A new urban question

bernardo secchi

Let me thank firstly the City Council for the kind invitation. It is an honour to be here, in this fantastic
building where I have never been before. Let me thank also Mrs. for the introduction; she was very
kind with me exaggerating my merits.

Im not sure that what I have to tell you is concerning you. Yesterday, coming in Oslo, I had the feeling
to enter in a different world; in a world different from the rest of Europe, where people can be safe and
protected; finally a world where the welfare state still exists.

During the last twenty years I had the opportunity with Paola Vigan, to study several European cities.
By studying we mean that we tried through some projects to improve their situation, solving their main
problems, and giving them a vision for a possible future. It was a long research by design; a long trip in
different situations.
In fact ach one of these cities was different: some were small cities, like Kortrijk in Flanders, others were
large metropolitan areas, like the Great Paris, or Brussels the capital region of Belgium. Now we are
studying the New Moscow. Some were southern cities, like Bergamo, or Prato in Italy, others were
situated in the different context of northern Europe, like Antwerp. They had different institutional
frameworks , different social structures and different economies. But they had something in common,
something that probably concerns the entire western world and Ill call a new urban question.

1. the urban question defined

I wrote a long article, some two years ago on this topic1, and so it is possible that Ill repeat what
somebody yet knows, but to explain what I mean by new urban question let me start with some banal
concepts:
a. many observers agree upon foreseeing an important urbanization process that will involve the
world population in the near future when most of it will live in large metropolitan areas or, in any case, in
highly urbanized regions. This process coincide in fact with an important spatial re-distribution of the
population. Individuals and social groups with diverse cultural backgrounds will more and more mix
together especially in highly urbanized regions.
These areas have developed in different periods and they are both different and contemporaries. Some
emblematic examples are Paris, the XIXth century icon, as London, Vienna or Berlin. These cities are
different from New York or Hong Kong and the other vertical cities that are the icons of the XXth
century. All these cities are, on the other hand, very different from the North-Western Metropolitan Area,
the vast area of the diffused urbanization located between Lille, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam and
Amsterdam.
My first hypothesis is that all these metropolitan areas and regions must face, in the near future,
similar problems, that, however, will be differently defined and articulated according to different spatial
as well as social, economic and institutional morphologies.

b. Many observers also agree on the consequences and the risks of climate change and
especially global warming. The increasing CO2 emissions deriving from the structure of industrial
production, consumption and mobility in modern economies and societies - especially in the worlds
more intensely urbanized metropolitan areas or regions - seem to be the major cause. Urban
morphologies, aggregate mobility technologies and social behaviours are frequently held responsible.

1
B. Secchi, 2010, A new urban question. Understanding and Planning the Contemporary European City, in: Territorio. n. 53

Bernardo Secchi, A new urban question, Oslo, 14.06.2012 Pag. 1

On the other hand, many observers also agree thinking that spatial mobility is part of the rights to the
city or of citizenship rights. Decreased options in terms of spatial mobility are becoming, for many
observers, the principal cause of social marginalization and segregation or, in other words, of spatial
injustice2. How different urban morphologies (again physical, social, economic and institutional) affect
or contrast climate change is, in my view, a vast and relevant research area .

