The Condition of Postmodernity

An Inquiry into the Origin of Cultural Change

David Harvey

Blackwell
Cambridge, MA
© 1990
 Postmodernism in the city 67
range of possible sensations and social practices can be thought
about, evaluated, and achieved. One dimension of Raban's Soft city
can be rendered more or less hard by the way the built environment
is shaped. Conversely, architecture and urban design have been the
locus of considerable polemical debate concerning the ways in which
aesthetic judgements can or should be incorporated in spatially fixed
Postmodernism in the city: form, and with what effects on daily life. If we experience architecture
architecture and urban design as communication, if, as Barthes (1975, 92) insists, 'the city is a
discourse and this discourse is truly a language,' then we ought to
pay close attention to what is being said, particularly since we
typically absorb such messages in the midst of all the other manifold
distractions of urban life.
In the field of architecture and urban design, I take postmodernism Prince Charles's 'kitchen cabinet' of advisers on matters to do
broadly to signify a break with the modernist idea that planning and with architecture and urban design includes the architect Leon Krier.
development should focus on large-scale, metropolitan-wide, tech- Krier's complaints against modernism, as published (long-hand for
nologically rational and efficient urban plans, backed by absolutely special effect) in 1987 in Architectural Design Profile (no. 65) are of
no-frills architecture (the austere 'functionalist' surfaces of 'inter- direct interest since they now inform public debate in Britain at both
national style' modernism). Postmodernism cultivates, instead, a the highest and the most general level. The central problem for Krier
conception of the urban fabric as necessarily fragmented, a 'palimpsest' is that modernist urban planning works mainly through mono-
of past forms superimposed upon each other, and a 'collage' of functional zoning. As a result, circulation of people between zones
current uses, many of which may be ephemeral. Since the metropolis by way of artificial arteries becomes the central preoccupation of the
is impossible to command except in bits and pieces, urban design planner, generating an urban pattern that is, in Krier's judgement,
(and note that postmodernists design rather than plan) simply aims 'anti-ecological' because it is wasteful of time, energy, and land:
to be sensitive to vernacular traditions, local histories, particular
wants, needs, and fancies, thus generating specialized, even highly The symbolic poverty of current architecture and townscape is a
customized architectural forms that may range from intimate, person- direct result and expression of functionalist monotony as legis-
alized spaces, through traditional monumentality, to the gaiety of lated by functional zoning practices. The principal modern
spectacle. All of this can flourish by appeal to a remarkable electicism building types and planning models such as the Skyscraper, the
of architectural styles. Groundscraper, the Central Business District, the Commercial
Above all, postmodernists depart radically from modernist con- Strip, the Office Park, the Residential Suburb, etc. are invariably
ceptions of how to regard space. Whereas the modernists see space horizontal or vertical owrconcentrations of single uses in one
as something to be shaped for social purposes and therefore always urban zone, in one building programme, or under one roof.
subservient to the construction of a social project, the postmodernists
see space as something independent and autonomous, to be shaped Krier contrasts this situation with the 'good city' (by its nature
according to aesthetic aims and principles which have nothing neces- ecological) in which 'the totality of urban functions' are provided
sarily to do with any overarching social objective, save, perhaps, the within 'compatible and pleasant walking distances.' Recognizing that
achievement of timeless and 'disinterested' beauty as an objective in such an urban form 'cannot grow by extension in width and height'
itself. but only 'through multiplication,' Krier seeks a city form made up of
It is useful to consider the meaning of such a shift for a variety of 'complete and finite urban communities,' each constituting an inde-
reasons. To begin with, the built environment constitutes one element pendent urban quarter within a large family of urban quarters, that
in a complex of urban experience that has long been a vital crucible in turn make up 'cities within a city.' Only under such conditions
for the forging of new cultural sensibilities. How a city looks and will it be possible to recuperate the 'symbolic richness' of traditional
how its spaces are organized forms a material base upon which a urban forms based on 'the propinquity and dialogue of the greatest
68 The passage from modernity to postmodernity Postmodernism in the city 69

