The Circulating City
I’m getting closer and closer to getting moving again on the dissertation. Sienna’s still demanding most of our time, as we try to figure out how to meet her needs. But it seems as though we’re beginning to be able to anticipate them and thus can begin turning back to our own needs. Hence, the dissertation.
On my morning ride this morning, I was trying to get the ideas flowing again and began thinking about my long term project investigating circulation and the city. And since in planning we like to “name” our cities, I was debating the merits of the two obvious candidates: City of Circulation and Circulating City. The first initially seemed most appropriate since I’m interested in processes of circulation within cities and between cities. And Circulating City sounded somewhat awkward: a city that circulates?
But then I realized that that is precisely what makes it appropriate. Linguistically, it’s more dynamic. And conceptually it’s more dynamic. Cities are simply a manifestation of density. After all, our attempts to define cities really hinge upon the density level at which we distinguish the category of “urban”. This is usually considered in terms of population per areal unit, but it can be thought of in terms of network connections, interactivity, etc. So the interesting aspect the Circulating City captures is the geographical shifts of that density. For example, in the 1940s and 1950s the denisty of US cities shifted outward toward the suburbs and remained until the 1990s.
More interestingly (for me) is that the density of economic activity shifts over time. Braudel talks about the shift of the European urban system from Venice to Amsterdam in the Middle Ages. So, if we think of urban systems in a capitalist social framework in which certain urban centers coordinate the system (a la Hymer, Sassen, Friedmann, etc.), then the city as a capitalist construct does circulate.
And hence my larger project is about the Circulating City, not the City of Circulation.
No comments yet.