Soft Urbanism @ University Dortmund

Soft Urbanism stands for an interdisciplinary field of work that examines the “soft” aspects, the communication aspects, of the city and deals with the dynamic interplay of urban planning and the space of mass media and communication networks, for example with information and communication processes in public space.

Publication Soft Urbanism @ Stadperspektiven, University Dortmund, Germany, 1 September 2008

Hybrid
Space

In October 1999, ReBoot, a ship equipped as a media laboratory, sailed from Cologne to Amsterdam. Eighty artists, musicians, architects, urbanists and media collectives spent a week on the ship exploring the space of the river along the route. At the ports where the ship docked, events such as concerts, guided tours, lectures and art projects took place, involving the local public and local actors. The projects were broadcast on local television stations and on the internet. At the same time, the ship was connected through internet links to a number of spaces along the river, such as clubs. This resulted in exciting interactions between physical and digital space.

Along the Rhine, this archetypal symbol of the network, in the “heterotopia par excellence” of the ship (Foucault, 1967), an intensive, creative atmosphere of exchange and partly telematic collaboration arose in the project. A hybrid, translocal space emerged that could not be localized in one place, but was the result of the interaction and connection of all these physical and media spaces. ReBoot was a transformer for the generation of a hybrid, combined analog-digital, urban landscape. (see fig. 1)

The term “hybrid” space stands for this interplay of media and physical spaces. Examples of such hybrid spaces can be found everywhere in our everyday lives, in the communication spaces of mobile telephony, which creates private islands in public space, in urban space, which is controlled with the help of monitors, or in real estate, which, like the car (connected car), becomes an interface between real space and virtual networks.

The urban sociologist Manuel Castels contrasts these media spaces, these information and communication networks, which he calls the “space of flows”, with the “space of places”, the local urban location (Castels, 1996, 376-428). More interesting than this distinction and polarization, however, is the interplay between media and urban spaces of interaction.

War, economy, culture and politics determine the space of our physical existence, but increasingly take place in medial spaces, in information and communication networks. Medialization and thus also globalization have a serious impact on contemporary urban-architectural developments. With the help of a holistic approach – that of hybrid space – it is possible to develop physical objects and urban-architectural spaces in context and in interaction with media networks and systems.

Within this new hybrid, combined physical and media urban landscape, the traditional concepts of spatial differentiation lose their validity. An emerging field of work known as “soft urbanism”, which develops architecture and the city holistically with information and communication networks and media spaces, proposes categories and tools to guide and develop this new network urbanity.

Soft
Urbanism

In the context of architecture’s task of defining and materializing the spaces of social interaction, the design of relationships and interfaces between physical and medial public space is becoming an ever-greater challenge.

Soft Urbanism stands for an interdisciplinary field of work that examines the “soft” aspects, the communication aspects, of the city and deals with the dynamic interplay of urban planning and the space of mass media and communication networks, for example with information and communication processes in public space.

Beyond the planning of interfaces, soft urbanism pursues an alternative “softer” planning approach: the decisive factor here will be that planners abandon their fixation on permanent and material objects and recognize the importance of infrastructure as a fundamental prerequisite for urban organizational processes. Soft urbanism intervenes at the level of infrastructure and is also guided by the paradigm of infrastructure. By providing networks and interfaces, new planning and design areas are to be opened up and (political-planning, social, etc.) self-organization processes are to be initiated.

The aim is to create frameworks that allow and promote a variety of developments. Following biological models, soft urbanism unfolds the hybrid public space as a field of interplay between plural forces. In this way, new strategies are developed that make it possible to introduce the engagement with an expanded, i.e. simultaneously urban and medial, public space into urbanism.

In today’s urban agglomerations, we are dealing with a polycentric model in which various cores and nodes have emerged in a network. Such an understanding of the urban system as a multidimensional network – with physical and media connections – helps us to deal with the complexity of fragmented urban landscapes.

The complexity of the urban landscape does not only refer to its morphologies, to the complex patterns of the figure-ground plan. The transformation processes of these urban structures, which must be taken into account in order to control urban reality in terms of qualitative development, are also complex.

The further development of complexity theory, “network science” (Watts, 2003), which focuses on networks, makes it possible to understand the development and impact of complex systems in the real world, as with X-ray vision. Such a view, based on the network paradigm, could help to understand the topological relationships that drive the development of the highly complex urban landscape, in order to have a guiding influence.

