UNIT 3

ALDO ROSSI COLLECTIVE MEMORY

WILLIAM WHYTE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES

The main aspects are :
1. seating space the book recommends 6% to 10%, but the idea of more than enough should apply.
Especially with concerns of over-capacity, the problem with urban spaces has mostly been underuse, not
overuse
2. sun, wind, trees, water these features make the sitting experience pleasant.
3. food the draw of food, especially with seating, creates a cafe-like atmosphere amiable to visitors.
4. the street urban space should be seen from the street, and a part of the street experience. Secluded and
unseen urban space is unused urban space.
5. triangulation street acts, public art, music, magicians, all add character and distinction to a space.
The elements of small urban spaces haven't changed much since 1980. Almost each element has his own
chapter:
The Life Plazas
Sitting Space (Grouping and Meeting behavior)
Sun, Wind, Trees, Water (Design elements)
Food
The Street (access to the small places)
The "Undesirables" (characterstics of people)
Effective Capacity (space design)
Indoor Spaces
Concourses and Megastructures
Smaller Cities and Places
Triangulation (Artists, Events at Small Urban Places)
The book revealed that sitting spaces are an important condition for small urban environments. Sitting
spaces provide an infrastructure for grouping and communication between people. A garden does almost
exactly the same. Gardening brings people together and they also talk during gardening activities. The
sitting elements could be steps (the size of the steps matters very much), ledges (the height matters),
benches (mostly static elements), and chairs (flexible elements).
People's interaction on sun, wind, trees, and water depends heavily on the seasons. Usually people try to
avoid wind, for this reason trees and other plants are used as protection. They look for sitting places
closely to a tree or bushes. The same is valid if the sun is too strong and the temperature are too hot.
Especially, trees provide a huge space of shadow and wind protection (page 46). Moreover, people feel
very comfortable surrounded by trees and bushes. An additional interesting design element of small
urban places is water. Water is really vital for the surviving of a plant. At small places and parks water
provides a well-being feeling to people. Especially, in summer water is used a for cooling down. People
have the desire to put their feet and hands into the water ..
The chapter about food does reveal snack bars and cafes are a critical success factor for plazas and parks.
They satisfy a demand. In some special cases, the employee(s) of a snack bar or cafe create a special aura
/atmosphere of a place. For instance, some hot dog vendors are really great entertainers. However, this
was not what I was looking for. At least one point is obvious, the desire of food at these kind of places is
strong. In this context it makes sense to consider that plants are able to provide a certain amount of food.
Why not integrating plants which provide food at these places. A good example for this is the community
garden Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin.

GENIUS LOCI SCHULZ

Each city has a unique spirit of place, or a distinctive atmosphere, that goes beyond the built
environment. This urban context reflects how a city functions in real time as people move through time
and space. Viewed through this lens, the architecture and physical infrastructure of a city give way to the
rhythms of the passing of the day and transition of the seasons. This provides the temporal spectacles
that define a city.
This context of a city is more formally known as genius loci, or the genetic footprint of a place. Latin
for the genius of the place, this phrase refers to classical Roman concept of the protective spirit of a
place. In contemporary usage, genius loci usually refers to a locations distinctive atmosphere, or the
afore-mentioned spirit of place, rather than a guardian spirit.
The concept of genius loci falls within the philosophical branch of architectural phenomenology. This
field of architectural discourse is most notably explored by the theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz in his
book, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture.
Norberg-Schulz and Genius Loci
1. The Norwegian architect and phenomenologist Christian Norberg-Schulz is a key theorist in
elucidating the concept of genius loci, which he explores in several works spanning three
decades.
2. In his 1963 thesis, his original intention was to investigate the psychology of architecture
(Norberg-Schulz, 1963).
3. Norberg-Schulz (1980) explores the character of places on the ground and their meanings for
people, Norberg-Schulz uses a concept of townscape (although not as Cullen defined it) to denote
skyline or image.
4. He sees the skyline of the town and the horizontally expanded silhouette of the urban buildings as
keys to the image of a place.
5. He promotes the traditional form of towns and buildings, which he sees as the basis for bringing
about a deeper symbolic understanding of places (Norberg-Schulz, 1985, pp. 3335, 48).
6. The concept of genius loci is described as representing the sense people have of a place,
understood as the sum of all physical as well as symbolic values in nature and the human
environment.
Concept genius loci
In Norberg-Schulzs description of the genius loci, as well as in his own use of the concept, four
thematic levels can be recognized: the topography of the earths surface; the cosmological light
conditions and the sky as natural conditions; buildings; symbolic and existential meanings in the
cultural landscape.
1. The natural conditions of a place are understood as being based on features in the topographical
landscape, including a cosmological and temporal perspective that includes continual changes of light and
vegetation in the annual cycle. These characteristic rhythmic fluctuations contrast with the stability of
physical form. This is the genius loci as a place in nature that we have to interpret when we are changing
our built environment (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, pp. 2532).
2. Norberg-Schulz gives a special place in this conception of the genius loci to natural conditions,
distinguishing three basic landscape characters: romantic, cosmic and classical (Norberg-Schulz, 1980;
1985, p. 48). These are also understandable as ideal types.

3. Both buildings and the symbolic meaning of a settlement are important for the genius loci concept as
expressions of societys cultural interpretation of place. Norberg-Schulzs analyses range from visual
impressions to the lived or experienced realm.
4. His four methodological stagesimage, space, character and genius lociillustrate peoples
experience of the physical environment. His aim, however, is to achieve the atmosphere, light conditions
and sense-related experiences of the genius loci.
5. Nature, he feels, is the basis for peoples interpretation and it is in relation to nature that places and
objects take on meaning. He discusses the way in which morphological and cosmic connections are given
physical expression in societys dwelling and living. He seeks meaning and symbolic function by
understanding the systematic pattern of the settlement. In summary, Norberg-Schulz conceives of
peoples life world as a basis for orientation and identity (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 203; 1985, pp. 15
25).
JANE JACOBS Death & Life of great American cities
Part 1
Jacobs briefly explains influential ideas in orthodox planning, starting from Howards Garden city, indeed
a set of self-sufficient small towns, ideal for all but those with a plan for their own lives. Concurrently,
City Beautiful was developed to sort out the monuments from the rest of the city, and assemble them in a
unit. Later Le Corbusier devised the Radiant City, composed of skyscrapers within a park. Jacobs argues
that all these are irrelevant to how cities work, and therefore moves on to explain workings of cities in the
first part of the book.
She explores the three primary uses of sidewalks: safety, contact, and assimilating children. Street safety
is promoted by pavements clearly marking a public/private separation, and by spontaneous protection
with the eyes of both pedestrians and those watching the continual flow of pedestrians from buildings. To
make this eye protection effective at enhancing safety, there should be an unconscious assumption of
general street support when necessary, or an element of trust. As the main contact venue, pavements
contribute to building trust among neighbors over time. Moreover, self-appointed public characters such
as storekeepers enhance the social structure of sidewalk life by learning the news at retail and spreading
it. Jacobs argues that such trust cannot be built in artificial public places such as a game room in a
housing project. Sidewalk contact and safety, together, thwart segregation and racial discrimination.
A final function of sidewalks is to provide a non-matriarchy environment for children to play. This is not
achieved in the presumably safe city parks - an assumption that Jacobs seriously challenges due to the
lack of surveillance mechanisms in parks. Successful, functional parks are those under intense use by a
diverse set of companies and residents. Such parks usually possess four common characteristics:
intricacy, centering, sun, and enclosure. Intricacy is the variety of reasons people use parks, among them
centering or the fact that parks have a place known as their centers. Sun, shaded in the summer, should be
present in parks, as well as building to enclose parks.
Jacobs then explores a city neighborhood, tricky to define for while it is an organ of self-governance, it is
not self-contained. Three levels of city neighborhoods; city, districts, and streets, can be identified. Streets
should be able to effectively ask for help when enormous problems arise. Effective districts should
therefore exist to represent streets to the city. City is the source of most public money from federal or
state coffers.
Part 2

