Descripción de la dimensión contexto instruccional

The reinsertion of the territory in the context of urban life is investigated in this book with contributions by architects, urbanists, sociologists and philosophers whose re-flections explore low-density urban situations, an environmental city perspective that recuperates the historic depth and sense of the territory and relaunches them in current terms, hence the “territorial future of the city”.

The article “The dilation of the concept of ‘inhabit’ and the city/territory rela-tionship” by Silvano Tagliagambe begins with a theoretical analysis of the concept of space and the difference between space and “spatiality”, with the purpose of focussing on the problem of the spreading of the city onto the territory within the theoretical sphere most suitable to this specific experience.

On the basis of the strong interweaving of perception, action and project, which emerges from the most significant results of recent studies on cerebral mecha-nisms and processes, it is emphasised that the city’s relationship with the territory surrounding it needs to be focussed on from the point of view not of spatiality generically meant, but of space whose structure refers back to the primary hori-zon of action and of the project underlying it, i.e. to those capacities for mov-ing and orientmov-ing ourselves in the space surroundmov-ing us, as well as for graspmov-ing the actions and intentions of others, which contribute to constituting a habitable world.

Beginning with this premise, it is proposed that the matter of the dilation of inhabiting and the spreading of the city onto the territory be placed in a suitable, appropriate space, the intermediate space between the two extremes at play, that of their boundary, adopted not as a clear, insurmountable demarcation line but as an interface, i.e. a two-sided buffer zone, one oriented towards the urban dimension and the other towards the territorial.

With this aim, the ideas proposed by Pavel Florenskij in a study of his of 1919 entitled Organoproekcija (The projection of the organs) are re-examined and de-veloped. When adapted to the problem analysed, they can be translated into the pinpointing of what might be considered the crucial challenge territorial planning has to face today: to stimulate the capacity on the part of communities to recog-nise themselves as a unit with respect to “notable places” with which their iden-tity is bound and which therefore define the borders of their natural, social and cultural environment sphere, and to shift these borders, projecting themselves into

supra-local scenarios, to build new urban solidarities and new, vaster and more complex forms of identity.

In “Planning in search of ground: committed muddling through or a critical view from above?”, Isabelle Doucet explores the knowledge processes we enhance to un-derstand our (changing) spatial environments. By means of five “experiences” from within planning and architecture – Cities without Cities (Thomas Sieverts 2003) and Switzerland: An Urban Portrait (Diener et al. 2006) – and from the borders of these disciplines – the Micronomics projects by City Mine(d), Political Typographies by Ursula Biemann, Angela Melitopoulos and Lisa Parks, and the [Negotiating Space]

Interactive Mapping in 2D/3D workshop – she explores the interdisciplinary and inter-experiential grey zones, such as between the university, activism and the field.

She explores the relations created by these studies between theory and practice and between conceptual innovation, fieldwork and research outcomes. The five “experi-ences” are explored through their functioning as “laboratories” in which knowledge is produced according to certain rules, conventions, methods and constraints. She explores the position of the researcher towards his/her object of research (e.g. the city) but also the outcome generated by the “laboratories”: a text, book, map or design. She also explores the practical consequences of extending our architectural and planning research to other, more hybrid experiences. Using the five selected

“experiences” and interdisciplinary and inter-knowledge challenges, she addresses the role of ground precisely by unravelling three major components of knowledge production: the position of the researcher, the functioning of his/her laboratory and the production of output.

In “The polycentric city and environmental resources”, Alfredo Mela explores one of the most important processes transforming the set-up of the territory in the current phase: the tendency towards modification in a polycentric sense of metropolitan areas. In effect, territorial organisation previously based on a tendency towards localisation of the rarer functions and services in central areas and on a clear contrast between centre and periphery now appears to be becoming old-fashioned in the metropolises of the more developed countries. It is being substituted by a much more complex structure envisaging, on the one hand, the division of the central space itself into thematic polarities and, on the other, the emergence of decentred poles in peripheral space and peri-urban crowns, especially in spots characterised by greater motor vehicle accessibility.

