The City Contemporary Foundations of Space and Place Series Editor: John Agnew

Titles in the Series:

Politics John Agnew and Virginie Mamadouh

Environment Kay Anderson and Bruce Braun

Development Stuart Corbridge

Regions J. Nicholas Entrikin

Transport Susan Hanson and Mei-Po Kwan

Culture and Society Nuala C. Johnson

The City Jacques Levy

Economy Ron Martin

The Rural Richard Munton

Theory and Methods Chris Philo The City Critical Essays in Human Geography

Edited by Jacques Levy Swiss Federal Institute o f Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

O Routledge Taylor &. Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Wherever possible, these reprints are made from a copy of the original printing, but these can themselves be of very variable quality. Whilst the publisher has made every effort to ensure the quality of the reprint, some variability may inevitably remain.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data The city : critical essays in human geography. - (Contemporary foundations of space and place) 1. Urban geography 2. Geographical perception I. Levy, Jacques 307.76

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007941051

ISBN 9780754628149 (hbk) Contents

A cknowl edgem ents ix Series Preface xi Introduction xiii

PART I THE CITY AS A CONCEPT

A City Is.... 1 Italo Calvino (1974), ‘Cities and Signs, 1, 2, 5’ in Giulio Einaudi, The Invisible Cities (Le citta invisibili, 1972), New York: Harcourt/Harvest-HBJ, pp. 13-14; 19-20; 61-2. 5 2 Rene Maunier (1910), ‘The Definition of the City’, The American Journal of Sociology, 15, pp. 536^8. 11 3 Louis Wirth (193 8), ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’, The American Journal of Sociology, 44, pp. 1-24. 25 4 Georg Simmel (1950), ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, in Kurt Wolff (ed.), The Sociology o f Georg Simmel, New York: Free Press, pp. 409-24. 49 5 Jacques Levy (2001), ‘Measuring Urbanness’, in Harri Andersson, Gertrud Jorgensen, Dominique Joye and Wim Ostendorf (eds), Change and Stability in Urban Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 15-25. 65

The Open City and its Enemies 6 Genesis, 11:1-32, ‘The Old Testament’, Good News Bible, 2nd Edn. 1994. 79 7 Plato (360BC), Critias (trans. Benjamin Jowett), pp. 1-14. 81 8 Frangoise Choay (1993), ‘Le regne de l’urbain et la mort de la ville’, in Jean Dethier and Alain Guiheux (eds), La ville. Art et architecture en Europe 1870-1993, Paris: Centre Georges-Pompidou, pp. 26-35. English translation by Alistair Clarke. 95 9 Jane Holtz Kay (1997), ‘The Asphalt Exodus’, in Asphalt Nation, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 221^5; 381-5. 113

Making the Complexity Thinkable 10 Michel Foucault (1986), ‘Of Other Spaces’, (‘Des espaces autres, 1967’), Diacritics, 16, pp. 2 2-7. 145 11 Michel Lussault (2006), ‘Ville’, in Sylvie Mesure and Patrick Savidan (dir.), Le dictionnaire des sciences humaines, Paris: PUF, pp. 1218-22. 151 12 Jane Jacobs (1984), ‘Back to Reality’, in Cities and the Wealth o f Nations, New York: Random House, pp. 2 9 ^4 ; 236. 157 13 Edward W. Soja (2003), ‘Writing the City Spatially’, City, 7, pp. 269-80. 175 14 Jean-Bemard Racine (2003), ‘From Urban Form to Urban Relations: In Search for a New Kind of Reflexive and Critical Knowledge in Urban Geography and City vi The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

Monitoring’, in Mirko Pak (ed.), Cities in Transition, IGU Commission Monitoring cities for tomorrow, Ljubljana: Dela 21, Department of Geography, University of Ljubljana, pp. 41-52. 187

PART II URBANNESS, URBANITY

Public Space: Beyond Urban Design 15 Isaac Joseph (1998), ‘L’espace public comme lieu de Paction’, La ville sans qualites, La Tour d’Aigues: L’Aube, pp. 41-51. English translation by Alistair Clarke. 203 16 Ulf Hannerz (1980), ‘The Construction of Cities and Urban Lives’, in Exploring the City, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980 pp. 242-61; 339^1; 341a 211 17 Lyn H. Lofland (1998), ‘Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm’, in The Public Realm, New York: Aldine De Gruyter, pp. 1-22; 22a-b. 235

Gentrification: Not So Simple 18 David Harvey (1973), ‘Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary Theory in Geography and the Problem of Ghetto Formation’, in Social Justice and the City, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 120-52; 152a. 261 19 Neil Smith (1987), ‘Of Yuppies and Housing: Gentrification, Social Restructuring and the Urban Dream’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 5, pp. 151-72. 295 20 Chris Hamnett (1991), ‘The Blind Men and the Elephant: The Explanation of Gentrification’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 16, pp. 173-89. 317

Mobility: Not Only Technology 21 Vincent Kaufinann, Manfred Max Bergman and Dominique Joye (2004), ‘Motility: Mobility as Capital’, International Journal o f Urban and Regional Research, 28, pp. 745-56. 337 22 Mathis Stock (2007), ‘European Cities: Towards a “Recreational Turn”?’, Hagar Studies in Culture, Polity and Identities, 7, pp. 115-33. 349

Co-Presence: A Future, Unexpected 23 William J. Mitchell (1995), ‘Recombinant Architecture’, Presence, 4, pp. 223-53. 371 24 William J. Mitchell (2001), ‘The Revenge of Place’, in Proceedings, Space Syntax, 3rd International Symposium, Atlanta, GA: Georgia Institute of Technology, pp. 1-6. 403

PART III THE CITY AT STAKE

The City as Agency: Discourses 25 Le Corbusier (1929), ‘The Great City’ (‘La grande ville’, 1925) in The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning, New York: Dover Publications, Inc. (1987), pp. 84-103. 413 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography vii

26 Ildefons Cerda (1999), ‘The Concepts of Urb and Urbanization’, in Arturo Soria Puig, (ed.), Cerda: The Five Bases o f the General Theory o f Urbanization, Madrid/Barcelona: Electa/Fundacio Catalana per a la Recerca, pp. 79-94. 433

Urban Flights 27 Melvin M. Webber (1964), ‘The Urban Place and the Nonplace Urban Realm’, in Melvin M. Webber et al, Explorations into Urban Structure, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 79-153. 451 28 Rem Koolhaas (1995), ‘The Generic City’, in Rem Koolhaas, Hans Werlemann, Bruce Mau, S, M, L, XL, New York: The Monacelli Press, pp. 1248-64. 527 29 Joel Garreau (1991), ‘The Search for the Future Inside Ourselves: Life on the New Frontier’, in Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, New York: Doubleday, pp. 3-15; 508-10. 543

New Avenues for the City 30 Peter Calthorpe (1993), ‘Guidelines’, in The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 41-55. 561 31 Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck (2000), ‘The Charter of the New Urbanism’, in Suburban Nation: The Rise o f Sprawl and the Decline o f the American Dream, New York: North Point Press, pp. 256-61. 577 32 International City/County Management Association (2002) ‘Introduction’, Getting to Smart Growth: 100 Policies for Implementation, Washington, DC: Smart Growth Network, pp. i-ii. 583

PART IV CONCLUSION

33 Henri Lefebvre (2003), ‘From the City to Urban Society’ (‘De la ville a la societe urbaine’, 1970), The Urban Revolution, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, pp. 1-22. 589 34 Italo Calvino (1974), ‘Conclusion’, in The Invisible Cities (Le citta invisibili, 1972), New York: Harcourt/Harvest-HBJ, pp. 164-5. 611

Name Index 613 To Ilaria Acknowledgements

The editor and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to use copyright material.

Bible Society for the essay: Genesis, 11:1-32, ‘The Old Testament’, Good News Bible, 2ndEdn. 1994. Scriptures and additional materials quoted are from the Good News Bible. Copyright © 1994 published by the Bible Societies/HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., UK, Good New Bible Copyright © American Bible Society 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992. Used with permission.

Blackwell Publishing for the essays: Chris Hamnett (1991), ‘The Blind Men and the Elephant: The Explanation of Gentrification’, Transactions o f the Institute o f British Geographers, 16, pp. 173-89; Vincent Kaufmann, Manfred Max Bergman and Dominique Joye (2004), ‘Motility: Mobility as Capital’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28, pp. 745-56. Copyright © 2004 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Columbia University Press for the essay: Ulf Hannerz (1980), ‘The Construction of Cities and Urban Lives’, in Exploring the City, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980 pp. 242-61; 339^1. Copyright © 1980 Columbia University Press.

Congress for the New Urbanism for the essay: Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck (2000), ‘The Charter of the New Urbanism’, in Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline o f the American Dream, New York: North Point Press, pp. 256-61. Copyright © 2000 by Congress of the New Urbanism.

Hagar Journal for the essay: Mathis Stock (2007), ‘European Cities: Towards a “Recreational Turn”?’, Hagar Studies in Culture, Polity and Identities, 7, pp. 115-33.

The Johns Hopkins University Press for the essays: Michel Foucault (1986), ‘Of Other Spaces’, (‘Des espaces autres, 1967’), Diacritics, 16, pp. 22-7. Copyright © The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission; David Harvey (1973), ‘Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary Theory in Geography and the Problem of Ghetto Formation’, in Social Justice and the City, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 120-52. Copyright © 1973 David Harvey.

University of Minnesota for the essay: Henri Lefebvre (2003), ‘From the City to Urban Society’ (‘De la ville a la societe urbaine’, 1970), The Urban Revolution, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, pp. 1-22. Copyright © 2003 by Robert Bononno. The City: Critical Esssays in Human Geography

Pion Ltd for the essay: Neil Smith (1987), ‘Of Yuppies and Housing: Gentrification, Social Restructuring and the Urban Dream’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 5, pp. 151-72. Copyright © 1987 a Pion publication.

Presses Universitaires de France (PUF) for the essay: Michel Lussault (2006), ‘Ville’, in Sylvie Mesure and Patrick Savidan (dir.), Le dictionnaire des sciences humaines, Paris: PUF, pp. 1218-22. Copyright © 2006 Presses Universitaires de France.

Random House, Inc. for the essays: Jane Holtz Kay (1997), ‘The Asphalt Exodus’, in Asphalt Nation, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 221^5; 381-5. Copyright © 1997 by Jane Holtz Kay. Used by permission of Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc.; Jane Jacobs (1984), ‘Back to Reality’, in Cities and the Wealth o f Nations, New York: Random House, pp. 2 9 ^4 ; 236. Copyright © 1984 by Jane Jacobs; Joel Garreau (1991), ‘The Search for the Future Inside Ourselves: Life on the New Frontier’, in Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, New York: Doubleday, pp. 3-15; 508-10. Copyright © 1991 Joel Garreau.

Simon and Schuster for the essay: Georg Simmel (1950), ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, in Kurt Wolff (ed.), The Sociology o f Georg Simmel, New York: Free Press, pp. 409-24.

Transaction Publishers for the essay: Lyn H. Lofland (1998), ‘Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm’, in The Public Realm, New York: Aldine De Gruyter, pp. 1-22. Copyright © 1998 by Walter de Gruyter, Inc. New York.

The University of Chicago Press for the essays: Rene Maunier (1910), ‘The Definition of the City’, The American Journal o f Sociology, 15, pp. 536^8; Louis Wirth (1938), ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’, The American Journal o f Sociology, 44, pp. 1-24.

University of Pennsylvania Press for the essay: Melvin M. Webber (1964), ‘The Urban Place and the Nonplace Urban Realm’, in Melvin M. Webber et al, Explorations into Urban Structure, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 79-153. Copyright © 1964 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania.

Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. Series Preface

This series collects together some of the most significant articles from the major fields of human geography published over the past 40 years. During this time something of a renaissance has occurred in the thinking that explores facets of human society using the concepts of space and place (and associated ones such as territory, geopolitics, mobility, diffusion, and locality). This reflects both the rediscovery of cultural difference and local knowledge as claims to universal, objective knowledge have come under critical scrutiny, and the exhaustion of historicist narratives owing to the failure of various projects to end global economic and political inequality. Thinking in terms of fixed territories of statehood has also become problematic owing to increased human mobility in a technologically-driven world in which religious and other, often non-national identities, appear to be in the political ascendancy. The period from 1970 until today has been one of particularly dramatic worldwide geopolitical change. Consider, for example, the impact of the political collapse of the Soviet Union, the economic rise of China, and the spread of globalization around the world. Many of the central tenets of Western social thought on nationalism, the primacy of economic change, and the centrality of states that were established during the Cold War are now subject to revision. Of course, concepts of space and place as they are applied to human society have old philosophical roots, although these were undoubtedly obscured, particularly in the United States, for many years. Since the seventeenth century ‘space’ has meant the plane on which events and objects are located, while ‘place’, the older of the two terms, dates back to the ancient Greeks and refers to the ‘lived’ or ‘occupied’ space. What is new in recent years is the varied ways in which these concepts and related ones are now being used. This involves blending older understandings, drawing from the three classic geographic traditions that emphasize the environmental (physical-human), spatial (distributional), and regional (clustering) approaches to geographic sameness and difference, with new sensibilities and concerns about social and political divisions (from social class, ethnicity, disability, and gender to the new political divisions of a post-Cold War world). This sense of older ideas adapting to new circumstances accounts for the seemingly paradoxical title of the series: Contemporary Foundations of Space and Place. If the foundations of recent thinking are rooted in the past, such thinking also mirrors recent imperatives. What is also new is a more self-consciously ‘critical’ tenor to use of concepts compared to a past when much research was driven less by theoretical or methodological considerations and much more by just an interest in a given phenomenon in itself (landscape features, settlement types, borderlands, etc.) as if the conditions for its study were self-evident. The ten volumes are divided, using fairly conventional distinctions, between those that are more general or cover large parts of the field (theory and methods, regions) and those that have relatively more constrained empirical subject matter (rural, economic, etc.). Unsurprisingly, there is considerable potential overlap across the volumes. Within the field as a whole, there is no simple division of labor between articles that are just ‘theoretical’ or ‘methodological’ and those that employ concepts in more mundanely ‘empirical’ ways. Nevertheless, there are xii The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography definitely some articles that have had greater theoretical or methodological influence across the field as a whole. Within their respective areas, however, editors do attempt to cover the main conceptual differences and controversies of the past forty years, paying particular attention to the scope of the influence in question. Each volume is comprised of articles in English. Of course, English dominates global academic production today, but this does not mean that only work written by native English-speakers is significant. In choosing volume editors and volume content, an active effort has been made to ensure the representation of standpoints and perspectives from all over the world. The series as a whole should be particularly helpful to those looking for substantial overviews of the course of human geography between the 1970s and the early 2000s but who lack access to large library collections of academic journals. The individual volumes are crafted by specialists who have expansive rather than narrow conceptions of the purpose of the overall enterprise. The volumes are thus also designed to appeal to those looking for artful reviews of recent developments in different substantive areas of human geography.

JOHN AGNEW General Editor UCLA Introduction

The City is Back

The city is back in geography, in social sciences more generally and, above all, in public issues. The city is back, but it is not the same city. The spread of urbanization has transformed the object, but the way urban planners, urban scientists and, above all, urban dwellers address it has also changed, probably even more so. The city is thus a new topic for geography, a discipline that has experienced an ambiguous relationship to cities in the past. What kind of geography is required in order to bring fresh insight to this renewed field? This question deserves to be raised, too. The reader may be surprised by the relative importance of non-geographers’ texts in this collection. This stems firstly from the reluctance, even sometimes rejection, that geography has shown vis-a-vis urban studies. Fortunately, philosophers, sociologists, economists and urban planners have carried out brilliant research. The second reason is more fundamental. Geography cannot be conceived as cut off from other social knowledge, even more so since geographers have started, and partially achieved, a significant epistemological and theoretical endeavour to upgrade their discipline. Now a more balanced dialogue is possible between geography and its ‘friends and neighbours’ from other fields: it would be absurd not to endorse it. This book can be read as a modest contribution to the emergence of the social sciences of space, fully aware of the crucial cognitive value of the geographical dimension of social worlds but equally aware of the urgent need for post-disciplinary approaches in social sciences.

Itinerary of a Curse

The history of the city entered our minds through a spell. The curse on the city (and indeed on globalization) announced in the Old Testament (Chapter 6), was maintained and given fresh impetus by an important European puritan-communal tradition. This tradition is represented at the highest philosophical and literary level by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote:

The major inconvenience of large cities is that people there become something other than their real selves, and that society gives them, as it were, beings different to their own.1

This tradition continued in Europe and was enhanced by ‘agrarian’ states that perceived emerging large cities as dangerous political rivals. This was particularly the case in France,

1 ‘C’est le premier inconvenient des grandes villes que les hommes y deviennent autres que ce qu’ils sont, et que la societe leur donne, pour ainsi dire, un etre different du leur.’, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La nouvelle Helo'ise. xiv The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography where the alliance between the central state and rural ‘notables’ kept Paris and other major urban areas in a state of subjugation.2 In many European countries, the ‘imagined community’ that underpinned the national identity was the myth of a self-sufficient, nature-friendly, prolific countryside harmony, unfortunately undermined and threatened by a messy, artificial, and sterile city.3 This myth migrated to America, conveyed by people who, from the day they landed, began to build an overwhelmingly urban environment, while remaining proud and ardent militants of the puritan cause. This probably explains a paradox: the North-American version of the anti-urban narrative is embodied, if not in a city, at least in a town landscape, that of ‘Main Street USA’ with its single-street ‘parochial’4 community and its farming hinterland, but not exactly in the plough, ploughing and the ploughman, as was the case in European mythologies. In Walt Disney’s images5 or in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, the discourse may seem to have been secularized. However, when one reads this statement in a Dearborn-published article by Henry Ford, stigmatizing the ‘pestiferous growth’ of the city, one discovers an unquestionable continuity with the Bible’s inspiration and style.

The city is doomed. [...] The modern city is the most unlovely and artificial sight this planet affords. The ultimate solution is to abandon it. We shall solve the city problem by leaving the city. [...] The suburban car and the automobile have rendered confinement within the City unnecessary for large numbers of people. Get people into the country, get them into communities where a man knows his neighbor, where there is a commonality of interest, where life is not artificial, and you have solved the City problem. Henry Ford, 19226

And finally, with Heidegger’s stance, the verdict is cast again. While there is no theory of the city in Heidegger’s works, what he called das Wohnen (dwelling or inhabiting) includes Bodenstandigkeit (rootedness) and rejects Neugier (curiosity’), Gerede (gossip), or Zweiteudigkeit (ambiguity), all urban attitudes that lead to an ‘oblivion of the being’. While it may be somewhat derogatory for the philosopher, I would argue that Marshall Philippe Petain, the fascist guide of the Etat frangais, was the best pupil of Heidegger’s teaching (though he must have been unaware of it), when he repeated his creed about territorial planning and social policy: ‘La terre ne mentpas ’ (Land does not lie). French-speaking, neo-Heideggerian thought in urban sciences (Frangois Choay, Chapter 8, as well as Augustin Berque, or Thierry Paquot) has taken the best part of an author who remains, in spite of everything, an important thinker for the philosophy of space.7 One of

2 See Bernard Marchand, Paris, histoire dune ville: xvf-xx6 siecle, Paris: Points-Seuil, 1993. 3 See Salomon-Cavin, La ville mal-aimee, Lausanne: PPUR, 2005 4 This is the word Lynn Lofland (see pp. 235-58) coined to designate the kind of fake public space where anonymousness is impossible. 5 See Karal Ann Marling, Designing Disney s Theme Parks. The Architecture o f Reassurance, Montreal/Paris: Canadian Centre for Architecture/Flammarion, 1997. 6 Henry Ford, 1922. My life and Work; 1926, ‘The Modern City -APestiferous Growth’, Dearborn Independent, Dearborn, Michigan: The Dearborn Publishing Company. 7 See his seminal lectures ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ and ‘Poetically Man Dwells’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper Colophon Books, New York, 1971. For a talented contemporary re-reading of Heidegger’s conceptions of space, see Peter Sloterdijk trilogy Spharen, (1. Blasen, 2. Globen, 3. Schaume)[Spheres : 1. Bubbles, 2. Globes, 3. Foams, not yet translated into English], Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2004. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography their converging conclusions is that the city has vanished, buried - surrounded, devastated, privatized, made obsolete or ‘museumized’ - by the urban sprawl. In a sense, these authors, who lament the end of ‘traditional’ urban culture, make the same diagnosis as their supposed opponents, such as the libertarian utopia epitomized by Melvin Webber (Chapter 27) or the cybermythology proposed by ‘early’ William Mitchell (Chapter 23), who joyfully celebrate the end of the city. They are not so far either from Rem Koolhaas, Bruno Secchi, or Thomas Sieverts, who agree on the prophecy and package it up in irony, good will or fatalism.

Geography outside Geography

Geography has not been a prominent player in the revival of the concept of city. And this is all the more true in North America. There have been some interesting works that take the city as an environment, namely David Ley’s social geography, John Agnew’s political geography, Allen Scott’s economic geography or even Larry Bourne’s analytical approach, which builds on Brian Berry’s works and other descendants of the Chicago School of sociology. However, these scholars, on one hand, are relatively rare, and, on the other, have not focused on the city as concept, but more often on the city as context. In this regard, Ed Soja’s ‘putting the city first’ (Chapter 13) can be seen as an exception. His peculiarity in the literature comes not so much from his subtle analysis of various ‘species’ of urbanity in a context (the Los Angeles area or its clones), where urbanity is unlikely to be met, but rather from his decision to place his whole framework under the patronage of both Jane Jacobs (Chapter 12) and Henri Lefebvre (Chapter 33). This companionship reveals Soja’s reading of Lefebvre: not as a freshly re-wrapped, old-fashioned Marxist, as most North-American social scientists see him, but as a useful transitional object towards an emerging approach capable, at last, of taking the city as such seriously. In general, geographers have let urban thought slip out of their hands simply because they failed to declare themselves interested. In Germany, urban space was leased to sociologists, in Britain and France, to nobody. As an heir of its German counterpart, the Chicago School, in the early twentieth century, has embodied various spatial dimensions of the urban sciences: quantitative studies carried out on the basis of a behaviourist and positivist approach; qualitative surveys inspired by exotic anthropological inquiries; and theoretical works taking advantage of the original link between sociology and philosophy. In this category, Louis Wirth epitomizes the fertility of the encounter between Simmel’s intuitions or reflections (Chapter 3) and empirical field studies in an eventful North-American metropolis. Why, for instance, do North American geographers seem so uninterested in the new trend emerging in North American cities? The following answers are deliberately simplistic, in an attempt to identify unsolved problems. i. Geographers are not interested in cities. They prefer rural areas, even if the entire World is urban. ii. Geographers have yet to bridge the gap with post-structuralist social theory. They continue to see society as if it were devoid of human beings. They see social dynamics as driven by faceless structures such as ‘capital’, ‘African-Americans’, or ‘women’. Is geography condemned to remain trapped in a pre-pragmatic turn? The theoretical and empirical exploration of contemporary historicity is dramatically absent, replaced by a xvi The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

standardized, politically-correct newspeak. Didn’t geographers even notice that Elias’s ‘society of individuals’ has emerged? h i. Geographers were not formerly interested in politics, only in techniques. Now they remain reluctant to recognize politics for what it is, namely: the controversial construction of a methodology capable of convincing the members of a society that violence is not the solution to achieve their private goals or (the same thing put in another way) that living in a society managed by such a method generates for its members a positive-sum game. On the contrary, most geographers imagine politics as a mere confrontation of particular interests, namely a shock between various communalisms, as if it were geopolitics; a zero-sum game. In practice, they prefer looking at street wars than considering the role of urban space as a political issue in itself, even less as a potential peacemaker. iv. English-speaking geographers are no longer interested in space. They prefer speech upon speech upon speech upon space. Opposing constructivism to realism instead of articulating them is a curse for the social sciences. v. American scientists, like other Americans, hate the city... even if some of their compatriots are currently changing their mind on this matter. vi. Many intellectuals do not like society when it succeeds. Hence they prefer ghettos to happy cities.

It may be argued, of course, that these weaknesses are not exclusive to geographers. A non-geographer scholar like Mike Davis, for instance, could be criticized because of his disaster-oriented view of cities and his motivations are probably linked to points v. and vi. Epistemologically and theoretically, however, geography is the missing link that has proven difficult to replace. This is probably due to a simple fact. A city is a spatial reality from whatever scale we try to address it, from the local to the global. In principle, the city is a spatial choice societies have made in order to manage the question of distance in a particular way. Co-presence (the maximum of realities in a minimum of extension) is in competition (I should say, more precisely, in co-opetition) with two other kinds of solution: mobility and telecommunication. If we fail to appreciate its spatiality, we are bound to understand virtually nothing in a city. We can’t make it out because we observe the consequences of a very peculiar spatial arrangement and try to relate them to the non-spatial. The resistance of social theory- oriented geography to ‘spatialism’ and to the myth of ‘general laws of space’, which were mere laws of geometry, served a useful purpose. But, conversely, in the same context, nothing can justify the refusal of any explaining power of space, if space is defined as a completely social component of societies. Both ‘spatial analysis’ activists and anti-spatial militants of single-principle economic, sociological, or political paradigms had good reasons to reject spatiality as a fully-fledged dimension of the social world. The concept of city was one of the numerous collateral victims of this deliberate ignorance. Will geographers finally meet the city? In this regard, the gentrification issue is more than simply a good example; it is somehow a crucial experiment. If it is said that the rich should live together with the poor, which could be a useful leverage for social mix, some geographers reply: ‘Nobody would accept this’. If it is observed that the so-called bobos8 (‘bourgeois-

8 An expression coined by David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography xvii bohemian’) pretend that they want to do it, the same people reply: ‘They say it but they won’t do it’. And if it is argued that this actually occurs, they reply: ‘They do it for the wrong reasons’. Social Justice and the City (Chapter 18) is probably a pivotal book among David Harvey’s works. It is his last attempt to develop, on the basis of Marx and Engels’ thought, a rational construction compatible with his previous epistemological inquiry, Explanation in Geography (1969). We can perceive in Social Justice and the City a ‘theoretical pain’, whose message would be: I have done my best to create a realistic Marxist theory of the city; now, if I want to continue to be a Marxist, I will have to adjust the urban reality to my postulates. Harvey identifies actual theoretical difficulties, for example, about the meaning of the land rent issue in an urban context, but finally decides to get rid of them by carpet-bombing the question marks with safe ideology on the working class, exploitation and revolution. As one of Harvey’s spiritual sons, Neil Smith (Chapter 19) has agreed to carry the burden. His debate with Chris Hammnett, however, is reminiscent of a dual-level road system in which there are very few interchanges. Hammnett’s arguments are simple and difficult to challenge, except for when an implicit axiom comes to the surface: the first non-poor, non-ethnic person moving to a formerly 100% poor, ethnic area is by definition committing an act of violence against the working class. Here lies the paradox: the denunciation of gentrification is not made for the sake of social mix but, conversely, in the name of an enhanced ghetto. Either the concept of urbanity as made of dense diversity is implicit but obvious (Hammnett), or it is firmly rejected as a dangerous illusion (Smith). In these circumstances, the characters of this play are rarely together on the same stage.

Weak Link Needs Strong Theory

Forty years after they were first published, Lefebvre’s works continue to attract considerable interest because they are not easily reducible to a banal discourse. Lefebvre admitted that the urban link, that is the kind of social interaction cities generate is, from an economic or political point of view, a weak link. Nevertheless, this weak link is presented as a key force in the shaping of societies Architects and political Utopians have found it difficult to reconcile this apparent antinomy. A city is not a masterpiece and urban planners are neither authors nor artists. First of all, they have to acknowledge that they are just one set of players among others. Secondly, if they want to be efficient, while they might not necessarily have to obey other stakeholders, they need to at least listen to them. A city is not thinkable on the model of the formal blueprint of an ideal society. It is neither a law nor a constitution. Its political construction encompasses the overall complexity of civil society. If this complexity is shattered, urbanity is over. This weakness appears in all classical urban utopias, from Plato (Chapter 7) to Thomas Moore or Charles Fourier: in these discourses, the city is supposed to be the pure embodiment of the ideal construction, from scratch, of a new society. We can see with new towns how difficult it is to ‘create’ a city. A city is always an ex-post reality. Cities cannot be summoned to solve all the problems of a given society. There is a slight misunderstanding here. Asking cities to do what they can’t and then concluding we’ve got bad cities is an unfair trial. By themselves, cities cannot eliminate poverty and illiteracy, or protect us from war and exploitation. If we believe, however, in the self-perfectibility of societies, we can and should ask cities to make their intrinsic contribution to a desirable evolution. xviii The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

Roughly speaking, this contribution can be seen in terms of an increased productivity of human interaction. This comes from a concentration of diversity, which allows for a more efficient management of inputs, and transforms the broad exposure to otherness into a creative device. Its usefulness is verifiable in terms of economic growth but also in terms of social cohesion, political governance, and environmental protection. For these reasons, urbanity is undoubtedly a dimension in any consistent project of a democratic republic based on justice. Urban links are weak just as ‘weak interactions’ in physics are weak: less dramatic, but more decisive. As Marxists, the early Manuel Castells9 and David Harvey stumbled across the city because they tried to encompass it within ‘ultimate-principle’ thought. Reading Lefebvre seriously, it can be understood that there is a strong ethics and aesthetics in the city. And, Lefebvre reminds us, there is even room for utopia: the creation of an ex-post utopia, in which a zero- dimension space emerges from the very existence of a banal city, capable of achieving the Greek ideal of synoikism (a place to be-together). We have to go back to basics, or rather the unique moment in the history of social sciences when sociology detached itself from philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century. The connection between the maverick philosopher of modernity, Georg Simmel (see pp. 49-64), in good company with Ferdinand Tonnies, Max Weber, and Karl Mannheim, is clearly present in its American projection, the Chicago School. Louis Wirth’s ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’ (Chapter 3) or, with a more economic inspiration, Rene Maunier’s ‘The Definition of the City’ (Chapter 2) are excellent syntheses of what the best non-spatial but open, cultured social sciences could say 70 to 100 years ago about urban space. That is why these key texts can still be used as the first step of urban scientists’ training, including geographers. Spatiality and societalness are the two necessary preconditions for a new beginning for a concept of the city. At the moment, spatiality is a major rationale of society-making and scientists that have integrated this approach into their work (Lussault, Chapter 11) provide us with the bases for complexity-oriented urban studies. Thus, Michel Foucault (Chapter 10) eloquently shows how rich can be a simple distinction between homo- and hetero-topia, while Michel Lussault synthesizes a definition of the city with the help of basic and powerful geographical tools.

Some Things We (Should) Know about the City

In the following propositions, I try to sum up what can be considered the cumulated basic knowledge on the city and the starting point for contemporary research.

1. City is Co-Presence.

The city is a way of generating a whole society thanks to the principle of co-presence. From the Neolithic onward, there are only three major means to manage distance, one of which is co-presence. Many observers have predicted the end of co-presence because of mobility or

9 See his first theoretical book, The Urban Question, 1977 (1972: La question urbaine), London: Edward Arnold, where he developed a rigidly functionalist Marxist approach to the city, as if ‘production’ and ‘reproduction’ could never interact in the same urban space. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography xix telecommunication. But the three modes seem to be in a situation of co-opetition, that is to say a compound of co-operation + competition. Each element of this rationale uses the others for its own objectives but is also used by the others. There can be no city without telephones and Internet. No email without places. No e-commerce without a delivery system. The key aspect of co-presence is probably the involvement of the body, whereas mobility and above all telecommunication can get by without it.

Table 1. Three Ways for Managing Distance

Co-presence Mobility Telecommunication Accessibility —— + to identified information

Serendipity + = — Exposure to place — + — otherness Exposure to body + = — otherness Type of space Place, territory Territory, network Network, place generated Examples City, family Intercity and intra Mail, books, the city transportation Web networks

2. Urbanity is made o f density and diversity.

Urbanity is what makes an urban space urban. Urbanity is made up of an association of density and diversity, where density includes people in their homes, at work, in hotels, in shops, in the street or in buildings, and material as well as immaterial objects, while diversity encompasses people (‘social mix’), activities (industry, commerce, school, and so on), and functions (activities, housing, transport, and so on). Diversity includes historical complexity: the coexistence of various temporalities embedded in a partially unified, contemporary rationale is the mark of a successful city.

3. The city is the urban space par excellence.

The city is not the only type of urban space. Urbanity can be found elsewhere, other than in cities, but a city is a space where the intensity of urbanity is maximal. Urbanity, urbaneness, urbanness, and Wirth’s ‘urbanism’ are roughly synonymous. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

4. Urbanity can be absolute or relative.

The n x (n-1), or approximately n2, formula defines the number of potential non-reciprocal links between n realities. It allows for an understanding of why the size of a city matters. Nevertheless, size is not everything. You can have a big n but no reason for people to meet, either because they are too similar or too different and have nothing to exchange, or because they lack sufficient accessibility to come into contact. Hence, there is an absolute, size- dependent urbanity and a relative size-independent urbanity. This means that urbanization can be defined as a creation of urbanity, in relative as well as absolute terms. You can inject urbanity into an existing city by creating density or diversity. ‘Urban renewal’ or ‘urban renaissance’ are typical of relative urbanization processes.

5. We live in a totally urban world.

A recent book on urban Switzerland (Diener, 2006) argued that the Matterhorn, an icon of the Swiss Alps, is urban. So can the same be said of the Firth of Forth or of Death Valley? The birth of cities is contemporary with the emergence of the first (Neolithic) modernity: in the Near East, farming, breeding, writing, money, the state and the city were invented almost simultaneously. Then, in the history of the city, there was a long period of stagnation and indeed the correlation between industrial revolution and urbanization can be misleading. The usefulness of concentration is subject to restrictions linked to the necessity of feeding urban dwellers with surrounding rural areas. Nevertheless, from its very outset, the city was essential to economics, politics, religion and geopolitics. Cities have appeared in a context of the emergence of interstate wars. The search for defensive efficiency tended to restrict urban development to the smallest perimeter possible, which generated small, but high-density cities. That forced the various social casts and classes to cohabitate, in spite of the profound divide that existed in the social fabric. The need to manage that diversity in density helped to create an urban society, including its political dimension, urban government and urban citizenship, as well as to invent social solidarity and political democracy. In rural societies or, more precisely, in societies where dominance was rural, cities were a particular ‘geotype’ (or a geographical situation), with peculiar configurations and landscapes. In today’s urban societies, the countryside (that is, exurban or infra-urban space) is a set of particular expressions of urban space, a gradient o f urbanity. There are still rural societies, mostly in Eastern and Southern Asia, but fewer and fewer every day. People from the countryside are increasingly connected to cities as their way of life are dramatically changing through material and immaterial networks. And we mustn’t forget that all non-urban societies are not rural. Predatory or low-intensity productive societies in mountainous, desert or polar areas, as well as oasis societies, have never been rural. European ‘projected’ settlements in the Americas have never been completely rural either. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography xxi

Table 2. Societal dominance and geotypes of urbanity

Geotype Societal Dominance City Countryside Urban City-centre, Suburbia Exurbia, Infra-Urban Rural Medieval Town ‘Country’, ‘Land’

6. Global cities are full cities.

At particular times, Rome, Cairo, Baghdad or the successive capital cities of China have been world-cities. They possessed power and wealth and, in particular, a significant part of the material heritage of the civilisations that existed when they were at their pinnacle. They were worlds. Today, global cities are simultaneously globalizing actors: they ‘export’ their ‘production’ all around the World. They are globalized, too: they ‘import’ various components from the outer World. Any global city offers a certain balance between import and export, an exposure to globalness and a capacity to shape it. In this sense, stereotypes about the domination of the financial sector with respect to the dynamics of global challenges should be scrutinized carefully and sometimes challenged. One such stereotype is expressed by the following reasoning: 1. finance is the most important sector in the age of globalization ; 2. global cities are financial cities; 3. financial cities are global cities. Actually, Peter Taylor, with the GaWC10, has shown that ‘generalist’ cities tend to come higher in financial economy rankings than finance-specialized cities. As a matter of fact, the four dominant cities in the financial sector as he defines it (accountancy, banking, advertising, and legal services) are New York, London, Tokyo and Paris, not Frankfurt, Chicago or Hong Kong.

7. There is no size limit to urban over productivity.

Another classically lazy statement is that there is a critical size for metropolises. In almost all states, large cities have productivity levels (gross urban product/inhabitant) superior to the national average. The largest of all, Tokyo, is also one of those where each dweller is economically most efficient. Even cities that look smaller enjoy a scale economy because they are connected to a network of cities. Today the hinterland of any city is the archipelago of worldwide cities. Lifetime and lifeline contexts are important in defining the relevant scale. On the other hand, no relevant limit of a ‘human-size city’ has been discovered. What can be observed, however, are unequal capacities in terms of creating a local or regional context where an individual can

10 Peter Taylor,4 So-called “World Cities”: The Evidential Structure within a Literature’, Environment and Planning A, 31 (11), 1999, pp. 1901-1904. The Globalisation and World Cities (GaWC) group is based in Loughborough, UK. It has published on its site more than 200 research bulletins (http://www. lboro.ac.uk/gawc/publicat.html). xxii The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography effectively reconcile their identity with the necessary resources for their development. In the case of Tokyo, more than 30 million people live in the same local society, with a common technical and anthropological environment, a situation that cannot be found either in Europe or in America.

Public Space as a Reasonable Utopia

The eighth basic proposition would be that public space should occupy a core function in any urban theory. Ulf Hannerz (Chapter 16), Lynn Lofland (Chapter 17) and Isaac Joseph (Chapter 15), whose texts are presented here, are good examples of how geographers can take advantage of anthropology and sociology in this regard. A public space is a place inside an urban area, where everybody knows that they can expect to experience an urban diversity whose magnitude might be similar to that of the overall urban area. Public space is a piece of actual, material as well as immaterial, space. It should not be confused with the public realm, that is: state property, or with the public sphere, a notion from political philosophy and translating the German expression Offentlichkeit. Public space is 4 a reasonable utopia’ because there is nothing impossible in its principle, except for the risk that some of the population might refuse co-presence with others. A public space is a fundamental and fragile expression of urban society. It is a place where what is called civility is practised. Erving Goffrnan described the way people are supposed to look at others as a type of ‘civil inattention’. Civility has unwritten rules, and therefore conflicts over such rules are particularly complex. For instance: can I stop in the middle of the sidewalk, can I sit on the grass, can I whistle if I see a beautiful girl or boy, can I read someone else’s paper over their shoulder as we sit on the same bench. There is a large array of public spaces. A possible classification crosses two principles: societalness (‘Who will I meet there?’) and accessibility (‘How easily can I get there?’). The table below shows how the decay of one or both principles jeopardizes the public nature of space. A last distinction should be made between privacy and intimacy. A public space is the opposite of a private space, but intimacy is neither forbidden nor suspended in public spaces. Contemporary individuals’ intimate lives find complementary configurations in very private places (the right to privacy in houses against any kind of community is typical of today’s societies) and in very public places (weak links, for example, the practice of seeing and being seen, are fundamental for strong individuals). When you are not in a movie theatre, you are not the same person whether there are 1 or 300 films to see. This is virtuality, which should not be confused with simulation or approximation. A large city is characterized by the importance of its virtuality: there are so many things to do, you have to choose, which means to eliminate. The more you live in an urbanity-rich environment, the larger the gap between what you could do and what you actually do: the golden burden of urbanity. In this context, chance offers a partial solution. The non-actualized part of the potentials offered by the city is made available by random encounters. The Three Princes o f Serendip is a medieval Persian tale, popularized by Horace Walpole in the eighteenth century. Princes in the story use two alternative strategies to get through difficult situations. The first is to take advantage of unexpected things they meet along the way, while The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography xxiii the second is to employ a capacity to arrange 'accidents' (an expression of their 'sagacity', to use Walpole's words). Robert Merton and Umberto Eco have both taken this phenomenon seriously.

Table 3. The Realms of Public Space

Free access

Regulated Building porches, 0 Access space': doorman areas. traditional neighbourhoods·. 'ethnic' districts, council housing

Restricted Semi-private Worship places, Staircases, Body- access realm: taxis, 'ghettos' corridors, surrounding shops, cinemas, private streets buffer-zones, theatres, bars working spaces,

Reserved (3 Communal Working Private space: access housing, gated places, clubs, houses, flats, communities condominios automobiles

When you are not in a movie theatre, you are not the same person whether there are 1 or 300 films to see. This is virtuality, which should not be confused with simulation or approximation. A large city is characterized by the importance of its virtuality: there are so many things to do, you have to choose, which means to eliminate. The more you live in an urbanity-rich environment, the larger the gap between what you could do and what you actually do: the golden burden of urbanity. In this context, chance offers a partial solution. The non-actualized part of the potentials offered by the city is made available by random encounters. The Three Princes of Serendip is a medieval Persian tale, popularized by Horace Walpole in the eighteenth century. Princes in the story use two alternative strategies to get through difficult situations. The first is to take advantage of unexpected things they meet along the way, while the second is to employ a capacity to arrange 'accidents' (an expression of their 'sagacity', to use Walpole's words). Robert Merton and Umberto Eco have both taken this phenomenon seriously. xxiv The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

We can even go beyond mere observation and consider how to arrange serendipity. Transforming chance into productivity is what John Udell, a blog specialist, calls ‘manufactured serendipity’. In an urban context, we can then identify the conditions to be met for efficient serendipity: i. The activation and involvement of all our perceptive captors, indeed our complete senso rial apparatus, in order not to miss information. Pedestrian metrics are the most suitable for that purpose, although they are challenged by physical or digital libraries, and even more so by research engines. ii. An exposure to otherness that supposes that otherness exists (diversity) and is accessible (density), and of course that one accepts such exposure. h i The cognitive skill to usefully interpret the information you receive.

Thus, reciprocal reinforcement takes place between urbanity and serendipity: serendipity is all the more necessary because urban space generates a rich set of virtual resources; at the same time, serendipity is all the more possible because urban space is dense and diverse. This is a clear case of virtuous positive feedback. Conversely, if we diminish the level of urbanity, we weaken the efficiency of serendipity as well as its usefulness. Public space entertains a strong relationship to mobility and, especially, to the metrics of mobility. Pedestrian metrics are typically public metrics. When used, public transit allows a pedestrian to remain a pedestrian. Users of the transport system essentially maintain their exposure to otherness as well as a multi-sensory sensibility to random interaction. That is why mobility should never be addressed separately from the overall urban realm. This is illustrated by intra-urban social and political models of mobility (see Kaufmann, et. al.,Chapter 21) as well as by worldwide tourist migrations as a powerful force for changing the face of cities (see Stock, Chapter 22). Public space is a new ‘mission’ field for geographers. It shows that there is no good reason to establish a scale prohibition. Gaps or divides between a component of a city and a city as a whole represent a major issue for the intelligence of societal logics operating in a given city. If they agree to address such issues, geographers seem to be fairly well equipped to tackle them. Moreover, from the sidewalk kerb to the World archipelago of cities, a whole set of continuities and discontinuities can be usefully observed and seen within a geographical framework or, more specifically, with a ‘spatial vehicle’.

