Reading Socio-Spatial Interplay - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i ...

R E A D I N G S O C I O - S P A T I A L I N T E R P L A Y P A R T 1neighbourhood planning, etc. They both give elaborate descriptions of howsuch planning principles has caused loss of essential urban qualities – as aloss of repertoires of encounter situations that again have brought about alack of potentials for getting a fulfilled life for dislocated people (Lefebvre),and a loss of spatial continuity related to aspects of architecture as a culturalstructure and a carrier of the collective memory (Rossi).Both Rossi and Lefebvre apply a structural approach to urbantransformation. Transformation of urban structures is seen as a necessaryprecondition for all modern societies in change, and as a characteristic aspectof the dynamic role of cities in the development of societies through history.Their answers to the critique of modernist urban planning can be read asarguments for more sophisticated approaches for understanding both thecomplexity of the city, urban dynamics, and the dialectics at work in urbantransformation.Rossi’s main focus is on the production of architecture and how theproduction of architecture is related to culture and society. Lefebvre’s mainfocus is on the production of social space and how social formation throughindividual socio-spatial practice is related to production of architecture anddevelopment of society. As I see it there are more useful connections anddiscrepancies than overlaps and conflicts in their approaches to the city andits architecture. I will therefore carry out a comparative discussion of theapproaches of Rossi and Lefebvre in order to set out a basis for discussinghow architectural analysis of differences and discrepancies within the urbanstructure can inform studies of processes of socio-cultural urbantransformation.First, I shall focus on the specificities of “urban form”, as described byhence Lefebvre and Rossi. The reasons for doing so are the following:1) A first identification of the essential characteristics of urban form,understood as a synthesis of urban life and urban environments, can later beused as a basis for discussing stability and transformation: what are theessential characteristics of urban form even when the content has beenchanged?2) A first discussion of correspondence between concepts, approaches andcontents in their writings can later be used to establish connections betweendifferent aspects of how new patterns in socio-spatial situations aredeveloped in relation to previously produced patterns. In this way relatedconcepts may give methodological points of entry to empirical investigationsof manifestations of practices.50