possible variety and hence on the expression of true variety as Mies van der Rohe, of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the like, could gain
evidenced by the meaningful and truthful articulation of public spaces, the kind of purchase they did, less as a controlling force of ideas over
urban fabric, and skyline.' production than as a theoretical framework and justification for what
Kner, like some other European postmodernists, seeks the active practical-minded engineers, politicians, builders, and developers
restoration and re-creation of traditional 'classical' urban values. This were in many cases engaged upon out of sheer social, economic, and
means either restoration of an older urban fabric and its rehabilitation political necessity.
to new uses, or the creation of new spaces that express the traditional Within this general framework all kinds of solutions were explored.
visions with all the cunning that modern technologies and materials Britain, for example, adopted quite stringent town and country plan-
will allow. While Krier's project is only one out of many possible ning legislation. The effect was to restrict suburbanization and to
directions that postmodernists could cultivate — quite at odds, for substitute planned new-town development (on the Ebenezer Howard
example, with Venturi's admiration for Disneyland, the Las Vegas model) or high-density infilling or renewal (on the Le Corbusier
strip, and suburban ornamentation — it does harp upon a certain model) in its stead. Under the watchful eye and sometimes strong
conception of modernism as its reactive beginning point. It is useful, hand of the state, procedures were devised to eliminate slums, build
therefore, to consider to what degree and why the sort of modern- modular housing, schools, hospitals, factories, etc. through the
ism Krier decries became so dominant a feature of postwar urban adoption of the industrialized construction systems and rational plan-
organization. ning procedures that modernist architects had long proposed. And
all this was framed by a deep concern, expressed again and again in
The political, economic, and social problems that faced the advanced legislation, for the rationalization of spatial patterns and of circulation
capitalist countries in the wake of World War II were as extensive as systems so as to promote equality (at least of opportunity), social
they were severe. International peace and prosperity had somehow welfare, and economic growth.
to be built upon a programme that met the aspirations of peoples While many other European countries pursued variants of the
who had given massively of their lives amd energies in a struggle British solution, the United States pushed towards urban reconstruc-
generally depicted (and justified) as a struggle for a safer world, a tion of a rather different sort. Rapid and weakly controlled subur-
better world, a better future. Whatever else that meant, it did not banization (the answer to every demobilized soldier's dream, as the
mean a return to the prewar conditions of slump and unemployment, rhetoric of the time had it) was privately developed but heavily
of hunger marches and soup-kitchens, of deteriorating slums and subsidized by government-backed housing finance and direct public
penury, and to the social unrest and political instability to which investments in highway construction and other infrastructures. The
such conditions could all too easily lend themselves. Postwar politics, deterioration of the inner cities consequent upon the flight outwards of
if they were to remain democratic and capitalistic, had to address both jobs and people then provoked a powerful and again government-
questions of full employment, decent housing, social provision, wel- subsidized strategy of urban renewal through massive clearance and
fare, and broad-based opportunity to construct a better future (see reconstruction of older city centres. It was in this context that some-
Part II). one like Robert Moses — the 'power broker,' as Caro (1974) depicts
W'hile the tactics and conditions differed from place to place (in, him, of metropolitan redevelopment in New York — was able to
for example, the extent of war-time destruction, the acceptable degree insert himself in between the sources of public funds and the require-
of centralization in political control, or the level of commitment to ments of private developers to such powerful effect, and to reshape
state welfarism), the trend was everywhere to look to the war-time the whole New York metropolitan region through high-way con-
experience of mass production and planning as means to launch struction, bridge building, park provision, and urban renewal.
upon a vast programme of reconstruction and reorganization. It was The US solution, though different in form, nevertheless also relied
almost as if a new and revivified version of the Enlightenment neavily upon mass production, industrialized construction systems,
project sprang, phoenix-like, out of the death and destruction of ind a sweeping conception of how a rationalized urban space might
global conflict. The reconstruction, re-shaping, and renewal of the emerge when linked, as Frank Lloyd Wright had envisaged in his
urban fabric became an essential ingredient within this project. This Broadacre project of the 1930s, through individualized means of
was the context in which the ideas of the CIAM, of Le Corbusier, of transportation using publicly provided infrastructures.
70 The passage from modernity to postmodernity Postmodernism in the city 71
It would, I think, be both erroneous and unjust to depict these capital still had a great deal of power. And where corporate capital
'modernist' solutions to the dilemmas of postwar urban develop- was in command (especially in the United States), it could happily
ment and redevelopment as unalloyed failures. War-torn cities were appropriate every modernist trick in the architect's book to continue
rapidly reconstructed, and populations housed under much better that practice of building monuments that soared ever higher as sym-
conditions than was the case in the inter-war years. Given the tech- bols of corporate power. Monuments like the Chicago Tribune
nologies available at the time and the obvious scarcity of resources, it building (built from a design chosen by competition between many
is hard to see how much of that could have been achieved except of the great modernist architects of the period) and the Rockefeller
through some variant of what was actually done. And while some Center (with its extraordinary enshrining of the credo of John D.
solutions turned out to be much more successful (in the sense of Rockefeller) are part of a continuous history of celebrating supposedly
yielding widespread public satisfaction, as did Le Corbusier's Unite sacrosanct class power that brings us in more recent times to the
d'Habitation in Marseilles) than others (and I note the postmodernist Trump Tower or the postmodernist monumentalism of Philip
penchant for always and only citing the bad ones), the overall effort Johnson's AT & T building (see plates 1.11, 1.12, 1.13). It is com-
was reasonably successful in reconstituting the urban fabric in ways pletely wrong, I think, to lay all the blame for the urban ills of
that helped preserve full employment, improve material social pro- postwar development at the modern movement's door, without regard
vision, contribute to welfare goals, and generally help preserve a to the political —economic tune to which postwar urbanization was
capitalist social order that was plainly threatened in 1945. Nor is it dancing. The postwar surge in modernist sentiment was, however,
true to say that modernist styles were hegemonic for purely ideol- widespread, and could be so at least in part because of the consider-
ogical reasons. The standardization and assembly-line uniformity of able variety of on-the-ground neo-modernist constructs to which the
which postmodernists were later to complain were as omni-present postwar reconstruction gave rise.
in the Las Vegas strip and Levittown (hardly built to modernist It is useful here, I think, to go back and look at Jane Jacobs's
specifications) as they were in Mies van der Rohe's buildings. Both attack upon all of this in The death and life of great American cities,
labour and conservative governments pursued modernist projects in published in 1961, not only because it was one of the earliest, most
postwar Britain, though it is curious that the left is now largely- articulate, and most influential of the anti-modernist tracts, but because
blamed for them when it was the conservatives, by cutting corners it sought to define a whole mode of approach to understanding
on costs of low-income housing in particular, who perpetrated many urban life. While the 'pointmen' of her wrath were Ebenezer Howard
of the worst examples of instant slums and alienated living conditions. and Le Corbusier, she in fact aimed her barbs at a whole range of
The dictates of costs and efficiency (particularly important in relation targets from city planners, federal policy makers, and financiers, to
to the less affluent populations served), coupled with organizational the editors of Sunday supplements and women's magazines. Sur-
and technological constraints, surely played as important a role as veying the urban scene as it had been reconstituted since 1945, she
ideological concern for style.
Nevertheless, it did indeed become fashionable in the 1950s to
laud the virtues of the international style, to vaunt its capacities to Low income projects that become worse centers of delinquency,
create a new species of human being, to view it as the expressive arm vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they
of an interventionist bureaucratic state apparatus that, in conjunction were supposed to replace. Middle income housing projects
with corporate capital, was reckoned to be the guardian of all further which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed
advances in human welfare. Some of the ideological claims were against any buoyancy or vitality of city life. Luxury housing
grandiose. But the radical transformations in the social and physical projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with vapid vulgarity.
landscapes of capitalist cities often had little to do with such claims. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore.
To begin with, speculative land and property development (to gain Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums, who have
land rent and to build profitably, quickly, and cheaply) were domin- fewer choices of loitering place than others. Commercial centers
ant forces in a development and construction industry that was a that are lackluster imitations of standardized suburban chain-
major branch of capital accumulation. Even when contained by plan- store shopping. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere
ning regulations or oriented around public investments, corporate and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great
72 The passage from modernity to postmodernity Postmodernism in the city 73

