The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism / Gwendolyn Wright / 1991

Wright argues that urban design was strategically used as a tool to make colonialism more tolerable for colonized and more popular among colonizers. Analyzing three cities in French colonized North Africa: Indochina, Madagascar, and Morocco, she argues that urban culture was used in political endeavor.

She argues that the French modernized certain sections of the city like public health, industries,  and supported certain other aspects (like building and maintaining opulent palaces for Sultans) so that the traditional values are preserved.

Main argument: French used the colonies as laboratories where they could experiment urban planning strategies that could be eventually implemented in the metropole: Paris, Lyon etc. They saw the colonies as tabula rasa. As administrators were seeking to maintain colonies without having to use military, they used architects, urban planners, geographers etc to introduce urban planning measures in the colonies. Through this they hoped that the colonized people would become loyal and appreciative of the French, and the French planners could test planning methods.

Contradictory methods were suggested in doing this. The early 19 century method called "assimilation" which was more heavy handed and hegemonic. French planners introduced standardized buildings, simplified geometric forms, and the city was imagined as a unified whole rather than as haphazard organic growth. French predominance in language, laws, and military dominance by destroying indigenous cities. As this process came under attack, primarily for moral reaons in the early 20th century, a  second process called "association", that tried to respect indigenous traditions and architecture, and aimed to maintain a balance between modernization and preservation was introduced -- "laboratory for colonial life and conservatory for oriental life".

Morocco: Herbert Luatey - association - dual city - preserving the indigenous city with mosques and winding streets, and constructing an outer neighborhood for colonial officials. There was a no-construction zone between the two settlements - "sanitary corridor". The French quarters had large roads, sanitation, zoning guidelines but used Moroccan motifs in design and used to indigenous climatological design solutions. Habous districts were newly created as harmonious districts to accommodate growing population. These provided some facilities that old Arab cities lacked like sanitation and thoroughfares, but were still inherently Moroccan in cultural form. This became the western setting for tourism.

Indochina (Vietnam): Here too they wanted to strike a balance between modernization and preserving local architecture and culture. But the architects and planners only had superficial knowledge of the cultural differences. Herbard outlined a zoning plan that restricted uses for different districts in the city. But here the restriction and segregation was not not based on military dominance but relied on modern industry, financial development, cultural tolerance.

Madagascar: This island had resisted colonization for 100 years by refusing to built inland roads. But French abolished slavery, and forcibly put former slaves who migrated to cities to build roads. Seeing the success of Morocco and Indochina they wanted to follow a balanced model without disturbing local traditions unnecessarily. But since malaria and plague were major concerns they built wide roads outside the native city - cordon sanitaire - to segregate the population. But this separation did not help prevent mosquitoes, and the next governor general implemented standardized building with concrete, and uniform buildings were built for both Madagascar workers and French officials in place of old indigenous buildings.

Comments: Local voice is lost as Wright only narrates the story of French colonial urbanism and politics using references from French architects and planners. Were the lessons learnt in the colonies used in the metropole? What was the fate of these colonial designs post the nations' independence? How did the dual city model affect the natives' lives?

The Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City/ 1996

Jacobs book marks a critical move from earlier colonial discourses on urbanism by moving the spatial rhetoric to 'real' geographies. She studies four cities --two in London and two in Autralia -- to bring together the theories of colonial and postcolonial urbanism with studies of postmodern contemporary cities. She traces contemporary processes of urban redevelopment in postmodern cities which were previouslt the seat of Imperialism, to show how the relations of power and difference of colonialism still lingers on in first world cities, and is challenged through politics of identity and power that artculates itself through spaces.

By picking four cities - London, Spatialfields, Perth, Brisbane -- she destablises the edge and periphery model of postcolonial urbanism at the outset. These examples represent the presence of a third world inside the firest world (the aboriginal australia, disporic communities in London). By examining the local in the global city, Jacobs says, she unsettles the cultural geographies and politics of power and identity. Jacobs situates both the postcolonial and postmodern in the first world. If one followed, Anthony King and Brenda Yeoh, these cities can be termed "post-imperial"metropoles.

Colonialism/Imperialism: "Imperialism defined as the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory. Colonialism, by his definition, is a specific

articulation of imperialism associated with territorial invasions and settlements." (Said)

Jacobs argues that term 'postcolonial' is prematurely celebratory since there still exists unresolved tensions and conflicts in the spaces of both the colonized and colonizer. Aboriginal in Australia are still fighting for their identity as indigenous/native, and Bangaladeshi immigrants in London are still victims of Xenophobia etc. Jacobs conceptualizes postcolonialism as "an historically

dispersed set of formations which negotiate the ideological, social and material structures of power established under colonialism."(p.25) Citing several postcolonial critics, she writes, by terming an entire set of nations postcolonial, there is generalization of diverse culture and geographies.

London: Bank Junction - Urban redevelopment struggles. Jacobs argues that imperialism, the power struggle is continuing even today in postcolonial cities.  People protested the re-development of heritage area of Bank Junction in London. The buildings and memorials here were considered to be reminiscent of the Imperial domination.
Spitalfields: Bengali immigrants were being driven out due to gentrification. 

The International Style/ Hitchcock and Johnson/ 1932

"Architecture is always a set of actual monuments, not a vague corpus of theory".

The 18th century was a time of revival, chief among which were styles of Classical Revival and Medieval Revival. But the stylistic confusion of combining the styles of revivalism with the new methods and technologies of construction was the

In the 19th century, the revival styles came to be used as decorative elements with no relation to interior space and function. The style of 'Eclecticism' created more chaos. The authors argue that one of the primary reasons that some architects revolted in the 20th century to these styles was that "eclecticism' had broken away from the disciplines of classical architecture, and was simply imitating them. They write that it is possible to imitate the essence of past styles, but imitating their surfaces is problematic.

In this context, they argue, a new style was born -- that which resembled Gothic in terms of structure, and resembled the classical in terms of handling problems.

International Style: Not international in the sense that buildings built in different countries look similar. Neither is it so prescriptive that works of different architects are indistinguishable. This has become distinguishable as a style only after different architects in different countries have carried out similar experiments which share characteristics.
Three characteristics:
conception of architecture as volume and not mass
regularity vs axial symmetry
Proscribing decorative ornamentation

Chapter 2:
The need to break away from existing architectural traditions:
1. availability of new building technologies
2. development of architectural design regardless of limitations

Beginnign of 19th century architects began to move away from revival styles. But stylistic integration did not happen until after world war. Although Industrial architecture of Germany, Berlage at Amsterdam, use of ferroconcrete at paris had initiated principles of International style independently before war.

But it was in America that the International style came into fruition. Walter Gropius, JJ Oud, Mies Van Rohe, Le Corbusier can be considered to be the primary figures of International style. 

All That is Solid Melts into Air/ Marshall Berman/ 1982

Marshall Berman's book is a critique of postmodernism. He urges the readers to reconsider the history of modernity which will enrich our present and may even guide us into the future. In his introduction 'Modernity- yesterday, today, tomorrow' he briefly traces the different experiences of modernity in 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and argues that our ancestors experience with modernity has been much richer.

He begins with this childhood home in Bronx that was demolished to build highway under the orders of Robert Moses. He writes that since highways symbolized modernity, the people opposing the construction (as they were loosing their homes from the demolition) were made to feel guilty, as if they were opposing modernity.

Modernity: Historical experience. Experience of men and women in modern environments.
Modernization: Social processes that bring a maelstrom (industrialization, scientific progress etc) into being, and keep it in a perpetual state of being. People being both subjects and objects on modernization.
Modernism: The visions and values that modernization brings, and gives people the power to be changed and change the world they live in modernism.

History of Modernity
1st Phase: 16th to 18th century : people don’t know what hit them. Beginning to grapple with new ideas.
2nd phase: French revolution – 1790 – end of 19th century – revolutionary ideas, upheavals in social and political lives. 

19th century: People can understand what it means to live in modernity. Ideas of modernism and modernization emerge. People are living in two worlds simultaneously.
3rd Phase: 20th century: expands to the entire world. Modernity breaks down society into fragments – people loose touch with their roots.

