Cities are Fun. Aesthetic Preferences and Urban Landscapes. (Preliminary draft) Marina Bianchi and Daniela Federici Department of Economic Sciences and CreaM Cassino University marina.bianchi@caspur,it d.federici@unicas.it

Abstract An intriguing experiment in interactive urban design has been tried in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Citizens and architects there worked together to come up with a design for bus stops that would give better protection in bad weather. The result has been the realization of a shelter whose orientation alters according the varying direction of wind and rain. In London, at the last Biennale of Architecture a special exhibition was devoted to the proposals and ideas that Londoners have suggested for making their city a more pleasant place to live in. In Italy too there are experiments of similar sort underway. A whole square in Bari has been redesigned according to the desires of its citizens and in collaboration with architects (such as the Roman Mao studio and the Ivrea interaction design).

These examples of direct participation and interaction between users and designers of urban landscapes offer important indications about the different ways cities might evolve and change. For cities, including old city centres, do change. In Europe these changes are coming to be for the better. The process of de-manufacturing as well as income growth has transformed what were once aesthetic liabilities into aesthetic amenities: think of the creative re-use of old factories, reduced air pollution, and the return to nature of polluted rivers and lakes. This process of rejuvenating and renovating old cities has improved and favoured what cities have always been: centres of soft, face-to-face exchanges, based on communication and the sharing of information and knowledge. But they always were also places for innovation and discovery, for introducing and sampling novelty and variety. Recent debates on city growth and urban resurgence point to just these creative features. Taste for amenities, as well as tolerance, diversity, and aesthetic beauty are the ingredients that attract and foster a skilled and diverse population (Glaeser et al. 2001, Florida 2002, Storper and Manville 2006). This process in turn creates a diverse economy where knowledge extends across different industries and facilitates the creative recombination of resources.

The paper will address the following points: A. What is the place of individual preferences in the way cities evolve? Do cities change according to individual preferences? Certain factors are against individuals playing a role in re-shaping cities. - Cities are accumulations of past preferences (Storper and Manville 2006) and these can be a hindrance to change. - Individuals choices of location are more bundled and more rigid than those for ordinary goods. Given such constraints, how can individual preferences be registered? B. What is likeable in cities? Recent studies on landscape preferences, i.e. on aesthetic responses to the physical environment, have shown that pleasurable landscapes are those that have partially

open-space configurations, that are easy readable yet not boring, and most of all those that prefigure new opportunities and discoveries if only one ventures more deeply into the scene (Kaplan 1992). How do cities respond to these features?

C. The examples of recent interactive design given earlier represent an additional instance of how consumers have become more active on the economic scene (Von Hippel 2005). Are similar experiences likely to increase and involve urban change and shape? An analysis of some recent urban developments in the city of Rome will be provided and discussed. In particular, we will refer to the innovative practice of spatial planning systems which consists in the explicit search for dialogue and interactive procedures among the various actors involved (city government, urban communities, city planners, entrepreneurial associations, etc.). The redesign of urban localities and facilities such as the area of the old Mercati Generali, the re-planning of services, public parks and gardens, and interventions in "aesthetic infrastructures" (such as Tangenziale Est), all involve novel practices and outcomes. To mention just one aspect, the space definition of the area subject to intervention is now determined on the basis of the community of interests. It is within this set of shared interests that professionals, families, community groups, government officials and others try to generate guidelines for making decisions about and re-creating their environment. Introduction

Cities differ in terms of history, size, climate, social composition, job and life opportunities, beauty and in many other ways.

Cities also change: they surge, decline, possibly resurge: and some disappear. A constant, however, is that they are an important contributor to economic growth, and not

least because of their human, or social attraction. 1 In 1800 just 3% of the worlds population lived in cities. Today, however, half are city

dwellers. As The Economist has recently remarked, Homo sapiens may not have started life as an urban creature but has definitively become so. The development of cities in fact has become synonymous with human development (The Economist April 26th 2007).