Soft urbanism, as a holistic view of urbanity, is important for the city in transition, both in the context of shrinkage and in growth regions.

Soft
Strategies

Half a century of peace in Western Europe, demographic developments and the accelerated globalization of the movement of people and capital have expanded the field of work and tasks for architects and planners. The self-image of Germany’s architects, which dates back to the post-war era of rapid construction and growth, is currently being called into question.

Today, when the focus is no longer on the extensive expansion of the city, it helps to discard the outdated fixation on growth and construction and to develop a holistic view that takes into account the entire space of the urban landscape, that includes not only the built-up but also the undeveloped areas, not only the physical-architectural but also the digital-media spaces in the transformation processes of the urban.

In times of a crisis of centralized planning, other processes of urban development are gaining relevance. This crisis of planning is a crisis of state institutions and is exacerbated and accelerated by the financial emergencies of local authorities. At the same time, however, this crisis is a crisis of faith in the feasibility of the world and mastery of the urban.

In the vacuum created by this crisis, the emergence andempowerment of a large number of social actors becomes visible. In communicative processes, including with the help of new media, they are appropriating the classic tasks of state spatial planning. In this way, the linear processes of centralized planning give way to decentralized, network-like control. In Anglo-Saxon, this change is referred to as the transition from government to governance.

At a time when urban development geared towards growth is coming to nothing due to a lack of demand, the tasks of “qualification”, quality improvement and the appropriation of our environment are becoming increasingly important. Today, it is less and less about providing new buildings and more and more about accompanying and controlling the growth, transformation and recycling cycles of the urban landscape. In a time of planning crisis, alternative, “soft”, flexible, process-oriented strategies ofsoft urbanism are being sought.

A series of thought models and project examples will illustrate the linkage and interaction of physical and virtual space and highlight aspects of soft urbanism and soft strategies.

Public
Media
Urban
Interfaces

We have formulated aspects of “soft”urbanism in the project “Public Media Urban Interfaces” (Sikiaridi/Vogelaar, 1997, 142-143). This project is simple and remains clear, yet it operates in a complex thematic connotation space. It is about thinking digital networks and physical space together, as spaces of social interaction. The “Public Media Urban Interfaces” project proposes to create a network of interfaces between urban and media space across the city. These interfaces are placed in public spaces and offer everyone access to the global media network. Unlike today’s media, such as television, the project conceives a network with abottom-upstructure, where processes from below have a chance to assert themselves in the media space.

The public interfaces between urban and media space developed in the “Public Media Urban Interfaces” project occupy the vacuum between the “local” and the “global”. These interfaces expand public space by accelerating local events and happenings and colliding with the global network (see Fig. 2).

Local (neighborhood) facilities in the form of combined analog-digital environments make it possible to interactively produce “messages” in a public urban space and disseminate them according to a dynamic editorial and broadcasting system. (see Fig. 3).

A protocol for the spatially graduated distribution ofmessages, made possible by an “airtime credit card” (“Air TimeSpace for All Smart Card”), supports the public dynamic structure of the network and equips the communication system with a self-organized heterarchy: Anyone could produce short TV spots here and thus articulate themselves telematically. The broadcasts would initially only be distributed in the local catchment area of the studio, i.e. in a neighborhood. However, this “airtime” could also be used to amplify a third-party “message” and thus give it greater (broadcasting) space if there is no desire to produce it yourself. Local broadcasts could thus be strengthened and then, beyond the local catchment area, temporarily penetrate more or less into the global media space: they could be received in several districts or regions, on a national or international level.

Small studios, which are set up and installed like boxes or passport photo machines in subway stations, next to laundrettes, petrol stations or even in district stores, act as spatial interfaces on a local neighborhood basis. Another spatial offering is the “Bridge Clubs” as larger mass event spaces of city-wide importance. They are not only used for broadcasting, but also combine the experience, selection and broadcasting of the spots with other uses such as congresses, events, games, media libraries, exhibitions etc..

This model was tested once in London: The result was 128 local terminals evenly distributed across central London, connected to eight larger public broadcasting stations located directly on the Thames: The larger broadcasting stations on the Thames (“Bridge Clubs”) would simultaneously form bridges between the wealthy north and impoverished south London (see Fig 4).

What is exciting about these studios and clubs is that they are hermaphrodites, i.e. ambivalent spaces that are simultaneously analogue and digital, virtual and material, haptic and abstract, global and local, and offer a playful framework for the self-organisation of the public sphere. These hybrid communication spaces form nodes in the network of a hybrid (urban and media) infrastructure.

