THE CITY ASSEMBLED:by SPIRO KOSTOF

THE CITY EDGE

ANUJA KANANI 1404

INTRODUCTION

“ cities are too particular as phenomena- specific to moments in time and to the alterations of site and culture- to be pinned down by absolute taxonomies”

“ urbanism as a process- the many ways in which a city‟s physical frame is adjusted according to changing contingencies” – spirokostof.

this book looks at the factors affecting change and modification of urban form, what elements constitute it, how they assemble together to weave the pattern of urban fabric.

The review attempts to study the chapter on the City Edge. It takes into account historical, topographical, political, socio-cultural factors which brought about a change in the defined city edge over time.

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The City Edge This chapter looks at the following broad themes:

a) preliminaries- the birth of the edge, the ritualistic annotations attached to the edge in history, and its meaning.

b) The walled edge- nature of physical boundary, its evolution in time and place, factors that cause modifications, its consequent impact on the urban fabric.

c) Meeting the water- the fluid edge, harbour towns, how do port cities differ from in land cities, nature of such a geographical edge.

d) On the periphery-the changes in physical form of the edge, its political and social repurcussions, formation of suburbs, industrial regions.

e) The open city- dissolution of the hard edge, the idea of a fuzzy boundary, extensions to city, engulfing the surroundings.

f) The soft edge of suburbia- nature of suburbs, the growth pattern, new forms of urbanization, formation of complete communities at the edge, called “edge cities”.

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The Walled Edge the earliest cities had no need for walls.

Most of the time, the natural topography of the land was defense enough. Border cities had some sort of fortifications but otherwise, walls were more a matter of allegiance than defense.

The walls were dispensed with when the political power was strong and wanted to show off its glory by their removal, such as the Ottoman empire.

In absence of their own defenses, settlements depended on a central fortified zone, to escape to when in danger. Other means were to build the outermost houses in a tight ring of walls with a windowless periphery.

The presence of a definite physical boundary limited the city‟s expansion, also it made it effective in protecting market privileges.

The Catal huyuk, Turkey.: note the tight clustered formation of houses with one continuous wall

The Chaco culture, New Mexico. Urban form as measure of defense

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WALL – its features Walls need room. The base of earlier

walls meant for defense was as wide as 12- 16m across.

They were supplemented by a ditch , which becomes a more effective defense mechanism if its filled with water and becomes a moat.

Earth excavated is used in building the rampart , the proportions of the two are closely related.

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Sketches of proportion between ditch and wall

Usually defense circuits are circular :shortest defense line around a maximum area required few defenders than right angle or broken outlines.

Transition from circular to rectangular: early walls were massive affairs, made from compressed earth. Around the 14th

century the walls were faced with brick or stone. The use of modular units such as bricks gave rise to rectangular circuits from then onwards.

Primitive walls used wooden barriers in the form of stockades : large pointed oaks with intermittent embrasures. Later additions included the towers for cannon at the corners and at the gates as artillery was invented.

The shortest defense line is circular: hence the first circuits were designed circular… morever, it was tracing the land contours, around a hill.. Which usually formed a circular path.

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Athens : 18th century depictionsA citadel was the only fortification in the 5th century bc. The outer wall came in the 12th century, which was modified in the 17th century ad.

The Nature of the Wall – their evolution in time

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Primitive edge: closely knit fabric surrounded with fields and wilderness.

The exact nature of the walls of a medieval town or city would depend on the resources available for building them, the nature of the terrain and the perceived threat. The walls were modified to suit new tactics, weapons and siege techniques

Simple single curtained wall

Masonry walls consist of a single or a double curtain, of varying thickness and design. In medieval Europe, the idea of a double curtain comes around 14th century. The sheltered belt was used by the besieged to gather and stage unexpected sorties.

the wall will have had an internal and an external pomoerium. This was a strip of clear ground immediately inside or outside the wall.

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double curtained wall : in between space is called the “killing ground” where the besieged get a clear target of their attackers

A star fort or trace italienne is a fortification in the style that evolved during the age of black powder, when cannons came to dominate the battlefield, and was first seen mid-15th century in Italy.

Star fortifications were further developed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century in response, primarily, to the French invasion of the Italian peninsula. The French army was equipped with new cannons and bombards that were able to easily destroy traditional fortifications built in the Middle Ages.

Towards the 17th century, the bastioned wall with its associated features such as pincers, ravelins etc became a must, more out of a political stunt of show of power rather than need for defense. The city was completely, cruelly cut off from the countryside. This thwarted the growth of European cities to a large extent.

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Bourtange fortification, restored to 1750 situation, Groningen, NetherlandsFortification plan

Around the wall: the pomoerium In Constantinople, the invaders

had to first traverse a wide moat, which was met by a terrace 15 m in width which separated it from the lower outer wall. Then came another terrace (called peribolos ) and then the high inner circuit of the walls.

The space outside the walls was called the extramural zone, and the space between the built form and the inner most wall was the intra mural zone.

This space usually used for taking the troops to the top of the walls. In Ancient Roman cities, the ceremonial procession route cutting through the heart of the city, apart from ritual associations, primarily served the purpose of troop movement.

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Fort walls in Carcassone, France. : Ramps for troop movement.

Walls in Avila, Spain.

Change in the nature of walls : the intramural

zone.

As the power of cannons grew during the 16th and 17th century, medieval walls became obsolete as they were too thin to offer any realistic protection against prolonged bombardment. Most walls were torn down, the material was used in building of towers.

