had been formed representing the rational exploration and debate between the government and the private sector. The literature clubs, newspapers and political magazines, institutions for political debate that had been formed show the liberal and democratic public sphere in the early modernism. That had been a society where individuals criticize the common interests, where the individuality and citizenship could have shaped the society through their activities in the public sphere.

Another situation in the epoch of the modernism that Habermass illustrates (similar to the situation in our society) is the transition from the entrepreneurs, market capitalism into the governmental or monopolistic capitalism. This is the stage where the state and the private corporations overtake the vital functions of the public sphere and at the same point the liberal and democratic public discussion transfer into sphere of domination. Through the mechanism of bureaucracy the government manipulates the economy, trying to prevent the crises and at the same time controls the public functions like education, social care, and public mediums.

The giant corporations enter the public sphere and transform the individuals from citizens and public debaters into mere observers of the political, cultural and public matters. The developments of new media, marketing, public relations are becoming controlling tools of the private corporations. These tools empower the private corporations in the realm of public sphere and at the same time suppress the rational individuals and citizens.

After analyzing the transformation of the capitalism, Habermass encourages the idea of communicative acting. The instrumental acting directly connects the instruments to the goals, without rethinking the rationality of the aim. The communicative acting is focused on inter-subjective communication and understanding the goal, or forming consensus over a question.
The described tool according Habermass is the tool for initiating critics and reconstruction of the society.


Reference:
Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, 1991, Postmodern Theory, Critical Interrogations, The Guilford Press

Space Syntax as a new Master Planning Tool

by Biljana Spirkoska

The architectural knowledge is knowledge of formal and spatial architectural possibility and of how to use this knowledge to create an actual form. Accordingly, the two domains of architectural knowledge are the physical and the spatial forms of buildings. These domains of knowledge are about complexes of relations between things- physical elements on the one hand and individual spaces on the other. As such they are subject to the general way of thinking about complex relations: namely that, as with the grammar of a language, we think of words, but with the unconscious rules that form them into sentences. This is the problem of architecture: its primary domains of knowledge are non-discursive: we deal with them competently, but intuitively.

This is where architectural theory enters. It has always been the aim of classical architectural theories to render the non-discursive discursive-so we can talk about it in an explicit way. However, Hillier argues two problems with the ways in which architectural theories had approached the analysis of the non-discursive in architecture: firstly, most aimed at the analytics of physical form, few aimed at the analytics of space, and secondly this has usually been done in a partially normative, rather than fully analytic way. In effect architectural theories tent to be normative rather than analytic and close down the solution space in the direction of particular aesthetics, rather than open it up as theory should.

What he suggests it is needed is a "general theory of description of space, able to describe the differences between one spatial pattern and another in a way that is both analytic, in that it could describe all kinds of case, and theoretical in that it would aim at an effective description in terms of as few terms and concepts as possible."

In an answer he develops the space syntax project as: "a search for a spatial language to describe the relational properties of spatial patterns in buildings and cities, so a language of the spatial non-discursive, with sufficient precision to design with it and testable through comparing and correlating spatial and functional patterns."

The fundamental proposition of space syntax, one that underlines all others in some sense, is that the emergence of spatial patterns from the placing and shaping of objects is subject to simple laws. These are not in any sense laws which tell human beings what to do, but take the form: if we do this with objects than that emerges in an ambient pattern of space. These simple but pervasive spatial laws could only be brought to light by learning to analyze space configurationally that is by considering relations between all spatial elements, however defined and all others.

As a set of techniques, space syntax is about: applying configurational analyses to different representations of space: rooms, convex spaces, lines, street segments and similar, and through this- identifying structure in the spatial patterns and looking for observable functional correlates of these spatial patterns. In this way cultural patterns can be identified, underlying deep structures in architectural space can be brought to light, clear structure-function relations can be showed, theoretical ideas can be experimented, designs to see how they would work in context can be simulated and spatial laws about the relation between the placing and shaping of objects and the shapes of space that emerge from this can be identify. Once created, those analyses are powerful design tool, since they can be used for exploration of the effect of changes by just drawing and re-analyzing.

Space syntax is increasingly being used as a master planning tool, not only at the scale of the urban area, but also at the scale of the city and its region.