Urban
Service
Design

Medialization modifies spatial hierarchies and changes the qualities of the built environment. Teleworking, for example, even if only for a few days a week, has consequences not only for the space available, but also for the structure, qualities and choice of location of office buildings, which are now increasingly expected to provide space for the communicative elements of everyday working life. At the same time, medialization is also reducing the need for built space. Nevertheless, in dealing with the problems of urban shrinkage, the expansion of media spaces to take over functions from the physical urban space is proposed: “Shrinking can be learned – for example by traveling to Scandinavia,” writes Elisabeth Niejahr in “ZEIT” and continues: “In May 2004, Brandenburg’s Minister President Matthias Platzcek visited sparsely populated Finland, where young people from remote villages already communicate with their teachers via video lessons and hospitals in the countryside have experts in Helsinki help them with difficult operations via video.” (Niejahr, 2004).

Media services are seen as a solution for infrastructure facilities that are underutilized and can therefore no longer be maintained. The use of mobile services is seen as a means of counteracting the thinning out of the social infrastructure network and thus ensuring quality of life for the more immobile sections of the population, senior citizens and poorer people in shrinking regions. The article just quoted mentions the movie projectionist who travels around the villages and the on-call bus that takes individual passengers to the place of their choice. Such models of combined mobile and media services are being tested in several regions in the west and east of Germany.

The project “Urban Service Design” (cf. Fig. 5) deals with this problem and develops typologies of services and concepts for urban hubs and for physical, media and mobile networks that serve them (Sikiaridi/Vogelaar, 2005, pp. 18-19).

Rooting
Routes

In the Dutch Randstad, the global player airport is growing without reference to its direct suburban surroundings, and even in conflict with them. The localities around Schiphol Airport bear the burden, but do not benefit from the “global condition” of their neighbor.

The project “Rooting Routes: weaving Schiphol-airport within its local fabric by the means of transit tourism” (see Fig. 6) uses the potential of transit tourism to interlink the airport with its surroundings. For transit passengers and business travelers arriving briefly at the airport for a few meetings, a series of short routes in the surrounding area is proposed. These thematic routes, which range from historical-didactic to nature routes to shopping safaris and also include sports activities, can also be covered by minibuses, water cabs or bicycles. These itinerary programs can be communicated, guided and directed using cell phones and other portable devices.

The “non-place” airport would thus gain identity through the local qualities of its surroundings. The surrounding districts and green spaces would benefit from the airport’s economic appeal. This interlocking of the transit space strengthens the airport’s function as an interface between the global and local space.

Neighbors
Network
City

In 2004, the “Neighbors Network City (NNC)” project was proposed for the Ruhr Network City as European Capital of Culture 2010. The NNC project activates both the urban and the medial public space. It develops scenarios for the interplay of urban space and mass media in order to strengthen the public space of the urban landscape of the Ruhr area, which is increasingly undergoing a process of segregation. The NNC project (as an inversion of CNN) is intended to unfold the urban network as an “open Gesamtkunstwerk” from the plurality of local forces.

NNC as an open project is to develop in the course of (sub-)projects that build on each other and are interwoven. The (sub-)project “We eat for the Ruhr” (see Fig. 7) takes up the motto of the Capital of Culture (“Food for the Ruhr”) and proposes a Ruhr-wide food for the Ruhr.

We eat
for the
Ruhrgebiet

On the longest day of the year, dinners are to be organized decentrally in the city districts by the residents and for the residents. Every stranger, whether hiker, tourist, vagrant, commuter or business traveler, is also cordially invited to join in and eat.

The tables are set in unused areas and wasteland. These boundaries of the urban systems are thus reinterpreted as communicative fringes. On this evening, the region’s music and theater ensembles will parade along the temporary route of food culture and provide small interludes at the festive tables. At the same time, the toast echoes throughout the region, spoken in different accents: “we eat for the Ruhrgebiet”!

The project intervenes at the level of perception and communication processes of urbanity; it aims to change and intensify these. Spaces are to be re-evaluated; new contacts, new relationships are to be developed and new positive signs are to be set.

The second meal for the Ruhrgebiet will take place at a long table on the A40/B1!

SubCity

Like no other urban landscape, the Ruhr region is defined by its underground, its sub_city. The course of the coal seams was decisive for this region, which first blossomed as a result of mining. Their course was followed, as above-ground phenomena and equivalents, by industrial settlement and thus also urbanization.

