ecules fi Volume 3, Nuamber 3, July 1996 ECUMENE ‘4 JOURNAL OF ENNIBONMENT - CULTURE ~ MATING Contents ARTICLES a9 282 205 Place, memory, monument: memorializing the past in contemporary Highland Seodand harks W.J. Withers 325 ROOK REVIEW ESSAY Deconstructing and reconstructing rural geographies “Andy C. Pratt 345 CONVERSATIONS IN REVIEW Livingstone, David N. The geographical tradition: episodes in the history of a contested enterprise (Charles W.J. Withers, Jane Camerini, M. J. Heffernan, David Livingstone) 351 BOOK REVIEWS367 Mitchell, T. Art and science in German 170-1840 Ks ; landscape painting ses Chomsky, N. World orders, old and new (reviewer: Pater J. Talon) 370 PAPER CITIES: VISUAL THINKING IN URBAN PLANNING far from being a mere ragpicker, san explo- ‘posing mind, which needs to understand but mediations of knowledge. The roles of text and visualization, in Ihave thus been analysed in numerous recent publications. As far as .cerned, the influence exerted upon geography by contemporary cul sropology is noticeable in the emergence of textuality as a doubly ‘category. First, as metaphor, textualty has been used to decode land indy, a8 mode of inscription of geographical knowledge, it has func- tioned as a space in which the scientific rhetoric of our discipline has been brought into question? ‘of the visual, to which this article refers, has been given rather less is today attracting more interest. I begin by sketc research, s0 as to place my work in context. In geography, three important contributions to the history of cartography, the history of geography, and the debate at modernity In cartography, recent work has been distancing itsel from traditional evolu- tionary ideas of cartographic representation to concentrate more on question- ing its internal structure and its efficacy within the evolution of western thought ‘or more specifically in relation to specific sociopolitical events.* In geography, nition to the efficacy of certain modalities of rep- © Amid 1996250_Ola Sodorstrim 4 central home in the postmetern debate. Podern di tuodcra ceaton to parcaar cognitive postare nih coca toualrian and gendered knowledge: Certain postmodern tional and ofthe hegemonic pretensions of ome seni been linked in recent work to critiques ofthe cain ied ave upon the object of analy According to ncriss i power by diagualiing the vichness and par, sisted Points of view In feminist ought his deconsnaction of the walt of inn frie takes the form ofa erg othe voyerisn wh characteris and coh hecs both the distant gaze ofthe moderns upon nature and the male gato to bring them together, ke present article touches om all urban cartography and sraphical discourse in the constinaion of urban planning, ant boca a siempys (0 ident several of the crucial tages which have marke dhe aha ology ofthe totalizing give levelled at ban spac. This text therefore devel ops an argument about val mediation in a relvely unexplored eld: wsban pag Visualization in urban planning ‘Urban planning is a practice in which visual ‘obvious reason for this, of course, is becau consists of organizing objects in space. The enabling faculty fo ‘of this operation is vision. It is not surprising, then, to find that for one of the principal pioneers of modern urban planning, Patrick Geddes, the trained eye was the best instrument of scientific knowledge, whilst graphic representation remained the most efficient vector for its diffusion. Consulting the theoretical works devoted to urban planning, however, one notices how little work has been done that analyses the relations between urban panning and the visual, or that, ‘more particularly, takes seriously in its full complexity the question of the ways urban development and the modalities of representation of the city mutually structure each other* Its clear that many texts deal with construction drawings and notably with the gradual maturing of architectural projects in terms of graphic practice which many different forms of visualization, Scattered here and there in the titerature, one also finds stray theoretical remarks and aphorisms by certain e is ng to discove> that this phenomenon ~ per- ps because of its very conspicuousness - hasrot i either theoretical ique or practical analysis of the efficacy of urban representations, is one possible explanation for this. The situation may very well be symptomatic of a phenomenon that has become more and more remarked upon ‘over the last few years: the growing gulf separating the theory of urban plan. ‘ning from the practical problems encountered by planners. Urban planning the- ‘ory has become increasingly complex as it has absorbed categories and concepis developed by social theory and epistemology? This welcome refinement in Ecaeene 19963 (3) Paper cities: visual thinking in urban planning Chinking about planning has nevertheless had the wnfortna practical contingencies rom the arena of theoretical dew Tne tat nk urban theory to the actual practice of wba tecceingy tenons once the debate alate in terms oF abstract defined ‘ionalaavons or sophisicated and ideal decisionmaking models. tn other Theory seems to have ae much trove