Dissertationen an der Fakultät für Architektur der RWTH Aachen Herausgegeben von Wolfgang Döring Wilfried Führer Michael Jansen Karsten Ley The Urban Matrix Towards a Theory on the Parameters of Urban Form and their Interrelation I. Architektur und Planung, Nr.2 DIGITALE VERSION Die Reihe der Dissertationen an der Fakultät für Architektur der RWTH Aachen: I. Architektur und Planung Herausgegeben von Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Wolfgang Döring II. Ingenieurwissenschaften Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wilfried Führer III. Geisteswissenschaften Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Jansen Für die Fakultät für Architektur Freunde des Reiff e.V. Aachen Schinkelstr.1, 52062 Aachen © beim Autor - Aachen 2009 Alle Rechte, auch das des auszugsweisen Nachdrucks, der aus- zugsweisen oder vollständigen Wiedergabe, der Speicherung in Datenverarbeitungsanlagen und das der Übersetzung vorbehalten. ISBN 978-3-936971-20-0 (Dissertationsdruck) ISBN 978-3-936971-25-5 (Buchhandelsausgabe) ISSN 1436-7904 "D 82 (Diss. RWTH Aachen), 2009" DIGITALE VERSION The Urban Matrix. Towards a Theory on the Parameters of Urban Form and their Interrelation Die urbane Matrix. Zu einer Theorie über die Parameter städtischer Form und deren Wechselbeziehungen Doctoral Thesis by Karsten Ley Supervisors Univ.-Prof. Dr. Michael Jansen RWTH Aachen Lehr- und Forschungsgebiet Stadtbaugeschichte Univ.-Prof. Kunibert Wachten RWTH Aachen Lehrstuhl und Institut für Städtebau und Landesplanung William Leslie Forsyth, Edinburgh College of Art Head of the School of Architecture and Coordinator Postgraduate Programs in Urban Design Aachen, August 2008 / March 2009 DIGITALE VERSION DIGITALE VERSION Part 0 Preliminaries and Contents Preliminaries The present employment, which is performed by an author educated in architec- ture and urban design, seeks to approximate the city as a specific anthropogenic transformation of the biosphere as well as a distinct reflexive human design ap- proach towards the environment – ultimately as "culture and geography's largest artifact, the product of a very complex play of greatly varied forces" (Vance Jr 1990: 4). In short, this statement by the geographer James E. VANCE Jr not only points out the object of research to be covered but also enfolds its quandary: What makes us characterize so diverse entities, such as Rothenburg, Ur and Mex- ico City, which originated in topographically completely unlike settings at a time difference of well more than 3000 years, with the same term – city?1 And what allows us to draw one transition line from our contemporary urban forms back to the Bronze Age, in which – to common knowledge – the city has its origins? Exactly for its variety and constant transformation the city is hard to grasp, why most researchers abide by functional aspects for a general understanding and focus formal aspects only in a historical perspective.2 Moreover, even this agree- ment on general functional categories usually refers to a particular period of time, trying to distinguish urban from non-urban entities; along these lines researchers deal with the idea of an Urban Revolution in the Bronze Age, the notion of a Great Urbanization in the Middle Ages, or within the present-day development discuss Edge- or Generic Cities. Still, in addition to this variety of functional assessments there also persists the notion of a formal urban continuum, which appears to be only partly explained by the diverse functional definitions. But, what is urban form, how does it determine urbanism, and what effect does it or can it have onto the differentiation between cities, villages, and settlements?3 This present thesis thus shall add to the according manifold functional examinations and ratioci- nations, an approach to the city by means of considering the significance of its continuing form and investigating the general factors that determine this form. With regard to the vast research on the city that well illuminates the functional implications, of course, these considerations and investigations have to be under- stood as a mere initial occupation with this task, why they should be understood as an employment TOWARDS A THEORY ON THE PARAMETERS OF URBAN FORM AND THEIR INTERRELATION, that relies on further elaboration and discussion. Obviously, such basic research yields no immediate practical benefit. It is more of gaining additional general cognition, notably for the specialist, who takes the consistency of his domain often for granted while engaging in particular issues. Yet, today the architectural and urbanistic profession faces two major develop- ments: the ongoing suburbanization in the Western World on one side and the ongoing metropolization in the developing countries on the other; already today some 50% of the world's population live in cities – in 2050 presumably 70%;4 reason enough to examine, scrutinize, and re-develop not only the different urban living-models but also the concurrent urban forms and their underlying attributes. 