Plate 1.11 The modernist monumentaUsm of the Rockefeller Center Plate 1.12 Trump Tower: one of the most recent architectural celebrations
of personal power to grace the skyline of New York City

cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of

cities. intricate system of organized rather than disorganized complexity, a
vitality and energy of social interaction that depend crucially upon
This 'Great Blight of Dullness' (see plate 1.14) arose in her judge- diversity, intricacy, and the capacity to handle the unexpected in
ment, from a profound misunderstanding of what cities are about. controlled but creative ways. 'Once one thinks about city processes,
'Processes are of the essence,' she argued, and it is upon the social it follows that one must think of catalysts of these processes, and this
processes of interaction that we should focus. And when we look at ioo is of the essence.' There were, she noted, some market processes
these on the ground, in 'healthy' city environments, we find an at work which tended to counter a 'natural' human affinity for
74 The passage from modernity to postmoderrnty Postmodernism in the city 75

t.

Plate 1.14 The 'Great Blight of Dullness' of which Jane Jacobs complained is
,ell represented in this typical example of public housing in Baltimore.

provide for it. It is curious that city designers seem neither to

recognize this force of self-diversification nor to be attracted by the
jsthetic problems of expressing it.'
On the surface, at least, it would seem that postmodernism is
precisely about rinding ways to express such an aesthetics of diversity,
but it is important to consider how it does so. In that way we can
-ncover the deep limitations (which the more reflective postmod-
ernists recognize) as well as the superficial advantages of many post-
modernist efforts.
Jencks (1984), for example, argues that postmodern architecture
Plate 1.13 The modernism of Trump Tower (left) battles the postmodernism
of Phillip Johnson's AT& T building (right) for position on the Ne-w York ;as its roots in two significant technological shifts. First, contem-
'Byline. porary communications have collapsed the 'usual space and time
Doundaries' and produced both a new internationalism and strong
diversity and produce a stilling conformity of land uses. But that eternal differentiations within cities and societies based on place,
problem was seriously compounded by the way planners declared reaction, and social interest. This 'produced fragmentation' exists in
themselves enemies of diversity, fearing chaos and complexity because * context of transport and communications technologies that have
they saw it as disorganized, ugly, and hopelessly irrational. 'It is .r.i; capacity to handle social interaction across space in a highly
curious,' she complained, 'that city planning neither respects spon- ^.nerentiated manner. Architecture and urban design have therefore
taneous self-diversification among city populations nor contrives to Dcen presented with new and more wide-ranging opportunities to
I
 Postmodernism in the city 77
76 The passage jrum modernity to postmodernity
diversity spatial form than was the case in the immediate postwar be devised that meets the needs of rich and poor alike. 1 his pre-
period. Dispersed, decentralized, and deconcentrated urban forms supposes, however, a series of well-knit and cohesive urban com-
are now much more technologically feasible than they once were. munities as its starting point in an urban world that is always in flux
Second, new technologies (particularly computer modelling) have and transition.
dissolved the need to conjoin mass production with mass repetition, This problem is compounded by the degree to which the different
and permitted the flexible mass production of 'almost personalized 'taste cultures' and communities express their desires through dif-
products' expressive of a great variety of styles. 'The results are ferentiated political influence and market power. Jencks concedes,
closer to nineteenth century handicraft than to the regimented super- for example, that postmodernism in architecture and urban design
blocks of 1984.' By the same token a whole new range of building tends to be shamelessly market-oriented because that is the primary
materials, some of which permit of almost exact imitation of much language of communication in our society. Although market inte-
older styles (from oak beams to weathered brick) can now be procured gration plainly carries with it the danger of pandering to the rich and
quite cheaply. To give the new technologies prominence in this way the private consumer rather than to the poor and to public needs,
is not to interpret the postmodern movement as technologically that is in the end, Jencks holds, a situation the architect is powerless
to change.
determined. But Jencks does suggest that the context in which archi-
tects and urban planners now operate has altered in ways that liberate Such a cavalier response to lop-sided market power scarcely favours
them from some of the more powerful constraints that existed in the an outcome that meets Jacobs's objections. To begin with, it is just
as likely to replace the planner's zoning with a market-produced
immediate postwar period.
The postmodern architect and urban designer can, as a con- zoning of ability to pay, an allocation of land to uses based on the
sequence, more easily accept the challenge to communicate with principles of land rent rather than the kind of principles of urban
different client groups in personalized ways, while tailoring products design that someone like Kner plainly has in mind. In the short run,
to different situations, functions, and 'taste cultures.' They are, says a transition from planned to market mechanisms may temporarily
Jencks, very concerned with 'signs of status, history, commerce, mix up uses into interesting configurations, but the speed of gentri-
comfort, ethnic domain, signs of being neighbourly' and willing to ncation and the monotony of the result (see plate 1.15) suggests that
cater to all and every taste, such as those of Las Vegas or Levittown ;n many instances the short run is very short indeed. Market and
— tastes that the modernists tended to dismiss as common and banal. Und-rent allocation of this kind have already re-shaped many urban
In principle, therefore, postmodern architecture is anti-avant-gardist ..indscapes into new patterns of conformity. Free-market populism,
(unwilling to impose solutions, as the high modernists, the bureaucratic :or example, puts the middle classes into the enclosed and protected
planners, and the authoritarian developers tended — and still tend — -.paces of shopping malls (plate 1.16) and atria (plate 1.17), but it
Joes nothing for the poor except to eject them into a new and quite
to do).
It is by no means clear, however, that a simple turn to populism is nightmarish postmodern landscape of homelessness (see plate 1.18).
sufficient to answer Jane Jacobs's complaints. Rowe and Koetter in The pursuit of the consumption dollars of the rich has led, how-
their Collage city (the very title of which indicates sympathy with ever, to much greater emphasis upon product differentiation in urban
the postmodernist thrust) worry that 'the architectural proponents jesign. By exploring the realms of differentiated tastes and aesthetic
of populism are all for democracy and all for freedom: but they are preferences (and doing whatever they could to stimulate those tasks),
characteristically unwilling to speculate as to the necessary conflicts irchitects and urban designers have re-emphasized a powerful aspect
of democracy with law, of the necessary collisions of freedom with : capital accumulation: the production and consumption of what
justice.' By surrendering to an abstract entity called 'the people,' the Bourdieu (1977; 1984) calls 'symbolic capital.' The latter can be
populists cannot recognize how manifold the people happens to be, iefincd as 'the collection of luxury goods attesting the taste and
and consequently 'how much in need of protection from each other function of the owner.' Such capital is, of course, transformed
us components happen to stand.' The problems of minorities and the r.oney capital which 'produces its proper effect inasmuch, and only
underprivileged, or of the diverse counter-cultural elements that so inasmuch, as it conceals the fact that it originates in "material" forms
intrigued Jane Jacobs, get swept under the rug unless some very : capital.' The fetishism (direct concern with surface appearances
democratic and egalitarian system of community-based planning can :.:at conceal underlying meanings) is obvious, but it is here deployed
 The passage from modernity to postmodcrrnty Postmodernism in the city 79
78