geting a clear Tea or the obec of Ie std os radional epistemology has had accountng for how scent fats are produced in he Iboratries of the exact siences. One cout even sx that he former has probably encountered more severe prob fem, snc urban pnning ia form of kaowledge whose very esience spre uch greater reason to fake its conerete specs nto proper comtdert ‘This diagnos echoes a similar conchsion reached some fifteen years ago vehin the held of whats now often called ‘Science, Technology and Soieyy es of thinkers more or lew acknowledging this umbrella term to Aeserbe their intrest gave new ie to the socalogy of slence by arguing pre thaly forthe need fo consider the concrete means of producion of scenic ime that nas st up wath sai in wew i there the mating, or sence in action" ay opposed that wadional epi mology tends to deserve The ap UFcourse imply tha al theoededl ambions have tobe Jettsoned, but raher Seats to reconstruct a theory of scenic Knowledge capable of accountng for ig way of working and its efeay in contemporary society. Visalizauon techy igus ther mode of inscription and culation, play an importa the fame of ths research programme. When scientists are observed at work, ome bein to se how te particular mediations between the researcher and Nahe objet of study conuibue sigicanly to the laboraon and commu cation of inowdge”™ ° ‘Mya here to thus co explore the role payed by vation in wan plan ning fom a peropetve related to that of the researchers inthe STS fed 1 ope certain of the concepmal and methodological instruments elaborated in ther work on sienuie representations, On the other hand, not all of my esearch suateyies are asimilale to the STS studies. Since the reearch “described here deals with an area prev unexplored by STS methods of thatj iw important to consider the characterises that distinguish plan from the experimental scences I is alo necesty 0 develop a cleat his I analysis of the phenomena being investigated. hres inet is best dealt ith asa genealogy ofthe practices of urban representaon. This is dificult in the narrow space ofan aril. 1 therefore concentrate ‘on ientifing a series of essential bifurcations In the Inodaltes of siualzaion of urban spac, whether they were specially Atsigned as samen of urban planing or Hot Urban planing is owadas tml complex vual constriction ofthe cy by means of diferent tech- niques of representation, Certain are to be found in very iferent fs of Tnbwige and practice (the geometial pla, for instance): others ae tech Ecumene 1996 3 (3)252_Ola Sisdrstedan sigue of representation proper to wan planing (he zoning plan in pari I shall therefore drill three boreholes at crucial points in the history of urban the Rome of Leon Battista Alberti and the Germany of the first planning civil tion during the Renaissance and the constitution of urban autonomous field of practices. We may then attempt to describe thi methodological clarifications. The first wo deal with my principles of analysis, the third with urban planning’s historical starting-point. The efficacy of visualizations Representations of the city are considered here for their ter What interests me in representations isthe actual work lizations of the thougit of urban planners as they go about their work by means of these procedures. ym the extemal efficacy of representar 1¢ administration of proof. This sec- to be placed in vision and in the in other words, the capacity for certain ‘of expertise, is often suificient to persuade nor-profes of the planning policies. In other words, the simple fact of a code of representation of the town commen to an fessionals is enough to guarantee the project’s seriousness. ‘The external efficacy of any visualization is therefore intrinsically linked co its oanene 1963 (3) Paper cities: viswal thinking in urban planning 253, circle of profess ‘cedures that govern the way representations are conceived from the ‘soc! to which those representations are putin the ‘outside’ world. Its, on and will be procedures which have contributed to the makeup of the planner’s laboratory and its essential tools. Visualizations as ‘immutable mobiles’ If we take seriously the instruments used by a discipline to apprehend its object, wwe are necessarily called upon to understand in what ways urban planning has progressively elaborated forms of visual mediation capable of scaling down built Space; existing or to be created, so that it can be easily moved and handled. ‘What is at issue here is what Bruno Latour calls immuta that isto say, representations which can be detached from the place (or object) which they represent, ‘whilst remaining immutable so that they may be moved in any direc- tion without distortion, loss 0 corruption tific cartography and linear perspective are tech ich immutable mobiles. “The appeal of this notion to identify three aspects ners to give themselves the means of manipulating 1 Latour’s terminology, of ‘acting at a distance’ upon that to grasp the main stages of con- struction of the urban planner In this respect, my argument work done in the anthropology of science and technology, while maintaining a cé : ments which it gives