The strength of the space syntax urban models in comparison to the traditional planning models is seen in its ability to synthesize with great precision all kind of urban data-movement, land use, densities and similar- on the basis of a functionally intelligent spatial analysis of the street network and use it in a new kind of evidence-based design, to work across urban scales with the same level of precision at the micro scale as at the macro scale, to deploy science in design in a way which does not tell the designer what to do, but helps the designer to understand what he or she is doing, and to create theories which do not close down the solution space, but open it up to new thinking about design and new problems.

This text has been based on the lecture ''Space Syntax as a Thinking Machine for Architecture'' held by Bill Hillier on the 11th International Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar.

Collective memory under siege

by Stefan Lazarevski

The recently held Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar revealed several issues that planners, architects, sociologists and other city researchers are being occupied with at the moment. The questions of control and freedom, core and periphery, state and society as well as networks that are enforced, based on Michael Hardt’s and Antonio Negri’s perception of the new World-order, were addressed. There were two focal points; the relationship between theory and practice overshadowed by the economic, political, social and moral issues that pervade in any globalized society; and how to escape the conformist role that architecture tends to aspire by focusing on moods, ornaments and atmospheres.
Sounds familier? Yes, it already had been an issue in the early 20’s when the founders of Bauhaus Gropius and Mies van der Rohe demanded a “resolute affirmation” of the current conditions and responses adequate of the needs, goals and the time.

Now, standing in the turning point of humanity, clinched between economic and moral crises, architecture must once again rise and answer the social dilemmas. This can, very easily, be understood as self-centered and arrogant position of architects but it also must be considered that, as Keller Easterling said in her expose, some of the most radical changes to the globalized world are being written, not in the language of law and diplomacy, but rather in the language of architecture, urbanism and infrastructure. Finally, the city is the physical evidence of the collective memory and the changes in global trends will most definitely be embedded in the urban form and architectural language and as such will remain to justify our actions in the society of our time.

In her book “The city of collective memory”, Christine Boyer asks probably one of the most fundamental question of the identity of cities and ultimately the nation states; the question of what is collective memory? Today when identity is attacked by forces of globalization, is the collective memory under siege? This question seems to be very liable in a societies that are driven by political figures and pseudo-scientific workers on constant alert of strengthening the national identity. The rise of the nation states has mobilized and commercialized the collective memory, bringing it to a mere product, that can be easily sold, once it’s branded. This only proves that collective memory is rather political question than programmatic and in most of the cases it has nothing to do with the past. The reflection of such memory is to be found in different layers of the city which piled over the time.

However, what happens with the memory once it has been subjected to the instants of war, of genocide, of totalitarian rule or nationalistic amnesia? Is it a break from conventional form of memory or an absolute memory free situation? Christine Boyer argues that memory is absolute zero in such actions, that Bogdan Bogdanovic describes as urbicid; but she does not differentiate the true from the false memory. Perhaps this is the right approach, because if collective memory conveys only data, than the value of that information or its accuracy is of no importance to the identity structure. Then why totalitarian rule is bad for collective memory? In the globalized world, most of the spectacular architectural production by star architects happens in countries with soft or absolute totalitarian rule. The cities in these countries get inerasable urban form and thus build up its own collective memory.

“The more centralized the power, the less compromises need to be made in architecture” says Peter Eisenman. However, the liability of such collective memory hovers over the issues of morality, truth and its independent reading. Sure, we have the chicken, but is it really not important if it came first or was it the egg. The lack of dialog, transparency and process, corrupts and undermines this collective memory giving it a questionable and false face. Yes, it is a memory but it is a declarative one.

Professor Eckardt in his expose on modern Empires refers to Foucalt’s ideas of understanding urban society and says that it is all about power. People are controlled by places, by its culture and habits and most certainly by the different forms of power such as the State or the modern companies. Sometimes, they are controlled by the burden of its own collective memory. It is also true that people are the creators of all forms of control and they are the ultimate key in changing them.

“Before any process of memorization can take effect, silencing has to be undone.”
Christine Boyer

This text has been inspired by the lecture ''Collective memory under siege in the age of Empire'' held by M. Christine Boyer on the 11th International Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar.