The “visitor-friendliness” of cultural-tourist cities – Reflection on “Planning considerations for cultural tourism: a case study of four European cities”
Zhang Yali
An increasing number of European cities have selected tourism as a strategic sector for local development.Under this background, this paper discusses and tests a framework of reference for “visitor-friendliness” of cultural-tourist cities by taking four European cities for example.
Cultural tourism has opportunities and problems as well. Cultural tourism does can promote the development of urban economy. Cultural tourism industry is sustainable and plentiful in synergies with other strategic sectors of the urban economy.
However, tourism also has some financial problem for the preservation and restoration of the heritage that should be taken attention to. There are the compatibility between the development of a tourism industry and the preservation of the heritage ‘‘out of the market’’; the existing and potential synergies and tensions between the ‘‘global’’ tourism system and the ‘‘local’’socio-economic development.
It is therefore necessary that the tourism planners bring together development and sustainability, on more than one scale: the spatial, the socio-economic and obviously the environmental. Tourism development requires that a number of basic conditions regarding the quality of hospitality are met which are always overlooked in cultural and tourism planning.
In this context, two elements—almost in contradiction, but interrelated—determine the success of a tourist destination. The first is the necessity to create a tourist infrastructure of internationalstandards and with a high degree of predictability that allows the destination to be attractive. The second is presence of increasingly fragmented impulses coming from the marketplace, and identifying niche positions in the market.
To establish the ‘‘visitor-friendliness’’ of cultural-tourist cities, the article focuses on the relationships between a consumer oriented management strategy for the system of cultural resources and other layers oftourism policy.
The factors that determine the competitiveness of a destination have been synthesised in the ‘‘tourism product’’ — a model of the overall attractiveness of an urban destination, concept by Van den Berg etc. The five basic factors are the quality of ‘‘primary’’ tourist products (the
elements that represent the main reasons for a visit to the locality); the quality of the secondary or complementary products; the image of the destination; the accessibility of the destination, articulated in external (the effort required to reach the destination) and internal accessibility (the ease of wandering around the destination and reaching the various attraction points during the
stay).
The quality of primary and secondary products, the image and accessibility can be improved through deliberate actions by the industry and the government. These five factors have been made operational to permit an international comparative analysis. To achieve this, a number of
qualitative indicators have been evaluated for each city. These are:
- Existence of a strategy for tourism management at themetropolitan level.
- Quality of information and hospitality.
- Presence and quality of secondary or complementary tourist services.
- The internal and external accessibility
- Attractions and events.
European Institute for Comparative Urban Research (EURICUR) has research a series of case studies utilizing the ‘‘uninformed visitor’’ approach. The cities selected for the research—Lyon, Lisbon, Rotterdam and Turin—present a series of features that are utilized to test a reference
framework of their ‘‘visitor-friendliness’’. The case studies highlight how specific soft elements of the urban tourism product are the ones that matter most in determining the attractiveness of a city for international visitors, and yet they are often overlooked by city planners.
These four cities are given comparative analysis from following aspects: strategies; information and hospitality; secondary tourism products and services; internal and external accessibility; attractions and events; image and atmosphere.
There are some lessons we can learn from the case studies. The first is that the ‘‘soft’’ parts of the primary and secondary tourist products and internal accessibility are indeed important preconditions for effective tourist development.
The analysis of visitor-friendliness in the four cities not only underscores the main deficiencies in the quality of hospitality, but also permits an inventory of ‘‘best practice’’ in tourism management: A tourist card distributed in Lisbon; a ‘‘transition’’ stage has successfully
completed in Turin, like opening of important museums and exposition centers; fromstrategically located tourist kiosks, to the enormous variety of brochures, programs and totems, visitors are assisted 24 h a day in Lyon. All the cities are willing to inform visitors by utilizing the Internet
technology. And local authority management organizes not only for the effective design of the transport network but also fortourism management.
According to the comparative analysis system, we can adopt it to Weimar, which is also a cultural tourist city. Weimar’s cultural heritage is vast. It was the home of the leading characters of the literary genre of Weimar Classicism — the writers Goethe and Schiller, and the musician Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was born here. The city was also the birthplace of the Bauhaus movement. Many places in the city center have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites.
These provide rich resources of primary tourist products of Weimar. Concerts, theatre performances, festivals or traditional markets: Weimar’s cultural calendar is bursting at the seams, as the secondary products, attractions and events. Quality of information and hospitality are not as good as Lyon, which should be promoted to provide more convenience to tourists.
