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The City As a Personality and Its Projection in Urban Semiotics

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The City As a Personality and Its Projection in Urban Semiotics Matej Jaššo The ciTy as a personaliTy and iTs projecTion in urban semioTics observaTions on spaTial idenTiTy Now the city, which had weighed and tasted Urbanity and urban semiotics deprived of the ideological support it enjoyed and smelled them, which had used all its po- The problems of urbanity, recurrent in di- in the first part of the 20th century, shatte- wers save one, prepared to use its final ability, scussions of urban planners, space planners, red by imperial conflicts, and degraded and the power of speech. It did not speak with the architects, economists and sociologists, may fragmented, a concept we can still agree on? rage and hostility of its massed walls or to- divide or unite these professionals, foresha- It is hard to say. wers, nor with the bulk of its cobbled avenues dowing future trends prevalent in social and fortresses of machinery. It spoke with the discourse. Approaches to these problems Post-modernist urban development is apt to quiet voice of one man. are characteristic and representative for create ‘representative spaces’, understood as Ray Bradbury, The City the ways of thinking at the onset of the 21st areas of projection of values, thoughts, ideas century: systems are becoming increasingly or principles. Ugliness, paradox, deforma- complicated and paradigmatic limitations tion and allusion have become legitimate are disappearing, to be replaced by uncerta- narrative strategies for the creation and inty of future developments. The old, still revitalisation of urban space. Traditional relevant definition of urbanity as the unique interpretations of urbanity, based on a socio- quality of the city which enables communi- ecological foundation (urbanity as density cation and facilitates social contacts in the and diversity of urban communities), on the urban environment is constantly undergo- diametric opposition of the public and the ing theoretical experiments. Is urbanity, private, or on functionalist canons (urbanity photo d. gruška photo as a measure of the development of city- codes and websites. Shapeless, changeable semiotic and non-semiotic processes. This forming functions), have been supplanted or visually indiscernible elements are also revealed the need to revaluate urban semio- by increasingly prominent interpretations regarded as signs. tics from the theoretical, methodological and of urbanity as an integrated chaos, space research perspective. for spontaneous, informal and illegitimate One of the first attempts to formulate an activity. 1 urban ‘grammar’ was the famous concept of urban personality and its psycho-se- mental maps put forward by Kevin Lynch.4 miotic analysis An interesting platform for the study of His theory held that elements of the urban Let us imagine the city as a human persona- urbanity is urban semiotics. This discipline and architectural structure – paths, edges, lity. Man’s personality, as well as – figura- explores the social significance of forms of districts, nodes and landmarks – are more tively – the personality of any other entity space and the ways in which physical objects than an isolated set of signs and physical (company or city) is the foundation of iden- and spatial types communicate meaning elements. It was one of the most precise tity: it differentiates an individual from a through signs and symbols.2 Semiotics consi- typologies that was applicable to any urban multitude of others in an absolutely accurate ders the city to be a ‘text based on a grammar environment (including a virtual environ- and explicit way. As a rule, what is original of spatial patterns and meaningful structu- ment); research has confirmed its intercultu- is not particular features of character or res’.3 Society, community and an interaction ral accuracy (it is likely to be culture free). personal qualities but their combination. As framework are the main contexts for the early as 1957 such a comparison was made by interpretation of signs and sign registers – Lynch’s theory, however, was criticised for American writer Richard Powell during the more significant than their purely physical its alleged reductionism.5 Some critics (such launch of his novel The Philadelphian: and morphological order. Semiotics focuses as Gottdiener and Lagopoulos) claimed that not only on systems of way-finding, colours, urban space is not a text but a ‘pseudo-text’ ‘In order to stimulate writers, the persona- signage, notices, arrows, pictograms, photos, in that it is created by barely separable lity of a city or town need not be lovable. streets, buildings or squares, but also on In fact, of the nine major cities which have addresses, maps, telephone numbers, post 4 See K. Lynch, The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA personalities, only San Francisco has a really 1960, and also P. Bakalář, Psychologický pruvodce Pra- nice one. The other eight cities often annoy hou, Praha 2006. people who have not had the good fortune of 1 See K. Schmeidler, Sociologie