one the opportunity to ol the development of the instruments and practices of urban planners in ‘genealogical terms, this research tries to provide the necessary keys for inter- pretation of ethnographic work by unpacking the sedimented histories that such Instruments and practices contain. Constitution of urban planning thas been traditionally supposed that the history of urban planning began dur- ing the second half of the nineteenth century, when the discipline started to become instittionalized and professionalized, with accompanying claims to sc- tentific satus, The points of departure for this reading of the history ofthe field umane 196 3 (3)254 Ola Saderstn are Baron Haussman’s policies in Pars, the first manuals of German urban plan- boing produced by Baumeister and Stibben, or Ildefonso Cerda’s Teoria generat de la urbanizacion, Francoise Choay offers a different interpretation, arguing that the nineteenth century cannot be seen to corstitute a ‘true beginning’. She i the inaugural role played by Alberti’s De Re Aetificatoria tise is effectively the firs text to consider construction rm used by Alberti to cover both architecture and urban srms of an autonomous field to which rational method is to be Tc is this second reading which I shall rake up, concentrating, unlike Choay, practices and material representations than on texts. Ths approach to the principal stages characterizing the constitution of the range of instruments peculiar 0 urban planning will distance us from certain canonical passages in the history of urban planning which, ike any history, contains its own accepted hagiography as well a its dark ages and ages of enlightenment. I hope to prove (Ube to skip some of the adnited staues in the museum of hhave been gathering dust in interests me, the work of the iquiries have considerably greater importance than Howard's garden-ies (which introduced no major in terms of representation) of the four functions of the Athens Charter {already defined fifty years earlier by Baumeister). “The first section of this article deals essentaly wit the relationship between the sabiliztion of representation and the historical constitution of urban plan- hing, as well as with the gradual emergence of standard representations ofthe City. The point at isue will therefore be an inaugural moment when the eff ‘cacy of the representation is particularly clear. Stabilizing representation, totalizing the city: the geometrical plan as immutable mobile inedrawing to the i ‘mate subject. This black hole swallows up the whole world: know, constitutes the beginning of a new regime in the history of representation. From the thirteenth century on, we see a develop- ‘ment from conventional, formulaic representations towards a form of repre- sentation that enables recognition of specific features of the figured urban space.® This shift is linked to the gradual, and geographically irregular, disso- lution of a medieval, neo Platonie aesthetic privileging the inward gaze and dis- trusting external appearances. It led in the domain of urban representation 10 the production of less stereotypical representations of cities. This process was characterized by a crucial threshold constituted by the (re) invention of linear Eeamene 1996 3 (3) Paper cities: visual thinking in urban planning 255 perspective, whose effects, of course, were to be felt far outside the domain of Fepresentation of the city? These facts are well known. What interests me is ‘another technique of representation which, a8 we Jmpact on the development and the very constitution of urban pl autonomous practice. Perspective is effectively unequal to the tasks ofthe urban planner as an instru: ‘ment of visualization, since it limits the apprehension of the city to the purely 9 of what is seen; mew ertheless, it can only with difficulty prod which is not a partial vision of ics o taken, some time after Filippo Brun ‘experiments Leon Battista Alberti. Albert's De re audifcatoia was the first architectural trea- tise since antiquity, first published in 1485, but presented in manuscript form to Pope Nicholas V in 1452. The treatise describes a rational method, a body of rrules governing the art of construction of anything from a house to a whole ‘Gy. Ithas as such been considered as the true beginning of what would become turban planning in the nineteenth century.” Although Alberti codified perspective and theorized painting in De pictura, his architectural treatise has no illustrations and does not discuss the representa tion of the whole city, In another, much briefer text, however, he does propose fan ingenious method for transeribing a city onto paper. This method is a crux ‘ial step in the development of urban planning. It occurs in Desaiptio Urbis ‘Romae, witten probably around 1445. Alberti’s emblem was a winged eye, and wwe shall see in our analysis of this method that there is no more appropriate image.” ‘The (re-)invention of planimetry Rather than being a text in the ordinary sevise of the word, Descriptio Urbis Romae is more ofa list of instructions concerning instruments and transcription meth- ods. The final product, a plan of