He critiques post-modernists as being too quick to reduce modernism into a closed monolith that is incapable of being shaped by modern men anymore. He critiques postmodernism as leading towards a nihilistic point of view, and sucking the optimism of modernism. He critiques Foucault and his postmodernist theories for behaving as if everything in the society is new, and modern man does not have any freedom in shaping his/her own world. Berman suggests that postmodernist ideas are "simply iterations of the constant intellectual evolution of modernity itself, that in seeking to destroy the modernist ideas that preceded them they have in fact become simply the newest destructive forces that are inherent in the modern cycle of destruction and rebirth."

Berman argues that by examining our contemporary society (Today) through the visions and lens of (Yesterday), 19th century modernists will encourage us to create the modernisms of 21st century (Tomorrow). He argues modernisms of the past can help us connect the world and brings together people who are going through the processes of modernization together.

He engages with Goethe's Faust, Marx's Communist Manifesto, Baudelaire's essays on modernity, and Dostoevsky's and Gogol's digresses about Crystal Palace to introduce the vitality and dynamism inherent in early modernist writers.

The End of Tradition, or the Tradition of Endings/ Nezar Alsayyad/ 2004

Alsayyad begins the essay by tracing the four threads of recent discourses on endings. The first is Daniel Bell's "The end of ideology". Bell argued that 19th century ideologies like Marxism were ending, and that a new utopia of social harmony cannot be brought about through ideological means. But this theory was proved false with the radicalism that arose in 1960's. The second is Fukuyama's 'End of history and the the last man' which argued that as western liberal democracy takes root and the sociocultural evolution of man will halt with liberal government becoming the final form of governing. But this was also wrong since liberal democracy has been constantly challenged by fundamentalism, radical movements, and authoritarianism. The third discourse was Ohmae's End of Nation state that argued that as the money that moves between nations are mostly private, there is no need for a nation-state involved. Fourth, Jacoby's 'End of Utopia' that argues with the wide spreading of free market capitalism there cannot be any radical changes and that utopia that brings about change is dead. Alsayyad argues that all these endings are a fallacy, and in the 21st century there exists real threats to liberal democracy, history, capitalism, and new ideologies still emerge.

On tradition: Alsayyad argues that tradition has to be seen as the process that creates contested subjectivities involved in producing/occupying spaces. First study of tradition in 1989: Tuan argued Tradition to be a constraint. Paul Oliver presented the concept of handing down traditions and Rapoport came up with a list of attributes to test the degree of trasitionality.

On built environment: How built traditional environments have to studies in response to changes in society? Glassie and Rapoport say architecture is material culture/cultural landscape and they reflect the norms of the society. Abu Lughod argues for breaking down of dichotomies and suggests the use of 'traditioning' as a verb in opposition of tradition as a noun (process over product). She argues that traditional environments should not be seen as endangered environments. Following this argument Alsayyad argues that deterritorialization of identity through globalization happens in 4 phases, Insular phase (indigenous vernacular) colonial (hybrid architecture) independent nation building (modernization), and globalization (settlements homogenized, and people are ethnically aware).

Alsayyad asks, if the end of tradition as an object of enquiry suggests an end of tradition as an objective reality? Answering his question negatively, he says the new modes of enquiry into tradition only suggests that tradition as a concept we have know thus far is ending, and not the end of tradition itself.

The book is divided into 3 parts:

Part 1 examines the dialectic nature of tradition and modernity. The three essays present new ways of looking at tradition through the lens of modernity.

Jane Jacobs: Tradition is (not) modern - Tradition and modernity are codependent but mutually exclusive. Tradition is imagined by modernity. Globalization has not killed tradition but rather reshaped it. Aboriginals in Australia hired architects to insert aboriginal identity into contemporary architecture of touristic buildings. Traditional authority was channeled through modes of modernity.
Ananya Roy: Nostalgias of the Modern: End of tradition is end of traditional ways of thinking. Consumption of tradition is production of tradition.
Dwelling: Authenticity- Recovering authenticity by creating nostalgia. (Crystal palace, Eifel Tower)
Performing: making explicit acts of consuming tradition. (Algiers)

Part 2: examines traditions as a process of invention. The three essays examine how traditions are "manufactured, packaged and deployed". An invented landscape inherently depeds upon succesful deployment of invented traditions. Since invented traditions are often messy and are competitive in what traditions they are excluding invented landscapes are usually a failure.