Certain early economists were acutely aware of the great potential for development that cities offered. Writing in 1690 Nicolas Barbon, who was heavily invested in redeveloping London after the Great Fire of 1666, argued that cities were the very heart of the nation. Through the proximity, anonymity and opportunities for emulation they afforded, cities combined the advantages of specialization with the socializing power of market interactions. They favored peace and the development of human wants. (note: the polyvalence and multiplicity of the attractions afforded by Barbons London is beautifully conveyed in Pepys diaries (1659-1663). In undertaking the constant errands required by his office, which brought him from one corner of the city to another, Pepys encountered, and recorded, his endless wonder and surprise at the life of London: her new cafes, her theatres, the chats with acquaintances they enabled and the useful encounters they brought his way. For Bernard de Mandeville cities represented trading hubs, not only for material goods but also for individual interests and passions. In the constant flow of exchanges and exposure to new goods, ideas and people that city dwellers enjoyed, their own desires were brought to light, refined and extended. Envy, self love and greed might be involved in all this, but fundamentally too cities were arenas where these potentially harmful passions could compete for excellence, novelty, and variety in goods, arts and knowledge.

Echoes of these thoughts and experiences are found in the literature of the time. DeFoes heroines the likes of Moll Flanders and Roxana put their fortunes and freedom in play in the city. Cities are the loci of action, deception and intrigue but also of collaboration, triumph and passionate love. Jane Austens women love the country but also dream of the city for the excitement of its social round, displays of fashion, and refinements, but also for the possibilities of romance and marriage it held. From the diaries of contemporary travelers we also learn how cities could excite with their constant flow of social events and of chance encounters. A city like London provided surprises and solicitations from morning till sundown, when it would be transformed by illuminations, with its long rows of shops, glittering with novelties, attracting streams of well-dressed people.

These references to earlier city life are meant to show how cities became centers of economic growth thanks to their human dimension and the varied stimulations and face to face encounters they made available to the people who lived in them. They were a source of economic innovation processes and products but also of creative personal and inter-personal engagements and enjoyments. 1. The recent new lease on life of cities

All current debates on urban economies and growth start with the challenge that the end of industrialization posed for cities. The seventies were the critical years. Heavy industries closed or moved out of cities and cities, especially in the US, lost population to suburbs and smaller localities.

Cities that were less specialized and industrialized and had been less economically prosperous in a way had their revenge. Thanks to a more flexible and varied range of production activities, and to smaller, adaptable firms, they were more able to adjust to technological changes and to the preferences of more refined consumers (see the comparison between the cities of Manchester highly specialized in cotton textiles and Birmingham, with its multiple small industries, made by Jane Jacobs 1969).

Surprisingly, however, many of the cities temporarily disadvantaged, in the late 1980s and the 1990s revived. Their populations started to grow again, incomes (and rents) rose. What caused this resurgence?

The first and obvious answer is: the rise of new economy with its computer hardware and software and the internet. The heavy industries that, in time of crisis, seemed to have doomed many cities, were replaced by the light information economy and by a new generation of talented people. Big, dense, and diverse cities could provide an advantage, through the multiple interactions they enabled, in helping spawn the understanding and inventive novel uses to which the technology might be put and developing the infrastructures of the new knowledge-based economy (see Hall 1988, Drennan 2002, Van Den Berg et al. 2005).

Yet, the information economy is also, by its very nature, disembodied, and aside from an initial phase of coming to understand how the internet worked and what its potential was, when people to people interactions helped, physical proximity is less essential in a post-industrial world. And, as the world quickly discovered, inventive talent is widespread and virtually free; and there were few entry barriers for high tech talent. What could cities offer that might make them grow again? And how did resurgence start? What, for example, were the factors that attracted talented people once more to specific physical locations?

The idea that cities started to grow again because of talent is linked to an approach based on human capital. The presence of highly technically educated people shows up as a strong predictor of growth in all the data on city resurgence. But why did it have to be cities? As Robert Lucas had remarked in an article of 1988, land outside a city is much cheaper than inside, so economic forces should act centrifugally, not centripetally. What is it then that holds people together within a city and leads them to pay outrageous rents to be there? Richard Florida has noted critically that human capital tends to be measured in terms of educational input: degrees, institutions attended, years of training, etc. It is also treated, he points out, as a stock. His own preferred term is creative capital,

which places the emphasis on creative outputs and the creative people who generate them. Florida also stresses that creative capital is more like a flow than a stock: it is constantly in flux, and to be channeled and entered as one might a stream on a raft but not an endowment, fixed and unalterable (Florida 2002 and 2005).