Rome, is not represented, but it can be recon- structed if we follow the author's instructions carefully. Des with the coordinates of several important features of the ‘natural or man-made: the city it lic buildings, with the Capitol as reference-point at the centre of the city plan. ‘To construct the plan of Rome with these coordinates, Alberti explains that we need to use a disc, called a horizon, divided into 48 degrees, each degree itself divided into four minutes. This enables us to transcribe onto a sheet of paper the angular measures he has made. The next step is to use a ruler divided into 50 degrres so as t0 transpose accurately the distances of any feature from the Capitol ‘This method enables one to construct a geometrical plan, following princt ples which were to prove to be at the origin of modern planimetry in the six- teenth century. To understand Albert's method correctly, one needs to consult another text, Ludi matematic, in which he explains how to effect the measure- ments contained in Descriptio. This text was written to armuse a friend who was Beamene 19963 (3)256 Ola Sadersten in prison, and in it Alberti deseribes the basic principles of triangulation which im to construct the first global plan of Rome to be produced since ', and one which remained untivalled until Leonardo Butlin’ city ‘Descriptio, hen, (reJinvented the geometical plan which constitutes, what we now commonly take to be a city plan, Alberts plan in some ways tnarked the end of the evolution in planimetry from the ideal to the specifi, Teferred to above. Though its Content, its ‘isalizaion-conait the physical materiality ofthe city and no longer with its symbolic meaning, The ‘existing physical features of the eity and their respective positions are what inter ‘ot Alberti and not, asin medieval emblematic figuration, the revelation of the terrestrial presence of the divine order “Albert's plan therefore signals the emergence of new aspirations in repre sentation, though it remains, nonetheless, a very summary plan of Rome, ge0- tmeuieal and not ichnographic. An ichnographic plan respects metrical distances beaween features making up the city, their respective sizes and orientation. The ‘igure 1 ~ Modern reconstitution of Vagneti’s pln of Rome, based on the data and instructions given by Alberti converted to modem measurements (from I. Vagnett, "Deseo Ecamene 1996 3 (3) Paper cites: visual thinking ia urban planning 257 ation of buildings is on! js why certain commentators consider Descriptio to be a decisive and not a defin- itive ep towards the production of such a plan. The first wuly ichnographi plan seems to have been Leonardo da Vinei’s celebrated 1503 plan of Imola” Leonardo must have used some form of transit equipped with compass to be fade the ground plans of the buildings on his city plan.” ‘Alisough Alberti may not have formulated al! the basic principles of modern planimeuy, his plan nevertheless marks the beginning of the production of a fhew system of visualizing urban space. The extraordinary number of ichno~ graphic plans in the sixteenth century is witness to this, proof of the rapid dif- fusion of these new techniques. “This technique of representation had a clearly i since it was so closely linked to urban planning. rieal then the ichnographie plan were specifically used for Descriptio was produced within the context of Alberti’s collaboration in the Roman reconstruction programme under Pope Nicholas V (1447-55). There is, then, a perfect historical coincidence between the new visualization technique land what can be considered as the beginning of organized, concerted urban planning in the Renaissance." “The most important of the five components of Nicholas V's programme con- cerned an entire quarter of the city. It involved the reconstruction of Borgo ‘Leonino, situated between the Vatican and the castle of S. Angelo, This is prob- ably the first time in the Renaissance that detailed planning on such 2 scale was igi. sane 1996 3 (3)attempted, that is to say @ project on a truly urban scale, and it is more than likely that Alberti contributed to the project principally by supplying represen- tational techniques But if was not only the sheer scale of the planning inter. ‘vention that was innovative, but also the fact that the principal characteristic of Nicholas V's programme was the use of urban form as an instrument of social engineering. ‘The physical substance of the city of Rome became as a res ‘once a metaphor and an instrument of power, serving to guide citizens in their irban activities. For this purpose, a precise and totalizing rep- ispensable, importance of this Albertian moment in the fabrication of laboratory, what need (o be stressed are the intellectual and ‘up by modern planimetry, that is, its efficacy. It fhe maker of the representation. As Alberti says in the openi such & plan could be worked out by ‘anybody of average intelligence’. The author becomes interchangeable, the representa- tion no longer varying according to the painter's artistic skill. Alberti’s ining of the stabilization of representation of the ci Similarly, the representation no longer