The City at Stake: From Urban Thought to Urban Practice, and Vice Versa

Criticisms of the Modem Movement in urban planning came first from urban planners. For a long time, geographers cared little about the issues at stake in city-making. That is why New Urbanism, Transit Oriented Development, and Smart Growth movements (Chapter 32) once again marginalized geography from the public debate about desirable cities. Beyond geography, many politically correct or technically obsessed social scientists simply did not see the point. That is also why the architectural, ‘materialist’ vision of urban planning, seen as ‘urban composition’ or ‘urban design’, dominated urban public debate for many years. It also explains why too many observers reduced New Urbanism to nostalgic architectural aesthetics - which it is not, in spite of the fact that, in the North-American urban imagination, The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography xxv

emerging urban planning is sometimes related to a lost-paradise-like representation of the built environment. But, as readers will notice, the contribution from the sector of urban agency is far from being past-oriented. It is simply the American face of urban modernity. In any case, urban planners have been producing sophistically argued texts for a long time. By the end of the nineteenth century, Barcelona’s transformer Ildefons Cerda (Chapter 26) had already convincingly replied to Le Corbusier. As an engineer, Cerda understood that functional diversity was absolutely crucial for urban development. Unfortunately, Le Corbusier and the Athens Charter supporters failed to grasp this viewpoint and continued promoting an industrial vision of the city for several decades. Today, the debate between urban planners is much more interactive and open to other disciplines. It is good news that, at last, geographers’ voices can be audible, too (see Racine, Chapter 14). In the case of the United States, for instance, another current of criticism came from journalists and essay writers that increasingly related various components of the ‘American way of life’ to urban issues, including an analysis of the automobile’s negative impact on the very construction of social links (see Garreau, Chapter 29 and Holtz Kay, Chapter 9). The globalization of the urban world has not standardized urban landscapes but unified urban issues, bridging the gap between ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ cities. We know that between ‘compact’ and ‘sprawled’ cities, the ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Johannesburg’ models (see Levy, Chapter 5), there is a political rather than a technical conflict. The former accepts urbanity and its consequences: public space and public transport. The latter refuses and tries to privatize all urban space apart from private personal space. In Europe and Asia, large cities and city centres, the Amsterdam model dominates, while the Johannesburg model is stronger in North America and Africa, small towns and suburbs. However, the situation is changing rapidly. We could speak of the ‘Asianization’ of the Pacific Rim (Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, the Pacific Coast of Canada and the US). Asian populations themselves, with their attractive food, body image, aesthetics - and cities - play a role. Sydney’s rapidly changing downtown area, with its increasing numbers of residential skyscrapers, occupied by some autochthonous professionals and many Chinese students, is spectacular. The most emblematic case is probably Vancouver, whose transformation is clearly related to the arrival of large numbers of Hong Kong migrants following the 1997 Chinese handover. Throughout the regions of Asia under direct or indirect Chinese cultural influence, density and public metrics have been positively reappraised, like in Seoul and, from now on, in Chinese cities, too. This evolution follows the reversal of the Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong model in the 1970s and 1980s. In an initial phase, the first developed Asian metropolises looked mimetically at their North-American counterparts, but they soon realized that their material and ideal patterns were inapplicable in a context where density and diversity were basic values of society’s expectations. However, the North-American urban ‘renaissance’ can by no means be reduced to foreign inspiration. The emerging new inner city in former industrial cities like Chicago or the brand new compact and mixed urban planning in cities like Denver or even Houston, which had experienced neither ‘European’ tradition nor ‘Asian’ impact, show that the urban future has yet to be written, even in the country of pervasive, naturalized suburbia. Nobody but urban dwellers can and will invent it. xxvi The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

From Urban Geography to a Geography of the City

At the end of this urban journey, how far has geography changed? Like the World, politics, the human body, and some other topics, the city used to be a blind spot in geographical discourse. That was due to heavy epistemological orientations that could of course be shifted. These inflexions led to subsequent changes in its overall methodological and theoretical framework. Taking the city seriously invites geographers to couple qualitative to quantitative techniques: a city is made not only of concrete but of human dreams, too. Cartography is forced in new directions: Euclidean maps valued the miles and square-miles of farming countryside, maritime routes, and battlefields. Fresh geographic views bring fresh metrics for cartography, capable of encompassing the variety of distances of which a city is made up. Re-reading the concept of distance is a task that the city requires geographers to carry out. It demands an ability to marry topology with topography, territories with networks, ‘countries’ with ‘rhizomes’, and borderlines with borderlands. In a world where the limits of cities are not always to be found exactly where one might expect, the issue of the relevant thresholds that distinguish a place from an area is crucial, not only to understand cities but also to govern them. A public space, a local urban society or an urban network can, depending on one’s viewpoint, be defined either as a place or as an area. It is probably time for the wonderful work carried out in the phenomenological, anthropological and psychological exploration of the concept of place to be matched with a comprehensive approach to geographical vocabulary. What is an urban place today? - Something which might include mobility, multiplicity, and lifetime as well as historical changes. ‘As simple as possible, but not simpler’, Einstein joked. Urban issues need a limited but an enriched, neither literarily impressionist nor merely mathematical vocabulary of spatial complexity. At last, we escape from traditional ‘urban geography’, which was undermined by the same general defects as geography. As a result, urban geography failed to address the core area of the field and only focused on peripheral aspects: economic location patterns, inter-urban networks and size hierarchies. At its best, such geography was an acceptable urban sociology or economics: a geography in the city. This book tries to convince the reader that a geography of the city is possible, and already sufficiently equipped to put out to sea. It is certainly not the geography but more modestly a geography: pluralism is undoubtedly a vital asset in scientific environments and scientific practice. However, it is a geography, not geographies. The overuse of plural forms is often a sign of theoretical cowardice. Geography cannot be the arithmetic sum of geographies, each one turning its back on the others. A politely managed but messy heap of ideas is the exact opposite of what scientific exchanges, with their convergences and controversies, should be. Each scholar has to accept that their propositions have inevitable consequences on the whole body of their disciplinary framework and, furthermore, on their epistemological paradigm. This is particularly true for the basically spatial and spatially basic concept of the city. And I finally take on the singular of this book’s title. There are of course cities. If we include all cities belonging to spatial and temporal ‘elsewheres’, we can see a wide range of differences, and even oppositions, between them. Cairo is not Los Angeles, who would doubt it? But why is Cairo’s subway, in some respects, very similar to LA’s? If, then, we contend that there can be a concept of city, we have to accept the consequences of our statement: a geography of the city is useful in attempting to understand each singular city. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography xxvii

Genesis’ myth of Babel forever condemned both urbanization and globalization. Kant’s reply to the Old Testament is a definite affirmation that the border of hubris should be moved: 4 [Enlightenment] is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another.’ This message of freedom finds its immediate counterpart in Georges Perec’s warning: ‘There is nothing inhuman in cities, except our own humanity’. Concluding with Italo Calvino, this book proposes the following message, too: let our serendipity lead us to all items of a relevant geography of the city we might encounter, whatever label they might have.

References

Diener, R. et al. (2006), Switzerland: An Urban Portrait, Basel: Birkhauser. Kant, I. (1784), An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?

Parti The City as a Concept

A City is ...

[1] Cities and Signs Italo Calvino

You walk for days among trees and among stones Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger’s passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are. Finally the journey leads to the city of Tamara. You penetrate it along streets thick with signboards jutting from the walls. The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things: pincers point out the tooth-drawer’s house; a tankard, the tavern; halberds, the barracks; scales, the grocer’s. Statues and shields depict lions, dolphins, towers, stars: a sign that something— who knows what?— has as its sign a lion or a dolphin or a tower or a star. Other signals warn of what is forbidden in a given place (to enter the alley with wagons, to urinate behind the kiosk, to fish with your pole from the bridge) and what is allowed (watering zebras, play ing bowls, burning relatives’ corpses). From the doors of the temples the gods’ statues are seen, each por trayed with his attributes— the cornucopia, the hour glass, the medusa— so that the worshiper can recog nize them and address his prayers correctly. If a building has no signboard or figure, its very form 6 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

and the position it occupies in the city’s order suffice to indicate its function: the palace, the prison, the mint, the Pythagorean school, the brothel. The wares, too, which the vendors display on their stalls are valuable not in themselves but as signs of other things: the embroidered headband stands for ele gance; the gilded palanquin, power; the volumes of Averroes, learning; the ankle bracelet, voluptuous ness. Your gaze scans the streets as if they were writ ten pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you be lieve you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts. However the city may really be, beneath this thick coating of signs, whatever it may contain or conceal, you leave Tamara without having discovered it. Out side, the land stretches, empty, to the horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds. In the shape that chance and wind give the clouds, you are already in tent on recognizing figures: a sailing ship, a hand, an 14 elephant. . . . The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 7

wf Travelers return from the city of Zirma with distinct memories: a blind black man shouting in the crowd, a lunatic teetering on a skyscraper’s cornice, a girl walking with a puma on a leash. Actually many of the blind men who tap their canes on Zirma’s cob blestones are black; in every skyscraper there is some one going mad; all lunatics spend hours on cornices; there is no puma that some girl does not raise, as a whim. The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind. I too am returning from Zirma: my memory in cludes dirigibles flying in all directions, at window level; streets of shops where tattoos are drawn on sailors’ skin; underground trains crammed with obese women suffering from the humidity. My traveling companions, on the other hand, swear they saw only one dirigible hovering among the city’s spires, only one tattoo artist arranging needles and inks and pierced patterns on his bench, only one fat woman fanning herself on a train’s platform. Memory is re dundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to 19 exist. 5 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography MM / Isaura, city of the thousand wells, is said to rise over a deep, subterranean lake. On all sides, wherever the inhabitants dig long vertical holes in the ground, they succeed in drawing up water, as far as the city extends, and no farther. Its green border repeats the dark outline of the buried lake; an invisible land scape conditions the visible one; everything that moves in the sunlight is driven by the lapping wave enclosed beneath the rock's calcareous sky. Consequently two forms of religion exist in Isaura. The city’s gods, according to some people, live in the depths, in the black lake that feeds the un derground streams. According to others, the gods live in the buckets that rise, suspended from a cable, as they appear over the edge of the wells, in the revolving pulleys, in the windlasses of the norias, in the pump handles, in the blades of the windmills that draw the water up from the drillings, in the trestles that support the twisting probes, in the reser voirs perched on stilts over the roofs, in the slender arches of the aqueducts, in all the columns of water, 20 the vertical pipes, the plungers, the drains, all the way up to the weathercocks that surmount the airy scaffoldings of Isaura, a city that moves entirely up ward. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 9

No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it. And yet between the one and the other there is a connection. If I describe to you Olivia, a city rich in products and in profits, I can indicate its prosperity only by speaking of filigree palaces with fringed cushions on the seats by the mullioned windows. Beyond the screen of a patio, spinning jets water a lawn where a white peacock spreads its tail. But from these words you realize at once how Olivia is shrouded in a cloud of soot and grease that sticks to the houses, that in the brawling streets, the shifting trailers crush pedestrians against the walls. If I must speak to you of the inhabitants’ industry, I speak of the saddlers’ shops smelling of leather, of the women chattering as they weave raffia rugs, of the hanging canals whose cascades move the paddles of the mills; but the image these words evoke in your enlightened mind is of the mandrel set against the teeth of the lathe, an action repeated by thousands of hands thousands of times at the pace es- 61 tablished for each shift. If I must explain to you how Olivia’s spirit tends toward a free life and a refined civilization, I will tell you of ladies who glide at night in illuminated canoes between the banks of a green estuary; but it is only to remind you that on the outskirts where men and women land every eve- 10 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

ning like lines of sleepwalkers, there is always some one who bursts out laughing in the darkness, releas ing the flow of jokes and sarcasm. This perhaps you do not know: that to talk of Olivia, I could not use different words. If there really were an Olivia of mullioned windows and peacocks, of saddlers and rug-weavers and canoes and estuaries, it would be a wretched, black, fly-ridden hole, and to describe it, I would have to fall back on the meta phors of soot, the creaking of wheels, repeated ac tions, sarcasm. Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.

62 [2] THE DEFINITION OF THE CITY1

RENE MAUNIER2 Paris

The study of cities is not of interest to the statistician alone. The phenomena of the city, because of the various social conse quences flowing from them, are of primary importance to the sociologist. It is astonishing then that a scientific definition of it has scarcely been attempted as yet. Such is the purpose of the present study. But first we must undertake a critical examination of the current definitions. These fall into two groups. I. Most of them are based upon some special characteristic. They term every social establishment3 presenting a certain definite quality a city. But they differ as to the nature of the character istic.4 Some authors employ morphological characteristics. Cities have commonly been defined as aggregations having a certain population,5 i. e., the city group is characterized by its size or by its extent, by the number of its human elements in connection

1 Thib study is an extract from a forthcoming book, Uorigine et la fonc- tion economique des villes, etude de morphologie sociale (“ Bibliotheque soci- ologique internationale” )> Paris, Giard et Briere, 1910. 3 Translated by L. L. Bernard, The University of Chicago. 8 The word in the original is etablissement, Perhaps the English word community would have been a better equivalent, though somewhat narrower in sense. It seemed necessary however to use this word to translate societe. As a consequence the literal, if somewhat awkward and vague, equivalent estab lishment was decided upon.— Tr. 4 We mention as examples the biological definitions, based upon organic comparisons. Thus Dr. Bordier (La vie des societes} 1887, P* 110 calls cities “the points of ossification of the social organism.” See a criticism of this definition by Worms, Organisme et societe, 1896, p. 163, 5 It is notably the point of view of Meuriot, Des agglomerations urbaines dans I’Europe contemporaine, 1898, and of Weber, The Growth of Cities, New York, 1899. Mr. Weber defines cities as aggregations having more than 10,000 inhabitants (op, cit.} p. 16). 12 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

THE DEFINITION OF THE CITY 537

with the amount of its territorial element. Thus administrative statistics are most frequently based upon this assumption. The French censuses since 1846 and L’institut international de statistique since 1887, have applied the term city to every aggregation of more than 2,000 inhabitants. Such a definition cannot serve as the basis of a scientific study, and it has long been denounced as arbitrary. The space occupied by the establishment is too external a characteristic and varies too' much according to the circumstances. Several historians have defined the city of the Middle Ages by another morphological characteristic, the pres ence of a fortification.6 But apart from the fact that this char acteristic, which does not obtain in the case of modern cities, lacks universality, it still could not be used to' define and to specify the mediaeval city, for many villages and even farms were also fortified.7

6 The German writers of the eleventh century distinguished two kinds of places: unfortified places (villages) and fortified places (cities). Thus they con trast the urbs, castellum or civitas with the villa or the vicus. See Keutgen, Untersuchungen iiber deutschen Stadtverfassung, p. 46. Mauer (Geschichte der Stddteverfassung, I, 31 ff.) says the same: “Cities are villages surrounded by walls.” See also Babeau, La ville sous I’ancien regime, p. 239, who de tects in the rampart the essential quality of the city. 7 In all primitive societies villages are fortified. A frica : Masquer ay, For mation des cites chez les populations sedentaires de VAlgerie, p. 86; Cyr. van Overberg, Les Mayombe, p. 160 (Belgian Congo) ; A s ia : Cabaton, Les peuplades demicivilisees de I’Indochine (Conferences ecole coloniale, 1907—1908, p. 94) ; The Book of Ser Marco Polo, ed. Yule, II, 131 (China) ; Hunter, Imperial Gazetteer of India, I, 458; XIII, 88 f¥.; Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 302 (the special necessity for protection against the head-hunters) ; Am erica: Tylor, Primitive Culture [French translation, I, 54] (Sioux, Iroquois) ; Dor sey, Omaha Sociology, Third Rept. Bur, Amer. Ethn., pp. 313, 314 (description and plan of Fort Ponka) ; Diehl, UAfrique byzantine, pp. 224, 292; Jullian, Histoire de la Gaule, II, 214, 215 (existence of open and fortified villages for refuge in war time) ; Flach, Origine historique de Vhabitation, pp. 45 f¥., and Origines de Vancienne, France, II, 301 fif.; Thierry, Monuments pctiir servir d Ishistoire du Tiers-£tat, IV, 785 (the villages of Ponthieu were almost all fortified) ; Stouff, “La description de pltisieurs fortresses et seigneuries de Charles le Temeraire,” Revue bourg. Ens, Sup., XII, 14 (a. village still fortified in 1473). Here is apparent a further reason why aggregations of 22 households, of 50 households, etc., are designated in the texts by the title castrum (Molinier, “La senechaussee de Rouergue,” Bib. Hcole Chartesf 1883, pp. 468, 470 ff., numerous examples). See also K. Hegel, Entstehung des The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 13

538 THE AMERICAN IOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Other writers, among them Rtimelin, have made use of demographical characteristics and have defined the city for example by the lowness of its birth-rate or by its high marriage-rate. But he himself recognizes that these characteristics are by no means exclusive. The demography of the great city resembles that of the farm ; that of the small city resembles that of the village.8 More over the demographical qualities of the city are not sufficiently stable to characterize it. They vary with changes in the size of the city, as well as according to the period and the community. Thus in the Middle Ages the city death-rate was lower than that of the country. At the time of Graunt the reverse was true. At the present time there is again a tendency, due to other causes, toward an urban death-rate lower than that of the country. On the other hand, the birth-rate of the city, which is ordinarily lower than the rural birth-rate, sometimes tends to surpass the latter.9 The juridical definitions10 are subject to the same defect that certain morphological definitions have. They are valid for certain types of cities only. Furthermore the juridical character istics of the city are not universal even in a given social situation. The right of municipality (droit municipal) or the right of trade

deutschen Stadtwesens, pp. 30, 33. That most of the ancient German villages were fortified has already been remarked by Roscher (Htconomie politique rurale rN ationalokonomik des Ackerbaues und der verwandten XJrproduktionen], pp. 299, 300), who with Justi considers the village “a product of the age of the right of the strongest;” Gomme, The Village Community, pp. 122, 123; Stubbs (Constitutional History of England, I, chap. v [French translation, I, 101, note 5, and 114]), even claims that the term township which applies to the village as to the city, comes from the woven hedge or tun which surrounded all the villages that did not possess a wall proper. See, on the matter of forti fied villages of the neolithic age, J. de Morgan, Les premieres civilisations, etude sur la prehistoire et Vhistoire, 1909, p. 152. 8 Rumelin, “Ville et campagne,” in Problemes dJeconomie politique et de statistique, pp. 210-12. 9 Thus in Massachusetts and in Sweden. See, Henderson, “Are Modern Industry and City Life Unfavorable to the Family?” American lournal of Sociology, XIV, 671. 10 Justi has defined the city by the existence of a council (Stadtrat). But many villages of the Middle Ages had an organ of that sort, as the panchaydt of the Hindu village of the present. The city has also been defined by the specialness of its law, by the ensemble of its privileges (see, Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 173), what the Germans have called its “Privilegierung.” 14 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

THE DEFINITION OF THE CITY 539

(droit du marche), which have frequently served as criteria for historians, were even in the Middle Ages lacking to many aggre gations termed “cities” in the texts,11 and which were sufficiently important to be classed as such. The most serious of the unilateral definitions are those based upon some functional characteristic. Every aggregation which is the seat of special activities, regardless of what those activities might be, has sometimes been called a city.12 The abstract specialness of the activity is taken into consideration independ ently of its concrete content. Still other and more careful writers have demanded the presence of definite determined and concrete activities, and notably of certain industrial activities.13 In an offhand way the historians of the present define the mediaeval city by the existence of a market. But the history of the localiza tion of industries proves satisfactorily that no industrial activity is a universal and exclusive characteristic of the city. The ancient cities, as Sombart, following Bucher,14 points out, were generally consumption cities, even the greatest of them. And in modern

n See, for example, Planiol, “Les villes de Bretagne au X V IIIe sied©,” Nouv. rev. historique de droit, 1894, P* I 34* 13 Muller-Lyer, Phasen der Kultur und Richtungslinien des Fortschritts, 1908, p. 133. 13 Adam Smith said (Wealth of Nations, Book III, chap. iii [French transl., pp. 475, 485]) : “Cities are inhabited chiefly by artisans and tradespeople.” A large portion of this article will go to prove the falsity of this statement, so far as it concerns the Middle Ages. See, especially Sombart, “Der Begriff der Stadt und das Wesen der Stadtebildung,” Braun's Archiv, 1907, X XV, 2: Cities are “aggregations of men dependent upon the products of outside agri cultural labor for their subsistence.” But this proposition, as that of Smith, is true only for relatively modern cities. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie, II, 406, also defines the city as an industrial and commercial center. Sieveking, “ Die mittelalterische Stadt, in Vierteljahrschrift fur Soc. und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1904, II, 190, defines it as a center of exchange. 14 See, Etudes d'histoire et dJeconomie politique, pp. 342, 343. Cantillon held a more correct view when he wrote (Essai sur le commerce, p. 20), “The assemblage of several wealthy proprietors of land, who live together in the same place, suffices to form a city.” Sombart would reply that these purely consumers live wholly from the agricultural labor on the outside. But it will be shown in detail farther on that among many peoples agriculture holds a con siderable place even in the cities and in their centers. This is a fact too little known. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 15

540 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

times there are cities of complex activities and cities of specialized activities, industrial cities and commercial cities.15 It might even be said that its activity (function) is one of the most variable characteristics of the city.

II. Let us pass next to definitions based upon multiple char acteristics. Most commonly they distinguish the city by a multi plicity of characteristics which are of the same nature. Thus M. Pirenne defines the city by means of a group of morphological characteristics,16 and various contemporary economists define it by means of a group of functional characteristics.17 But the characteristics employed by the definition may also be of an unlike nature. The definition will then be based both upon the morphological and upon the functional characteristics of the aggregation.18 But these definitions, being merely amalgama tions of numerous simple definitions, already set forth, are subject to the same criticisms.

15 See, for all this, my article, “La distribution geographique des industries,” Revue Internationale de sociologie, July, 1908. 16 The city, he says, is distinguished in a level country by its gates, the churches, and the density of the population. See, “L ’origine des constitutions urbaines,” Revue historique, t. LVII, 64. 17 For example, by the coexistence of industrial, commercial, and political activities. 18 In 1801 the court at Rennes defined the city as an aggregation having “a numerous population, with which are connected public institutions for the har mony of general association and the commercial needs” (cited by Ramalho, “ Des villes, bourgs et villages,” in the Revue generale df administration s 1901, t. I, 291). Geddes, “Civics as Concrete and Applied Sociology,” in Socio logical Papers of the Sociological Society of London, 1905, II, 67 ff., 88 ff., defines the city as composed of three elements: people (individuals and insti tutions), affairs (activities), and places. Von Below (see Burger, in Conrad- 3schen Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, II, 1181) characterizes the mediaeval city both by the fortification and by the market. Likewise Heil, Die deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter, pp. 25-27. Flach, Origines de Vancienne France, II, 329, defines the city at the same time by the material defense, the religious protection, and the commercial activity. But the possession of a market with the special right attached thereto was far from characterizing all the cities. See a criticism of these definitions by Hassert, Die Stadte geogra- phisch betrachtet, 1907, pp. 4-6. 16 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

THE DEFINITION OF THE CITY 541

All these definitions,19 whether simple or complex, have cer tain vices in common. They rest upon characteristics which are too special, many of which are also superficial and secondary, and many more are not universal but apply to certain types of cities only. The definition should partake of a sociological character, which ought to present the following qualities: 1. It ought to be universal {constant), i. e., be common to all the types of cities. This condition goes without discussion. 2. It ought to be uniform (fixe), i. e., it ought to be found everywhere relatively unchanged, and vary as little as possible in degree. For a modality which, while existing in the various forms of its object, varies among these forms, would not answer to the purpose of the definition, which is to allow easy recognition of the object defined, and to enable it to be distinguished at a glance. It is seen at once that the characteristic in question ought not to be a functional characteristic; no characteristic of this kind can be universal and uniform. Specialisation in activity, consid ered abstractly and in itself, is true of only certain types of cities. It is wanting in what has been called “urban industry” (economie urbaine). And likewise the concrete nature of the activity varies greatly according to the cities specialized (commercial cities, industrial cities, or even those at different times dependent upon different industries, etc.). The criteria which we employ ought then to be of the morpho logical order; and since we have already eliminated certain criteria of that type, the field of our choice will be rather limited. Neither the territory covered by the establishment, nor the condi tion of things which it implies (rampart, construction of the houses) can suffice for our needs. The external form of the aggregation is not any more specific. There is left to us then only the characteristics relative to its internal structure. The

18 We must also mention the study of the psychological characters of the city, made by Simmel, in “Die Grosstadte und das Geistesleben,” Jahrbuch der Gehe-Stiftung, IX, Dresden, 1903; by Marpillero, “Laggio di psicologia dell' urbanismo,” Rivista italiana di sociologia, XII, September—October, 1908; and so ingeniously by Professor Ross in his Social Psychology, New York, 1908, pp. 58 f¥., 181 f¥. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 17

542 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

problem is to understand the nature of the structure which differ entiates the city from other types of establishment; and to solve this problem it is necessary to arrive at a general classification of these types. Cantillon, who, in his Essai sur la nature du commerce, was among the first to attempt a classification20 has distinguished four types of habitation: the village,21 the town, the city, the capital. The classification in use today is more simple. It distinguishes the isolated farm, the village, the city. The one here proposed is more simple still. It distinguishes only two main types of establishment, each comprehending a certain number of sub-types. The first category has to do with simple establishments, i. e., with a single social group. It includes what may be termed briefly the farm, composed of a single family; the hamlet and the village, composed of a number of families which form among themselves a unit community, a single political and social organism. The purest type of the village is the long house, such as that found among the American Indians or in Oceania, where all the mem bers of the village live in common in a single house,22 each family possessing for private use only a single compartment. At its

20 It is necessary to mention, as earlier still, Botero (Delle cause• delle grandezza e magnificenza cittd, Rome, 1588) who dwelt on the conditions and physical limitations of the development of cities. The importance of the same for statistics and sociology has been perceived by Kovalewsky. See his memoir on Botero in Vol. I ll of the Annales de Vinstitut international de sociologies

21 He does not speak of the isolated farm, which was doubtless still rare in his time, but which was to be found everywhere in England since the eleventh century. See Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, Oxford, 1908, pp. 264, 267, 268; Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 15, 16, A little later, Steuart, in his Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy (Works, London, 1805), I, 59 ff., in chap. ix, entitled, “What Are the Princi ples Which Regulate the Distribution of Inhabitants into Farms, Villages, Ham lets, Towns, and Cities?” completed from this point of view the classification of Cantillon and distinguished the farm, the hamlet, the village, and the city.

22 See Morgan, Ancient Society, New York, 1878, p. 399, who cites houses containing 160 persons. De Morgan, in Les premieres civilisations, etudes sur la prehistoire et Vhistoire, 1909, p. 121, points out that in the eighteenth cen tury the populations of Kamchatka lived in a sort of subterranean house of from 20 to 100 meters in length and from 6 to 10 meters in width, divided into compartments, and where as many as 300 people crowded together. 18 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

THE DEFINITION OF THE CITY 543

origin, the village is only the development of a clan. It com prises a true undivided family, a community closely cemented through collective responsibility. And although the modern village is composed of a number of families living separately, these families are units too restricted and otherwise too loosely held together to constitute true social divisions. They do not affect the village’s organization, which remains homogeneous and simple. The second category of social establishments has to do with complex establishments, i. e., with numerous forms of distinct social groups; those which we will term cities. They have vari ous degrees of complexity, and the combination of their parts is effected in different ways. But two characteristics, which con stitute the definition of the city, are common to all: a primary and a secondary characteristic. I. Ordinarily the city is defined as an aggregation, or to be more specific, as a contraction of the community or of a part of the community. This, however, is not for our purposes the most important characteristic. It is rather the fact that the city is a complex community, i. e., formed from a number of secondary groups.29 The city is a community composed of an aggregation of smaller communities, such as families, professional groups, etc. Thus it is conceived, not as a simple geographic fact, nor even as a simple industrial phenomenon, but as a social fact. The city is not to be regarded as an isolated phenomenon, sui generis. It is a community (societe), which must be identified, because of its characteristics, with a certain social type, and which differs from other communities of the same class only in degree. II. In effect, within this class of complex communities, there exist communities of two types. Those of one kind have a definite localization, within varying limits of course, but always closely connected with a certain portion of territory. The others are personal associations without geographical localization. The local clan, the village, the province, the nation, are communities

23 La Bruyere has said, “The city is partitioned into diverse communities which are so many small republics which have their laws, their customs, their jargon...... ”— Caracteres, chap. vii, p. 4. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 19

544 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY of the former type. The totemic clan, the commercial company, the universal church, are of the second. To be sure even the latter are not without attachment to a certain point of space, the totemic center, the community seat, or holy city. But they always overflow its bounds, and it serves them as a center only. The city is a community of the former class. But within that class itself it occupies a special place. And in this respect it is the second characteristic which makes it possible to distinguish it from other communities of the same type. All have a localiza tion sufficiently clearly defined. But that localization varies in extent, the community varies in dispersion and consequently the density of the social elements, men and things, varies. An Indian or Eskimo tribe occupies an enormous territory, relative to the number of its members. The city, on the contrary, is a com munity which, in relation to its size— or, if preferred, in relation to the number of its human elements— occupies an especially lim ited area.24 But this is a distinction merely of degree, exclusive only in that it sets off the city, an element within a social type, from other communities of the same kind. However, it is not the second characteristic which distinguishes it from other general types of establishment, and that is why we characterize it as secondary. It can not be truly said what is the minimum limit of space that will allow the community which occupies it to be called a city. This is not an absolute but a relative matter, which varies according to the population of the city. There is between the city and the more dispersed community of the same type a whole series of intermediary establishments. Such a city as Paris occupies a larger area than a small community which, how ever, is not a city. But because of its enormous population it constitutes a compact conglomerate of social groups, and that is sufficient.

24 Consequently, a market (marche), from its function of uniting a num ber of social groups, as the intertribal markets (fairs), may be regarded as a temporary city. There are also seasonal “cities” and on the other hand the market often presents morphological characteristics analogous to those of the “city.” It is frequently fortified even. But we must not, because of that, say with M. Pirenne that all cities spring from markets. The market is only a type of the city, characterized by periodicity and a certain function. 20 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

THE DEFINITION OF THE CITY 545

The city is then a complex community of which the geographic localisation is especially limited in relation to the city’s size (volume), of which the amount of territory is relatively small with reference to the number of human beings.

This definition takes cognizance of the external characteristic upon which the current definitions are based: the more copious population of the city. For a complex community is normally larger and more numerous than a simple community, since it is made up of a number of simple communities. But it is not neces sarily more extensive, for there are simple communities of extremely varied dimensions. Thus it is seen that this external characteristic is not sufficiently invariable to be used as a defini tion. Accordingly our definition leads to certain results. Tending to reverse the traditional hierarchy of the characteristics of the city in regarding as secondary the fact of aggregation, and as primary that of complexity, and thus replacing in the definition a purely external characteristic with a vital one, it shows the dif ference between the city and the village to be both less and greater than it is ordinarily represented as being. It is less in the first place, because we do not describe the city in terms of some activity (function), industrial or other, which is supposed to be proper to it alone. Since the city differs from the village only in its more, complex morphology, an aggregation of adjacent villages is sufficient, as will be shown, to constitute a city. But from another point of view the difference between the two appears to be more marked. They are not merely two kinds of establishments differ ing solely in their dimensions, but they are two communities of different types. The essential difference between the communities is here also one of morphology. But it is a more profound morphological characteristic which marks the distinction. Dis similarity of internal structure takes the place of a simple unlike ness in extent. Another and final result is the determination of the modalities of this latter characteristic according to which the types of the urban phenomena are to be classified. Instead of classifying the The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 21

546 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY cities after the manner of the statisticians, as small, medium, and large, we shall attempt to arrange the urban types according to their degree of complexity and especially according to the nature of the composition of their parts. It is possible thus to distinguish two very different types of cities. This distinction marks out our study, for only one of these, the more elementary, will constitute its main object. The city, we have said, is a complex local group. But the simpler groups of which it is composed are themselves either local groups, or on the contrary personal associations without distinctive and definite geographic localization. In the former case the city is made up of locally juxtaposed groups, each of which has its distinct location in the city territory.25 In the latter case the secondary groups which constitute the city are confounded geographically and occupy the urban territory with out dividing it. The districts (quartiers), the trades (metiers) of the Middle Ages occupying each its own street, are divisions of the former class. Families or the professions of the present, whose members are scattered throughout the city, are examples of the second. In the former case the urban territory is itself complex and heterogeneous, made up of numerous and distinct social regions. In the second it is simple and undivided. In this latter case the complexity of the urban community does not affect the organization of its territory; each of the secondary groups

25 Thus the cities of the Pueblo Indians are each formed from one tribe, itself constituted of several clans, each of which occupies its distinct quarter in the city, separated from that of the rest. See, on their organization, Krause, “Die Pueblo-Indianer,” in Abhandlungen der Kaiserl. leop.-carol. deutschen Akademie des Naturjorschers, Band 87, Halle, 1907, p. 50; Gatschet, A Migra tion Legend of the Creek Indians, 1884, pp. 154, 172, 173 (Creeks and Dakotas). Each clan has its group of houses designated by a distinctive emblem; Frazer, Totemism, p. 47 (Ottawas) ; Dorsey, “Omaha Sociology,” in Third Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., 1883, pp. 219 fif.; Powell, “Wyandot Government,” in First Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 64. See especially the exceptional work of Mindeleff, “Localization of Tusayan Clans,” in Nineteenth Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 639-699 (Tusayan and Hopis) ; by the same author, “A Study of Pueblo Architecture,” in Eighth Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn. See Morgan, “Houses and House Life of the American Aborigines,” in First Rept. of the Archeological Institute of America, 1881, and E. Sarfert, “ Haus und Dorf bei den eingeboren Nordamerikas,” in Archiv. fur Anthropologie, VII, 1908. 22 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

THE DEFINITION OF THE CITY 547

being distributed over the whole of the city. A city of the former kind might be called a segmental or partitioned city, and that of the latter an undivided or homogeneous city, these terms applying to the urban territory, not to the urban community which is always complex, divided, heterogeneous. Thus the city is in itself a matter of differentiation. Just as it is a complex community, so has it necessarily a heterogeneous and differentiated structure. Although its organization is natu rally and essentially a phenomenon of social differentiation, the same is not necessarily true of its functioning (fonctionment). The latter presents two aspects. I. Considered in its ensemble and as a whole, the city has an industrial function, i. e., it is the seat of a group of activities for transforming economic goods. This function may or may not be differentiated. The city may be the seat of a complex of activities or “industries,” including the industry of agriculture. It may on the contrary develop within itself more or less exclusively certain industrial functions. The loss of the agricultural function to the city, which becomes the special seat of “industry,” is an early differentiation of this sort. For there arises, as Adam Smith and, later, Stuart Mill have pointed out, a division of labor between the city and the country. At a more advanced stage the city specializes in certain kinds of industrial activities, and thence arises a division of labor between the cities, of which Sombart has classified the types and measured the influence upon the in ternal arrangement of the industries in the city itself. II. From this we are led to consider the functioning of the city under its second or internal aspect. If we recall the well- known propositions and classifications, all of which treat the city from the external point of view, it will be seen that our inquiry tends to give more importance to the other, the internal, point o f view, to define the city as an industrial phenomenon and to classify its types less by its external functional characteristics than by its internal functional characteristics. Thus we take up a position quite different from that which the economists are accustomed to occupy, as appears from what follows. The city, according to the definition which we have given, is The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 23

548 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

a complex whole, made up of parts; it is a social group formed from secondary groups. Its total function, however, is not distributed among these parts. And the parts or secondary groups themselves may or may not have a definite localization in the territory occupied by the group as a whole. When they are localized and not specialized we have the kind of city which we have termed undifferentiated (indifferenciee). When they are localized and specialized, there is what we may call a differenti ated (differenciee) city, thus conferring upon that word a special and definite sense which refers exclusively to the internal functioning of the urban organism.

Thus, in its morphology as in its functioning, the city in its simple and primitive form appears to be a community comparable to the rural milieu which surrounds it. It differs only because of a certain closing in or contraction which results in a greater density of men and things in the urban region. The city then by no means implies, as has often been said, a high development of commercial functions and relations. For it to. come into existence it is necessary, but also sufficient, that, for any cause whatever, a complex community, i. e., a community composed of secondary groups, should be compelled to contract, to reduce the territory which it occupies and to confine itself to a narrower region. For this reason it is possible for cities to originate in communities as yet little developed, where war is almost constant and where as a consequence the social groups could not exist in a scattered condi tion. It is under such conditions that most ‘of the cities among the aborigines of Africa and of America have arisen. Thus war has played the same role in the formation of urban civilizations that commerce comes to play in its turn. Operations of exchange have succeeded in this respect merely in developing and trans forming the beginnings which had been made before. This shows why the commercial centers have always grown up around previously formed military centers. The original causes of the city then are not industrial. But only with the growth of indus trial relations can the most advanced types of the city appear.

[3] URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE

LOUIS WIRTH

ABSTRACT The urbanization of the world, which is one of the most impressive facts of modern times, has wrought profound changes in virtually every phase of social life. The recency and rapidity of urbanization in the United States accounts for the acuteness of our urban problems and our lack of awareness of them. Despite the dominance of urbanism in the modern world we still lack a sociological definition of the city which would take adequate account of the fact that while the city is the characteristic locus of urbanism, the urban mode of life is not confined to cities. For sociological purposes a city is a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of heterogeneous individuals. Large numbers account for individual variability, the relative absence of intimate personal acquaintanceship, the segmentalization of human relations which are largely anony mous, superficial, and transitory, and associated characteristics. Density involves di versification and specialization, the coincidence of close physical contact and distant social relations, glaring contrasts, a complex pattern of segregation, the predominance of formal social control, and accentuated friction, among other phenomena. Hetero geneity tends to break down rigid social structures and to produce increased mobility, instability, and insecurity, and the affiliation of the individuals with a variety of inter secting and tangential social groups with a high rate of membership turnover. The pecuniary nexus tends to displace personal relations, and institutions tend to cater to mass rather than to individual requirements. The individual thus becomes effective only as he acts through organized groups. The complicated phenomena of urbanism may acquire unity and coherence if the sociological analysis proceeds in the light of such a body of theory. The empirical evidence concerning the ecology, the social organization, and the social psychology of the urban mode of life confirms the fruit fulness of this approach.

I. THE CITY AND CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION Just as the beginning of Western civilization is marked by the permanent settlement of formerly nomadic peoples in the Mediter ranean basin, so the beginning of what is distinctively modern in our civilization is best signalized by the growth of great cities. Nowhere has mankind been farther removed from organic nature 26 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

than under the conditions of life characteristic of great cities. The contemporary world no longer presents a picture of small isolated groups of human beings scattered over a vast territory, as Sumner described primitive society.1 The distinctive feature of the mode of living of man in the modern age is his concentration into gigantic aggregations around which cluster lesser centers and from which radiate the ideas and practices that we call civilization. The degree to which the contemporary world may be said to be “ urban” is not fully or accurately measured by the proportion of the total population living in cities. The influences which cities exert upon the social life of man are greater than the ratio of the urban population would indicate, for the city is not only in ever larger degrees the dwelling-place and the workshop of modern man, but it is the initiating and controlling center of economic, political, and cultural life that has drawn the most remote parts of the world into its orbit and woven diverse areas, peoples, and activities into a cosmos. The growth of cities and the urbanization of the world is one of the most impressive facts of modern times. Although it is impossible to state precisely what proportion of the estimated total world- population of approximately 1,800,000,000 is urban, 69.2 per cent of the total population of those countries that do distinguish be tween urban and rural areas is urban.2 Considering the fact, more over, that the world’s population is very unevenly distributed and that the growth of cities is not very far advanced in some of the countries that have only recently been touched by industrialism, this average understates the extent to which urban concentration has proceeded in those countries where the impact of the industrial revolution has been more forceful and of less recent date. This shift from a rural to a predominantly urban society, which has taken place within the span of a single generation in such industrialized areas as the United States and Japan, has been accompanied by profound changes in virtually every phase of social life. It is these changes and their ramifications that invite the attention of the so ciologist to the study of the differences between the rural and the 1 William Graham Sumner, Folkways (Boston, 1906), p. 12. ; S. .V. Pearson, The Growth and Distribution of Population (New York, 1935), p. 211. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 27

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 3 urban mode of living. The pursuit of this interest is an indispensable prerequisite for the comprehension and possible mastery of some of the most crucial contemporary problems of social life since it is likely to furnish one of the most revealing perspectives for the under standing of the ongoing changes in human nature and the social order.3 Since the city is the product of growth rather than of instantane ous creation, it is to be expected that the influences which it exerts upon the modes of life should not be able to wipe out completely the previously dominant modes of human association. To a greater or lesser degree, therefore, our social life bears the imprint of an earlier folk society, the characteristic modes of settlement of which were the farm, the manor, and the village. This historic influence is reinforced by the circumstance that the population of the city itself is in large measure recruited from the countryside, where a mode of life reminiscent of this earlier form of existence persists. Hence we should not expect to find abrupt and discontinuous varia tion between urban and rural types of personality. The city and the country may be regarded as two poles in reference to one or the other of which all human settlements tend to arrange themselves. In viewing urban-industrial and rural-folk society as ideal types of communities, we may obtain a perspective for the analysis of the basic models of human association as they appear in contemporary civilization.

