Environment and Planning D; Society and Space 1996, volume 14, pages 331 -355

Urban design and dilemmas of space

AH Madanipour Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tync, NE1 7RU, England Received 24 March 1995; in revised form 23 October 1995

Abstract. My aim in this paper is to find an understanding of the concept of space which could be used in urban design, but which could also be shared by others with an interest in space. Social scientists, geographers, architects, urban planners, and designers use the term space in their academic and professional involvement with the city. But when they meet each other their discourse seems to be handicapped partly because of a difference in their usage and understand­ing of the concept of space. I will argue that to arrive at a common platform in which a meaningful communication can become possible, we need to confront such fragmentation by moving towards a more unified concept of space. I will argue for a concept of space which would refer to our objective, physical space with its social and psychological dimensions, a dynamic conception which accommodates at the same time constant change and embeddedness, and that can only be understood in monitoring the way space is being made and remade, at the intersection of the development processes and everyday life.

We hear frequently about 'space', a term which we use easily and in a variety of contexts. We use it as if the meaning of the term were free from any problems or contradictions, as if we all agreed what space means. Yet we will be surprised by the multiplicity of its meanings if we monitor our own usage of the term. The Oxford English Dictionary gives no fewer than nineteen meanings for the term, including: "continous expanse in which things exist and move", "amount of this taken by a particular thing or available for particular purpose", and "interval between points or objects". These meanings reflect some aspects of the common understanding of the term as used in daily life. They also illustrate the complexity of the concept and refer to deeply rooted debates about it, which have been running for a long time.

In this paper, I will focus on space as the main subject matter of urban design. I will explore some of the main approaches to, and the dilemmas associated with, the concept of space, a concept which lies at the core of urban design and a number of other disciplines and professions. This is a necessary step to take as it is crucial that, before moving into the normative realm of design, we explore the realm of the descriptive and analytical, in other words, to understand urban space before we attempt to transform it. The highly prescriptive and practical nature of design requires a set of information to be assembled, often too quickly because of time limits, and be employed in a solution-finding exercise. Far too many such exercises take place on the basis of assumptions which are in need of a critical evaluation and a more informed approach to the existing urban space. This is therefore an urgent task, despite theoretical and practical problems inherent in the relationship between knowledge and action, especially in an arena as complex as urban space, in a process as often mystifying and potentially controversial as design.

At the risk of oversimplifying complex concepts in the limited space of this paper, I will search for a meaning of space which can be used in urban design and can be shared with other spatial arts and sciences. I will look at the way various disciplines

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involved in the study and transformation of space tend to understand it. Disciplines such as geography, planning, and architecture, whose primary concern is with space, have developed concepts of space from different, but inevitably interrelated, perspectives. In their theorizations, they have often benefited from debates in philosophy, psychology, sociology, mathematics, and physics, to name a few. These perspectives vary widely, including seeing space as a physical phenomenon, a condi­tion of mind, or a product of social processes. A brief review of some of these conceptualizations will serve us in a variety of ways. It will offer an awareness of the dimensions of space, with keys to a better understanding of the debates about space within different disciplines. This will help us to position ourselves and to find our way in understanding the intricate maze of urban space and the discussions about it. As we will quickly find out from a brief look at some of these conceptual­izations of space, there is a multiplicity of gaps and fragmentations in understanding space. These concepts are dominated by dilemmas and conflict of perspectives, conveying the impression that space is contested in almost every sense. I will then put forward a framework with which to confront these divides and to bridge some of these gaps, with the aim of moving towards a more coherent understanding of space. It is only with such understanding that a common discourse between frag­mented circles of professions and disciplines can be promoted.

Absolute and relational space It may make sense to start our search for approaches to space from the core of the social sciences. To our surprise, however, despite the signs of rising attention (for example, Giddens, 1984; Gottdiener, 1994), so far there has hardly been a strong interest in space among sociologists. This is clearly reflected in the absence of the term from most sociology reference books (Abercrombie et al, 1984; Boudon and Bourricaud, 1989; Fairchild, 1970; Hoult, 1969; Marshall, 1994; Mitchell, 1979). Perhaps sociologists have seen the concerns about space as metaphysical, as philos­ophers have tended to do for so long. Or perhaps it belongs to the realm of natural sciences, as shown in the theories of space in physics. Yet there is a strong link between the debates about space in philosophy and physics, where space has been a long-standing concern (Jammer, 1954).

The philosophical debates about space in the last three centuries have been dominated by a dichotomy between absolute versus relational theories. The theory of absolute space was developed by Newton, who saw space (and time) as real things, as "places as well of themselves as of all other things" (quoted in Speake, 1979, page 308). Space and time were "containers of infinite extension or dura­tion". Within them, the whole succession of natural events in the world find a definite position. The movement or repose of things, therefore, were really taking place and were not a matter of their relations to changes of other objects (Speake, 1979, page 309). Before Newton, Aristotle had described space as the container of all objects (Wiener, 1975, page 297). The ancient Greeks, however, did not create a space of logical, ontological, or psychological perceptions. Neither did they develop a general conception of space for geometry and geometrically oriented analysis, as they concentrated on space in cosmology, physics, and theology (Bochner, 1973).