Public transport systems in Weimar are generally effective. Well, the internal and external accessibility can be better. And the strategiesfor tourism management should be discussed in the next step. Meanwhile, we can learn some “best practice’’ in tourism management from these
cities, such as tourist card, internet technology and so on.
In conclusion, this study contributes a redefinition of the ‘‘hospitality function’’ of a city, because it highlights itsinfrastructure and organizational preconditions. The various elements of the tourist product—primary and secondary products, events, transports, information centers and packing— have to be systemized and managed according to an integrated and dynamic approach, for instance using the opportunities offered by new technologies. Also, professionalism, creativity and the capacity to astonish remain the most important elements.
Overexposed City, Reflection
Lucie Svobodová
In the introduction to the essay is written: “The present essay is the preliminary exploration of emergent representational paradigm – an „aesthetics of disappearance“. This notion itself – more exactly the connection of the words aesthetics and disappearance – sounds paradoxical. Aesthetic is a study dealing with the perception of art, beauty and taste. It is a reflection of art, culture and nature. A culture is represented by human pieces of work, which are closely bound with the way of living. The notion aesthetics is automatically connected with the substance, which has its volume and limits and is present. In which way can then aesthetics explore disappearance, an abstract appellation describing the
process of losing one’s form and shape? It seems that the limits have been exceeded. Form is no more determining in the space and in the connection of the two opposites – aesthetics of disappearance – the urgency and significance of the new epoch of creating the space is underlined. The space, which consists of limited volumes, indisputably participating, was more likely transformed into the unsure, unsecure und easily vulnerable ubiquitous virtual space that is every time everywhere and simultaneously nowhere ever. Such a new physically absent space demands a new way of perception.
There used to be obvious boundary of the city in the past. The access led through a gate, arch or triumph. Now there are tollbooths instead, of which function is no more to represent the city to the incomers, but rather to monitor the flow of visitors with an electronic system. The city does not need to notify its presence because it has became matter of course and it is no longer significant. The boundary between city and country, between centre and periphery has got lost. The Virilio’s question sounds: “Does a greater city still have a facade?” If the material boundary is not determining anymore and it is impossible to find the non-material one, then the city’s facade has got lost. However, is there
still any boundary? The limits of the form have been exceeded into any unsubstantial unlimited interface and I state the question: Are there still single cities? Firstly, they have been slowly spreading beyond its original boundary together with the expansion of the humans, who leave their footprints everywhere. Nowadays, city is not perceived as something extraordinary in the landscape.
Secondly, such a populated world with its virtual background in addition, where the limitation becomes communication, where the boundary line becomes the access route, merges into one complex city. Its physical structure is somewhere denser, somewhere sparser and the new technology enabled to interconnect the physical clusters of settlements either through the mechanical means of transport, through the screen or through the virtual sphere, where the transmission of information is instantaneous. The city cannot to face us, because we are no longer in front of the city, but really inside it wherever we are.
In such a city, the vast geographical expanse contracts. The space factor is replaced by time factor. We do not wonder about the new technologies, which allow us to get over the large distances, but we are interested in how fast we could cover it. The spectator who is hundred miles far away can to perceive the instantaneously transferred information through the screen. However, could such the perception achieve the same quality as it would be perceived right on the place? Maybe, it is possible to negotiate an instantaneous experience but not to transmit its deepness and intensity.
The attribute of “The Overexposed City” is also the form of architecture constructed with highly processed materials and finishes that are polished, shiny, reflecting. With the use of these materials the new form of architecture must be primarily extravagant, magnificent, conspicuous. Influenced by the commercial intents such skins suffer from a lack of tolerance and respects to the existing surrounding
as well as to the basic functionality of the building. The city is generated by the flow of unstable images of fast proceeding evolution. The appearance was replaced by transparency, where nothing is constant and everything exists at the same time.
The aesthetics of the appearance of stable images and forms has turned into the aesthetics of disappearance of unstable images continuously moving. The 3D reality of solid volumes has turned into reality of transparent, changing space where the duration of one image is unpredictable. It causes the uncertainty and instability at the backs of our minds. The incessant presence of the images in the incessant motion is very disquieting. Images which could anytime disappear are not good landmarks for our consciousness, but there are rather confusing. We need landmarks, we need boundaries otherwise we get lost. We need a determining physical interface in the human scale in order to be determined.
