On Space, Practice and the Postindustrial CityMany have written about the seemingly chaotic and incoherent evolution of late twentieth century North American cities, of the endless development and lack of connection between structure and inhabitation. The spatial forces generated by global economic and communications systems seem to have disintegrated the spatial textures of the city to produce “mutually repellent spaces,”[1] or heterotopia. Henri Lefebvre notes we are “confronted by an indefinite multitude of spaces....”[2] Beyond the traditional professions and economic determinants that have shaped the city over the last several decades, there has emerged an active involvement in the evolution of the city by new disciplines and numerous grassroots constituencies. As a result we see a multitude of different languages of space engaged in trying to shape the city, and each constituency understands and describes urban space differently. These differing spatial models provide a very real heterotopic condition as spatial structures vie with one another or are superimposed on top of each other. Michel Foucault charges that we are in the age “of the simultaneous, of juxtaposition, the near and the far, the side by side and the scattered.”[3] Modernist preoccupations with space began to have dramatic effect at the urban scale in the post Second World War era resulting in ubiquitous suburban sprawl. The space of urban sprawl is not enclosed and directed as in traditional cities. Rather, it is open and indeterminate, identified by points in space and patterns on the ground; these are two-dimensional or sculptural symbols in space rather than buildings in space, complex configurations that are graphic or representational.[4] The postindustrial city, that emerged coincidentally with the electronic revolution, can be described as complex free-flowing spaces interrupted by urban detritus (buildings, signs, etc.) and zoned as a closed system by the transportation and infrastructure patterning (roads, parking, nominal pedestrian spaces, etc.) of the horizontal surfaces. Robert Venturi et al determined this when examining Las Vegas in the early 1970s in their seminal study, Learning from Las Vegas. Urban space is made sensible by rules and signs that direct movement and action. This notion is affirmed by Susan Sontag when she writes: “...space is black, teeming with possibilities, positions, intersections, passages, detours, U-turns, dead-ends, one-way streets...”[5] The abstract nature of the postindustrial city, as alluded to by Venturi and Sontag, means the reduction of space to a two-dimensional visual field organized by a multitude of systems. As Lefebvre suggests there is a resulting flattening of space, and the emergence of quasi-spatial dimensions. The contemporary city reflects this condition with plethora of new and often little understood spaces that “overwhelm the architectural gesture, [and] ultimately dominate the contemporary urban environment. Vast parking lots, continuous or sporadic zones of urban decay, undeveloped or razed parcels, huge public parks, corporate plazas, high speed roads and urban expressways, the now requisite cordon sanitaire surrounding office parks, industrial parks, theme parks, malls and subdivisions....”[6] The predominance of space, paradoxically, developed at the same time that the structure of the city changed from an open to a closed system. Albert Pope makes much of the fact that the open and continuous structure of the original 19th century gridiron has imploded into the closed and fragmented city, the city of “ladders;” a ladder he defines as the “remainder of a partially eroded grid.”[7] The ladder is a useful structural notion that describes the disintegration of the contemporary city into an endless system of carefully controlled enclaves. Pope argues that we have collectively failed to understand the true nature of the changes to the city, knowledge of which would substantially alter our strategies for urban design. In particular he stresses that applying formal models from the past will not do anything to contribute to or change the new urban spaces that surround the vestiges of the nineteenth century gridiron city. Space does not originate from a representation or an intellectual projection; witness the disjuncture between architectural renderings and the resulting construction. A space cannot be projected into existence, space emerges from a conglomerate of strategies. The homogeneous Cartesian space of modernity has given way to the fragmented pluralism of postmodernism. Spaces that architects and planners cannot understand are often made habitable through the devices of popular culture. Every space is already in place before the appearance in it of actors....This pre-existence of space conditions the subject’s presence, action and discourse, his competence and performance; yet the subject’s presence, action and discourse, at the same time as they presuppose this space, also negate it.[8] Urban space is many things, however, as de Certeau and Lefebvre have argued, space is a social construct within which we exist, in which we act. Space is a project, an artifice; the city describes infinite territories to be engaged, altered, and lived in. Despite, the seeming incoherence of the spaces we construct, either consciously or by default, there are a plethora of strategies that are and can be employed to populate, transform and question the spaces of sprawl. According to Lefebvre social space is the “outcome of past actions, social space is what permits fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others, while prohibiting yet others.”[9] Therefore, space is an active and heterotopic condition that can be engaged by using analogous approaches as spaces “interpenetrate one another and/or superimpose themselves upon one another.”[10] Lefebvre concludes that “each body is space and has its space: it produces itself in space and it also produces that space.”[11] The body turns otherwise undefined space into comprehensible spaces through the act of making or territorializing. This occurs as both an individual and a collective activity. Routes, boundaries, abodes, intersections, and spaces are established that reinforce the heterotopic condition. Space is thus able to depict many states of being: emotional, linguistic, cultural, economic, ideological, etc. The city remains an uneven tapestry of ever changing spaces, juxtaposed, and overlapped, in which no space “ever vanishes utterly, leaving no trace.”[12] The practice of regulatory agencies and established professions does not necessarily coincide with social space, or everyday practice. According to Michel de Certeau, “space is a practiced place.”[13] Out of the spatial pluralism of the contemporary city arises the need for continuous engagement by all those involved. Space becomes the realm for construction, narrative development, memory and action. While many urban structures may be imploding, there exists, at other levels, many open possibilities. Notes:
Graham Livesey, MAAA, MRAIC, is an Associate Professor in the Architecture Program (Faculty of Environmental Design) at the University of Calgary and a principal in Down + Livesey Architects. |
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