Urban Identity and Collective Memory

 

Piazza San Marco, Venice (photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash)

 
During a recent, spirited round of Swedish death cleaning here in my home, I came across a brief essay I wrote in 1983 during my final year at the University of Oregon. The paper, titled Urban Identity and Collective Memory, was an assignment for Professor Rosaria Hodgdon’s class ARCH 441G – Critical Issues in the Urban Environment. Reflecting on it now, I recognize my naïve idealism and pedantic tone. My generalization about American attitudes towards urbanism was cartoonish. That said, I believe the core theme remains relevant, particularly its exploration of the relationship between the individual and the collective within our cities.
 
Influenced by cultural shifts, growing environmental awareness, and the political ideologies of the early 1980s, I grappled with the tension between individualism and collectivism. Today, while there is a strong emphasis on community and sustainability, I feel a fundamental belief in the power of architecture to shape social interactions and community life is increasingly absent from architectural education, overwhelmed by an exponentially broadening range of other concerns.
 
My perspective has evolved over the past four-plus decades, but I remain convinced of the importance of individuals coming together with a shared understanding of what constitutes a healthy urban environment. Maybe the 20-something me wasn’t so naïve after all.
 
Urban Identity and Collective Memory
The meaning of the term “urban” often eludes those of us who were indoctrinated with anti-urban, agrarian, and Jeffersonian sensibilities, and raised in that antithesis of the city—the homogenous bedroom suburb. Most Americans do not understand what it is to belong to the polis, to contribute to and share the rewards of collective agreement, much less understand the place and function of architecture within a complex city structure. The frontier mentality persists, encouraging everyone to stake their own claim on the land. It is the individual that is stressed and not the collective. Many consider “urban” and “urbanity” as abstract concepts, the domain of politicians, sociologists, and planners, rather than architects.
 
There is a risk in so simplistic a characterization of American attitudes; nevertheless, it serves the point I am making. This is that we too often hesitate to share ourselves, to be active participants in the life of the collective, and yet it is public agreement and celebration of that which is shared that ensures a vital city. Rob Krier suggests that we might almost infer in the city the existence of a kind of social ritual which provides a perfect match between the individual and the collective. To Krier, Aldo Rossi, and many others, being “urban” means being both—to be part of a community.
 
Rossi would say that all of us belong and contribute to the collective memory of the city, and that it is in the architecture of the city that we find this memory. Architecture is the stage for, as well as a participant in, the drama of human events. The city is one large piece of architecture. For Krier, “urban space” is the operative term. Urban space is of the city, and it is either internal/private or external/public. Jose Ortega y Gasset spoke of the city as a product of the street and square, the basic elements of urban space. To him the polis started as an empty space, the architecture of the city being the means of fixing that empty space and limiting its outlines. A public square, thanks to the fabric that defines it, sets itself in opposition to the countryside. The fabric is the architectural fact of urban space, and it is the interplay between architectural fact and urban effect that is of interest to Vincent Scully, among others.
 
Architecturally, individual buildings have a responsibility to the collective urban scene. At their best, they display an enthusiasm for the public life. The Piazza San Marco is a good example of a public urban space. Kevin Lynch calls the piazza a “node,” a strategic focus for the city. It sets itself in sharp contrast to the general character of Venice and to the narrow, twisted spaces of its immediate approaches. The piazza is highly structured architecturally, but as Robert Venturi noted, the consistent spatial order is not without contradictions in scale and texture.
 
J.N.L. Durand wrote “Just as the walls, the columns, etc. are the elements which compose buildings, so buildings are the elements which compose cities.” As a corollary to this, we can say that while it is the particular that characterizes the individual, it is individuals that form the collective. The Venetians have an urban sense, and the Piazza San Marco is evidence: It is full of everyday life, people, activities, and history. The piazza is the city’s living room. If we could muster a fraction of the enthusiasm for the city that the Venetians have for theirs, both we and our architecture would be more surely urban.
 
RN/1983