The relationist theories were developed as a critique of the concept of absolute space. The first major opposition was made by Leibniz, who held that space merely consisted in relations between nonspatial, mental items (Smart, 1988; Speake, 1979). Leibniz saw space as "the order of coexisting things, or the order of existence for all things which are contemporaneous" (quoted in Bochner, 1973, page 297). Another major opposition was by Kant, who saw space as belonging to the subjective

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constitution of the mind and not as an empirical concept derived from outward experiences (1993, pages 48-68). We can speak of space only from the human point of view. Beyond our subjective condition, "the representation of space has no meaning whatsoever" as it "does not represent any property of objects as things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relations to each other" (page 52). Space (and time) are appearances which "cannot exist in themselves, but only in us" (page 61). I;rom this viewpoint, therefore, "what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space" (page 54). Whatever the nature of objects as things in themselves, our understand­ing is confined to our own mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us. Other relationists have tried to preserve the reality of space (and time) by asserting that they are merely relations between physical objects and events and that, therefore, "the container is not logically distinct from the things it is said to contain" (Speake, 1979, page 309).

Smart (1988) argues that, although they share in their opposition to the Newtonian concept of absolute space (and time), it is important to distinguish between the theories of relativity and relationist theories of space. He believes that some have been misled into thinking that the theory of relativity supports a rela­tional theory, as the special theory of relativity maintains that lengths and periods of time are relative to frames of reference. On the contrary, both special and general theories of relativity appear to be perfectly compatible with an absolute theory of space-time. Yet Einstein (1954, pages xiii-xv) gives us another impression. He contrasts the two concepts of relational and absolute space as "space as positional quality of the world of material objects" versus "space as container of all material objects" (figure 1). The first meaning, he maintains, is rooted in the concept of place, which is older and easier to grasp: material objects have a place in the world, that is, a small portion of the earth's surface or a group of objects. The second is a more abstract meaning, seeing space as 'unlimited in extent', framing and containing all material objects, a concept that Einstein helped to reject on the basis of field theory and the concept of four-dimensional space-time.

Figure 1. Is space the container of all the objects we see or is it the positional quality of these objects? (Amsterdam).

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The distinctions in philosophy and physics between absolute and relationist theories can also be found in geography, even if not always specifically referred to (Clark, 1985; Small and Witherick, 1986). In geography, however, there is a tendency to use the term relative space for what philosophy calls relational space, perhaps because of the influence of the theory of relativity. According to Blaut (1961, page 1), the absolute conceptions of space refer to "a distinct, physical and eminently real or empirical entity in itself. A generation later, these meanings are still echoed in the definition of the concept. For example, absolute space has been defined as "clearly distinct, real, and objective space" (Mayhew and Penny, 1992, page 214). Absolute space, or "contextual space", is "a dimension which focuses on the characteristics of things in terms of their concentration and dispersion". It is this aspect of space which can be traced back to the early mapmakers and their concern with precise measurement of locational relationships, continued in the contemporary geographer's interest in spatial analysis (Goodall, 1987, page 440). In contrast, the relative con­ceptions refer to space as "merely a relation between events or an aspect of events, and thus bound to time and process" (Blaut, 1961, page 1). It is "perceived by a person or society" (Mayhew and Penny, 1992, page 214). Relative, or 'created', space is perceptual and socially produced, a context which focuses on the characteristics of places, as in the early travellers' descriptions of unfamiliar areas (Goodall, 1987).

We might ask ourselves whether the dichotomy between absolute and relational or relative space is a mere difference in the way we see things, a difference which at best can be treated as various aspects of a pluralist understanding of the world, or at worst be left aside as a scholastic, metaphysical debate only good for armchair theorists. We might compare the debate to two ways of describing the same phe­nomenon: a half-filled glass or a half-empty one. After all, it was Einstein (1954) himself who said that both concepts of space "are free creations of the human imagination, means devised for easier comprehension of our sense experiences" (page xiv). But we are quickly reminded that major battles have been fought in natural sciences over the primacy of these two concepts of space. This debate can be traced to see how it has been powerful enough to inspire a transformation of our built environments.

Space and mass The absence of the term space from the sociology reference books may seem under­standable, and could be explained by an absence of interest in space by sociologists. But its absence from architectural reference books (Curl, 1992; Harris and Lever, 1966; 1993; Hatje, 1963; Pevsner et al, 1991; Sharp, 1991; Yarwood, 1985) is quite noticeable. The only exception I could find was an old text, which defined space as "the area at the corner of a turning stair" (Sturgis, 1989, originally published 1901-02). This seems surprising in a discipline in which space is consid­ered by many of its distinguished members as its essence (Giedion, 1967; Tschumi, 1990; Zevi, 1957). One obvious explanation for such a dramatic absence could be that architects' conception and use of the term space are so clear and universally accepted among them that no need has been felt to explain a taken-for-granted term. This simple explanation, however, fades away when we learn that the term is relatively new, in the context of the long history of architecture, and that it has become a controversial concept in recent decades. Perhaps it is not in the dictionaries and encyclopaedias that we should expect a definition of the concept of space in architecture.

To define space, Tschumi (1990, page 13) reminds us, has two meanings: "to make space distinct", a normative dimension in which art and architecture are concerned.