Virilio P. – The Overexposed City, orig. La ville surexposee’, from L’espace critique (Paris: Christian Bourgeois 1984), translated in Zone 1-2 (New York, Urzone 1986) by Hustveldt A., in: K.M. Hays – Architectural Theory since 1968, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2000
Postmodern Semiotics; Material Culture and the Forms of Postmodern Life
Daniel Stilwell
Mark Gottdiener’s Postmodern Semiotics is a developed perspective of Postmodernism. Notably perceiving the theory of the role of symbols in
postmodern culture. Alongside this, Gottdiener exposes case studies to aid the reader in analyzing contemporary society.
The engaging relationship between semiotics and postmodern culture discussed by Gottdiener rejects the influence of Saussure and takes the
point of view from Peirce. All that being said, he does go on to critique deconstruction and the analysis of Baudrillard. Furthermore the end result is a proposed materialistic semiotics, which sets to avoid the idealism of postmodernism.
The concept of semiotics, coined by John Locke in 1690 is the study of signs or sign systems, applied to any kind of sign, not just words. Three
main influencers of semiotics, all of whom are referenced in “ Postmodern Semiotics” are Charles Pierce, founder of the philosophical school of
Pragmatism; who’s views on semiotics seems most appreciated by Gottdiener. Ferdinand de Saussure, invented a subject called Semiology.
Lastly, Umberto Eco made the discipline more popular to a wider audience but he himself explicitly acknowledged Pierce. Gottdiener concludes with three main points; Firstly “ Culture is not simply understood as a system of significance, but as a sign system articulating with exo-semiotic processes – in particular economics and politics”.
Strongly referring to how Semiotic analysis is a multiplicity of ideas and arguments. That being said, Gottdiener seems to direct an answer to the
reader that semiotics that are confined by the sign can only help explain symbolic relations. Culminating in Semantic Semiotics, highlighting the
signs meaning.
The second conclusive point he makes is that “ Meaning is not produced through the free play of signifiers alone”. With further reading into the rest of the point, the reader is lead to a fuller understanding with reference to cultural analysis and examples of these material forms such as theme parks, shopping malls and Focault’s prison, clinic and hospital. This can be seen as Syntactic Semiotics, the relationship among signs in formal structures.
The last point made elaborates on the depth of Semiotics, “Postmodernism criticism should not be confined to textual analysis alone,
or the critique of forms of representation alone… everyday life”. Seemingly evident to Pragmatic Semiotics, where we see a relation between signs and the sign using agents through everyday life.
Throughout the extract, Gottdiener continually references past Semioticians. “ Codified ideologies, or the codes and contexts deemed
important to semiosis by Eco, serve as constraints that structure semantic fields”. Some background research into Eco led to a quote by him that I think complements this example in “ Postmodern Semiotics “. “ I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it has an underlying truth” The point Gottdiener is trying to make to the
reader is one that semiotics is a multi leveled and multi definable discipline. Dependant on the point of view, the notion of the Semiotician and branch one is looking into.
What I find most interesting are his views on deconstruction and his wording on everyday life. “ Although there is a level of everyday life that is
encapsulated by the complex connotations of the hyperreal…does not imply that signifieds no longer exists”. I find his reasoning deep and
thorough. The above quote doesn’t directly link to deconstruction but leads onto the part of the extract that does. Written that there are new
signifieds being created through social media by people and lived experiences. He also writes “ Deconstructionism, in contrast ignores social interaction and the dynamics of communication that both produce and reaffirms / reproduce a deep level signified”. Gottdiener’s main point
he is trying to portray stems from the work of Jacques Derrida’s theory of the sign. Elaborating that the notion of a direct relationship between
signifier and signified is no longer applicable. That there are infinite shifts in meaning relayed from one signifier to another.
This is further backed up with figure 1.1 in the extract, “ The decomposition of the sign according to Hjemslev “
Signified Content Substance over Form
The sign : = =
Signifier Expression Form over Substance
This deconstruction of ideology is provocative and insightful of understanding social semiotics. This allows for the possibility to describe “
the way cultural codes articulate with material forms”. IT allows for both sender and receiver of signs to interpret the meaning of their own accord.
Gottdiener carries on to write of the important observations of Eco in contradistinction to deconstructionism. “ that all connotations of signs are
understood only in specific relation to other signs within a particular semantic field”. Elaborating on this idea that semiotics is in part and truth
an interpretation of the past, present and future thoughts of the participants.
The last point I will make on “ Postmodern Semiotics” is it’s integration of Socio- Semiotics. Gottdiener highlights that the premises are as follows;
Signs capture the articulation of “ meanings and the material world”, which he continues to elaborate on with a small story of how to know
what a Unicorn looks like, one must have seen a photo of one or have some lexicographic description. He also goes onto write about “ every
sign is part of a system of signification” which is said to be structured by paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes.