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«*., Plate 1.16 Baltimore's Gallery at Harbor Place is typical of the innumerable
Plate 1.15 The signs of rehabilitation and gentnfication often assume almost anterior shopping malls that have been constructed since around 1970.
exactly the same serial monotony as the modernism they were supposed to
replace: rehabilitation in Baltimore is everywhere signalled by the standard
coach lamp hanging outside the house. 'to the reproduction of the established order and the perpetuation of
domination remain hidden.'
It is instructive to put Krier's search for symbolic richness in the
deliberately to conceal, through the realms of culture and taste, the context of Bourdieu's theses. The search to communicate social dis-
real basis of economic distinctions. Since 'the most successful ideo- tinctions through the acquisition of all manner of symbols of status
logical effects are those which have no words, and ask no more than has long been a central facet of urban life. Simmel produced some
complicitous silence,' the production of symbolic capital serves ideo- orilliant analyses of this phenomenon at the turn of the century, and
logical functions because the mechanisms through which it contributes a whole series of researchers (such as Firey in 1945 and Jager in
80 The passage front modernity to postmodemity

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1986) have returned again and again to consideration of it. But I s

think it is fair to say that the modernist push, partly for practical, £
technical, and economic, but also for ideological reasons, did go out
of its way to repress the significance of symbolic capital in urban life.
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The inconsistency of such a forced democratization and egalitarianism
of taste with the social distinctions typical of what, after all, remained ^
a class-bound capitalist society, undoubtedly created a climate of
repressed demand if not repressed desire (some of which was expressed
in the cultural movements of the 1960s). This repressed desire pro-
82 The passage from modernity to postmodernity Postmodernism in the city 83
bably did play an important role in stimulating the market for more conceived of as 'a system of anarchic and archaic signs and symbols
diversified urban environments and architectural styles. This is the that is constantly and independently self-renewing.' Other architects
desire, of course, that many postmodernists seek to satisfy, if not strive to cultivate the labyrinthine qualities of urban environments
titillate shamelessly. 'For the middle class suburbanite,' Venturi et al. by interweaving interiors and exteriors (as in the ground plan of the
observe, 'living not in an antebellum mansion, but in a smaller new skyscrapers between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Mid-Town
version lost in a large space, identity must come through symbolic Manhattan or the AT & T and IBM complex on Madison Avenue
treatment of the form of the house, either by styling provided by the - see plate 1.17), or simply through the creation of an interior sense
developer (for instance, split-level Colonial) or through a variety of of inescapable complexity, an interior maze like that of the museum
symbolic ornaments applied thereafter by the owner.' in the re-shaped Gare d'Orsay in Paris, the new Lloyds Building in
The trouble here is that taste is a far from static category. Symbolic London, or the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, the confusions of
capital remains capital only to the degree that the whims of fashion which have been dissected by Jameson (1984b). Postmodern built
sustain it. Struggles exist among the taste makers, as Zukin shows in environments typically seek out and deliberately replicate themes
an excellent work on Loft living, which examines the roles of 'capital that Raban so strongly emphasized in Soft city: an emporium of
and culture in urban change' by way of a study of the evolution of a styles, an encyclopaedia, a 'maniacal scrap-book filled with colourful
real-estate market in the Soho district of New York. Powerful forces, entries."
she shows, established new criteria of taste in art as well as in urban The multivalency of architecture which results, in turn generates a
living, and profited well off both. Conjoining the idea of symbolic tension that renders it 'radically schizophrenic by necessity.' It is
capital with the search to market Kner's symbolic richness has much interesting to see how Jencks, the chief chronicler of the post-
to tell us, therefore, about such urban phenomena as gentrification, modern movement in architecture, invokes the schizophrenia that
the production of community (real, imagined, or simply packaged many others identify as a general characteristic of the postmodern
for sale by producers), the rehabilitation of urban landscapes, and mind-set. Architecture, he argues, must embody a double coding, 'a
the recuperation of history (again, real, imagined, or simply repro- popular traditional one which like spoken language is slow-changing,
duced as pastiche). It also helps us to comprehend the present fascin- full of cliches and rooted in family life,' and a modern one rooted in
ation with embellishment, ornamentation, and decoration as so many a 'fast-changing society, with its new functional tasks, new materials,
codes and symbols of social distinction. I am not at all sure that this new technologies and ideologies' as well as quick-changing art and
is what Jane Jacobs had in mind when she launched her criticism of fashion. We here encounter Baudelaire's formulation but in a new
modernist urban planning. histoncist guise. Postmodernism abandons the modernist search for
Paying attention to the needs of the 'heterogeneity of urban villagers inner meaning in the midst of present turmoil, and asserts a broader
and taste cultures,' however, takes architecture away from the ideal base for the eternal in a constructed vision of historical continuity
of some unified meta-language and breaks it down into highly dif- and collective memory. Again, it is important to see exactly how this
ferentiated discourses. 'The "langue" (total set of commumcational is done.
sources) is so heterogeneous and diverse that any singular "parole" Krier, as we have seen, seeks to recuperate classical urban values