This essay intends, first of all, to supply departure points for a description of this phenomenon and for an analysis that will enable different types of metropolitan pole to be distinguished, throwing light on the positive and negative effects this transformation entails. In order to do so, it takes a cue, in particular, from a re-cent paper by Harvey, which proposes a distinction between three dimensions of space (absolute, relative and relational space); on the strength of this, corresponding dimensions of metropolitan polycentrism are pinpointed. Moreover, a reflection is made on possible paths of intervention with a plan directed both at promoting the positive aspects of the phenomenon of city transformation in a polycentric sense and at neutralising at the same time the negative effects, especially as regards possible fragmentation of urban space and accentuation of the social imbalances between the

various parts of the city. Furthermore, light is thrown on how each intervention needs to aim at inducing the reorganisation of spatial functions with a view to increasing sustainability of the territorial development model.

In her paper “Images of local societies and projects for space”, Paola Pittaluga describes how the coherence between the spatial images of local societies and the images produced by knowledge is becoming a constituent requisite of the project for space organisation. Indeed, one of the reasons for the inefficacy of projectual activity may be acknowledged in the divergence between the project and the im-plementation of it and, as underlined, in the ever-increasing difficulty of producing and promoting a sense of belonging and rootedness towards the urban territorial contexts concerned, which translates into a principle of responsibility with respect to the future of our own space of life. This leads us to hypothesise that the gap ensuing might indeed constitute a cause of inefficacy, in the sense that when the image with which the project is represented does not contain elements deriving from the “perceptive worlds” of a settled society, created by a process of “territorial hysteresis” in which environmental dominants emerge – the significant places, the non-negotiable values, the long-lasting elements that have always been at the head of space organisation of the society and above all the relations between the latter – it may often happen that the outcome is not effective and shared, precisely because it concerns elements alienated from the local population and because it derives from exogenous models of development indifferent to the actual vocations of the context.

The article “Critical Design – The implementation of ‘designerly’ thinking to ex-plore the futurity of our physical environment” by Nel Janssens critically addresses the importance of designerly thinking in exploring the futurity of our physical en-vironment. Acknowledging the important role of design in participation and com-munication processes, as occurs in urban planning projects, the author nevertheless criticises the way “research by design” is currently adopted. The concern is that design is nowadays too often reduced to its communicative, decision-facilitating and programme-tuning capacities, whereas the more critical capacities of design-erly thinking get much less attention and appraisal. The alternative approach that is proposed here is to develop “research by Critical Design” in a kind of analogy and complementarity with the already existing term “critical theory”. The text then explores how utopian thinking can be considered as a breeding ground for “Critical Design” by beginning with the statement that “Critical Design” is in fact “tentative design”, a type of designerly thinking that can be characterised by the capacity of prefiguration, hence making prospective alternatives the subject of anticipative reflection. The possibilities for such “tentative design” are explored in this chapter by means of two major cases. The Unadapted City (T.O.P. Office/Luc Deleu) is not merely a radical project for the city, but a specific way of thinking about the city through design. As a second case study, “Mare Meum” is explored: a project in which the designerly approach of FLC extended (free associating designers) exem-plifies how an alternative future can be conceptualised by speculating on a differ-ent – though latdiffer-ently presdiffer-ent – reality, hence surpassing the given situation. These projects show that their unconventional or non-conformist thinking is essential to

developing a critical perspective on the issues at stake and as such is intrinsically part of “Critical Design”.

The last section of the article explores the specific characteristics of “Critical Design” and argues that this way of designerly thinking should be more actively developed and used in research on the physical environment.

In their article “Imagining the re/co-production of a hybrid territory. Testing sustainable concepts of landscape development in Roeselare West”, Liesl Vanaut-gaerden, Bruno De Meulder and Kaat Boon assert that the role of design is unclear when considering the transformation of peri-urban territories. Distinctions between rural and urban have become irrelevant while space is transformed incrementally by an assortment of actors. At the same time, conventional planning tools such as Masterplans and zoning principles have lost their meaning and are being replaced by more strategic or structural ones. The spatial vision is regularly emphasised amid these as a tool for both the imagining of the desired development and the long-term framing of short-term action. The background to this article is the idea that de-sign and vision building should go together. We therefore explore a dede-sign-based approach that substantiates the spatial vision as a tool for territorial development.