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It also means "to state the precise nature of space", a descriptive dimension which is the concern of philosophy, mathematics, and physics. It is, of course, the enclosure of space, rather than space itself, which is the focus of attention. Zevi (1957) sees space as the essence of architecture: "The facades and walls of a house, church or palace, no matter how beautiful they may be, are only the container, the box formed by the walls; the content is the internal space" (page 24). This is a concept which is still widely held. According to van dcr Laan (1983), for example, architectural space comes into being through the erection of two walls, creating a new space in between them, which is separated from the natural space around them.

Zevi (1957) follows the same definition for urban space, where streets, squares, parks, playgrounds, and gardens are all 'voids' which have been limited or defined to create an enclosed space. "Since every architectural volume, every structure of walls, constitutes a boundary, a pause in the continuity of space, it is clear that every building functions in the creation of two kinds of space: its internal space, completely defined by the building itself, and its external or urban space, defined by that building and the others around it" (page 30). In the creation of urban space, however, other objects are involved, which arc not often identified as architecture, such as bridges, obelisks, fountains, triumphal arches, groups of trees, and the facades of buildings. The central role that these objects play, however, is the way they enclose space and define it in new ways. For Zevi, therefore, the essence of architecture "does not lie in the material limitation placed on spatial freedom, but in the way space is organized into meaningful form through this process of limitation" (quoted in Scruton, 1979, page 43). To define space in architecture, therefore, means "to determine boundaries" within "a uniformly extended material to be modelled in various ways" (Tschumi, 1990, pages 1 3 - 14).

The concept of architectural space, as "something preexistcnt and unlimited", "a positive entity within which the traditional categories of tectonic form and surface occurred" (Colquhoun, 1989, page 225) was probably first formulated by Schmarsow at the end of the 19th century. Ever since this influential definition, which is strictly phenomenological and psychological, the ideas of continuity, transparency, and indeterminacy have been given new values.

The emergence of the idea of space coincided with the first movement of modernist architecture, Art Nouveau (van de Ven, 1993). To the modernists, the concept of space (the relations between interlocking spaces), became accepted as the essence of architecture. Giedion (1967) was one of the most influential advocates of modernism and of the concept of space as the essence of architecture. He identified three stages in the conception of space throughout the history of architecture. In the first stage, as exemplified in ancient Egypt, Sumer, and Greece, architectural space was created by the interplay of volumes, with less attention paid to the interior space. In the second stage, which began in the middle of the Roman period, architectural space was synonymous with the hollowed-out space of the interior. The third stage started at the beginning of the 20th century by the abolition of the single view of perspective, which brought about an optical revolution. The profound consequences of this development for our perception of architectural and urban space was the appreciation of the "space-emanating qualities of free-standing buildings", and finding an affinity with the first, ancient stage of space conception (Giedion, 1967, pages lv-lvi).

This notion of "an abstract undifferentiated space", however, came under attack from postmodern urban criticism (Colquhoun, 1989, page 225). Seeing space as "a uniformly extended 'material' which can be 'modelled' in different ways" was criticized as "naively realistic" (Norberg-Schulz, 1971, page 12). Critics saw limitless,

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abstract space as a main feature of the modernist city with its tendency to blow apart the perceptible urban space. It has become a habit of thought in the modern city to conceive of buildings as "simple-shaped volumes, floating in a sea of ill-formed space" (Alexander et al, 1987, page 67).

The concept of space has come to be questioned since the 1970s by post­modernists, who have shown a renewed interest in corporeal mass and its meanings (van de Ven, 1993). This reflects the long-lasting dilemma between mass and void, between empirical and conceptual, between real and abstract. It is a dilemma between physical space, which can be understood immediately by the senses, and mental space, which needs to be interpreted intellectually. An example of this challenge to abstraction is given by Scruton (1979, pages 43-52), who criticizes the concept of architectural space on the grounds that it fails to give an account of all that is interesting in buildings. In St Paul's, for example, we can speak about the "spatial" grandeur, but there are also "deliberate and impressive effects of light and shade, of ornament, texture and moulding". Scruton believes that the experience of architecture and its "spatial" effects depend on significant details and argues that the reduction of the effects to space is a misrepresentation of the entire nature of our experience. He goes as far as suggesting that the concept of space "can be elimi­nated from most critical writings which make use of it without any real detriment to their meaning" (pages 48-49). Despite these criticisms, the concept of space as the essence of architecture remains powerful, and the question of the relationship between container and contained, between mass and space, an open one.

But what are we to think of this dilemma between mass and void in dealing with urban space? Is it not an exaggerated dichotomy in which no one wins? As we walk the streets, do we merely see the people, buildings, pavements, bridges, traffic lights, signs, etc and their relationships? Or are we walking in a space which exists independently of these material objects (figure 2)? Does it not make sense to say that in our walking the street we have both a spatial experience, in which enclosures are different from open spaces and streets from squares, and an experience of the material objects which shape or condition this space? We could argue, then, that mass and void are interrelated and, in our experience, interdependent. After all,

Figure 2. The city centre of A Contemporary City, published by the Modernist architect Le Corbusier in 1924, shows how a new concept of space was promoted, one which was defined to be independent from the buildings and other material objects, allowing freedom of move­ment, as exemplified by the aeroplanes. (Source: Le Corbusier, 1971 The City of To-morrow and Its Planning Architectural Press, London, pages 246 - 247.)