(individual selection) will reflect this.' Although he does not use the directly. The Italian architect Aldo Rossi puts a different argument:
phrase, Jencks could easily have said that the language of architecture
dissolves into highly specialized language games, each appropriate in Destruction and demolition, expropriation and rapid changes in
its own way to a quite different interpretative community. use as a result of speculation and obsolescense, are the most
The result is fragmentation, often consciously embraced. The recognizable signs of urban dynamics. But beyond all else, the
Office for Metropolitan Architecture group is described in the Post- images suggest the interrupted destiny of the individual, of his
modern visions catalogue (Klotz, 1985), for example, as understanding often sad and difficult participation in the destiny of the col-
'the perceptions and experiences of the present as symbolic and lective. This vision in its entirety seems to be reflected with a
associative, a fragmentary collage, with the Big City providing the quality of permanence in urban monuments. Monuments, signs
ultimate metaphor.' The group produces graphic and architectural of the collective will as expressed through the principles of
work 'characterized by the collage of fragments of reality and splinters architecture, offer themselves as primary elements, fixed points
of experience enriched by historical references.' The metropolis is in the urban dynamic. (Rossi, 1982, 22)
 Postmodernism in the city 85
Here we encounter the tragedy of modernity once more, but this
time stabilized by the fixed points of monuments that incorporate
and preserve a 'mysterious' sense of collective memory. The preser-
vation of myth through ritual 'constitutes a key to understanding the
meaning of monuments and, moreover, the implications of the
founding of cities and of the transmission of ideas in an urban
context.' The task of the architect, in Rossi's view, is to participate
'freely' in the production of 'monuments' expressive of collective
memory, while also recognizing that what constitutes a monument is
itself a mystery which is 'above all to be found in the secret and
ceaseless will of its collective manifestations.' Rossi grounds his
understanding of that in the concept of 'genre de vie' — that
relatively permanent way of life that ordinary people construct for
themselves under certain ecological, technological, and social con-
ditions. This concept, drawn from the work of the French geographer
Vidal de la Blache, provides Rossi with a sense of what collective
memory represents. The fact that Vidal found the concept of genre
de vie appropriate to interpret relatively slow-changing peasant
societies, but began, towards the end of his life, to doubt its applic-
ability to the rapidly changing landscapes of capitalist industrialization
(see his Geographic de Vest published in 1916), escapes Rossi's atten-
tion. The problem, under conditions of rapidly unfolding industrial
change, is to prevent his theoretical posture lapsing into the aesthetic
production of myth through architecture, and thereby falling into
the very trap that 'heroic' modernism encountered in the 1930s. Not
surprisingly, Rossi's architecture has been heavily criticized. Umberto
Eco describes it as 'frightening', while others point to what they see
as its fascist overtones (plate 1.20).
Rossi at least has the virtue of taking the problem of historical
reference seriously. Other postmodernists simply make gestures
towards historical legitimacy by extensive and often eclectic quotation
of past styles. Through films, television, books, and the like, history
and past experience are turned into a seemingly vast archive 'instantly
retrievable and capable of being consumed over and over again at the
push of a button.' If, as Taylor (1987, 105) puts it, history can be
seen 'as an endless reserve of equal events,' then architects and urban
designers can feel free to quote them in any kind of order they wish.
The postmodern penchant for jumbling together all manner of re-
ferences to past styles is one of its more pervasive characteristics.
Reality, it seems, is being shaped to mimic media images.
But the outcome of inserting such a practice into the contemporary
socio-economic and political context is more than a little quirky.
Since around 1972, for example, what Hewison (1987) calls 'the
86 The passage from modernity to postmodermty Postmodernism in the city 87
Hewison is, I think, here revealing something of great potential
importance because it is indeed the case that the preoccupation with
identity, with personal and collective roots, has become far more
pervasive since the early 1970s because of widespread insecurity in
labour markets, in technological mixes, credit systems, and the like
(see Part II). The television series Roots, which traced the history of
a black American family from African origins to the present day,
sparked a wave of family history research and interest thoughout the
whole Western world.
It has, unfortunately, proved impossible to separate postmod-
ernism's penchant for historical quotation and populism from the
simple task of catering, if not pandering, to nostalgic impulses.
Hewison sees a relation between the heritage industry and post-
modernism. 'Both conspire to create a shallow screen that intervenes
between our present lives, our history. We have no understanding of
history in depth, but instead are offered a contemporary creation,
more costume drama and re-enactment than critical discourse.'
The same judgement may be made of the way postmodernist
architecture and design quotes the vast range of information and
Plate 1.20 Aldo Rossi's design for student accommodation in Chicti yields a images of urban and architectural forms to be found in different
very different sort of impression within the eclecticism of postmodern
parts of the world. We all of us, says Jencks, carry around with us a
architecture.
musee imagmaire in our minds, drawn from experience (often touristic)
of other places, and knowledge culled from films, television, exhibi-
heritage industry' has suddenly become big business in Britain. tions, travel brochures, popular magazines, etc. It is inevitable, he
Museums, country houses, reconstructed and rehabilitated urban says, that all of these get run together. And it is both exciting and
landscapes that echo past forms, directly produced copies of past healthy that this should be so. 'Why, if one can afford to live in
