New Models of urban thinking and perspective Mathilde Marengo

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Implementing Advanced Knowledge

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Today’s cities, throughout the world, are no longer comparable to what the traditional models and theories describe them as. They are in fact much larger, and dispersed, not to mention growing at a much more rapid pace than ever before. They no longer have well defined borders, making it difficult to determine clearly what is - and what is not - part of the city. It seems therefore of interest to start searching for the characteristics and structure that define this urban dispersion, revisiting the former accepted models and theories, and translating them in a contemporary key.

To do so, it appears useful to select a territory where this change is strongly marked and expressed, so as to understand this change, and its paradigms, using this territory as a slide with which to go into the depth of – study under the microscope - this new urban conformation. A territory that is both associable to a single urban dispersion, but contemporarily, if one were to consider traditional models and theories, is referable to these, so as to understand not only the new urban dispersion, but comprehend the change that generated it.

A Mediterranean city?The Mediterranean on one hand is linked to a given image, a single image, in peoples’ minds, be they people who live it on a day to day basis, people who touch it with hand once in a while, or people who simply dream it. It has an identity that is expressed through diverse traditions, cultural elements, and people, all of which are contemporarily drawn together by this identity, but at the same time very different in their details.

At the same time the Mediterranean is a territory that offers a rich terrain, both in terms of quantity and quality, of what appeared to be associable, until now, to the traditional models and theories in relation to the urban context.

The in depth analysis of the Mediterranean therefore has the potential to bring to the light what is happening to the urban context, and what the new phenomenology linked to this change in fact is. Hence contributing to updating in some way the perception and the concepts linked to what in reality the city is today.

Could one consider this territory, with reference to what is happening in the urban context today, a city? Perhaps an extreme question, yet with respect to this situation and the apparent unlimited potential of growth of the world’s cities and their populations, it is also of interest to understand how far one can really stretch this concept of city. What is the limit?

New Models of urban thinking and perspective

Figure 1 - “8-bit Mediterranean”, Mathilde Marengo.Figure 2 - “Complexity”, Mathilde Marengo

Cover - “Changing perspectives”, Mathilde Marengo.

Although the Mediterranean was in the past, and continues to be in recent years, of great interest for studies in all disciplinary fields, it appears that maps of said territory do not exist, aside from environmentally based maps. In any case these are not sufficient to describe the elements that describe the city. There is therefore an interest to map this territory comprehensively. Towards the comprehension of what in reality composes the Mediterranean, and consequently what defines it, and in the face of such a complex territory, the choice was made to map the “layers” – agglomerations of typological elements that are associated to one another through their uses and social connotations - of this city separately. The aim is to finally understand if these elements, in a first moment singly, and then at a later stage collectively, through their superimposition, are sufficient to in fact consider the Mediterranean as a city.

Some of these layers are in fact associable to defining elements of the city, through consolidated theoretical elaborations on the topic, as for example the mobility networks placed in parallel to the definition proposed by Bauman suggesting the city be a field of relationships. However, in general, these analogies lack a certain urban intensity, making them slightly forced statements. Hence the decision to superimpose the diverse layers of the Mediterranean to see, if once united and recomposed, the shape of the city emerges.

The analogy once again seems forced; however - of great interest - a series of macro urban structures do emerge. Urban structures that in fact do have qualities and characteristics that are not associable to traditional models and theories of the city, but are recognisable as such: from the intensity of exchanges, to the density of population, built fabric and facilities associated

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to the urban habitat. In particular three structures, linked to four particular ways of living the territory of the Mediterranean have been identified. I have named these: the Vector City, or Through Fare City, a city that works as an elastic network, where people are continuously in movement; the Isolated City, or Extreme City, where disconnection generates extreme situations; the Back to Back City, or Magnetic City, where, although an exchange or connection does not appear so explicit or comprehensible, it is in fact very strong. These macro urban structures have been studied exclusively in the context of the Mediterranean coastline, however, if the field of observation is enlarged to include Eurpoe, the Middle East and Africa, new structures emerge through the combination of the already identified macro urban structures and the macro urban structures present in the territories added forming what could be called the In Between City, or Connective City, representing the city formed along the infrastructural routes connecting the Mediterranean city to the hinterland.

These structures have in fact been identified in diverse research initiatives carried out throughout the Mediterranean Region, researches which have served as the basis for the definition of these structural typologies, not merely related to geographical characteristics, but in particular related to the way these are lived, and consequently develop. In particular four research projects served as manifesto projects for the afore mentioned structures: PICity (Prati,

Figure 3 - Connected city, Mathilde Marengo

Peluffo and Ricci) and Hiper Catalunya (Gausa, Guallart and Muller) for the Vector city, Islands (Staniscia) for the Isolated City, and the Gibraltar Case (Poli and Zanfi) for the Magnetic city.

The above-mentioned structures emerge very clearly in the Northern Mediterranean Region, along with an important quantity of base research studies to solidify this proposal of structures. However in the Southern Mediterranean Region, this is not the case. The structures do not emerge so directly, and moreover the quantity of research done on this phenomenon is much less, and generally much less accessible. Therefore it is possible that with the further research and development of the Southern Mediterranean area, other structures could emerge.

Anyhow, in support of the development in knowledge relative to the city, these structures encountered already contribute to the debate, providing data from which to learn, rather than a solution to the debate, as it appears difficult to define characteristics of the contemporary urban fabric which are applicable globally. It is in fact more feasible to define diverse structural expressions of a phenomenon that is globally recognised as urban.

The Mediterranean, used as a tool and lense through which to observe and study the contemporary city proves fruitful towards the contribution to the ever actual debate on the contemporary city, offering the possibility of being a “laboratory” towards the generation of new models of urban thinking and perspective.

