The Backdrop of Social Interaction - Essay Example

Urban Space & Other Areas: Social Construction Zone—Inventing Urban Space Urban space as the backdrop of social interaction evolves with the times associal, technological, economic, cultural and political variables change in varying degrees. Its landscapes reflect the values, the social behavior as well as individual actions of people that constitute it and that the contrived environment itself is regarded as the outcome of the relationship between society and space. In addition to this, they also reflect the way urban spaces are controlled in order to achieve developmental and survival objectives. For example, the medieval cities would always be surrounded by walls which primarily represented a need to shelter communities from outside intervention and influence. The controlled environment is evident in the way the city center became regulated environments and the communities outside of the wall are populated by heretics, foreign exiles and other misfits, thriving in black market trade (Bridge and Watson 2010, 266). Here, one sees how different kinds of people gravitate towards different urban areas. Today, it is widely accepted that the urban space is a public space. This phenomenon was aptly ushered in by Edward Allan Poe’s literary works in the nineteenth century that wrote a characterization of things and people in urban America as well as the competitive market economy in such a way that present an environment wherein people could act any roles without jeopardizing the personal aspect of their lives. Modernization and the Urban Space According to Renza (2002) the increase in commercialization, bureaucratic and industrial innovations contributed much in producing an impersonal public sphere that changed how social privacy is conceived. This is demonstrated in the way how market economy has transformed the urban landscape. Renza explained: Transportation changes, in particular railroad expansion after 1830, and telegraph linkages between cities (begun around 1844) reduced people’s perceived sense of private versus public spaces… building public thruways, bridges, wharfs and even parks involved the expropriation of preexisting rights, usages, and expectations… requiring the techniques of the well-regulated societies (60). The highways in modern urban setting became the equivalent of the medieval “walls” previously cited, functioning as boundaries that separate the rich from the poor or a race from another race. As a consequence of this development, the suggestion of new ethos emerged – specifically to deal with the values and social anxieties that the phenomenon entailed. This ethos was supposedly a kind of “sincerity” in the relationship among individuals bred out of suspicions and private motivations that led to the introduction of “social-interactional codes and quasi-quarantined zones” (60). All in all, modernity was able to shape the new urban space in a way that resembles the pattern of past periods. The main principle at work here is that space is affected by elements of social organization, particularly economics, culture, politics and ideological values. Change Initiatives There are urban designers who attempt to directly effect change or build contrived urban environments. This is often in response to a problem and is considered a part of the urban design discipline. For example, with the aim to change the divisive nature in which cities are built with its network of roads and areas for class and ethnicity, the remodeling of the pedestrian has been adopted by many cities. The idea is to homogenize urban space by transforming pedestrian zones into shopping malls or by combining the complex requirements of production and consumption instead of an exclusive use for either one. It is expected that such transformation in pedestrians could contribute to the enhancement of the urban life. One of the excellent examples for this is the proposed ribbon geometry of urban pedestrians as developed by Pagliardini, Porta and Salingaros. This proposal has followed the so-called simple rules of using the pedestrian space to invite diversity and homogenization and help to enliven the urban landscape. Some of these are outlined below: A city’s life is the direct result of pedestrians using its public urban spaces. Urban space is an open container for crisscrossing footpaths, protected from, but at the same time connected to all other forms of transportation. Urban space also provides the setting for the crucial human contact with nature. The function of building fronts is to enhance the enclosure and informational properties of urban space (2). The transformation of the pedestrians underscores the need for cities and its managers to provide urban spaces. This is important because these areas help define and direct the movements of people, vehicles, goods as well as information, among other related variables. Salingaros et al., stressed that such initiatives encourages homogenization by creating a healthy mix of social classes to occur and, in the process, establish living urban fabric that is harmonized with architectural and engineering considerations (3). Certainly, this is also the principle behind the redevelopment of brown field areas that suffered with the decline of industrialization. A case in point is the massive redevelopment efforts of East London for the 2011 Olympic Games. While, the primary aim of the feverish construction being undertaken on the site is for the global sporting event, the