urban infrastructures, have become part and parcel of a vast trans- different ages and cultures, restrict oneself to the present, the locale?
formation of the British landscape to the point where, in Hewison's Eclecticism is the natural evolution of a culture with choice.' Lyotard
judgement, Britain is rapidly turning from the manufacture of goods echoes that sentiment exactly. 'Eclecticism is the degree zero of
to the manufacturing of heritage as its principal industry. Hewison contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western,
explains the impulse behind it all in terms a bit reminiscent of Rossi: eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears
Paris perfume in Tokyo and 'retro' clothes in Hong Kong.'
The impulse to preserve the past is part of the impulse to The geography of differentiated tastes and cultures is turned into a
preserve the self. Without knowing where we have been, it is pot-pourri of internationalism that is in many respects more startling,
difficult to know where we are going. The past is the foundation perhaps because more jumbled, than high internationalism ever was.
of individual and collective identity, objects from the past are When accompanied by strong migration streams (not only of labour
the source of significance as cultural symbols. Continuity be- but also of capital) this produces a plethora of 'Little' Italics, Havanas,
tween past and present creates a sense of sequence out of Tokyos, Koreas, Kingstons, and Karachis as well as Chinatowns,
aleatory chaos and, since change is inevitable, a stable system of Latino barrios, Arab quarters, Turkish zones, and the like. Yet the
ordered meaning enables us to cope with both innovation and effect, even in a city like San Francisco where minorities collectively
decay. The nostalgic impulse is an important agency in adjust- make up the majority, is to draw a veil over real geography through
ment to crisis, it is a social emollient and reinforces national construction of images and reconstructions, costume dramas, staged
identity when confidence is weakened or threatened. ethnic festivals, etc.
88 The passage from modernity to postmodermty Postmodernism in the city 89
The masking arises not only out of the postmodernist penchant
for eclectic quotation, but also out of an evident fascination with
surfaces. Jameson (1984b), for example, regards the reflecting glass
" UJ
surfaces of the Bonaventure Hotel as serving to 'repel the city outside'
much as reflector sunglasses prevent the seer being seen, thus permit-
ting the hotel 'a peculiar and placeless dissociation" from its neigh-
bourhood. The contrived columns, ornamentation, extensive quotations
from different styles (in time and space) give much of postmodern
architecture that sense of 'contrived depthlessness' of which Jameson
complains. But the masking nevertheless confines conflict between,
for example, the historicism of being rooted in place and the inter-
nationalism of style drawn from the musee imagmaire, between
function and fantasy, between the producer's aim to signify and the
consumer's willingness to take the message.
Behind all this eclecticism (particularly of historical and geo-
graphical quotation) it is hard to spot any particular purposeful
design. Yet there do seem to be effects which are themselves so
purposeful and widespread that in restrospect it is hard not to
attribute a simple set of orchestrating principles. Let me illustrate
with one example.
'Bread and circuses' is an ancient and well-tried formula for social
Plate 1.21 Riots, burnings, and looting were an all-too-frequent urban
control. It has frequently been consciously deployed to pacify restless spectacle in the inner cities of the United States in the 1960s. Baltimore in
or discontented elements in a population. But spectacle can also be April 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, was one of many
an essential aspect of revolutionary movement (see, for example, examples.
Ozouf's, 1988, study of festivals as a means to express revolutionary
will in the French Revolution). Did not even Lenin, after all, refer to
revolution as 'the festival of the people'? The spectacle has always effort of the 1960s had created a highly functional and strongly
been a potent political weapon. How has urban spectacle been de- modernist downtown of offices, plazas and occasionally spectacular
ployed these last few years? architecture such as the Mies van der Rohe building of One Charles
In US cities, urban spectacle in the 1960s was constituted out of Center (plates 1.22 and 1.23). But the riots threatened the vitality of
the mass oppositional movements of the time. Civil rights demon- downtown and the viability of investments already made. The leaders
strations, street riots, and inner city uprisings, vast anti-war demon- sought a symbol around which to build the idea of the city as a
strations, and counter-cultural events (rock concerts in particular) community, a city which could believe in itself sufficiently to over-
were grist for the seething mill of urban discontent that whirled come the divisions and the siege mentality with which the common
around the base of modernist urban rene\val and housing projects. citizenry approached downtown and its public spaces. 'Spawned by
But since around 1972, the spectacle has been captured by quite the necessity to arrest the fear and disuse of downtown areas caused
different forces, and been put to quite different uses. The evolution by the civic unrest in the late 1960s,' said a later Department of Housing
of urban spectacle in a city like Baltimore is both typical and and Urban Development report, 'the Baltimore City Fair was orig-
instructive. inated . . . as way to promote urban redevelopment.' The fair set out
In the wake of the riots that erupted after the assassination of to celebrate the neighbourhood and ethnic diversity in the city, even
Martin Luther King in 1968 (plate 1.21), a small group of influential went out of its way to promote ethnic (as opposed to racial) identity.
politicians, professionals, and business leaders got together to see if There were 340,000 visitors to the fair in the first year (1970), but by
there was some way to bring the city together. The urban renewal 1973 that number had swelled to nearly two million. Bigger, but step
90 The passage from modernity to postmodermty Postmodernism in the city 91