needs to be inscribed within a narra It no longer refers outside itself to a text which will furnish its meaning. Visualization is selfsufficient, containing within itself the terms the plan renders space homogeneous by eras Henceforth, the sacred and profane, the natural and cultural c same representation, whereas beforehand the city had either been a simple graphic convention or metonymically epitomzed by enclosure and monument. In other words, quality, hierarchy, and difference are replaced by quantity, posi spective ~ Albertian plans totalize urban space. We find representations corre- sponding no longer to individual visual experience, but (o the net product of multiple points of view. By choosing the same point of view and by closing one eye, one can reconstruct the vision of the Batistero or the Palazzo della Signoria, as painted by Brunelleschi during his celebrated sojourn in Flor interchange between representation and its referent is still possible with per- spective. This is no longer the case with the geometrical, ichnographic plan. Nobody could see Alberti’s Rome except in the plan he had constructed. AS a ‘consequence, Albertian visualization created a new object, the city, insofar as it ‘opened up a’ new field of visibility, visualizing what had been invisible tll that ‘The city had, of course, existed as a politcal entity before Alberti, Modern planimetry nevertheless had the effect of expanding consciousness of its physi- fal realigy This new space of representation simultaneously opened up a new space of action: urban space.” Situated within the same simulated space, scaled down so as to be readily assimilable ata glance, forms that had hitherto belonged to incommensurable categories could now be apprehended by the mind and could therefore be manipulated as parts of a whole. In this sense, one can say that modern urban planning finds the grourds ofits possibility just as much in Beamene 1936 3(3) Paper cities: visual {his new mode of visualization as in particular political and cultural transfor From oblique to zenithal gaze: code naturalization "The fact that today the ichnographic plan isso taken for granted and is so dom inant a form of representation tends to obscure its specific characteristics, and in particular the selection procedures that it operates within the urban space as fa vitole. If the procedures for producing an ichnographic plan were known from the sixteenth century on, they nevertheless remained marginal for a long time land were used exclusively for technical purposes (military. planning, adminis: trative), as, generally speaking, up to the eighteenth century bird'seye views ‘were preferred and were easier 10 produce. This mode of visualization, which In the beginning was designed for planning purposes, only very slowly became the ‘standard’ way of representing a city as a whole. To understand properly the specific characteristics of this stabilized representation of the city ~ mobile but immutable ~ we need to compare it with its ‘rival. "The bird's-eye view was for several centuries, quantitatively speaking, inant fortn, and one of the most impressive examples in terms of scal 282 em), richness of detail, und artistic skill is probably the 1500 view by Jacopo de’ Barbar. As with Albert's plan, Jacopo's view presupposes an ‘anonishing level of abstraction, since no single point of view could possibly fur nish anything approaching the overview provided by the Venetian painter engraver.” The bird who views the scene has the fa bird of prey, for not only does it contemplate the city from on hi architecture and layout of the canals down «0 plan of Rome, this spectacular view of Venice total Centrating into one gave a multiplicity of particular visions of the city. Nevertheless, these two forms of visualization are the result of different pro- Se. OA % pure 3 ~ View of Venice by Jacopo de Barbi (100) (rom J. Eliot, They in map tuan mapping t» 1900, London, British Library, 1987; reproduced by courtesy of the “Trustees of the British Museum) Fexmene (996 3 (3)duction procedh view was probably production: on the one hand, geometrical plans were being produced designed circle of specialists and decisionsrakers (in partieular the “urban 13’) and on the other, perspective views were being produced for the pub- lic at large, These wo modes of represei ‘were governed by different procedures for the encoding of urban space. Wh acy’ was therefore different in each ease. But we need to continue with the comparison in order 10 grasp the respective internal efficacy of the o¥0 techniques, th 1g procedures of selec tion/schematization/synthest ‘This comparison has been made lective and partial nature ~ to nde of production by claim- vated representation, according scale cartograph gaze from the horir Eramene 1996 3 (3) Paper cities: visual thinking in urban planning 261 repre ‘dominates urban visualizations. The geometrical, of, 10 be more precise ichnographic, plan became the natural and non-problematic means of inscrib- ing the object which itis urban planning’s task to manipulate, This was a very {gradual process, of course, and one needs to be careful not