II. A SOCIOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF THE CITY Despite the preponderant significance of the city in our civiliza tion, however, our knowledge of the nature of urbanism and the process of urbanization is meager. Many attempts have indeed been made to isolate the distinguishing characteristics of urban life. Ge ographers, historians, economists, and political scientists have in-

3 Whereas rural life in the United States has for a long time been a subject of con siderable interest on the part of governmental bureaus, the most notable case of a comprehensive report being that submitted by the Country Life Commission to Presi dent Theodore Roosevelt in 1909, it is worthy of note that no equally comprehensive official inquiry* into urban life was undertaken until the establishment of a Research Committee on Urbanism of the National Resources Committee. (Cf. Our Cities: Their Role in the National Economy [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1937].) 28 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

4 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

corporated the points of view of their respective disciplines into diverse definitions of the city. While in no sense intended to super sede these, the formulation of a sociological approach to the city may incidentally serve to call attention to the interrelations be tween them by emphasizing the peculiar characteristics of the city as a particular form of human association. A sociologically signifi cant definition of the city seeks to select those elements of urbanism which mark it as a distinctive mode of human group life. The characterization of a community as urban on the basis of size alone is obviously arbitrary. It is difficult to defend the present census definition which designates a community of 2,500 and above as urban and all others as rural. The situation would be the same if the criterion were 4,000, 8,000, 10,000, 25,000, or 100,000 popula tion, for although in the latter case we might feel that we were more nearly dealing with an urban aggregate than would be the case in communities of lesser size, no definition of urbanism can hope to be completely satisfying as long as numbers are regarded as the sole criterion. Moreover, it is not difficult to demonstrate that communi ties of less than the arbitrarily set number of inhabitants lying with in the range of influence of metropolitan centers have greater claim to recognition as urban communities than do larger ones leading a more isolated existence in a predominantly rural area. Finally, it should be recognized that census definitions are unduly influenced by the fact that the city, statistically speaking, is always an ad ministrative concept in that the corporate limits play a decisive role in delineating the urban area. Nowhere is this more clearly apparent than in the concentrations of population on the peripheries of great metropolitan centers which cross arbitrary administrative boundaries of city, county, state, and nation. As long as we identify urbanism with the physical entity of the city, viewing it merely as rigidly delimited in space, and proceed as if urban attributes abruptly ceased to be manifested beyond an arbitrary boundary line, we are not likely to arrive at any adequate conception of urbanism as a mode of life. The technological develop ments in transportation and communication which virtually mark a new epoch in human history have accentuated the role of cities as dominant elements in our civilization and have enormously ex- The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 29

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 5 tended the urban mode of living beyond the confines of the city itself. The dominance of the city, especially of the great city, may be regarded as a consequence of the concentration in cities of in dustrial and commercial, financial and administrative facilities and activities, transportation and communication lines, and cultural and recreational equipment such as the press, radio stations, thea ters, libraries, museums, concert halls, operas, hospitals, higher edu cational institutions, research and publishing centers, professional organizations, and religious and welfare institutions. Were it not for the attraction and suggestions that the city exerts through these instrumentalities upon the rural population, the differences between the rural and the urban modes of life would be even greater than they are. Urbanization no longer denotes merely the process by which persons are attracted to a place called the city and incorpo rated into its system of life. It refers also to that cumulative ac centuation of the characteristics distinctive of the mode of life which is associated with the growth of cities, and finally to the changes in the direction of modes of life recognized as urban which are apparent among people, wherever they may be, who have come under the spell of the influences which the city exerts by virtue of the power of its institutions and personalities operating through the means of communication and transportation. The shortcomings which attach to number of inhabitants as a criterion of urbanism apply for the most part to density of popula tion as well. Whether we accept the density of 10,000 persons per square mile as Mark Jefferson4 proposed, or 1,000, which Willcox5 preferred to regard as the criterion of urban settlements, it is clear that unless density is correlated with significant social characteris tics it can furnish only an arbitrary basis for differentiating urban from rural communities. Since our census enumerates the night rather than the day population of an area, the locale of the most intensive urban life— the city center— generally has low population density, and the industrial and commercial areas of the city, which

•' “The Anthropogeography of Some Great Cities,” Bull. American Geographical Society, XLI (1909), 537- 66. 5 Walter F. Willcox, “A Definition of ‘City’ in Terms of Density,” in E. W. Burgess, The Urban Community (Chicago, 1926), p. 119. 30 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

contain the most characteristic economic activities underlying urban society, would scarcely anywhere be truly urban if density were literally interpreted as a mark of urbanism. Nevertheless, the fact that the urban community is distinguished by a large aggregation and relatively dense concentration of population can scarcely be left out of account in a definition of the city. But these criteria must be seen as relative to the general cultural context in which cities arise and exist and are sociologically relevant only in so far as they operate as conditioning factors in social life. The same criticisms apply to such criteria as the occupation of the inhabitants, the existence of certain physical facilities, institu tions, and forms of political organization. The question is not whether cities in our civilization or in others do exhibit these dis tinctive traits, but how potent they are in molding the character of social life into its specifically urban form. Nor in formulating a fertile definition can we afford to overlook the great variations be tween cities. By means of a typology of cities based upon size, location, age, and function, such.as we have undertaken to establish in our recent report to the National Resources Committee,6 we have found it feasible to array and classify urban communities ranging from struggling small towns to thriving world-metropolitan centers; from isolated trading-centers in the midst of agricultural regions to thriving world-ports and commercial and industrial conurbations. Such differences as these appear crucial because the social char acteristics and influences of these different “cities” vary widely. A serviceable definition of urbanism should not only denote the essential characteristics which all cities— at least those in our cul ture— have in common, but should lend itself to the discovery of their variations. An industrial city will differ significantly in social respects from a commercial, mining, fishing, resort, university, and capital city. A one-industry city will present different sets of social characteristics from a multi-industry city, as will an industrially balanced from an imbalanced city, a suburb from a satellite, a resi dential suburb from an industrial suburb, a city within a metropoli tan region from one lying outside, an old city from a new one, a

6 Op. cit., p. 8. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 31

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 7 southern city from a New England, a middle-western from a Pacific Coast city, a growing from a stable and from a dying city. A sociological definition must obviously be inclusive enough to comprise whatever essential characteristics these different types of cities have in common as social entities, but it obviously cannot be so detailed as to take account of all the variations implicit in the manifold classes sketched above. Presumably some of the char acteristics of cities are more significant in conditioning the nature of urban life than others, and we may expect the outstanding features of the urban-social scene to vary in accordance with size, density, and differences in the functional type of cities. Moreover, we may infer that rural life will bear the imprint of urbanism in the measure that through contact and communication it comes under the in fluence of cities. It may contribute to the clarity of the statements that follow to repeat that while the locus of urbanism as a mode of life is, of course, to be found characteristically in places which fulfil the requirements we shall set up as a definition of the city, urbanism is not confined to such localities but is manifest in varying degrees wherever the influences of the city reach. While urbanism, or that complex of traits which makes up the characteristic mode of life in cities, and urbanization, which denotes the development and extensions of these factors, are thus not ex clusively found in settlements which are cities in the physical and demographic sense, they do, nevertheless, find their most pro nounced expression in such areas, especially in metropolitan cities. In formulating a definition of the city it is necessary to exercise caution in order to avoid identifying urbanism as a way of life with any specific locally or historically conditioned cultural influences which, while they may significantly affect the specific character of the community, are not the essential determinants of its character as a city. It is particularly important to call attention to the danger of confusing urbanism with industrialism and modem capitalism. The rise of cities in the modern world is undoubtedly not independent of the emergence of modern power-driven machine technology, mass production, and capitalistic enterprise. B'ut different as the cities of earlier epochs may have been by virtue of their development in a 32 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY preindustrial and precapitalistic order from the great cities of today, they were, nevertheless, cities. For sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals. On the basis of the postulates which this minimal defi nition suggests, a theory of urbanism may be formulated in the light of existing knowledge concerning social groups.

III. A THEORY OP URBANISM In the rich literature on the city we look in vain for a theory of urbanism presenting in a systematic fashion the available knowledge concerning the city as a social entity. We do indeed have excellent formulations of theories on such special problems as the growth of the city viewed as a historical trend and as a recurrent process,7 and we have a wealth of literature presenting insights of sociological relevance and empirical studies offering detailed information on a variety of particular aspects of urban life. But despite the multi plication of research and textbooks on the city, we do not as yet have a comprehensive body of compendent hypotheses which may be derived from a set of postulates implicitly contained in a socio logical definition of the city, and from our general sociological knowl edge which may be substantiated through empirical research. The closest approximations to a systematic theory of urbanism that we have are to be found in a penetrating essay, “Die Stadt,” by Max Weber,8 and a memorable paper by Robert E. Park on “The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment.” 9 But even these excellent contributions are far from constituting an ordered and coherent framework of theory upon which research might profitably proceed. In the pages that follow we shall seek to set forth a limited number of identifying characteristics of the city. Given these characteristics we shall then indicate what consequences or further characteristics follow from them in the light of general sociological theory and v See Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, et a/., The City (Chicago, 1925), esp. chaps, ii and iii; Werner Sombart, “ Stadtische Siedlung, Stadt,” Handwdrterbuch der Soziologie, ed. Alfred Vierkandt (Stuttgart, 1931); see also bibliography. 8 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tubingen, 1925), Part II, chap. viii, pp. 514-601. 9 Park, Burgess, et al., op. cit., chap. i. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 33

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 9 empirical research. We hope in this manner to arrive at the essential propositions comprising a theory of urbanism. Some of these propo sitions can be supported by a considerable body of already available research materials; others may be accepted as hypotheses for which a certain amount of presumptive evidence exists, but for which more ample and exact verification would be required. At least such a procedure will, it is hoped, show what in the way of systematic knowledge of the city we now have and what are the crucial and fruitful hypotheses for future research. The central problem of the sociologist of the city is to discover the forms of social action and organization that typically emerge in relatively permanent, compact settlements of large numbers of heterogeneous individuals. We must also infer that urbanism will assume its most characteristic and extreme form in the measure in which the conditions with which it is congruent are present. Thus the larger, the more densely populated, and the more heterogeneous a community, the more accentuated the characteristics associated with urbanism will be. It should be recognized, however, that in the social world institutions and practices may be accepted and con tinued for reasons other than those that originally brought them into existence, and that accordingly the urban mode of life may be perpetuated under conditions quite foreign to those necessary for its origin. Some justification may be in order for the choice of the principal terms comprising our definition of the city. The attempt has been made to make it as inclusive and at the same time as denotative as possible without loading it with unnecessary assumptions. To say that large numbers are necessary to constitute a city means, of course, large numbers in relation to a restricted area or high density of settlement. There are, nevertheless, good reasons for treating large numbers and density as separate factors, since each may be connected with significantly different social consequences. Similarly the need for adding heterogeneity to numbers of population as a necessary and distinct criterion of urbanism might be questioned, since we should expect the range of differences to increase with numbers. In defense, it may be said that the city shows a kind and degree of heterogeneity of population which cannot be wholly ac- 34 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

io THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY counted for by the law of large numbers or adequately represented by means of a normal distribution curve. Since the population of the city does not reproduce itself, it must recruit its migrants from other cities, the countryside, and—in this country until recently— from other countries. The city has thus historically been the melt ing-pot of races, peoples, and cultures, and a most favorable breed ing-ground of new biological and cultural hybrids. It has not only tolerated but rewarded individual differences. It has brought to gether people from the ends of the earth because they are different and thus useful to one another, rather than because they are homo geneous and like-minded.10 There are a number of sociological propositions concerning the relationship between (a) numbers of population, (b) density of settle ment, (c) heterogeneity of inhabitants and group life, which can be formulated on the basis of observation and research. SIZE OF THE POPULATION AGGREGATE Ever since Aristotle’s Politics,™ it has been recognized that in creasing the number of inhabitants in a settlement beyond a certain limit will affect the relationships between them and the character

10 The justification for including the term “permanent” in the definition may appear necessary. Our failure to give an extensive justification for this qualifying mark of the urban rests on the obvious fact that unless human settlements take a fairly permanent root in a locality the characteristics of urban life cannot arise, and conversely the living together of large numbers of heterogeneous individuals under dense conditions is not possible without the development of a more or less technological structure. 11 See esp. vii, 4. 4-14. Translated by B. Jowett, from which the following may be quoted: “To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled...... [A] state when composed of too few is not as a state ought to be, self-sufficing; when of too many, though self-sufficing in all mere necessaries, it is a nation and not a state, being almost incapable of constitutional government. For who can be the general of such a vast multitude, or who the herald, unless he have the voice of a Stentor? “A state then only begins to exist when it has attained a population sufficient for a good life in the political community: it may indeed somewhat exceed this number. But, as I was saying, there must be a limit. What should be the limit will be easily ascertained by experience. For both governors and governed have duties to perform; the special functions of a governor are to command and to judge. But if the citizens of a state are to judge and to distribute offices according to merit, then they must know each other’s characters; where they do not possess this knowledge, both the election to The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 35 URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE n of the city. Large numbers involve, as has been pointed out, a greater range of individual variation. Furthermore, the greater the number of individuals participating in a process of interaction, the greater is the potential differentiation between them. The personal traits, the occupations, the cultural life, and the ideas of the mem bers of an urban community may, therefore, be expected to range between more widely separated poles than those of rural inhabi tants. That such variations should give rise to the spatial segregation of individuals according to color, ethnic heritage, economic and social status, tastes and preferences, may readily be inferred. The bonds of kinship, of neighborliness, and the sentiments arising out of living together for generations under a common folk tradition are likely to be absent or, at best, relatively weak in an aggregate the members of which have such diverse origins and backgrounds. Under such circumstances competition and formal control mechanisms furnish the substitutes for the bonds of solidarity that are relied upon to hold a folk society together. Increase in the number of inhabitants of a community beyond a few hundred is bound to limit the possibility of each member of the community knowing all the others personally. Max Weber, in recog nizing the social significance of this fact, pointed out that from a sociological point of view large numbers of inhabitants and density of settlement mean that the personal mutual acquaintanceship be tween the inhabitants which ordinarily inheres in a neighborhood is lacking.12 The increase in numbers thus involves a changed char acter of the social relationships. As Simmel points out: [If] the unceasing external contact of numbers of persons in the city should be met by the same number of inner reactions as in the small town, in which one knows almost every person he meets and to each of whom he has a positive offices and the decision of lawsuits will go wrong. When the population is very large they are manifestly settled at haphazard, which clearly ought not to be. Besides, in an overpopulous state foreigners and metics will readily acquire the rights of citizens, for who will find them out? Clearly, then, the best limit of the population of a state is the largest number which suffices for the purposes of life, and can be taken in at a single view. Enough concerning the size of a city.”

12 Op. cit., p. 514. 36 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

12 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY relationship, one would be completely atomized internally and would fall into an unthinkable mental condition.^ The multiplication of persons in a state of interaction under condi tions which make their contact as full personalities impossible pro duces that segmentalization of human relationships which has some times been seized upon by students of the mental life of the cities as an explanation for the “schizoid” character of urban personality. This is not to say that the urban inhabitants have fewer acquaint ances than rural inhabitants, for the reverse may actually be true; it means rather that in relation to the number of people whom they see and with whom they rub elbows in the course of daily life, they know a smaller proportion, and of these they have less intensive knowledge. Characteristically, urbanites meet one another in highly seg mental roles. They are, to be sure, dependent upon more people for the satisfactions of their life-needs than are rural people and thus are associated with a greater number of organized groups, but they are less dependent upon particular persons, and their dependence upon others is confined to a highly fractionalized aspect of the other’s round of activity. This is essentially what is meant by saying that the city is characterized by secondary rather than primary contacts. The contacts of the city may indeed be face to face, but they are nevertheless impersonal, superficial, transitory, and segmental. The reserve, the indifference, and the blase outlook which urbanites manifest in their relationships may thus be regarded as devices for immunizing themselves against the personal claims and expecta tions of others. The superficiality, the anonymity, and the transitory character of urban-social relations make intelligible, also, the sophistication and the rationality generally ascribed to city-dwellers. Our ac quaintances tend to stand in a relationship of utility to us in the sense that the role which each one plays in our life is overwhelmingly regarded as a means for the achievement of our own ends. Whereas, therefore, the individual gains, on the one hand, a certain degree of emancipation or freedom from the personal and emotional controls ** Georg Simmel, “ Die Grossstadte und das Geistesleben,” Die Grossstadt, ed. Theodor Petermann (Dresden, 1903), pp. 187-206. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 37

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 13 of intimate groups, he loses, on the other hand, the spontaneous self-expression, the morale, and the sense of participation that comes with living in an integrated society. This constitutes essentially the state of anomie or the social void to which Durkheim alludes in at tempting to account for the various forms of social disorganization in technological society. The segmental character and utilitarian accent of interpersonal relations in the city find their institutional expression in the prolifer ation of specialized tasks which we see in their most developed form in the professions. The operations of the pecuniary nexus leads to predatory relationships, which tend to obstruct the efficient function ing of the social order unless checked by professional codes and occu pational etiquette. The premium put upon utility and efficiency sug gests the adaptability of the corporate device for the organization of enterprises in which individuals can engage only in groups. The advantage that the corporation has over the individual entrepreneur and the partnership in the urban-industrial world derives not only from the possibility it affords of centralizing the resources of thou sands of individuals or from the legal privilege of limited liability and perpetual succession, but from the fact that the corporation has no soul. The specialization of individuals, particularly in their occupa tions, can proceed only, as Adam Smith pointed out, upon the basis of an enlarged market, which in turn accentuates the division of labor. This enlarged market is only in part supplied by the city’s hinterland; in large measure it is found among the large numbers that the city itself contains. The dominance of the city over the surrounding hinterland becomes explicable in terms of the division of labor which urban life occasions and promotes. The extreme de gree of interdependence and the unstable equilibrium of urban life are closely associated with the division of labor and the specializa tion of occupations. This interdependence and instability is in creased by the tendency of each city to specialize in those functions in which it has the greatest advantage. In a community composed of a larger number of individuals than can know one another intimately and can be assembled in one spot, it becomes necessary to communicate through indirect mediums and 38 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

14 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY to articulate individual interests by a process of delegation. Typical ly in the city, interests are made effective through representation. The individual counts for little, but the voice of the representative is heard with a deference roughly proportional to the numbers for whom he speaks. While this characterization of urbanism, in so far as it derives from large numbers, does not by any means exhaust the sociological inferences that might be drawn from our knowledge of the rela tionship of the size of a group to the characteristic behavior of the members, for the sake of brevity the assertions made may serve to exemplify the sort of propositions that might be developed. DENSITY As in the case of numbers, so in the case of concentration in limi ted space, certain consequences of relevance in sociological analysis of the city emerge. Of these only a few can be indicated. As Darwin pointed out for flora and fauna and as Durkheim14 noted in the case of human societies, an increase in numbers when area is held constant (i.e., an increase in density) tends to produce differentiation and specialization, since only in this way can the area support increased numbers. Density thus reinforces the effect of numbers in diversifying men and their activities and in increasing the complexity of the social structure. On the subjective side, as Simmel has suggested, the close physical contact of numerous individuals necessarily produces a shift in the mediums through which we orient ourselves to the urban milieu, es pecially to our fellow-men. Typically, our physical contacts are close but our social contacts are distant. The urban world puts a premium on visual recognition. We see the uniform which denotes the role of the functionaries and are oblivious to the personal eccentricities that are hidden behind the uniform. We tend to acquire and develop a sensitivity to a world of artefacts and become progressively farther removed from the world of nature. We are exposed to glaring contrasts between splendor and squalor, between riches and poverty, intelligence and ignorance, order and chaos. The competition for space is great, so that each area gen-

E. Durkheim, De la division du travail social (Paris, 1932), p. 248. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 39

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 15 erally tends to be put to the use which yields the greatest economic return. Place of work tends to become dissociated from place of residence, for the proximity of industrial and commercial establish ments makes an area both economically and socially undesirable for residential purposes. Density, land values, rentals, accessibility, healthfulness, prestige, aesthetic consideration, absence of nuisances such as noise, smoke, and dirt determine the desirability of various areas of the city as places of settlement for different sections of the population. Place and nature of work, income, racial and ethnic characteristics, social status, custom, habit, taste, preference, and prejudice are among the significant factors in accordance with which the urban popula tion is selected and distributed into more or less distinct settlements. Diverse population elements inhabiting a compact settlement thus tend to become segregated from one another in the degree in which their requirements and modes of life are incompatible with one another and in the measure in which they are antagonistic to one another. Similarly, persons of homogeneous status and needs un wittingly drift into, consciously select, or are forced by circum stances into, the same area. The different parts of the city thus acquire specialized functions. The city consequently tends to re semble a mosaic of social worlds in which the transition from one to the other is abrupt. The juxtaposition of divergent personalities and modes of life tends to produce a relativistic perspective and a sense of toleration of differences which may be regarded as pre requisites for rationality and which lead toward the secularization of life.15 The close living together and working together of individuals who have no sentimental and emotional ties foster a spirit of competition, aggrandizement, and mutual exploitation. To counteract irresponsi bility and potential disorder, formal controls tend to be resorted to. Without rigid adherence to predictable routines a large compact

15 The extent to which the segregation of the population into distinct ecological and cultural areas and the resulting social attitude of tolerance, rationality, and secular mentality are functions of density as distinguished from heterogeneity is difficult to determine. Most likely we are dealing here with phenomena which are consequences of the simultaneous operation of both factors. 40 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

16 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY society would scarcely be able to maintain itself. The clock and the traffic signal are symbolic of the basis of our social order in the urban world. Frequent close physical contact, coupled with great social distance, accentuates the reserve of unattached individuals toward one another and, unless compensated for by other opportuni ties for response, gives rise to loneliness. The necessary frequent movement of great numbers of individuals in a congested habitat gives occasion to friction and irritation. Nervous tensions which derive from such personal frustrations are accentuated by the rapid tempo and the complicated technology under which life in dense areas must be lived. HETEROGENEITY The social interaction among such a variety of personality types in the urban milieu tends to break down the rigidity of caste lines and to complicate the class structure, and thus induces a more ramified and differentiated framework of social stratification than is found in more integrated societies. The heightened mobility of the individual, which brings him within the range of stimulation by a great number of diverse individuals and subjects him to fluc tuating status in the differentiated social groups that compose the social structure of the city, tends toward the acceptance of instability and insecurity in the world at large as a norm. This fact helps to account, too, for the sophistication and cosmopolitanism of the urbanite. No single group has the undivided allegiance of the indi vidual. The groups with which he is affiliated do not lend them selves readily to a simple hierarchical arrangement. By virtue of his different interests arising out of different aspects of social life, the individual acquires membership in widely divergent groups, each of which functions only with reference to a single segment of his personality. Nor do these groups easily permit of a concentric arrangement so that the narrower ones fall within the circumference of the more inclusive ones, as is more likely to be the case in the rural community or in primitive societies. Rather the groups with which the person typically is affiliated are tangential to each other or intersect in highly variable fashion. Partly as a result of the physical footlooseness of the population and partly as a result of their social mobility, the turnover in group The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 41

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 17 membership generally is rapid. Place of residence, place and char acter of employment, income and interests fluctuate, and the task of holding organizations together and maintaining and promoting intimate and lasting acquaintanceship between the members is difficult. This applies strikingly to the local areas within the city into which persons become segregated more by virtue of differences in race, language, income, and social status, than through choice or positive attraction to people like themselves. Overwhelmingly the city-dweller is not a home-owner, and since a transitory habitat does not generate binding traditions and sentiments, only rarely is he truly a neighbor. There is little opportunity for the individual to obtain a conception of the city as a whole or to survey his place in the total scheme. Consequently he finds it difficult to determine what is to his own “best interests” and to decide between the issues and leaders presented to him by the agencies of mass suggestion. Individuals who are thus detached from the organized bodies which integrate society comprise the fluid masses that make collective be havior in the urban community so unpredictable and hence so problematical. Although the city, through the recruitment of variant types to perform its diverse tasks and the accentuation of their uniqueness through competition and the premium upon eccentricity, novelty, efficient performance, and inventiveness, produces a highly differ entiated population, it also exercises a leveling influence. Wherever large numbers of differently constituted individuals congregate, the process of depersonalization also enters. This leveling tendency in heres in part in the economic basis of the city. The development of large cities, at least in the modern age, was largely dependent upon the concentrative force of steam. The rise of the factory made possi ble mass production for an impersonal market. The fullest exploita tion of the possibilities of the division of labor and mass production, however, is possible only with standardization of processes and products. A money economy goes hand in hand with such a system of production. Progressively as cities have developed upon a back ground of this system of production, the pecuniary nexus which implies the purchasability of services and things has displaced per sonal relations as the basis of association. Individuality under these 42 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

18 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY circumstances must be replaced by categories. When large numbers have to make common use of facilities and institutions, an arrange ment must be made to adjust the facilities and institutions to the needs of the average person rather than to those of particular indi viduals. The services of the public utilities, of the recreational, educational, and cultural institutions must be adjusted to mass re quirements. Similarly, the cultural institutions, such as the schools, the movies, the radio, and the newspapers, by virtue of their mass clientele, must necessarily operate as leveling influences. The po litical process as it appears in urban life could not be understood without taking account of the mass appeals made through modern propaganda techniques. If the individual would participate at all in the social, political, and economic life of the city, he must sub ordinate some of his individuality to the demands of the larger com munity and in that measure immerse himself in mass movements.

IV. THE RELATION BETWEEN A THEORY OF URBANISM AND SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH By means of a body of theory such as that illustratively sketched above, the complicated and many-sided phenomena of urbanism may be analyzed in terms of a limited number of basic categories. The sociological approach to the city thus acquires an essential unity and coherence enabling the empirical investigator not merely to focus more distinctly upon the problems and processes that prop erly fall in his province but also to treat his subject matter in a more integrated and systematic fashion. A few typical findings of em pirical research in the field of urbanism, with special reference to the United States, may be indicated to substantiate the theoretical propositions set forth in the preceding pages, and some of the crucial problems for further study may be outlined. On the basis of the three variables, number, density of settlement, and degree of heterogeneity, of the urban population, it appears possible to explain the characteristics of urban life and to account for the differences between cities of various sizes and types. Urbanism as a characteristic mode of life may be approached empirically from three interrelated perspectives: (i) as a physical structure comprising a population base, a technology, and an eco- The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 43

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 19 logical order; (2) as a system of social organization involving a characteristic social structure, a series of social institutions, and a typical pattern of social relationships; and (3) as a set of attitudes and ideas, and a constellation of personalities engaging in typical forms of collective behavior and subject to characteristic mecha nisms of social control. URBANISM IN ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE Since in the case of physical structure and ecological processes we are able to operate with fairly objective indices, it becomes pos sible to arrive at quite precise and generally quantitative results. The dominance of the city over its hinterland becomes explicable through the functional characteristics of the city which derive in large measure from the effect of numbers and density. Many of the technical facilities and the skills and organizations to which urban life gives rise can grow and prosper only in cities where the demand is sufficiently great. The nature and scope of the services rendered by these organizations and institutions and the advantage which they enjoy over the less developed facilities of smaller towns enhances the dominance of the city and the dependence of ever wider regions upon the central metropolis. The urban-population composition shows the operation of selec tive and differentiating factors. Cities contain a larger proportion of persons in the prime of life than rural areas which contain more old and very young people. In this, as in so many other respects, the larger the city the more this specific characteristic of urbanism is apparent. With the exception of the largest cities, which have attracted the bulk of the foreign-born males, and a few other special types of cities, women predominate numerically over men. The heterogeneity of the urban population is further indicated along racial and ethnic lines. The foreign born and their children consti tute nearly two-thirds of all the inhabitants of cities of one million and over. Their proportion in the urban population declines as the size of the city decreases, until in the rural areas they comprise only about one-sixth of the total population. The larger cities similarly have attracted more Negroes and other racial groups than have the smaller communities. Considering that age, sex, race, and ethnic 44 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

20 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY origin are associated with other factors such as occupation and interest, it becomes clear that one major characteristic of the urban- dweller is his dissimilarity from his fellows. Never before have such large masses of people of diverse traits as we find in our cities been thrown together into such close physical contact as in the great cities of America. Cities generally, and American cities in particular, com prise a motley of peoples and cultures, of highly differentiated modes of life between which there often is only the faintest communication, the greatest indifference and the broadest tolerance, occasionally bitter strife, but always the sharpest contrast. The failure of the urban population to reproduce itself appears to be a biological consequence of a combination of factors in the complex of urban life, and the decline in the birth-rate generally may be regarded as one of the most significant signs of the urbaniza tion of the Western world. While the proportion of deaths in cities is slightly greater than in the country, the outstanding difference between the failure of present-day cities to maintain their popula tion and that of cities of the past is that in former times it was due to the exceedingly high death-rates in cities, whereas today, since cities have become more livable from a health standpoint, it is due to low birth-rates. These biological characteristics of the urban population are significant sociologically, not merely because they reflect the urban mode of existence but also because they condition the growth and future dominance of cities and their basic social organization. Since cities are the consumers rather than the pro ducers of men, the value of human life and the social estimation of the personality will not be unaffected by the balance between births and deaths. The pattern of land use, of land values, rentals, and ownership, the nature and functioning of the physical structures, of housing, of transportation and communication facilities, of public utilities—these and many other phases of the physical mechanism of the city are not isolated phenomena unrelated to the city as a social entity, but are affected by and affect the urban mode of life. URBANISM AS A FORM OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION The distinctive features of the urban mode of life have often been described sociologically as consisting of the substitution of sec- The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 45

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 21 ondary for primary contacts, the weakening of bonds of kinship, and the declining social significance of the family, the disappearance of the neighborhood, and the undermining of the traditional basis of social solidarity. All these phenomena can be substantially veri fied through objective indices. Thus, for instance, the low and de clining urban-reproduction rates suggest that the city is not con ducive to the traditional type of family life, including the rearing of children and the maintenance of the home as the locus of a whole round of vital activities. The transfer of industrial, educational, and recreational activities to specialized institutions outside the home has deprived the family of some of its most characteristic historical functions. In cities mothers are more likely to be em ployed, lodgers are more frequently part of the household, marriage tends to be postponed, and the proportion of single and unattached people is greater. Families are smaller and more frequently without children than in the country. The family as a unit of social life is emancipated from the larger kinship group characteristic of the country, and the individual members pursue their own diverging interests in their vocational, educational, religious, recreational, and political life. Such functions as the maintenance of health, the methods of alleviating the hardships associated with personal and social in security, the provisions for education, recreation, and cultural ad vancement have given rise to highly specialized institutions on a community-wide, statewide, or even national basis. The same factors which have brought about greater personal insecurity also underlie the wider contrasts between individuals to be found in the urban world. While the city has broken down the rigid caste lines of pre industrial society, it has sharpened and differentiated income and status groups. Generally, a larger proportion of the adult-urban population is gainfully employed than is the case with the adult- rural population. The white-collar class, comprising those employed in trade, in clerical, and in professional work, are proportionately more numerous in large cities and in metropolitan centers and in smaller towns than in the country. On the whole, the city discourages an economic life in which the individual in time of crisis has a basis of subsistence to fall back 46 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

22 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY upon, and it discourages self-employment. While incomes of city people are on the average higher than those of country people, the cost of living seems to be higher in the larger cities. Home owner ship involves greater burdens and is rarer. Rents are higher and absorb a larger proportion of the income. Although the urban- dweller has the benefit of many communal services, he spends a large proportion of his income for such items as recreation and ad vancement and a smaller proportion for food. What the communal services do not furnish the urbanite must purchase, and there is virtually no human need which has remained unexploited by com mercialism. Catering to thrills and furnishing means of escape from drudgery, monotony, and routine thus become one of the major functions of urban recreation, which at its best furnishes means for creative self-expression and spontaneous group association, but which more typically in the urban world results in passive spectator- ism on the one hand, or sensational record-smashing feats on the other. Being reduced to a stage of virtual impotence as an individual, the urbanite is bound to exert himself by joining with others of similar interest into organized groups to obtain his ends. This re sults in the enormous multiplication of voluntary organizations di rected toward as great a variety of objectives as there are human needs and interests. While on the one hand the traditional ties of human association are weakened, urban existence involves a much greater degree of interdependence between man and man and a more complicated, fragile, and volatile form of mutual interrelations over many phases of which the individual as such can exert scarcely any control. Frequently there is only the most tenuous relation ship between the economic position or other basic factors that de termine the individual’s existence in the urban world and the vol untary groups with which he is affiliated. While in a primitive and in a rural society it is generally possible to predict on the basis of a few known factors who will belong to what and who will associate with whom in almost every relationship of life, in the city we can only project the general pattern of group formation and affiliation, and this pattern will display many incongruities and contradic tions. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 47

URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 23 URBAN PERSONALITY AND COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR It is largely through the activities of the voluntary groups, be their objectives economic, political, educational, religious, recrea tional, or cultural, that the urbanite expresses and develops his personality, acquires status, and is able to carry on the round of activities that constitute his life-career. It may easily be inferred, however, that the organizational framework which these highly dif ferentiated functions call into being does not of itself insure the consistency and integrity of the personalities whose interests it en lists. Personal disorganization, mental breakdown, suicide, delin quency, crime, corruption, and disorder might be expected under these circumstances to be more prevalent in the urban than in the rural community. This has been confirmed in so far as comparable indices are available; but the mechanisms underlying these phe nomena require further analysis. Since for most group purposes it is impossible in the city to appeal individually to the large number of discrete and differentiated indi viduals, and since it is only through the organizations to which men belong that their interests and resources can be enlisted for a col lective cause, it may be inferred that social control in the city should typically proceed through formally organized groups. It follows, too, that the masses of men in the city are subject to manipulation by symbols and stereotypes managed by individuals working from afar or operating invisibly behind the scenes through their control of the instruments of communication. Self-government either in the economic, the political, or the cultural realm is under these circum stances reduced to a mere figure of speech or, at best, is subject to the unstable equilibrium of pressure groups. In view of the ineffec tiveness of actual kinship ties we create fictional kinship groups. In the face of the disappearance of the territorial unit as a basis of social solidarity we create interest units. Meanwhile the city as a community resolves itself into a series of tenuous segmental rela tionships superimposed upon a territorial base with a definite center but without a definite periphery and upon a division of labor which far transcends the immediate locality and is world-wide in scope. The larger the number of persons in a state of interaction with one another the lower is the level of communication and the greater is 48 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography

24 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY the tendency for communication to proceed on an elementary level, i.e., on the basis of those things which are assumed to be common or to be of interest to all. It is obviously, therefore, to the emerging trends in the com munication system and to the production and distribution technolo gy that has come into existence with modern civilization that we must look for the symptoms which will indicate the probable future development of urbanism as a mode of social life. The direction of the ongoing changes in urbanism will for good or ill transform not only the city but the world. Some of the more basic of these factors and processes and the possibilities of their direction and control invite further detailed study. It is only in so far as the sociologist has a clear conception of the city as a social entity and a workable theory of urbanism that he can hope to develop a unified body of reliable knowledge, which what passes as “urban sociology” is certainly not at the present time. By taking his point of departure from a theory of urbanism such as that sketched in the foregoing pages to be elaborated, tested, and revised in the light of further analysis and empirical research, it is to be hoped that the criteria of relevance and validity of factual data can be determined. The miscellaneous assortment of discon nected information which has hitherto found its way into socio logical treatises on the city may thus be sifted and incorporated into a coherent body of knowledge. Incidentally, only by means of some such theory will the sociologist escape the futile practice of voicing in the name of sociological science a variety of often un- supportable judgments concerning such problems as poverty, hous ing, city-planning, sanitation, municipal administration, policing, marketing, transportation, and other technical issues. While the sociologist cannot solve any of these practical problems—at least not by himself—he may, if he discovers his proper function, have an important contribution to make to their comprehension and solu tion. The prospects for doing this are brightest through a general, theoretical, rather than through an ad hoc approach.

U n iv e r s it y o f C h icago [4] The Metropolis and Mental Life Georg Simmel

THE DEEPEST PROBLEMS OF modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. The fight with nature which primitive man has to wage for his bodily existence attains in this modern form its latest transformation. The eighteenth century called upon man to free himself of all the historical bonds in the state and m religion, in morals and in economics. Man’s nature, originally good and common to all, should de velop unhampered. In addition to more liberty, the nineteenth century demanded the functional specialization of man and his work; this specialization makes one individual incomparable to another, and each of them indispensable to the highest pos sible extent. However, this specialization makes each man the more directly dependent upon the supplementary activities of all others. Nietzsche sees the full development of the individual conditioned by the most ruthless struggle of individuals; social ism believes in the suppression of all competition for the same reason. Be that as it may, in all these positions the same basic motive is at work: the person resists to being leveled down and worn out by a social-technological mechanism. An inquiry into the inner meaning of specifically modern life and its products, into the soul of the cultural body, so to speak, must seek to solve the equation which structures like the metropolis set up be tween the individual and the super-individual contents of life. Such an inquiry must answer the question of how the personality accommodates itself in the adjustments to external forces. This will be my task today. The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individ- 50 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 410 The Metropolis and Mental Life uality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli. Man is a differentiating creature. His mind is stimulated by the difference between a momentary impression and the one which preceded it. Lasting impressions, impressions which differ only slightly from one another, impressions which take a regular and habitual course and show regular and habit ual contrasts—all these use up, so to speak, less consciousness than does the rapid crowding of changing images, the sharp discontinuity in the grasp of a single glance, and the unexpected ness of onrushing impressions. These are the psychological con ditions which the metropolis creates. With each crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupa tional and social life, the city sets up a deep contrast with small town and rural life with reference to the sensory foundations of psychic life. The metropolis exacts from man as a discriminat ing creature a different amount of consciousness than does rural life. Here the rhythm of life and sensory mental imagery flows more slowly, more habitually, and more evenly. Precisely in this connection the sophisticated character of metropolitan psychic life becomes understandable—as over against small town life which rests more upon deeply felt and emotional rela tionships. These latter are rooted in the more unconscious layers of the psyche and grow most readily in the steady rhythm of uninterrupted habituations. The intellect, however, has its locus in the transparent, conscious, higher layers of the psyche; it is the most adaptable of our inner forces. In order to accom modate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the in tellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events. Thus the metropolitan type of man—which, of course, exists in a thousand individual variants—develops an organ protecting him against the threatening currents and discrepancies of his external environment which would uproot him. He reacts with his head instead of his heart. In this an increased awareness assumes the psychic prerogative. Metropolitan life, thus, under lies a heightened awareness and a predominance of intelligence in metropolitan man. The reaction to metropolitan phenomena The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 51 The Metropolis and Mental Life 411 is shifted to that organ which is least sensitive and quite remote from the depth of the personality. Intellectuality is thus seen to preserve subjective life against the overwhelming power of metropolitan life, and intellectuality branches out in many di rections and is integrated with numerous discrete phenomena. The metropolis has always been the seat of the money economy. Here the multiplicity and concentration of economic exchange gives an importance to the means of exchange which the scantiness of rural commerce would not have allowed. Money economy and the dominance of the intellect are intrin sically connected. They share a matter-of-fact attitude in dealing with men and with things; and, in this attitude, a formal justice is often coupled with an inconsiderate hardness. The intellec tually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine indi viduality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations. In the same manner, the individuality of phenomena is not commensurate with the pecuniary principle. Money is concerned only with what is common to all: it asks for the exchange value, it reduces all quality and individuality to the question: How much? All intimate emotional relations between persons are founded in their individuality, whereas in rational relations man is reckoned with like a number, like an element which is in itself indifferent. Only the objective measurable achievement is of interest. Thus metropolitan man reckons with his merchants and customers, his domestic servants and often even with persons with whom he is obliged to have social intercourse. These fea tures of intellectuality contrast with the nature of the small circle in which the inevitable knowledge of individuality as inevitably produces a warmer tone of behavior, a behavior which is beyond a mere objective balancing of service and return. In the sphere of the economic psychology of the small group it is of importance that under primitive conditions production serves the customer who orders the good, so that the producer and the consumer are acquainted. The modern metropolis, how ever, is supplied almost entirely by production for the market, that is, for entirely unknown purchasers who never personally enter the producer’s actual field of vision. Through this anonymity the interests of each party acquire an unmerciful 52 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 412 The Metropolis and Mental Life matter-of-factness; and the intellectually calculating economic egoisms of both parties need not fear any deflection because of the imponderables of personal relationships. The money economy dominates the metropolis; it has displaced the last survivals of domestic production and the direct barter of goods; it minimizes, from day to day, the amount of work ordered by customers. The matter-of-faet attitude is obviously so intimately interrelated with the money economy, which is dominant in the metropolis, that nobody can say whether the intellectualistic mentality first promoted the money economy or whether the latter determined the former. The metropolitan way of life is certainly the most fertile soil for this reciprocity, a point which I shall document merely by citing the dictum of the most eminent English constitutional historian: throughout the whole course of English history, London has never acted as England’s heart but often as England’s intellect and always as her moneybag! In certain seemingly insignificant traits, which lie upon the surface of life, the same psychic currents characteristically unite. Modern mind has become more and more calculating. The calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to the ideal of natural science: to transform the world into an arithmetic problem, to fix every part of the world by mathematical formulas. Only money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical determinations, with a reduction of qualitative values to quantitative ones. Through the calcula tive nature of money a new precision, a certainty in the defini tion of identities and differences, an unambiguousness in agree ments and arrangements has been brought about in the relations of life-elements—just as externally this precision has been effected by the universal diffusion of pocket watches. However, the conditions of metropolitan life are at once cause and effect of this trait. The relationships and affairs of the typical metro politan usually are so varied and complex that without the strictest punctuality in promises and services the whole structure would break down into an inextricable chaos. Above all, this necessity is brought about by the aggregation of so many people with such differentiated interests, who must integrate their rela- The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 53 The Metropolis and Mental Life 413 tions and activities into a highly complex organism. If all clocks and watches in Berlin would suddenly go wrong in different ways, even if only by one hour, all economic life and com munication of the city would be disrupted for a long time. In addition an apparently mere external factor: long distances, would make all waiting and broken appointments result in an ill-afforded waste of time. Thus, the technique of metropolitan life is unimaginable without the most punctual integration of all activities and mutual relations into a stable and impersonal time schedule. Here again the general conclusions of this entire task of reflection become obvious, namely, that from each point on the surface of existence—however closely attached to the sur face alone—one may drop a sounding into the depth of the psyche so that all the most banal externalities of life finally are connected with the ultimate decisions concerning the meaning and style of life. Punctuality, calculability, exactness are forced upon life by the complexity and extension of metropolitan existence and are not only most intimately connected with its money economy and intellectualistic character. These traits must also color the contents of life and favor the exclusion of those irrational, instinctive, sovereign traits and impulses which aim at determining the mode of life from within, instead of receiving the general and precisely schematized form of life from without. Even though sovereign types of personality, char acterized by irrational impulses, are by no means impossible in the city, they are, nevertheless, opposed to typical city life. The passionate hatred of men like Ruskin and Nietzsche for the metropolis is understandable in these terms. Their natures dis covered the value of life alone in the unschematized existence which cannot be defined with precision for all alike. From the same source of this hatred of the metropolis surged their hatred of money economy and of the intellectual ism of modem existence. The same factors which have thus coalesced into the exact ness and minute precision of the form of life have coalesced into a structure of the highest impersonality; on the other hand, they have promoted a highly personal subjectivity. There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which has been so unconditionally reserved to the metropolis as has the blase attitude. The blase 54 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 414 The Metropolis and Mental Life attitude results first from the rapidly changing and closely com pressed contrasting stimulations of the nerves. From this, the enhancement of metropolitan intellectuality, also, seems orig inally to stem. Therefore, stupid people who are not intellec tually alive in the first place usually are not exactly blase. A life in boundless pursuit of pleasure makes one blase because it agitates the nerves to their strongest reactivity for such a long time that they finally cease to react at all. In the same way, through the rapidity and contradictoriness of their changes, more harmless impressions force such violent responses, tearing the nerves so brutally hither and thither that their last reserves of strength are spent; and if one remains in the same milieu they have no time to gather new strength. An incapacity thus emerges to react to new sensations with the appropriate energy. This constitutes that blase attitude which, in fact, every metro politan child shows when compared with children of quieter and less changeable milieus. This physiological source of the metropolitan blase attitude is joined by another source which flows from the money economy. The essence of the blase attitude consists in the blunt ing of discrimination. This does not mean that the objects are not perceived, as is the case with the half-wit, but rather that the meaning and differing values of things, and thereby the things themselves, are experienced as insubstantial. They appear to the blase person in an evenly flat and gray tone; no one object deserves preference over any other. This mood is the faithful subjective reflection of the completely internalized money economy. By being the equivalent to all the manifold things in one and the same way, money becomes the most frightful leveler. For money expresses all qualitative differences of things in terms of “how much?” Money, with all its colorlessness and indiffer ence, becomes the common denominator of all values; irrepar ably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability. All things float with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money. All things lie on the same level and differ from one another only in the size of the area which they cover. In the individyal case this coloration, or rather discoloration, of things through their money equivalence may be unnoticeably minute. How- The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 55 The Metropolis and Mental Life 415 ever, through the relations of the rich to the objects to be had for money, perhaps even through the total character which the mentality of the contemporary public everywhere imparts to these objects, the exclusively pecuniary evaluation of objects has become quite considerable. The large cities, the main seats of the money exchange, bring the purchasability of things to the fore much more impressively than do smaller localities. That is why cities are also the genuine locale of the blas<§ attitude. In the blase attitude the concentration of men and things stimu late the nervous system of the individual to its highest achieve ment so that it attains its peak. Through the mere quantitative intensification of the same conditioning factors this achieve ment is transformed into its opposite and appears in the peculiar adjustment of the blase attitude. In this phenomenon the nerves find in the refusal to react to their stimulation the last possi bility of accommodating to the contents and forms of metro politan life. The self-preservation of certain personalities is brought at the price of devaluating the whole objective world, a devaluation which in the end unavoidably drags one’s own personality down into a feeling of the same worthlessness. Whereas the subject of this form of existence has to come to terms with it entirely for himself, his self-preservation in the face of the large city demands from him a no less negative be havior of a social nature. This mental attitude of metropolitans toward one another we may designate, from a formal point of view, as reserve. If so many inner reactions were responses to the continuous external contacts with innumerable people as are those in the small town, where one knows almost everybody one meets and where one has a positive relation to almost everyone, one would be completely atomized internally and come to an un imaginable psychic state. Partly this psychological fact, partly the right to distrust which men have in the face of the touch-and-go elements of metropolitan life, necessitates our reserve. As a result of this reserve we frequently do not even know by sight those who have been our neighbors for years. And it is this reserve which in the eyes of the small-town people makes us appear to be cold and heartless. Indeed, if I do not deceive myself, the inner aspect of this outer reserve is not only indifference but, more often than we are aware, it is a slight aversion, a mutual 56 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 416 The Metropolis and Mental Life strangeness and repulsion, which will break into hatred and fight at the moment of a closer contact, however caused. The whole inner organization of such an extensive communicative life rests upon an extremely varied hierarchy of sympathies, indifferences, knd aversions of the briefest as well as of the most permanent nature. The sphere of indifference in this hierarchy is not as large as might appear on the surface. Our psychic activity still responds to almost every impression of somebody else with a somewhat distinct feeling. The unconscious, fluid and changing character of this impression seems to result in a state of indifference. Actually this indifference would be just as unnatural as the diffusion of indiscriminate mutual sugges tion would be unbearable. From both these typical dangers of the metropolis, indifference and indiscriminate suggestibility, antipathy protects us. A latent antipathy and the preparatory stage of practical antagonism effect the distances and aversions without which this mode of life could not at all be led. The extent and the mixture of this style of life, the rhythm of its emergence and disappearance, the forms in which it is satisfied— all these, with the unifying motives in the narrower sense, form the inseparable whole of the metropolitan style of life. What appears in the metropolitan style of life directly as dissociation is in reality only one of its elemental forms of socialization. This reserve with its overtone of hidden aversion appears in turn as the form or the cloak of a more general mental phe nomenon of the metropolis: it grants to the individual a kind and an amount of personal freedom which has no analogy what soever under other conditions. The metropolis goes back to one of the large developmental tendencies of social life as such, to one of the few tendencies for which an approximately uni versal formula can be discovered. The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles. How ever, this circle is closely coherent and allows its individual members only a narrow field for the development of unique qualities and free, self-responsible movements. Political and kinship groups, parties and religious associations begin in this way. The self-preservation of very young associations requires The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 57 The Metropolis and Mental Life 417 the establishment of strict boundaries and a centripetal unity. Therefore they cannot allow the individual freedom and unique inner and outer development. From this stage social develop ment proceeds at once in two different, yet corresponding, direc tions. To the extent to which the group grows—numerically, spatially, in significance and in content of life—to the same degree the group’s direct, inner unity loosens, and the rigidity of the original demarcation against others is softened through mutual relations and connections. At the same time, the indi vidual gains freedom of movement, far beyond the first jealous delimitation. The individual also gains a specific individuality to which the division of labor in the enlarged group gives both occasion and necessity. The state and Christianity, guilds and political parties, and innumerable other groups have developed according to this formula, however much, of course, the special conditions and forces of the respective groups have modified the general scheme. This scheme seems to me distinctly recog nizable also in the evolution of individuality within urban life. The small-town life in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages set barriers against movement and relations of the individual toward the outside, and it set up barriers against individual independence and differentiation within the in dividual self. These barriers were such that under them modern man could not have breathed. Even today a metro politan man who is placed in a small town feels a restric tion similar, at least, in kind. The smaller the circle which forms our milieu is, and the more restricted those relations to others are which dissolve the boundaries of the individual, the more anxiously the circle guards the achievements, the conduct of life, and the outlook of the individual, and the more readily a quantitative and qualitative specialization would break up the framework of the whole little circle. The ancient polis in this respect seems to have had the very character of a small town. The constant threat to its existence at the hands of enemies from near and afar effected strict coher ence in political and military respects, a supervision of the citizen by the citizen, a jealousy of the whole against the indi vidual whose particular life was suppressed to such a degree that he could compensate only by acting as a despot in his own house- 58 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 418 The Metropolis and Mental Life hold. The tremendous agitation and excitement, the unique colorfulness of Athenian life, can perhaps be understood in terms of the fact that a people of incomparably individualized personalities struggled against the constant inner and outer pressure of a de-individualizing small town. This produced a tense atmosphere in which the weaker individuals were sup pressed and those of stronger natures, were incited to prove themselves in the most passionate manner. This is precisely why it was that there blossomed in Athens what must be called, without defining it exactly, “the general human character” in the intellectual development of our species. For we maintain factual as well as historical validity for the following connec tion: the most extensive and the most general contents and forms of life are most intimately connected with the most indi vidual ones. They have a preparatory stage in common, that is, they find their enemy in narrow formations and groupings the maintenance of which places both of them into a state of defense against expanse and generality lying without and the freely moving individuality within. Just as in the feudal age, the “free” man was the one who stood under the law of the land, that is, under the law of the largest social orbit, and the unfree man was the one who derived his right merely from the narrow circle of a feudal association and was excluded from the larger social orbit—so today metropolitan man is “free” in a spiritualized and refined sense, in contrast to the pettiness and prejudices which hem in the small-town man. For the reciprocal reserve and indifference and the intellectual life conditions of large circles are never felt more strongly by the individual in their impact upon his independence than in the thickest crowd of the big city. This is because the bodily proximity and narrow ness of space makes the mental distance only the more visible. It is obviously only the obverse of this freedom if, under certain circumstances, one nowhere feels as lonely and lost as in the metropolitan crowd. For here as elsewhere it is by no means necessary that the freedom of man be reflected in his emotional life as comfort. It is not only the immediate size of the area and the number of persons which, because of the universal historical correlation between the enlargement of the circle and the personal inner The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 59 The Metropolis and Mental Life 419 and outer freedom, has made the metropolis the locale of free dom. It is rather in transcending this visible expanse that any given city becomes the seat of cosmopolitanism. The horizon of the city expands in a manner comparable to the way in which wealth develops; a certain amount of property increases in a quasi-automatical way in ever more rapid progression. As soon as a certain limit has been passed, the economic, personal, and intellectual relations of the citizenry, the sphere of intellectual predominance of the city over its hinterland, grow as in geo metrical progression. Every gain in dynamic extension becomes a step, not for an equal, but for a new and larger extension. From every thread spinning out of the city, ever new threads grow as if by themselves, just as within the city the unearned increment of ground rent, through the mere increase in com munication, brings the owner automatically increasing profits. At this point, the quantitative aspect of life is transformed directly into qualitative traits of character. The sphere of life of the small town is, in the main, self-contained and autarchic. For it is the decisive nature of the metropolis that its inner life overflows by waves into a far-flung national or international area. Weimar is not an example to the contrary, since its sig nificance was hinged upon individual personalities and died with them; whereas the metropolis is indeed characterized by its essential independence even from the most eminent indi vidual personalities. This is the counterpart to the indepen dence, and it is the price the individual pays for the indepen dence, which he enjoys in the metropolis. The most significant characteristic of the metropolis is this functional extension be yond its physical boundaries. And this efficacy reacts in turn and gives weight, importance, and responsibility to metropoli tan life. Man does not end with the limits of his body or the area comprising his immediate activity. Rather is the range of the person constituted by the sum of effects emanating from him temporally and spatially. In the same way, a city consists of its total effects which extend beyond its immediate confines. Only this range is the city’s actual extent in which its existence is expressed. This fact makes it obvious that individual free dom, the logical and historical complement of such extension, is not to be understood only in the negative sense of mere 60 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 420 The Metropolis and Mental Life freedom of mobility and elimination of prejudices and petty philistinism. The essential point is that the particularity and incomparability, which ultimately every human being possesses, be somehow expressed in the working-out of a way of life. That we follow the laws of our own nature—and this after all is free dom—becomes obvious and convincing to ourselves and to others only if the expressions of this nature differ from the expressions of others. Only our unmistakability proves that our way of life has not been superimposed by others. Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor. They produce thereby such extreme phenomena as in Paris the renumerative occupation of the quatorzieme. They are persons who identify themselves by signs on their residences and who are ready at the dinner hour in correct attire, so that they can be quickly called upon if a dinner party should consist of thirteen persons. In the measure of its expansion, the city offers more and more the decisive conditions of the division of labor. It offers a circle which through its size can absorb a highly diverse variety of services. At the same time, the concentration of individuals and their struggle for customers compel the in dividual to specialize in a function from which he cannot be readily displaced by another. It is decisive that city life has transformed the struggle with nature for livelihood into an inter-human struggle for gain, which here is not granted by nature but by other men. For specialization does not flow only from the competition for gain but also from the underlying fact that the seller must always seek to call forth new and differen tiated needs of the lured customer. In order to find a source of income which is not yet exhausted, and to find a function which cannot readily be displaced, it is necessary to specialize in one’s services. This process promotes differentiation, refinement, and the enrichment of the public’s needs, which obviously must lead to growing personal differences within this public. All this forms the transition to the individualization of mental and psychic traits which the city occasions in proportion to its size. There is a whole series of obvious causes underlying this process. First, one must meet the difficulty of asserting his own peronality within the dimensions of metropolitan life. Where the quantitative increase in importance and the expense The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 61 The Metropolis and Mental Life 421 of energy reach their limits, one seizes upon qualitative differen tiation in order somehow to attract the attention of the social circle by playing upon its sensitivity for differences. Finally, man is tempted to adopt the most tendentious peculiarities, that is, the specifically metropolitan extravagances of mannerism, caprice, and preciousness. Now, the meaning of these extrava gances does not at all lie in the contents of such behavior, but rather in its form of “being different,” of standing out in a striking manner and thereby attracting attention. For many character types, ultimately the only means of saving for them selves some modicum of self-esteem and the sense of filling a position is indirect, through the awareness of others. In the same sense a seemingly insignificant factor is operating, the cumulative effects of which are, however, still noticeable. I refer to the brevity and scarcity of the inter-human contacts granted to the metropolitan man, as compared with social intercourse in the small town. The temptation to appear “to the point,” to appear concentrated and strikingly characteristic, lies much closer to the individual in brief metropolitan contacts than in an atmosphere in which frequent and prolonged association assures the personality of an unambiguous image of himself in the eyes of the other. The most profound reason, however, why the metropolis conduces to the urge for the most individual personal exist ence—no matter whether justified and successful—appears to me to be the following: the development of modern culture is characterized by the preponderance of what one may call the “objective spirit” over the “subjective spirit.” This is to say, in language as well as in law, in the technique of production as well as in art, in science as well as in the objects of the domestic environment, there is embodied a sum of spirit. The individual in his intellectual development follows the growth of this spirit very imperfectly and at an ever increasing distance. If, for in stance, we view the immense culture which for the last hundred years has been embodied in things and in knowledge, in institu tions and in comforts, and if we compare all this with the cul tural progress of the individual during the same period—at least in high status groups—a frightful disproportion in growth between the two becomes evident. Indeed, at some points we 62 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 422 The Metropolis and Mental Life notice a retrogression in the culture of the individual with refer ence to spirituality, delicacy, and idealism. This discrepancy results essentially from the growing division of labor. For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual. In any case, he can cope less and less with the overgrowth of objective culture. The individual is reduced to a negligible quantity, perhaps less in his consciousness than in his practice and in the totality of his obscure emotional states that are derived from this practice. The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life. It needs merely to be pointed out that the metropolis is the genuine arena of this culture which outgrows all personal life. Here in buildings and educational institutions, in the wonders and comforts of space-conquering technology, in the formations of community life, and in the visible institutions of the state, is offered such an overwhelming fullness of crystallized and impersonalized spirit that the per sonality, so to speak, cannot maintain itself under its impact. On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream, and one needs hardly to swim for oneself. On the other hand, however, life is composed more and more of these impersonal contents and offerings which tend to displace the genuine per sonal colorations and incomparabilities. This results in the indi vidual’s summoning the utmost in uniqueness and particulariza tion, in order to preserve his most personal core. He has to exaggerate this personal element in order to remain audible even to himself. The atrophy of individual culture through the hyper trophy of objective culture is one reason for the bitter hatred which the preachers of the most extreme individualism, above all Nietzsche, harbor against the metropolis. But it is, indeed, also a reason why these preachers are so passionately loved in the metropolis and why they appear to the metropolitan man as the prophets and saviors of his most unsatisfied yearnings. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 63 The Metropolis and Mental Life 423 If one asks for the historical position of these two forms of individualism which are nourished by the quantitative relation of the metropolis, namely, individual independence and the elaboration of individuality itself, then the metropolis assumes an entirely new rank order in the world history of the spirit.' The eighteenth century found the individual in oppressive bonds which had become meaningless—bonds of a political, agrarian, guild, and religious character. They were restraints which, so to speak, forced upon man an unnatural form and outmoded, unjust inequalities. In this situation the cry for liberty and equality arose, the belief in the individual’s full freedom of movement in all social and intellectual relationships. Freedom would at once permit the noble substance common to all to come to the fore, a substance which nature had deposited in every man and which society and history had only deformed. Besides this eighteenth-century ideal of liberalism, in the nine teenth century, through Goethe and Romanticism, on the one hand, and through the economic division of labor, on the other hand, another ideal arose: individuals liberated from historical bonds now wished to distinguish themselves from one another. The carrier of man’s values is no longer the “general human being” in every individual, but rather man’s qualitative unique ness and irreplaceability. The external and internal history of our time takes its course within the struggle and in the changing entanglements of these two ways of defining the individual’s role in the whole of society. It is the function of the metropolis to provide the arena for this struggle and its reconciliation. For the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions which are re vealed to us as the opportunities and the stimuli for the develop ment of both these ways of allocating roles to men. Therewith these conditions gain a unique place, pregnant with inestimable meanings for the development of psychic existence. The me tropolis reveals itself as one of those great historical formations in which opposing streams which enclose life unfold, as well as join one another with equal right. However, in this process the currents of life, whether their individual phenomena touch us sympathetically or antipathetically, entirely transcend the sphere for which the judge’s attitude is appropriate. Since such forces of life have grown into the roots and into the crown of 64 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 424 The Metropolis and Mental Life the whole of the historical life in which we, in our fleeting exist ence, as a cell, belong only as a part, it is not our task either to accuse or to pardon, but only to understand.11

The content oLthis lecture by its very nature does not derive from a citable literature. Argument and elaboration of its major cultural-historical ideas are con tained in my Philosophic des Geldes [The Philosophy of Money; Miinchen und Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1900]. [5] Measuring Urbanness JACQUES LEVY

Introduction Many contemporary works suggest that we are now experiencing a victory of the 'urban' and a defeat of the 'city'. This is an appar ently easy way to sum up a current situation, whereby urban areas are ending into something fundamentally new. Doing this, how ever, we might take the risk of giving up trying to think together realities that, despite of their differences, belong to the same realm, to the same rationale. Should we abandon any hope of constructing common tools for the whole spectrum of urban phenomena, today and in the past, here and elsewhere? Should we downgrade our pretensions to a mere approach of what happens in the city and ignore the simple but upsetting question of what exactly do we mean by the word "city"? The state of the art in this field shows two main orientations: 1) the measurement of morphological agglomerations, generally based on the continuity of a built-up area; 2) various functional indicators, often referring to daily commuting and sometimes other criteria. In many European statistical surveys we observe different mixtures of both approaches; they are the pressure of a third: the web of administrative districting, municipalities or other local ju risdictions. Everybody acknowledges that neither a purely mor phological, nor a simple set of mobility data, even less a primary opposition between the official eponymous 'city' and its 'suburbs' can count for the present-day mutations. But how can we cope with them while maintaining a comprehensive approach to the urban phenomenon? 66 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 16 Change and Stability in Urban Europe Seven principles The following principles comprise an attempt to go beyond this unsatisfactory 'bricolage' and to set up a more consistent way of considering urban spaces.

Adopt a basic and universal definition of urbanness We must again discover the framework proposed by the most rele vant works of the Chicago School, namely Louis Wirth's famous manifesto 'Urbanism as a Way of Life' (1938). This text emerged as a result of three main sources: 1) Georg Simmel approach of urban life as a dimension of a post-communautarian environment; 2) a concern of urban space among German geographers (unlike the French who were still bogged down in their ruralist perspective); and 3) the first empirical sociological space-oriented studies carried out in Chicago and other North-American cities. Wirth delivers a simple but fundamental message: the city is a specific geographical layout, based on co-presence. By the association of density and diversity, a city affords an effective solution to transportation and communication, the other ways to cope with the obstacles that dis tance raises to social interaction. As a result, density and diversity represent a good measure of urbanness, which can be defined as what makes a city a city.

Distinguish a priori urbanness from a posteriori urbanness and urban capital Traditionally, cities are classified according to their economic func tions or by the distribution of their social groups. A more efficient approach would require a prior study of the potentialities offered by the basic layout of the urban 'form', which is actually much more than a contentless form. The compactness of a built-up area, the level of accessibility between the various places which, together make up a city, comprise relevant criteria to characterise, at a pri mary stage, an urban area. Thus, two metropolises such as Cairo and Los Angeles, which are virtually incomparable in terms of marketable production or social structure, become relatively simi lar if we use indicators of spatial pattern such as dwelling density or quality of transportation system. This is the purpose of the ap proach to a priori urbanness: analysing the geographical assets of a city independently from their social, economic and political use (a posteriori urbanness). The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 67 Measuring Urbanness 17 Beyond these two space-oriented measurements, a third set of indicators can be explored. It is called 'urban capital' and consists of a non-spatial overall assessment of the city according to classical economic, sociological, or political efficiency criteria. This approach can be seen as a translation of the assets of a specific geographical situation - a place - into some universal indicators which can be applied to any kind of social aggregate. Thus, the productivity of a city, be it solely economic or more comprehensive, can be com pared to that of other urban or non-urban social layouts. For in stance the Gross Urban Product (GUP) per capita of a particular city can be compared to that of the entire country where this city is located (see below 'Two global models...').

Distinguish relative urbanness from absolute urbanness The larger the city, the greater the mass of possible interactions, according to the formula I = n (n - l)/2, where n is the number of urban 'items' (inhabitants, buildings, organisations,...). Yes, but... this depends upon the nature of the items co-present in an area and on their propensity to interact. In a mining town, for instance, or in any single-activity (manufacturing, tourism, commerce) aggregate, the lack of diversity works as a limiting factor. The effective sum of possible encounters is a decisive element, too: a sprawled city bro ken up into secluded communities takes less advantage of its size than a smaller one, with a more effective proximity between its different neighbourhoods. Hence we can study separately, at least at a first stage, mass effects (absolute urbanness) and the part of an urban phenomenon which is independent from its size. Measuring separately from realities is a condition for exploring their possible similarities. Many preliminary observations show that although relative and absolute dimensions of urbanness are methodologi cally independent, urban mass and urban style are correlated. Thus, in a given set of cities, density grows with population.

Distinguish pedestrian metrics from automobile metrics Research on transportation has often been oriented towards the analysis of multi-means combinations. This can be justified to im prove the efficiency of the overall transportation system. If the point is the "intelligence" of the city and the measurement of ur banness, another framework is required. The two main categories of urban movement - 1) by car; 2) by any means, including mass transit, where a pedestrian can remain a pedestrian - have very different effects on urban life. Both metrics have a strong power of 68 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 18 Change and Stability in Urban Europe structuration on distance, proximity, and on the urban space as a whole. Pedestrian metrics allow different kinds of multisensorial interactions and enhance the role of public spaces, where unex pected productive encounters ('serendipity') are more likely to oc cur. Beyond its direct impact on the destruction of public spaces (transformation of the basic street network into a single-use area, parking spaces, freeways and their buffer zones) and on the ensu ing loss of density, many studies have shown the strong link be tween the use of automobile and the achievement of an urban way of life whose classical hallmark is the single-family owned house. In this model, largely achieved in most North American cities and in European peri-urban areas, the relationship individual/society is the search for family self-reliance which entails a tendency toward a certain level of self-segregation from other parts of the urban so ciety, separation from other social groups and from other urban functions. Exceptions like Oslo, where individual housing did not prevent major use of mass transit systems, are not common, or, at the opposite end, like Sao Paulo, where mistrust toward urban mix is associated with automobile and high densities, confirm the im portance of transportation metrics. Cars and pedestrians make, at the same time, two different cities.

Encompass simultaneously territory and networks Contemporary cities are multi-speed areas with a 1 to 100 (strolling walk to high speed train) ratio from the slowest to the fastest. This is a first in urban history. Unlike former situations, where this dif ferentiation represented the mere projection of the socio-economic or socio-political structure (fast-dominant vs. slow-dominated) and a simple way of rank social strata, today virtually each urban citi zen has the opportunity to experience this diversity of metrics. Everyone who lives in a city actually lives in many different cities. This superposition of various metrics presents a challenge to our understanding capacity and an invitation to go beyond the Euclid ean space representation. More specifically, a city appears as a mix of two main families of spaces: territories, with continuous and exhaustive distance units; and networks, with discontinuous and lacunary distance units. Distinguishing territories from networks allows us two perceive their dialectics. A street and its sidewalks can be both a network (as a transportation infrastructure, including for walking), and a territory (as a narrow and volatile but efficient crossing zone and meeting place). Cerda, more than one century ago, boldly expressed it, the quality of a city lies only on the frail balance between vias and entrevias, that is, between what connects The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 69 Measuring Urbanness 19 and what is connected. The complexity of the network/territory relationship is well revealed by the two different sorts of territories generated by car and by pedestrian metrics. In the first case, the complete appropriation of all kinds of road networks, including the 'capillary' web, leads to an 'oil-stain' spreading territory with a growing pressure to unify it at the highest speed level, the breaking point being the transformation of all streets into motorways. As for pedestrian metrics, the limit point would be a complete articulation of all operating scales, from walk to train, each of them occupying its comparative advantage niche: unlike the unlimited territorial fusion at a weak level of relative urbanness offered by automobile, pedestrian metrics create an archipelago of strong territorial units. What is true at an intra-urban scale is even more obvious among inter-urban relations. Continuity of built-up area may be an illu sion, as it is from New York to Philadelphia or from Paris to Le Havre when it does not match a functionally unified area. Con versely, a powerful network can allow high-intensity exchanges when the connected nodes are strong territories, as it is the case between Tokyo and Osaka or between Paris and various cities of the European Ridge.

Design a point-to-point measurement Especially in Europe, we are used considering a standard urban pattern with a historical core surrounded by suburbs. In the same spirit, we often emphasize home-to-work commuting and ignore the trips aimed at other purposes. In doing so, we take the risk of neglecting powerful emergent phenomena like new peripheral cen tres (identified as edge cities in North America) or non-job, leisure or commerce-oriented polarities (like shopping centres or "Cine- plexes"). To encompass such processes, we must address the geo graphical layout of a city no more as a ex-ante datum but as a ex post outcome, at stake in our attempt to measure urbanness. The point is making those facts visible, and we may achieve this goal by adopting a spatial background as neutral as possible. The reference map on which we are to mark the measured data must have no preliminary borders of what would be the urban area. We must also cautious regarding the side effects of administrative bounda ries (their size and their shape) on the results of our study and, of course, rule out any special treatment of the eponymous municipality. Moreover, we have dire need of a thorough reflection on a cartographic language appropriate for taking account of the intermingled metrics (car and pedestrian, territory and network) of urban spaces. 70 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 20 Change and Stability in Urban Europe Build ready-to-use indicators A measurement tool is meaningless if not usable. The statistical apparatuses of various countries are not always compatible, and even in the European Union much remains to be done to provide an efficient and versatile set of information on urban phenomena. Research programmes require either the use of the available data or 'home-made' productions made from scratch and with limited resources. In both options, a certain level of approximation seems unavoidable. If we are aware of these limiting effects, we can cope with them and try to bridge the gap between concepts and indica tors. We can give quantitative data a relevant meaning within our theoretical framework, even if these had not been designed for it. For instance, dwelling density can be used with some qualification to sum up density in general, transportation times to approach ac cessibility, and land and real estate values to address a complex issue: the way members of an urban society assess the value of dif ferent places in a city.

An empirical study on Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo Since 1993, VillEurope, a research group funded by the French CNRS, has carried out various programmes to establish and em pirically test measures of urbanness, and to try to provide a better definition of 'europeanness' of the city. The most recent stage of this research included a comparative study on three metropolises: Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo. The goal was to approach point-to- point 'a-priori urbanness', in its relative and absolute dimensions, using data on the compactness of the urban area and accessibility by car and mass transit. • Here are some major outcomes of this still unfinished re search programme. • In the three cities surveyed, the best accessibility level from a given point is better in dense areas. The highest ratio be tween the accessible population within one hour and the population of the whole continuous built-up area is ob tained in central Paris (almost 100%), both by car and public transit system. The highest absolute number of accessible population is found in central Tokyo (over 24 million), thanks to public transportation. In spite of its dense freeway grid, Los Angeles hardly reaches 60% and 8 million, in lim ited areas located in downtown and its surroundings. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 71 Measuring Urbanness 21 • In terms of compactness, the three cities show comparable data, such that Los Angeles attains a surprisingly good score, partly because it is spared by space 'moth-eating', a countryside-city mixture often typical of the peri-urban ar eas in countries with old rural civilisations such as France and Japan. This is also to be related to Los Angeles' clear- cut boundaries, deriving from its location between ocean and desert. Paris and Tokyo present a more complicated layout, with sinuous townships along valleys. This good performance of Los Angeles is made possible by the fact that density has been approximated with a built-up area (to eliminate the gap between residential density and daytime density). Absolute figures are not as high for the Southern California metropolis. • Public transportation shows its evident superiority in pro viding a general point-to-point accessibility in a large city. Density appears as the only good solution to achieving good accessibility in these over-ten-million-people cities. However, density makes adequate car access almost impos sible, as we can observe in common several-hour traffic jams in Tokyo. In the intermediate case of Paris, the rela tively smooth road flows are a result of the high quality of its mass transit system. When public transportation supply is weak, as in outer ring/outer ring routes, the road network reveals its inability to cope with a growing traffic demand. • The analysis of relative urbanness shows a steep and ap parently paradoxical contrast between car and pedestrian metrics. Because of their cost, mass transit lines make up a lacunary and hierarchised network but they provide a transportation supply which is roughly evenly distributed within the densely urbanised areas. Conversely, in spite of the appearance of equal access to a unified road network, the car accessibility map shows significant differences from one specific spot to another one close by. This situation de rives from the fact that there is no simple ratio between the existence of a densely urbanised area and the supply of a massive, fast and fluid road routes. It may even be the op posite: the I-10/I-405 interchange in Los Angeles, the most famous, almost permanent gridlock in the United States, generates an obvious traffic viscosity, without comparison with the viscosity observed in Tokyo Central Station, probably the biggest railroad hub in the world. • The relationships between this measurement of a priori ur banness and other aspects of urbanness have not yet been 72 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 22 Change and Stability in Urban Europe completely explored. Let us just point out one issue, related to 'segregation', an aspect of a posteriori urbanness. At the metropolitan scale there is no evidence of a clear relation between accessibility, and more generally a priori urban ness, and the location of poorer populations or 'minority' groups. Watts and South Central in Los Angeles and Paris' northeast suburbs enjoy a very good level of accessibility to the remainder of the urban area. This necessitates a more cautious linkage between social 'exclusion' and spatial con finement.

Two global models of city The world of cities - as the World full stop - is increasingly differ entiated and unified. This process of globalisation, which began with the Great Discoveries, has known many detours and rever sals. For the moment, this integration is marked by the growing dominance of hierarchised networks on the traditional jigsaw puz zle of geopolitical states, by the relevance of core/periphery rela tionships between social groups, organisations and places, and by the emergence of a global civil society still largely deprived from its political counterpart. As those places in the World which are the most connected with each other, cities are deeply involved in this uneven but generalised interaction. We cannot be surprised when we observe strong similarities from one city to another throughout the planet. We can thus notice the global or practically global diffu sion of some urban objects, often bom in the West, like American- style Central Business Districts or European-style low-rent housing projects, shopping centres or pedestrian streets, urban motorways or underground railways all common landmarks of big cities and, in a reduced form, of smaller ones, too. Generic places have multi plied much faster than during the 'forced globalisation' of Euro pean colonisation. Simultaneously globalisation means the emer gence of places, that is complex spatial configurations which are not liable to move. When traditionally mobile items (commodities, capital, people) become even more mobile, the contrast with non- mobile, permanent items appears sharper. As actors in the global isation process, cities play their part with a script which is a unique combination of individuals, groups, skills, organisations, powers, time and space. If places matter, it is not, or at least not only, because of an al leged 'resistance of places' but because singularity and universality walk at the same pace. In this sense, regionalising of the world of The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 73 Measuring Urbanness 23 cities may produce strange outcomes. If we adopt the criterion of the relative importance of public mass transit, Sub-Saharan Africa and North America would be on the same side of weak public poli cies in a context of low-density urban areas, while Europe and East Asia would find themselves on the opposite side. At this stage, we may hypothesize only two major models of city in the contemporary world. We can call the first one the 'Am sterdam model' and the second the, 'Johannesburg model'. Table 2.1 Two models of city " Amsterdam" "Johannesburg" High density + Compactness + Good intra-urban accessibility + Strong pedestrian metrics + Co-presence housing/jobs + Diversity in activities + Social mix + Strong intra-urban polarities + High Gross Urban Product per capita + Positive self valuation of all urban area + Self identification of the urban society + Urban-scale governance + The basic idea of this dichotomic typology is that all compo nents of relative urbanness (independently from urban mass) are 1) positively correlated with each other; 2) largely embodied in actual cities. Of course, Amsterdam is not the perfect expression of the Amsterdam model, nor Johannesburg the achieved incarnation of the Johannesburg one. But each model represents a major trend in urban organisations. In the Amsterdam model, the advantage of concentration achieves its highest level, i.e. co-presence and inter action between a maximum of social operators. Only the individual is entitled, with his/her housing, to a right of remoteness (privacy). In the Johannesburg model, separation in any form structures an urban space made up of a mosaic of homogeneous and partly in dependent neighbourhoods. In spite of its specific character - the ghastly radicality of apartheid and its legacy - the actual city of Johannesburg is representative of many other cities, including many in Southern and Western North America. With its strong identity, its bourgeoisie conveying through centuries a design whereby free-market and solidarity, social hierarchy and citizen ship were deeply interwoven, its constant and consistent urban policy, Amsterdam (like Barcelona, Hamburg or Bologna) provides a sharp and perhaps excessively favourable image of what is the most specific of the European city. 74 The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 24 Change and Stability in Urban Europe Both models can be seen as the expression of major civilisa- tional options and, at this level of generality, ranking them would be highly questionable. In the 1997 ranking given by the develop ment level composite indicator (Human Development Index, HDI) proposed by the UNDP (United Nations Development Pro gramme), Canada and France come in first and second respec tively. Now Canadian urban spaces pertain more or less to the Jo hannesburg category, while French cities, with qualifications, are rather akin to the Amsterdam 'template'. This apparent confusion can be interpreted in two ways. Either urbanness has a weak im pact on the overall performance of a society; or - this would be my own hypothesis - when an urban society experiences a poor situa tion regarding its specifically urban assets, other social assets can to a certain extent make up for it. Table 2.2 The 25 richest cities, ranked by GUP, and their OPR City Population Gross Urban Over Produc (morphological agglomerations) (thousands) Product (GUP) tivity Ratio (G$) (OPR) 1 Tokyo 29 317 1443.8 1.246 2 New York 24 310 829.2 1.249 3 Osaka 15 Oil 628.7 1.060 4 Los Angeles 14 539 457.4 1.152 5 Paris 9 513 361.4 1.515 6 Nagoya 6 851 291.3 1.076 7 Chicago 8 991 273.6 1.114 8 San Francisco 5 567 213.9 1.407 9 Washington/Baltimore 5 706 212.1 1.361 10 London 8 017 208.9 1.394 11 Seoul 18 942 193.6 1.090 12 Boston 5 346 173.5 1.188 13 Hong Kong/ Shenzhen 7101 140.0 (a) 14 Miami 4 385 132.8 1.109 15 Essen 4 669 128.9 1.000 16 Dallas 4 031 124.4 1.130 17 Detroit/Windsor 4 097 120.2 (a) 18 Buenos Aires 11757 111.5 1.180 19 Toronto 4 587 107.4 1.181 20 Milan 3 850 102.1 1.385 21 Hamburg 2151 101.5 1.709 22 Taipei 7 583 100.2 1.100 23 Houston 3 381 98.5 1.067 24 Sao Paulo 16 333 94.6 1.563 25 Mexico 17 738 93.5 1.588 (a): international agglomeration. Source: Geopolis/Vill£urope, 1998. The City: Critical Essays in Human Geography 75 Measuring Urbanness 25 This latter interpretation seems confirmed by the measure ment of Gross Urban Products carried out by Francois Moriconi- Ebrard (Geopolis database) for VillEurope. The ratio GUP per cap ita/GDP per capita of the respective country, called OverProductiv- ity Ratio (OPR), shows a clear advantage to 'Amsterdam'-type cit ies, mostly in European metropolises, while some cities in North America (New York, San Francisco), in Japan, and Latin America, too, as do Los Angeles, Miami, and Dallas, obtain more disappoint ing scores. These data suggest that the overall efficiency of ' Amsterdam'- type cities is better than that of the 'Johannesburg'-type ones, in cluding in a specifically economic dimension. Strangely enough, many comparative works (see for instance, Sassen, 1991) yet exclu sively polarised by the financial component of growth and devel opment and despising too 'literary' concepts like knowledge or creativity, just seem to neglect this basic but hardly disputable monetary accounting. Taking urban space seriously, we could not be surprised by a better urban performance of cities that attain a better level of ur banness. Because of their European style urbanness, European cit ies remain the most productive spatial machines in the world. Conversely the Johannesburg model typically encompasses a kind of city where urbanness is everyday and everywhere challenged by its opposite. No wonder, in those conditions, that, in comparison to other spatial options, the urban choice cannot gain its full momen tum.

References

C a t t a n Nadine et al. (1992 ) Le concept statistique de la ville en Europe, Luxembourg: Eurostat. C e r d a Ildefonso (1867), Teoria general de la urbanization y aplicacion de sus principios y doctrinas a la reforma y ensanche de Barcelona, 3 vol., Madrid. Sassen Saskia (1991) The Global City, New York: Princeton University Press. VillEurope (1995) Urbanite et europeanite, research report for CNRS, Paris. VillEurope (1998) Metroparis, research report for CNRS and RATP, Paris. WiRTH Louis (1938) '"Urbanism as a w ay of life", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44.

References

Introduction

Diener, R. et al. (2006), Switzerland: An Urban Portrait, Basel: Birkhauser.

Kant, I. (1784), An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment? A City Is....

C a t t a n Nadine et al. (1992) Le concept statistique de la ville en Europe, Luxembourg: Eurostat.

C e r d a Ildefonso (1867), Teoria general de la urbanization y aplicacion de sus principios y doctrinas a la reforma y ensanche de Barcelona, 3 vol., Madrid.

Sassen Saskia (1991) The Global City, N ew York: Princeton University Press.

V illE u r o p e (1995) Urbanite et europeanite, research report for CNRS, Paris.

V illE u r o p e (1998) Metroparis, research report for CN RS and RATP, Paris.

WiRTH Louis (1938) '"Urbanism as a w ay of life", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44. The Open City and its Enemies

A n d e r s o n , M a r t in . The Federal Bulldozer. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964.

B l u m , J o h n M o r t o n . V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1976. K ea rn s G o o d w in , D o r is . N o Ordinary Time. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994. M a n c h e s t e r , W il l ia m . The Glory and the Dream. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973. N a bako v , V l a d im ir . Lolita. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. W h y t e , W il l ia m H., J r ., e d . The Exploding Metropolis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Y e r g in , Da n ie l . The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. 393 Making the Complexity Thinkable

FROM URBAN FORM TO URBAN RELATIONS:

IN SEARCH FOR A NEW KIND OF REFLEXIVE AND

CRITICAL KNOWLEDGE IN URBAN GEOGRAPHY

AND CITY MONITORING

Jean-Bernard Racine1

Institut de Geographie et Ecole des HEC, Universite de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

The paper explores what unites the social environment the material environment, both the material form, and, jointly, the sensibility that echoes it. .It argues that urban geographers need to develop a research model drawing on urban geography, on urbanism and on land management and capable of integrating the thoughts, the emotions, the affects and the valu es of city dwellers and citizens and therefore knowledge situated at a micro-social level.

However, such research still would need to lead to truly regulatory knowledge. Its translati on into practical measures needs to be democratically approved, especially by actors who know how to think and act both locally and globally, in relation to multiple and complex territories of affiliation and intervention. This implies a huge effort of the imagination and of construction, both at the theoretical level and at the level of the operational tools needed.

Indeed, the concept of “ urban project ”, which has been frequently encountered since the end of the ‘70s and which is supposed finally to supersede functionalist urbanism, cannot

-be conceived of without taking into consideration the population’s capability to participate and embrace projects or, on the contrary, to oppose them.

Key words: Innovative scientific knowledge, social science, urban form, sustainability, relation, lifeworld, socio-affectives relations and analysis, urban research agenda

OUR KNOWLEDGE AT STAKE

The issue needs to be addressed: through the multiplication of our “ assignments ” and research papers, don’t we risk contributing to the transformation of inevitably arbitrary political choices into more or less objective technical choices, “ by way of managing the

1 A more developped version of this paper, in french, have been published in P. Bridel, ed. L’invention dans les sciences humaines, Geneve, Labor et Fides, 2004, pp. 98-125 42 Jean-Bernard Racine / Dela 21 • 2004 • 41-52 inertias and the mirages of societies less and less capable of shaping their future and of defining ideals and hope ? Do we still truly produce a theoretical knowledge ? Can such knowledge be produced today, knowing that society exhorts us to be empiricists and data- gatherers and that those who sponsor research projects favor practical, “ usable and profita ble ” projects ? What kind of questions do we need to ask in order to bring to light the emerging knowledge demanded by F. J. Varela (1996) ? Such questions need to be asked by our disciplines and by geography in particular urban geography to be more pre-cise. I have asked myself the questions as a geographer having sacrificed much to the study of cities in a variety of geographical contexts and along a multitude of conceptual and met hodological lines of approach, the qualitative approach and the socio-cultural reference, phenomenological and hermeneutical preoccupations having progressively replaced ambiti ons of a more positivist nature, being empirical and formal, quantitative and favoring mo deling, drawing initially on functionalism and applied at first to the socio-economic domain (Racine, 1975, 1993, 2002, 2004). To illustrate this discussion, I will take as an example the issue of the urban form, much as many other examples could be used. My choice might seem unexpected. I shall say simply that this topic is “ basic ” both because of its place in any urban study and in light of its comeback in the specialized literature. However, it must be said that the topic of the urban form and of formal specifities of space has been massively discussed in the scientific literature in more or less original ways. THE RETURN OF THE FORM: A TERRAIN FOR BOTH ANCIENT AND CURRENT QUESTIONS In the more general context of the question of the social rapport to materiality, the old ques tion of the urban form is considered again today in a new context, one defined by the per spective adopted by sustainable development. Thus, the study of the urban form is currently considered as one of the major dimensions contituting the analysis of “regime of urbaniza tion”, besides the analysis of spatial relationships between cities and agglonerations and their different spatial envirlopes and besides its effects in termes of use of ressources and in termes of pollution at the environmental level and in relation to its effects on the quality of life of city dwellers. For example, nothing prevents us from asking ourselves what the relationships bet ween urban forms, or “ regimes of urbanization ”, and the health of the population living in them could be. A recent amazing article by Daniel Z. Sui (2003), appeared in Urban Geo graphy, has given serious thought to the possible relationships between urban forms and public health, by linking the anthropomorphic but imaginative metaphor of the “ fat city ”, describing sprawling cities, to the obesity that plagues more and more Americans. The specification of the nature of such interactions will doubtless prove to be very helpful in understanding the way of living the emerging city ! It is also an issue of form, but placed in a different perspective: it is just as legitimate to delve into the historical components of the present territory and to try to distinguish what belongs to ancient, modem or recent From Urban Form to Urban Relations: In Search for a New Kind of Reflexive and ...... 43 strata (Malfroy, 2000). Some simply reproduce, in a generalized intertextuality, views that have long being agreed upon, on the analysis of the urban landscape and of the visual as pects of the environment, as well as its value in terms of amenities (Whitehand, 1981, 1992).

Other, more original, ones, like the ones of the Schools of Architecture of Paris-Villemin and of Versailles (Panerai, Castex, Depaule, 2001), by following the avenues opened by S.

Muratori (1960) renew the morphological analysis by trying to 66 recreate the discipline ” with very precise ambitions in mind. Some English researchers, sometimes the same ones

(Whitehand, 1987, 2001), have proposed a deductive theory of fringe belts which tries to relate the dynamic and the processes of physical renewal to the cyclic variations of the cost of land, in a way that may seem more interesting to those who criticize the excessively empirical and descriptive nature of studies in urban morphology. We may agree with E.

Ducom (2003) in thinking that studies in the variation of the nature of urban edges accor ding to the period of time and to the distance from the center and according to the decisions of individuals and of organisms attentive to economic cycles and to the cost of land may have a prospective or even predictive value. However, this anticipation doesn’t tell us anything more about the quality of the population’s relation to space ensuing from this form of growth.

FORM AND SUSTAIN IBILITY

It can doubtless be shown, as stated by A. Cunha and B. Bochet (2002) in their ten theses on urban sustainable development and on the control of the social dynamic, “ that a city characterized by short distances needs fewer resources ” and that “ the combined organiza tion of collective transportations and of spatial allocations improves the economic, social and environmental situation ”. Nevertheless, the authors acknowledge that more than ten years of research have yet to provide any conclusive evidence capable of highlighting the direct and indirect costs of concentration and of dispersion at the triple economic, social and ecological level. The advocates and the adversaries of the compact city and of the expanded city thus seem to be overwhelmed by these compromisers, advocates of a “ new urbanism” and of the polynuclear or polycentric model (Breheny, 1996, Camagni and

Gibelli, 1997). B. Bochet and G. Pini (2002) draw a very legitimate conclusion, holding that “ the major task isn’t to conceive of an ideal urban form, rather to “ reconceive o f” the extant forms and to take into consideration the need for different lines of approach at the planning and at the conceptual level so that these forms can become sustainable ”. We may also quote S. Guy and S. Marvin (2000) who recommend “ trying to identify the complex paths through which different urban forms may claim sustainability ”, rather than looking for a static model of a sustainable urban form. May we bear this in mind. -The plea in favor of densifying cities, seeking to curb the habitat’s dispersal in favor of models drawing resolutely on a specialized multicentrality, is currently quite common, much as some of the statements condemning the dispersed city are already contested. Two critics are P. Gordon and H.W. Richardson (1997), who ask whether compact cities are a 44 Jean-Bernard Racine / Dela 21 • 2004 • 41-52 desirable objective of land management and who question the efficiency of compactness, minimizing the economic gains and the environmental benefits that would result from its implementation. However, it must be pointed out that even when it comes to “ formal ” and apparently well-defined relations, such as the one stating that density is inversely, proportional to the consumption of fuel (Newman and Kenworthy, 1999), a relation of cause and effect cannot be automatically derived. Not only are the empirical data oftentimes not very reliable and hardly comparable from one context to another but, like everybody knows, not all variati ons are the expression of a relation of cause and effect. And even when such a relation exists, what is then the cause and what is the effect ? Are low densities the cause of traffic or is motorization that allows people to live farther away from the center, having more space at their disposal, i.e. low density ? P. Merlin (2000), reminds us that we do know “ that causality is a two-way relation, and the two elements strenghten each other and reach a balance that has been instable up to this day The progress made in quantitative analysis, combined with advances in geomatics, seem' to have given new life to the study of distributions and of morphologies and, particularly at the present time, of the spatial growth of cities and of their fragmentation, as well as of their r elation to mobility, to an intermingling deemed necessary and to anything that seems to condition a type of development supposed to be conceived of according to explicit choices resulting from a multicriteria and sustainable approach and grounded in the knowledge necessary to make a decision. Especially in the context of the urban form, these tools doub tless contribute to a sizable increase in our knowledge and open it up to some of its correla tives, at all levels, and particularly well at the intra-urban level. Multidimensional and mul ticriteria spatial data processing accounts for this particularly well. However, we still need to ask ourselves to what extent it may be possible to produce knowledge that gives meaning and value to information and that helps understand, beyond the spate of details provided by Geographic Information Systems, for example, the import of changes in the urban form for those who dwell in it. As stated by P. Villeneuve (2002), it can well be shown that greater mobility “ increases the “ plasticity ” of women in the per formance of their activities ”. Yet what conclusions can we draw ? A greater social equity between genders? Or rather does this new plasticity “ justify an unequal, gender-based division of labor ” ? At a more general level, we should keep asking ourselves whether our quantitative analyses, although so useful to us, really help us fathom the social substance characterizing the spaces where everyday life activities are carried out (Therault et al. 1999). A SIMPLE QUESTION OF FORM? A CONCEPTUAL LEGACY THAT NEED TO BE ACCEPTED AND MOVED AHEAD OF Evidently, beneath the different representations of an ideal compact form, lie the old mo dels found in student manuals that have trained a majority of geographers (Senecal and Hamel, 2001). The classical theory of urban space is built on the premise that “ a city lives From Urban Form to Urban Relations: In Search for a New Kind of Reflexive and ...... 45 through its center ”, “ ground for activities and for the accomplishment of responsibilities and satisfactions of a higher order; prestige, information and interconnections are its apparently irrefutable attributes; a metropolis controls, presents, distributes and gathers by virtue of its center ” (Labasse, 1966). The current representations of the meaning and future of urban form doubtless owe their nature to the persistence, in the mind of geographers, of the North-American founding models of sociology and of urban geography, conceived by the School of Chicago. Two- thirds of a century after these pioneering works, we have inherited from such models a series of fundamental representations of what lies beneath the urban form. First of all, the fact that density gradients follow land-cost gradients and sustain ecological urban structu res. Second, the fact that high values of land in the center of cities are revealed by the extreme compactness of buildings and by the good accessibility of central spaces. In this context, the residential breakdown evolves also according to gradients between center and periphery, from apartment buildings to low-density suburbia. Third, the fact that this struc turation depends also on the images of the city, in terms of values, of meaning, of significa tion and on the very forms constituting the urban landscape, among which the presence of nature plays a central role. This third aspect was largely developed by K. Lynch after W.

Firey (1945) brought it up in relation to Boston in his critique of the classic models of the

School of Chicago. Such were the standards of theory in urban geography. These standards have been de bated since their inception. More so since the emergence of what some have called the third movement of periurbanization and others of counter-urbanization, while activities specific to centrality were being decentralized, following residential and commercial functions. The appearance of centers of secondary order, edge cities (Garreau, 1988), or other major su burbs became the designation of a recasting of the classic model. The polycentric form claims to be an alternative to hypercentrality and to urban spreading in that it could reduce the number of cummuters and therefore curtail pollution as well as land pressure on the natural environment (Ewig, 1997). Hence, new words and new concepts are being invented to describe the American

New City (Fishman, 1990), and. the sometimes contradictory implications of metropolizati- on, which has superseded urbanization. A fragile balance characterizes it and it behooves us to start to analyze its tendencies, which may only appear to be contradictory, contributing either to the decline of centers or to the attribution of greater value to centrality. Which means it is still worthy to delve into it, like M. Bassand (1997) does, trying for example to understand what, in a city, gathers or informs, what, especially, acts as a system of referen ce for the action of city-dwellers. We shall retain, however, the deliberate and optimistic perspective that emanates from the analyses carried out by V. Kaufmann (2001) and his collaborators on European cities.

The conclusion they draw is that this much-decried periurbanization is not fatal and that by being sufficiently imaginative, other modes of urbanization are possible, especially in the suburbs close to the center, “ provided that these spaces can be given more value at the actual and at the symbolic levels ”. A notation that seems essential to me, especially becau se it is anchored in a key question. How can we possibly think the urban dynamic from a 46 Jean-Bernard Racine / Dela 21 • 2004 • 41-52 perspective defined by sustainable development, by analyzing the constraints and the op portunities linked to the urban form but by omitting the analysis of the aspirations, the satis factions and the arbitrations linked to their more or less high level of convergence and to the rules of the game ? (Kaufmann, Jemelin, Guidez, 2001). And, above all, as V. Kauf- mann would say, by lacking imagination and by not offering any other model than the clas sic dichotomous image of the city-center (no opportunities to develop)/diffuse periur-ban city encouraging the generalized use of the automobile. Can we do any better ? A CITY TO INVENT OR A CITY THAT INVENTS ITSELF? THE RELATION TO THE CITY AS A SOCIO-AFFECTIVE RELATION In this connection the issue addressed by Y. Chalas (2000) is particularly interesting. He first reminds us that “ the city is neither ahistorical nor transhistorical, and that it changes not only in its form, or what can be called its landscapes, its aesthetic appeal, but also in its fundamental structure, its organization, the hierarchy of its different centers or of its diffe rent facets, the lifestyles of its inhabitants, etc. ”. In other terms, the city “ is not the result of an identical reproductive process ”. Being historical, it is an invention and a permanent reinvention, “ a social and historical creation” as C. Castoriadis would say (1975), 44 meaning that it is what people make of it and not only what people inherit ”. The city, which always appears to be different from itself and from other cities, is the result of a transformation that man hasn’t at least in part wanted or mastered. It is in this context that Y. Chalas places the task of urban research. Thus, he joins us in our interests, which “ consist in constantly deciphering the city’s evolution, and therefore producing new mo dels to understand the city so as to rethink these renewed entities and propose these models to those who act on the city to modify or strengthen its tendencies if research has to be at least partly useful ”. This means specifying the process that leads to the invention of the city, along three lines of approach he deemed appropriate: the social imagination, dwelling practices, the architectural and urbanistic epistemology. What should we retain ? Mainly the fact that in addition to the rapport between what he qualifies of “ primordial in the city ” and what will give each one its peculiarity, “ if not within a same society or a same culture, at least from one society or culture to another ”, there is what proceeds from invention. The primordial element evidently refers to the very genesis of the urban phenomenon, to the extraordinary anthropological phenomenon repre sented by the appearance and the disappearance of the city throughout history. Almost invariable, these structural elements belong to what all cities have in common. C. Raffestin (1977) identifies them to the “ very principles of the idea of city ”, centration, concentrati on, heterogeneity, power and regulation. Y. Chalas (2001), identifies them with a series of founding antagonisms, both external and internal (between city and nomadism and between city and country), “ a multiplicity of oppositions within themselves, in the form of a functi onal division from which only can it be stated that there is a city ”. These contradictions can also be a source of concord and of creation, by forming a complex system that gives it its multiple meanings. The invention refers to a few specific, “ identity-related and meaningFrom Urban Form to Urban Relations: In Search for a New Kind of Reflexive and ...... 47 ful ” traits, that coexist with it and that confer on it, in new ways, singularity and historic adaptation, some elements being potentiated, others being rearranged differently. “ The only thing that changes through history, is the organization of these elements ” (ibid). These quotations and this epitome of Y. Chalas’ thinking help us situate our problem.

Have we exploited the leeway given us by our evolving cities, by inventing instead of let ting them invent themselves ? The processes haven’t been understood, and we have limited ourselves to finding purely managerial and technical solutions, with no other ambition in mind. There has been a lack of sufficient theoretical knowledge and of a holistic, prospective outlook, capable of defining a desirable future which has resulted in a lack of sufficiently solid critical thinking. This has resulted in purely pragmatic, unscientific policies, characteri zed by a lack of knowledge and of imagination, our eyes being fixed on the status quo. It thus seems that we have made many mistakes. Is there an alternative to acting belatedly on negative impacts nobody wants to be responsible for ?

ON FROMS AGAIN: THE URBAN FORM AS RELATION

“ An urbanist, after all, should be first an inhabitant ”, wrote D. Mangin and Ph. Panerai

(1999), two specialists of urban analysis. They consider “ the urban form as implication ” and are interested in ways we can build cities taking into consideration not only the preoc cupations of technicians but also the economic, cultural and social aspects. These authors hypothesize that “ rigorously relating the allocation of land to the type of buildings, provi des the initial framework for an urban tissue likely to favor appropriations and adaptati ons ”, by offering city-dwellers a framework likely to adapt to changes in their lifestyles and in the economy. However, the foregoing quotation encourages us to move beyond what they themselves say, so as to conceive of the city not through buildings but through urban forms in an “ urban project ” working as a tool of mediation between buildings and their city . Specialists oftentimes criticize, legitimately, “ the limits of an action concerned merely with buildings and not with the relations between them ” (ibid). It is necessary to know what they mean by the notion of relation in this connection. These texts will disappo int readers, users, inhabitants and specialists and politicians concerned with 64 making city ”.

Even though these will admire the analysis of the complex relations between land and buil dings, between roads and buildings, between forms and practices, they still will say that the last term, indissociable, but otherwise more complex still, is being sacrificed. Does the outlook on the city, on the relation between life and the city, have to come from a sociolo gist who would also be a novelist and a musician (Sennett, 1992), or from a writer (Gracq,

1985), to be capable to link forms to the way we look at them, to link the morphological element, in its spatial and temporal complexities, to the socio-cultural or socio-affective element ? (Bochet and Racine, 2002). This is precisely what has been illustrated with enthusiasm by the geographers

W.K.D. Davies, J. Chan, and I.J. Townshend (1999), Towrnshend and Davies, (1999) and again Townshend (2002) in their remarkable works on the Chinese and on the elder co mmunities of Calgary and of Lethbridge, Alberta. In their studies, they associated to their 48 Jean-Bernard Racine / Dela 21 • 2004 • 41-52 factorial ecologies objective and subjective measures and discovered quantitatively the high degree of empirical correspondence between concepts associated to behavioral, cognitive and affective dimensions of the variation identified within these communities. These works considerably renew the classic studies of urban areas and show that these concepts can be studied in a complete urban context, rather than being limited to previously defined social niches. They also show that those conceptual models of differentiation of communities which take into consideration the affective, cognitive and emotional dimensions of popula tions are quite reliable even when the whole of the social areas of the city are included in the analysis, social areas which, when taken individually, don’t generate any significant differences. Which is also why we argue in favor of abandoning a purely formal and functionalist perspective, that distances experiences as they are lived and which defined the positivist, scientific objectivity of modemiiy. Our efforts should thus seek to pursue the more ambiti ous project of mastering the connections between the world as such and the world as we experience it. Such a perspective doesn’t necessarily set the social environment against the material environment. Rather, it explores what unites them, both the material form, and , jointly, the sensibility that echoes it (Berque, 1990). In other words, we need to develop a research model drawing on urban geography, on urbanism and on land management and capable of integrating the thoughts, the emotions, the affects and the values of city dwellers and citizens and therefore knowledge situated at a micro-social level. However, such rese arch still would need to lead to truly regulatory knowledge. Its translation into practical measures needs to be democratically approved, especially by actors who know how to think and act both locally and globally, in relation to multiple and complex territories of affiliati on and intervention. This implies the development of technically and spatially, adequate systems. The constraints of each place also need to be taken into consideration. This also implies a huge effort of the imagination and of construction, both at the theoretical level and at the level of the operational tools needed. Indeed, the concept of “ urban project ”, which has been frequently encountered since the end of the ‘70s and which is supposed finally to supersede functionalist urbanism, cannot be conceived of without taking into consideration the population’s capability to participate and embrace projects or, on the contrary, to oppose them (Toussiant & Zimmerman, 1998). It is also necessary to discover or at least to give a new interpretation to what sustains and nourishes the socio-affective relation to the city as well as the meaning which can be attributed to it. The question being whether in the context of this relation, the city is an actor in and of itself or rather through one of the dimensions that cause it to exist for this other actor an acting agent which is the individual dwelling in it and lives it in a given system of social and spatial relations: dimensions of urbanity, of amenities, of civilities (Bochet and Racine, 2002) and of everybody’s capability to love the. people of their city. Or should we instead look into the personal element, into the set of one’s social relations ? And if, as we may hypothesize, the answer lies between two issues of “ the actor as acted upon ”, as N. Elias (1985) would say, in the dialectic nature between city and city-dwellers, what lessons can we draw in terms of public policy and of good governance ? From Urban Form to Urban Relations: In Search for a New Kind of Reflexive and ...... 49 First, we need to know who is concerned by this set of relations and for what reasons, at the double level of effects and of a desire to organize space: it is the question of the fun damental knowledge of a relation system implying simultaneously materiality and immateriality. Second, we need to know whether the actor should be considered as an indi vidual isolated in his habitus or as an element of a collective habitus. The question is being asked as the urban form evolves towards a metropolitan form. This evolution implies not only spreading and fragmentation, generally brought up by every author, but also individua tion. Third, as fulfiller of roles or as organizer of the elements of his system of action, ha ving found in the city spaces of gratification (Laborit, 1974 ; 1994), of mimetic mediations

(Girard, 1961), the possibility to enliven his imagination (Noschis, 1984), likely to nourish and satisfy his socio-affective relation. This is the very crux of the problem facing city dwellers: the fact that between subject and object, between nature and culture, the essential takes places in the double movement between the two mediatory leifmotiv that has been rigorously illustrated by the science des milieux elaborated by A. Berque (1990). In other words, a landscape is not a thing, but a relation. The same goes for any urban form. Material forms are social forms, as has been said repeatedly since H. Lefebvre (1974) and M. Castels (1977). They have a history, “ they are their own histories ”. Don’t they, at the intersection of geography and history, serve as

“ mediation between the world of things and the one of human subjectivity ”, like the land scapes of A. Berque (1995), “place-forms” (Frampton 1993), but also “ ecosymbols ” thro ugh which our future is written and elaborated ? It is therefore necessary to study “ the cognitive cogency of space ”, and the way space in its contents, its organization and its representations directs and informs the psyche looking at it. In addition, it is necessary to underscore the affects and emotions of individuals in relation to their city, but also the way the city enters the individual experience and takes on its own affects. Such is “ the city that gives itself as something effecting something in its inhabitant, that causes something to be defined to resonate in him, an affective phenomenon, which is an effect of the world on his sensibility, the power of his thought to recognize himself in this city, to be strenghtened through an affective and emotional rapport to space and this, probably, independently of any symbolic content” (Wunenburger, 1997). As J .P. Sartre remains us in L’Etre et le

Neant: “ the form doesn’t exist as pure exteriority ”. In other words, “it is the relation that makes the world ” and it is through human reality that there is a world.

TOWARD THE EXPLORATION OF AN EVIDENT INEXPLO

RED RELATION: AN AGENDA FOR URBAN RESEARCH?

Let's leave the word of conclusion to my friend A. Berque, who commented my first draft in these terms: “ in fact you plead for a deliberate insertion of the urban forms question in the pluridimensional problematic of social sciences, referring in particular to H. Lefebvre's work. In short, to consider them as social forms. I absolutely agree with you (...). I say that urban forms are social because they are our social body, I would say in my language, our

Desmarais, G. (1995) La morphogenese de Paris. Des origines a la Revolution, Paris, L’Harmattan.

Ducom, E. (2003) La theorie des ceintures limitrophes (fringe belts): discontinuity d’occupation de l’espace sur les franges des villes, L’Information geographique, vol 67, no. 1, pp.35-44

Ewing, R. (1997) Is Los Angeles-Style Sprawl Desirable ? Journal of the American Plan- ningf Association, 61(1), pp. 107-126.

Firey, W. (1945) Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables, American Sociologi cal Review, 10, pp. 140-148.

Frampton., K. 81993) Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six points for an architecture of resistance, in Docherty, Th. (ed.) Postmodernism: a reader., New York, London, Har vester-Wheatsheaf

Garreau, J. (1988) Edges cities, Lanscape Architecture, 78(8), pp. 48-55.

Gordon, P. et Richardson, H. W. (1997) Are Compact Cities a Desirable Planning Goal? Journal of the American Planning Association, 61(1).

Elias, N. (1985) Norbert Elias par lui-meme, Paris, Agora.

Gracq, J. (1985) La forme d'une ville, Paris, Jose Corti.

Girard, R. (1961) Mensonge romantique et verite romanesque, Paris, Grasset.

Guy, S. et Marvin, S. (2000) Models and Pathways. The Diversity of Sustainable Urban Futures, in: Williams et al (eds.) The Compact City, Oxford, Spon, pp. 9-18.

Isin, E. F. (1996) Metropolis Unbound: Legislators and Interpreters of Urban Form, in: Caulfield. J. et Peake, L. (eds.) City Lives & City Forms. Critical Research and Canadian Urbanism, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, pp. 98-127.

Labasse, J. (1966) L’organisation de l’espace: elements de geographie volontaire, Paris, Hermann.

Laborit, H. (1994) L’agressivite detournee. Introduction a une biologie du comportement social, Paris, Union generate d’editions.

Malfroy, S. (2000) Penser et representer la ville, Lausanne, ENAC, EPFL, 369 p. Mangin, D. et Panerai, P. (1999) Projet urbain, Marseille, Parentheses, 185 p.

Merlin, P. (2000) Preface, in: Fouchier, V. Les densites de la Ville nouvelle d’Evry. Du projet au concret, Paris, Anthropos.

Muratori, S. (1960) Studi per una operante storia urbana di Venezia, Rome, Instituto Poli- grafico della State.

Panerai, P., Castex, J. et Depaule, J.-P. (2001) Formes urbaines de Pilot a la barre, Marseil le, Parentheses, 197 p.

Noschis, K. (1984) Signification affective du quartier, Paris, Meridiens, 170 p.

Racine, J.-B. (1975) Un type nord-americain d’expansion metropolitaine: La couronne urbaine du Grand Montreal (Geographie factorielle experimentale d’un phenomene suburbain), Lille, Service d’Editions des theses,

Racine, J. B. (1993) La ville entre Dieu et les hommes, Paris, Anthropos, Geneve, Presses bibliques universitaires 52 Jean-Bernard Racine / Dela 21 • 2004 • 41-52 Racine, J.-B. (2002) Migration, Places and Intercultural Relations in Cities, in: Schnell, I. and Ostendorf, W. (eds.) Studies in Segregation and Desegragation, Aldershot. Ashga- te Publishing Ltd, pp. 67-86. Racine, J.B. (2004) Forme urbaine, relation a la ville et invention disciplinaire: savoirs et savoir-faire geographiques en question, in Pascal Bridel, ed. L’Invention dans les sci ences humaines, Hommage a Giovanni Busino, Geneve, Labor et Fides, pp.98-125 Raffestin, C. (1977) La ville comme metaphore, Medecine et Hygiene, 1, pp. 37-50. Raffestin, C. (1977) La ville comme metaphore, Medecine et Hygiene, 1, pp. 37-50. Sartre, J.-P. (1943) L’Etre et le Neant, Paris, Gallimard, 724 p. Senecal, G. (1996) Champs urbains et developpement durable: les approches canadiennes de la ville ecologique, in: Natures, Sciences, Societes, Paris, Dunod, 4. Senecal, G. et Hamel, P. J. (2001) Ville compacte et qualite de vie: discussions autour de 1’approche candienne des indicateurs de durability Le Geographe canadien, 45, n° 2, pp. 306-318. Sui, Z. D. (2003) Musings on the fat city: are obesity and urban forms linked ? Urban Geography, 24, 1, pp. 75-84 Theriault, M. et al. (1999) A Spatio-Temporal Data Model for Analysing Personnal Bio graphies, in: Tjoa, A.-M. et al. (eds.) Tenth International Workshops on Database and Expert Systems Applications, IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, California, pp. 410-418. Townshend, I.J. et Davies, W.K.D. (1999) Identifying the Elements of Community Charac ter: A case study of Community Dimensionality in Old Age Residential Areas, Rese arch in Community Sociology, 9, pp.219-251 Townshend, I.J. (2002) Monitoring Community Dimensions: City-Wide Characteristics and Differentiation by Social Area Type, in Monitoring Cities: international Perspectives, edited by W.K.D. Davies and I.J. Townshend, IGU, Urban Commission, Department of Geography, University of Calgary and Free University of Berlin, pp.435-459 Toussaint, J.-Y. et Zimmermann, M. (1998) Projet urbain. Menager les gens, amenager la ville, Paris, Mardaga. Varela, F. J. (1996) Initiation aux sciences cognitives, Paris, Seuil. Villeneuve P. (2002) Territorialite, interaction spatiale et rapports hommes-femmes, Cahi- ers Geographiques. La territorialite: une theorie a construire. En hommage a Claude Raffestin, 4, pp. 103-109. Whitehand, J. W. R. (ed.) (1981) The Urban Lanscape: Historical Development and Mana gement, Londres, Academic Press. Whitehand, J. W. R. (1987) The Changing face of cities. A study of development cycles and urban form, Oxford, IBG Special Publication, Basil Blackwell Whitehand, J. W. R. (1992) The Making of the Urban Landscape, Oxford, Blackwell. Whitehand, J. W. R. (2001) The physical form of cities ; a historico-geographical approach, in D. Paddison (ed.) Handbook of urban studies, Londres, Sage publications Whitehand, J. W. R. (2001) Changing suburban landscape at the microscale, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, vol.92, pp. 164-184 Public Space: Beyond Urban Design

Humans invented the city some five to ten thousand years ago,1 but up until the past two and a half centuries, most especially until the past cen tury, only a miniscule proportion of the hum an population had ever had the experience of urban living. While some preindustrial cities may, even by modern standards, have been quite large in population, the majority were modestly sized.2 Morever, at any given historical moment, extant cities were few in number, w ith most of the earth's population living out their lives in less complex physical and social environments: small bands, nomadic tribes, villages. As late as 1800 "only 3% of the human population lived in cities of 100,000 or more" (Sadalla and Stea 1978:140). In marked contrast: The number of metropolises with over a million inhabitants has tripled during the past 35 years.. . . U.N. projections indicate that there will be 511 metropolises exceeding a million inhabitants by 2010. Thereafter, more than

40 such metropolises will be added every five years, so that in the year 2025, there will be 639 metropolises exceeding one million residents. Before the chil dren born in 1985 become adults, half of the world's population will be urban, and half of this half will be located in metropolises with over a million inhabitants.

(Dogan and Kasarda 1988:13, emphasis added.)

In other words, in a phenomenally brief period of time, humans have man aged to transform themselves from a predominantly rural people to a sig nificantly urban people.

Given the lightening-fast character of this transformation, perhaps we should not be surprised at how little they know about their new environ ment, how negatively some of them view it (what a source of dis-ease it is to them), or even how resistant some of them are to granting it more than temporary status. But the brevity of the hum an encounter with the city may not tell the whole story. The antiurban feelings themselves, combined with the belief that the city is an "unnatural" and therefore impermanent hum an habitat, may contribute to the lack of knowledge. In the words of Jane

Jacobs's mildly sarcastic query, "How could anything so bad be worth the 2 Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm attempt to understand it?" (1961:21). And such willful ignorance may, in turn, help to create urban conditions that generate an d /o r reinforce antic ity sentiments.3 In sum, among the many other "pickles" the human species has gotten itself into of late, add this one: a near majority of us are now or will soon be living in a social-psychological environment that we do not understand, that many of us despise, and that, because we act toward and on it out of ignorance and prejudice, we may be making unlivable.4 This book is written in the naively optimistic belief that having gotten ourselves into this particular pickle, we can get ourselves out again. I hope it will make a contribution to a body of literature that, beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s and developing over the past several decades, has sought to understand the urban settlement rather than condemn it, to study it rather than dismiss it, and to look upon city as hum an habitat rather than to shun it as alien territory. The city in its entirety is not, of course, what we shall be exploring here. We shall, as specified earlier, be looking at only one component—but a quintessential one—of the urban settlement form: the public realm. The major burden of this chapter is to sketch the outlines of a geography and history of that realm, as well as to provide a brief overview of subsequent chapters. F irst however, two preliminary matters demand our attention. PRELIMINARIES Before getting on to the central business of this chapter we need (1) to look briefly at the work of four people who were crucial in challenging social science's conventional wisdom about the asocial character of the public realm and (2) to spend a little time pinning down some working definitions for words that have the unsettling habit of taking on a whole variety of meanings. Pioneering the Study of the Public Realm For a social scientist to proclaim in the 1990s that life in the public realm is thoroughly social is merely to proclaim the commonplace, to enunciate the obvious. But, as we have seen in earlier pages, such was not always the case, and the transformation in the perception of public realm activity from "obviously" asocial to "obviously" social was a hard-won victory. There were numerous contributors to this victory and different scholars would undoubtedly single out different clusters of individuals for special men tion. I lay no claim, then, that my cluster—composed of Gregory Stone, Jane Jacobs, Erving Goffman, and William H. Whyte—is everyone's quar

Preliminaries 3 tet of choice, but I think there is no question but that most social scientists would identify all four as contributors and that one or more of my nomi nees would appear on m any lists. None of these scholars, of course, think or thought of themselves as being concerned with the public realm per se: that phrase appears nowhere in their work. And three of them, like most public realm explorers, were simply "passing through" on their way to someplace else. But the observations they made en route and, in one instance, in situ were especially crucial in helping me to see the public realm as a social territory and to see it as one worthy of detailed exploration.

Gregory Stone stepped into the public realm because he was interested in the question of the social integration of urban populations.5 His "City

Shoppers and Urban Identification," published in 1954, reported the sur prising fact that, for some persons, a degree of integration with the local community appeared to be achieved through an identification with purely economic institutions. Specifically, he found that a portion of retail estab lishment customers, rather than viewing clerks as either utilitarian instru ments or asocial physical objects (as received truth on these matters would have it), infused customer-clerk interactions with meaning and feeling. Or to phrase it in the more technical language of the sociologist, these cus tomers injected elements of primary group relationships into what were

"supposed" to be purely secondary relationships. In the obviously anony mous and impersonal world of the city, personalism had been espied.6

Jane Jacobs's concern in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) was with understanding how a city, which she conceived of as a problem in "organized complexity," actually operated. But in pursuing the ques tion of how the various building blocks of the city—its households, streets, local neighborhoods, districts—affected one another and the whole, she devoted over eighty pages (ibid.:29-lll) to a close and textured analysis of the city's streets and parks, or, in other words, to a close and textured analysis of portions of the public realm. Where she "should" have found a social vacuum, she found rich and complex acts, actions, and interactions; w hat should have been an empty stage turned out to be the setting for an

"intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole" (ibid.:50). In the obviously anonymous and impersonal world of the city, webs of social linkages had been discerned.

While the aforementioned writings of Stone and Jacobs are landmarks in the study of the public realm, each made only a single contribution to that study, each struck only a single blow, as it were, to conventional beliefs about the realm's asocial character. In contrast, Erving Goffman struck multiple blows. Goffman, like Stone and Jacobs, meandered into the public realm on his way to somewhere else; in his case, on his way to an elucidation of what he later came to think of as "the interaction order" 4 Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm (1983). But because a fair amount of his interaction order data dealt with people who were "out in public/' Goffman almost inadvertently focused his enormous talent for microanalysis on numerous instances of public realm interaction. In much of his work, but especially in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Behavior in Public Places (1963a), and Relations in Public (1971),7 Goffman demonstrated eloquently and persuasively that what occurs between two strangers passing on the street is as thoroughly social as w hat occurs in a conversation between two lovers, that the same concerns for the fragility of selves that is operating among participants in a family gathering is also operating among strangers on an urban beach. In the obviously anonymous and impersonal world of the city, evidence of ritually sacred interchanges had been unearthed. Of the four pioneers, only William H. Whyte entered the public realm because that is where he intended to go. While the term public realm is not one he himself has used, since at least the mid-1960s he has been unabashedly interested in the public spaces of cities.8 That interest found some very preliminary expression in the 1968 book The Last Landscape, but it came to full flower in two more recent volumes: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980) and City: Rediscovering the Center (1988). In these widely read works, Whyte not only confirmed Stone's, Jacobs's, and Goff- m an's observations of a flourishing public realm social life, he also, and most crucially, began the task of constructing a political argument for the indispensability of public space to the life of the city. Referring especially to that portion of the public realm located in the city's center, Whyte has written: [T]he center is the place for news and gossip, for the creation of ideas, for marketing them and swiping them, for hatching deals, for starting parades. This is the stuff of the public life of the city—by no means wholly admirable, often abrasive, noisy, contentious, without apparent purpose. But this human congress is the genius of the place, its reason for being, its great mar ginal edge. This is the engine, the city's true export. Whatever makes this congress easier, more spontaneous, more enjoyable is not at all a frill. It is the heart of the center of the city. (1988:341) In the obviously anonymous and impersonal world of the city, someone had located not only social life but a socially important life. Defining Some Terms As a second and last preliminary matter, it is necessary to spend a little time making clear exactly w hat I mean by four crucial terms: city or urban settlement, stranger, public (as opposed to private) space, and public realm.

Preliminaries 5

C ity . There have been times when and there still are places where

"city" creates a quite distinct pattern on the landscape. The "large, dense and heterogeneous" settlement—to use Louis W irth's time-tested defini tion (1938)—is, precisely because of these characteristics, easily distin guishable from the lightly populated, low density, and homogeneous vil lages that might be near it. It is distinguishable also because it is geographically bounded—clearly separated from other cities and other set tlement forms by a visual demarcation—often a wall combined with open space in the premodern period (see Illustrations 1.1 and 1.2); simply expanses of open space in more recent times. For example, in the United

States, despite long experience with "suburbanization" (see Fishman 1987;

Jackson 1985), up until the late 1930s and early 1940s the political bound aries of most cities were largely coterminous with their visual boundaries.9

In the post-W orld War II period, however, that initially distinct pattern becomes both less and less distinct and less and less a pattern. With the emergence of the settlement form known as "undifferentiated urban mass" (sprawl, for short), the physical referent for the word city is nothing if not elusive, and, as a not-very-surprising consequence, the everyday language we Americans use to talk about varying settlement forms is nothing if not confusing. Students in my urban courses who were born and raised in the densely populated suburban landscape of California, for example, tell me that they have never "lived in a city." Persons who grow up in metropolitan area settlements of twenty thousand, fifty thousand, or even seventy-five thousand or more, as another example, tell of going off 6 Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm Illustration 1.2. Delhi in 1858. From Toynbee (ed.), 1967. to the "city" and then, exhausted by the pace of city life, happily returning to the "small town" whence they came:10 Many of those who do return [to the suburbs] are like Clay Fry, who moved back to Lafayette [a Bay Area community of about 23,000] after liv ing in Oakland and working in an architectural office in San Francisco. His life in the urban environment lasted "365 days—almost to the hour," he said. "It was really stimulating, but after a while, the rat race got to me," said Fry, 30, who now works in Walnut Creek [another Bay Area community, popula tion: 58,650]. "I'm used to trees. When I was working in the city, I found myself longing for those days with the trees in the 'burbs." (Congbalay 1990, emphasis added) The definitional efforts of people like my students and this young man have their own logic: they are attempts to make sense of the diversity of the built environment within sprawling urban regions or metropolitan areas. For these speakers, the word city is reserved for the largest, oldest, and (usually) the densest of the many named and unnam ed settlements within those areas. Similar efforts to use language to "capture" the physi cal and social heterogeneity of urban areas can also be found in the schol arly literature—the distinctions between and among the terms central city,

Preliminaries 7 suburbia, exurbia, and arcadia being a prime example (see, for example,

Vance 1972).

The problem with such distinctions, useful as they are for some pur poses, is that they obscure the fact of the cityness of the entire area. A set tlement of fifty thousand next to one of five hundred thousand is unar- guably smaller than the latter, but that doesn't make it a "small town." A municipal entity with a population of two thousand may be defined by its residents as a village, but if it is bordered on all sides by other municipal entities, "village" can be no more than a courtesy title. Under conditions of

"metropolitanization," the urban (or rural) character of a settlement can be determined neither by comparing its size to that of its larger or smaller neighbors nor even by its official population. Thus, in tracking the urban experience of the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau speaks not of cities and their nearby towns and villages, but of "metropolitan statistical areas ."11

My definition of the term c ity is both simpler and more inclusive than those employed either in everyday speech or in scholarly discourse. For my purposes, a city is "a permanently populous place or settlement."12

The simplicity of the definition is self-evident; its inclusiveness perhaps a little less so. This latter quality comes from using "place" loosely and imprecisely enough that it is allowed to cover both those large, dense, and heterogeneous settlements—past and present—that are visually distinct from their surroundings and those jumbles of variously sized settlements that are woven together into the urban blankets the U.S. Census Bureau calls "metropolitan statistical areas."

S tranger. The above definition stresses the populous character of urban settlements because, as we have seen, I am interested in the pres ence of strangers within them. The larger the number of people within some bounded space, the smaller the proportion of people w ithin that space who can be personally known to any one of them .13 That is, as the population of a "place" increases, so does the number of strangers.14

As should be obvious from what I have just said, I am here using stranger in the quite straightforward, everyday, and dictionary sense of "a person with whom one has had no personal acquaintance" (Random House 1987) or "a person or thing that is unknown or with whom one is unacquainted"

(Merriam 1971). I must warn my readers, however, that this usage, despite its common currency, is neither recommended (nor approved) by many scholars who claim a sociological interest in the "stranger." As David Karp and William Yoels remind us (1986:97-98), beginning with Georg Simmel's six-page discussion (1908), the word strangers has been reserved almost exclusively to mean "cultural strangers . . . those who occupy symbolic worlds different from our own" rather than "biographical strangers . . . 8 Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm those we have never met before" (Karp and Yoels 1986:98). That is, the dom inating concern for most students of strangerhood has been in the relation ship between a newcom er/outsider and the members of some established collectivity, 15 rather than that between persons or groups who are "new comers" as it were, to one another. In the pages ahead, we shall mostly be concerned with social and psy chological spaces containing biographical strangers, but we shall not be ignoring the Simmelian tradition altogether. As will become apparent, a crucial dynamic of the public realm emerges from the fact that not only do many of its inhabitants not "know" one another in the biographical sense, they often also do not "know" one another in the cultural sense. The pub lic realm is populated not only by persons who have not met but often, as well, by persons who do not share "symbolic worlds." Pub lic S pace . A central assumption permeating this book is that it is meaningful to distinguish between different types of physical space and that the "private-public" axis constitutes one sort of meaningful distinc tion. Unfortunately for any claims I might want to make about universal ity, not every group subscribes to this "reality." As Gloria Levitas, writing about an "anthropology and sociology of the street," tells us, the street with boundaries that separate interior from exterior, private from public space does not exist in hunting and gathering societies. The com pound of encampment or village itself, which seems to function as "a field of interaction/' is not defined as a series of destinations in a linear system.. . . The absence of the street in circular villages appears to reflect no strongly felt need for boundaries between public and private behavior. (Levitas 1978: 228) Adding to the complexity, even among groups that do make the distinc tion, exactly where the line is drawn and what is understood by each term are matters of enormous historical and cultural variation .16 However, at least at this early juncture, we may safely ignore such definitional vertigo. For the peoples and the periods w ith which we will mainly be concerned (see Commissions and Omissions below), space is routinely divided into public and private and there appears to be a rough consensus—at least theoretically—about which is which. Public spaces (whatever their own ership) are generally understood to be more accessible (physically and visu ally) than private spaces (see, e.g., Benn and Gaus 1983a,b,c; Franck and Paxson 1989:123). Dictionary definitions capture this quality with great clarity and for our purposes, for now, these definitions will suffice. A pub lic place, according to Webster's Third N ew International D ictionary of the English Language (Merriam 1971) is "accessible or visible to all members of

Preliminaries 9 the community." The Random House D ictionary of the English Language

(Random House 1987) concurs. Such a location is "open to all persons . . . open to the view of all" and stands in sharp contrast to private space, which is "not open or accessible to the general public."

Pub lic R ea lm . To this point, I have used "urban public space" and

"public realm" as synonyms. They are not, and exactly how and why they are not will become clearer in the next section. Here, I w ant only to offer a preliminary—and unnuanced—definition. The public realm is constituted of those areas of urban settlements in which individuals in copresence tend to be personally unknown or only categorically known to one another. 17 Put differ ently, the public realm is m ade up of those spaces in a city which tend to be inhabited by persons who are strangers to one another or who "know" one another only in terms of occupational or other nonpersonal identity categories (for example, bus driver-customer).

It may help to clarify w hat I mean to think about settlement forms in which the public realm does not exist. For example, using the dichotomous contrast between the private and the public (or communal) space, one can note that in pre- or nonurban settlements (bands, tribes, villages, small towns) these conjoin. The characteristic form of social organization in such settings is the community (defined as overlapping geographical, cultural, and acquaintance space, see, for example, Gusfield 1975). That is, pre- or nonurban settlements are primary groups containing other pri mary groups. In them, when one leaves one's immediate personal or pri vate space (if the group even makes such a distinction), one moves into a world of acquaintances, kin, friends, enemies, and so forth, with whom one shares a culture and a history. All relationships are primary and what is defined as appropriate behavior among various categories of primary group members is as appropriate in private as in public space. In contrast, in the city, this conjoining disappears. As the city emerges, so does the sep arate and quite discrete public realm. In the city, when one leaves private space, one moves into a world of many unknown or only categorically known others (biographical strangers), many of whom may not share one's values, history, or perspective (cultural strangers). In short, the pub lic realm is a form of social space distinct from the private realm and its full-blown existence is what makes the city different from other settlement types. The public realm, as my subtitle indicates, is the city's quintessen tial social territory.18 * * *

Having completed the preliminaries, it is time to turn to the topics with which this chapter is centrally concerned: the public realm's geography and its history. That accomplished, I will conclude w ith an overview of both what is and what is not to be found in the pages ahead. 10 Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm MAPPING THE PUBLIC REALM: A RUDIMENTARY GEOGRAPHY In the prologue, I labeled the public realm a regio incognita, an "unknown territory." It is certainly that, but it is not totally that. Enough is known to sketch a crude map, to initiate movement toward a rudimentary geography—and that is what we shall do in this section. We will begin by contrasting the public realm to its adjacent territories; go on to ponder the less than "rooted" character of social, as distinct from physical, space; and conclude by facing the protean nature of realm boundaries. The Three Realms of City Life A goal in all mapmaking is to render the visual image in such a way that different phenomena are distinguishable from one another: oceans from land masses, for example, or one nation-state from another. I began to do this above by distinguishing between the public realm and the private realm, and for preliminary definitional purposes that simple dichotomy was quite serviceable. But as we move into mapmaking, the very simplic ity of the dichotomy makes it less useful; exactly because it is simple, it dis torts the messier empirical reality it is supposed to illuminate. A trichoto- mous distinction, though still a long way from matching the complexity of the real world, can provide a significantly greater degree of precision. Thus, in what follows, we shall be concerned not only with private and public realms, but with parochial realms as well. Following Albert Hunter (1985), I will define the private realm (order, in his terms) as characterized by ties of intimacy among primary groups members who are located w ithin house holds and personal networks, and the parochial realm (or order) as character ized by a sense of commonality among acquaintances and neighbors who are involved in interpersonal networks that are located within "communities."19 To oversimplify a bit, the private realm is the world of the household and friend and kin networks; the parochial realm is the world of the neighbor hood, workplace, or acquaintance networks; and the public realm is the world of strangers and the "street." Through the lens of this trichotomy, we can see that tribes, villages, and small towns are composed simply of the private and parochial realms (or, if the group has no conception of pri vate space, simply of the parochial realm). Again as we saw above, not until the invention of the city does the public realm come into existence. But what H unter's triadic distinctions allow us to see in addition is that cities are the most complex of settlement forms because they are the only set tlement form that routinely and persistently contains all three realms.