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Plate 1.22 Baltimore urban renewal of the 1960s in the modernist style: the Plate 1.23 Baltimore urban renewal modernism: the Mies van der Robe
Federal Building in Hopkins Plaza building of One Charles Centre

by step inexorably less 'neighbourly' and more commercial (even the had dominated in the 1960s. An architecture of spectacle, with its
ethnic groups began to profit from the sale of ethnicity), the fair sense of surface glitter and transitory participatory pleasure, of display
became the lead item in drawing larger and larger crowds to the and ephemerality, of jouissance, became essential to the success of a
downtown area on a regular basis, to see all manner of staged project of this sort (plates 1.24, 1.25, 1.26).
spectacles. It was a short step from that to an institutionalized Baltimore was not alone in the construction of such new urban
commercialization of a more or less permanent spectacle in the spaces. Boston's Faneuil Hall, San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf
construction of Harbor Place (a waterfront development reputed (with Ghirardelli Square), New York's South Street Seaport, San
now to draw in more people than Disneyland), a Science Center, Antonio's Riverwalk, London's Covent Garden (soon to be fol-
an Aquarium, a Convention Center, a marina, innumerable hotels, lowed by Docklands), Gateshead's Metrocentre, to say nothing of
pleasure citadels of all kinds. Judged by many as an outstanding the fabled West Edmonton Mall, are just the fixed aspects of organized
success (though the impact upon city poverty, homelessness, health spectacles that include more transitory events such as the Los Angeles
care, education provision, has been negligible and perhaps even nega- Olympic Games, the Liverpool Garden Festival, and the re-staging
tive), such a form of development required a wholly different archi- of almost every imaginable historical event (from the Battle of Has-
tecture from the austere modernism of the downtown renewal that tings to that of Yorktown). Cities and places now, it seems, take
92 The passage from modernity to postmodernity Postmodernism in the city 93

/.2-^ Baltimore goes to the City Fair: a collage of scenes of a managed Plate 1.25 Harbor Place attempts a postmodernist atmosphere of leisure
and controlled urban spectacle (by Apple Pie Graphics) sprawled around modernist scenes of urban renewal.

much more care to create a positive and high quality image of place, of a definite image of place blessed with certain qualities, the organi-
and have sought an architecture and forms of urban design that zation of spectacle and theatricality, have been achieved through an
respond to such need. That they should be so pressed, and that the eclectic mix of styles, historical quotation, ornamentation, and the
result should be a serial repetition of successful models (such as diversification of surfaces (in Baltimore, Scarlett Place exemplifies
Baltimore's Harbor Place), is understandable, given the grim history the idea in somewhat bizarre form, see plate 1.27). All of these
of demdustriahzation and restructuring that left most major cities in tendencies are exhibited in Moore's Piazza d'ltalia in New Orleans.
the advanced capitalist world with few options except to compete We here see the combination of many of the elements that have been
with each other, mainly as financial, consumption, and entertainment so far described within one singular and quite spectacular project
centres. Imaging a city through the organization of spectacular urban (plate 1.28). The description in the Post-modern visions catalogue
spaces became a means to attract capital and people (of the right sort) (Klotz, 1985) is most revealing:
in a period (since 1973) of intensified inter-urban competition and
urban entrepreneurialism (see Harvey, 1989). In an area ot New Orleans requiring redevelopment Charles
While we shall return to a closer examination of this phenomenon Moore has created the public Piazza d'ltalia for the local Italian
in Part III, it is important here to note how architecture and urban population. Its form and architectonic language have brought
design have responded to these new-felt urban needs. The projection the social and communicative functions of a European and,
94 The passage jrom modernity to postmodermty Postmodernism in the city 95

•f^?tSfc:^,^-.v,0 K
Plate 1.27 Scarlett Place of Baltimore brings together historical preservation
Plate 1.26 The pavilions of Harbor Place are reputed to bring as many (the nineteenth-century Scarlett Seed Warehouse is incorporated into the far
visitors to Baltimore as to Disneyland. left-hand corner) and the postmodernist urge for quotation, in this case from
a Mediterranean hilltop village (note the modernist public housing in the
background).
more specifically, Italian piazza to the southern United States.
Within the context of a new block of buildings covering a
substantial area and featuring relatively regular, smooth, and tive form than a fully three-dimensional architectural detail.
angular windows, Moore has inserted a large circular piazza Their elevation is faced in marble, and their cross section is like
that represents a kind of negative form and is therefore all the a slice of cake. The columns are separated from their Corinthian
more surprising when one enters through the barrier of the capitals by rings of neon tubing, which give them colorful
surrounding architecture. A small temple stands at the entrance luminous necklaces at night. The arched arcade at the top of the
and heralds the historical formal language of the piazza, which Italian boot also has neon lights on its facade. Other capitals
is framed by fragmented colonnades. At the center of the take on a precise, angular form and are placed like Art Deco
arrangement is a fountain basin, the 'Mediterranean' bathing brooches beneath the architrave, while other columns present
the boot of Italy, which extends down from the 'Alps.' The further variations, their fluting created by jets of water.
placement of Sicily at the center of the piazza pays tribute to All of this brings the dignified vocabulary of classical archi-
the fact that the Italian population of the area is dominated by tecture up to date with Pop Art techniques, a post-modernist
immigrants from that island. palette, and theatricality. It conceives of history as a continuum
The arcades, placed in front of the convex facades of the of portable accessories, reflecting the way the Italians themselves
building around the piazza, make ironic reference to the five have been 'transplanted' to the New World. It presents a nos-
orders of classical column (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, talgic picture of Italy's renaissance and baroque palaces and its
and Composite) by placing them in a subtly colored continuum, piazzas, but at the same time there is a sense of dislocation.
indebted somewhat to Pop Art. The bases of the fluted columns After all, this is not realism, but a facade, a stage set, a fragment
are formed like pieces of a fragmented architrave, more a nega- inserted into a new and modern context. The Piazza d'ltalia is a
96 The passage from modernity to postmodermty Postmodernism in the city 97

