Gian Pablo @ ITP

I suspect that de Certeau’s initial idea, correspondence between spatial and linguistic navigation, can be taken further by referring to other domains. The use of spatial models in thinking has existed in some form for a long time, and is reflected in colloquial language: “I’ve been kicking an idea around in my head” etc. Renaissance “memory palaces”, the method of loci, enabled extraordinary feats of memory by identifying a text (or other critical information) with a mental map of an imagined city.

More recently, cognitive science and neuro-linguistic programming have established that thought does follow spatial patterns: we imagine the future ahead of us, the past behind us, memories to the left, suppositions and possibilities to the right. By shaping spatial behaviors, it is possible to shape mental habits!

This has an interesting implication: that patterns of navigation developed through walking the city might be reflected in new patterns of thought! The historical record suggests that this has been the case: Medieval cities were renowned as especially free places, where one could escape the constraints of the feudal overlords.

Unlike de Certeau, I believe that this is still true: cities, by richly satisfying human needs and allowing economic specialization, allow a degree of freedom of choice for most people that is far greater than non-urban living. Of course, a city dweller is living in a constructed environment, and the architects of that environment do hold considerable sway. However, the landlords of rural areas hold considerably greater power! Arguably, the creation of the “utopian” city is what makes possible the freedom to navigate and create. Simply by navigating a city, patterns of thought are learned which allow for greater freedom than those learned by people chained to rural/agrarian cycles. The very fact that a city is a constructed environment makes it possible to entertain the possibility of change, something that is unthinkable when surrounded only with natural geographical boundaries.

The “specialness” of cities, and of their spatial organization, has been recognized from the very earliest times. The city of Çatalhöyük, in present day Turkey, is known to have been inhabited as far back as 7,000 BC, making it the oldest known city. It contains an extraordinary wall painting – a representation of the city itself, against a background of the nearby mountains. The painting is now known to be an accurate map, with individual structures clearly represented:

However, not all cities lend themselves to freedom of action, and hence freedom of thought. It is interesting to explore some magnificent failures, such as the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis. This public housing complex was demolished 20 years after construction, after skyrocketing problems with crime and vandalism attributed to the very design of the place.

Brazilia, the planned capital of Brazil, was a similar utopian project, and roughly contemporary. While not as catastrophic a failure as Pruitt-Igoe, the master-planned central area has certainly not fulfilled expectations, and more than 85% of the population lives in neighborhoods that emerged from the “temporary” shanty towns built to house workers during the cities construction.

It is hard to imagine a more ideologically driven city than Brazilia: it is laid out in the shape of an enormous bird, with the government in the head, the cultural center (and now shopping precint) in the heart, and workers living in the wings. Lucio Costa, responsible for the master plan, divided the residential wings into self-contained macro-blocks, each with a small shopping precinct, meeting hall and school. Vehicle traffic was limited to main roads between macro-blocks, with only pedestrian traffic within them. However, the dwellers of Brazilia quickly asserted their freedom to navigate, asserting their preference for shops and restaurants within macroblocks outside the ones where they lived, and the traffic scheme has now resoundingly collapsed. Even within a city as strictly planned as Brazilia, the residents have shaped a city for themselves that is much freer than other places in Brazil.

In conclusion, I would argue that cities, no matter how strictly planned and tightly managed, by their very nature allow for a type of freedom of thought and action that is impossible in other environments. Cases where this freedom has been explicitly curtailed or shaped have failed: the massive reaction of people, through migration, crime or political protest, has ultimately concluded in the assertion of people’s freedom to move.