Designing for and against Symbolic Boundaries

Urban design is the physical realization of the collective imagination of the city and more importantly, what the city should be. To oversimplify, urban designs have gone through three phases that largely mirror economic shifts in the broader economy. We have seen urban design transition from the de...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:City & community 2017-12, Vol.16 (4), p.369-373
Main Author: Kramer, Rory
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Architecture
Boundaries
Cities
Design
Fear
Government spending
Inequality
Investments
Mental task performance
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Political economy
Suburbanization
Symbolism
Urban planning
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Summary:Urban design is the physical realization of the collective imagination of the city and more importantly, what the city should be. To oversimplify, urban designs have gone through three phases that largely mirror economic shifts in the broader economy. We have seen urban design transition from the desire to organize the chaotic city, to the architecture of fear and suburbanization in the declining and segregated city, to today's design and placemaking, which mirrors the financialization of the city and the rise of the service economy. I argue that, via the mixture of physical and symbolic boundaries, placemaking and urban design reinforce inequality, albeit less overtly than the architecture of fear Davis identifies. In the contemporary political economy that privileges diversity while inequality grows and government funding decreases, design must somehow promote a universal right to the city while while also encouraging investment in underutilized spaces.
ISSN:1535-6841
1540-6040
DOI:10.1111/cico.12267