The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

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4Postmodernism in the city :architecture and urban designIn the field of architecture and urban design, I take postmodernismbroadly to signify a break with the modernist idea that planning anddevelopment should focus on large-scale, metropolitan-wide, technologicallyrational and efficient urban plans, backed by absolutelyno-frills architecture (the austere 'functionalist' surfaces of 'internationalstyle' modernism). Postmodernism cultivates, instead, aconception of the urban fabric as necessarily fragmented, a 'palimpsest'of past forms superimposed upon each other, and a 'collage' ofcurrent uses, many of which may be ephemeral. Since the metropolisis impossible to command except in bits and pieces, urban design(and note that postmodernists design rather than plan) simply aimsto be sensitive to vernacular traditions, local histories, particularwants, needs, and fancies, thus generating specialized, even highlycustomized architectural forms that may range from intimate, personalizedspaces, through traditional monumentality, to the gaiety ofspectacle. All of this can flourish by appeal to a remarkable electicismof architectural styles.Above all, postmodernists depart radically from modernist conceptionsof how to regard space. Whereas the modernists see spaceas something to be shaped for social purposes and therefore alwayssubservient to the construction of a social project, the postmodernistssee space as something independent and autonomous, to be shapedaccording to aesthetic aims and principles which have nothing necessarilyto do with any overarching social objective, save, perhaps, theachievement of timeless and 'disinterested' beauty as an objective initself.It is useful to consider the meaning of such a shift for a variety ofreasons. To begin with, the built environment constitutes one elementin a complex of urban experience that has long been a vital cruciblefor the forging of new cultural sensibilities. How a city looks andhow its spaces are organized forms a material base upon which aPostmodernism in the city 67range of possible sensations and social practices can be thoughtabout, evaluated, and achieved. One dimension of Raban's Soft citycan be rendered more or less hard by the way the built environmentis shaped. Conversely, architecture and urban design have been thefocus of considerable polemical debate concerning the ways in whichaesthetic judgements can or should be incorporated in spatially fixedform, and with what effects on daily life. If we experience architectureas communication, if, as Barthes (1975, 92) insists, 'the city is adiscourse and this discourse is truly a language,' then we ought topay close attention to what is being said, particularly since wetypically absorb such messages in the midst of all the other manifolddistractions of urban life.Prince Charles's 'kitchen cabinet' of advisers on matters to dowith architecture and urban design includes the architect Leon Krier.Krier's complaints against modernism, as published (long-hand forspecial effect) in 1987 in Architectural Design Profile (no. 65) are ofdirect interest since they now inform public debate in Britain at boththe highest and the most general level. The central problem for Krieris that modernist urban planning works mainly through monofunctionalzoning. As a result, circulation of people between zonesby way of artificial arteries becomes the central preoccupation of theplanner, generating an urban pattern that is, in Krier's judgement,'anti-ecological' because it is wasteful of time, energy, and land:The symbolic poverty of current architecture and townscape is adirect result and expression of functionalist monotony as legislatedby functional zoning practices. The principal modernbuilding types and planning models such as the Skyscraper, theGroundscraper, the Central Business District, the CommercialStrip, the Office Park, the Residential Suburb, etc. are invariablyhorizontal or vertical overconcentrations of single uses in oneurban zone, in one building programme, or under one roof.Krier contrasts this situation with the 'good city' (by its natureecological) in which 'the totality of urban functions' are providedwithin 'compatible and pleasant walking distances.' Recognizing thatsuch an urban form 'cannot grow by extension in width and height'but only 'through multiplication,' Krier seeks a city form made up of'complete and finite urban communities,' each constituting an independenturban quarter within a large family of urban quarters, thatin turn make up 'cities within a city.' Only under such conditionswill it be possible to recuperate the 'symbolic richness' of traditionalurban forms based on 'the propinquity and dialogue of the greatest
68 The passage from modernity to postmodernitypossible variety and hence on the expression of true variety asevidenced by the meaningful and truthful articulation of public spaces,urban fabric, and skyline.'Krier, like some other European postmodernists, seeks the activerestoration and re-creation of traditional 'classical' urban values. Thismeans either restoration of an older urban fabric and its rehabilitationto new uses, or the creation of new spaces that express the traditionalvisions with all the cunning that modern technologies and materialswill allow. While Krier's project is only one out of many possibledirections that postmodernists could cultivate - quite at odds, forexample, with Venturi's admiration for Disneyland, the Las Vegasstrip, and suburban ornamentation - it does harp upon a certainconception of modernism as its reactive beginning point. It is useful,therefore, to consider to what degree and why the