Given the importance of all kinds of diversity, intricately mingled in mutual support, part two of the book
explains the conditions for city diversity or the economic workings that produce lively cities. First,
districts must serve more than one primary function to ensure presence of people using the same common
facilities at different times. Second, blocks should be short, to increase path options between points of
departure and destinations, and therefore enhance social and as a result economic development. Third,
buildings should be at varying ages, accommodating different people and businesses which can afford
different levels of rents. Fourth, there should be a dense concentration of people, including residents, to
promote visible city life. It is important that all of these four conditions are necessary to generate
diversity, and absence of each one would result in homogeny and ultimately dullness.
Jacobs refutes the myths about disadvantages of diversity presented in orthodox planning. First she argues
that diversity does not innately diminish visual order. Conversely, homogeny or superficially diverselooking homogeneous areas lack beauty. Moreover, diversity is not the root cause of traffic congestions,
which is caused by vehicles and not people in themselves. Lively, diverse areas encourage walking.
Diversity is not permissive to ruinous uses- if defined correctly- either. A category of uses contributing
nothing to a districts general convenience, such as junk yards, grow in unsuccessful spots. In fact, to
make these areas successful and thereby dispose of such ruinous uses, diversity should be enhanced. A
second category of conceived ruinous uses such as bars and theaters are a threat in grey areas, but not
harmful in diverse city districts. The final category includes parking lots, large or heavy truck depots, gas
stations, gigantic outdoor advertising and enterprises harmful due to their wrong scale in certain streets.
Jacobs suggests that exerting controls on the scale of street frontage permitted to a use would alleviate
such a use.
Part 3
Part three of the book is designated to analyzing four forces of decline and regeneration in city cycles:
successful diversity as a self-destructive factor, deadening influence of massive single elements in cities,
population instability as an obstacle to diversity growth, and effects of public and private money.
Self destruction of outstanding successful districts occurs by ousting less affluent dwellers and
businesses, to replace them with more affluent or profitable ones, probably as the multiplication of those
already existing in that district. This not only erodes the variety of dwellers and businesses as the base for
diversity in that specific district, but also has a cross-effect on the diversity of other localities by
depriving them from such profitable businesses and affluent residents needed for mutual support. Massive
single facilities such as railroad tracks, enormous parks, and college campuses create vacuums in areas
immediately next to their borders because such areas (adjoining borders) are a terminus of generalized
use. Jacobs suggests to figure out border-line cases, such as special park uses (chess or checker
pavilions), in order to blend the border and the immediate neighboring area together and yet keep the city
as city and the massive element (such as the park) as itself.
Population instability is the third factor in the life cycle of cities. For instance, the reason that slums
remain slums is the unstable population of residents there, ready to get out when they have the choice.
Therefore, Jacobs suggests that the real slumming process, as opposed to slum shifting through renewal
projects or slum immuring practices of orthodox planning, is to make slum dwellers desire to stay and
develop neighborhoods. This could possibly be done by gradual incremental monies which make
continual improvements in the quality of lives of individual residents of slums.
The last factor is public and private money. Jacobs argues that money has its limitations, incapable of
buying inherent success for cities lacking the success factors. She classifies money into 3 forms: credit
extended by traditional, non-governmental lending institutions, money provided by government through

tax receipts or borrowing power, and money from the underworld of cash and credit. Jacobs argues that
despite the differences, these three kinds of money behave similarly in one regard: They shape
cataclysmic, rather than gradual, changes in cities. She matches the cycles in city districts with these
types of money: First the withdrawal of all conventional money, then ruination financed by shadowworld money; then selection of the area by the Planning Commission as a candidate for cataclysmic use
of government money to finance renewal clearance. These cataclysmic monies, in the absence of gradual
money, waste city districts which are indeed fit for city life and possess a potential for rapid
improvements.
Part 4
Part four of the book is dedicated to effective tactics to actually improve city performance. These include:
subsidized dwellings, attrition of automobiles as opposed to erosion of cities by cars, improvement of
visual order without sacrificing diversity, salvaging projects, and redesigning governing and planning
districts.
Jacobs suggests subsidized dwellings be offered to those who cannot afford normal housing. Unlike the
current practice in which the government acts as the landlord, these people can and should be housed by
private enterprises in regular buildings, not projects. The government guarantees a rent to the landlords.
Tenants pay subsidized rents, calculated based on their income level, and the government pays the
difference. This way, under circumstances that tenants incomes increase, they are not forced to leave, for
their rents would be adjusted. Therefore, diversity would be enhanced by keeping those wishing to remain
at their choice. Tenants might be encouraged to stay by letting them own the house gradually, after years
of paying rents. Jacobs admits that there are potentials for corruption, but argues that corruption grows as
the target of corruption remains unchanged. Thus, she suggests that methods of subsidized dwelling be
revised and varied every eight or ten years.
Cities offer multiple choices. However, one cannot take advantage of this fact without being able to get
around easily. Thus, accommodating city transportation is important, and this should not destroy the
related intricate and concentrated land use. She proposes tactics of giving room to other desired city uses
which compete with automobile traffic needs such as widening sidewalks for street displays which would
narrow the vehicular roadbed and thereby automatically reduce car use, and traffic congestion. Jacobs
argues that visual cohesiveness should not be regarded as a goal. She stresses the importance of the visual
announcement that a high number of streets would make by picturing an intense life. On the down side, if
such streets go on and on to the distance, the intricacy and intensity of the foreground appears to be
repeated infinitely. Therefore the endless repetition and continuation should be hampered, by introducing
visual irregularities and interruptions into the city scene, such as irregular street patterns with bends,
special buildings, etc.
Finally Jacobs argues that cities are a problem of organized complexity. Unlike simple two-variable or
disorganized-complexity problems of statistical randomness, problems of organized complexities are
composed of numerous interrelated factors. Therefore, horizontal structures in city planning would work
better than vertical structures, which aim at oversimplifying problems of such complexity