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Thomas Sieverts
Cities Without Cities: An Interpretation of the Zwischenstadt
Routledge, New York, October 2002
ISBN: 0415272602
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Book Review
by Lucio Giecillo
One of the central lines of analysis to accompany the reading
of Thomas Sieverts book Cities without cities is represented by
the correlation between diffusion and fragmentation of settlements
and the processes of globalisation.
Although the irrefutability of this statement probably warrants
some ulterior element of evaluation, the fact remains that actually
we are witnessing a proliferation of studies and research on the
post-Keynesian landscape of the city that from diverse points of
view, are inclined to highlight the relation that exists between
the transformations which occur at a regional level and the process
of capitalist accretion. A relation taking place in a context of
immense elasticity and mobility of capital, a relation that characterizes
the process of globalisation of markets, finance, production and
employment. Nevertheless, if the relevant fact actually seems to
be that of a growing interest on the part of territorial disciplines,
of geography and sociology on the themes of diffused settlements
and of social fragmentation that are related, they cannot not be
considered like they have been for a long time, marginalized or
misunderstood by the urban planning culture, in particular the European
one.
If already in 1915 P. Geddes spoke about conurbation in reference
to Ranstad (Holland), with the idea of describing urban development
characterized by the continuity between different cities, and if
later J. Gottmann (1961) coined the term megalopolis to define the
"urban nebula", which extends between Boston and Philadelphia,
it is of no surprise how such an concept has been assimilated so
slowly, by urban planning culture, with a mostly negative connotation.
On the other hand, the propagation of terms like banlieu, metropolitan
fringe, hinterland, confirms how this undifferentiated area has
for a long time been assigned an almost exclusively residual value
of outgrowth and marginal area.
Only recently have terms like edge-city, urban sprawl, city-territory,
landscape-city been used as representations of a phenomenon that,
from the first instances of industrialisation to the present, have
progressively proliferated to the point of subverting the idea of
the city itself. Although it is obvious how this aspect of the evolution
of this phenomenon of settlement, in it’s multiple facets
and regional variances, can hardly be confined to the reassuring
margins of a rigid definition, instead of a strict definition a
framework of the altered rapport between population and territory
emerges, as the extent and breadth of the effects that such a change
generates in the physical and social morphology of cities.
To a certain extent Cities without cities proposes itself as a clarification
of this subject matter. It does so indicating a reading sequence
criss-crossing instances of disciplinary renewal, cultural indications,
and proposals of operational value. The territorial purview of analysis
is represented by the central western region of Germany, one of
the most economically mature areas of the Europe, henceforth a region
more prone to receiving development opportunities originating from
the existing processes of globalisation.
A critique ensues that, from a historicization of the dispersion
and fragmentation of settlements, contributes in redefining the
theoretical, cultural and interpretative confines. This is already
evident from the early 20th century debate facing the apologists
of the Garden City (model of the urban phenomenon as inserted in
the conceptual limits of a gentle humanism and the desired harmony
between man and nature), and the supporters, less numerous in reality,
of a development perspective non ascribable to the regulatory criteria
of the planned city. More specifically, it is from the ideas of
H.G. Wells, modern prophet of urban fragmentation (Anticipations,
1902), that the author inspires himself for a radical revision of
urban planning models, laying the basis for the construction of
a new cultural perspective for the contemporary city and indicating,
at the same time, a few guidelines for his project.
Among the most frequent concepts in the book, "city-landscape"
and “urbanised landscape” emerge as conceptual keys
through which the author invites us to look at the complexity of
social, economic, productive dynamics, as determining factors of
the ongoing changes in settlement patterns. If indeed, on one hand,
the territory of the contemporary city seems to suffer a sort of
overexposure to the homogenizing forces of the global market - acceleration
of communication and information exchanges, progressive fibrillation
of the supremacy of space, … - on the other hand, the weakening
of the central state paradigm as a regulating factor in the urban
and territorial dynamics would seem to lead to a progressive dissolution
of the traditional idea of the city, towards a urban-rural continuum
able to question the very same notion of territoriality as a stable
spaciotemporal reference of state sovereignty.
