The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Edward W. Soja
All these elements of the general spectacle in
this entertaining country at least give one’s
regular habits of thought the stimulus of a
little confusion and make one feel that one is
dealing with an original genius.
Henry James
Transatlantic Sketches (1875)
What, then, is the Dutch culture offered here?
An allegiance that was fashioned as the consequence,
not the cause, of freedom, and that
was defined by common habits rather than
legislated by institutions. It was a manner of
sharing a peculiar—very peculiar—space at
a particular time[,] . . . the product of the
encounter between fresh historical experience
and the constraints of geography.
Simon Schama
The Embarrassment of Riches:
An Interpretation of Dutch Culture
in the Golden Age (1988)
16 On Spuistraat: The Contested Streetscape
in Amsterdam