Mapping the Public Realm 1 1

H unter's distinctions do even more. By means of them it becomes pos sible—though granted in only a very rough sort of way—to sort among cities, or within cities, among areas, in terms of the patterns formed by the relations among the three realms. For example, one might note that a cru cial difference between, say, San Francisco and Tucson is that the former has a robust public realm, the latter a less well developed one. Similarly, one could argue that in many parts of many American cities, while the pri vate realm flourishes, the world of the parochial realm, the world of "com monality among acquaintances and neighbors who are involved in inter personal networks located within communities," is truncated. Manifested as neighborhood community, the parochial realm is radically anemic. As another example, the argument by the historian Donald Olsen (in The C ity as a Work of A rt, 1986) that nineteenth-century London was far more

"domestic" than were Vienna and Paris in the same period can be trans lated as saying that in these latter cities, for whatever reason, the private realm took up a smaller portion of the "life space" of its inhabitants than it did in London. Or, as yet another example, one can contrast the worlds of varying segments of the populace of, say, eighteenth-century London, by noting that elite females were heavily restricted to the private realm, while working- and lower-class men and women, and middle- and upper-class males (like Samuel Johnson) spent a great deal of time in the parochial and public realms.

Realms As Social, Not Physical Territories

Except under conditions of cataclysmic geological or political change, maps of physical territories possess the satisfying quality of rootedness.

The Pacific Ocean, for example, has a certain position on the map, a certain relationship to the land masses that border it. Over millennia, that position and relationship may change a bit, but for all practical purposes, I can pre sume that the Pacific Ocean will, next week, be in the same "place" it is in today. Unfortunately for my attempt at mapmaking, realms are not geo graphically or physically rooted pieces of space. They are social, not physical territories. Whether any actual physical space contains a realm at all and, if it does, whether that realm is private, is parochial, or is public is not the consequence of some immutable culturally or legally given designation

(claiming, for example, this street is public space, this yard is private space). It is, rather, the consequence of the proportions and densities of rela tionship types present and these proportions and densities are themselves flu id .

For example, a personal residence, if it is em pty of hum an beings, contains no realm. And while a populated residence is usually a private realm space, it is quite possible for it to be transformed into a public realm space, 12 Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm as when its rooms are inundated w ith strangers who have paid for a "house tour." Similarly, an empty public park has no realm, and one in which a portion has been "reserved" for a wedding or family reunion con tains a private realm "bubble" within it. Or, as a last example, in a small city with a stable population and a very high "density of acquaintance ship" (Freudenburg 1986), what the outside observer might quite reason ably take to be public space (streets, parks, and so forth) may, in fact, be almost totally within the parochial realm. What I am saying here is certainly not new, though the language I am using to say it may be unfamiliar. More than thirty years ago, for example, Anselm Strauss (1961) observed that many public areas are not, in fact, very public (or, in my terms, space that is legally and culturally designated as public, may—sociologically speaking—be parochial) and this led him to distinguish between what he called "locations" and what he called "locales." By location, Strauss meant a street (or other "public area) in which the physical segregation of "life-styles" is maximized—that is, where only persons of similar values and identities are likely to be found. In contrast, a locale is a street (or other public area) that draws to itself dif ferent sorts of populations. Now the value of Strauss's distinction is not limited to the insight that legally public space may be parochial. Perhaps more importantly, it opens up the possibility that social territories or realms may, in general, be "out of place. That is, if we extend his definitions just a bit and define locations as "bounded" or identifiable portions of nonprivate space dominated by communal relationships (a neighborhood bar is an example) and locales as "bounded" or identifiable portions of nonprivate space dominated by stranger or categorical relations (an airport terminal, for example), then we can note that while locations may be said to be naturally "at home" when surrounded by parochial space, and locales when surrounded by public space, both are quite capable of taking up residence in alien space, as seen in Table 1.1, which depicts the independent relationship between realms and their spaces. Similarly, as I indicated just above, small pieces of the private realm— "bubbles"—may intrude into public or parochial space. Just as they do when they reserve portions of public parks for weddings or family reunions, persons who are linked by ties of family an d /o r friendship may, if they are sufficient in number, create little bubbles of private space in a sea of public or parochial territory. Of course, even the lone individual or the dyad may do this to some degree. When we speak of norms like "civil inattention" (see Chapter 2) we are speaking about a mutual willingness to concede that there is a thin layer of private space around the bodies of the people with whom we are sharing nonprivate space. 20 But if a group

Mapping the Public Realm 13

Table 1.1 Spaces and Realms as Independent of One Another (Physical) Public Space (Physical) Parochial Space

Locale

(Public realm territory)

Location

(Parochial realm territory) (1 ) City center plaza (3) Exclusive home terri tory bar in city center (2) Newly trendy ethnic restaurant in a cohesive neighborhood (4) Neighborhood bar

Locales (small public realm territories) are naturally "at home" amidst public realm space; locations (small parochial realm territories) are naturally "at home" amidst parochial realm space (cells 1 and 4) but both can be found in alien space (cells 2 and 3). is large enough, it can do more than accept this almost universally granted concession. It can, in addition, transform the character of a substantial por tion of the space within which it is located. A "home territory" (see Chap ter 2) is a widely recognized form of bubble (Cavan 1963, 1966; Lofland,

[1973] 1985; Lyman and Scott 1967). Less well known is the "traveling pack":

[I]n any particular public place when a group is sufficiently large, there is created for the individuals who make it up an area of private space. That is, a sufficiently large group provides for its members a kind of mobile “home territory" which .they may move about with them from setting to setting.

This is possible because a group is (by definition) made up of persons who know one another well and who identify with one another and who thus rec iprocally ensure mutual protection and self-confirmation. Any need for con cern with establishing one's identity to strangers or with ascertaining the identity of strangers is eliminated----The group itself provides all the reas surance and support necessary. What constitutes "sufficiently large/' how ever, will vary depending upon a number of other factors such as the size of other groups also present, the dimensions of the space itself, or the amount of leeway allowed by the setting in what is considered acceptable behavior.

. . . Whatever the requisites for sufficient size, when a group reaches the nec essary numbers, its members begin to act in a way that is in stark contrast to the actions of those others in the same locale who are alone or with one or two others.. . . They use public space with abandon, in such a way that, for example, a group of adolescents can choose to play running games in an air terminal. They feel free to indulge in backstage behavior, calling each other by name, yelling at one another across the expanse of the setting, using obscene language and laughing loudly at private jokes. And they express proprietary attitudes. If their numbers are plentiful enough, they may even force others to depart, as when the overflow from a convention invades a city's nightspots. (Lofland [1973] 1985:138-139) 14 Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm The unrooted character of these social territories goes yet further. Humans may disagree over whether a particular piece of physical space belongs to group A or group B or whether it should be designated Fredo- nia or Altoona, but they generally agree about where that space is located. The social territories that are realms breed no such consensus. Whether a specific piece of space is considered private, parochial, or public is often a matter of conflict an d /o r negotiation. And spaces have histories. Even those that are consensually defined at one time may be redefined or sub ject to warring definitions at another time. Mercurial Boundaries As a last point in this rudimentary geography, we need to face the dis comforting fact that not only are realms unrooted, but their boundaries are protean, mercurial. This is true in two senses. First, in the above discus sion, although I have treated the various distinctions as though they were discrete categories, in reality they are better conceived as variables. Con crete places often exist on a continuum between private and public, between private and parochial, between parochial and public. Even if we limit our consideration to nonprivate spaces, we m ust recognize that any given piece of these exists on a continuum between locations and locales and the locations and locales are situated amidst surrounding space that is itself on a continuum between the parochial and the public. Second, just as definitions of what kind of space this is may be subject to conflict, so may be understandings of just where the boundaries between different kinds of spaces are located. In sum, realms as social territories come into being only in actual phys ical space—in physical territories. However, whether any actual physical space contains a realm, and if so what type, is always a matter to be dis covered empirically The realm type (private, parochial, or public) is not defined by the physical space in which it is located but by the relational form that dominates within it: • A private realm exists when the dominating relational form found in some physical space is intimate. • A parochial realm exists when the dominating relational form found in some physical space is communal. • A public realm exists when the dominating relational form found in some physical space is stranger or categorical.

Notes on the History of the Public Realm 15

That cities are homes to three sorts of social territories or "realms" that bear varying relationships to one another, that these realms are mobile, that their boundaries are fluid—these geographical matters will prove to be of some import as we try to understand both w hat goes on in the pub lic realm and the animus this social territory evokes. Of equal import is some grasp of its history. NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC REALM

Just as a reasonably complete map of the public realm has yet to be con structed, so a reasonably complete history has yet to be written. Still, we know bits and pieces, and m any of those bits and pieces will find their way into the pages ahead. At this point, I want only to draw attention to one particular plot-line in the larger historical narrative. To wit, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain and northern Europe

(and later throughout the rest of the world), the Industrial Revolution wrought a critical shift in the relationships between private, parochial, and public realms.

As students of urban history well know, a cardinal characteristic of cities prior to late eighteenth century—wherever they were located—was that a significant portion of their social life occurred in the public realm.

That is, social life and public life overlapped in the preindustrial city to a remarkable degree—remarkable, at least, by standards of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century urban forms. This was not necessarily, in fact not even probably, a matter of choice. Like their tribal and village counterparts who lived in "communities" whether they wanted to or not, preindustrial city dwellers, given the technology available to them, lived in the public realm out of necessity Let me review a few of the reasons this was so.

Since the preindustrial city had a largely illiterate population and lacked a technology for the broadcasting of pictorial messages, news had to circulate by moving among copresent hum an beings via the spoken word. A single person communicating to many others simultaneously proved, of course, more efficient than one-to-one communication: thus the very widespread institution of the town crier. To find an audience, the town crier went into the city's public realm; to hear the news, announce ments, and pronouncements, the city's populace did likewise. Similarly, without telephones or telegraphs and, again, with a largely illiterate pop ulation, most personal messages, like public messages, had to be delivered personally. To communicate to anyone outside one's own household, one had to leave the household and walk through the public realm until one reached the home or workplace of the message's recipient. And note that I 16 Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm Illustration 1.3. London in 1560. said walk. Elites, who by the way represented a very small portion of the total population, could afford litters or horse-drawn conveyances that allowed them to encase themselves in cocoons of privacy and thus to insu late themselves from the public realm—just as m odern affluent Western ers are able to do by means of their private automobiles. But most people, in moving from one place to another in the city, had to walk and they had to be both in and of the public realm when they did so. Not only the move ment of messages required one's presence in the public realm; for every one but elites (all of whom had servants and some of whom had quite advanced plumbing systems), the securing of water and the disposal of garbage and body wastes did so as well. The same necessity to be in pub lic was true for a myriad of other activities: shopping, political action, entertainment, religious devotion, and so forth. Add to this the fact that, again excepting some elites in some places, for most of the city's populace, their private space was crowded and uncomfortable even by the standards of their time. For many people, to be in the public realm was to be warm instead of cold, cool instead of hot. It was to breath air—however bad— less fetid than the air of one's private quarters. It was to move into space— however teeming with people—less cramped than home. In sum, the preindustrial city was overwhelmingly a city characterized by the domi

Commissions and Omissions 17

Illustration 1A. Late twentieth-century London. The enormous growth in the size of London can be seen most clearly by comparing the relation of the city's expanse to the bend in the River Thames (highlighted portion of schematic map) here with that shown in Illustration 1.3. And this schematic is of "inner London" only!

Crown Copyright MC/98/22. Reproduced by permission of Geographer's A-Z Map Company Ltd. nance of public life. (This portrait is draw n from Lofland [1973] 1985 and

However, as that complex of events and conditions and phenomena and actions and choices we choose to encapsulate by the term "Industrial

Revolution" began to unfold, new possibilities for enlarging and strength ening the city's private and parochial realms emerged. Two characteristics of the late eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century city are espe cially relevant: (1) innovations in forms of transport allowed this city to be much larger in area than its preindustrial ancestor (see, for example, Illus trations 1.3 and 1.4), and (2) innovations in construction and communica tion allowed this city to enclose many more activities than had cities of the past. To put it briefly, these two characteristics—enlargement and enclo sure—together made possible the separation of workplace from place of 18 Toward a Geography and History of the Public Realm residence, made possible the development of highly specialized and large workplaces (e.g., factory districts), made possible the development of homogeneous and large areas of residence (e.g., working-class neighbor hoods), made possible the siting of much round-of-life activity within the place of residence or neighborhood, and eventually, w ith the introduction and widespread personal ownership of the automobile, made it possible for an individual to connect pieces of widely dispersed space without the necessity of actually being, in any socially meaningful sense, in the inter vening spaces. That is, it truly became possible for large numbers of late eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century city people, as it had not been possible for preindustrial city people, to spend significant portions of their lives entirely in the private an d /o r parochial realms. Why I have labeled this shift a "critical" one will become clear as we proceed. For now, I ask only that the reader keep in m ind my assertion that such a shift did occur. COMMISSIONS AND OMISSIONS: AN OVERVIEW AND SOME CAVEATS In Part I of this book, we shall explore three aspects of the public realm. Chapter 2 deals with the realm's normative principles (or, straining at the kingdom metaphor, its legal system), confronting questions like the fol lowing: What "rules" or interactional principles do people seem to be fol lowing when they are out in public? How do they conduct themselves and negotiate their way through space when they are surrounded not by inti mates or colleagues but by strangers? Does everyone agree on "how to act" and what happens if they disagree? If we move about in space (culture) and time (history), do the rules stay the same? Chapter 3 looks at the relational forms or types that are characteristically found in the public realm. It inves tigates such issues as whether strangers can form relationships with one another and still remain strangers; whether emotional bonds are possible between and among people who do not "know" one another; how private and parochial realm ties can intrude into the world of strangers; and how one relational type can be transformed into another. In Chapter 4, the last chapter of Part I, we focus on the many pleasures uniquely available to denizens of the public realm and on the unique esthetic principles that seem to guide their judgments of environmental attractiveness. Part I, then, provides a partial "portrait" of the public realm. Part II focuses on its opponents and some of their variously configured assaults: the negative image of the realm found commonly in Anglo-American art, literature, and political discourse (Chapter 5); the widespread personal

Notes 19 fear of strangers and an apparent retreat into private space (Chapter 6); and the work that architects and developers have done and are doing in either destroying the public realm or taming it (Chapter 7).

Finally, in Chapter 8 and in an Epilogue, I will hazard, first, some obser vations about "functions" the public realm seems to serve and thus about what we might lose if its enemies are successful and, second, some guesses about its future.

This, then, is the promised overview of what lies ahead. But what of the caveats? They have to do with very serious limitations regarding space and time. Not the space available for my words, nor the time it will take me to write them, but the cultural areas and the historical eras that will be dealt with. Most of the data available to me—both what I have collected myself and what I can glean from the work of others—has to do only with

Europe (especially northern Europe and, most especially Britain) and

North America and is focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Where the data allow me to speak of other periods and places, I will do so; in the main, however, this is a book about the public realm as it exists only in a certain period and only in a certain place. But, remember, at the very outset, I did warn you that we would be exploring a regio incognita. NOTES 1. These quite disparate estimates are a consequence less of individual read ings of the archaeological record, per se, than of differing assumptions about the necessary prerequisites to city life, the defining characteristics of a city, and the physical nature of the "urban form." See, for example, Arensberg (1980), Jacobs

(1969:Chapter 1), Lofland ([1973] 1985:182, note 8), Price and Brown (1985), and

Sjoberg (1960:Chapter 2). 2. Some scholars estimate that the population of Rome at the end of the first century A.D., for example, was a million or more (Carcopino 1940, 1952). Others suggest that two hundred thousand is a more likely number (Russell 1958; Sjoberg

1960). In contrast, there seems general agreement that by the early decades of the fifteenth century, the Chinese city of Nanking had a population of about a million

(Mote 1977; see also Skinner 1977). 3. I think a strong case could be made that the fate of the urban settlement in the United States provides a textbook demonstration of the validity of these propo sitions. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 contain materials relevant to this assertion. 4. Having written this sentence, I now wonder why I find this situation remarkable. After all, the exact same situation exists in our relation to the natural environment: a species prepared to poison the air and water it needs to survive is hardly likely to be "house proud" vis-a-vis its built environment. 5. This interest eventually led Stone to a concern with the sociology of sports.

Notes 21 extent with products which have been produced or otherwise obtained for sale in the market by the residents and by the residents of the nearby countryside/' (discussed in Bahrdt 1966:78)

More recently, George Hillery defined cities as "localized systems integrated by contracts and families" (1963:782), and Harold Proshansky offered the suggestion that the city should be understood as a "differentiated but unified physical sys tem" (1978:162). In fact, the range and self-contradictory character of extant defin itions is so confusing that most recent urban sociology textbooks have simply eschewed all effort to be precise about the "thing" they are analyzing. In part, these competing definitions arise out of the varied research interests of their authors, but they seem also to be a consequence of the social and physical complexity and diversity of the phenomenon they seek to capture. Gulick (1989:1-5) provides a convincing argument for the futility of any attempt to develop a single definition.

11. As early as 1910, the bureau introduced the concept of the "metropolitan district," but by 1950 this was no longer adequate and the "Standard Metropolitan

Statistical Area" (SMSA) entered the bureau's conceptual cupboard. In 1983, the

SMSA concept—in its turn perceived as lacking the refinement necessary to cap ture increasingly complex urban patterns—was discarded and eventually a quin tet composed of "metropolitan area" (MA), "metropolitan statistical area" (MSA), "New England county metropolitan area" (NECMA), "primary metropolitan sta tistical area" (PSMA) and "consolidated metropolitan statistical area" (CMSA) came into use. For discussions of the Census Bureau's ongoing struggle to develop an adequate "urban" language, see Choldin (1985:1354-5), Federal Committee on

Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (1979, 1980), Gottdiener (1994:7-8), Scott

(1968:192-97), Shyrock (1957), and Starr (1987). As of 1993 in the United States, there were 328 MAs comprised of 241 MSAs, 17 CMSAs, 58 PMSAs, and 12 NEC-

MAs (Slater and Hall 1995A-1).

12. I am not being entirely arbitrary here. Webster's Third New International Dic tionary of the English Language, Unabridged (Merriam 1971) defines city as (among other definitions) "a populous place."

13. For a discussion of the boundaries and of the melting of the boundaries between personally known others and strangers, see Lofland ([1973] 1985:16-19).

14. For a discussion of just why this should be the case, see Lofland ([1973]

1985:9-11). Depending on the criteria they use to judge "urbanness," scholars may categorize differing settlements very differently. Writing of the history of Houston,

Texas, for example, Anthony Orum and Joe Feagin note that up until about 1930, the city's maximum size was "only a little over 50,000 people, clearly a small town by any standard "(1991:126, emphasis added). Fifty thousand may be "small" by Orum's and Feagin's standard; it is certainly not by mine (see Lofland [1973] 1985:11).

Among other problems, such a high population threshold for granting city status eliminates from that category most of the world's historic "urban" settlements.

15. See, for example, Berger and Kellner (1964), Greifer (1945), Harman (1988),

Levine (1979,1985), Meyer (1951), Park (1928), Schutz (1944), Tiryakian (1973), and the numerous works cited therein. Some of these scholars feel quite proprietary about the topic of strangerhood and are apparently made uneasy by any use of the term that differs from their own. Donald Levine has made the case for this position

Benn, Stanley I. and Gerald F. Gaus (eds.). 1983a. Public and Private in Social Life. London: Croom Helm.

------. 1983b. "The Public and the Private: Concepts and Action." Pp. 3-27 in Pub lic and Private in Social Life, edited by Stanley I. Benn and Gerald F. Gaus. Lon don: Croom Helm.

------. 1983c. "The Liberal Conception of the Public and the Private." Pp. 31-65 in Culture and Ideology in Ireland, edited by Public and Private in Social Life, edited by Stanley I. Benn and Gerald F. Gaus. London: Croom Helm.

Cavan, Sherri. 1963. "Interaction in Home Territories." Berkeley Journal of Sociology 17-32.

Congbalay, Dean. 1990. "A Generation That Hardly Leaves the Suburbs." San Fran cisco Chronicle, November 26, p. Al.

Dogan, Mattei and John D. Kasarda. 1988. "Introduction: How Giant Cities Will Multiply and Grow." Pp. 12-29 in The Metropolis Era, Volume 1, A World of Giant Cities, edited by Mattei Dogan and John D. Kasarda. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Fishman, Robert. 1987. Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia. New York: Basic Books.

Franck, Karen A. and Lynn Paxson. 1989. "Women and Urban Public Space: Research, Design and Policy Issues." Pp. 121-46 in Human Behavior and Envi ronment: Advances in Theory and Research, Volume 10, Public Places and Spaces, edited by Irwin Altman and Ervin H. Zube. New York: Plenum.

Freudenburg, W. R. 1986. "The Density of Acquaintanceship: An Overlooked Vari able in Community Research?" American Journal of Sociology 92(1, July): 27-63.

Goffman, Erving. 1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor.

------. 1963a. Behavior in Public Places. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.

------. 1971. Relations in Public. New York: Basic Books.

------. 1983. "The Interaction Order." American Sociological Review 48(February):l-17.

Gusfield, Joseph R. 1975. Community: A Critical Response. New York: Harper and Row.

Hunter, Albert. 1985. "Private, Parochial and Public Social Orders: The Problem of Crime and Incivility in Urban Communities." Pp. 230-42 in The Challenge of Social Control: Citizenship and Institution Building in Modern Society, edited by Gerald D. Suttles and Mayer N. Zald. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Gentrification: Not So Simple

The blind men and the elephant: the explanation of gentrification

CHRIS HAMNETT

Senior Lecturer in Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall,

M ilton Keynes M K7 6AA

Revised M S received 2 January, 1991

ABSTRACT

This paper critically reviews the major theories of gentrification which have emerged over the last 10 years and the debate which has surrounded them. It argues that the reason why the gentrification debate has attracted so much interest, and has been so hard fought, is that it is one of key theoretical battlegrounds of contemporary human geography which highlights the arguments between structure and agency, production and consumption, capital and culture, and supply and demand. It also argues that each of the two major explanations which have been advanced to account for gentrification (the rent gap and the production of gentrifiers) are partial explanations, each of which is necessary but not sufficient. Finally, it argues that an integrated explanation for gentrification must involve both explanation of the production of devalued areas and housing and the production of gentrifiers and their specific consumption and reproduction patterns.

KEY W ORDS: Gentrification, Theory, Production, Consumption, Housing, Residential change INTRODUCTION

The gentrification phenomenon, and the debate over its significance, processes, explanation and effects have occupied a remarkably large amount of space in the scholarly journals over the last 10 years (see

Hamnett, 1984; Smith and Williams, 1986 for recent bibliographies). In the Annals alone, there have been articles by Ley (1980; 1986; 1987), Schaffer and Smith

(1986), Smith (1987b) and Badcock (1989).

Gentrification has now been identified in a large number of cities in North America, Europe and

Australia, but despite its expansion during the 1970s and 1980s, it is still a relatively small scale and very geographically-concentrated phenomenon compared to post-war suburbanization and inner city decline.

Berry (1985) dismissively refers to it as Islands of renewal in seas of decay. It is therefore important to ask why so much attention has been devoted to the subject. At least five possible explanations can be identified. These are outlined in ascending order of importance. First, and somewhat instrumentally, it can be suggested that gentrification has provided a convenient subject for a new generation of urban geographers and sociologists on the lookout for novel and potentially interesting city-specific research topics. Hence the large number of one-off, locally based case-studies. A second, and more convincing explanation is that gentrification has posed a major challenge to the traditional theories of residential location and urban social structure (Hamnett, 1984). Neighbourhood change was viewed by Hoyt and Burgess as a one-way process where 'the wealthy seldom reverse their steps and move backwards into the obsolete housing which they are giving up' (Hoyt, 1939, p. 118). Gentrification undermines the dominant assumption that filtering is a uni-directional downwards process in which lower income groups move into progress ively deteriorated housing, and it challenges the explicit assumption underlying Alonso's 'structural' theory of the urban land market that the preference for space and low densities are far more important than accessibility to the central city. Finally, gentri fication undermines existing 'stage theories' or evo lutionary models of urban residential change which see middle class suburbanization as the final stage of a progression from the pre-industrial to the industrial city. Ley (1981) has commented that as a result of: CHRIS HAMNETT 174 the revitalization process of the past decade, sections of the post-industrial inner city have begun a transformation from the homes of labouring classes toward a zone of privilege reminiscent of the inner-most residential ring in Sjoberg's model of the pre-industrial city. If present trends continue, the social geography of the nineteenth-century industrial city may even appear to urban scholars of the future as a temporary interlude to a more historically persistent pattern of higher-status segregation adjacent to the downtown core (Ley, 1981, p. 145). The third reason for the emergence of gentrifi cation as a central research issue lies in the policy and political debates regarding gentrification-related dis placement. Whereas gentrification has been seen by some as the saviour of the inner cities, heralding a halt to decades of white middle class flight and residential abandonment and offering an increased tax base (Sumka, 1979; Sternlieb and Hughes, 1983) others regard it as a threat to inner city working class areas (Ley, 1981; Hartman, 1979; Marcuse, 1986; LeGates and Hartman, 1986) and a prelude to the wholesale conversion of parts of the inner city into a bourgeois playground (Schaeffer and Smith, 1986). A fourth, and related explanation, is that gentrifi cation can be seen to constitute one of the major leading edges' of contemporary metropolitan re structuring. Just as suburbanization and inner city decline comprised the leading edges of urban restruc turing in the 1950s and 1960s, so gentrification is argued to represent one of the leading edges of urban restructuring in the 1970s and 1980s. By slowing or reversing inner city middle class population loss and housing decay, gentrification represents a partial reversal of previous trends. From this perspective, gentrification, like suburbanization before it, high lights the importance of capital switching between different sectors of the economy and different parts of the city (Smith, 1979; Harvey, 1978; 1980; Badcock, 1989; King, 1989a, 1989b, 1989c). This argument is developed by Smith and Williams (1986) who suggest, among other things, that gentrification has to be seen as part of the changing international spatial division of labour, and the emergence of global cities with control and command functions as part of a new urban heirarchy dominated by flows of finance capi tal. This is leading to a restructuring of both the urban heirarchy and of intra-urban space. Schaeffer and Smith (1986) thus reject the claims of minimalists' such as Berry who see gentrification as a small scale process. They argue that: we are witnessing not a curious anomaly but a trenchant restructuring of urban space' (Schaeffer and Smith, 1986, p. 362). The fifth, and arguably, the most important ex planation for the prominence of gentrification in con temporary urban geographical literature, is that it represents one of key theoretical and ideological battlegrounds in urban geography, and indeed in human geography as a whole, between the liberal humanists who stress the key role of choice, culture, consumption and consumer demand, and the struc tural Marxists who stress the role of capital, class, production and supply. Gentrification is one of the main arenas of conflict between the proponents of culture, preference and human agency, and the pro ponents of the imperatives of capital and profitability. Indeed, two of the major combatants, David Ley and Neil Smith have been closely engaged in wider de bates about epistemology and explanation in human geography as a whole [see Duncan and Ley, 1982 and Smith, 1982; 1987c). To the extent that this interpretation is correct, gentrification is a frontier (Smith, 1986) not just physically, economically, socially and culturally, but also theoretically, ideologically and politically. It comprises a contested boundary zone between radi cally different theories and explanations. And it is arguably this aspect of gentrification, above all others, which has kept the gentrification debate at the forefront of urban geographical literature for over a decade. The gentrification debate is one played for high theoretical and ideological stakes. Not surpris ingly, it has also been fiercely contested, with the proponents of production and profitability sniping at the advocates of consumption and choice and vice versa. As Schaeffer and Smith (1986) clearly stated: the debate over causes has come to center on the issue of production based vs. consumption based explanations . . . . Each of the different positions in this debate . . . involves a larger theoretical commitment concerning the way in which urban space is continually patterned and repatterned (Schaeffer and Smith, 1986, p. 350). And Rose (1984) notes in her sympathetic critique of Marxist analyses of gentrification that: M arxist work on gentrification has insisted that the 'correct' place to begin theorising about this process is with the production of the commodities of gentrified dwellings. I use the word 'correct' to draw attention to the fact that this type of insistence on a single analytical starting point in the 'sphere of production' is politically grounded . . . activities in this sphere are . . . (seen a s ) . . . the primary motors of change within capitalist society The blind men and the elephant

. . . . To a large extent, M arxist approaches to gentrifi cation have defined their objectives self-consciously in opposition to positivist approaches. . . . A crucial element in the M arxist approach, in contrast, to positivist approaches, is that it sees that gentrification is . . . not reductible to the behaviour of individuals (Rose, 1984, pp. 49-50).

It is this aspect of gentrification, that of intellectual battleground between competing and radically opposed theoretical perspectives, that I intend to focus on in this article. Although several alternative explanatory emphases have been identified (Hamnett,

1984; Ley, 1986; Smith, 1986), notably those of changes in demography, life-style and urban amenity; land and housing market dynamics and in urban econ omic activity and employment structures, in essence they collapse into two main competing sets of explanations. The first, primarily associated with the work of Smith has stressed the production of urban space, the operation of the housing and land market, the role of capital and collective social actors such as developers and mortgage finance institutions on the supply of gentrifiable property. The second, which

Smith has termed the consumption side argument, focuses on the production of gentrifiers and their associated cultural, consumption and reproductive orientations (Ley, 1980; 1981; Mullins, 1982; Moore,

1982; Rose, 1984; Williams, 1984; Beauregard, 1986).

This paper argues that both of the two principal theoretical perspectives on gentrification are partial abstractions from the totality of the phenomenon, and have focused on different aspects to the neglect of other, equally crucial elements. Like Aesop's fable of the blind men and the elephant, each of the major theories has perceived only part of the elephant of gentrification. The two theoretical perspectives are complementary rather than competing. This has sub sequently been slowly appreciated, and the initial exclusionary tendencies have been watered down to some extent. The gradual emergence of an integrated theory of gentrification (Hamnett, 1984; Beauregard, 1986) has arisen from the realization that production and consumption are both crucial to a comprehensive explanation.

In arguing this thesis, only limited attention is paid to the debates over the role of the state in gentrifi cation and to the gender dimensions of the process

(Rose, 1984; 1989) but it is contended that, while important these are essentially secondary to the central issue of production versus consumption. lifestyle is . . . consumption and status orientated in pursuit of self-actualization '(Ley, 1980, pp. 242-3).

Ley's reference to a class in emergence' is import ant, and he noted that as the post-industrial thesis was developed by sociologists it was not locationally specific. But he argued that 'these traits are not uniformly distributed; there is a geography of the post-industrial society . . . it might fit circumstances more closely in San Francisco or London than in

Cleveland or Glasgow' (Ley, 1980, pp. 242-3). This is a key point which has an important bearing on the question of where gentrification is found and Ley proceeded to apply the thesis to Vancouver, looking at changes in industrial, occupational and demo graphic structures and in the lifestyles and inner city housing market which had occurred. Ley did not explicitly refer to the term gentrification in this paper, but in 1981 he made a clear link between the growth of the tertiary and quaternary sectors, the growth of professional and managerial occupations, changes in the structure of housing demand in Vancouver and gentrification. As he put it: it is possible to follow the transmission of large scale adjustments in the economy to the pattern of job creation in Vancouver, with trends favouring white collar job growth in the central business district. These contextual factors lie behind the demographic changes in the metro politan area and the housing demand pressures which accompanied them (Ley, 1981, p. 128 emphases added).

But these housing demand pressures are locationally specific. Discussing the growing number of small, young, high income households and their impact on the inner city housing market, Ley argued that cultural factors are important: 'The neighbourhoods them selves include a measure of life-style, ethnic and archi tectural diversity, valued attributes of middle-class movers to the central city . . . these desiderata of the culture of consumption should not be under-estimated in interpreting the revitalization of the inner city'

(Ley, 1981, p. 128).

Ley had less to say on the structure and operation of urban land and housing market and the supply and production of gentrifiable properties and areas and, where he does, it is more focused on the demand aspects of the equation. Ley noted the role of the real estate industry, but he accorded it a secondary or reinforcing role in the gentrification process. Referring to the revitalization of the inner city area of Kitsilano, he states that: 'There is little doubt that the activity of the real estate industry added to the instability of the local housing market, quickening the transition pro cess and fuelling inflationary land values, through speculation and by increasing the expectations of homeowners to receive windfall prices for their homes' (Ley, 1981, p. 138, emphases added). The causal primacy is quite clear. Ley sees property activity as stimulated by the market power of the growing white collar labour force, which is a product of changes in economic and employment structure. He has reiterated this view in a more recent (1986) paper. As he put it: job growth (in) the white-collar complex of downtown head offices, producer services, and indirectly, (in) public institutions and agencies in . . . nodal centres . . . leads to the 'production' of professionals, managers and other quaternary employees working downtown, who then provide the demand base for housing re-investment in the inner city . . . this population, as it gives political and economic expression to its own predeliction to urban amenity, will restructure the built environment and accelerate the gentrification process (Ley, 1986, p. 532). AN ASSESSMENT OF LEY'S THEORY OF POST-INDUSTRIAL URBANISM There is much in Ley's thesis that Marxist analysts would strongly challenge, not least the political emphasis he accords to a new elite of tastemakers and opinion formers, the importance of culture and consumption, his acceptance of the idea of post industrialism (Walker and Greenberg, 1982), and his seeming relegation of the production of the built environment and nineteenth-century notions of labour and capital to a secondary role in urban affairs. But Ley was not advocating an autonomous theory of consumption-determined urban development and change, or a straightforward consumer preference theory of gentrification as some of his critics have argued, and nor does his work rest just on Bell's con cept of the post-industrial city. On the contrary, the importance he accords to culture and consumption in the post-industrial city are clearly rooted in the deeper changes in the structure of production, the changing division of labour, and the rise of a locationally concentrated service class. While Ley argues that this class played a key role in politics and culture, he also identified it as a product of the changes in the division of labour and the spatially uneven nature of these changes. He thus linked together changes in the organization of pro duction and the economy, politics and culture, into an CHRIS HAMNETT 178 approach to gentrification and urban change based on the production of gentrifiers and their cultural charac teristics and requirements. Without this, he would have been guilty of advocating a non-materialist, consumption-based, theory of gentrification as his critics have suggested. But, in my view, they have misinter preted his stress on culture and consumption as a narrow demand and preference-based approach when, in fact, it is based on changes in the social and spatial division of labour and on the supply of potential gentrifiers. These changes underpin the development of a new culture and the residential and political demands that follow from it. Looking at Ley's early work in general, it can be argued that its strength lies in its focus on the changes in the social and spatial divisions of labour, and the concentration in a limited number of post-industrial', service-dominated cities, of a professional and man agerial elite. He accords a considerable stress to the role of changes in culture and consumption and the residential requirements or demands of the new elite, but he locates this in the context of changes in the nature and structure of economic organization. Ley's thesis is strongest in the explanation it offers of the type of city in which gentrification is likely to occur, and the characteristics of the gentrifiers. It also implicitly deals with the timing of gentrification through its analysis of the growth of the service econ omy in the 1970s and 1980s. Where it is weaker is in its explanation of the areas in which gentrification occurs, which Ley sees largely as a product of demand for inner city locations and the amenity and cultural facilities they offer to the gentrifiers. The supply of potential gentrifiable houses is assumed to follow on from the demands and market power of potential gentrifiers to outbid other users. But Ley's stress on the market power of the new elite suggests that he sees the power to outbid other users as a major deter minant of the urban landscape: perhaps as important as the new elite's culture of consumption. THE SUPPLY-SIDE ANALYSIS: GENTRIFICATION AND THE 'RENT-GAP' Ley's approach to the explanation of gentrification stressed the production of gentrifiers and their cultural and consumption requirements as its key element. The supply o f gentrifiable properties and the operation of the urban land and housing markets were accorded a secondary role. Smith (1979) com pletely reversed this explanatory emphasis, arguing that the 'consumer preference' arguments were taken for granted and contradictory. In his view, the actions of producers as well as consumers need to be taken into account in explaining the gentrification phenomenon. As he put it: 'To explain gentrification according to the gentri- fier's actions alone, while ignoring the role of builders, developers, landlords, mortgage lenders, govern ment agencies, real estate agents and tenants is excessively narrow. A broader theory of gentrifica tion must take the role of producers as well as consumers into account' (Smith, 1979, p. 540). Smith is entirely correct in this respect, and this is something that Ley largely failed to do. But what Smith then proceeded to do was to argue for producer dominance: it appears that the needs of production in particular the need to earn profit are a more decisive initiative behind gentrification than consumer preference. This is not to say in some naive way that consumption is the auto matic consequence of production, or that consumer pref erence is a totally passive effect caused by production. Such would be a producer's sovereignty theory, almost as one-sided as its neo-classical counterpart. Rather, the relationship between production and consumption is sym bi otic, but it is a symbiosis in which production dominates. Although it is of secondary importance in initiating the actual process, and therefore in explaining why gentrifi cation occurred in the first place, consumer preference and demand are of primary importance in determining the final form and character of revitalized areas (Smith, 1979, p. 540 emphases added). Smith concluded that: The so-called urban renaissance has been stimulated more by economic than cultural forces. In the decision to rehabilitate inner city structure, one consumer preference tends to stand out above the others the preference for profit, or, more accurately a sound financial investment. Whether or not gentrifiers articulate this preference, it is fundamental, for few would even consider rehabilitation if a financial loss were to be expected. A theory of gentri fication must therefore explain why some neighbour hoods are profitable to redevelop while others are not? What are the conditions of profitability? Consumer sovereignty explanations took for granted the avail ability of areas ripe for gentrification when this was precisely what had to be explained (Smith, 1979, pp. 540-1). Smith then proceeded to lay out his theory of the rent gap. This is by now very well known, and I do not intend to detail his argument in full. Suffice to say that it locates gentrification within long-term shifts of The blind men and the elephant 179 investment and disinvestment in the built environ ment, and focuses on the relationship between land and property value, particularly on the way in which disinvestment produces the possibility of capital re investment. Smith argues that in the nineteenth cen tury, most cities had a classical land value gradient, highest at the centre and falling gradually towards the periphery. But, as the suburbanization of industry and population proceeded from the turn of the century onwards, land values in the inner city fell relative to the

CBD and the suburbs and a Valley' in the land value gradient opened up which intensified during the decades of sustained suburbanization in 1940s, 50s and 60s. This devalorization of the inner city provided the basis for subsequent profitable reinvestment.

The key for Smith, is the relationship between land value and property value. When depreciation of the existing structures has proceeded far enough, the point is reached where the capitalized ground rent of site or neighbourhood is less than its potential ground rent in its 'highest and best use'. This is the rent gap, and according to Smith, gentrification or redevelopment, can occur when the gap is wide enough to ensure a profit.

Once the rent gap is wide enough, gentrification may be initiated in a given neighbourhood by several different actors in the land and housing market. And here we come back to the relationship between production and con sumption, for the empirical evidence suggests strongly that the process is initiated not by the exercise of those classical economists, but by some form of collective social action at the neighbourhood level (Smith, 1979, p. 545 emphasis added).

Smith's opposition to any explanation of gentrifi clear cut, and referring to the importance of mortgage funding in this process, he argues that:

All the consumer preference in the world will come to nought unless this long absent source of funding re appears; mortgage capital is a prerequisite. O f course, this mortage capital must be borrowed by willing con sumers exercising some preference or another. But these socially created (Smith, 1979, pp. 545-6).

Smith summarizes his thesis as follows: gentrification is a structural product of the land and housing markets. Capital flows where the rate of return is highest, and the movement of capital to the suburbs for gentrification to occur, it is not sufficient. It does not necessitate that gentrification will take place. In deed, rent gap theory says nothing about why gentri fication should take place rather than some other form of renewal or redevelopment. The rent gap theory of gentrification is thus substantially under-determined.

Gentrification is not 'to be expected' where the rent gap exists; it is a contingent phenomenon. Gentrifica tion could occur but so could renewal, deterioration or abandonment.

And given that the gap between potential and actual ground rents is predicated on the existence of potential ground rent, Smith says very little about the processes by which such potential ground rents come into existence. It is possible, for example, that in gentrifying areas, the potential ground rent is, in part, a result of demand from potential gentrifiers (Moore, 1982). As Munt (1987) argues: 'As gentrifiers can afford numerous inner-city residential locations, it follows that the size of the rent gap in particular locations depends on their attractive ness, and hence on demand, which is absent from

Marxist gentrification theory' (p. 1177). Ley goes further to argue that the rent gap is not even a necessary element of gentrification. In his view, all that is necessary is the potential for profit and the ability of gentrifiers to outbid existing or potential users for desirable inner city sites. Ley also argues that most developers are risk averse and will not risk entering an area until demand is proven. 'From the developers point of view, demand is the bot tom line. In short capital follows demand, though this is not to say that local markets cannot be manipulated e.g., blockbusting or that demand is produced by broader economic contexts' (1990, personal communication).

These problems with the rent gap thesis have been documented in two recent empirical studies. Clark

(1988) found clear evidence of a rent gap in his pioneer ing analysis of the evolution of land and property values in Malmo, Sweden, but he argued that it was theoretically explicable either in terms of Marshall's neo-classical formulation or in terms of Smith's

Marxist one, and that the rent gap was in no sense a determinant of gentrification or a complete expla nation for it. In fact redevelopment rather than gentrifi cation occurred in all cases in Malmo. Clark thus rejected the idea of: some predetermined development with the 'needs of capital' as prime mover and the rent-gap as time-set triggering mechanism. The action of agents with econ gentrification we must more away from the sphere of production and focus upon their reproduction and con sumption activities . . . . What is it about an urban resi dence, in addition to proximity to work, which is especially compatible with the reproduction and con sumption activities of this fraction of labour? (1986, p. 43).

Beauregard concludes by arguing that: the rent gap argument provides only one o f the necessary conditions for gentrification and none o f the sufficient ones —

Many areas of central cities have rent gaps greatly in excess of those areas that gentrify. Thus the theory can not easily explain why Hoboken . . . becomes gentrified, but Newark . . . does not (1986, p. 39 emphases added).

