ABSTRACT
This has been a difficult book to write because it covers a large field in which the concepts culture and city are subject to continuing redefinition. I end with a feeling that concepts are part of the problem, though I do not advocate an approach which is entirely empirical. In a creative tension between ideas and evidence, then, I embark on this final chapter concerning the permeability of cultural formations. This is not exclusively a dimension of urban cultures but is particularly evident in the specifically urban form of a street plan such as the familiar grid. The recurrence of the grid in different societies and histories does not guarantee a uniformity of meaning, however. It is easy to assume that grids are inscriptions in the manner of the engineer in Descartes’s Discourse drawing regular places according to his fancy (Lacour, 1996), but this is an idea specific to European modernity. I begin the chapter with an exploration of the urban grid to find diverse and conflicting meanings in its specific appearances, looking particularly at the form of cities in the Americas as discussed by Setha Low in
and diversity I ask if such an ordering is sustainable. Finally, I ask how I can understand from this and preceding sections of the book what is meant by a right to the city (in Henri Lefebvre’s terms) and how it might include the imagination and realisation of future urban conditions. In case studies I cite Michel Tournier’s reworking of the Robinson Crusoe story in Friday; and the work of the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi. Finally, I illustrate a bunch of carnations placed on the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin in 2005.
