74 <strong>The</strong> passage from modernity to postmodernityPostmodernism in the city 75Plate 1.14 <strong>The</strong> 'Great Blight <strong>of</strong> Dullness' <strong>of</strong> which Jane Jacobs complained iswell represented in this typical example <strong>of</strong> public housing in Baltimore.Plate 1.<strong>13</strong> <strong>The</strong> modernism <strong>of</strong> Trump Tower (left) battles the postmodernism<strong>of</strong> Phillip Johnson's AT&T building (right) for position on the New Yorkskyline.diversity and produce a stifling conformity <strong>of</strong> land uses. But thatproblem was seriously compounded by the way planners declaredthemselves . enemi:s <strong>of</strong> diersity, fearing chaos and complexity becausethey saw It as dlsorgamzed, ugly, and hopelessly irrational. 'It iscurious,' she omlaine .d, 'that city planning neither respects spontaneousself-dlVerstficatlOn among city populations nor contrives toprovide for it. It is curious that city designers seem neither torecognize this force <strong>of</strong> self-diversification nor to be attracted by theesthetic problems <strong>of</strong> expressing it.'On the surface, at least, it would seem that postmodernism isprecisely about finding ways to express such an aesthetics <strong>of</strong> diversity.But it is important to consider how it does so. In that way we canuncover the deep limitations (which the more reflective postmodernistsrecognize) as well as the superficial advantages <strong>of</strong> many postmodernistefforts.Jencks (1984), for example, argues that postmodern architecturehas its roots in two significant technological shifts. First, contemporarycommunications have collapsed the 'usual space and timeboundaries' and produced both a new internationalism and stronginternal differentiations within cities and societies based on place,function, and social interest. This 'produced fragmentation' exists ina context <strong>of</strong> transport and communications technologies that havethe capacity to handle social interaction across space in a highlydifferentiated manner. Architecture and urban design have thereforebeen presented with new and more wide-ranging opportunities to
76 <strong>The</strong> passage from modernity to postmodernitydiversify spatial form than was the case in the immediate postwarperiod. Dispersed, decentralized, and deconcentrated urban formsare now much more technologically feasible than they once were.Second, new technologies (particularly computer modelling) havedissolved the need to conjoin mass production with mass repetition,and permitted the flexible mass production <strong>of</strong> 'almost personalizedproducts' expressive <strong>of</strong> a great variety <strong>of</strong> styles. '<strong>The</strong> results arecloser to nineteenth century handicraft than to the regimented superblocks<strong>of</strong> 1984.' By the same token a whole new range <strong>of</strong> buildingmaterials, some <strong>of</strong> which permit <strong>of</strong> almost exact imitation <strong>of</strong> mucholder styles (from oak beams to weathered brick) can now be procuredquite cheaply. To give the new technologies prominence in this wayis not to interpret the postmodern movement as technologicallydetermined. But Jencks does suggest that the context in which architectsand urban planners now operate has altered in ways that liberatethem from some <strong>of</strong> the more powerful constraints that existed in theimmediate postwar period.<strong>The</strong> post modern architect and urban designer can, as a consequence,more easily accept the challenge to communicate withdifferent client groups in personalized ways, while tailoring productsto different situations, functions, and 'taste cultures.' <strong>The</strong>y are, saysJencks, very concerned with 'signs <strong>of</strong> status, history, commerce,comfort, ethnic domain, signs <strong>of</strong> being neighbourly' and willing tocater to all and every taste, such as those <strong>of</strong> Las Vegas or Levittown- tastes that the modernists tended to dismiss as common and banal.In principle, therefore, postmodern architecture is anti-avant-gardist(unwilling to impose solutions, as the high modernists, the bureaucraticplanners, and the authoritarian developers tended - and still tend -to do).It is by no means clear, however, that a simple turn to populism issufficient to answer Jane jacobs's complaints. Rowe and Koetter intheir Collage city (the very title <strong>of</strong> which indicates sympathy withthe postmodernist thrust) worry that 'the architectural proponents<strong>of</strong> populism are all for democracy and all for freedom: but they arecharacteristically unwilling to speculate as to the necessary conflicts<strong>of</strong> democracy with law, <strong>of</strong> the necessary collisions <strong>of</strong> freedom withjustice.' By surrendering to an abstract entity called 'the people,' thepopulists cannot recognize how manifold the people happens to be,and consequently 'how much in need <strong>of</strong> protection from each otherits components happen to stand.' <strong>The</strong> problems <strong>of</strong> minorities and theunderprivileged, or <strong>of</strong> the diverse counter-cultural elements that sointrigued Jane Jacobs, get swept under the rug unless some verydemocratic and egalitarian system <strong>of</strong> community-based planning canPostmodernism in the city 77be devised that meets the needs <strong>of</strong> rich and poor alike. This presupposes,however, a series <strong>of</strong> well-knit and cohesive urban communitiesas its starting point in an urban world that is always in fluxand transition.This problem is compounded by the degree to which the different'taste cultures' and communities express their desires through differentiatedpolitical influence and market power. Jencks concedes,for example, that postmodernism in architecture and urban designtends to be shamelessly market-oriented because that is the primarylanguage <strong>of</strong> communication in our society. Although market integrationplainly carries with it the danger <strong>of</strong> pandering to the rich andthe private consumer rather than to the poor and to public needs,that is in the end, Jencks holds, a situation the architect is powerlessto change.Such a cavalier response to lop-sided market power scarcely favoursan outcome that meets Jacobs's objections. To begin with, it is justas likely to replace the planner's zoning with a market-producedzoning <strong>of</strong> ability to pay, an allocation <strong>of</strong> land to uses based on theprinciples <strong>of</strong> land rent rather than the kind <strong>of</strong> principles <strong>of</strong> urbandesign that someone like Krier plainly has in mind. In the short run,a transition from planned to market mechanisms may temporarilymix up uses into interesting configurations, but the speed <strong>of</strong> gentrificationand the monotony <strong>of</strong> the result (see plate 1.15) suggests thatin many instances the short run is very short indeed. Market andland-rent allocation <strong>of</strong> this kind have already re-shaped many urbanlandscapes into new patterns <strong>of</strong> conformity. Free-market populism,for example, puts the middle classes into the enclosed and protectedspaces <strong>of</strong> shopping malls (plate 1.16) and atria (plate 1.17), but itdoes nothing for the poor except to eject them into a new and quitenightmarish postmodern landscape <strong>of</strong> homelessness (see plate 1.18).<strong>The</strong> pursuit <strong>of</strong> the consumption dollars <strong>of</strong> the rich has led, however,to much greater emphasis upon product differentiation in urbandesign. By exploring the realms <strong>of</strong> differentiated tastes and aestheticpreferences (and doing whatever they could to stimulate those tasks),architects and urban designers have re-emphasized a powerful aspect<strong>of</strong> capital accumulation: the production and consumption <strong>of</strong> whatBourdieu (1977; 1984) calls 'symbolic capita1.' <strong>The</strong> latter can bedefined as 'the collection <strong>of</strong> luxury goods attesting the taste anddistinction <strong>of</strong> the owner.' Such capital is, <strong>of</strong> course, transformedmoney capital which 'produces its proper effect inasmuch, and onlyinasmuch, as it conceals the fact that it originates in "material" forms<strong>of</strong> capita1.' <strong>The</strong> fetishism (direct concern with surface appearancesthat conceal underlying meanings) is obvious, but it is here deployed
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