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our interpretation of our environments draws upon our sensory impressions as well as on our more formal abstractions. But is this experience sufficient to explain the complex relationships between human beings, who are agents of transforming space, and space and the material objects within it, between social and physical space?

Physical and social space Colquhoun (1989, page 223) defines the term urban space in two senses; social space and built space. The social space is "the spatial implications of social institu­tions" and is studied by sociologists and geographers, This is a viewpoint which tends to see the physical characteristics of the built environment as 'cpiphcnomcnal'. The built space, on the other hand, focuses on the physical space, "its morphology, the way it affects our perceptions, the way it is used, and the meanings it can elicit", which is the concern of architects. "This view", Colquhoun maintains, "is subject to two approaches—that which sees forms as independent of functions, and that which sees functions as determining forms", It is in this interconnection of function and form that the second perspective tends to approach that of the geographer and sociologist. Unlike them, however, "the architect is always finally interested in the forms, however these may be thought to be generated" (page 224).

An example of this interest in form is the work of Kricr (1979), who begins with an attempt not to introduce new definitions of space but "to bring its original meaning back into currency" (page 15), a meaning on which, to avoid value judg­ment, no aesthetic criteria are imposed. He therefore identifies urban space as the "external space", "all types of space between buildings in towns and other localities". This is a purely physical space, which is "geometrically bounded by a variety of elevations". His analysis of urban space is therefore confined to a morphology, enumerating the basic elements of urban space (street and square) and its basic forms (square, circle, and triangle), with a number of possible variations and combinations.

Colquhoun reasserts the conventional distinction between physical and social space by reliance on the role of social functions. He criticizes the modernist tendency "to take a historicist and relativist view of architecture and to regard the city as an epiphenomenon of social functions, resulting in a particular kind of urban space". In doing so, he takes the side of postmodern critics who tend to dissociate physical and social space, by concentrating on the former as "an autonomous formal system" (1989, page 224).

The relationship between physical and social space, that is, between form and function in modernist architectural language, has been one of the key themes of the postmodern challenge to modernism. The modernist formula, "form follows /unc­tion", related the social and physical space in a rather simplistic and deterministic way. The postmodern challenge, in contrast, has attempted to disengage this rela­tionship and to concentrate on physical space. However, neither the narrow linear way that social and physical space were combined in modernist architecture and planning, nor the political escapism associated with a later postmodernist disregard of social space, can be maintained in a socially concerned approach to the urban environment. In the meantime, however, the divorce between physical and social space has widened the gap between architecture and social sciences with their different conceptions of space.

Mental and real space Another manifestation of the debate between absolute and relational space is the one between the concepts of mental and real space. In this debate, real space,

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understood through the senses, is differentiated from the human being's intellectual interpretations of the world, which create a mental construct.

A representation of the dilemma of mental versus real space is made by Tschumi (1990). Following the Surrealist author Bataille, Tschumi concentrates on the rela­tionship of concepts and experience in the normative realm of architectural theory. He identifies this relationship as the main paradox of architecture. The conceptual approach is visualized by a pyramid, "this ultimate model of reason" (page 20; see figure 3). In order to state the nature of space, architecture becomes dematerialized, a theoretical concern, in which the modernist avant-garde felt free to act. In this way, the "domination of idea over matter" is ensured by a rational, theoretical approach to understanding and transforming space.

Figure 3. A pyramid is an 'ultimate model of reason', transforming space through a theor­etical approach and a rational geometry (Paris).

As against this theoretical approach, there is a sensory approach to space. From this perspective, our experience of space is "a sensuous event". This involves move­ment, a movement which creates "a kaleidoscope of changing impressions, of transitions between one spatial sensation and another" (Porter and Goodman, 1988, page 6). Tschumi uses the image of a labyrinth to represent this experience of space from within. From this viewpoint, "space is real, for it seems to affect my senses long before my reason" (Tschumi, 1990, page 20). This view, that "seeing comes before words", had been known by Surrealists. "The child looks and recognizes before it can speak" (Berger, 1972, page 7). Another sense in which this gap can be traced is that, "It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world". Yet there is an unsettled relationship between what we see and what we know: "Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowl­edge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight" (page 7). This gap between words and seeing, between reason and senses, was vividly portrayed by the Surrealist painter Magritte in his paintings such as The Key of Dreams.

Within Tschumi's labyrinth, with its ambiguities and dark corners, we cannot have an overview of the space around us (figure 4). The only way to relate to it is through immediate experience of space with the help of our senses, an empiri­cal understanding of real space. Therefore, the paradox of architecture, accord­ing to Tschumi, is the "impossibility of questioning the nature of space and at the

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same time making or experiencing a real space" (1990, page 27), It is a paradox between rationalist and empiricist approaches to space. As he puts it, "We can­not experience and think that we experience", from which it then follows that, "the concept of space is not in space" (page 27), The only way out of this dilemma, he maintains, is to shift the concept of architecture towards the build­ing development process, as exemplified by the work of Lefcbvrc. In this way, the philosophical gap between ideal space, which is an outcome of mental pro­cesses, and real space, which is produced by social praxis, can be bridged. Space is created in a historical process which produces and conditions both ideal and real aspects of space. Yet Tschumi hesitates to go along this route to bridge the gap. Instead, he prefers to treat physical space and the events and functions within it separately. There is a disjunction between these two, between physical and social space, which he seems anxious to keep.