Socio-Semiotics main interplay is to analyze the phenomena of material culture, most aptly through in this case, Disneyland. According to Marin “the oppositions nature/ machine, past / future, reality/ fantasy” all accumulate and structure the space of the theme park. The analysis captures both points of views from the consumers of culture and the producers.
Gottdiener, Mark – Postmodern Semiotics. Material Culture and the Forms of Postmodern Life, Blackwell, London 1995
Reflection on Overexposed City
Liang Li
“The camera, in matrix metering mode and in concert with the flash, tries to brighten the dark world, and the resultant pop of light is right outta Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. (You know. When LA gets vaporized.)”
Joe McNally used his odd sense of humour to give us a description of what a terrible overexposure or overexposed picture looks like-nothing left but totally blank. After overexposure, the graphic elements of the final picture disappear more or less by either unconscious desperation or conscious “art purpose”. As for the city, if we can say that there exists an overexposed city, then what disappear and what leave in the city? This
question I came up with when I read Paul Virilio’s article “overexposed city” at the very beginning. However in this article, not merely only disappear and left are mentioned, but also changes.
In this article, the author mentioned that at the times from 1960s to 1970s cities suffered from multinational economy to terrorism. Technology developing and information explosion led to a result that plentiful elements related to the city were disappeared and replaced. Geographic space and substantial boundary was taken place by the screen interface, distance and depth transformed into pure surface. Time substituted for space. Meanwhile a face-a-face encounter finally changed into the screen of the terminal. As the consequences of such kind of “overexposed”, physical space and distance loses their importance in human life. Time and speed became front stage. At that age, transmission will be accomplished instantly rather than before. The space for work resolved into personal computer system.
All these facts have a significant impact on the city’s inhabitants, façade of buildings, city and architecture’s form and even their structure. All tiny fragments of urban functions or human life in urban space will be gradually transformed and integrated. The city is still a machine which is no longer composed by engines or mechanized equipment but by computers, fax machine, data processors typically. This kind of “machine” (city) or city life could make satisfied instantly abolished the impacts of physical distance between the workplace and residential space, reduced the opportunities for interaction when in face by face reality.
And finally by means of those terminals, screens and keyboards as the medium of a new interpersonal relationship, in the overexposed city, every detail of daily life and human behavior will be changed.
From my point of view, under the concept of overexposed city, all the substantial elements in the field of architecture and urban planning do not exist anymore like the graphic elements disappear in the overexposed photos. Virtual reality and the screen interface make people never pay attention to the substantial construction and real city life. Such impacts display in two ways for architect. On one hand, the façade turns from a
single face object to a double faces one, or even more a no longer importance object for a building. Facade don’t act its traditional role to show what the building looks like from outside.
However, along with the transparent material and nonlinear structure overflowing, the difference of inside or outside a building has already weakened or indeed in some cases doesn’t exist. Buildings become more and more a non-substantial object in the urban space, become transparent, illusory and complicated. As this way, buildings do not enclose blocks; do not distinguish the private interior space and outside
public urban space, but act as a highly integrated complex mixed with private or public space, with interior or urban space (also the function). Just like the nowadays people can hardly exactly tell an architecture’s function by its appearance. On the other hand, the screen interface which represents the time and speed interrupt the activities in the building and the city. Huge vivid advertisement screens replace the graceful sculpture and the rigorous proportion of the façade, making the street view looks like the science fiction movie scene in your TV’s screen. Facing the screen technically everyone can get the images of every single room of the building, the image of every corner of the city, the image of every part of the world or even the universe. Maybe we can face everywhere through the screen instantly instead of walking in the real world. In the same way architecture or urban designs apply the screen computer ceasing the usage of pencil and model. Instantly people can get the thousands of results of the building or city which will be built. So the value of experiencing real urban space or architecture will shrink to
the button meanwhile people pay no attention to the distance and dimensions of space however the instant experience and the diversity in the screen.
I try to start to understand this article from a perspective of an attracting word in the field of photography -“overexposed”. After reading these little obscure words, I wonder if I get the idea in a right way. Likewise the city nowadays the overexposed in the photograph is no longer an irreversible chemical changes but a group digital data which is changeable in a large range after the shooting. When you change several value by
computer, the disappear scenery or figure will totally get back. And the spread of those groups of data definitely gets a much higher speed by internet or even the WIFI component in the camera than the old way of developing, printing and mailing. The only separation of you and your travelling friends is how fast you receive his or her sending digital images but not the physical distance between your place and the place where the photo takes. It depends on virtual things, so as the city.
