Traversing the City

Since the dawn of Western civilisation, architecture and its processes have acted as an apparatus in the fabrication of idealist city and colonial planning schemes across the globe. Conceptual analysis of architecture’s role in a Euro-centrical context by the likes of Helen Rosenau, Mark Wigley, Kevin Lynch, Simon Sadler, Iain Borden, Siobahn Lyons, Jane Rendell, Lewis Mumford and Bernard Tschumi have facilitated critical discussions regarding the motives of many Western ideological city planning schemes and opened the door to reverberating the sociological concerns and reactions of the flaneur in the contemporary urban context.

Concerns similar to that in Melbourne, with discussions led by Fiannuala Morgan and Nadia Rhook detailing the sociological issues concerning place and the sense of belonging in an ideal colonial city plan situated on stolen land. Figure one extracts these issues and observes how the abrupt expansion of Melbourne’s public infrastructure network has inflicted trauma on the city’s ecological and sociological landscape. In relation to Henri Lefebvre, Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin’s deliberations into the effects of globalisation on the city's networked infrastructures. Figure two elaborates on the issue of place and finding refuge when traversing Melbourne from afar, in relation to Mark Wigley and Rem Koolhaas’ discussions of high-density urban conditions and Jacqui Alexander’s concerns of domesticity in the age of home sharing media platforms. Linking to a critique of colonial ideal city forms and how the selective erasure of certain urban histories has invoked current and possibly future sociological urban traumas related to the changing contemporary urban condition.

Historical analysis of architecture’s role in planning and habituating idealistic urban forms and occupations during periods of significant political, technological and social change throughout the twentieth century has helped spark numerous contemporary debates by authors and researchers. Supported by Western educational institutions and publications, framing sociological and spatial discussions concerning the weternised urban citizen. Analysis conducted by the likes of Rendell, Soja and Rosenau suggesting that in the past, architecture and planning schemes were the “producer of urbanisms” (Soja 1980, 207), tasked in fabricating cities of desire, dictated by religious and political motives of control, power and wealth. Resulting in division and unrest between the social and working classes, breeding spaces of “methodological struggle” (Rendell 2001, 108) ripe with sexual, racial and gender-based segregation. The concerns raised by these authors are situated in the context of twentieth-century urban conditions and sociological experiences had by citizens of the past. However, this historical analysis has helped facilitate contemporary discussions for the possible re-imagination of spatial experiences in the city. Notions of city planning devoid of restrictive, divisive planning schemes that suffocate expression and the sociological and biological "freedom of will" (Rosenau 2007, 14) have been elaborated upon by the likes of Lynch, Sadler, Wigley, Lyons and Tschumi. Pushing for the city’s architecture to be “dismantled and its rules transgressed”

(Tschumi 1983, 74) in favour of the situationist, the flaneur and the act of the drift in possibly re-imagining psychogeographic concerns for the “interrogation of space and history” (Lyons 2017) in regards to contemporary cities with difficult histories. This concern in the scope of colonial cities where sociologically difficult "sites of methodological struggle" (Rendell 2001, 108) and places of trauma have been induced by abrasive Euro-centric ‘settling’ techniques of the past. Observations by Fiannuala Morgan and Nadia Rhook, situate these discussions in the context of contemporary Melbourne and its associated concerns of urban occupation and the sociological experience of place on stolen land, where a history of trauma and devastation is ripe. Their reading between the lines suggests how the city’s current “call to memory” (Rhook, 2015) conceals more than it divulges. With the Hoddle Grid, a true reflection of this abrasive city planning which has erased any remanence of indigenous heritage and “the dynamic presence of ‘coloured colonials’" (Rhook, 2015) in Melbourne. A grid that has selectively recalled ideological European calls to memory, ignoring the influence of migrants with attention given mainly to “selective and myopic histories of place” (Morgan 2016, 79), choosing to celebrate tails of triumph and success regarding settlers such as John Batman, Pascoe Fawkner, Bourke and Wills. Perhaps highlighting a larger sense of amnesia that Australia, currently holds about its traumatic past of racial segregation and the ill-treatment of its cultural minorities. Amnesia which currently feeds into the motives of many city planning schemes.

This discourse of written material concerning the history of place in the context of the ideal city and its associated processes has highlighted conflicting concerns regarding infrastructure planning and the sociological experiences had by the urban citizen amongst the growing nature of the globalised contemporary city. Figure one reflects this conflict upon the context of Melbourne and the abrupt expansion of its infrastructure networks which have inflicted trauma on native ecologies and ultimately lead to the forming of what Lefebvre calls ‘non-places’. Work by Graham and Marvin discusses how the connective forces of globalisation has informed new urban centres of industry, trade and commerce, intent on generating economic gain. An intent, ultimately influencing public infrastructure expenditure and planning schemes while ignoring any environmental or historical concerns raised by the city’s citizens. Ignoring these concerns raises issues of place in the contemporary urban condition, where expanding infrastructures driven by nodes of economic activity have resulted in the formation of urban spaces with little to no connection to place. Prior to ‘Gov-Hubs’, industrial zoning and city-linking infrastructures, the urban citizen used to live, work and play in their postcode of residence. Ultimately resulting in the urban citizen feeling a stronger sense of place and a willingness to feel a connection to the histories associated within the suburbs of which they lived. Now, in a contemporary context, the city dweller is forced to live in a cycle of “perpetual movement” (Lefebvre 2014, 30), constantly circulating the network of freeways and rail lines to live, work and play. This cycle eventually breeding zoned urban spaces which only invoke a sense of dissociation between the citizen and the places they reside. Upon reflection, these concerns showcase how the city of Melbourne’s infrastructure has provided a lifeline for this new age of urban living, where all aspects of life extend beyond the limits of the citizen’s own postcode.