What makes for creative capital, and especially for creative capital in cities? A first consideration is that cities have the ability to provide amenities. These are represented not only by the traditional arts, but more especially by entertainments of varied sort, perhaps taking the form of music venues and clubs, casual restaurants and bars, outdoor recreational activities, and a nature-friendly environment. A second consideration is openness: how varied, diverse and tolerant is the social context? These two factors, the first measured by an index of cool, or Bohemian index, and capturing the density of the producers of amenities: writers, musicians, designers, etc, and the second by a so-called gay index, are strongly correlated with talent and education. Talent, tolerance and the presence of informal amenities constitute the creative capital, which seems to provide strong support to the citys new growth. In sum, workers in the high tech fields tend to balance economic opportunities with lifestyle characteristics in the choice of a place to live. Cities that rank high in the talent, coolness and gay indexes are also the most prosperous and creative.

Floridas model has garnered a lot of attention, and policy makers and city mayors have perhaps too facilely translated it into planning formulas. There have also been critics aplenty, some of them adducing different data that do not seem to confirm the emphasis that Florida puts on the role of the bohemian and gay index. Such criticisms can easily slide into ideological assertion. On all these planes the debate continues. Floridas great merit remains that of having identified, measured and brought together these different factors making for city growth. One of the more intriguing of Floridas empirical findings brings into question the value of efforts to stimulate city and regional growth by attracting and placing firms in juxtaposition, often at great cost in terms of tax and other concessions. He finds that, among creative people, a decision to move is not based primarily on job but on place: lifestyle and consumer amenities come first in attracting creative and talented people. And, of course, once there are enough such people choosing in this way, jobs and incomes follow. This upending of the traditional presumed order begins to be recognized and has been confirmed in several studies of city successes. Economist Edward Glaeser in particular has shown that, when adjusted for costs of living (rents, house prices, etc), real wages have been falling in dense urban areas. This means that inward migration and urban resurgence cannot be due primarily to rising productivity or strictly economic attractions, but must be ascribed to a primary increased desire of people to live in cities. Big cities, one might also say, are enjoying a renaissance as places of consumption not just production (Glaeser and Gottlieb 2006, Glaeser et al. 2001). It is true that urban proximity facilitates both positive and negative interactions as Mandeville noted three centuries ago. Yet, smarter policing, clearer boundary-setting (e.g., zero tolerance of crime) and rising incomes and employment possibilities, as well as higher education levels, have tended to lower the impact of negative interactions while favoring the positive ones.2

Finally, evidence is emerging which suggests that almost all social and leisure activities, such as going to concerts, restaurants, museums and the movies, entertaining guests and seeing friends, are more common in central cities than in their suburbs. These amenities have also become more valuable over time as education and income have increased, thus making their presence a source of city revitalization (Glaeser and Gottlieb 2006). 2. The role of individual preferences.

The debate on city resurgence has brought new attention to how individual preferences form and alter. Even if the issues concerning cities are still actively being refined, there is no doubt that a new preference for the city lifestyle has played an important role in the way cities are now being redeveloped. This rediscovery of the role of individual preferences is good news since it is uncommon in economic theory to unpack preferences and analyze their mutual relations and the relations with other economic and social variables.

Yet, the various approaches to city growth, though challenging traditional interpretations of how consumer preferences matter, still share a bias towards supply-side accounts. The general tendency is to say that it is the supply of amenities and of tolerance that make some cities more attractive than others in the eyes of a new-skilled, creative labor force. Little attention has been paid to the possibility that different consumer practices are the expression of a different sort of consumer. The agglomeration economies that work for firms are important also for consumers. Jane Jacobs (1969 and 1984) was perhaps the first to insist on the advantage that cities provide in fostering a dynamic division of labor. For her division of labor is the first step towards the creation of new ideas and activities that, in their turn, deepen the division of labor. But this is true for consumers too. Specialized forms of consumption allow for new ideas to be experimented with, learned, and diffused. Different and new consumption practices branch out in different directions, providing for novelties and changing experiences. The sociologist Georg Simmel a century ago theorized this special feature of the metropolis. Cities, he observed, are the locus of division of labor and, if specialization makes man more dependent and one-sided, it also promotes differentiation, refinement and an enrichment of the publics needs just as Mandeville also stressed. The metropolis intensifies stimulation and change and a desire to assert personal differences and individuality as an antidote to the brevity and anonymity of social contacts (Simmel 1997: 183-184).

Consumers then the users of the city and its creative core actively contribute to the creation of spatial identities and meanings. As many micro-studies of urban behavior and practices have stressed, all the ways of soft socialization, such as urban walking and strolling, meeting in squares, hanging out, etc., change the image and use of the city and contribute to the way city spaces and amenities evolve. 3 Mitchell 2006, with his newly coined term of e-topia, provides a perfect contemporary example of this creation of new functional spaces in the city as a result of consumers changing consumption habits. He shows how communication technologies have changed not only the private space (that has become a multifunctional, fusion space) but also the urban public space, that becomes more flexible and mobile. Telecommunication networks on the one hand reduce the need for adjacency and proximity for activities that require the exchange of information. On the other hand, and importantly, they allow for latent or no longer satisfied demands for adjacency to become more effective through social spaces re-created to allow both: for example, a park wired allows for both social interaction and wireless connectivity. The result is a spatial restructuring through fragmentation and recombination of space (Mitchell 2006: 330-1). 3. Aesthetic preferences and landscapes

What is it in consumers preferences that makes cities likeable? Studies in consumer culture have often analyzed changes in consumer preferences within the terms of postmodernist theory. Within this view consumer preferences and city spaces tend to reflect the progressive commodification of urban life. The move towards a postmodern city is a move towards forms of consumption that are significant more for their symbolic rather than their functional aspects (see Jayne 2006: 66). Correspondingly, urban development coincides with an aestheticization of everyday life that both excites and numbs the senses (ibid.77). Symbolic and idealized consumption, however, ends up hiding the conflicts and social disparities that flourish in the city. This approach has the merit of analyzing the micro-changes and everyday practices of consumption that happen in cities and its narratives are important despite the normative overload that often characterize them (see Gregson and Crewe 2003, de Certeau 1984, Lefebvre 1991, Gardiner 2000). Yet preferences are here portrayed as easily manipulable and dependent on the lure of the market with no real intrinsic utility to the choices made.

An alternative approach to this rather negative depiction of the determinants of consumption preferences comes from a set of analyses developed in the field of evolutionary psychology (see Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby 1992). Of particular interest are those studies that have focussed on

the formation of landscape preferences, of aesthetic responses to the physical environment. In the model proposed by Kaplan (1992) four variables are selected as capturing the salient environmental features that both work as predictors of preferences and are linked with the process of acquiring and processing knowledge. They are coherence, complexity, legibility, and mystery. Subjects in laboratory experiments are presented with photo or slide questionnaires of different natural landscapes. At one extreme there are landscapes characterized by uniform and repetitive features that show high coherence and therefore facilitate a more or less immediate understanding. At the opposite extreme are landscapes characterized by the presence of partially screened views, by winding and bending paths that suggest mystery and favour inferential exploration. The results of these experiments show that mystery is the most consistent predictor of aesthetic preferences. Conversely, landscapes that are difficult to understand because of lack of coherence or that are boring because of lack of complexity are the least preferred.