The approach is based on the concept of landscape as a complex and dynamic sys-tem: an open system that functions and transforms on its own, the transformation mechanisms of which can be identified. How these mechanisms can become the object of research and a tool for design is studied by means of investigation of the Roeselare-West region. This case study relates spatial transformation to a range of actors and each actor’s logic of (re)producing space. Thus it perceives reproduction as a mechanism of shaping space. The exploration evolves somewhere in between urban design and landscape architecture, in an approach that combines a multiple reading of the existing landscape, a scenario development of what is possible and a synthesis developed through an integrated landscape vision that expresses what is desirable and feasible. This leads to a spatial vision as an imagination of space that accommodates processes, rather than as a conventional plan that configures spatial elements. It is the projection of an image of future development in which a given interplay between the various actors can be generated, activated or coordinated. This projection requires interdisciplinary work.

In her paper “Derelict places as alternative territories of the city”, Silvia Serreli discusses some alternative territories of the city not directly linkable with the dense metropolis. The experiences illustrated by means of the concepts of peripherality and proximity offer interesting departure points for in-depth study of the urban per-spectives for non-core areas in particular.

The crisis processes involving derelict sites are not connected with their being

“small” realities, but with being “isolated” places, far from the “sources of knowl-edge creation and transfer”. Situations in peripheral areas are also investigated, by means of the concept of re-urbanity, in which new ways of inhabiting are found which shape new spatialities. These are places where the great tension between the different urban populations, be it the long-standing residents or the neo-rural in-migrant populations, has revealed new socio-spatial dynamics which highlight significant emerging practices of the city.

The approach towards new scenarios of territoriality is highlighted by the author through certain requisites of the project: the environment is the strategic nucleus of space organisation perspectives and growth of economies; the environmental structure guides and directs localisation and organisation of settlement systems and activities; local societies need urban motivation and environmental awareness. In particular, attention is drawn to how urban motivation may be produced in the project through the use of narratives which give voice to territorial subjectivity and put the social actors in a position to express their values and expectations. The narrative approach offers itself as one of the modalities of self-representation of a local society, as it constitutes the exploration of representations of trajectories that favour recognition of the plural dimensions of a territory.

Notes

1. On this and other specific aspects of human territoriality cfr in particular Sack 1986; Frank 1992; Mark and Frank 1991; Campari and Frank 1993.

2. In one of the most famous paragraphs of the Investigations philosophiques, in which Wittgenstein compares language to an old city: “A labyrinth of lanes and little squares, old and new houses, and houses enlarged in different periods; and all this surrounded by a number of new quarters with streets at right-angles lined with houses all the same” (Wittgenstein 1958;

Soutif 1994).

3. Tokyo–ga, directed by Wim Wenders, Road Movies Filmproduktion/Berlin Wim Wenders Pro-duktion.

4. The Sky above Berlin, directed by Wim Wenders, Road Movies, Filmproduktion/Berlin Argos Films/Paris, 1987.

5. Each day in the metropolis we pass by hundreds, thousands of people, in silence, each a stranger to the other, like the trees in a wood. Man is just a phenomenon, a microcosm whose relations do not interest us, but whose form is accessible to us as are those of the mountains and trees. Man is an element of nature. An element just as fascinating, just as attractive as any other. [. . .] There is nothing nicer than sitting in silence in the tram among strangers, not to spy on their conversations, but to experience their feelings, to enjoy observing them. [. . .] One man is enough, a point that is moving, to upset the ordered symmetry of a street. This takes on, to a certain extent, a human dimension, asymmetrical, with the free space divided up by the movement of this body, distance and size take on a new significance. [. . .] He who thinks of architecture, thinks of the consequences of the elements of construction, fac¸ades, columns, embellishments – and yet, all this is secondary. What counts first and foremost is not the single form, but its context, the space surrounding it, the void that extends rhythmically between the walls, and is delimited by them (Endell 1908; Cacciari 1973, pp. 153 and 157).