“The debate regarding the city is a potentially infinite discussion, as “the city is a subject apparently about everything. […] Without some sort of focus, or a framework applied to the ways in which we think about it, the city is a subject so all-embracing that any discussion about it becomes a discussion about everything - and so, in the end, about nothing” (Sudjic, 2007)

It seems to me difficult to define the Mediterranean as the body of a single city, first and foremost because it remains difficult to define the city itself.

Cities have exploded, not only in the Mediterranean context, and their growth has been uncontrollable, and this moreover appears to be a process that is still well under way. A study conducted by a group of researchers from Yale, Stanford and Arizona State Universities and directed by Karen Seto shows that by 2030 cities will have grown by 1.5 million square kilometres, to answer the needs of 1.47 billion new inhabitants who will be living in urban areas.

In this optic, with reference to the Mediterranean coastal conurbation as a lense through which to look at and study the contemporary urban phenomenon, Luca Galofaro suggests “the Mediterranean is the metaphor of the contemporary urban situation” and more importantly, it embodies “a real possibility of coexistence” (interview with the author).

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This coexistence is based on the solid relationships developed in diverse fields over time. Ricci reminds us, in his quest to understanding the particularity of the Mediterranean urban phenomenon, that Bauman describes the city as a field of relationships. With respect to this Ricci feels that these relationships “need to have an intensity useful to urban life” to be amenable to a context of city, and that in this respect “the Mediterranean could be considered a city around a large void” (interview with the author). Manuel Gausa also feels the same way, specifically with regard to the Mediterranean coastline, that “is starting to function with a certain density of intense relationships and exchanges” (interview with the author), with the implementation and easy access to mobility infrastructure being the factor playing a major role to this end. This factor inevitably brings with it an increment in the scale of the distances we are happy to travel in our everyday lives, and consequently the scale of what we accept to define as the city we live in, thus becoming, as Tomas Diez suggests “the producers of the city” (interview with the author). Bernard Tschumi tells us the story of how in a matter of days he has set foot in, and lived some of the globe’s most prominent centres, creating for him a situation where “mobility completely chanhes the way I see the city” (interview of Bernard Tschumi with Areti Markopoulou and Manuel Gausa). Perhaps in this case, and in that of the Mediterranean, the term “multi-city” suggested by Manuel Gausa, represents something closer to the reality we are observing; a multi-city of macro urban structures.

The structures that emerge when studying the Mediterranean consist in three different structures, that are not limited to the mere geographical descriptions of these contexts, but rather the ways in which the users of these structures live them. Moreover, when widening the context observed to include Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the emergence of a possible fourth structure, connecting those observed in the Mediterranean coastal region to macro urban structures in the three continents.

As mentioned previously, it is difficult to define the Mediterranean as the body of a single city; keeping, however, the focus on the Mediterranean coastal urban system, projecting this vision into the future, and basing oneself on the prevision of continuous urban growth, both in size and population - processes already well underway in the Eastern parts of the Mediterranean -, a map has been elaborated to pin down a vision of what the Mediterranean multi-city of the future could be look like. Inspired by the Google Maps programmers 2012 April Fools joke on the people of the world, transforming the Google Map tool into an 8-bit viewing system of the globe, and in line with the concept of a new urban perspective, the map gives a conceptual vision of the Mediterranean multi-city, or the multi city coast, showing the potential future of the Mediterranean as a city.Figure 4 - Italia, la più bella “città” del mondo.

Living HubsFrom this observation of the Mediterranean and the intense debate on the contemporary urban phenomenon, it is evident that the concept of city no longer refers to traditional models, rather to something much broader and far reaching. In parallel to the extension of the concept of city to a global, networked and mega scale, this concept comes closer to what in fact the Mediterranean is. This has been demonstrated throughout this research project, generating a change in perspective when dealing with the Mediterranean and the way we envisage its potential future.

With the change of the city-scape the definition of the city itself has changed as well. Perhaps not enough to define the Mediterranean as a city, but coming closer to what the Mediterranean in fact is. And possibly in this sense what Areti Markopoulou suggests is not far from the truth: “I feel that it is very probable that the term “city” itself will become obsolete, and we move towards the use of terms such as ‘urban hubs’, or ‘living hubs’ ” (interview with the author), terms that I feel closely enough define the urban phenomenon present today on the Mediterranean coastline.

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Pujades 10208005 Barcelona, SpainT +34 933 209 520F +34 933 004 333ana.martinez@coac.netwww.iaac.net

Institut for Advanced Architecture of CataloniaBarcelona

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IAAC SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:Nader Tehrani, Architect, Director MIT School Architecture, BostonJuan Herreros, Architect, Professor ETSAM, MadridNeil Gershenfeld, Physic, Director CBA MIT, BostonHanif Kara, Engineer, Director AKT, LondonVicente Guallart, Architect, Chief City Arquitect of BarcelonaWilly Muller, Director of Barcelona RegionalAaron Betsky, Architect & Art Critic, Director Cincinnati Art Mu seum, Cincinnati Hugh Whitehead, Engineer, Director Foster+ Partners technology, LondonNikos A. Salingaros, Professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio Salvador Rueda, Ecologist, Director Agencia Eco logia Urbana, BarcelonaArtur Serra, Anthropologist, Director I2CAT, Barcelona

Copyright © 2014Institute for Advanced Architecture of CataloniaAll rights Reserved.

PUBLISHED BY:Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia

ISSN 2339 - 8647

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EDITORIAL TEAMManuel Gausa, IaaC DeanMathilde Marengo, Communication & PublicationJordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator

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