Part 3 examines tradition as a representation of a regime. It shows how tradition is programmed, policed, and deployed in hegemonic struggles that create both built environemnts and citizen subjects through its reworking of tradition.  Essays include Mia Fuller's examination of standardized farmhouses enforced by Italian fascist regimes to ensure that people thought of national identity before regional identity, and Dufang Lu's example of breaking and rebuilding city walls in China as a symbolic entity.

"What has ended is not tradition itself, but the idea of tradition as a harbinger of authenticity, and as a container of specific cultural meaning, as a place-based, temporally situated concept; as a static authoritative legacy; as a heritage owned by certain groups of people."

"Tradition is no longer found only in ‘real’ places; it lives on in the most fake of all places, where

it is reborn everyday in the social practice of those who inhabit what used to be the

space of fakery."

Behind the postcolonial/ Abidin Kusno/2000

School of thought: Postcolonial Critique

Others scholars mentioned: Spiro Kostof 'motivation of sequence'; Ben Anderson 'spectre of comparisons'; Anthony King 'colonial modernity'; Paul Rabinow 'social modernity'; Said 'social mission'; Partha Chatterjee 'material and spiritual realms'

Kusno address broad themes in postcolonial architetcure using specific historical examples from Indonesia. He begins the book by laying out the politics of the built environment in postcolonial Indonesia. While the old-order Sukarno's government favored a modern architectural style for newly independent Indonesia, and built a national mosque' symbolizing the narrative of progress, the new-order Suharto's regime favored going back to classical javanese architecture as a symbol of national identity. Several mosques were built across the archipelago in traditional javanese style trying to substitute one national style in place of several indigenous architectural styles. With Kusno argues architectural to be a produce of social and political forces, and as a way of rewriting history. He questions, where Indonesian architecture is rooted, and when should the beginning be placed? He argues architecture and urbanism is not only a lens to understand political and cultural formations of a postcolonial nation, but they are the tools themselves that shape particular social, cultural, and political formations. He uses the theoretical frameworks of Anthony King, Paul Rabinow, and Said to argue that architecture in Indonesia can only be grasped through a serious analysis of political cultures of regimes in power, and the continuing presence of colonialism in today's postcolonial society.

The book divided in three parts examines the architecture, urban spaces, and transnational architectural and political cultures of Indonesia. The primary themes of the book are: colonial origins of contemporary Indonesian architecture, the violent genology of the New Order, and the hybrid modernities that protest the New Order culture.

Part 1: Dutch architects who designed 'Indies architecture' were raised in the colony, and went to Netherland to obtain education. Returning as architects they believed in the colonial mission of modernizing subjects as a 'social mission'. This architecture provided a grammar for postcolonial arhcitects to imagine a national identity. Through the case of Dutch architects working in the Indies, Kusno tries to break away from the narrative of domination (colonizer/colonized binary), and "develop a way to understand the complexity and ambiguity which often formed colonial relation without undermining the importance of power relations."

Part 2:

Part 3: Contemporary protests after New Order:
Kusno argues that the creation of Self and Other as Said argues is occuring even after colonialism ended. Modern elites modernizing elites construct categories of “others”in urban spaces. "These “others” were not meant to be modernized. Instead, they were created for the self-formation of the “modern” elites. This formation of “internal” other follows the logic of colonial “civilizing mission” which in its attempt to modernize the colony still maintained a distance or a gap necessary for hierarchal identification." (Kusno interview)

1. Examines the role of architecture and urbanism in formation of collective subjectives in postcolonial Indonesia
2. It is a political history of Indonesian architecture, by studying the colonial origins of postcolonial architecture not only for the past, but to understand it in present and future
3. It transcends the criticism of modernist architecture as colonial and presents an understanding of how it can be nation-specific.
4. Studying the nexus of power that is located outside the east-west paradigm and understanding the different types of modernities.

