In the essay Urban Vitality and the Fallacy of Physical Determinism (1968) Hebert J. Gans critizes urban planners, saying that the overestimate their capacity of influencing the life of people through urban planning. This essay in particular criticizes Jane Jacobs famous book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), arguing that see falls in the same trap of as the modernist city planner; her opponents. Gans, who is a sociologist, say that it is not so much the physical form of the city that determines behavior. He argues that rather the cultural codes of a social group determine behavior. The way people use the urban spaces depend on with social or ethnic group they belong to. The reason why people in a certain neighborhood have a intensive street life and others not, could have been caused by the fact that the house is reserved for the family, and therefore the social life has to take place on the street.[1] So the determiner of the use of space is in itself not physical but sociological. The modernist planners of the city, but also their criticizers like Jane Jacobs are losing themselves in ‘the fallacy of physical determinism,’ which mean that they put too much weight at the physical appearance of space when it comes to sociological phenomena.
Gans writes about the American middle-class who prefers to live in the suburbs and don’t want to live in diverse neighborhoods, the retreat from the working class parts of the city is a very conscious decision, that is not in the first part determined by physical space but by the status they want to represent among their equals. They don’t want to travel by public transport, they want to travel by car, as every middle-class family does. They don’t want to go to the small merchant, they prefer the supermarket where they have more choice and it is much easier to park your car.
I will write more about this interesting sociologist, because I think that the nuances he makes are very still very valid today; especially to prevent to lose ourselves for the trap of the ‘technical fix’, the attitude that social problems are easily solvable by technology.
Gans writes about the American middle-class who prefers to live in the suburbs and don’t want to live in diverse neighborhoods, the retreat from the working class parts of the city is a very conscious decision, that is not in the first part determined by physical space but by the status they want to represent among their equals. They don’t want to travel by public transport, they want to travel by car, as every middle-class family does. They don’t want to go to the small merchant, they prefer the supermarket where they have more choice and it is much easier to park your car.
I will write more about this interesting sociologist, because I think that the nuances he makes are very still very valid today; especially to prevent to lose ourselves for the trap of the ‘technical fix’, the attitude that social problems are easily solvable by technology.
[1] Herbert J. Gans, Urban Vitality and the Fallacy of Physical Determinism, in: People and Plans: Essays on Urban Problems and Solutions (1968, 1972) Cox & Wyman Inc., London, p. 34,35.
No comments:
Post a Comment