This is a crucial point which greatly weakens Smith's claims. To sum up, it is clear that the existence of a pool of new middle class potential gentrifiers is a necessary pre-requisite for gentrification to take place. So is the existence of a stock of potentially gentrifiable areas and houses. But neither of these are sufficient for gentrification to occur. That requires a fragment of the expanded professional and managerial group who wish to live in the inner areas, and a concentration of appropriate facilities and environments. Without these prerequisites, it is highly unlikely that gen trification will occur notwithstanding the actions of developers and the availability of mortgage finance.

SMITH'S ATTEMPT TO INTEGRATE

CONSUMPTION INTO GENTRIFICATION

In 1986 Smith attempted to locate the rent gap thesis within a wider analysis of gentrification which included the de-industrialization of capitalist econ omies and the growth of white collar employment, and changes in demography and consumption patterns.

This appeared to herald a significant widening of his approach, and Smith noted that although previous attempts at explanation have tended to fasten on one or the other trend, they may not in fact be mutually exclusive (p. 21). This is an important concession, but

Smith's view regretably remained firmly production based, viewing demographic and cultural processes as epiphenomenon or surface froth. As he revealingly put it: changes in demographic patterns and life-style pref erences are not completely irrelevant, but . . . the import ance of demographic and life-style issues seems to be chiefly in the determination of the surface form taken by much of the urban restructuring rather than explaining the fact of urban transformation. Given the movement of capital into the urban core, and the emphasis on execu tive, professional, administrative and managerial func tions, as well as other support activities, the demographic and lifestyle changes . . . help to explain why we have proliferating quiche bars rather than Howard Johnstons, trendy clothes boutiques and gourmet food shops rather than comer stores' (Smith, 1986, p. 31). This view represents the total marginalization of 'consumption' to influencing the colour and design of the icing on the cake of urban restructuring and gen trification. It ignores the arguments put forward by Moore, Beauregard and Ley regarding the import ance of culture and consumption in explaining why the new class gentrify the inner city rather than move out to the suburbs. While Smith accepts that it is important to explain the role of changes in the struc ture of production and the changing spatial division of labour in producing professional and managerial workers in the inner city, he fails to address the reason why a fraction of this group should locate in the inner city. And when he discusses the role of gentrifiers he resolutely dismisses any idea that they might play a crucial role in the process: as with the original frontier, the m ythology has it that gentrification is a process led by individual pioneers and homesteaders whose sweat equity, daring and vision are paving the way for those among us who are more timid. But . . . it is apparent that where urban pioneers venture, the banks, real estate companies the state or other collec tive economic actors have generally gone before (Smith, 1986, pp. 18-19). But this is not borne out by evidence from London and New York (Zukin, 1987) which indicates that individual pioneers do play a key initial role even if they may be often overtaken by the banks, real estate agents and developers. Munt (1987) argued that in Battersea, London, a gradual process of infiltration by gentrifiers . . . preceeded any large scale develop ment' (p. 1177). Contrary to Smith, there is a strong case that where the collective economic actors venture, urban pioneers have often gone before (Goetze, 1979). In 1987 in a major paper entitled 'Of yuppies and housing: gentrification, social restructuring and the urban dream', Smith attempted to tackle the social restructuring and consumption arguments head on. Looking first at the evidence for the existence of a 'new middle class', Smith accepted that there has been an undeniable occupational transformation, with 'pro fessional, managerial and upper level administrative C H RIS H A M N E T T 184 personnel in expanding sectors heavily represented among gentrifiers' (Smith, 1987a, p. 154), but he argued that this does not prove the existence of a new middle class in Marxist terms (i.e. in relation to owner ship and control of the means of production). This is correct, but as the social restructuring thesis is pri marily concerned with occupation change and not the theoretical validity of Marxist class categories, this is largely irrelevant and Smith appears to accept the existence of a new 'class' in empirical terms if not in terms of Marxist class theory. As he puts it: There is no doubt that employment structure has changed dramatically and that a profound social restruc turing is taking place .. . and that it is altering. . . the class configuration of society. Equally, this social restructuring is heavily implicated in the gentrification process (Smith, 1987a, p. 161). But while Smith accepted the 'overarching import ance' of the new work on social restructuring for explaining gentrification he argued that: they also bring certain intrinsic dangers with them. I f gentrification is to be explained first and forem ost as the result o f the emergence o f a new social group . . . then it becomes difficult to avoid at least a tacit subscription to some sort o f consumer preference model, no matter how watered down. How else does this new social group bring about gentri fication except by demanding specifc kinds and locations of housing in the market' (Smith, 1987a, p. 163 added emphases). Smith's fears are very clear, and they shape his attempt to resolve his problem of accepting the exist ence of a new social group without giving them a key role in the gentrification process. His 'solution' is ingeneous and highlights what is perhaps the key problem in the explanation of gentrification: namely its spatial manifestation. He states: There is no argument but that demand can at times and especially those times when demand changes dramati cally alter the nature of production. But the conundrum o f gentrification does not turn on explaining where middle class demand comes from . Rather, it turns on explaining the essentially geographical question o f w hy central and inner areas o f cities, which for decades could not satisfy the demands o f the middle class, now appear to do so handsomely. If, indeed, demand structures have changed, we need to explain why these changed demands have led to a spatial re-emphasis on the central and inner city (Smith, 1987a, pp. 163-4 emphases added). Smith's argument is a fascinating one. Having accepted that demand can play a role in altering the nature of production, he then avoids the consequences of this admission by arguing that the conundrum of gentrification does not turn on where demand comes from, but on why it takes the locational form it does. This question is fundamental for the explanation of gentrification. But it is only half the issue. The con undrum of gentrification turns on both the expla nation of where middle class demand comes from and on its manifestation in the central and inner cities. Smith however identifies the second question as the key one. He argues that: There can be little doubt that a continued and even accelerated centralization of administrative, executive, professional, managerial and some service activities may make a central domicile more desirable for a substantial sector of the middle class. But do these arguments really amount to an explanation of the geographical reversal of the location habits by a proportion of middle-class men and women? . . . the argument that social restructur ing is the primary impetus behind gentrification is substantially underdetermined (Smith, 1987a, p. 164). Smith is correct in arguing that social restructuring alone is not an adequate explanation of gentrification. But, as we have seen, the proponents of the social restructuring thesis do not argue that it is. On the contrary, they all point to the crucial role of the specific cultural and consumption requirements of a fragment of the new class, and argue that they are met by an inner city location. There is a causal link between the production of a new professional and managerial labour force, the cultural and consumption character istics of part of that group, and the creation of potential gentrifiers. There are two steps to the argument, not one, but Smith only acknowledges the first and dis misses the second. Not surprisingly, Smith concludes that: I would defend the rent-gap analysis . . . not as in itself a definitive or complete explanation but as the necessary center piece to any theory o f gentrification. It is the historical patterns of capital investment and disinvestment in the central and inner city cities that establishes the oppor tunity (not the necessity) for this spatial reversal in the first place (Smith, 1987a, p. 165 emphases added). This statement represents a substantial retreat from Smith's initial position, and presupposes whatBadcock (1989, p. 126) has termed 'a considerable relaxation of the theory's original assumptions'. Smith now seems The blind men and the elephant 185 to view the rent gap as a key which translates more general processes, i.e. the production of gentrifiers into a spatial reversal. But Smith's argument that the rent gap is the necessary centrepiece to any theory of gentrification is too large a claim. As Smith points out, the rent gap establishes the opportunity, not the necessity, for a spatial reversal to occur. The rent gap may provide the means, but it does not provide a motive for gentrification. For this, we need to look into what is, for Smith, the heart of darkness: locational

Given that Smith finds any emphasis on individual life styles and consumption unacceptable; in 1987 he outlined a way of trying to integrate production-side and consumption-side arguments vis-a-vis gentrifi cation in terms of a historical analysis of societal re structuring. This entailed rejection of Ley's ideas about post-industrialism as a 'shallow empirical abstraction . . . incapable of sustaining theoretical scrutiny' (Smith, 1987a, p. 166) while reinterpreting the substance of the consumption society argument in terms of the 'regulationist' analysis of Aglietta. It is argued that as the intensive regime of accumulation began to fray at the edges in the 1970s and 1980s, there has been a switch towards a new (post-Fordist) regime of accumulation associated not with mass pro duction and consumption, but with differentiated production and consumption. In this new regime of accumulation, the accent is on product-differentiation and niche markets. Gentrification is explained in these terms as a result of the desire of gentrifiers to differen tiate themselves from other social groups. As Smith notes:

It is this question of cultural differentiation in a mass market which is most relevant to gentrification. Gentrifi cation is a redifferentiation of the cultural social and economic landscape . . . gentrification and the mode of consumption it engenders are an integral part of class constitution; they are part of the means employed by new middle class individuals to distinguish themselves from the . . . bourgeoise above and the working class below (Smith, 1987, pp. 167-8).

What Smith has done is to reinterpret, in terms of regulationist theory, Ley's work on post-industrial consumption. But Smith's interpretation of con sumption and its role in gentrification is clearly very different from that suggested by Ley and others. By stressing the importance of consumption within the framework of capital accumulation he attempted to circumvent the theoretical dangers inherent in giving individual gentrifiers a key role in the gentrification process. But such differences aside, the fact that Smith had to undertake this reinterpretation is indicative of the limitations of the rent gap theory of gentrification and Smith's fundamental unwillingness to concede that individuals have any significant role in shaping their environment. Yet the closest Smith can bring himself to go is to accept the role of collective social actors and the functional requirements of differen tiated consumption in new mode of regulation. It is not that Smith refuses to grant individual agency domi nance this is not the argument but that he seems to refuse to accept it even exists at anything other than a superficial level. His opposition to any form of agency explanation reveals him as a structuralist for whom individual agency is reduced to the role of flickering shadows cast by the light of capital's fire. TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED THEORY OF GENTRIFICATION It has been argued that both the social restructuring thesis associated with Ley and the rent gap thesis advanced by Smith are partial attempts to explain gentrification. Ley's approach focused on changes in the social and spatial divison of labour, changes in occupational structure, the creation of cultural and environmental demands and their transmission into the housing market via the greater purchasing power of the new class. He largely took for granted the existence of potential areas suitable for gentrification and saw the process primarily in terms of housing market demand. Smith on the other hand focused on the production of gentrifiable housing through the mechanism of the rent gap. He took for granted the existence of a supply of potential gentrifiers and ignored the question of why a segment of the new class opted to locate in the inner city. Mullins, Moore, Beauregard and Rose argued that an understanding of the production of gentrifiers and their social and cul tural characteristics was of crucial importance for an understanding of gentrification. They developed Ley's thesis considerably and argued that gentrifiers are central to the gentrification process. Without them, the process cannot occur at all. But gentrifi cation is not simply a product of changes in the social and spatial division of labour, crucial though this has been. A specific locational orientation towards the inner city or specific housing areas within it, is also necessary and a supply of gentrifiable areas and housing defined not just in terms of the existence of a rent gap, but also in terms of relative desirability or CHRIS HAMNETT186 attractiveness to the potential gentrifiers (Munt, 1987, pp. 1195-6). There are four requirements for gentrification to occur on a significant scale. The first three are con cerned, respectively, with the supply of suitable areas for gentrification, the supply of potential gentrifiers, and the existence of attractive central and inner city environments. They comprise the necessary supply side elements of the equation. The final requirement involves a cultural preference for inner city residence by a certain segment of the service class. It is therefore possible to conceive of a range of possible outcomes depending on the combination of these four elements. The range of outcomes are shown in Table I. The important point to emerge from the schema is that gentrification only occurs under one combination of circumstances. None of the other combinations lead to gentrification, although Ley would argue that it could occur without a rent gap as long as the new class have the purchasing power to displace or replace other land users. T A B L E I. Conditions fo r gentrification schema Rent N o Rent g ap exists gap exists N o potential gentrifiers N o gentrification N o gentrification Supply o f potential gentrifiers exists N o inner city demand N o gentrification N o gentrification Inner city preference b y a section o f the 'n ew class' Gentrification Gentrification? But this is merely a classification of circumstances. It does not, of itself, provide a basis of a theory of gentrification. And, as we have seen, the key question for such a theory is its starting point. It is inadequate to argue that gentrification is the result of a combi nation of circumstances without attempting to assign some theoretical priority to those circumstances. I have no doubt that, as Beauregard has argued, that 'the explanation for gentrification begins with the presence of gentrifiers' and that 'gentrification is defined by the presence of gentrifiers' (Beauregard, 1986). But this does not mean that culture and con sumption are assigned first place in the explanation of gentrification. As Ley, Mullins and others have pointed out, the appropriate place to start is with the changes in the structure of production and the social and spatial divisions of labour which have led to de industrialization of advanced capitalist economies and the growth of the service sector. This, in turn, has been associated with the rapid expansion of the pro fessional and managerial service class, and the con centration of key financial, legal and other functions in a relatively small number of major cities such as London and New York and Paris and a number of other major cities such as Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney and San Francisco. It is in these cities that gentrification has been most marked. The explanation for gentrification must therefore begin with the processes responsible for the produc tion and concentration of key fractions of the service class in a number of major cities. These processes have produced the pool of potential gentrifiers, and the primary emphasis must be on the explanation of the expansion of this key group. This is not a con sumption based explanation. It is firmly based in the changes in the structure of production and the social and spatial division of labour in advanced capitalist countries. It is then necessary to explain why gentrifi cation occurs in some of these cities. As we have seen, two conditions are necessary. First, it is necessary to have a supply of potentially gentrifiable inner city property. This is where rent gap theory comes in, explaining why a supply of devalued inner city prop erty exists as a result of prior suburbanization and dencentralization. The potential value of this prop erty is greater than its current value. But, as we have seen, the existence of a rent gap does not necessarily lead to gentrification. Without the existence of a pool of potential gentrifiers and available mortgage finance, gentrification will not occur however great the rent gap and however great the desire of devel opers to make it happen. And where appropriate inner city housing stock does not exist in sufficient quantity, as for example in cities such as Dallas, Pheonix and other new southern and western US cities, gentrification may be very limited, however large the new service class. In older north-eastern American cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington D.C., on the other hand, there is an abundant supply of nineteenth century row housing, much of it devalued and run-down and home to working class and minority populations. In such cities gentrification has proceeded apace. Secondly, there has to be some effective demand for inner city property from potential gentrifiers. This may result from financial inability to afford a suburban home or, as is more commonly argued, it may stem from a preference to live in the inner city The blind men and the elephant 187 close to central city jobs and social and cultural facili ties. This, in turn, depends on both the growth of service class job opportunities downtown, and on demographic and lifestyle changes which have seen large numbers of women enter the labour force and growing numbers of both single households and dual career childless couples. For these groups, with a high disposable income, inner city locations offer proximity to employment and to restaurants, arts and other facilities. Not surprisingly, a significant proportion of them appear to have opted for inner city residence in those cities where city centre social and cultural facili ties exist. Without this effective demand, based in large part on a positive orientation towards central and inner city living, gentrification is unlikely to occur however large the army of potential gentrifiers and however large the rent gap.

We are therefore faced by three sets of conditions all of which are necessary, and none of which are sufficient. But it is clear that the existence of a poten tial pool of gentrifiers is logically and theoretically sub-group of the service class. And, while the exist ence of a supply of appropriate inner-city houses is necessary for gentrification to occur, the existence of a rent gap will not, of itself, produce gentrification. It is thus difficult to accept Smith's view that the rent gap is 'the necessary centerpiece to any theory of gentrification'. Necessary it may be, but if gentrifi cation theory has a centrepiece it must rest on the conditions for the production of potential gentrifiers.

CONCLUSIONS

I have attempted to show that the debate over the explanation of gentrification has been broadly shaped by the conflict between those who have argued that the key to the problem lies in global changes in the structure of production and the social and spatial division of labour, and in the concentration in specific cities of a section of the new middle class' or 'service' class with a particular demographic composition, and cultural and consumption orientation. On the other hand Smith has consistently argued for the key role of investment and disinvestment in the built environ ment and for an approach based on the primacy of profitability. This conflict has manifested itself in a variety of ways. In a conflict between so-called

'supply' and 'demand' explanations, choice and cul ture versus capital and so on. Yet, I have argued many of these dualisms and polarities have been more

HAMNETT, C. and RANDOLPH W. (1986) landlord dis investment and housing market transformation: the flat break-up market in London', in WILLIAMS, P. and

SMITH, N. (eds) Gentrification o f the city (George Allen and Unwin, London) pp. 121-52

HAMNETT, C. and RANDOLPH, W. (1987) Cities, housing and profits (Hutchinson, London)

HARTMAN, C. (1979) 'Comment on neighbourhood re vitalization and displacement: a review of the evidence',

J. A m . Plan. Ass. 45: 488-94

HARVEY, D. (1974) Class monopoly rent, finance capital and the urban revolution. Reg. Stud. 8: 239-55

HARVEY, D. (1978) The urban process under capitalism: a framework for analysis', Int. J. Urb. Reg. Res. 2: 101-31

101-31

HOYT, H. (1939) The structure and growth o f residential neighbourhoods in American cities (Federal Housing

Administration, Washington D.C.)

KING, R. J. (1989c) 'Capital switching and the role of ground rent: 3. Switching, between circuits, switching between submarkets, and social change, Environ. Plann. A

21: 853-80

LEGATES, R. T. and HARTMAN, C. (1986) 'The anatomy of displacement in the United States', in SMITH, N. and

WILLIAMS, P. (eds) The gentrification o f the city (Allen and

Unwin, London), pp. 178—203

LEY, D. (1978) 'Inner city resurgence units societal context', mimeo, paper presented to the AAG Annual Conference,

New Orleans

LEY, D. (1980) 'Liberal ideology and post-industrial city',

A nn. Ass. A m . Geogr. 70: 2 3 8 -5 8

LEY, D. (1981) 'Inner city revitalization in Canada: a

Vancouver case study', Canadian Geogr. 25: 124—48

LEY, D. (1986) Alternative explanations for inner city gentrification: A Canadian assessment. A nn. Ass. A m .

Geogr. 76: 521-35

LEY, D. (1987) Reply: the rent gap revisited. A nn. Ass. A m .

Geogr. 77: 465 -68 MARCUSE, P. (1986) 'Abandonment, gentrification and displacement: the linkages in New York City', in SMITH,

N. and WILLIAMS, P. (eds) The gentrification o f the city

(Allen and Unwin, London) pp. 153—177

MOORE, P. W. (1982) 'Gentrification and the residential geography of the N ew Class, mimeo, Scarborough

College, Univ. of Toronto

MULLINS, P. (1982) T he 'middle-class' and the inner city',

J. Australian Polit. Econ. 11, 44 -58

MUNT, I. (1987) 'Economic restructuring, culture and gen trification: a case study of Battersea, London, Environ.

Plann. A 19:1175-97

ROSE, D. (1984) 'Rethinking gentrification: beyond the uneven development of marxist urban theory', Society and Space 2: 4 7 -74 ROSE, D. (1989) 'A feminist perspective on employment restructuring and gentrification: the case of Montreal', in WOLCH, J. and DEAR, M. (eds) The power of geography: how territory shapes social life (Unwin Hyman, London) pp. 118-38 SCHAFFER, R. and SMITH, N. (1986) 'The gentrification of Harlem?', Ann. Ass. Am. Geogr. 76: 3 4 7 —65 SMITH, A. (1989) 'Gentrification and the spatial con stitution of the State: the restructuring of London's Docklands', Antipode 21: 2 3 2 -60 SMITH, N. (1979) 'Toward a theory of gentrification: a back to the city movement by capital, not people', ]. Am. Plan. Ass. 45: 538-48 SMITH, N. (1982) 'Gentrification and uneven develop ment', Econ. Geogr. 58: 139-55 SMITH, N. (1986) 'Gentrification, the frontier, and the re structuring of urban space, in SMITH, N. and WILLIAMS, P. (eds) Gentrification of the city (Allen and Unwin, London)pp. 15-34 SMITH, N. (1987a) 'Of yuppies and housing: gentrification, social restructuring and the urban dream', Society and Space 5: 151-72 SMITH, N. (1987b) 'Gentrification and the rent gap', Ann. Ass. Am. Geogr. 77: 46 2 -7 8 SMITH, N. (1987c) 'Dangers of the empirical turn', Antipode 19: 59-68 SMITH, N. and WILLIAMS, P. (eds) (1986) Gentrification of the city (Allen and Unwin, London) STERNLIEB, G. and HUGHES, J. W. (1983) The uncertain future of the central city', Urban Affairs Quart. 18: 455-72 SUMKA, H. (1979) 'Neighbourhood revitalization and dis placement: a review of the evidence', ]. Am. Plan. Ass. 45: 480-7 WALKER, R. and GREENBERG, D. (1982) 'Post-industrialism and political reform in the city: a critique', Antipode 14: 17-32 WILLIAMS, P. (1978) 'Building societies and the inner city', Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 3: 23-34 WILLIAMS, P. (1984) 'Economic processes and urban change: an analysis of contemporary patterns of residen tial restructuring', Austr. Geogr. Stud. 22: 3 9 —57 WOLFE, J., DROVER, G. and SKELTON, I. (1980) 'Inner city real estate activity in Montreal: institutional charac teristics of decline', Canadian Geogr. 24: 348 -67 ZUKIN, S. (1982) Loft living: culture and capital in urban change, (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore) ZUKIN, S. (1987) 'Gentrification: culture and capital in the urban core', Am. Rev. Sociology 13: 129—47 Mobility: Not Only Technology

Ascher, F. (1995) Metapolis ou Vavenir des villes. Odile Jacob, Paris.

-----(2000) Ces ovonements nous dopassent, feignongs d ’en etre les organisateurs. L’Aube, La Tour d’Aigues.

Bailly, J.-P. and E. Heurgon (2001) Nouveaux rythmes urbains: quels transports? L’Aube, La Tour d’Aigues.

Bassand, M., M-C. Brulhardt, F. Hainard and M. Schuler (1985) Les suisses entre la mobilite et la sedentarite. Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, Lausanne.

Bauman, Z. (1992) Intimations o f postmodernity. Routledge, London.

-----(2000) Liquid modernity. Polity Press, Cambridge.

Beck, U. (1992) Risk society: towards a new modernity. Sage, London.

-----(1999) World risk society. Blackwell, Oxford.

Bergman, M.M. (2003) Pauvrete, exclusion et territoire dans les societes modernes: les limites des approches multinationales. Les Annales de la Recherche Urbaine 93, 87-97.

-----and D. Joye (2001) Comparing social stratifications schemas: CAMSIS, CSP- CH, Goldthorpe, ISCO-88, Treiman, and Wright. Cambridge Studies in Social Research 9, 1-37.

Blau, P.M. and O.D. Duncan (1967) The American occupational structure. Wiley, New York.

Boden, D. and H. Molotch (1994) The compulsion of proximity. In R. Friedland and D. Boden (eds.), Now here: space, time and modernity, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

Bourdieu, P. (1983) Okonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital. In R. Kreckel (ed.), Soziale Ungleichheiten, Soziale Welt, Sonderband No. 2, Schwartz, Gottingen..

Brulhardt, M-C. and M. Bassand (1981) La mobilite spatiale en tant que systeme. Revue Suisse d ’Economie Politique et de Statistique 3, 505-19.

Castells, M. (1977) The urban question. Arnold, London.

-----(1978) City, class and power. St Martin, London.

-----(1996) The rise o f the network society: the information age. Blackwell, Oxford

Chalas, Y. (1997) Les figures de la ville emergente. In G. Dubois-Taine and Y. Chalas (eds.), La ville emergente, L’Aube, La Tour d’Aigues. Coombs, C.H. (1964) A theory o f data. Wiley, New York. Cuin, C.H. (1983) Les sociologues et la mobilite sociale. PUF, Paris. Dubet, F. (1994) Sociologie de Vexperience. Editions du Seuil, Paris. Dubois-Taine, G. and Y. Chalas (1997) La ville emergente. L’Aube, La Tour d’Aigues. Erikson, R. and J.H. Goldthorpe (1992) The constant flux: a study o f class mobility in industrial societies. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Featherman, D.L., F.L. Jones and R.M. Hauser (1975) Assumptions of social mobility research in the U.S. Social Mobility Research 4, 329-60. Flamm, M. (2004) Comprendre le choix modal — Les determinants des pratiques modales et des representations individuelles des moyens de transport. PhD thesis, EPFL, Lausanne. Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and self- identity: se lf and society in the late modern age. Polity, Cambridge. Goldthorpe, J.H. (1992) Employment, class, and mobility: a critique of liberal and Marxist theories of long-term change. In H. Haferkamp and N.J. Smelser (eds.), Social change and modernity, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Grafmeyer, Y. and F. Dansereau (eds.) (1998) Trajectoires familiales et espaces de vie en milieu urbain. Presses Universitaires de Lyon, Lyon. Harvey, D. (1990) The condition o f postmodernity. Blackwell, London. Joye, D., M.M. Bergman and P. Lambert (2003) Intergenerational educational and social mobility in Switzerland. Swiss Journal o f Sociology 29.2, 263-91. Kaplan, K. (1996) Questions o f travel. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Kaufmann, V. (2002) Re-thinking mobility. Ashgate, Burlington. Lee, D.J. and B.S. Turner (eds.) (1996) Conflicts about class: debating inequality in late industrialism. Longman, London. Levy, J. (2000) Les nouveaux espaces de la mobilite. In M. Bonnet and D. Desjeux (eds.), Les territoires de la mobilite, PUF, Paris. Lipset, S.M. and H.L. Zetterberg (1959) Social mobility in industrial societies. In 756 Vincent Kaufmann, Manfred Max Bergman and Dominique Joye S.M. Lipset and R.M. Bendix (eds.), Social mobility in industrial society, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Lyotard, J-F. (1984) The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Meissonier, J. (1999) Les provinciliens. Etude strategique d ’un comportement de deplacement quotidien et alternants en train, entre capitale et province. UFR Sciences Sociales, Universite de Paris 5, Paris. Mol, A-M. and J. Law (2000) Situating technoscience: an inquiry into spatialities. Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University. Montulet, B. (1998) Les enjeux spatio- temporels du social — mobilite. L’Harmattan, Paris. Perrot, M. and M. de la Soudiere (1998) La residence secondaire: un nouveau mode d’habiter la campagne. Ruralia 2, 137-49. Remy, J. (2000) Metropolisation et diffusion de l’urbain: les ambigu'ftes de la mobilite. In M. Bonnet and D. Desjeux (Eds.), Les territoires de la mobilite, PUF, Paris. -----and L. Voye (1992) La ville: vers une nouvelle definition. L’Harmattan, Paris. Roch, M. (1998) La spatialisation du social a l’epreuve de la mobilite: l ’exemple de l’espace peri-urbain. Espaces et Societes 94, 135-52. Schuler, M., B. Lepori, V. Kaufmann and D. Joye (1997) Eine Integrative Sicht der Mobilitat: im Hinblick au f ein neues Paradigma der Mobilitatsforschung. Schweizerischer Wissenschaftsrat, Bern. Sorokin, P.A. (1927) [1959 edition] Social mobility. Second edition, Free Press, Glencoe, IL. Touraine, A. (1988) Return o f the actor: social theory in postindustrial society. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Urry, J. (2000) Sociology beyond societies: mobilities fo r the twenty-first century. Routledge, London. Vallet, L-A. (1999) Quarante annees de mobilite sociale en France: revolution de la fluidite sociale a la lumiere de modeles recents. Revue Franqaise de Sociologie XL.l, 5-64. -----(2001) Change in intergenerational class mobility in France from the 1970s to the 1990s and its explanations: an analysis following the CASMIN approach. Laboratoire d’Analyse Secondaire et de Methodes Appliquees a la Sociologie, Institut du Longitudinal, Paris. Wellman, B. and R. Richardson (1987) Analyse des reseaux sociaux — principes, developpements, productions. Seminaire du CESOL, Un Niveau Intermediate, les Reseaux Sociaux, Paris. Xie, Y. (1992) The log-multiplicative layer effect model for comparing mobility tables. American Sociological Journal 57.3, 380-95. Yamaguchi, K. (1987) Models for comparing mobility tables: toward parsimony and substance. American Sociological Review 52, 482-94. [22] European cities: Towards a “recreational turn”? Mathis Stock

ABSTRACT

The article puts forth the thesis that European cities are increasingly influenced by recreation, changing the essential quality o f the urban space. I begin by setting out a theoretical framework in which cities are seen as specific places used as a resource by mobile individuals in a specific “dwelling regime. ” The concepts o f city, tourism and recreational turn are explained. The paper goes on to give a brief description o f the context o f tourism in Europe, with reference to data problems for a European-wide study o f tourism on the local level o f urban settings. Finally, specific processes o f the recreational turn are reconstructed, leading to differentiated urban qualities o f contemporary European cities: festivalization, investing in industrial agglomerations,

“her it ageing, ” experiencing the modernity o f cities, and the urbanization o f tourist resorts. The conclusion reflects upon the consequences o f recreation and mobility for the European city as a place for geographically plural individuals, where cohabitation becomes a crucial political issue.

Introduction

There is a gap in current urban studies: while great importance is attached to high-tech industries, communication, the image-producing industry, financial services and other business services, the question of recreation has failed to be recognized as a central point of analysis.1 The sole approach to this issue appears via the label “urban tourism,”

1 This thesis calls for reconstruction of the scholarly approach to the relationship between tourism and the city, which is beyond the scope of the present paper. We can nevertheless use this as a provisory thesis, supported by the lack of importance given to tourism in readers and textbooks (Beaujeu-Gamier,

1995;Knox, 1995; Lichtenberger, 1998), as well as in urban theory (Soja, 2001; Siebel. 2004). Exceptions are the contributions of Burgel (1993), Hannigan (1998), Judd and Fainstein (1999), Moisy (2001) and 116 European cities conceived as a specific activity (tourism) in a specific type of place (the city). This is surprising, given that European cities have long been touristic cities or have at least had touristic dimensions2: eighteenth-century Florence, Rome and Venice, as well as nineteenth-century Paris, Bruges and Rothenburg, were among the very first cities where tourism changed the mode of existence, albeit in very different ways.3 However, since the 1960s, tourism has grown tremendously in importance, affecting an increasing number of European cities. Thus, I argue that this neglect of tourism in urban studies is an obstacle to adequate thinking about cities: far from being anecdotal, tourism and recreation are essential for contemporary European cities and have to be considered as central to urban studies. Practices and economic activities, as well as the “gaze” (Urry, 1990)-the perspective/direction of the interpretation scheme of individuals, entrepreneurs, legislators and municipal leaders-of space, be it urban or not, is informed by recreation. In this paper, I focus on several qualities of urban places, defined as ways of arranging urban areas, based on varying degrees of heterogeneity/diversity and density of social realities (Wirth, 1938; Levy, 1999), as well as on how public space and touristic space are constituted-where tourism and recreation are present to varying extents. These urban situations, or “geotypes” (Levy, 1999,2003), have not arisen naturally or instantly, but have grown out of a gradual process that has transformed, temporarily, a location or an urban place into a touristic place.4 This process takes time and is embedded in a Hoffman et al. (2003), which raise the problem of tourists and visitors in cities, and Ashworth and Tunbridge’s (1990) study of the tourist-historic city. Among the contributions to urban tourism are Jansen-Verbeke (1988), Law (1993), Page (1995) and Van den Berg et al. (1995). For a historical reconstitution of part of the issue, see Ward (1998) and Cocks (2001). 2 I use the term “touristic,” as coined by MacCannell (1976) from the French touristique. 3 The Grand Tour practice of European aristocrats, which developed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, is sometimes considered a tourist practice, but I classify it as pre-tourist, i.e., as not quite a tourist practice. My argument is that the term “tourist” emerged only in 1811, reflecting a new discourse for new practices, based on the development of “sightseeing,” a “tourist gaze” (as opposed to a scientific gaze) and adequate “tourist equipment,” such as hotels (late eighteenth century), promenades (1800s) and the like. Nevertheless, the practice of the Grand Tour can be seen as one of the essential elements for the tourist practice occurring later (see Towner, 1996; Lofgren, 1999; Boyer, 2000; Equipe MIT, 2005). 4 It seems essential to distinguish between two processes that lead to the constitution of tourist places: (1) the transformation of a location, little or not appropriated by humans, maybe even “empty” or presenting a vacuum, into a tourist place, and (2) the insertion of tourism into an already constituted place, urban or otherwise, where tourism changes the quality of the place. From a geographical point of view, this allows also for a distinction between the concepts of “location” (the Greek topos or the German Stelle) and “place” (the Greek chora, the German Ort), as well as a connection to Platonian and Heideggerian ways of conceptualizing space. See Berque (2000, 2005) for a fundamental contribution on this issue. Mathis Stock 117 specific moment, a “dwelling regime,” where societal processes develop in a similar way.5 This temporal distinction is important, as it highlights the specificity of contemporary societies and European cities, which are informed by the recreational dimension. It also allows us to focus on the various processes of touristification, i.e., the coming into being of a touristic place.

In order to understand the emergence of tourism in the constitution of a city’s urbanness, I argue that a “recreational turn” has taken place in European societies, engaging space in various ways and serving, even in non-touristic situations, as a referent of meaning. As such, tourism operates as referent and integrator of a whole range of social phenomena. Indeed, images, discourses, practices and values of tourism are widely diffused through and “infuse” society (Lussault, Forthcoming). This occurs in a specific “dwelling regime” where space and spatiality are largely defined by mobility.

A “dwelling regime” should be understood as the ordering and ordered way of constituting/experiencing space and of ways of coping with space. The central idea is that the association of quality of space (a city, for example) and place practices (tourism, for example) in an ordered way includes conceptions, images and values of space, as well as geographical referents of identity and technologies. In this dwelling regime, both the quality of places (the city as open to commuters, businessmen, tourists) and the individual’s ways of inhabiting different urban places (practicing the city as a tourist, for example) are informed by mobility. The issue of mobility is highly important, for individuals associate distant places with their practices far more than in otherwise organized societies. The questions “Where do individuals play that?” “Where do individuals discover that?” “Where do individuals relax?” are no longer answered exclusively by the response “at home.” This is without doubt one of the key elements of the importance of cities as places for recreation.

The paper begins with a rapid development of the theoretical framework within which the problem of tourism in European cities is approached. I shall then turn to the context of tourism and leisure in European cities, in order to elaborate the hypothesis of what I call the “recreational turn.” Finally, various urban situations in which tourism is present are described, in an attempt to reconstruct different processes of recreationalization.

5 See Equipe MIT (2005) for in-depth treatment of this topic. It is highly significant that the “production of space”-to use a Lefebvrian expression-of and in tourist places is different in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries: in analogy to manufacturing, the terms “pre-industrial” (1780-1830), “industrial”

(1850-1920) and “post-industrial” (1950-?) tourism could be employed. But we still lack adequate studies of the development of tourism on a global scale. 118 European cities Concepts and theoretical framework: Cities as places in a “dwelling regime” Several concepts need to be defined and examined for their adequacy: “city,” “recreation,” “tourism” and “recreational turn.” These concepts establish a theoretical horizon, in which the spatial dimensions of society are seen as crucial. As such, the concept of space as allowing cognitive operations of orientation, distance, arrangement, spatial organization, placement, recognition of various spatial qualities and so forth is a central point of analysis. More precisely, it stems neither from an approach where space is seen as “naturally” built and explained by “natural laws” or closely related theories (such as in classical approaches of “distance decay”), nor from an approach in which space is seen as the material “surface” or Cartesian res extensa on which the social is projected. Rather, it is an approach where the central perspective is that of an actor- and practice-oriented “geography making” by various types of actors (Werlen, 1993, 1995, 1997). More precisely, it is an approach whereby this geography making stems from practice in everyday life, in which the multifold relationships to space are at stake (Stock, 2004a). This “doing with space,” which I call “dwelling” (Wohnen in German and habiter in French), is addressed within a phenomenologically informed practice-based approach rooted in twentieth-century developments of social theory (Stock, 2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2006). The following concepts should be seen within this broader theoretical framework, in which actors fabricate space through their actions, while embedded in situations where spatial dimensions-from the local to the global, and from material to meta-geographical constructions-are co-constitutive of their actions. The city as a specific kind o f urban place Approaching the touristic dimensions of cities raises the question of the kind of places concerned, of their quality: How can the concept of “city” be defined in contemporary Europe? How can we speak of “cities” without speaking of places that are not cities? This classical scientific problem is particularly difficult with regard to urban places because of confusion and difficulty in drawing adequate distinctions. One important question, often raised since Lefebvre (1974) or Castells (1973) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is: Can we still speak of “the” city, or has the urban phenomenon become too manifold to assign one word to it? Many problems remain unsolved: (1) the urban/ rural opposition-is the countryside an urban place for residence and recreation? (2) the “culturalist” definitions of the city in context-is there still a “European” city, in the sense of a culturally different urban place, or do processes on the global level affect cities in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America in the same manner, thus no longer allowing us to give culture-based definitions of urban spaces? (3) the delimitation of Mathis Stock 119 city in comparison with agglomeration or “urban region”; and (4) the differentiated urban qualities of places, between global cities and small cities, industrial agglomerations, countryside, tourist resorts and the like.

Within the framework of dwelling, a city is seen here as a place of specific qualities with which its inhabitants cope, i.e., mobilize as resources within their actions, recognize as problems within their practices or give sense to by encoding a certain meaning through their practice. This meaning is constructed through the intentionality that guides the performed practice. Depending on the situation (the city is practiced in one way by the tourist and in another way by the resident), the individual experiences the city, and the city makes sense as a place for specific practices. It is therefore the quality of the place, mediated through the specific situation, which is important for dwelling. The problem of defining the city, then, lies in the definition of a certain quality of place, as compared to other kinds of places (urban or non-urban), that is mobilized during an action. Without probing deeper, we can use three important elements for the current purpose: (1) the distinction between different types of places where urbanness exists, at all levels of scale, making “city” one urban place among others; (2) on a local level of scale, seeing the “city” as designating the densest and most diverse organization of the urban; and (3) in comparison to tourist resorts, approaching cities as places with centrality that often have a poly-functional structure of urbanness (more diverse than resorts).6

Tourism as a subsystem o f dwelling and as a specific kind o f recreation How do touristic dimensions contribute to the quality of the European city? How can tourism be defined? In order to fit into the actor-centered approach, the definition of tourism is one in which tourists are seen as essential. In fact, three interrelated issues are raised here: the definition of tourism, the question of recreation and the question of touristic places.

First, tourism is defined as a system of places, actors and practices that has emerged in order to allow for inhabiting other places for the purpose of recreation (Equipe MIT,

6 Therefore, in the further development, I deliberately do not take resorts into account-although they are of extreme importance in the spatial organization of contemporary European societies-because they are not cities. Nonetheless, it is true that many of the original resorts in Europe have been developing into cities: Cannes, Baden-Baden, Montreux. As such, they can be addressed as tourist cities, but not as resorts. The term “resort cities,” as used in Judd and Fainstein (1999), seems inappropriate for address ing the fact that contemporary cities may have a resort background, because they are no longer “re sorts.” Still another problem is the existence of places, such as Palma de Mallorca, where a resort has been built on the Eastern part of the already constituted city, functioning thus as city and resort. The term “city-resort” (ville-station) has been chosen to describe this (Duhamel, 2003). 120 European cities 2002; Knafou and Stock, 2003). More narrowly, tourism could be defined as evolving in a sphere delineated by the various combinations of displacement and recreation of individual actors. It is therefore distinguished from other definitions of “visitors” for such multiple purposes as conferences, business, pilgrimage and visiting friends.7 The distinction is drawn between the everyday and the non-everyday, where the break with routine constitutes the essential experience. This has been called “de-routinization” by Elias (1986). Touristic practices are therefore seen as a kind of de-routinization based upon a specific relationship with space: through a displacement, a change of place, where alterity allows for a more efficient break with routine and recursive practices. This allows for an understanding of different practices implying mobility, where familiar places are distinguished from other places, where recursive and non-recursive practices are distinguished from each other. From a historical viewpoint, it seems important to see tourism as a relatively autonomous “sphere” or “domain” that has progressively emerged over time, between 1800 and 1850. It is this emergence of a new domain in human societies that contributes to understanding its relative importance in contemporary cities. Second, recreation should be understood here as a break with the everyday in order to attain “controlled relaxing of self-control” (Elias, 1986) through various practices.8 At this point of the argument, it should be acknowledged that this dichotomy of recreational practices does not fit numerous recreational practices: going frequently to a second home, or to visit a friend or a family, are practices where the strangeness of place is mediated through a familiar “technology.” We might also question the relative importance of touristic practices in an age of mobility, where recreational displacement is no longer rare, such as in bourgeois and middle-class tourism between 1850 and 1950. Thus, it might be more adequate to conceptualize a continuum of recreational practices, where the otherness plays a greater or lesser role. Third, touristic places are nowadays highly differentiated places. Their touristic quality of space emerges not only through markers-through space designed fo r tourists- but also through the situated action of tourists. A touristic place can be defined as a 7 For example, practicing a city for a conference is excluded, although conferences are an important structuring element of European cities in the present age of mobility (Stock and Duhamel, 2005). 8 Elias (1986) calls this “leisure” and defines a highly differentiated “spectrum of leisure.” One criticism can be raised from the spatial standpoint: he neglects the possibility of “going elsewhere” to practice “other” places, in short, to perform a “displacement.” The whole issue of vacation is omitted, because the possibility of leisure through geographical mobility is not taken into account. In contrast, the cur rent conceptual framework defines “leisure” as recreation within a quotidian context, where familiar ity with places is present, as distinct from “tourism” as recreation within a non-quotidian context of strangeness and otherness (for development of the importance of “other” places, see Hennig, 1997; Knafou et al., 1997; Lofgren, 1999; for reinterpretation of the Eliasian framework through space, see Stock, 2001,2005). Mathis Stock 121 place for touristic situations in the sense that the presence of tourists in a non-touristic place does not immediately transform the latter into a touristic place. Rather, the touristic place is a temporary result of the emergence and stabilization of touristic practices. As a first step towards a more differentiated approach, three elements might help to distinguish four fundamental types of touristic places (see Table 1). First, the tourist site (site touristique) is distinguished from other touristic places by its lack of capacity to receive staying visitors (bed capacity). Second, the tourist post (comptoir touristique)9 is distinguished from the resort and city by the absence of the local population in the former and its presence in the latter two. Finally, the tourist resort (station touristique) is distinguished from the tourist city (ville touristique) in that the latter has diverse urban and touristic functions, while the former has mono-functional characteristics.

One element is therefore important in order to pinpoint a city where tourism is important: we need to look for diverse urban functions and centrality.10 The tourist city is a specific kind of urban place and a specific kind of touristic place, defining a certain mode of urbanity. Table 1: Types of touristic places Bed capacity Local population Diversity of touristic and urban functions, including centrality

Tourist site

Tourist post +

Tourist resort + +

Tourist city + + +

Source: Adapted from Stock, 2003.