Pleasurable landscapes then are those that have partially open-space configurations, that are easy readable yet not boring, and most of all those that prefigure new opportunities and discoveries if only one ventures more deeply into the scene. Other analyses of environmental preference patterns have been applied to the features of urban spaces, housing locations, architecture, and landscape photos and paintings (see Orians and Heerwagen 1992; see also Benedikt 1996 for the role played by novelty in urban landscapes). Again, the features of the environment that balance opportunities of refuge and openness, evoking the feeling that there is always more to be learned (ibid.: 572 and 573), seem to be the ones that heighten more positive responses. 4 4. Expressing preferences: The Exit and Voice option

The desires of citizens, as revealed by their choices but also by the empirical studies just discussed, seem to go run to cities that are functional but also enjoyable places in which to live, cities that offer work opportunities but are not boring, nor simply fast and purely anonymous. How do cities register and respond to these preferences? Have cities the capability to, and do they, respond to individual preferences? If so city evolutions would reflect individual preferences. Certain factors are against individuals playing this role in re-shaping cities. Cities are accumulations of past preferences (Storper and Manville 2006: 1262) and past preferences have a durability that defeats change sometimes benignly, sometimes perversely. Furthermore, individuals choices of location are more bundled and more rigid than those for ordinary goods. House locations, for example present characteristics that come in unbreakable packages that cannot be recombined at pleasure: spacious living with proximity to city-centres, car-free lifestyle and green landscapes with the need to commute. Additionally, choice of location carries financial and emotional investments that are difficult to undo once made. Finally, in the identification and production of desirable social amenities it is easy to incur Prisoners dilemma-type conflicts that are related to the production of public goods. The first two of these obstructive factors have the effect of rising the costs of both entry to and exit from chosen locations and characteristics. The result of these barriers, as is well argued by Albert Hirschman (1970), is that consumers are made more captive and cannot counteract developers interests or stand up to city administrators, who consequently can act as monopolists. The third factor instead requires forms of cooperation that are difficult to devise and implement in the rather loose communities of the city. These constraints can cause conflict between preferences and choices. Preferences possibly cannot reveal themselves or, if revealed, do not have the power to activate change.

Yet the previous discussion on the features of the new economy but also on the spontaneous practices of consumers who contribute to make the city alive show that city dwellers do have indeed a voice, one that has been empowered by the new internet technology.

Internet technologies have already deeply altered the practices of firms, with consumers playing a much greater role in the process of value creation by being engaged in the design process

from the beginning (see Von Hippel 2005). More and more common now are interactions between producers and users, to the point of blurring the boundaries between the two. Users can now customize their product (from shoes to bags to cars), they can introduce innovative specifications and improvements (sports equipment, surgical instruments, toys), and they can even create the whole content of a product or realm of activity (YouTube for video production and sharing, Flickr for photos, Second Life for the imaginary city). It is not difficult to see in these new practices an additional powerful opportunity for city dwellers to co-design their city.

5. Communispace-communiplace

In the last decade or so a new approach to urban planning has started to take shape and be experimented with in Europe, the United States and the developing world as well. This is a movement promoting collaborative, interactive planning; one that stresses the importance of forms of participatory action for the realization and quality of the final urban outcome. Initially deemed idealistic, it starts to attract the attention of policy makers as more and more local government agencies, businesses, residents, architects and designers find forms of mutual partnership and collaboration. Economists have traditionally focused on the features of economic industrial sectors and tended to neglect the time and space dimension of economic activities. Not surprisingly, theories of urban planning and especially of urban collaborative planning come from other disciplines than economics. The history of their developments and contrasts can be found in Hall 1988. But it was in the 1960s that the view of urban planning as simply a form of rational management started to be opposed and contrasted with forms of bottom up processes. Communicative planning pays more attention to the parties involved and the dynamic changes that might occur in the use of space. Within this view community participation is meant to provide people with a voice in design and decision making. The implication is that to involve stakeholders in the decision processes means to increase trust and confidence, and promotes a sense of community and the sharing of common goals. Though the degrees of participation may be different (from awareness to implementation), still participation is a source of wisdom and information, and it is inclusive and pluralistic in its ability to identify and provide for latent or unrecognized needs (see Sanoff 2000 and Healy 2006). This new current of thinking and governance practice in Europe is especially evident in cities. There are many more old cities in Europe, and in them the preservation and related constraints under which urban reshaping can occur are particularly strong. At the same time, the density of city populations gives residents an even stronger stake in what is done than where new land or space can be created through demolition or is simply there for the using.5 In these circumstances, attention has had to be given to creating forms of decentralized participation which allow the views of local residents to be heard on designs or re-designs for their spaces. Frequently what is called for is the engagement of a whole array of organizations: public and private organizations, non-governmental organizations, and local community groups. And, the stakes being high for these stakeholders, particularly if exit is not an easy or desired option, there has been a growing importance given to consensus-based negotiation processes and to the strengthening of local community and local democracy. All of this, of course, adds nuance and complexity to the efforts of urban planners to make urban regions more economically competitive, and sustainable, and to re-imagine cities without heavy industry or mass production (on these and related issues see Healey 2004). 6. The case of the city of Rome.