The Invention of Tradition/ Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger/ 1983

Introduction: 
Hobsbawm in his introduction 'Inventing Traditions' makes the claim that traditions that often seem ancient and well established might in reality be created/invented in a more recent dateable time period. He defines 'Invented traditions' to mean "a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past." (p.1). He introduces an idea of a 'historic past' -- where traditions are invented to establish a continuity with a suitable historic past, but they are factitious.  In a constantly changing modern world, invented traditions attempt to structure some parts of social life and to create a semblance to an unchanging past.

Tradition, he argues, has to be differentiated from 'custom'. While the object and characteristic of traditions is to be unchanging and invariant, 'custom' cannot afford to be invariant, because life even in traditional societies is constantly changing. Customs, therefore, "gives any desired change the sanction of precedent and social continuity" (p.2). A decline of custom inevitably changes tradition.
Second, he writes, social practices which have to be repeated frequently are often formalized into a set of conventions or practices for the sake of convenience and efficiency. These set of practices, he argues, are not 'invented traditions' since their function is technical and not ideological. He identifies three overlapping types of invented traditions formed post industrial revolution - one, that is used to establish social cohesion or membership to real/imagined groups, second, establishing or legitimization social institutions and third, those which were instituted for value systems and inculcation of beliefs. But argues that the first type is what primarily qualifies as invented traditions.
He identifies two major differences in invented and age-old traditional practices: Old ones were strong, specific, and social binders. Latter ones are unspecified and vague to reflect nature of the values. Second, even though a lot of new traditions have been invented they only fill a small part of the vacuum created by the loss of 'real' traditions by secularization.

Why is the study of invented traditions important: 1)they are both symptoms and evidences of the changes occurring in the society. They in fact point to breaks in continuity.  2) they showcase human relationship to the past, and how they want the past to be preserved and remembered. Especially in case of nationalism, symbol of nation-state, national languages etc. constructing historic continuities is crucial to the formation of social cohesion.

Chapter 2: The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland / Hugh Trevor-Roper
Trevor-Roper examines Scotland's national symbols (such as kilt, bagpipe, highland myth, wearing of different patterned Kilt to be representative of different clans etc.) and argues that they are not symbols of antiquity but rather modern inventions, that were developed in reaction to Scotland's Union with England. The highlands were always culturally connected to Ireland than to Scotland. They were isolated clans from Scottish lowlands, and their gaelic language was also considered to be closer to Irish. But after Scotland's union with England, the Scottish crown banned the usage of cultural Highland symbols like kilts, and popularized English in schools, in an attempt to unify the state and anglicize it. After the ban was lifted, Scottish gentry and Highlanders started wearing kilt, not only to preserve their identity but also to ease transition. Trevor- Roper argues that the Kilt as we know it today was invented by a Englishman in 18th century, and Sottish nationalists eventually claimed it as a symbol of their Celtic ancestors.

Chapter 4: The British Monarchy and Invention of Tradition/ David Cannadine
This chapter examines the pageantry and ceremonial practices associated with the British Monarchy. He argues that most ceremonial rituals associated with the royal family and the crown was established in 20th century, not only to bolster a shaky monarchy but also to foster a sense of national identity and belonging. He identifies the beginning of certain traditions, like the king's funeral in Westminister Abbey, the jubilee functions of the monarch's survival in office, investiture ceremony etc. Cannadine discusses the role of television media (BBC) in promoting of of this invented traditions, by commenting that it has enhanced the "fairytale splendor" of the royal families by bringing them to people's living rooms.

Chapter 5: Construction of Ritual idiom in Victorian India/ Bernard S Cohen
At the beginning of Raj, the first governor general travelled across North India carrying the message of the Crown and held "durbars" for Indian princes, British and Indian officials. At these "durbars" Indian prices were bestowed with titles such as Nawab, Rai Bahadur etc. These "durbars" Cohen argues became an invented tradition. The durbars were modeled upon those held by Mughal and Hindu kings where people were offered gold coins, clothes, keepsakes, and sometimes even elephants, horses etc. While in the Indian culture these gifts were reflective of a relationship forged b/w the emperor and his subject, the British mistook them to be bribery/ tributes. Gradually, Indian prices were ranked in terms of their allegiance to the British empire, their land holding etc. and at the British durbars Indian prices had to wear a certain attire, stand at a certain position, and would be greeted a certain way based on their rank and title.