Session details
Organizer(s)
Rogier van Kooten (University of Antwerp)
Abstract
How do social, economic, political and cultural transformations reflect in urban space? Papers in this session explore case studies across Europe between 1600 and 1900 demonstrating how urban topography evolves and reflects these societal changes, whether long term evolutions or short term shocks, and how this impacts spatial inequalities between different social groups.
Papers
New Town to New World: Planning Enlightenment Edinburgh’s Unequal Progress
Author(s)
Phil Dodds (Lund University)
Keywords
Urban Planning, Enlightenment, Progress
Abstract
In this paper, I explore how social inequality was built into the planning of Edinburgh’s Enlightenment New Town, and how the planning of the New Town was then incorporated into the city’s conception of unequal global progress. I analyse how city plans from the 1750s to the 1800s reinforced a system of unequal property relations and overlooked the needs of the labouring classes and urban poor. The property divisions mapped in manuscript cadastral surveys from 1759 had to be incorporated into New Town plans well into the nineteenth century, as land ownership and exchange continued to play a crucial role in the shape and use of this new elite suburb in a more formally segregated city. The influential mapmaker John Ainslie’s grand city plan of 1804 demonstrates this point well, as do cheaper maps published in city guidebooks by John Stark. Drawing on evidence that philosophers of social progress such as Dugald Stewart and Adam Ferguson were personally familiar with these Edinburgh mapmakers and their work, I analyse how such city planning expressed – and was incorporated into – wider Enlightenment ideas about improvement. The planning of the New Town fitted into a social schema that associated global superiority with: 1) the ability to plan, and 2) being in a progressive phase (rather than merely achieving stable prosperity). This inaugurated and naturalised a new set of property relationships and a system of power over space that defined Scottish urban planning through the nineteenth century. It also had, I suggest, important implications for British imperial policy around the world.
Shox and the City – Quantifying Spatial Impact of Disruptions and Megatrends
Author(s)
Constantin Alexander (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)
Keywords
Sustainability, Risk, Spatial Impact
Abstract
Cities are symbols of constant change: Disruptions such as COVID19, but also megatrends (e.g. Digitalization, Climate Change, Demographics or Mobility Turn) manifest themselves spatially, but also socially, financially and politically. The consequences are diverse: By becoming obsolete certain spatial usages make room for more creative, sustainable and livable functions. But certain externalities such as structural change, violent events or natural disasters have also weakened communal agency.
In the interdisciplinary research project “The Obsolete City”, funded by German Robert Bosch foundation, the impact of certain megatrends on cities is analyzed, using its own analytics tool “Obsolete Risk Index” (ORI). During the development of the prototype, the COVID19 pandemic was used as a data reference point, therefore analyzing the spatial impact Corona directly had on certain cities, but also including the impact of measurements against the spread of the virus. Among other areas the German cities Hamburg, Hannover and Wolfsburg were used as benchmarks to develop and test indicators and evaluation formats.
After completing the prototyping phase, first results using the tool become clear: COVID19 is intensifying certain urban inequalities regarding spatial development and sets the need to adjust planning and development policies in order to implement sustainable communal strategies.