Figure 4. Inside the labyrinth, our understanding of space is through immediate experience. We cannot have an overview of the space beyond. (Newcastle upon Tyne).

An interesting example of the relationship between mental and real space can be found in architecture and film, two spatial arts whose often asymmetrical rela­tionship (Dear, 1994) is once again being widely discussed (Toy, 1994; Vidler, 1993). What is generally held to link them is that "The actual experience of architectural space by an observer within that space has many similarities to the viewer's perception of a chosen sequence within a film" (Toy, 1994, page 7). Whereas architecture invites the observer to participate in its spatial narration, the film's narrator tells "spatial stories" (O'Herlihy, 1994, page 90). It is in this transi­tion, from movement in real space to movement in imaginary space, that Eisenstein, writing in the late 1930s, identified architecture as the ancestor of film. He mapped the two contrasting paths of the "spatial eye": the "cinematic', where there are "diverse impressions passing in front of an immobile spectator", and the "architec­tural", where "the spectator moved through a series of carefully disposed phenomena which he absorbed in order with his visual sense" (quoted in Vidler, 1993, page 56). It is this proximity that has inspired designers such as Nouvel, for whom "Architecture exists, like cinema, in the dimensions of time and movement.

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One conceives and reads a building in terms of sequences. To erect a building is to predict and seek effects of contrast and linkage through which one passes" (quoted in Rattenbury, 1994, page 35).

It appears that this perspective reduces both the architectural and the cinematic experiences to visual experiences, abandoning, in Rattenbury's words, "the last lingering attempt to explore the objective existentialism of the building" (1994, page 36). As Mallet-Stevens put it, "Real life is entirely different, the house is made to live, it should first respond to our needs" (quoted in Vidler, 1993, page 56). The distance between the imaginary world of film, and by extension video and the cyber­space of computer images, with the real space of architecture is best preserved. This is in the face of the trend in which "buildings and their spatial sequences are designed more as illustrations of implied movements, or worse, as literal fabrications of the computer's eye view" (Vidler, 1993, page 56). The gap between these two spatial arts, however, as Dear (1994) argues, can be bridged through the sociospatial dialectic offered by the spatial science of geography. This can be achieved by understanding the shared purpose of architecture and film, that is, "to forge new time - space relationships", and that they share in "distancing", that is, the distance between the observer and the observed and between the author and the representation, allowing the difference to be explored and recognized (1994, pages 13-14).

Sack (1980) argued, within a geographical frame of reference, that discussions about the duality between ideal and real space should be broadened to encompass the differences in our understanding of space. The meanings of space are different because our perception and description of the spatial relationships among things are different in different situations. In his survey of the concepts of space, he sees both the absolute and relational aspects of space as its objective meanings, distinctive from subjective approaches to space. His broadened outlook includes the aesthetic, the child's view, the practical, the mythical - magical, and the societal views of space. To explore the interrelationships of these conceptions, he relies on two sets of distinctions to build up a general framework: the distinction between objective and subjective and that between substance and space. He then identifies two broad patterns: one in which these distinctions occur (sophisticated-fragmented) and one in which they are absent (unsophisticated-fused), signifying their differences in their different use of symbols.

Soja (1989, page 123) is not convinced by Sack's approach to space, which he classifies as neo-Kantian and criticizes it as divorced from materialized social reali­ties. Soja identifies two concepts of space: the first is the physical space of material nature, under which he (wrongly) classifies the classical debates about absolute versus relative theories (page 120). The second concept (which is indeed the rela­tional concept) is the mental space of cognition and representation, which includes attempts to explore the personal meaning and symbolic contents of mental maps and landscape imagery. He then, following Lefebvre, introduces a third concept of social space and argues that one of the most formidable challenges to contempor­ary social theory is to define the interconnections of these three spaces.

Soja's analysis, similar to Tschumi's (1990) and partly to Dear's (1994), draws upon the powerful analysis of social space by the philosopher Lefebvre, whose work, as outlined in his major work The Production of Space (1991), has influenced both modernist and postmodernist interpretations. Although Lefebvre offers us ways of bridging the gap between mental and real space, however, he introduces another dilemma: between differential and abstract space, a dilemma which lies at the heart of the postmodernism versus modernism debate.

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Abstract and differential space Lefebvre's starting point is the gap between mental and real space. He criticizes the trend in modern epistemology, and its predecessors in philosophical thought, which sees space as a "mental thing" or a "mental place", He directs his criticism especially towards semiology, the systematic study of signs, which is "an incomplete body of knowledge":

"When codes worked up from literary texts are applied to spaces—to urban spaces, say—we remain, as may easily be shown, on the purely descriptive level. Any attempt to use such codes as means of deciphering social space must surely reduce that space itself to the status of a message > and the inhabiting of it to the status of a reading. This is to evade both history and practice" (1991, page 7). In its original context of linguistics and literary theory, this criticism has been

similarly raised against semiology, or semiotics, which coincides and overlaps with structuralism. For structuralists, as Eagleton (1983, page 109) puts it, "there was no question of relating the work to the realities of which it treated, or to the conditions which produced it, or to the actual readers who studied it, since the founding gesture of structuralism had been to bracket off such realities". Structuralism held that "Reality was not reflected by language but produced by it" (page 108), and as such, it was "hair-raisingly unhistorical" (page 109).