Figure one demonstrates the evolution of the city’s public infrastructure network and its associated impacts on native ecologies, indigenous histories and the sociological well-being of the citizen. Using data and mapping to ask the question as to whether public infrastructure has made it harder to feel as sense of belonging and grapple with the sometimes traumatic nature of the city’s history.

While figure one reflects the impact Melbourne’s infrastructure has had on the physical landscape and the sociological sense of place for its citizens, figure two elaborates more on the discussions had by Wigley, Koolhaas and Alexander. Establishing a debate between the sociological effects of expanding high-density residential developments and new shared media platforms such as AirBNB have influenced the formation of “peculiar domestic mutations” (Alexander 2018, 1) in the contemporary global city. Arguing how these new typologies have possibly inflicted sociological trauma on Melbourne’s citizens by disregarding the surrounding natural environment and history of site.

Figure two reflects these concerns by conducting a psychogeographic derive that narrates the rail journey into Melbourne from a regional context via the images that pass the window of a train. As time passes by, the foothills and bushland begin to fall behind the horizon and the further from home the citizen travels, the more they feel detached from nature and more attached to the increasingly “man-made experience” (Koolhaas 1994, 10) of the highly “mechanised” (Wigley 2001, 9) nature of the suburbs. As the disconnect from the natural environment grows and the vertical nature of built urban condition intensifies, refuge is seemingly harder to find as the bush is traded in for the skyscraper.As showcased in figure two, the “increasingly mobile population” (Wigley 1999, 9) of the densified city has meant the skyscraper has had to offer the ultimate refuge in the city with Koolhaas stating, "the further It goes up, the more undesirable the circumstances it leaves behind.” (Koolhaas 1994, 82) With the influence of international property developers and share housing platforms sparking demand for cheap, quick-build high-rise residential developments in Melbourne. These factors resulting in the new urban citizen becoming more detached from the street condition than ever before. This detachment via the skyscraper however, does offer a short-lived sense of serenity, sometimes offering a visual connection to the natural landscape at afar but often lacks a connection to place and its history where the “real and the natural” (Koolhaas 1994, 10) cease to co-inhabit. Unfortunately, this built disconnection is fed into the sociological perceptions the skyscraper's citizens hold about their own sense of belonging to the place on which they live.

Whether it be through plan or the abrasive formation of its architecture, the quixotic ambition of the ideal city has bred critical contemporary discussions about the trauma inflicted by the implementation of ideal city planning techniques on sites of sociological and ecological devastation. Techniques dictated by Euro-centric motives of power and control, often resulting in a “bemoaned disjunction” (Tschumi 1983, 67) between object and event while homing divisive urban conditions ripe with racial, gender-based, sexual and class related segregation. A divisive plan very much likened to that of Melbourne’s Hoddle Grid, a physically and sociologically abrasive form of city planning which intentionally erased any remanence of indigenous, migratory and ecological heritage. A plan that over time has been seen as an icon of ‘Marvelous Melbourne’, riddled with landmarks, monuments and plaques selectively recalling ideological colonial tails of political triumph and sovereignty by the likes of colonial leaders such as Batman, Fawkner, Bourke and Wills. Reflecting the city's sense of amnesia when it comes to facing the trauma of its past, associated with the colonies and practices these figures had inflicted on the landscape. Now, contemporary “sites of activism, resistance and spiritual significance” (Morgan 2016, 70) through the implementation of art installations such as the ‘The Another View Walking Trail’ by Ray Thomas, Robert Mate and Megan Evans have helped breathe life to more subjectively experienced architecture and public city spaces. Where sociologically difficult urban histories and places of trauma have been highlighted to “compel you to ‘think deeper’ (Morgan 2016, 78), implying that “if Melbourne’s streets are the public pages of our history, what do they teach us about our social past?” (Rhook 2015) However progressive and important the work of public art and other initiatives have been in Melbourne, the development of the city’s infrastructure and the growth of high-density residential typologies to meet the demands of the city’s evolving housing market has unfortunately generated trauma of a new kind to the city. A trauma that has seen the further diminishment of native ecologies and heightened the sense of disconnection between place, history and the urban citizen. Figures one and two demonstrate both the impact of this new wave of trauma the city is experiencing and questions how the city could benefit from a “strategic, “glocal” approach…which considers the interplay of global and local forces” (Alexander 2018, 9) instead of purely one or the other, could achieve positive urban outcomes for Melbourne’s citizens.

Western civilisation, its architecture and urban processes have acted as an apparatus in the fabrication of idealist city planning schemes of the past. Conceptual analysis of architecture’s role in a Euro-centrical context have facilitated critical discussions and debates regarding ideological city planning schemes and the previously held notion that the architect can act as the "comprehensive visionary in the re-structuring of urban occupation." (Seligmann. "Dreaming Ideal and Utopian Cities" Melbourne, 2019) Opening the door to contemporary re-imaginations of urban occupation in the context of “colonial” and contemporary Melbourne, regarding sociological concerns of place and memory. An urban occupation which maps out the "revolutionary desire" (Sadler 1999, 164) of the contemporary citizen, where artistically and socially minded ideas of traversing the city's socio-spatial conditions takes the forefront in the architectural image and the formulation of its spatial experiences.