1 This represents a key-question for the teaching in and research on the History of Urbanization, as it has been raised by Michael JANSEN in his university lectures and the discussions with the author. 2 see for instance (Kostof 1991: 9) 3 compare the discussion with (Osborne et al. 2005: 1f.) 4 In addition this ratio refers to an increasing world population from over 6.5 billion people today to an estimated 9.2 billion in 2050; see (UN/DESA 2008). Preliminaries and Contents 5 DIGITALE VERSION Despite these eminent developments, however, those professionally engaged in planning and designing cities in the recent years more and more back out from the original vanguard role that over decades characterized their scope. After sev- eral urbanistic failures, especially in the 1960s, and with the immense change through information-technology, today the professional self-conception is confined to moderating interests, mentoring stakeholders, and squiring processes – impor- tant activities indeed, yet often avoiding the urbanistic subject itself. In the pref- ace to Jörg SEIFERT's report on the Symposium Urban Research: The Individual and Density on January 19, 2002 at the Vienna Center for Architecture (Az W) Bart LOOTSMA stated that the urban change resulting from the second phase of modernization forces us to again analyze historically, sociologically, programmati- cally, typologically, and morphologically those processes leading to urbanism.5 In this context, the considerations of this thesis represent an according attempt that shall also embody a pleading for comprehensively addressing the city as well as its planning and design, rather than supporting a potentially precarious incrementalism, in which architects and planners refrain from a substantially provident involvement. Against the background of this plea, the contribution of the present employment refers to a general urbanistic approach towards the city that builds up on two basic thoughts, which also address the difficulty of approximating the formal urban continuum: The first comprises a phenomenological reasoning, that suggests a differentiation and yet intrinsic relation between factual cities and a theoretical concept that serves as an ideal perception of how a city should be; this ratiocination, which was well established by the art historian Giulio ARGAN (1909-92) in his "Storia dell'arte come storia della città", forms the starting point for the suggested per- ception of an abstractum urban form that consequently allows for an examination of its constitution and characteristics. The second involves a systemic understanding, that implies a distinct interrelation of various factors that yet erratically afford cities; this ratiocination goes back to the sociologist Niklas LUHMANN (1927-98), and allows explaining the variety as well as the unpredictability of factual urban forms in course of the diversity of opinions and interests involved, while he concurrently insinuates the investigation for, evidently abstract, conditioning and contingency formulas that determine the process of interrelation. Urban planners and architects, as the urbanist Francis FERGUSON said, can be "viewed in a somewhat traditional sense as those interested in the city as a physi- cal system or artifact. They do, of course, perceive the city as a container of so- cial, economic, and political phenomena, and they appreciate the significance of these activities in giving physical form to the city, but their primary concern is for the artifact itself – the process of giving form to this artifact" (Ferguson 1975: 4). Acknowledging this statement the present thesis shall stress the notion of the artifact as an abstractum that is likewise dissociated from any phenomenal de- mand, but still subject to constant principles. Arguably such an urbanistic reason- ing affords the formal urban continuum, eventually leading to the present propo- sition of interrelating parameters of urban form within a perpetual Urban Matrix. 5 The German original reads: "Diese Veränderungen [innerhalb der Städte aufgrund der zweiten Phase der Modernisierung; the author] […] zwingen dazu, die Prozesse die zum Städtebau führen (historisch, soziologisch, programmatisch, typologisch und morphologisch) erneut zu analysieren [sic!]" (Seifert 2003: 11). 6 DIGITALE VERSION These thoughts imply that the suggested approach is primarily a theoretical- normative occupation, dealing with abstract concepts rather than the actually built environment. Thus, the reader will be confronted with a search for preferably simple and