Lefebvre's aim was to confront this shortcoming by contcxtualizing semiology, on the one hand, and by introducing subjectivity into the political and economic understanding, on the other: in other words by integrating mental space into its social and physical contexts. He argues that these dimensions of space—mental, physical, and social—should not be kept separate and sets out to formulate a "unitary theory" of space, a "unitary theory" which brings together the physical space of nature, the mental space of logical and formal abstractions, and the practico-sensory realm of social space. In his attempt, he was partly inspired by the search in physics for unity, where space, time, and energy are interlinked; and by Surrealists, who had been searching for a junction between the inner and the outer worlds of human beings.

To bridge the traditional duality between real and mental space, Lefebvre intro­duces the concept of social space, the space of social life, of social and spatial practice. He then uses the Hegelian notion of production to arrive at a unitary theory of space. Social space, he argues, is a social product. Every society, and mode of production, produces its own space. It is only through such understanding that the duality between mental and real space can be confronted. It is this produc­tion process which should be the object of interest, rather than things in space, although process and product are inseparable.

The concept of the production of space has a central role in Lefebvre's thinking, "space as a social and political product, space as a product that one buys and sells" (quoted in Burgel et al, 1987, pages 29-30) . It is based on the notion that com­modification, which is basic to the analysis of capitalist order, is extended to space to entangle the physical milieu in the productive system of capitalism as a whole. He further argues that the organization of environment and society, and the layout of towns and regions, are all dependent on the production of space and its role in the reproduction of the socioeconomic formation. Harvey (1982; 1985a; 1985b) follows Lefebvre by elaborating on this commodification process, outlining the contradictions within the primary circuit of capital, where the capitalist production process takes place. Here the drive to create surplus value by competing capitalists leads to overaccumulation. This becomes manifest in the overproduction of com­modities, with falling prices and surpluses of labour and capital. In an attempt to

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overcome the contradictions, these extra resources are switched into a secondary circuit of capital, where investment is made in the built environment, creating a whole physical landscape for the purposes of production, circulation, exchange, and consumption. There is also a switch of flows to the tertiary circuit of capital where investment is channelled to research and development and to improve the labour force. The switch is, however, cyclical, because of the cyclical nature of overaccu-mulation, and temporary, because of the crisis arising from overinvestment in the built environment. The implications of these contradictions for the spaces created under capitalism are, therefore, the devaluation of structures to be put to use later and the destruction of the existing landscapes to open up fresh room for accumulation.

Lefebvre identifies a triad of perceived, conceived, and lived spaces as the "three moments of social space", which have dialectical interrelationships (1991, pages 38-40). The first moment is spatial practice, which refers to the way space is organized and used. Under neocapitalism, spatial practice "embodies a close association, within perceived space, between daily reality (daily routine) and urban reality (the routes and networks which link up the places set aside for work, 'private' life and leisure)". The second moment is representations of space, which refers to the "conceptualized space, the space of scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers ...". This is "the dominant space in any society", tending "towards a system of verbal (and therefore intellectually worked out) signs". The third moment is that of representational space, "space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of 'inhabitants' and 'users' ...", a space understood through nonverbal means. Representational space is "the domi­nated—and hence passively experienced—space", overlapping physical space and making symbolic use of its objects. Lefebvre argues that these three moments should be interconnected, as was the case in the Western towns from the Italian Renaissance to the 19th century. The historical space of the city, however, was taken over by the abstract space, "the space of bourgeoisie and of capitalism" (page 57), which approached the natural, historical, and religiopolitical sphere negatively. The predominance of abstract space means "that the place of social space as a whole has been usurped by a part of that space" (page 52). To confront this, a new space, a "differential space" will need to emerge, "because, inasmuch as abstract space tends towards homogeneity, towards the elimination of existing differences or peculiarities, a new space cannot be born (produced) unless it accen­tuates differences" (page 52).

Lefebvre's first task, therefore, is to bring together objective and subjective understandings of space by tracing them both back to the process in which space is produced. He questions the validity of any understanding of space which is not rooted in the political economy of its production. At the same time, to strike a balance with the political economy of space production, he resorts to everyday life, a 'perspective' which, as Maffesoli (1989a; 1989b) explains, is set to address the subjective, and inter subjective, aspects of social life, which have been undermined by the traditional emphasis of social sciences on objective understanding. As such, it is a critical response to the "crisis of totalizing classical sociologies" (Bovone, 1989, page 42), and brings to our attention the importance of meaning and differ­ence in social inquiry. A number of authors have attempted to incorporate the everyday life perspective into the wider perspectives of social processes, as exempli­fied by Schutz (1970), who brought together sociology and phenomenology, and by Habermas (1987), who outlined the relationship between systems and lifeworld. Habermas, for example, separates everyday life from the systems of money and power, stressing that these systems tend to penetrate and colonize everyday life

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through monctari/ation and bureaucratization. By widening the scope of reason, he argues for a rationally constructed, communicative action between individuals, which would enable everyday life to resist such penetration. According to Giddcns (1984), the dichotomy between structures and individuals is the centra! problem of social theory, as reflected in functionalism and structuralism on the one hand and hermeneutics and the various forms of interpretive sociology on the other, As he rightly observes, however, the difference between the two views can be exaggerated (1989, pages 704-705). He argues (1984) that social structures, us recursively organized sets of rules and resources, refer to structural properlies of social systems. The structures, whose transmutation or continuity leads to reproduction of social systems, are not external to individuals and exert constraining as well as enabling powers upon them. There is a process of "double involvement" of individ­uals and institutions: "we create society at the same time as we are created by it" (1982, page 14).