The city government of Rome and its residents have worked hard to increase the quality and effectiveness of urban life and the citys amenities. Negotiation and participation have been accepted as the best way to face future uncertainties, and reduce the fragmentation and conflict generated by the traditional top-down and bureaucratic approach .

Numerous initiatives have emerged that involve residents and other local players in projects involving territorial re-qualification and the redefinition of neighbourhoods, in experimenting with different practices of participation, and in debates about possible failures, successes and limits to what is possible.The instruments utilized to build a new form of social dialogue include the Participatory Suburb Forum, Neighborhood Contracts, and Territorial Laboratories.

Among the most interesting projects recently undertaken within the participatory framework are the following (Comune di Roma, 2006):

- the so called Landscapes and Identities of the Outskirts (Paesaggi e identit delle periferie) that are meant to overcome the social polarization between the city centre and the outskirts, to improve suburban living conditions, to re-think and to strengthen local identities around a sense of place.

- The Hill of Peace in the VIIIth Municipal Quarter. This project refers to the reconstruction of the urban landscape through the recovery of a hill compromised by land speculation and now transformed into a new park. It is the result of an active and strong pressure by residents and was planned with the cooperation of local school and spontaneous Neighborhood Committees.

- Parco Alessandrino in the VIIth Quarter. The intention of this project was to reshape this area with new squares, a pedestrian space, bike lanes and to create a connection with the Roman archaeological district.

- The project called Cento Piazze (One hundred squares). The aim of this project is to recover the social role that open spaces such as squares have in city life when these have been degraded by car parking and pollution or simply erased by the sprawl of the suburbs.

- Pigneto District Contract. The contract for the area called Pigneto was part of a local development program aimed at rehabilitating and upgrading the landscape as well as the social and economic condition of the area. Pigneto is a popular suburb that emerged without any planning. The project engaged a multi-level cooperation of associations, public and private sector players, individual city dwellers, young people, religious institutions, and others.

- Territorial Laboratory Laurentino. This laboratory is a space for experimental discourse, where the local residents can explore, analyze and assess together with technical experts, and even suggest new urban projects involving neighborhood interventions. The community involvement is realized via focus groups, regular meetings, workshop, site visits, etc. The laboratory is a formal entity where citizens suggestions are collected, modifications to plans are made and documented, and even cultural and artistic events organised. This is an model institution for urban regeneration and social inclusion in a formerly degraded area, centered on permanent social dialogue. These cases were chosen to reflect on the integration of multiple dimensions (social,

political, economic issues) in the participatory approach to urban planning. As always with a new approach, questions remain. Have residents expectations

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1 For example, Boston economy, that accounts for 80% of Massachusetts economy, crashed three times during the twentieth century and three times rebounded passing from a mill-based to a mind-based economy (Drennan 2002: 3). 2 New Yorks mayor Mr Bloomberg has unveiled in April a package of 127 new initiatives dealing with land, air, water, energy and transport. His plans include planting 1m trees and cutting the citys greenhouse-gas emissions by 30%, in part by improving the efficiency of power plants and proposals for congestion pricing. The Economist April 26th 2007. 3 Stevenson 2003 discusses how consumers map the city through names, narratives, and memories that are unstable and changing. See also Lloyds detailed story of the radical transformation of Chicagos Wicker Park from its original industrial and degraded site to a centre for artistic life thanks to a re-use of space for social creative interaction by Bohemian artist-consumers (Lloyd 2006,124). 4These studies also address the impact that other ecological variables such as the presence that trees or flowers have on our perception of the environment. For a discussion of these points see Bianchi 2007 and Bianchi 2002. 5 For a comparison between Europe and US see Le Gals and Zagrodzki (2006).