9 “Post” is derived from the trading post, established by colonial organizations, such as the East India

Company. It means an access-controlled area, delineated for colonial purposes with little local link ages. The “tourist post” refers to such places as holiday clubs and resort hotels since the 1950s, the

European bathing establishments of the 1850s, and tourist developments such as Beaver Creek in the

U.S. and Les Arcs 1800 in France.

10 In a second step, these types of tourist places can be seen through a dynamic perspective, taking into account the past pre-tourist stage. Accordingly, we can outline some “development paths” of tourist places: from a vacant space to a resort as a typical ex nihilo development (Grande Motte, France; Prora,

Germany); from a city to a resort-city, as in the case of Palma de Mallorca, Spain; or from a tourist post to a tourist resort. Attempts have been made to systematize these examples in Equipe MIT (2002) and

Duhamel (2003). 122 European cities The recreational turn: A new quality fo r urban space The “recreational turn” is defined here as four interrelated processes: (1) the presence of tourists in urban places; (2) the desire, by local authorities or enterprises, to have tourists in their territory; (3) rejection of tourism (i.e., a negative attitude towards tourism); and (4) a general interpretation scheme-a “gaze” in the Foucaldian sense- based on tourism, with which to interpret the world.11 It expresses itself in two main modalities, usually termed “tourism” and “leisure” (Knafou et al., 1997). This recreational turn could be related to the works of scholars like Dumazedier (1988) on the “civilization of leisure” (civilisation du loisir) or Schulze (1997) on “society of experience” (Erlebnisgesellschaft). As the latter points out, the “esthetic” is a certain way of giving meaning to numerous practices. As such, recreation is a way of giving meaning to practices through a particular stance and attitude. Indeed, we observe that, although an effort is made, for example, climbing a mountain or going to an exhibition, that is not seen as work, but rather as fun and relaxation. This attitude is by no means “natural”-in the nineteenth century, British alpinists were seen as fools by the indigenous inhabitants of Switzerland-but rather corresponds to the emergence of a new social value for practice. In this way, we can also understand that the activity of shopping is a playful one, whereas the everyday task of buying is not. “Recreational turn” is therefore an expression that tries to back up the hypothesis that greater importance is given to different forms of recreation in contemporary society, particularly in European cities.12 The fundamental idea is that of a change in the quality of the urban space affected by recreation. European cities develop a new quality by the relatively increased importance of recreation and, more specifically, of tourism. The quality of urbanness largely depends on the presence of tourists, of tourist-related business and of images informed by tourism. A “real” city-a place defined by a certain quality of urbanness-is essentially defined by its touristic quality. 11 Urry’s (1990) use of the term “tourist gaze” could be adopted here if it were not overly affected by the visual paradigm. See MacCannell (2001) for interesting criticism of this aspect. 12 This plays an important role in the explanations of twentieth-century sociology and geography. Indeed, besides the question of amenity, raised by Ullman (1954), the question of a fundamental shift of society is addressed in sociology as “post-industrial” society. Fundamentally, scholars work with the idea of replacing the explanation of spatial dynamics by purely economic considerations-more precisely, exploitation of commodities in the central place-with a new kind of explanation based on the concept of amenity. Mathis Stock 123

The context of the recreational turn of European cities

Several elements can be seen as essential in the ongoing process of recreationalization of urban space. Changing time budgets (working time down, leisure time up, especially in terms of vacations, which are 4-6 weeks a year and, with the 1997 laws of reduction of labor time in France, even up to 11 weeks for senior executives), changing financial budgets (general rise in living standards between 1950 and 1970 in Europe) and also new ways of practicing space, related to acquired touristic practices (more frequent but shorter vacations), are important elements. That means the long-term vacation-the

German Sommerfrische or the French villegiature of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century-of one or two months is being replaced by more differentiated recreation practices: one- or two-week vacations, short weekend trips, long weekends, shorter but more frequent year-round vacations and the like. The tourist industry is aware of this change and advertises products such as “city breaks” and “short breaks.”

This new organization of touristic practice is one important element of the rise of cities as places of recreation. This, by the way, invalidates the widespread thesis of touristic practices as “flight” from the cities to the countryside, mountains or seaside, developed by Enzensberger (1962) and widely acknowledged in the academic literature on tourism.

What about the “flight” from the city to the city, or more precisely, from the (residential) suburb to the (touristic) center of the city?

In order to set the context for the processes affecting European cities, we would have to track down the statistics, but there is a lack of reliable figures. There are several obstacles to an adequate treatment of tourism in cities: at the local level, we find a huge discrepancy between figures, and varying assumptions and counting principles from one source to another. For example, the Urban Audit of the European Union (http:// www.urbanaudit.org) and the European Travel Commission (http://www.etc- corporate.org/) established data sets on European cities, which are neither complete nor reliable. The research group on tourism in European cities, based in Vienna (http:/

/tourmis.wu-wien.ac.at/), tries to address this problem. For Europe as a whole, the

European Commission estimates 2.2 billion bed nights (ECT, 2005), the most important countries being Italy, Germany, Spain, France and the United Kingdom (for a breakdown by capital city, see Table 2). These figures have the advantage of coming from the same source, but the disadvantage of being discrepant from other sources. For example, the statistical surveys of the United Kingdom count 204 million foreigners’ bed nights and 490 million nationals’ bed nights (www.staruk.com), a figure well above that given by the European Commission; French surveys count 567 million foreigners’ bed nights

(Direction du Tourisme, 2004), which exceeds the overall figure and is five times higher than that for foreigners given by the European Commission. Furthermore, these figures do not allow for a regional or local breakdown. Nevertheless, we can establish a cartographic construction known as a “cartogram” based on those figures (see Figure

1). It constructs the cartographical surface of countries depending on the importance 124 European cities of tourism, rather than the area of the national territory. It allows for a visual appreciation of the importance of tourism in European countries. Table 2: Bed nights and beds in some European capital cities City Bed nights (in millions) Beds London 60 (?) 179,000 Paris 60 (?) 116,000 Rome 38.9 114,000 Berlin 11.3 63,000 Prague 8.4 44,000 Vienna 7.9 40,000 Amsterdam 8.1 35,000 Budapest 5.2 34,000 Brussels 4.7 31,000 Lisbon 4.5 22,000 Stockholm 4.3 21,000 Helsinki 2.5 14,000 Oslo 2.5 14,000 Bratislava 1.0 9,000 Tallinn 1.2 6,000 Zagreb 0.8 6,000 Reykjavik 0.7 3,000 Laibach 0.4 2,000 Sources: ECT, 2005, and personal estimates. Irrespective of the problem of exact figures, the conclusion drawn is that the scale of European tourism has increased significantly. The elementary counting unit nowadays is per million bed nights in an increasing number of European cities. Apart from those cities where tourism plays a key role, there are numerous cities where tourism is present, but on a much smaller scale. Yet, establishing the recreational turn by counting tourists or bed nights is not sufficient. As tourism can be defined as a system of places, practices, representations and actors with relative autonomy, other elements besides beds, bed nights and flows are required to establish the contemporary context of tourism in European cities. Mathis Stock 125

Cartes fa tra u m a tn feurssp# S : J *. = iM

MM: I; I I P immM 111;: limtmmmrn.

It*

Figure 1: Spatial Distibution of tourism in Europe

Processes of recreationalization

Several processes lead to the increased and differentiated recreational quality of

European cities, following-and this is the main hypothesis-the initial quality of the place (see Equipe MIT, 2002; Duhamel, 2003). Indeed, the initial quality can be that of a tourist resort (e.g, Brighton) or an industrial agglomeration (e.g., Barcelona) or it can be tourist-oriented since the nineteenth century (Paris, Venice) or only recently (Bilbao).

This historical element contributes to differences between European cities. Although there is no coherent theoretical framework for addressing these issues, the following processes can be observed.

Festivalization

Festivals can be defined as musical, operatic or theatrical events, taking place every year at the same place and approximately the same time. In this context, the concept has been extended to incorporate “events.” We find two kinds of urban places that are 126 European cities important in that scheme: capitals (Edinburgh, Budapest, Istanbul, Vienna, Berlin) or medium-sized cities (Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg), on the one hand, and smaller tourist cities (Granada, Orange) or quasi-rural places, where the festival is the dominant urban attribute (Marciac Jazz Festival), on the other. Festivals are also used to boost “anciently constituted” tourist resorts: Garmisch-Partenkirchen, San Sebastian, Verbier, Gstaad, Montreux, Baden-Baden.13 As a consequence, “festive cities” (Gravari-Barbas, 2001) are created on the basis of fe te s : Paris (Nuit Blanche or Paris-sur-Seine), Reykjavik, Dublin and so on, directed not only towards the city’s inhabitants, but, because of the increased geographical accessibility in terms of cost and time, to metropolitan inhabitants at the national and European levels, too. The inspiring model for conceiving of an urban space as festive space is probably the case of Ibiza (Equipe MIT, 2005). More generally, the attempt to create “events” is increasingly important, and is seen by promoters as one way to generate profit or to play with the image of the city. Sports events are exemplary for this process, because professional sport has grown in importance since the 1950s. Sportsmen and sportswomen have developed from amateurs to professionals, creating performances to be experienced as a spectacle by an ever greater audience. The “sports system” is now a huge industry, with virtually no break throughout the year, and performing on a global scale. The pattern of distribution of sports events points to metropolises and anciently constituted tourist resorts. From manufacturing to recreation The cities that Judd and Fainstein call “converted cities” (Judd and Fainstein, 1999; Hoffman et al., 2003) are those where manufacturing has been replaced by tourism.14 This can be increasingly observed in those cities and urban regions where the manufacturing sector has declined since the 1950s. The most spectacular examples are British and Irish cities: Dublin, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham have made enormous efforts to change the city’s image and/or its infrastructure and the practices of people. But also in France (Lille), Germany (Ruhr, Hamburg), Italy (Genova, Torino) and Spain (Barcelona, Bilbao), the effects of a new recreational dynamic can be seen (Gonzalez 1993; Lorente, 2002). The processes taking place are differentiated, spanning from industrial “heritageing” to festivals, from sports to the display and imitation of lifestyle. 13 An interesting initiative is the Festival of Britain, held for the first time in Edinburgh in 1951. 14 One could critically argue that all cities where tourism is important are “converted” cities, in the sense of a transformation of initial urban function into a tourist one, based on two processes: a complete transformation of the urban space into a tourist space, as in “touristified cities,” or a partial transformation, as in “cities with touristic functions” (Equipe MIT, 2002; Duhamel, 2003). Mathis Stock 127

Liverpool is an interesting example because of the redefinition of what heritage might be: a malleable concept that can apply to virtually every situation. In the case of

Liverpool, heritage defines the nineteenth-century harbor facilities. It coincides with urban regeneration directed at the establishment of touristic space. Two main operations were conducted: the preparation and recognition of parts of the city-the port and adjacent areas-as a “world heritage site” by UNESCO and the nomination as European Capital of Culture in 2008. The share of the hotel and catering sector in employment is about

5%, which is relatively small compared to Benidorm, where it is 50%.

Barcelona is perhaps the model for all these transformation processes (Equipe MIT,

2005). Tourists from all over Europe come to experience the leisure of the Barcelonese and to stroll like them along the main street, the Ramblas. This was made possible through a politics of urban regeneration, “boosted” by the hosting of the Olympic

Games in 1992.

The “heritageing” o f inner cities

The “heritageing” of inner cities creates what Ashworth and Tunbridge (1990) call

“tourist-historic cities.” This process is not entirely new and has its roots in the nineteenth-century touristic development of Venice, Italy; Brugge, Belgium; and

Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany (Equipe MIT, 2005). It has expanded throughout the twentieth century to the extent that few European cities are exempt from branding and image-construction through the slogan of “cultural heritage.” This labelling raises the issue of a landmark that is worth visiting and fits in MacCannell’s (1976) theory of a marker for a “thing” becoming a tourist attraction. The actors of this process are no longer local or the tourists themselves, which used to be the case in the nineteenth century. They are global or national actors, such as the UNESCO natural and cultural heritage project-roughly 1,000 “natural” or “cultural” sites are labelled, not to mention national laws for heritage protection. Nevertheless, the UNESCO labelling and accompanying discourse raises the problem of an adequate distinction between

“cultural” and “natural.” Due to the esthetic, touristic and heritaged gaze-because of the definition, by a special board of actors, of these labelled things as worthwhile seeing-bio-physical elements (e.g., the Chinese karsts) become cultural.15

This process of heritageing is most important for small and medium-sized cities and transforms profoundly the quality of space, such as in Trier, Germany; Toledo, Spain;

Pisa, Italy; and Carcassonne, France. This process has extended to cities of the whole

15 See Berque (2000) for a theory of the ecumene, where the problem of the natural and the cultural is addressed in a challenging way that goes beyond traditional approaches of the nature/culture “divide.” 128 European cities spectrum of the urban hierarchy, where more or less adequate historical layers are invented in order to display them to visitors. Nevertheless, this process of heritageing is not self-evident and creates conflicts over which elements of cities are “heritageable” and which are not. Approaching the modernity o f metropolises The contemporary practice of short visits to cities-advertised as “short breaks” or “city breaks”-a trip lasting usually for a long weekend, is one element of the presence of tourists in cities. This raises the question: as these tourists are mostly “urbanites” themselves, how can we understand their desire to visit a sim ilar place? Besides the experience of heritage, Duhamel (Forthcoming) identifies another fundamental process in the touristification of cities from the perspective of the tourist: to experience elements standing for modernity. Since London and Paris of the nineteenth century, the modernity of metropolises has been at the center of the tourist agenda. Experiencing the urbanness of the city seems to constitute the key distinction from resorts and heritage cities: the touristic practice of the city is based on its being very urban, as a total experience. This also allows for an understanding of the multiple ways of residing in a metropolis as a tourist: exchange of apartments or staying with inhabitants rather than in hotels are forms of contact with the otherness of the place. The objective is to experience the city as an “insider,” thus transforming the other place into a familiar place. This is different than perceiving the tourist city as a collection of tourist sites. From resorts to cities: A specific kind o f urbanization Finally, there is what can be called a “tourist city”: ancient tourist resorts-or, more precisely, “anciently constituted tourist resorts” (Knafou, 1996)-that become cities through the development of centrality and diverse urban functions. This is one kind of urban place completely overlooked in the literature, because it is addressed either as a “resort” or as a “normal” city without grasping the specificities of a city with ancient touristic elements. It can be described as the development of a mono-functional resort into a more diverse city, where tourism continues to play a key role, often embedded in what Soane (1993) terms “resort regions.” There are two kinds of such “tourist cities” in Europe: the larger ones (e.g., Nice, France; Brighton and Hove, U.K.; Wiesbaden, Germany) and the smaller ones (e.g., Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany; Saint-Malo, France; Montreux, Switzerland). They have in common their emergence as tourist sites before the more recent rise of mass tourism. This corresponds to the first and second periods of tourism’s development: the first between 1780 and 1830, the second Mathis Stock 129 between 1830 and 1920.16 The process of urbanization is an interesting one: the diversification of recreational practices develops alongside population growth-both permanent and second homes-and the emergence of centrality in former non-central places.

Conclusion

If these observations and the proposed framework are accepted, the question has to be raised of how to explain the importance of recreation in cities. How can we delve more deeply into the process, and the temporary results, of the relatively greater importance that is given to the recreational practice of, business in, and “gaze” upon urban space?

Is there a new-symbolic and economic-value of urban places as recreational, or, more narrowly, as tourist-oriented? At the same time, how can we avoid ad hoc explanations?

The focus on places, prevalent until now, is insufficient; we have to embed places in a specific context, in which the constitution of this quality of space occurs. I therefore propose two key elements of a contemporary dwelling regime that contribute to the touristic dimensions of the urban today, as temporary results of a recreational turn.

First, European cities have been developing in the context of increased mobility, that is, the presence of temporary inhabitants and the temporary absence of city dwellers for very differentiated purposes: different forms of labor (conferences, business, meetings), recreation (leisure, tourism), sociability (friends, parents) and shopping

(regular, occasional, sales) are nowadays associated with displacement and the practice of other places. In the case of recreation, it allows for the distinction between the place of residence and the place of “playing,” making it possible to experience density and alterity temporarily without residing in such places.

Second, the context of relatively increased recreational dimensions is related to the increase of time and incomes and to new positive values of recreation, such as described by the notion Erlebnisgesellschaft (“society of experience”). The expression and consequences are twofold: the qualities of space as experienced in touristic places are

“imported” into everyday life, and this takes place in metropolises. The increasingly common sight of palm trees, climbing walls and even beaches (the Paris-Plage event) in cities; changing culinary items, such as olive oil in Scandinavia (Lofgren, 1999); and the rising coffee culture in traditionally non-coffee countries, such as the United

16 This is a rough delimitation I cannot expand upon here. In the literature, there is no consensus about the historic periods of tourism, every author applying his/her own defmition-often based on the national history he/she is embedded with-with little attention to the work of others. See Spode (1987, 2003),

Direction du Tourisme (2004). Les chiffres cle du tourisme en France. Paris: Ministere du Tourisme.

Duhamel, Ph. (Forthcoming). “La ville entre patrimoine et modemite,” in Ph. Duhamel (ed.), Mondes urbains du tourisme. Paris: Belin.

-----. (2003). “Les lieux touristiques,” in M. Stock (ed.), Le tourisme: Acteurs, lieux et enjeux (pp. 33-82). Paris: Belin.

Dumazedier, J. (1988). Revolution culturelle du temps libre 1968-1988. Paris: Meridiens Klincksieck.

ECT. (2005). City Tourism and Culture: The European Experience. Brussels: ECT Research Report 1.

Eisinger, P. (2000). “The politics of bread and circuses: Building the city for the visitor class.” Urban Affairs Review 35,3:316-333.

Elias, N. (1986). “Introduction,” in N. Elias and E. Dunning, Quest fo r Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell.

Enzensberger, H.-M. (1962). “Eine Theorie des Tourismus,” in H.-M. Enzensberger (ed.), Einzelheiten (pp. 147-168). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Equipe MIT (2005). Tourismes 2: Moments de lieux. Paris: Belin.

---. (2002). Tourismes 1: Lieux communs. Paris: Belin.

Gonzalez, J. (1993). “Bilbao: Culture, citizenship and quality of life,” in F. Bianchini and M. Parkinson (eds.), Cultural Policy and Urban Regeneration: The West European Experience (pp. 73-89). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Gravari-Barbas, M. (2001). “La legon de Las Vegas. Le tourisme dans la ville festive.” Geocarrefour— Revue de Geographie de Lyon 76,2:159-165.

Hannigan, J. (1998). Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Hennig, C. (1997). Reiselust. Touristen, Tourismus, Urlaubskultur. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Hoffman, L., Fainstein, S., and Judd, D. (eds.). (2003). Cities and Visitors: Regulating People, Markets, and City Space. Oxford: Blackwell.

Jansen-Verbeke, M. (ed.). (1988). Leisure, Recreation and Tourism in Inner Cities: Explorative Case Studies. Amsterdam: Royal Dutch Geographical Society, KNAG.

Judd, D., and Fainstein, S. (eds.). (1999). The Tourist City. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Knafou, R. (1996). “La transformation des lieux anciennement touristiques.” Mediterranee 84,3:3-4.

Knafou, R., Bruston, M., Deprest, F., Duhamel, Ph., Gay, J.-Ch., and Sacareau, I. (1997). “Une approche geographique du tourisme.” L ’Espace geographique 26,3:193-204.

Knafou, R., and Stock, M. (2003). “Tourisme,” in J. Levy and M. Lussault (eds.), Dictionnaire de la geographie et de Vespace des societes (pp. 931-934). Paris: Belin.

Knox, P. (1995). Urban Social Geography: An Introduction. Harlow: Longman.

Law, C. M. (1993). Urban Tourism: Attracting Visitors to Large Cities. London: Mansell.

Lefebvre, H. (1974). La production de Vespace. Paris: Anthropos.

---. (1968). Du rural a Turbain. Paris: Anthropos.

Levy, J. (2003). “Geotype,” in J. Levy and M. Lussault (eds.), Dictionnaire de la geographie et de Vespace des societes (pp. 412-413). Paris: Belin.

---. (1999). Le tournant geographique. Penser Vespace pour lire le monde. Paris: Belin.

Lichtenberger, E. (1998). Stadtgeographie. Vol. 1: Begriffe, Konzepte, Modelle, Prozesse. Stuttgart: Taubner.

Lofgren, O. (1999). On Holiday: A History o f Vacationing. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lorente, J. P. (2002). “Urban cultural policy and urban regeneration: The special case of declining port cities in Liverpool, Marseilles, Bilbao,” in D. Crane, N. Kawashima, and K. Kawasaki (eds.), Global Culture: Media, Arts, Policy, and Globalization (pp. 93-104). New York: Routledge. 132 European cities Lussault, M. (Forthcoming). “Le tourisme comme genre urbain commun,” in Ph. Duhamel (ed.), Mondes urbains du tourisme. Paris: Belin. ---. (2000). “Action(s),” in J. Levy and M. Lussault (ed.), Logiques d e l’espace, esprit des lieux. Geographies a Cerisy (pp. 30-51). Paris: Belin. MacCannell, D. (2001). “Tourist agency.” Tourist Studies 1,1:23-37. -----. (1976). The Tourist: A New Theory o f the Leisure Class. New York: Schocken. Moisy, L. (2001). “L’espace de la ville ludique et touristique. Approche a travers les pratiques spatiales des visiteurs (hebergements, itineraries).” Geocarrefour-Revue de Geographie deLyon 76,2:107-114. Page, S. (1995). Urban Tourism. London: Routledge. Schulze, G. (1997). Die Erlebnisgesellschaft. Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart. Munich: Campe. Schiitz, A. (1932). Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Siebel, W. (ed.). (2004). Die europaische Stadt. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Simmel, G. (1908). Soziologie. Untersuchungen iiber die Formen der Verges ells chaftung. Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt. Soane, J. V. H. (1993). Fashionable Resort Regions:f Their Evolution and Transformation With Particular Reference to Bournemouth, Nice, Los Angeles and Wiesbaden. Wallingford:tCAB International. Soja, E. (2001). Postmetropolis. Critical Studies o f Cities and Regions. London: Blackwell. Spode, H. (2003). Wie die D eutschen “R eisew eltm e is ter” wurden. E ine E infiihrung in die Tourismusgeschichte. Erfurt: Landeszentrale fur Politische Bildung Thuringen. -----. (1987). Zur Geschichte des Tourismus: Eine Skizze der Entwicklung der touristischen Reise in der Moderne. Stamberg: Studienkreis fur Tourismus. Stock, M. (2006). “L’hypothese de l’habiter poly-topique.” February 26, http://www.espacestemps.net/ document1853 .html. -----. (2005). “Les societes a individus mobiles: Vers un nouveau mode d’habiter? L’exemple des pratiques touristique.” May 15, http://www.espacestemps.net/documentl353.html. -----. (2004a). “L’habiter comme pratique des lieux.” December 18, http://www.espacestemps.net/ document 1138 .html. -----. (2004b). “Pratiques des lieux, modes/styles d’habiter, regimes d’habiter: Pourune analyse trialogique des dimensions spatiales des societes humaines.” Travaux de I ’lnstitut de Geographie de Reims 115:219-231. -----. (ed.). (2003). Le tourisme. Acteurs, lieux et enjeux. Paris: Belin. -----. (2001). Mobilites geographiques et pratiques des lieux. Etude theorico-empirique a travers deux lieux touristiques anciennement constitues: Brighton & Hove (Royaume-Uni) et Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Allemagne). Ph.D. dissertation, University of Paris 7-Denis Diderot, Paris. Stock, M., and Duhamel, Ph. (2005). “A practice-based approach of geographical mobility.” BELGEO- Revue beige de geographie 1-2:59-68. Towner, J. (1996). An Historical Geography o f Recreation and Tourism in the Western World 1540-1940. London: Wiley. Ullman, E. (1954). “Amenities as a factor in regional growth.” Geographical Review 44,1:119-132. Urry, J. (1990). The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage. Van den Berg, L., Van der Borg, J., and Van der Meer, J. (1995). Urban Tourism: Performance and Strategies in Eight European Cities. Avebury, UK: Aldershot. Ward, S. (1998). Selling Places: The Marketing and Promotion o f Towns and Cities, 1850-2000. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mathis Stock 133

Werlen, B. (1997). Sozialgeographie alltaglicher Regionalisierungen. Globalisierung, Region und Regionalisierung (Vol 2). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

---. (1995). Sozialgeographie alltaglicher Regionalisierungen. Zur Ontologie von Gesellschaft und Raiun (Vol. 1). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

---. (1993). Society, Action, Space: An Alternative Human Geography. London: Routledge.

Wirth, L. (1938). “Urbanism as a way of life.” American Journal o f Sociology 44,1:1-24. Co-Presence: A Future, Unexpected

Busack, G. (1994). Rural connections. Health Progress, 75(3),

48.

Bussel, A. (1994). Telecommuting and Main Street. -Progressive

Architecture, March, 55.

Calem, R. E. (1993). Working at home, for better or worse.

The New Tork Times, Sunday, April 18, Business Section, 1,

Chandler, D. (1993). Astronomy classes soon may stargaze in daylight. The Boston Globe, February 18.

ChannelDLS. (1990). U.S., British Libraries Need Space. 25

(8), April, 8.

Durand, J.-N.-L. (1802). Precis des lepons d’architecture. Paris:

Ecole Polytechnique.

Economist. (1994). Theme parks: Feeling the future. 19 Febru ary, 74-75.

ENR. (1992). Mobile shelving snafu: British Library building under construction in London delayed by rusting stacks.

229, September 2 8 ,1 7

Fintor, L. (1993). Telemedicine: Scanning the future of cancer control .Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 85(3), 183-

184. Forester, T. (1988). The myth of the electronic cottage. Fu tures, 2(9(3), 227-240.

Frankel, A. B., & Marquardt, J. C. (1987). International Pay ments and EFT Links. In E. Harris Solomon (Ed.), Elec tronic funds transfers and payments: The public policy issues., (pp.

111-130). Boston: Kluwer Nijhoff.

Fraser, L. (1993). Remote possibilities. New Physician, 42(6),

24.

Getty Art History Information Program (1993). Technology, scholarship, and the humanities: The implications of electronic information. Santa Monica.

Goldmark, P. C. (1972). Communication and community.

Scientific American, 227, 143-150.

Greenwald, J. (1994). The secret money machine. Time, April

11,28-34.

Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge, MA: MTT Press; translation o f the 1962

German original.

Hamer, R., Kroes, E., & Van Ooststroom, H. (1991). Tele working in the Netherlands: An evaluation o f changes in travel behaviour. Transportation, 18, 365-382.

Heather, R P. (1994). Electronic house alls American Demo graphics, March 6.

Herman, E., & Chomsky, N . (198%). Manufacturing consent:

The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon.

Hunter, I. W., Doukoglou, T. D., Charette, P. G., Jones, L.

Warwick, D. R. (1992). The cash-free society. The Futurist,

19-22.

Webber, M. M. (1968). The post-city age. Daedalus, 97,

1091-1110.

Weinstein, R., Bloom, K., &Rozek, S. (1989). Telepathol ogy: Long distance diagnosis. American Journal of Clinical

Pathology, 91 (Suppl. 1), S39-42.

Whitehead, B., & Eldars, M. Z. (1964). An approach to the optimum layout of single-storey buildings. Architects* Jour nal, June 17,1373-1379.

Winkler, M. (1993). Walking prisons: The developing tech nology of electronic controls. The Futurist, July/August, 34-36. Winner, L. (1986). The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yates, J. (1989). Control through communication: The rise of sys tem in American management. Baltimore: The Johns Hop kins University Press. YeHowlees, P., &McCoy, W. T. (1993). Telemedicine: A health care system to help Australians. Medical Journal of Australia, 159(7), 437. [24]

The Revenge o f Place

W illiam J. M itchell

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

The special qualities o f particular places are more important, not less so, in the digital elec tronic era. This will come as a surprise to acolytes of the now-standard e-gospel — the narrative of an electronically shrunken planet, a weightless economy, and an era o f anything anywhere. Here is my counter-narrative; I offer two scenarios and an analysis.1

Scenario 1: Being Vegetable

Sometimes the digital revolution makes me feel like I ’ve been transported to VatVille.

Imagine a large collection o f brains in vats. Let us equip each vat with an autonomous system for extracting necessary energy and nutrients from the surrounding environment — not so crazy, since that’s exactly how trees work. And let us also provide fast Internet connec tions, IP addresses, and effective interfaces between the wet stuff and the silicon. That’s

VatVille.org. (I ran Vatican.org through Network Solutions, but it’s taken.)

These brains have their limitations, but they can lead surprisingly interesting and produc tive lives. They can function efficiently as information workers (programmers, Web page designers, stock traders, or the like) plugged into the global digital economy. They don’t have mattresses to put their earnings under, but they can accumulate them in online accounts, they can transfer them as they wish, and they can spend them through online transactions. They are far from powerless to affect the physical world; it’s simple for them to order the transpor tation of physical materials and goods from place to place, and they can even operate a wide variety o f online telerobotic devices — ranging from IP-enabled light switches to advanced weapons systems. They can inspect their surroundings through webcams, and they can download text, music, and video files for their entertainment and cultural development. For social interaction they have online communities, chat rooms, instant messaging, and even shared virtual worlds within which they can represent themselves by means o f avatars. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a brain in a vat!

As far as I can tell, VatVille.org has Ettle inherent geographic logic, and it can scatter itself across the surface o f the globe in pretty arbitrary ways. It is hard to imagine a brain in a vat developing a preference for a particular location, since the sights, sounds, and facilities o f any location in the network are equally accessible at ^ //locations in the network. It is not even clear

(I will leave this one to the philosophers) that the brains in vats would have any conception of dwelling somewhere in particular; they park their core atoms at specific spots, it’s true, but in another sense they exist everywhere at once. Keywords: Place, society, technology, digital environments, communication networks. Professor William J. Mitchell, Dean, School of Architecture and Planning, Massachu setts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA 02139 USA. tel. +1 617 253-4402 [email protected] I f you look at VatVille.org from the outside, though, you can probably discern some rudimentary spatial patterns. Certain spots on the surface o f the earth provide better access to energy and nutrients, and are less subject to hazards and inconveniences than others, so you find vats more thickly clustered there. And, since it is cheaper to connect vats to nearby vats than to distant ones, you will find clusters around the locations o f the earliest, pioneer vats, with high-speed backbones forming cluster-to-clustcr connections. This clustering pattern is reinforced if the vats arc not fully autonomous, but depend on supplies of electricity, water, and other needs via networks from central supply points. You can imagine developers selling gated vat farms. I feel most like an inhabitant o f VatVille.org when I ’m alone in a hotel room, in a strange city, at night. My immediate surroundings provide few clues of where I am. The minibar, the litde basket of toiletries, and room service supply my basic needs. The television provides the same satellite channels pretty much anywhere. The telephone and (increasingly commonly) the high-speed network jack establish fast, two-way connections to the global digital telecom munications networks. My laptop computer creates the brain-to-bits interface. I can be all that a brain in a vat can be picking up from where I left off in the last vat. And pretty soon I will move to a smaller but otherwise similar vat — an airline seat. The now-ubiquitous high-tech worker cubicle is another good approximation to a brain- vat. Fill your coffee cup, put on your Walkman, log in, and it doesn’t much matter whether you’re in Sunnyvale or Bangalore. For me getting vatted is, at best, a tolerable temporary condition. (I don’t want to live like a hydroponic tomato.) But proponents of teleserviced “electronic cottages” seem to want to be brains in vats — 24/7/365. In this latest enactment of the anti-urban, agrarian-yearning subplot o f the American dream, these nouveaux-Thoreaus imagine themselves contentedly telecommuting from their postmodern cabins, far from the big city’s problems, distur bances, and people not like themselves. At the survivalist extreme, they are grimly prepared to keep the outside world at bay; brains in vats with guns. Scenario 2: Being Like a Bee At other times, the digital revolution seems to dump me in SwarmCity. I first felt this when, one day, I was visiting Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli with a large group of friends and colleagues. We all had our tiny cell phones — switched on all the time, in the Italian manner. We scattered over the vast site in seemingly disorganized fashion, but we found ourselves continually summoning one another to points of interest, and forming ad-hoc clusters which quickly broke up and reconfigured, on the fly as we pursued our individual but not-unrelated interests and schedules. When someone informed us that there was a particu larly fascinating discussion at some spot, we immediately converged on it. We took advantage of our rudimentary electronic intelligence system, and we swarmed. Members of natural swarms, such as flocks of birds and schools of fish, depend upon direct observation of their terrain and of each other. The behavior of the whole group emerges (by way of some satisfyingly elegant mathematics) from the numerous interactions among the behaviors of the constituent individuals.2 It was the same with us, but our interconnections were electronically mediated. A short while later I began to notice Japanese and Nordic kids similarly swarming through city streets. Their technology was slightly more advanced, it turned out. They were using their cell phones for wireless text messaging. As previous generations of rebellious teenagers had occupied their hands with cigarettes, these kids were into DoCoMo and Nokia. To watch them, you would think that the opposable thumb had evolved specifically for one-button control of handheld devices.

Then, when the demonstrations against the WTO hit Seattle, I saw SwarmCity emerge full-blown. As the situation changed from moment to moment, the demonstrators used cell phones to coordinate instant gatherings at current sites of action. By now — several demon strations later — the cops have figured out the best way to thwart this sort of strategy; you confiscate the phones.

Where brains in vats represent the endgame o f sedenterization, swarmers are electroni cally enhanced hunter-gatherers. They forage over their chosen terrains for currently available food, fuel, campsites, shelter, points o f interest, the companionship of their friends, oppor tunities for confrontation, customers, victims, raves, or whatever. They need mobility, either by being unencumbered on foot or through access to appropriate vehicles. And they become more formidable as their electronic intelligence repertoire grows from simple voice and text communication to video, GPS positioning, navigation and tracking systems, mobile Web access, and geographically filtered delivery of information.

For really hardcore swarmers, cities don’t need visible landmarks and edges to provide guidance, or the qualities of legibility and memorability that Kevin Lynch taught us to value in The Image of the City? They don’t even need very much signage. Swarmers simply rely upon their electronics to deliver relevant information at the right moment, to guide them where they want to go, and to tell them what they will find when they get there. In SwarmCity.org, landmarks are physical places that (maybe temporarily) have lots o f electronic pointers in their direction. And obscure backwaters are just places without pointers.

Lately, some of my hyper-ironic, thoroughly post-modernized Manhattan friends have been playing an extreme swarming game. For them, the landmarks are not the famous buildings that the tourists come to see. Instead, they are the inhabitants who — for the

Warholian quarter-hour, at least—count as celebrities. When players spot these walking icons, they broadcast text messages; “George Clooney at the produce rack in Balducci’s!” For a few minutes, that’s the place the electronic pointers pick out.

I think I got my swarmer spurs when I flew into DFW airport late one night, picked up a rental car with an electronic navigation system, and let it guide me through the blandly undifferentiated landscape of suburban Dallas (completely unfamiliar terrain for me) to my destination. I would never have got there if the destination had not appeared on the guid ance system’s menu — in other words, if it had not been an electronically recognizable land mark. When I arrived, I had no mental map o f where I had been. I might as well have been robomouse, blindly tracking signals from electronic cheese.

Analysis

VatVille and SwarmCity are patterns that emerge when some o f the familiar constraints on the locations o f activities within the urban fabric are electronically loosened.

In general, we find particular activities at particular urban locations for some combination o f three basic reasons. First, there are fixed attractions of the location — affordances that exist right there, and are mostly unaffected by what happens elsewhere. In a dry region, for ex ample, the fixed attraction may be a source of water; settlements arc typically found at oases.

Other fixed attractions include fertile agricultural land, mineral resources, favorable climate, scenic beauty and historic resonance. Second, there are accessibility advantages — those that derive from convenient, efficient connections to related activities. Thus crossroads, ports, and other nodes in transportation networks have traditionally offered economic benefits, and have been favored locations for settlements. Retail stores are located where there are plenty of customers, offices are located where workers can easily commute to them, and so on. These advantages are relative to conditions elsewhere in the network; if other activities relocate, if links in the network are broken or become clogged, or if new links are established, then the accessibility advantages of a particular location may rise or fall. Third, there are stability advantages. A building to accommodate an activity represents an investment at a particular location, for example. I f there are no prospective purchasers of it, moving from that location means a loss of that investment. So there is advantage in staying put. Essentially the same logic applies at building scale. By virtue o f their sizes, shapes, orien tations, views, and so on, rooms have fixed attractions that suit them to accommodating particular activities. By virtue o f their relationships to the circulation system they also have accessibility advantages. And it takes time and effort to move furniture and equipment from one room to another, so there are advantages to keeping the uses o f spaces stable — not moving things around too much. The distinctions among these types o f advantages are clear enough to be useful for our purposes here, but they are not absolute. It is worth noting, parenthetically, for example, that accessibility advantages begin to look like fixed attractions when transportation networks and activity distributions are relatively stable over long periods. Similarly, apparently fixed attrac tions may disappear when resources run out, when technologies change, when overwhelm ing competition develops from unexpected quarters, and so on. That’s how architects and urban designers like to think about it. Economists prefer an equivalent framing of the issue in terms of costs, roughly as follows.4 There are fixed costs of locating particular activities at particular locations; think of these as yearly rents. Then there are interactive costs', think o f these as yearly transportation bills for commuting to work, for moving raw materials to a manufacturing location and finished goods from it, and the like. Finally, there are move costs', think of these as mover’s bills and other relocation expenses resulting from transfer of an activity from one location to another. The total yearly cost of assigning some set o f activities to a set o f locations can be found by summing the fixed and interactive costs. I f you allow movement of activities, you can also compute the total cost of a sequence of assignments; take the cost of each assignment over the time for which it exists, and add the move costs resulting from the transition between each assignment and the next. The formulation o f the economists clarifies the tradeoffs. Often, for instance there is a tradeoff between fixed and interactive costs — between highly accessible locations with corre spondingly high rents, and less accessible locations with lower rents but higher interaction costs. Similarly, an activity may be “trapped” at an expensive or undesirable location because the move costs are too high. And the desirability of a potential move may be evaluated by calculating the time needed for it to pay off through more favorable fixed and interactive costs. Let us now look at VatVille in these terms. It represents a condition under which you can get anything you want anywhere, and that’s just as well, since it is very hard to move. More specifically, interactive costs are independent of distance, and move costs are high. Strategies for autonomously living off the land — collecting rain water, growing your own food, em ploying photovoltaics and windmills for electricity generation, indifference to the outside world — are one way of getting to VatVille; these simply reduce or eliminate the need to interact. Highly efficient networks connected to fixed delivery devices — such as high-band- width digital telecommunications systems connected to desktop computers — provide an other way; these reduce the friction of distance. You can drop out, you can plug in, or you can go for some combination of the two.

SwarmCity, it turns out, is the converse. This pattern emerges when local attractions and accessibility advantages matter a lot and may vary dynamically, when the availability of loca tions for assignment of activities fluctuates, and when good intelligence combined with very low move costs provides the opportunity to respond quickly as opportunities emerge. The produce rack at Balducci’s is of great interest for the fleeting moment that the celebrity is there, an alert cell phone user provides the intelligence, and fleet-footed Manhattan pedestrians can swarm to the spot to gawk. Similarly, the search for a hotel room or a parking spot goes better if you have a continually updated electronic guide to current availability and price.

Think of SwarmCity as a dynamic pattern rather than a static one — a sequence, over time, o f swift rcassignmcnts o f activities to new locations. (You might imagine computer RAM, with its fixed array o f locations and continually reassigned contents, as the most extreme version.) It is a pattern that effectively exploits distributed intelligence (the intelligence of the individual swarmers), that allows particularly efficient use of available real estate, and that encourages management of demand for both sites and channel capacity through dynamic variation o f prices.

Electronically mediated swarming can take place at a variety of geographic scales and over a range of timeframes. Pedestrians can swarm, over relatively local patches o f terrain, when they have portable electronic devices such as cell phones and wireless PDAs. Drivers can swarm over metropolitan road networks when they have phones and electronic navigation systems. Office workers can swarm over temporarily assignable desks or cubicles when they have wirelessly networked laptop computers. GPS-equipped campers can swarm over na tional parks. And electronically networked corporations can, increasingly, swarm their opera tions globally in response to varying local political conditions and labor markets.

The Revenge of Place

But what happens when ubiquitous digital networking, the miniaturization and mobiliza tion of electronics, wireless technology, and other factors combine to reduce both interactive costs and move costs? The remaining component of the cost equation — the fixed cost of each particular place—becomes increasingly dominant. And the less the attractions of a place can be replicated or substituted for electronically, the more desirable and expensive it will be.

Take the beach, for example. There is a fixed quantity of it, you cannot reproduce it (except in very imperfect form), and you cannot move it. You have to be there to benefit from its advantages of climate, scenic beauty, and recreational opportunity. And isolation need not diminish its value as it used to; you can telecommute from the beachfront, if you want. In a world where many distinctions among places are reduced, the particular value o f the beach stands out even more vividly. Or take listening to opera. You can inexpensively download MP3s o f pretty much any performance you might want, anywhere you might care to listen to it. But there is only one Im Scala. Opera fans will continue to seek the scarce tickets, and to pay the high prices, precisely because o f its unique historic associations, cultural resonance, and aura. In an electronically mediated, networked world, places that have few unique local qualities, and decreased opportunity to take advantage of differences in accessibility, will compete (for citizens, tourists, visitors, customers, investments, and so on) in a crowded and competitive market. Their value will inexorably be driven down. Conversely, places that have unique, irreplicable, non-transferrable advantages to offer will be the most highly desired real estate. They will be the nodes around which setdements form and swarms buzz. They will be the primary generators o f new urban patterns. They will be the subjects of increasingly sophisticated, electronically executed search, pricing, and allocation strategies. In other words, ubiquitous and efficient networks particularly digital telecommunica tions networks — produce the commodification of accessibility. This reduces the capacity of places (both physical and online) to distinguish themselves by virtue of superior accessibility. To be competitive, they have to provide something that you cannot find an where else. This is the revenge of place. Endnotes 1 This paper extends an exploration o f the relationship between electronic technology and urban form that began with my City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn (Cambridge MA, M IT Press, 1995), and continued with E-topia: “Urban life, Jim but not as we know it” (Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1999). 2 Mitchel Resnick, Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1997. 3 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1960. 4 T. C. Koopmans and M. Beckman, “Assignment Problems and the Location of Economic Activi ties,” Econometrica, 25:1 (January 1957), 53-76.