5 March 2015
Can one design an authentic place? According to Seamon and Sowers (Place and Placelessness) Edward
Relph believed that it was necessary to understand how people experience space –
their feelings towards certain places and the meaning places have for them - in
order to fix existing places no longer functioning well or to make new places
that are successful. His seven modes of
insideness and outsideness give a way to describe these intangible experiences
because it is necessary to be able to describe them in order to know how to
develop places that foster insideness rather than outsideness .
He also looked at ways a place is experienced authentically vs. inauthentically, genuinely vs. fashionably expected trend. For example: Why are these people running along the Portland Waterfront?
(image Jenette Danes)
Are they running because it is what they genuinely want to
do to be healthy and enjoy doing it on the path along the river or are they
doing it because it is trendy, expected by their peers, to be seen doing the
popular thing in the popular place? (Maybe
a mix of both). My hypothesis is that a place created
unself-consciously by people will be authentic but a place created deliberately
will usually start out inauthentic and will only become authentic over time as
people use it and adapt it. A place that
is only trendy for a time, is not adaptable, or does not generate a good
experience (outsideness) will fail over time unless it is repaired.
Is The Village in
Meridian a trendy or authentic experience? It seems to me to be trendy – only time will
tell if it will become authentic. How
about The Grove in downtown Boise or the Boise River Greenbelt? These are popular places and have been around
for long enough that many use them authentically.
(image bruclass.com)
The lively pedestrian oriented streets were replaced by a car
oriented business district.
(image google earth)
In
the 1980’s the State began to realize that a significant part of the urban heritage
and culture had been lost. An effort to
build a tourist economy through imitation reconstruction of historic streets
and public spaces (inauthentic places) failed and resulted in a conservation
effort to preserve the remaining historic urban fabric. Many remaining shophouses have been renovated
for reuse as small businesses,
social venues, and housing.
Some streets have been closed to vehicle traffic and life has been
restored to these streets.
(image smh.com.au)
The government supports the conservation efforts to preserve
the city’s unique character because it helps to promote a sense of national
identity (sense of place) and it is an economic driver, attracting residents,
tourists, businesses, and investors.
But, because of limited land (Singapore is an island), a growing
population, and an agenda of aggressive economic growth there is a constant
struggle to balance the needs of space for business, industry, and housing with
the need to preserve the remaining cultural and natural spaces. The authentic places are rapidly being lost
to placelessness. (Singapore, case study by Jenette Danes)
I have economist friends who travel the world. They have been studying where social forms of government are morphing, being adapted. Much of our conversations have considered where former communist societies are going, changing as capitalism is slowly being embraced. In other parts of the world, `democracies' have morphed into heavily controlled, managed oligarchies. These countries shall find their governmental forms change as well. When you write about Singapore, I have always wondered if Chinese, Vietnamese styles of government shall merge into similar social models. Then our concept of western designers kicks into place, and I wonder how a heavily social society can accomplish the vibrancy and sense of personal place which is needed in heavily populated corners of het world, such as Singapore ?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post,
ken