Joe McNally, The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes (Berkeley, CA; London: New Riders ; Pearson Education [distributor], 2009).
Virilio P. – The Overexposed City, orig. La ville surexposee’, from L’espace critique (Paris: Christian Bourgeois 1984), translated in Zone 1-2 (New York, Urzone 1986) by Hustveldt A., in: K.M. Hays – Architectural Theory since 1968, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2000
Reflection on Dirksmeier and Helbrecht’s, “Intercultural Interaction and ‘Situational Places’: A Perspective for Urban Cultural Geography Within and Beyond the Performative Turn”
R. Tyler King
A hallmark of any good performance is a good transition, and the “turn,” according to Dirksmeier and Helbrecht, signifies eternal motion in human geography. It can be made mobile through language with the trans prefix. An ongoing human-geographical tension is brought forth by Michel de Certeau—that, “…the bodies of the pedestrians write, but the walkers cannot read what it is that they write.” People move more rapidly than movement can be understood, if through the anthropological processes of observing the traces of other people’s movement, or through the creative process of recording one’s own movement. In other words, running parallel to the movement of people through time is a transition in the way we understand that movement.
How, then, does the application of performance theory to urban cultural geography serve as the next logical transition? By suggesting that human geography transcends disciplinary boundaries, it seems as if Dirksmeier and Helbrecht have granted themselves license to simply apply another field as an overlay onto theirs. In defense of Dirksmeier and Helbrecht, the ease of accessing the human-geographical subject readily invites the question of disciplinary boundaries (but in this case, would the term, “transdisciplinary,” be more suitable?). Instead, their claim was justified, not by a preceding intersectional urban cultural geographic approach, but, more seemingly because performance theory vis-a-vis urban cultural geography represents an uncharted academic frontier.
After offering a glimpse of a deconstructed human-geographical approach, Dirksmeier and Helbrecht suggest that performance theory, in particular, would allow human geography (specifically the urban cultural brand) to be reconstructed with even more transcendental traits.
Three categories of performance help to unlock an unseen human-social realm, rooted in dramatics, everyday life, and the event. Dirksmeier and Helbrecht problematize urban cultural geography, noting that so far the field has focused too heavily on the relationship between the individual’s geographic experience. Exploring these relationships further, though, could perhaps give their argument for the “performative turn” more grounding, and most importantly a more fluid transition.
Preceding Helbrecht and Dirksmeier’s notion of the “performative turn,” may have been what could be considered a clearly “epistemological turn” in the intersection of urbanism and social sciences. These are the accounts of movement told by many, including Allison Smithson’s diary of driving across the English countryside, AS IN DS, or Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s dissection of the language of sprawl, Learning from Las Vegas. Even Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (though fictional), could be stacked against these others as evidence of an “epistemological turn.” These examples and many more are symptomatic of Helbrecht and Dirksmeier’s concern, that too much emphasis is given to the individual, and as a result of many of these records being made during early postmodernity, the sign. However, viewing these accounts, often written as letters, or diaries, as the fragments of a latent performance, could help justify why the sign was so important, and also, what it is about contemporary geographic conditions that needs performance theory.
Another missed opportunity for a smoother transition, is any mention of the popular practice of the Situationist International Movement, psychogeography. Dirksmeier and Helbrecht are obviously informed of this mid-to-late century movement, but in a paper with “situational place,” in its title, how can the authors remain indifferent to the contributions of the SI Movement to urbanism? Wouldn’t, for instance, the particularly choreographic dérive offer handy segue into a discussion of performance and geography? This is, again, also subject to the authors’ criticism that too much emphasis on the individual experience, but it also allows us to imagine ways in which their call for more intercultural interactions can grow out of these practices, as performances.
The “situational place,” by the end of the paper, can be understood as the “bodily performance of intercultural relations.” From the individual’s account, Dirksmeier and Helbrecht offer that it’s time to shift the perspective, from an angle that is almost more akin to surveillance. In this sense, we can imagine that feet meeting the earth remains as the constant trait of human-geographic, but that the urban cultural experience switches more easily in-between observer and participant—between audience and actor.