The intramural zone was the least desirable area to build. This gave opportunity for squatter settlements and makeshift shanties come against the wall.

In China, the earlier walls that were built out of earth were massive affairs. The poor built shelters attached to it, as well as carved niches which were cave-like in nature.

City walls in Beijing, China: extremely massive.

Walls in Chang „an, china. Artillery platforms built in between the towers- largely increased unbuilt space between city and the walls. .

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The change within: Intramural

Even the rich were attracted to the intramural zone: There were multiple functions that the bastioned wall served, if we take a look through the pages of history, from formation of suburban districts to the building of pleasure gardens and palaces on top of them. The Zwinger palace in the city of Dresden in Germany is one such example.

In Paris, the development of boulevards was a consequence of the walls being brought down, and availability of a large unbuilt space at the city‟s edge.

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Berlin, 1720. inside the wall are a school, church, garrison area.

View of boulevards in Paris

pleasure walkways and gardens built on top of the walls and inside them, in the city of Lucca, Italy.

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The change without: Extramural zonethe fringe belt

The unbuilt zone in between the curtain walls and outside it, was occupied by lesser important urban functions and sects of society such as the artisans, the tannery, the horse and cattle markets and so on. Also contained in it were religious buildings which came up too late for the extremely dense core.

Geographers call this zone as the “urban fringe belt”. It stands for a collection of mixed land uses, with large scale and low density built pattern which is drastically different from the tightly knit urban fabric of the core.

As the city grows, new fringe belts are developed further out, in patterns which are not necessarily concentric manner or sequential growth. The development and growth pattern of fringe belts are irregular in most European city plans.

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Stages of development of fringe belts: one leapfrogging the other- creating irregular pattern of growth

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Map of Siena,Italy : late 17th century ad. The urban fringe outside the original city core is obviously seen.

above: Plan of Athens , 1848 Ad: dissolution of the walls, use of the grid, planned extensions are obvious. There are central streets connecting to the suburban development.

above: Early map of Athens, date unknown.

Left: plan of Athens, before 1800 AD. Showing how the densely urbanized section of the city reached to the north the area of the current City Hall; to the northeast, Stadiou ave. (where the 18th century wall was built). The streets of the city are the same irregular thoroughfares used today in the historic center

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The City Gates They funnelled the highway traffic

into the city. Markets occurred near them.

Noble families who owned land on both sides of the wall, used to build fortified residences there. The protection and maintainenceof the towers and gates adjacent to them was entrusted to the nobles.

The gates were the entry point, the landmark of a city. Thus they received great architectural care.

The conflict between defense (obstruction) and access had to be taken care of meticulously. In china, the gates were usually at a “t” intersection with through streets, not directly linked to the street network.

Roman Agora Gate in 1762

The Athens market ca. 1799

Boubounistra Gate in 1819, Athens Gate of Roman Forum

in 1819,Athens

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Mural traces First, the city edge had defined as a

hard physical wall, which got modified to the development of urban fringes, to dissolution of a hard edge to a subtle , notional edge. Traces of the wall always remained in some form or other.

In European cities, ring strasses, or outer ring roads occurred where the walls once stood.

Sometimes this huge unbuilt space was sold for construction. The land was divided into lots and converted to profitable commodities.

In cities with “organic” plans, the gates occur as a convergence point of internal streets, with 2 or 3 external streets outside it. Irregular constellations of streets suggest the presence of a defensive circuit.

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On the periphery A prosperous and safe city will attract outsiders to

its periphery who want to use its advantages. Also, sometimes, there is a spill out from the inner dense core to the periphery. Thus are born the suburbs.

The phenomenon is as ancient as cities. In Assyria, there existed Karum,a colony of merchants just outside the city.

Passing tradesmen in time would permanently plant themselves in the shadow of the city walls, near the gates, and form a new life , and create a new urban form.

There is another distinctive phenomenon of suburban growth which begins as new satellite centres around a city, but not directly attached to it. There is also the case of ribbon development, wherein the suburbs grow in a concentric fashion outwards.

Karum, trading colony at Kanesh, Asyyria.

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Planned extensions Medieval cities in Europe who seem to have organic growth patterns,

sometimes have been planned in stages, according to the street patterns.

There were built outer ring of walls, and in cases such as Florence and Siena, but took centuries to reach it. After the 17th century, large planned estates, with parks and monuments occurred outside the periphery.

In the industrial age, the privileged refused to move out of the historic core, which resulted in the urban extensions becoming exile zones with workers and industries girdling the city.

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Paris: 18th century AD.Outside the tight ring of the walls the suburbs start, towards the east. A ring road encircling the space of the walls can be seen clearly.

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Plan of Friedrichstadt, Germany: notice the grid formation in the first one, showing the planned suburbs immediately outside the star shaped bastioned wall.

Plan of Friedrichstadt: 1720 AD. Detail.

Strasbourg, Germany: the core is rectangular, wherein the cathedral is built. A trading suburb grew outside the walls to the southwest. centred on a major market street.

CONCLUSIONS

The walled edge was not just a physical entity, but a definition of the city‟s existence, the extent of its power, the meaning of its friendship with other cities. This edge later continued to get redefined in other forms; traces of it always remained in the footprint of a city, in its roads, layout, cultural associations to the edge. The boundary whether concrete or notional, always made a city, a city.

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