The Postmodern City and its Configurations

Provider: Kate Liu / 劉紀雯

• How do we identify a city such as Taipei?  What are its important images and configurations?
• What are the major concerns in urban design--Modernist and Postmodernist?  How are the city dwellers related to urban design [representation of space in Lefebvre's words]?

• How do we study the city in literature and film?  How are these literary configurations related to the physical ones?   Do we see urban design in literature? 

  City: definitions, types and history
 

Definitions:
-- Marc Blanchard: "the city is in the streets, viewed and experienced through the eyes and the gestures of a passer-by" (qut in Zhang xv-xvi)
-- Zhang [following Robert Park]: "This city . . . more than just a physical structure.  It is, among other things, a state of mind, an order of morality, a pattern of attitudes and ritualized behavior, a network of human connections, and a body of customs and traditions inscribed in certain practices and discourses" (Zhang 3-4).
-- "As its etymology suggests, the city is both internal and external; it possesses, in Robert Park's words, 'a moral as well as a physical organization'" (Zhang 6).
  [For the etymology and differentiation of city, urban, 城﹐鎮 (control, administration, designating small town nowadays), 市鎮﹐市弘﹐都市, 市弘﹐小市弘﹐市儈﹐ please see Zhang 6-7].

metropolis -- a major or capital city of a country, state or region.  extreme form -- 'megapolis' -- "a monstrosity that embraces several metropolises and, because of its 'tentacular bureaucracy,' 'sprawling gigantism,' and 'removal of limits,' threatens the very concept of the city itself" (Zhang 6).
modern city--"the complex city"; e.g. Archigramm's vision of a "Plug-In City," the ideal city of universal communication; Le Corbusier's "functional city"
1845 - 1945 old city underwent changes in "transportation and architecture, the rise of the department stores, the geographical growth of the central district, and the appearance of the model of the central shopping district" (James Vance discussed in Tsai 9)
modern city-- in China
"Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, in the wake of the Western cultural infiltration, the concept of the city underwent a series of transfigurations in China.  Increasingly, the city became aligned with Western 'imperialism' and 'colonialism,' and as such it gradually acquired a number of predominantly 'negative' qualities.  . . . 'anti-urbanism' became an issue in twentieth-century China, in both political and cultural realms."  (Tsai 5)

[back] 

  image of a city--functions

1.  basis of personal action, conceptualization and sense of security:
-- [way-finding devices: maps, street numbers, route signs]
"In the process of way-finding, the strategic link is the environmental image, the generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world that is held by an individual.  This image is the product both of immediate sensation and of them memory of past action, and it is used to interpret information and to guide action. . . .
2. "A vivid and integrated physical setting, capable of producing a charp image, plays a social role as well." -- raw material for the symbols and collective memories of group communication.  (Lynch 4)

production of an environmental image:

-- Environmental images are the result of two-way process between the observer and his environment
-- the city planners --interested in the external agent in the interaction (Lynch  7)
-- an environmental image: three components-- identity, structure and meaning.     (Lynch  8)

  legibility / imageability

 -- "A highly imageable (apparent, legible, or visible) city in this peculiar sense would seem well formed, distinct, remarkable; it would invite the eye and the ear to greater attention and participation.

   The elements of a city: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks (Lynch 46). [see the signs on the left]
to increase imageability -- e.g.

--  paths: "Characteristic spatial qualities were able to strengthen the image of particular paths."  [e.g. extremes of width or narrowness]; special facade [building facade, planting]  (Lynch 51); continuity.
-- "Where major paths lacked identity, or were easily confused one for the other, the entire city image was in difficulty"  (Lynch 52)

Critique of Lynch

References: