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 1on relations between individuals and social groups: The city cannot thoughbe reduced to the organization of either of these relations. Lefebvre poses thecity mid-way between the order of individual practice (l’ordre proche) andthe structure of society (l’ordre lointain), and describes the city as amediation that in many ways is analogous to language. 81 The ‘mediation’refers not only to the city’s scale-wise in-between position, but to thatproduction of the oeuvre (the city), or urban transformation, should be seenas a dialectic between the far order and the near order (structure andpractice).(3) The city as a work (an oeuvre) – not product: Lefebvre describes the cityas a work (oeuvre), similar to a work of art, formed by collective life. A work(oeuvre) is different from a pure material product (produit): The productionof cities and of social relations within cities implies continuous productionand reproduction of human beings through human beings. 82 The productoeuvredistinction points at both the process of origination, and the way bothof them operate: An oeuvre is created (like nature creates), and thereby it hassomething unique and irreplaceable about it. A product, on the other hand,can be reproduced exactly; it is the result of repetitive acts and procedures.And while a product can be consumed and spent, an oeuvre is lived andthereby relates itself to processes of creativity, in the same manner asperception of an oeuvre d’art is a creative and productive activity. 83Lefebvre’s discussions of urban morphology are based in a theory of forms: 84Forms are derived from differences of content and in turn codify the practiceswithin which a particular content operates. Their emptiness gives them agreat versatility and capacity for renewal and combination. Thus, forinstance, the form of the Greek polis and the Roman urbs come together inthe medieval city. To clarify the meaning of the concept form, Lefebvre uses81 “The city is a mediation among mediations. Containing the near order, it supports it; it maintains relations ofproduction and property; it is the place of their reproduction. Contained in the far order, it supports it; itincarnates it; it projects it over terrain (the site) and on a plan, that of immediate life; it inscribes it, prescribesit. A text in a context so vast and ungraspable as such except by reflection.” Ibid: p 10182 “And thus the city is an oeuvre, closer to a work of art than to a simple material product. If there isproduction of the city, and social relations in the city, it is a production of human beings by human beings,rather than a production of objects. The city has a history; it is the work of a history, that is, of clearly definedpeople and groups who accomplish this oeuvre, in historical conditions. Conditions which simultaneouslyenable and limit possibilities, they are never sufficient to explain what was born of them, in them, by them.”Ibid: p. 10183 “There is no oeuvre without a regulated succession of acts and actions, of decisions and conducts, messagesand codes. Nor can an oeuvre exist without things, without something to shape, without practico-materialreality, without a site, without a ‘nature’, a countryside, an environment. Social relations are achieved from thesensible. They cannot be reduced to this sensible world, and yet they do not float in the air, they do notdisappear into transcendence. If social reality suggests forms and relations, if it cannot be conceived in a wayhomologous to the isolated, sensible or technical object, it does not survive without ties, without attachment toobjects and things.” Ibid: p. 10384 He first developed such a theory in Logique formelle Logique dialectique, and later more particularly appliedto the urban in Right to the City (1965, ch.12)52