Like no other urban landscape, the Ruhr region is aware of this “primeval area” as the basis and motor of its development. Traumas and history(ies) have left their mark on the trenches; the groundwater is still there. As a result, this urban ground is often associated negatively in its ambiguity.

This common urban substrate needs to be reinterpreted and played with together.

“SubCity”, a ‘big urban computer game’ on a regional scale, which we propose as part of the NNC project, deals with the underground of the Ruhr area and populates it with the dreams and desires from which the region draws (see Fig. 8). The players, the residents and visitors of the Capital of Culture, simulate the underground of the city: they can develop underground cityscapes and populate them with their avatars and dreams.

People can populate the “SubCity”, the underground of the city, with their dreams and fantasies together, but also decentrally, using portable devices such as cell phones. At the landmark of the Ruhr area, the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex, the only open connection between the bustling city and its underground, players and visitors will be able to enter the “SubCity” play space as an interactive spatial simulation. The play space of the “SubCity” exhibition enables communication with the underground of wishes and dreams from which the city continues to draw and grow.

IdensityÂŽ

In the contradictory dynamics of today’s urban environment, with its conflicting tendencies towards concentration and decentralisation, functional mixing and segregation, the traditional concepts of spatial differentiation are losing their validity. New conceptual instruments are being sought in order to capture and control the merging, overlapping and interaction of medial and ‘real’ urban space. ‘Idensity®’ is a proposal for a conceptual tool to explore and develop space in the information/communication age.

The projects described above in this article intervene at the level of communication. They strengthen the identities of the urban landscape and intensify the communication processes of urbanity, consolidating urban networks. ‘Idensity®’, as a conceptual instrument for the development of the urban landscape, merges these concepts of identity and density of connections. It integrates the concept of ‘density’ (density of physical and media communication networks and infrastructure, density of connections, density of communication spaces) with the concept of identity (‘city image’ campaigns, branding, etc.).

It integrates the most important tasks in the context of urban landscape development: strengthening the (partial) identities of urban fragments and the ‘connection of urban systems’ (Sieverts, 2003, 49-51).

As an operational tool, ‘Idensity®’ can be used to steer urban development processes. Therefore, it can, for example, contribute to the understanding of processes of separation and spatial segregation between urban sub-areas that have characteristics of ‘global’ quality and that can be seen as part of a network of ‘global’ urbanity, as well as other, sometimes neighbouring (parts of) cities that are losing importance and disappearing from the (global) mental maps.

This new concept is introduced to understand and guide the overlapping and interaction of media and ‘real’ urban space. ‘Idensity®’ does not distinguish between information/communication networks and the urban built environment and offers an integrated model for dealing with hybrid (media and “real”) space in the information/communication age. It thus offers a tool for orientation within the newly emerging perspectives of the city.

Bibliography

Castells, Manuel: The Rise of the Network Society, Massachusetts/Oxford, 1996 (im Deutschen: Castells, Manuel: der Aufstieg der Netzwerkgesellschaft, Opladen, 2001)

Foucault, Michel: Des espaces autres (confĂŠrence au Cercle d’ĂŠtudes architecturales, 14 mars 1967). Als Dits et ĂŠcrits 1984 in Architecture, Mouvement, ContinuitĂŠ, n°5, Oktober 1984, S. 46-49.

Niejahr, Elisabeth: Mehr Wohlstand für alle – Die Deutschen werden weniger. Dies ist kein Grund zur Panik, sondern auch eine Chance. In „DIE ZEIT“, Nr. 43, 14.10.2004.

Sieverts, Thomas: Die Grenzen der Systeme. In „Deutsche Bauzeitung“ (db), 07/2003, Juli 2003.

Sikiaridi, Elizabeth and Vogelaar, Frans, Frans: Öffentliche Schnittstellen zwischen urbanem und medialem Raum. In „Mensch Masse Medien: Interaktion oder Manipulation“, Dokumentation des Internationalen Forums für Gestaltung Ulm 1996, Frankfurt a.M., 1997.

Sikiaridi, Elizabeth and Vogelaar, Frans: Architektur der Sukzession. Prozesse Entwerfen – Systeme Entwickeln. In „Deutsche Bauzeitung“ (db), 01/200, January 2005.

Watts, Duncan J.: Six Degrees, The Science of a Connected Age, London, 2003.

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