to confuse Fesentations of an elite with those of a society as a whole, and moreover his process was a rapid one.” Wh owes ye zoning plan, was the natural exten itself to selecting the jographie plan does, but goes Structure in time by determining the regulations control ‘My second borehole into the genealogy of the practices associated w representations takes place in the nineteenth century, during the ization of urban planning. For ime that the prineipal instruments of turban planning were det (the now standard representation sexfaire economics forced countries to develop their urban ‘The Second World War slowed down the process of institut began to develop again after 1945. NiPaper cities: visual thinking in rban planning 263 SS Dre Mt a ct pbc ene eee cea Tae Coen tae teats ae | Sebo Gans aa wat oe eer ‘The master plan the second basic feature of je plan of action, the y porated under regulations 1g to homogeneous and adjacent sectors. Zoning was therefore an instru- only made an overall grasp of the ichnographic plan already allowed, but also f city ‘A spatial processin 1e production of texts close to the practice of urban plant and became the toushsone for works produced by hit scestos Above describes what would coi ‘essential instruments and practices of urban planning up to the prevent day.” The principle of the master plan to organize fu ‘and proper 5 on in order to deal with the prob- strcts, problems of traffic and hygiene, {way of doing this inthe eyes of the German toring land vahies in order to have sectors of city, merely boundaries, defining coloured or crosshatched areas on a nd to guarantee the durabik a iz ne lization and the 1s out what a master plan con- effects of such a procedure, to and permitting investors to between the internal and external efficacy ofthis forn Division from on high 1 referred earlier to the ichnogra ticular technique of representati tury. When Baumeister, who was the frst eamene 1996 3 (3) nen 1996 3264 Ola Saderstsion jdea of the zoning plan, he had in his mind a city scaled down to a plan of type. He looks down upon the city with the eagle eye Of the zenithal view: point, and sets his bearings according to the points of the compass: fact thatthe luxury apartments in the main ‘end ofthe ciy. This phenomenon may be inferentally on the ‘of city plans and the location of activities. In other ‘words — and this was one of the arguments that would be used to legitimize zon- ster recognized in this immutable mobile, the city plan, tures that were historically constituted and on the basi Jaborated an instrument of managing urban development future requirements. begin to come into oper: scientific laboratories. It becomes apparent that Baumeister’s three key elements: an examination of @ of an object) which recognizably has the tig, the modern eity plan; ‘h inscriptions; and a simplification schematiza- tion of the information furnished by tie observation of this combination within a new form of representation, the zoning plan. Research carried out in the anthropology of science and technology has pointed to the Fundamental characterstics of laboratory activity in precisely the ‘would be unwise to push the analogy too far, since there ferences between an urban planning department or office and, ‘2 combination of a series 4 pure science laboratory, principally in terms of objectives and final product. ‘Nevertheless, the analogy makes it posible co pinpoint the importance in urban ing of inscriptions and of procedures that base their reasoning upon such ins, which rework, simplify, and interpret them. professional activities of Baumeister and his colleagues at the turn of the eamene 1996 3 (3) Paper cities: visual thinking io urban planning 265 sisting of a plan of concentric zones (Bauzonenplan regulations (Zonenbauordnung) and planning for zoni srictly in accordance with the rationale of ground rent, The same year the town, jpted a plan which included the same type of instrum year Berlin followed suit, and a fev years later, Cologne, Essen, an Diffusion of the principle of zoning ‘This frst phase in the development of zoning was followed by a second, lasting from 1905 until the First World War, characterized by the definition of a greater number of zones and by the implementation of Baumeister’s original idea, that is, a functional form of zoning that divided the city into the mosaic of | ved in presentday zoning plans. Practically all German cities were provided with similar plans by 1 rapid the diffusion of this innovation was. Then, in ‘came into use when applied to New York. By 1921, 76 cit ing plans and regulations. In 1926, this had risen to 564 and ten years jonstrating how very made known its decision concerning its constitutionality, zon- A ‘Sweden in 1907, as representable on a plan became the very substance of cont pjective would thenceforth be to manage the functioning and 1e urban organism, fents were characterized by the promotion of zoning to the stamus of a rational and scientific instrument. Consciously conceived as the means of reformist policy in its original German version, zoning became a means of ‘ensuring the future location