Dirksmeier P., Helbrecht I. – Intercultural interaction and “situational places”: a perspective for urban cultural geography within and beyond the performative turn, /www.soc-geogr.net (2010), accessed 03.2013
Reflection on “Places and memory multiple readings of a plaza in Paris…”
Im Soo-Jin
Considering or not the original function and the identity of one place was a question that was revealed such differently in the history. Indeed modernists such as Le Corbusier or Gropius were considering a quality of a space by its multi readability in terms of function. The criteria of the quality of a space would then remain in the possibility or not of the space to take several functions in the following times of history. The tabula rasa of Le Corbusier in terms of urban planning was about erasing the past ‘mistakes’ and starting again from a new beginning : the idea of suppressing traces being repeated. On the other hand the opposite approach was already dealt before by Victor Hugo whose position was to keep the historical art craftsmanship inscribed into architecture even though the raising thought of the period was to see the wide possibility that the machines would promise. More recently, other movements or thoughts were about to reorganize historical contexts using this machinery that human does not control any more, for example looking at the project of the City of Culture of Galicia by Peter Eisenman, where the attempt was to keep the layer of the existing medieval routes, but to play with it in a non-predictive way to generate a space that would unconsciously incorporate the historical trace in the physical spaces.
Dealing with the past history in terms of the spaces transcribes different approaches we have while facing the traces we left in the history and thus affect our social consciousness of today. In that sense, after the three examples of dealing with historical traces evoked below, the text of Bonnemaison describing the bicentennial parade of the French Revolution would be an attempt to show how a representation of a nation can offer a fair approach about accepting the history that is considered as ‘shameful’ by the post revolutionary period contexts and going towards an ‘evolution’ in terms of the human rights.
Then, how the fact of transforming a place temporarily can affect in shifting or opening the inhibited historical subject areas of the citizens of the nation? How this temporary event of installation in Place de la Concorde affect the ‘hidden’ aspect of French culture and history to come to show, and be revealed naturally?
Here the attempt will be to focus on the ways of revealing hidden sides by considering the past in a space which is very apparent and strongly inscribed in the history of the country, and thus to see the possibility that offers an installation coming in synergic effect with the original function and identity of a place.
Firstly we can observe all the roles and statuses that the chosen place can take. Existing from the 18th century under the reign of Louis XV, the place act as an efficient cross roads between two main axis, the one of Champs Elysees, and the one going through the National Assembly and the Madeleine church. The morphology of the place is moreover adapted for different uses: having the obelisk column in the middle of the ‘arena’ form, the place can become a scene or a large scale theatre, with the decors and spectators’ attention captivated towards the center. It could indeed have a stage in the center, and all the circulation roads can be transformed into sitting places if the bleaches are installed, as it is the case in the bicentennial parade spectacle. This historically marked place which is in the first place an important intersection in terms of urbanism, can thus become a theatre, an arena, a “hart of the ‘seat of power’” as evoked by Bonnemaison, both speaking of the urban planning and history in the period of the French Revolution, when it played a role of inversion of power from the royalty to the citizens.
This multi-readability of the place is though not coming to mean, seen from nowadays, that the place could be approached in a modernist way, following which a space would encompass several functions, erasing the preceding one when shifted into another. On the contrary la Place de la Concorde has a really distinct and proper meaning and identity through history, meant to have a precise role: the one of honoring the king, Louis XV. This strong identity is indeed coming in the centre of the main historical monuments such as the Tuileries Gardens, the former palace of Louvres, the Arc de Triomphe of Napoleon, passing by the new monuments erected under Francois Mitterand, and accompanied by its historical and political neighbors : the National Assembly by its South, the Madeleine church by its North. Furthermore, the history through which this place went is retracing most important fragments in constituting the French nation : the one of the royal honors, then the times of colonization with its obelisk column, the installation of the guillotine, and the shift of power during the French Revolution, and at last, as presented in the text, the place of the most important commemoration. Such a characteristic and historical site could never be erased by another function, but only put together with it which should come in combination, or in addition.
The parameters of the installation of the spectacle were taking in consideration this strong identity of the place, respecting it as its own, and playing with it by coming to implant the vision of the new future of France where it should go, after the revolution. But then the negative images staying in people’s mind and their avoiding attitude concerning some subject of the past had to be “hidden” in a way, or at least blurred, in order to come later in their mind in a more invitational way rather than sermonic, and so making them become aware of the situation for granted. In doing so, one of the strategy used could be the one calling for citizen’s historical memory, the one of the amphitheatre that was installed in Champs de Mars in the first anniversary of the revolution in 1790. By following thie “logic of the same”(of Mona Ozouf), the installation would replace the spectators in the ambience of the period just after the French Revolution, in the joy of flying into freedom after the hard conflict. In doing so, the citizen of France would more easily want to sympathize with the other countries not freed yet, that is to say the colonized ones.