pro urbanisty a archike- 5 Critics pointed out that the conception was based only ty, Brno 2001. on visual semiotics and relies on cognitive-behavioural being born there. I hope I am not revealing 2 See S. Keller, “Review on: Gottdiener, M. Lagopoulos, categories, neglecting psychological data such as existen- anything top secret when I say that, to many A., The City and the Sign: An Introduction to Urban tial value of a place, experiencability, emotionality or outsiders, Philadelphia and Boston have Semiotics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986”, motivation. See M. Gottdiener, A. Lagopoulos, The City Contemporary Sociology 1988 (XVII), pp. 346-348. and the Sign: An Introduction to Urban Semiotics, New highly irritating personalities. To many out- 3 See T. Jachna, Cyburban Semiotics, Split 2004. York 1986. siders, these two cities are rather like a pair of sheltered maiden ladies who have become crotchety and eccentric but who happen to 6 panoramio be awfully well-heeled.’ Obviously, the personality of the city arises from complex socio-historical processes, but 6 R. Powell, “Preface”, [in:] The Philadelphian: The Personality of Philadelphia, Medford 2007, p. 14. A view of the New Bridge in Bratislava it is also affected by management and the deli- temperament. This makes it possible to grasp pothetical personality, mark the city for many berate decisions of its authorities or residents. the reactions and manifestations of the city, years. The communist regime lasted slightly No city has an ultimately and immutably pro- seeking to answer the question of how the city more than forty years in Slovakia (1948–1989) filed personality; on the contrary, it is subject reacts to stimuli (does it tend to be phlegma- but the period left an indelible mark on the to change that can sometimes happen faster tic or choleric?). The temperament and the city with the abolition of the urban district of than the generational change. features of the city it involves translate into Vydrica, the splitting of the heart of the Old its atmosphere or ‘spirit’. The atmosphere can Town with the New Bridge, and the extension The foundation of any personality, the mo- be analysed not only from the point of view of of the National Gallery. The aesthetics of this ment which defines it – not only in its current its emotional hue but also as regards its mu- period was permeated with ideology – not only state but also in the previous stages of its deve- tability in time and space (morning/evening, in the East but also in the West (though ad- lopment – and which makes predictions about winter/summer, centre/outskirts). mittedly to a lesser degree). In practice, many its future possible, is the hierarchy of values. architectural solutions are evidence of the The urban environment is a mosaic of values A group of students of Spatial Development decline of functionalism as it created forms and pseudo-values whose influence on the at the Slovak University of Technology was devoid of any content slavishly performing the formation of hierarchies of values of individu- asked to do a laboratory project in visual socio- same functions. It is not a coincidence that al residents is unlimited. From the perspective logy. Their task was to analyse a hypothetical the height of functionalism was marked by of empirical observation another distinctive personality of a chosen city with regard to its early, isolated realisations doomed to become feature of the city’s personality is its face: the semiotic manifestations. Many students chose alien to users due to thoughtless, mechanical image of the city has a unique countenance to focus on Bratislava or its individual, rela- repetition. and physiognomy made up of symbols, land- tively independent (identity-wise) districts. marks, accents and other elements of visual Based on their findings, we shall take a closer The aesthetic ideology of organised modernity, communication. look at the ‘personality’ of the Slovak capital. which here took the degenerate form known as socialist realism, denied any values to the The language of the city speaks not only of the Bratislava as a personality past and was generally oriented towards tech- city itself but also of the society that inhabits Memory nical progress (behind which the cultural and it; the city’s visual language may be trivial, Every city’s historical memory is perhaps the social revolution lagged). The word ‘progress’ universal or unique. A less known category crucial component of its identity. The events was even used as a name for housing estates or used to describe the city, derived from the that shaped its appearance, and especially its cinemas built at the time, as a result of which psychological theory of personality, is its hierarchy of values, social atmosphere and hy- the term fell victim to communist newspeak: these days it is hard to imagine a developer calling his design this. The aesthetics of this wikimedia period was derived from the noble premise of the avant-garde that everyone should create; in reality it turned out that not everybody is capable of artistic creation of the same quali- ty.
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