of objective urban functions. The political and ide- ological content, therefore, tended gradually to be glossed over by a procedure that appeared to be neutral because it was simple, a procedure that thenceforfa efficacy The zoning plan claims, Iracteriscs ofthe different parts of the city ha this b the appropriate way to plan for their development in order to guar ante the optimal functioning ‘One should aote here that Wf aa cental motion in ufban plana, and tis interesting to observe thes its definition after 1920 had changed! to mean what can Be exes rapic thancie What rested graphic treatment would be slowly pushed into the back- Jon of zoning therefore corresponded wo the elabor ichessentaly depended wpon viuaiaions. sited to deabng only with the visible forms of th Pani woud be ke nto accounall he more readily hey cou e ie ined Phe panage through graphic representation became a condition of entry iinet urban planners laboratory. Burthermore, it enabled the development ics primitive form: the zing plan of Cologne according to build- (from Mancuso, Vicmde Paper citiest viewal thinking in urban planning 267 specific to urban planning, which would not have had the same ‘efficacy without the use of this form of mediation. ‘Visualizing the nonvisible, making reasoning and these are the issues Twill be dealing with in studying th social cartography in Great Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. This fhird and last borehole in my analysis will thus attempt to show how urban plan- ‘ning was constructed in close association with the social sciences and in partic- ular with soc ties, Visualizing the invisible city Whilst civil servants in Germany set out meticulously to imagine the instruments And institutions of contemporary urban planning, the simultaneous develop- ‘ment of this form of social planning in England took place in a more inflam- with problems of demographi pauperization of large sectors of the population, highly precarious housing con- {idons, disastrous sanitary conditions, and increased crime rates large process of being assessed, were therefore to act asa catalyst. British urban planning thus grew out of social concerns of great urgency, but they were also the result of the convergence between these concerns and the ‘opening up of new fields of visibility in the nineteenth century. Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) is an emblematic figure of this convergence. Trained a gist, this Scottish academic was one of the great proselytes and constr the networks of the growing diseipline.® An ardent anarchist, he became the instigator in Edinburgh and elsewhere of work in the field, done in collabora- tion with and destined for the most disadvantaged sectors of the population. He ely oculocentric, who attempted (and this attraction, sill allowing a panoptical view of the city. ings were by no means successful, Geddes bore ‘of new forms of knowledge and social management jeenth century. He developed, and argued in favour Of, the use of statistics and cartography within the framework of regional and urban planning, notably in his numerous reformulations of the survey, an indi. pensable first step in any development policy These techniques created the possibility of new means of gazing at the city. asmene 1996 3 (3)268 _Ola Sodersttin The opening up of new fields of visibility England indeed witnessed during the second half of the nin the development of an urban cartography which increased ‘and visibility of urban space. Te hhave at one’s disposal a pocketsized urtan atlas in book fe index, notably Collins’ Mustrated Auas of the city of London fon a world which had many ‘making up vast unknown ter Giipated ih the increased visibility of the city, and in particular in highlight: Ing the social differences that the anafjis of the slums made it possible to “The living conditions of the poorer clases and above all the inaction of the hen compared notably with the great Haussmannian public Works became more evident as a result These various developments, — ical movernents, cartographic representations of the city, social response to the social problems ~ ‘came together in. the famous inquiries ‘out by Charles Booth in London from 1886 on. These inquiries mark an important new threshold both in the story of social policy and in the perfeciing of the instruments making up the urban planners’ laboratory. Booth and social cartography Booth, who started as a merchant and shipowner before devoting himself 10 ‘was the author of the first social inquiries based on a precise taxon- ‘to produce social maps covering lasted a total of seventeen years, and were London, before extending over the whole of the city. His objective was to pro~ vide a scientific study of the living conditons of the London population in order to put an end to the doom-laden pictures and emotive ie juced fat the time on the subject of the deprived areas.