The transcendence towards the acceptance of the past memories of colonization is facilitated in that way, despite the emerging new criteria of moral judgment that the violation of the Human rights is a crime, which would make the French citizen face it so hardly. The historian Jacques Thibau also said, in 1989 (bicentennial year) that in mass culture as in academic milieu, French slavery continues to be ignored :
“When there is a lapse of memory there is embarrassment : embarrassment of being faced with the frightful connection between the economic/political modernity of Europe and the enslavement of the black people.”
On the other hand, in all the time period, France being in the seek to be on the leading position, giving the image of a leader to the main figure of the commemoration would have acted in a positive way. It would indeed have given another challenge to the French nation, the one of becoming the leader of freedom set by the respect of the Human rights, so encourage the liberty of colonized countries. In this different approach, which rather than assuming the shameful colonization period of the past, invite French citizens to feel sympathy and to will to be leading the abolishment of slavery and colonization. So then, the author underlines:
“The performance of Jessye Norman at the Bastille Day parade and the press coverage around French slavery in the late eighteenth century broke a collective silence about this national ‘embarrassment’ in a way that rarely happens.”
However, the conclusion of the text would somehow show the limits despite of all these aspects: the main sentiment of the revolution which had an effect on the citizen’s reception of the spectacle is more towards those who stay in their country than those who migrate to France from the third world. That is to say, there remains a certain degree of xenophobia inside the country, even though the allegory of the spectacle “was helpful to understand shifting conceptualizations of nationhood, liberty and citizenship in a time of troubled nationalism and increasing xenophobia”. But the possibility then remains here: it is not impossible that, a temporary installation of the spectacle and the scene changes the general perception of the citizen and participate to the future of a nation, by participating in deciding the direction it should go for.
Nevertheless, the success of doing so is depending on several criteria and strategies of how to interact with the existing social and cultural aspect of the place, and of the citizens, to introduce this future vision in an easily acceptable way. It is also interesting to see how the judging criteria change following the historical contexts, from the colonialism which was somehow considered as spreading an advanced culture to other countries, to the liberation of the latter after the revolution understanding it as a violation of the human rights. The very proud power of France shifting to a very shameful aspect that French wouldn’t want to face honestly, by embarrassment, and all this based on the nation’s historical experience and the general movement emerging on modern Europe. The question to be formulated could also be “How can we be assured that this generality is going towards an “evolving” direction?”
Bonnemaison S. – Places and Memory: Multiple Readings of a Plaza in Paris during the Commemoration of the French Revolution, in: Arnold D. , Ballantyne A. (ed.) – Architecture as Experience: Radical Change in Spatial Practice, New York: Routledge, 2004
Wright, Frank Lloyd – The art and craft of the machine, 1901 – An address by Frank Lloyd Wright to the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society, at Hull House, March 6, and to the Western Society of Engineers, March 20,1901
Hugo, Victor – Notre-Dame de Paris, V, II “Ceci tuera cela”, 1482
Le Corbusier – Vers une architecture, 1995
Eisenman Architects – Code X The City of Culture of Galicia, The Monacelli Press. Inc, 2005
Whole and real history identifies a city: Reflection on Urban identity policies in Berlin: From critical reconstruction to reconstructing the Wall
Chaoyi Chen
The research object of the paper is the change of Berlin’s urban identity policy in the past two decades after the unification of Germany. The paper describes in detail the radical U-turn in Berlin’s urban identity production with the indicator of Berlin’s strategies involving the Berlin Wall, which is the most prominent and famous physical legacy left by the divided period during the Cold War. The conclusion of the paper could be comprehended as that urban identity could only obtained by reflecting and visualizing the whole and real history of the city.
By comparing the change of Berlin’s urban identity policy mentioned in the paper, which is from “critical reconstruction” to “reconstructing the wall”, it is obvious that the core discussion lies in how the city cope with its divided history, which, in another word, its shameful past. The change of urban identity policy is exactly the process of from denying the communist period to facing up to it.