what is in the eye of the beholder, as it does on the thoughts of the

producer. Yet there is a certain facile naivety in such an answer. For
there is much too much coherence between the imagery of city life
laid out in books such as Raban's Soft city and the system of
architectural production and urban design here described for there to
be nothing in particular beneath the surface glitter. The example of
spectacle suggests certain dimensions of social meaning, and Moore's
Piazza d'ltalia is hardly innocent in what it sets out to say and how
it says it. We there see the penchant for fragmentation, the eclecticism
of styles, the peculiar treatments of space and time ('history as a
continuum of portable accessories'). There is alienation understood
(shallowly) in terms of emigration and slum formation, that the
architect tries to recuperate through construction of a place where
identity might be reclaimed even in the midst of commercialism, pop
art, and all the accoutrements of modern life. The theatricality of
effect, the striving for jouissance and schizophrenic effect (in Jencks's
sense) are all consciously present. Above all, postmodern archi-
tecture and urban design of this sort convey a sense of some search
for a fantasy world, the illusory 'high' that takes us beyond current
realities into pure imagination. The matter of postmodernism, the
catalogue to the Post-modern visions exhibition (Klotz, 1985) forth-
rightly declares, is 'not just function but fiction.'
Plate 1.28 Charles Moore's Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans is frequently Charles Moore represents only one strain of practice within the
cited as one of the classic pieces of postmodernist architecture. eclectic umbrella of postmodernism. The Piazza d'ltalia would hardly
earn the approval of Leon Krier, whose instincts for classical revival
are so strong as sometimes to put him outside the postmodernist
piece of architecture as well as a piece of theater. In the tradition appellation altogether, and it looks very odd when juxtaposed with
of the Italian 'res publica,' it is a place for the public to gather; an Aldo Rossi design. Furthermore, the eclecticism and pop imagery
yet at the same time, it does not take itself too seriously, and it that lie at the heart of the line of thinking that Moore represents
can be a place for games and amusement. The alienated features have come in for strong criticism, precisely because of their lack of
of the Italian homeland act as ambassadors in the New World, theoretical rigour and their populist conceptions. The strongest line
thus reaffirming the neighborhood population's identity in a of argument now comes from what is called 'deconstructivism.' In
district of New Orleans that threatens to become a slum. This part of a reaction against the way that much of the postmodern
piazza must count as one of the most important and striking movement had entered into the mainstream and generated a popular-
examples of post-modernist building in the world. It has been ized architecture that is lush and indulgent, deconstructivism seeks
the mistake of many publications to show the piazza in isolation; to regain the high ground of elite and avant-garde architectural
however, the model here shows the successful integration of practice by active deconstruction of the modernism of the Russian
this theatrical event into its context of modern buildings. constructivists of the 1930s. The movement in part acquires its in-
terest because of its deliberate attempt to fuse the deconstructionist
But if architecture is a form of communication, the city a discourse, thinking from literary theory with postmodernist architectural prac-
then what can such a structure, inserted into the urban fabric of New tices that often seem to have developed according to a logic all their
Orleans, possibly say or mean? The postmodernists themselves will own. It shares with modernism a concern to explore pure form and
probably answer that it depends at least as much, if not more, on space, but does so in such a way as to conceive of a building not as a
98 The passage from modernity to postmodermty
unified whole but as 'disparate "texts" and parts that remain distinct
and unaligned, without achieving a sense of unity," and which are,
therefore, susceptible to 'several asymmetrical and irreconcilable"
readings. What deconstructivism has in common with much of post-
modernism, however, is its attempt to mirror 'an unruly world
subject to carooming moral, political and economic system." But it
does so in such a way as to be 'disorienting, even confusing" and so
Modernization
break down 'our habitual ways of perceiving form and space." Frag-
mentation, chaos, disorder, even within seeming order, remain central
themes (Goldberger, 1988; Giovannini, 1988).
Fiction, fragmentation, collage, and eclecticism, all suffused with a
sense of ephemerality and chaos, are, perhaps, the themes that do-
minate in today's practices of architecture and urban design. And
there is, evidently, much in common here with practices and thinking Modernism is a troubled and fluctuating aesthetic response to
in many other realms such as art, literature, social theory, psy- conditions of modernity produced by a particular process of modern-
chology, and philosophy. How is it, then, that the prevailing mood ization. A proper interpretation of the rise of postmodernism, there-
takes the form it does? To answer that question with any power fore, ought to grapple with the nature of modernization. Only in
requires that we first take stock of the mundane realities of capitalist that way will we be able to judge whether postmodernism is a dif-
modernity and postmodermty, and see what clues might lie there as ferent reaction to an unchanging modernization process, or whether
to the possible functions of such fictions and fragmentations in the it reflects or presages a radical shift in the nature of modernization
reproduction of social life. itself, towards, for example, some kind of 'postindustriaP or even
'postcapitalist' society.
Marx provides one of the earliest and most complete accounts of
capitalist modernization. I think it useful to begin with that not only
because Marx was, as Berman argues, one of the great early modernist
writers, combining all the breadth and vigour of Enlightenment
thought with a nuanced sense of the paradoxes and contradictions
to which capitalism is prone, but also because the theory of capitalist
modernization that he offers makes for particularly compelling
reading when set against the cultural theses of postmodernity.
In The communist manifesto Marx and Engels argue that the
bourgeoisie has created a new internationalism via the world market,
together with 'subjection of nature's forces to man, machinery,
application of chemistry to agriculture and industry, steam navigation,
railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for culti-
vation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the
ground." It has done this at great cost: violence, destruction of
traditions, oppression, reduction of the valuation of all activity to the
cold calculus of money and profit. Furthermore:

Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturb-

ance of all social relations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation,
distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier times. All fixed,