redevelopment is part of the wider and longer-term strategy of the city of London to resuscitate its declining areas by providing excellent and sustainable urban space that will attract diverse group of residents and visitors. One of the most interesting perspectives on urban space in the context of social construction is that argument posited by Kevin Lynch and Gary Hack (1984) wherein they linked space to openness. To quote: The openness of open space is not a matter of how few buildings stand on it but rather whether it permits the freely chosen actions of its users. Openness is a product of physical character but also of access, ownership and management: the rules and expectations that govern activity (325). In Lynch and Hack’s commentary one is treated to a differing attitude in regards to how spaces, particularly in the way urban setting should be treated as a public arena wherein they are not constrained or forced to do and act according to some convention or rules. This particular kind of space in the discourse of socio-cultural nature does not actually translate into emptiness, which connotes non-use, but instead it prescribes freedom. In a way, this claim by Lynch and Hack are reasonable and quite legitimate. The urban space should be free for all in the sense that people should not be restricted in their movements. Somehow this conception of space especially in the urban setting coincide with Jacob’s (1996) claim that today the social construction of the urban space is part of the machinery of imperialism wherein space becomes evaluated and overlain with desire, the creation of landscapes and environments carved from alien territories at the same time establishing ordered grids of occupation (158). However, some observers posit that such ideal may not be preferable because the freedom conceived may lead to conflict. For example, Rotenbergh and McDonogh (1993) argued that a space must be categorized by its social structure and that constraints are necessary even at least through some physical characteristics, citing the argument that defining space means making it distinct so that there is a precise nature for it (4). The above issue is demonstrated in the redevelopment of the urban zone by socio-cultural and even political and economic variables. For example, this is demonstrated in the rebirth of the Broadway commercial zone in New York. The resurgence of the area has been mainly due to the way immigrant Latinos have reintroduced “an active street culture into a built environment which had remained obdurate since the 1920s and 1930s” (Darder 1995, 135) This example shows how diverse communities that emerged as an offshoot of globalization, the increasing integration of global market and the increased movements of people, have greatly impacted in the way culture flourishes in urban spaces today. Here, one can see how the user of the public space can actually shape how it is perceived and, eventually, dictate the appropriation of the area. Out of this development, the dominant culture is now complaining that the entire system within is on the loose. There is a clamor for control based on the argument that it could be chaotic and adverse to the society. Whatever the outcome of this controversy, there remains the fact that diversity and multi-ethnicity in the urban space contributes to the sense of freedom that is characterized by different cultural symbols and practices that continue to influence how public space is nowadays. This is very important, according to Darder, because social transformation is “inherently connected to the creative capacity of everyday life, language, and space which serve to reconstruct social relations (135-136). Conclusion The way the processes of modernization and globalization have impacted how cities are built today - along with the lifestyle, culture and values of its inhabitants - highlight how spaces are, first and foremost, socially, economically and culturally constructed. The specific and conscious aim of the contemporary urban space designers to encourage diversity and homogenization, as demonstrated in the initiatives mentioned by this paper, reflects this argument. Particularly, the success of the cities on the verge of degeneration to rehabilitate previously declining areas drives home the point. In the end, the important lesson here is that urban space is not only reflective of the socio-cultural, economic or political atmosphere of a given community but also, it is pivotal in the survival and development of a city because it is one of the enabling and nourishing factors that can help address problems faced by urbanization. Works Cited Bridge, Gary and Watson, Sophie. The Blackwell City Reader. Malden: John Wiley and Sons, 2010. Darder, Antonia. Culture and difference: critical perspectives on the bicultural experience in the United States. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995. Jacobs, Jane. Edge of Empire: postcolonialism and the city. London: Routledge, 1996. Lynch, Kevin and Hack, Gary. Site planning. MIT Press, 1984. Pagliardini, Pietro, Porta, Sergio and Salingaros, Nikos. "Geospatial analysis and living urban geometry." In Bin Jian and Xiaobai Angela Yao (eds.) Geospatial Analysis and Modeling of Urban Environments: Structure and Dynamics. New York: Springer, 2009. Renza, Louis. Edgar Allan Poe, Wallace Stevens, and the poetics of American privacy. LSU Press, 2002. Rotenber, Robert. The Cultural Meaning of Urban Space. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1993. Read More