In the former period of “critical reconstruction”, Berlin attempted to erase the whole divided period of history with the wish to return to its development direction of being a global city before the war. For this, it took action to demolish the physical and even physiological trace of the Berlin Wall as quickly as possible and fix the prominent public space (the twin squares of Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Platz) destroyed in the war. And what shocked me when reading the material is that the government of Berlin even forbidden the exhibition commemorating victims of the Berlin Wall. However, it deemed to be an empty wish. Since history to the city likes growth rings to the tree, they share the identity of continuousness so that each part of them could never be removed afterwards. The communist history of Berlin leaves trails and traces into every corner of the city and into the heart of every citizen rather than just leave a tall wall in between the city. And it is these trails and traces that identifies a city and makes it distinguishable from others. And this, as said in the paper, is exactly the essence and definition of urban identity.
After experiencing the failure of attempting to clean the legacies out of the city, Berlin finally began to face up to the real history, especially the history of Communist period. As said above, the Communist period has brought lots of changes to Berlin.
The story that Berlin should tell needs the visibility of those changes in the cityscape. As a result, Berlin changed its urban development strategies to reconstruct the wall, which means turning Berlin wall, the symbol of change, into a vital part of the identity-forming life story of the city. As a result, demolition of wall stopped; some parts of wall remains and checkpoints along the former wall are preserved in their place; Documentations about the dark period are available for citizens as well as tourists in Topography of Terror; and graffiti on the Berlin Wall is regarded and publicized as the “Wall art” in Eastern gallery; cobblestones are used to mark the former Berlin Wall’s course; the space in front of the Brandenburg Gate is used as public activity square. As described in the paper, “two decades after the Wall came down, the past as a divided city has not only become integrated in the urban identity production process, but has even taken centerstage”.
In fact, according to the paper, the decision to integrate the divided past into urban identity brought more to the city. After its changing the urban Berlin even discovers the wall’s great potential for promoting the so-called “Communist heritage tourism”. In fact, it is easy to understand the “win-win” interaction between “Communist heritage” and tourism. From tourists’ perspective, what they really anticipate to see in a city is its real unique part that is different from the cities that they live. Undoubtedly, the most straight way to experience that is to touch the city’s real history period, especially those unique period brought by historical event. For Berlin, the life during the special “Communist period” was exactly what tourists want to know most. So these wall-related “Communist heritage” is greatly needed to re-present the life then for tourists; and the prosperity of tourism would in turn be the driven force for the government to insist the urban identity policy.
To sum up, the paper demonstrates in a convincing and straight way that the visualization of the whole and real history in cityscape serves to the production of the urban identity and also the prosperity of the tourism of a city.
Input phase
The seminar took off on June 3-4. The input phase started in April with the elaboration of readings and students reflections. A lecture series with discussions related to the design topics followed and was accomplished by a city tour with attention to the four unseen elements: the hidden mosque, urban design addressing homeless people, the red light district and the water canals.
Students’ reflections on the unseen in the city
Looking forward to your contributions reflecting on the selected texts provided by the tutors!
The selected papers will be published here.
The Unseen in the City seminar
The offer of this year’s summer semester at the Bauhaus Faculty of Architecture in Weimar includes a seminar offered by a group of PhD students: The Unseen in the City. With the aim of exercising an indirect reading of the city, participants will form theme groups: architecture, urbanism, sociology and marketing.
Course description:
Various actors construct the city for reasons of their own, in both physical and social ways. For the same reasons, certain experiences of the city, too, are framed to be observed and apprehended in a specific manner. These favored “framed views” overshadow numerous other urban activities and structures of everyday life. Moreover, some urban activities are intentionally hidden away not to disrupt the preferred image.
The PhD-students of the IPP-EU/UH invite all Master students to discover the unseen structures of the city of Weimar via joining this design-oriented seminar. By combining the four main expertise areas of the PhDs (urbanism, architecture, marketing and sociology) we would like to ask the students to join us in a “scientific role play”. The seminar aims to enhance the participants´ competences in group work and interdisciplinary change of perspective, which are both crucial parts of professional and academic life.
The seminar will be conducted in five phases:
(1) Input: an organized series of lectures related to the four main fields will provide a solid theoretical framework on the topic
(2) Revealing the unseen: research on and collection of data on the unseen sites and structures in Weimar (e.g. the underground mosque or the defensive design elements in public spaces)
(3) Field visit: a guided tour to the sites previously identified through phase two will be organized and conducted
(4) Group work: after choosing one of the four fields, the students will have to form working-groups. By focusing on one of the sites identified in phase three, they will have to compile a design-project. Each group will be mentored by one PhD student, specialized in the groups´ chosen field.
(5) Outcome: the final outcome of the group-work shall be a design proposal that will be presented to the public, followed by a critical discussion, which will lead to deeper understanding on the subject of the “unseen in the city”.
the Unseen in the City 
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