The declared aim of Sieverts’ book if to reach an interpretation
of the zwischenstadt, or rather, of the "in-between" or
"intermediate" city, wanting in this manner to identify
a particular kind of urbanization that is defined, as announced
in the title, by negation or absence of the characteristic and distinguishing
traits of the traditional dense European city. In fact, if on one
hand, an important aspect of this reflection regards the crisis
of the centre-periphery paradigm of the territory’s organisation,
which grants the periphery (increasingly generic and inadequate
term to represent the always more varied and multiformed universe
of urban sprawl) the sole aspects of marginality and degradation,
on the other hand, the reference to the “intermediate”
dimension refers to a broader interpretation of on-going change,
as a process that involves the multi-dimensionality of territorial
manifestations, which comprises the ensemble of behaviours that
characterise the so-called "peri-urban society".
Then again it is known that in the last decades of the evolution
of cities, the their growth has been accompanied in a more or less
noticeable manner, in the context of capitalist economies around
the world, by a marked evolution of its territorial order and settlement
structures: the process of relocating production and companies outside
the dense city core, which is accompanied by the exodus of a growing
percentage of the population towards peripheral service centres
(shopping malls, supermarkets, multi-screen cinemas , airports,
theme parks, but also a simple accumulation of different kinds of
settlements along roads, freeways, railroads, stations and other
facilities, etc.) has progressively generated a city in which the
increasing demand for vehicle accessibility has not, in many cases,
been confronted by a careful appraisal of the overall living environment
quality. Furthermore, the distinctive connotations of the well-established
city (density of the built environment, a tangible urban-rural divide,
articulation of open spaces and rationality in the rapport between
public and private space) have been progressively replaced, by an
idea of "urbanized landscape" composed in large part by
summation or juxtaposition of independent clusters interconnected
amongst themselves by the system of infrastructure networks.
According to the author a powerful scenario of social instability
takes form as a corollary of the fragmentation that connotes the
landscape of settlement dispersal. This scenario is characterised
by the appearance of individual and collective behaviours reflecting
an increasing dissociation between the individual (or self) sphere
and participation in community life. It is the scenario of social
atomisation, of “day to day life”, as the author defines
it, in which the "overexposure of the individual" to the
capitalist production-consumption cycle (most noticeable in the
working environment), finds a contraposition in a surviving communitarian
dimension comparable to a renewed consideration for the local area
of affiliation (participation in associative activities and community
life), as well as in the context of a hyper-attention for the individual
dimension of the living space.
The author’s explorations throughout the multifaceted universe
of the zwischenstadt conclude with a reference to the problem of
its governability. The correct treatment of the fundamental problems
in regional development would imply, according to Sieverts, a rearticulation
of development strategies that take into account the plurality of
factors, all that are in some way correlated: from the realignment
of economic opportunities between city centres and peripheral areas,
to the prospect of renewing policies for the preservation of natural
areas towards forms of mediation between economic development expectations
of local populations and safeguarding requirements of environmental
resources and the stewardship of natural capital, to a more efficient
articulation of administrative functions and competencies between
different levels of government in the region.
Last but not least, the reference to the idea of a system of European
city networks places Cities without cities right in the heated debate
that, assuming the paradigm of polycentrism, imagines the territory
of European Union as a reticular system and interconnection of profoundly
different urban realities and regions, in terms of economic status,
culture, development perspectives, and in which the intermediate
dimension of zwischenstadt emerges as a crucial cultural and operational
skyline in the dialectic between local and global, on which, in
large part, depends the future of European territory.
Lucio Giecillo, PhD student in the Department of Urban Policies and Local Development of the Faculty of Architecture at the Università di Roma Tre.
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