6. These reflections on selectivity are taken from Maciocco 1995a.

7. See for example the IGM Cartographic Series 1992 on the scale 1:25.000 for Sardinia.

8. This type of selectivity aimed at places that count seems to be an unusual feature of the con-temporary urban condition. Artists represent it in a great variety of ways; it can be seen for example in some situationists’ works of a psychogeographical matrix, as is the case of The naked city by Guy-Ernest Debord and Constant’s Symboliese voorstelling van New Babylon.

Similarly, the urge towards selectivity by condensation of the urban image in a mental map is present in a conceptual artist like Stanley Brouwn, in an emblematic way in his work This Way Brouwn. To a similar sphere of selectivity may be referred in a certain sense even the phenomenon of buskers, the musical art of the streets, the presence of which in contemporary urban landscapes seems to want to promote the statement of an idea of space as a set of selective places for social relations and cultural growth.

9. Place of reciprocal interactions between population, activities and places.

10. Development of ideas entailing a synthesis of various functional, environmental and sociolog-ical elements.

11. On 18 April 1923 in New Jersey the RPAA was proposed, the main founders of which (ac-cording to Peter Hall “the most extraordinary creative minds who joined together in a com-mon urbanistic objective”) were: Lewis Mumford (1895–1990), Clarence Stein (1882–1975), Henry Wright (1878–1936), Frederick Ackerman (1878–1950), Robert Kohn (1870–1953), John Bright, an architect from Philadelphia, Henry Klaber, an architect from Chicago, Charles Whitaker (1872–1964), the Director of JAIA, Benton MacKaye (1879–1975), an expert in forestry science, and Catherine Bauer (1905–1975), an expert in problems of residence. The association lasted for 10 years (1923–1933) and the number of participants did not exceed 25 units. The following were among the most important contributions: Sunnyside Gardens in Long Island, Radburn in New Jersey, the first examples of American community planning, the Report of the New York State Commission of Housing and Regional Planning of 1926, the first example of planning at a state level, the plan of which corresponded to the idea of a widespread city region as would be created after the “fourth migration”, the metaphor Mumford created to describe the operative sense of his utopia: the hoped-for exodus from the metropolis cities towards the surrounding region.

12. The expressions “Fourth Migration” (Lewis Mumford), “New Exploration” (Benton MacKaye) and “Dinosaur City” (Clarence Stein) were meant to suggest an understandable imaginative vision to assert the need for the entire nation to be involved in the process of pointing out new forms of development. “Fourth Migration” is Mumford’s interpre-tation of the socio-geographical theories of society worked out by Geddes in Cities in evolution of 1915. The First Migration coincided with the process of urbanisation that fol-lowed the great migrations westwards. The Second Migration coincided with the establish-ment of industrialisation and the greater facility of moveestablish-ment due to the expansion of the railway; the population flow moved towards towns and fluvial valleys. The Third Migra-tion: after the civil war, growing technological progress produced the third migration to-wards large cities causing congestion in metropolitan centres. The Fourth Migration would be due to the spreading of automobiles, communications, the transmission of energy at a distance, with the retrieval of links with the non-urban environment lost in the previous migrations.

13. The Plan for European Space Development, to use the French acronym Sdec, gives these num-bers in a background of contradictory arguments which on the one side places the emphasis on the endless entity of the problems and on the other envisages a field of conventional ac-tivities for impossible all-out recuperation. Cfr SSSE, Plan for European Space Development (first official draft), Meeting of Ministers for territory order in member States of the European Union, Noordwijk, 9 and 10 June 1997.

14. A position in which a business strategy is applied to the city, a strategy understood as minimi-sation of risk, of the loss the business city might suffer with respect to the external world, a

14. A position in which a business strategy is applied to the city, a strategy understood as minimi-sation of risk, of the loss the business city might suffer with respect to the external world, a