® He di the trap of melodramatizing or of impresionism. He therefore di to use any data for which he provide quantitative val ‘se terms, Booth wanted to establish ‘the numerical relation whic! ‘ery and depravity bear to regular earnings and comparative com inspection notes ‘cre the general conditions under which each siete by school inspector, who woud then write up th very represented 8 or ER inarumenc fer the encouragement of the development of soci ‘The nnuiry as therefore seen asa necesaty preliminary step before real mee then, and for this reason had be presented with every posible Se of rigour hs publican, Booth consequently insists several times on the scientific cxmene 19963 (3) Paper cities: visual thinking in urban planning 269 wrk and to this end works out an entire For example, he compares his work to a photographic snaps! fixing the facts upon my negative’), the acme of neutrality at the time, and deseribes preceding work on the East End as diametrically opposed to his own (Cehis curtain we have tried to lift’). This objective gaze on the London shims was highly efficient, since it led to a neutralization of the moralizing discourse fn poverty and was at the origin, as he wished it tobe, of ‘sent! sei pol “The approach adopted by Booth to attain hi creation of a statistical classification of social categories ranging from A, the low: fst class, to H, the upper middle class, He therefore created, from the notes taken in the field by the inspector i cent sectors in the social spect duce the figure of 300,000 poor End® and of 1,300,000 for the city as a whole ~ nearh ‘of the cotal population at the time. The impact of the figures on the public was enormous, and was reinforced by the poverty maps which were included in the volumes of results dealing firstly with with the wh toric of objectivity. tographic terms, beco zone. In a certain sense, then, what one finds is a divis the geographer or field ethnologist and the study-based cartographer typical of seventeenth: or eighteenth-century cartography. The former takes notes in the field, whist the latter synthesizes the information in the form of graphic rep- resentations. The social map and the basic units of curative urban planning “The move from socal to spatial logic did not, however, constitute a perfect trans lation which left the representation exactly as it had been found. On the con- way ried fet aed and mec ifrmaton, I the conte of dy, efcacy of representadon if urban planning has is origins in these transformations. ee - «Tue pone in ct 0 dover win Bo ngs themes how i nt mnodales of representation of urban space actly shape that space. The Ginursedesrpton leads onthe one hand the continment of he cmb ied, empathetic and moral narrative of the inspector, as in the following pa sage: In the other room on the ground flor ved poor old Mis. Berry, a widow, paralyzed SS asta simon spec Sl she pushed sbasow and sold mas inthe see, camene 1996 3 (3)‘hours and travel many miles 10 take a few pence vd woman, who kept her Ns Berry is described ere as an ol handicapped widow, working hard for weet and an honest woman, thugs Tri There space in this descip- ihe tle differences just as much as there is for the air- iption is changed, though, and one turns to the map, where do we find ‘She lived at 92 Shelton Street in central London. Shelton Street is a black street, classified A. In other words, in the cartographic Fepresentaion, the good widow known personaly by the school inspector is sub- the class of vicious, semi-criminal’ no-hopers against which one must tial for urban plannis the complexity provided by discourse, thas to say, a context i between different inhabitants of the same building and which distingui beeen the same person's objective poverty, say, and their honesty. Urban plan int sill preserving very high efficacy, since it remained sufficiently Geuailed, The basie seale of the map used, that of the Ordnance Survey, made e 1x Figure 5 ~ Descripthe map of London poxery, northwestern sheet (fom Booth, Lif ‘and labour ie London v, 1902). Baomene 1996 3 (3) Paper cities: visual thinking in urban planning 271 je posible 10 distinguish, if need be, the location of different cl ‘tune residential block of houses. The precision of the representation was there- fore of a very high order: it pinpointed, as Topalov puts it, "the ‘ice for the pickaxe of the demolition men’.” It thus isolated the basic homo- Jeneous elements with which British urban planning would be dealing in the Early decades of the twentieth century: the slums. The slums seemed to take on. greater shape and form in the representation than in the inspections of the sites. ‘This is not to say that social cartography was the only reason un development of curative urban planning, Nevertheless, it might be u ‘ude here by showing that it did encourage two central tendené 7 porary urban planning. The first tendency is precisely this medical coneept of ‘urban development. Social cartography and the therapeutic paradigm “To think of urban development in terms of heal society of isis i not a nineteenth+ Gn thls point sce C. Topo, De la “gueion sociale” ‘elomnivun cle pepe des mezopeles Tntratont deSoss ts 125 (199) 7% On abject, sce ty preliminary work oo (Paris, La Découverte, 1988). © To get an idea ofthe extent of these experiments and of the complex dance of par- tional. Ecenene 19963 (3)