Planning the Unplanned : the Paradox of Creating Urbanity

• There are an increasing number of city building projects, which in the wake of modern­istic planning are trying to create an “urban atmosphere”. However, these planned environments are in general too one-sided in terms of their functional diversity, too neat in their creation of public spaces, and too empty of people to meet the various definitions of urbanity. Still, the archi­tects behind these projects portray their creations as urban. What we encounter is in fact a problem that is well captured by the theory of perspect­ivism. In particular there is a wide gap between how I as a city dweller ex­peri­­ence and relate to the built envi­ron­ment, on the one hand, and how practicing architects understand the concept of urbanity, on the other. In this paper I introduce how I explore this gap between ideals and realities in my forthcoming thesis. In short, I am moving back and forth between two fix- points – one the Body of the Walker, the other the Eye of the Architect – all with the hope of eventually reaching a synthe­sis. The prob­lem is well captured by the opposed forces of Apol­lo and Dionysus, where the first perspective represents plan­ning and architecture, while the latter symbo­lizes urbani­ty. The outcome will be a number of paradoxes related to the task of “crea­ting urbanity”: a/ planning the unplanned; b/ crea­ting dyna­mic social proces­ses through the manipulation of physical form; and c/ genera­ting chaos through order.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Human geography, economic geography

Kulturgeografi, ekonomisk geografi

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)