c. Finally, many observers recognize also the increasing differences between affluence and
poverty on a planetary scale and in most countries, including the wealthiest. They also agree that these
differences are more and more visible in urban and metropolitan contexts. After a century in which social
inequalities, in the wealthiest countries were decreasing, they started to dramatically increase since the
70 of the past century.
In this analysis affluent is not only the person, the family or the group having high income or significant
assets. A person with a high cultural capital is affluent too (using Pierre Bourdieus words3) referring to
his/her educational and professional level, or to his/her social capital, i.e. the systematic relations with
other people or social groups on the highest social levels. Finally, I might add, affluent is also the person,
family or social group with consistent and visible spatial capital, i.e. those living and working in the
urban spaces with most services and highest quality, whatever the definition for quality we might want to
adopt here.
At the same time poor is not only low income or assets person, family or social group , but poor are also
those who cannot, even potentially, access fundamental goods and services that are necessary for their
own survival. Poor are those who do not have, as opposed to the majority of the population of the same
country or region, the same citizenship or accessibility rights due to limited spatial capital and who live,
in the broadest sense of the word, in marginal, segregated and stigmatized areas without necessary
shelter, services and facilities.
The two groups, the rich and poor, have uncertain and mobile identities and boundaries. Throughout
history, and in different regions, they have been variously identified and defined. The poorest for,
instance, were the misrables (V.Hugo), the classes dangereuses (L. Chevalier), the people (J.Michelet),
the foule (G. Le Bon, G. Tarde) and finally the mass (D. Riesman). In contemporary liquid modernity4
rich and poor are very complex concepts. They do not have as clear a relation with their position in the
economic process as, schematically, the bourgeoisie or the working class in modern society, or the
aristocracy in the ancien rgime within their stable hierarchy of ownership and jurisdictional power.
Their identity and its limitations are defined in a more vague way by the conflicting, and often
contradictory, geography of the city and of power. What is more important is that the rich and the poor
are not specular categories. What defines affluence and its space is not always what defines, by
opposition, poverty and its space. Paradoxically, what defines the space of poverty is often irrelevant for
the spatial definition of affluence. Moreover, social and physical in-between spaces play an important
role in concealing extreme situations.
In modern and democratic societies, the group of the affluent is an open one - everyone knows that one
can join a group but also that the risk of being refused is a real one. During the most extreme crises in
modern western economies, since their beginning, this did come about at times.
It is not surprising that this group, like all dominant groups in the past, adopts strategies of exclusion and
inclusion that are based on spatial devices, even if this is an attempt to undermine democracy and its
rules5. Gated communities are one example. Gentrification processes, which are often linked to urban
renewal policies, are another. But the spatial devices of urban geopolitics are more and more complex .
This very complexity is an interesting issue to be studied . In the case of Grand Paris, for instance,
mobility policies have been an important element for positive and negative segregation as in many
Latin American cities or in the extreme case of Palestine6. In the case of Brussel the use of topography as
a device to build a topology, I mean, as a device to give a meaning to different sites, was another way

2
E.W. Soja, Lecture on the Seminar Pipes and Sponges, Venice, October 26-27, 200
3
P. Bourdieu, 1979, La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris
4
Z. Bauman, 2000, Liquid Modernity, Blackwell, Cambridge; Id. 2003, Liquid Life, Polity Press, Cambridge
5
S. Flusty, 1997, Building Paranoia, in: N.Ellin, E.J.Blakely, (eds.), Architecture of Fear, Princeton Architectural Press,
New York, pp. 47-59.
6
A. Petti, 2007, Arcipelaghi e enclave. Architettura dellordinamento spaziale contemporaneo, prefazione di Bernardo Secchi, Bruno
Mondadori, Milan

Bernardo Secchi, A new urban question, Oslo, 14.06.2012 Pag. 2

implement a policy of exclusion and inclusion7. Large contemporary cities seem to me the terrain where
these strategies and conflicts take place and where their potential outcomes are represented8. This opens
another vast area for research, in which one must stress the physical devices and spatial policies that
constitute different spatial capital for the different social groups.

The new urban question can then be expressed on the basis of growing urbanization and spatial re-
distribution of the worlds population, on the basis of climate change with the great responsibility of
large metropolitan areas, as on the debate over the right to mobility as a part of the right to urban life, on
the growing differences, within the same metropolitan areas, and, finally on the basis of the increasing
economic, cultural and spatial distance between poor and rich. This for me is a field where the main
research topics for spatial sciences are today defined.

2. A short history of the urban question

It is not the first time in western history that the urban question emerges as a thorny problem in the path
of social and economic growth. It is sufficient to mention the luxury controversy during the 18th
century (in fact a debate about where the first capitalistic accumulation could and was taking place9),
the housing question at the middle of the 19th century (a debate about the contradictions implicit in
passing from small-scale manufactured production to the factory system with the inevitable proletarian
concentration in the industrial city), the Grossstadt question at the turn of the 20th century (the main
theme for Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin 10- or the emergence of the crowd in the de-measured
metropolitan space11). Finally, during the 1960s and 70s , when the Fords model of labour
organization was declining and disappearing and when, at the same time, the importance of the individual
autonomy and, as a consequence, of everyday life emerged, a new urban question surfaced; this was
based on the right to the city and was studied, as it is well known, by Manuel Castells12, Henry
Lefebvre13 and Michel de Certeau14.

Roughly speaking, my hypothesis, which is just a working hypothesis, is that whenever the structure of
the entire economy and society is radically changing, the urban question comes to the fore: at the
beginning of the industrial revolution; passing from the manufacturing to the factory system; when the
Taylor-Fords labour organization took place; at its end and finally in the beginning of the era Bauman
associates with the liquid society15, Beck with the risk society16 and Rifkin with the age of
access17. In other words, the urban question emerges now when growing individualization of society,
growing awareness regarding the scarcity of environmental resources and growing confidence in
technological progress and change construct images, scenarios, policies and projects that are partially
contrasting, if not conflicting, one against the other.

It is during these passages that we are unable to use a simple discourse. Every passage was in fact
marked by a set of metaphors trying to depict the real urban situation and its problems. The role of the
metaphor, as it is well known: making sense of what we are unable to understand18. In fact ,whenever we
dont understand the situation, in my view, we need strong metaphors and images.

But what for me is important to stress is that after each passage the city is changing: The city of the
XIXth century is differentfrom the city of ancient regime; the metropolis of the beginning of the XXth

7
Bernardo Secchi, Paola Vigan, 2012, The Horizontal Metropolis, Brussels (forthcoming)
8
Z. Bauman, 2003, City of fears, city of hopes (trad.it.2005, Fiducia e paura nella citt, Mondadori, Milan)
9
C. Borghero (ed.), 1974, La polemica sul lusso nel Settecento francese, Einaudi, Turin
10
S. Fuzessry, Ph. Simay, 2008, Le Choc des mtropoles. Simmel, Kracauer, Benyamin, Editions de lclat, Paris
11
D. Riesman, 1948, The lonely Crowd,Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 1948, 1953, 1961, 1969
12
M. Castells, 1972, La question urbaine, Paris, Franois Maspero (engl. transl., MIT Press and Edward Arnold 1977 ;
revised edition 1980, Paris, La Decouverte)
13
H. Lefebvre, 1968, Le Droit la ville, I, (second dition). Le Droit la ville, II - Espace et politique, 1972
14
M. de Certau, L'Invention du Quotidien. Vol. 1, Arts de Faire, Union gnrale d'ditions, 1980
15
Z. Bauman, 2000, op. cit.
16
U. Beck, La societ globale del rischio, (ed. it. , Asterios Editore, Trieste 2001)
17
J. Rifkin, L'era dell'accesso. La rivoluzione della new economy, (trad.it ,Mondadori, Milan, 2000)
18
G. Lakoff, M. Johnson, 1980, Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bernardo Secchi, A new urban question, Oslo, 14.06.2012 Pag. 3

century is different form the city of the XIXth century, and the same we can say about the fordist city,
and of the post Fordism, i.e. actual, city. Each one is different of the preceding city in forma an in the
way of functioning. Each one is producing a different urban imagery, and different policies. Each one has
a different social structure and a different social geography.

Concerning social sciences and particularly those that are attentive to the spatial contexts where
fundamental parts of social life take place, the new urban question is then the locus of thinking about
these issues and contradictions. This requires not only a different articulation of the different disciplines
and of the themes they face, a new formulation of their statutes and research programs, a stronger
integration of their modus operandi, but also facing some fundamental questions of a conceptual
nature. I will refer to these questions as the problems of new alliances19, new techniques and, perhaps,
new epistemologies.