Reconciling political economy with everyday life, argues urban sociologist Gottdiencr (1994), following Lefebvrc, compensates for the shortcomings of the two predominant approaches to urban analysis: human ecology and political economy. Human ecology appreciates the role of locations in social interaction, but theoretically does not develop this role and approaches social processes by adopting one-dimensional and technologically deterministic explanations. Political economy, on the other hand, offers a better understanding of social processes which produce urban space, but is limited in that it treats space as a container of economic activities and ignores the importance of spatial relations. Urban sociosemiotics (Gottdiener and Lagopoulos, 1986) is one interpretation of this reconciliation: relating semiotics to a concrete context through social processes. An example is to see how success­fully shopping malls have translated commercial interests into new urban forms (Gottdiener, 1986). Gottdiener's new theory of urbanism (1994) thus brings together three aspects of the semiotics of place: the way environments are under­stood, through mental mapping and urban sociosemiotic analysis, the patterns of behaviour in public places, and the sense of community and its associated social networks.

A second task, closely linked with the first, in Lefebvre's project is to argue for differential space, for the "right to be different" (1991, page 64). Difference in the city is as old as the city itself, as it was known from the ancient times that, in Aristotle's words, "A city is composed of different men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence" (quoted in Sennett, 1994, page 13). Especially since the 19th century and the unprecedented growth of cities, the issue of difference and diversity has become a central feature of urban life. In his theory of urbanism, for example, Wirth (1964, page 69) saw heterogeneity, along with population size and density, as a determining feature of the city. Emphasis on heterogeneity of urban life is clearly evident in the discussions about strangers in the city, which have occupied a promi­nent place in sociological inquiries, to the extent that city life has been seen as a world of strangers (Karp et al, 1991).

The way social sciences and humanities tend to understand the urban environ­ment is often to seek to find out how society and space are structured. They try hard to see the city from above, in abstraction, and hence tend to see it in terms of its physical and social structures. In parallel with this, urban planners and designers think of ways of structuring the city so as to turn it into a manageable collection of orderly component parts. Both in our understanding of the city and in our prescrip­tions for it, we aspire to see order and to give order to the complex array of objects and events that we come across in the city. An alternative way of seeing the city,

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however, is to leave this abstract, theoretical position and to look at daily life, with its spontaneity, difference, and disorder. This alternative view will add new dimen­sions to our understanding of urban space by acknowledging the different groups and life forms that can develop only in the city.

In his analysis of Los Angeles, Dear (1995) reviews three ways of reading this city: one which sees Los Angeles as constituted by four basic ecologies of beach cities, foothills, plains, and freeways; another which sees the city as essentially structured by its boulevards; and a third which illustrates the city as a decentred and decentralized agglomeration of fragmented theme parks. Dear argues that all these three are studies of the city, looking at it with a detached voyeuristic gaze from the top, offering inherently modernist representations of the city. What he invites us to be armed with is a postmodernist sensibility, concentrating on the extremely finely grained microgeography of the city, and discovering that there is no common narrative, no single reality to the city.

In this way of reading the city, Dear is drawing upon de Certeau's invitation to concentrate on everyday life, as opposed to abstract visualizations of the city. An example of this abstraction, one which is not unfamiliar to urban planners and designers, is what de Certeau (1993) describes when looking at Manhattan from the 110th floor of the World Trade Centre. As we look down on it to see its 'whole', the gigantic mass of the city becomes immobilized before our eyes: we totalize this human context, as if it were a picture. De Certeau invites us to leave this abstract position, in which we only 'see' things, to go down to the street level, where daily life is practised. Here, walking the street provides us an elementary form of experi­encing the city. What we enter here is the lived space of everyday practices, as distinct from a programmed and regulated field of operation. To find out about the lived space of everyday practices, de Certeau traces the footsteps of people who move around the city. An abstract representation of this movement, however, such as the surveys whose thick and thin lines show the volume of pedestrian flow, cannot replace the reality of movement, "the act itself of passing by" (1993, page 157), which can be walking, wandering, or window shopping. In this move­ment and in response to the names of urban places, people invent stories and attribute meaning to spaces they enter, meanings that challenge the alienated and sterilized character of the city.

The walkers in the city, representing spontaneity and a challenge to the estab­lished order, are often exemplified by the mid-19th century flaneurs (strollers, loiterers) of Paris. Their main interest was the microscale aspects of street life, rather than the official, public city that Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III had created (Wilson, 1991). The spatial relations of human bodies in the way they see, hear, touch, and relate to each other, therefore, finds a particular importance. How­ever, the dilemma of the contemporary city, as Sennett (1994) articulates, is that the individuals move freely around without a physical awareness of other human beings. The speed of movement in the city tends to reduce our contact with the urban fabric, as "we now measure urban spaces in terms of how easy it is to drive through them, to get out of them" (pages 17-18). When confronted with difference, with strangers, people become passive as the stranger does not fall into general cate­gories and social stereotypes. Rapid movement, made possible by cars and other vehicles, and fragmented geography, where land-use zones and social classes are set apart, enhance this passivity and provide the possibility of escaping from difference, from the other. Losing the ability to live with difference is a major problem of the contemporary city. Even where a willingness by different people to live next to each other has developed, as in Greenwich Village, New York, a shared fate is absent.