sort of modernismKrier decries became so dominant a feature of postwar urbanorganization.The political, economic, and social problems that faced the advancedcapitalist countries in the wake of World War II were as extensive asthey were severe. International peace and prosperity had somehowto be built upon a programme that met the aspirations of peopleswho had given massively of their lives amd energies· in a strugglegenerally depicted (and justified) as a struggle for a safer world, abetter world, a better future. Whatever else that meant, it did notmean a return to the prewar conditions of slump and unemployment,of hunger marches and soup-kitchens, of deteriorating slums andpenury, and to tlie social unrest and political instability to whichsuch conditions could all too easily lend themselves. Postwar politics,if they were to remain democratic and capitalistic, had to addressquestions of full employment, decent housing, social provision, welfare,and broad-based opportunity to construct a better future (seePart II).While the tactics and conditions differed from place to place (in,for example, the extent of war-time destruction, the acceptable degreeof centralization in political control, or the level of commitment tostate welfarism), the trend was everywhere to look to the war-timeexperience of mass production and planning as means to launchupon a vast programme of reconstruction and reorganization. It wasalmost as if a new and revivified version of the Enlightenmentproject sprang, phoenix-like, out of the death and destruction ofglobal conflict. The reconstruction, re-shaping, and renewal of theurban fabric became an essential ingredient within this project. Thiswas the context in which the ideas of the ClAM, of Le Corbusier, ofPostmodernism in the city 69Mies van der Rohe, of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the like, could gainthe kind of purchase they did, less as a controlling force of ideas overproduction than as a theoretical framework and justification for whatpractical-minded engineers, politicians, builders, and developerswere in many cases engaged upon out of - sheer social, economic, andpolitical necessity.Within this general framework all kinds of solutions were explored.Britain, for example, adopted quite stringent town and country planninglegislation. The effect was to restrict suburbanization and tosubstitute planned new-town development (on the Ebenezer Howardmodel) or high-density infilling or renewal (on the Le Corbusiermodel) in its stead. Under the watchful eye and sometimes stronghand of the state, procedures were devised to eliminate slums, buildmodular housing, schools, hospitals, factories, etc. through theadoption of the industrialized construction systems and rational planningprocedures that modernist architects had long proposed. Andall this was framed by a deep concern, expressed again and again inlegislation, for the rationalization of spatial patterns and of circulationsystems so as to promote equality (at least of opportunity), socialwelfare, and economic growth.While many other European countries pursued variants of theBritish solution, the United States pushed towards urban reconstructionof a rather different sort. Rapid and weakly controlled suburbanization(the answer to every demobilized soldier's dream, as therhetoric of the time had it) was privately developed but heavilysubsidized by government-backed housing finance and direct publicinvestments in highway construction and other infrastructures. Thedeterioration of the inner cities consequent upon the flight outwards ofboth jobs and people then provoked a powerful and again governmentsubsidizedstrategy of urban renewal through massive clearance andreconstruction of older city centres. It was in this context that someonelike Robert Moses - the 'power broker,' as Caro (1974) depictshim, of metropolitan redevelopment in New York - was able toinsert himself in between the sources of public funds and the requirementsof private developers to such powerful effect, and to reshapethe whole New York metropolitan region through high-way construction,bridge building, park provision, and urban renewal.The US solution, though different in form, nevertheless also reliedheavily upon mass production, industrialized construction systems,and a sweeping conception of how a rationalized urban space mightemerge when linked, as Frank Lloyd Wright had envisaged in hisBroadacre project of the 1930s, through individualized means oftransportation using publicly provided infrastructures.
Page 1: The Conditionof PostmodernityAn Enq
Page 4: PrefaceI cannot remember exactly wh
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12IntroductionMarshall Berman (1982
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Table 3.1 A 'grid' of spatial pract
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15The time and space of theEnlighte
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18Time and space In the postmodernC
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Part IVThe condition of postmoderni
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21Postmodernism as the mIrror ofmIr
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Table 4.1 Fordist modernity versus
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27Cracks in the mIrrors, fusions at
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ReferencesAglietta, M. (1979): A th
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364 ReferencesJacobs, J. (1961): Th
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Index 369Adorno, T. 13Aglietta, M.
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372IndexSoja, E. 284Sorel, G. 34Spe
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