3. New alliances
While working, for instance, on environmental problems, we, architects and urbanists, encountered
again geographers, geologists and hydraulic engineers and not only economists, sociologists and
historians as in recent times. It was a return that forced us to reconsider the different dimension of time -
the longue dure and everyday life, idio-rhythms20 and time-frames of different population groups and
the inertia of the environments in which they live, the physical environment of course, but also the
environment formed by their images, ideas and ideologies.
We are living today an evident contradiction between the speed of many economic and social
phenomena, especially the global phenomena, their liquidity and volatility and the inertia of a great part
of the world, especially the local world within which those same phenomena take place. Inertia, not only
change, measures time. Inertia, not only change, creates a great part of our individual and collective
imagery and prejudices.
In the case of Grand Paris, for instance, we started to work following the trails of Vidal de la Blache e de
Jean Basti. But, like when you meet up again with some childhood friend, the protagonists had changed
in the meantime. Geographers, geologist and engineers had changed their working styles, their analytical
approaches and techniques, their main concepts and, as a consequence, their philosophies. The two
versions of porosity - of material and of fracture - we used to interpret many problems in the urban
fabric of the Paris banlieues, came to us from geologists; similarly, the concept of permeability came
from hydraulic engineers. But the way to measure porosity, permeability and, later, accessibility drove us
to work with mathematicians.
In fact, while working on mobility issues with many traffic engineers who developed simulation models
we felt the need to conceive the mobility networks as pipes and sponges in order to better understand
what was happening and what could happen in such a vast region. The pipes provide entry and exit from
some spigots and sponges have an osmotic relation with their contexts. We gave the mathematician
some suggestions that were very different from the past and received different answers and new
suggestions; it was a different way to model the phenomena we were investigating and this lead to
different and often surprising outcomes. In fact , we had models for pipes but not for sponges. On the
contrary, working on mobility issues in Grand Paris, like in Flanders or in the Veneto region, we
understood the importance of the sponge. For this reason we asked the mathematician to help us to build
adequate models. The sponge concept was strictly linked to porosity, permeability and accessibility - a
device to contrast the tendency to produce new enclaves.
Trying to reduce energy consumption, which is an issue linked as much to the environment as it is to
mobility technologies and behaviours, we understood that what we have to do is not to build a new city,
but to modify what is existing by adding and subtracting as has always happened throughout history. This
approach lead us to reflect on the continuities and discontinuities in the history of urban space, trying to
explain them not only from the outside, as consequences of economic and social change, but from the
inside, as internal formal contradictions within the urban text. At this point, we rediscovered our old

19
P. Vigan, Landscape of water, Edizioni RISMA. 2009
20
R. Barthes, 2002, Comment vivre ensemble. Cours et sminaires au Collge de France, (1976-1977), texte tabli, annot et prsent
par Claude Coste, Seuil Imec, Paris

Bernardo Secchi, A new urban question, Oslo, 14.06.2012 Pag. 4

friends, geographers, geologists, historians and, obviously, economists and sociologists - natural
scientists and social scientists together.

These new approaches, I must say, are the outcome of a description period - a period in which,
according to a bottom-up strategy, we tried to describe many different situations in detail, using a
sampling strategy, helping to discover the emerging innovations, the role of the individual and collective
imagery. We mapped different territories and overlaid the different maps with the awareness that maps
always lie. We took a critical distance from them and from their rhetoric, investigating the differences
more than the similarities, again discovering the role of time and uncertainty.

We didnt rely on our ability to forecast, but we started to build scenarios asking the question what
could happen if.?. For the Veneto diffuse city, for instance, we developed no car scenarios to
show that no car is not an inconceivable condition. We used a project for producing knowledge. Going
back to the personal, physical and mental experience of space, we considered cities and regions as an
immense laboratories where everything moves - people and their behaviours, ideas and their images,
institutions and the ways in which they structure economy and society and the relationships between
different activities and social groups.

Perhaps my training as an architect and urbanist, even if an unorthodox urbanist in the European
tradition, gave me a biased framework, but in my view and in Ed Sojas21, it is important to give a
significance to space that is analogous to the one traditionally given to history; to give to spatial sciences
the same importance we give to other hard scientific fields. With these words, I am suggesting, as a
working hypothesis, the importance of spatial capital as an autonomous, central and independent
category for social, economic and institutional organization.

21
E.W. Soja, op cit

Bernardo Secchi, A new urban question, Oslo, 14.06.2012 Pag. 5