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There is no simple, deterministic relationship between social, psychological, and physical dimensions of space. The overarching formula of the modern movement in architecture, "form follows function", attempted to show such a direct determinstic relation. According to this normative formula, the social dimension of space, its functions, should determine its physical form. The attempt to integrate the social and physical dimensions of space, or in other words to eontextualr/.e physical space into human practices, is an important step in our understanding of space. We cannot identify our environment as an unrelated collection of material objects, as exemplified in the tendency to equate cities with their buildings. On the other hand, we cannot understand our space as merely a container of social relations without a physical dimension. In their attempts to introduce space into social theory, some geographers seem to have moved towards a concept of nonphysical, mental space, which is merely a by-product of social relations, and which we can understand only through verbal means, denying the nonverbal forms of understanding with which we relate to our space. At any point in time, our conceptualization of space will need to focus both on its physical and on its social dimensions. The physical space that we perceive, create, and use is embedded in our daily practices and it is through charting the process of its making that we can understand this environment. Inherent in the notion of making is the relationship of space with time.

Space and time Some of the current words and expressions in language, with which we speak of space to indicate time, such as short or long, thereafter, always, and before, show that space was an object of consciousness probably before time (Jammer, 1954, pages 3-4). In the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term space has had, at least since around 1300, both temporal and spatial mean­ings. Until the beginning of this century, these two senses of the word had always been separately conceptualized. Space and time were, however, both dominated by one common paradigm: "the mathematical linear continuum" (Bochner, 1973, page 301).

Ever since the development of the special and general theories of relativity, the separate concepts of space and time have increasingly been approached as a combined concept of space-time (Smart, 1988). According to Minkowski who suggested the concept in 1908, space-time is a four-dimensional continuum, which unites the three dimensions of space with one of time. Every object, therefore, must have not only length, width, and height, but also duration in time. Einstein, who incorporated this concept into his special theory of relativity, contended that, as opposed to the Newtonian theory, a separation of space and time in an absolute way is not possible, but is relative to a choice of a coordinate system. "The universe of four dimensions includes space with all of its events and objects as well as time with its changes and motions" (Winn, 1975, page 297).

There were parallels to this conception of space-time in art and architecture, in their concentration on movement within space. The Cubists, for example, used the concept of the fourth dimension by moving round their objects, rather than trying to represent them from a static viewpoint. They offered a new conception of space by enlarging the way space is perceived. By breaking from the Renaissance perspec­tive, which presented objects in three dimensions, the Cubists added a fourth dimension of time. They viewed objects relatively, dissecting them so that the objects could be seen simultaneously from several points of view. By this approach, the Cubists introduced a principle which, according to Giedion (1967, page 436), is "intimately bound up with modern life—simultaneity". The Futurists also attempted to

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enlarge the conventional optical vision by introducing movement in their paintings and architectural drawings, as best shown on Sant'Elia's project for his "Citta' Nuova", in which high-rise apartments are connected by various means of move­ment at different levels (figure 5). This was an image vividly portrayed later in Lang's film Metropolis. Cinema, as "the modernist art of space par excellence", offered an exciting opportunity for incorporating time into space (Vidler, 1993, page 46). As early as 1912, Gance was fascinated by "that admirable synthesis of the movement of space and time", which was made possible by film. In 1920, Scheffauer wrote of "this photographic cosmos" giving birth to a fourth dimension: "Space—hitherto considered and treated as something dead and static, a mere inert screen or frame, often of no more significance than the painted balustrade-background at the village photographer's—has been smitten into life, into movement and conscious expression" (quoted in Vidler, 1993, pages 46-47).

Figure 5. The city centre of Chicago shows an early example of urban space colonized by rapid movement, the futurist dream materialized.

These appreciations of movement, as a representation of the fourth dimension, were to be used in the famous Charter of Athens in 1933. Here movement is seen as one of the main four functions of the modern city (Sert, 1944), one which, as we have now experienced, was most instrumental in the transformation of the built environment during the past fifty years. To free the movement patterns within the city and to break with the Renaissance optical perspective, the modernists' aim was to abolish the urban streets. "Today we must deal with the city from a new aspect, dictated by the advent of the automobile, based on technical considerations, and belonging to the artistic vision born out of our period—space-time" (Giedion, 1967, page 822). The outcome was high-rise buildings set within movement networks, allowing one to experience space while moving around the buildings.

The dramatic transformation which this viewpoint brought to the cities has been criticized by a generation of postmodern commentators, calling, for example, the vast open spaces thus created "lost spaces" (Trancik, 1986). There were attempts to introduce movement into our understanding of space without a call for a radical transformation of space, as exemplified by Cullen's "serial vision" (1994). Further­more, there are those who have not been convinced that the four-dimensional

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notion of space can have any scientific basis in, or usefulness for, architectural design (Cowan, 1973; Scruton, 1979). After all, as Sack (1980) reminds us, at the geographical (and architectural) scale, physical space is still seen as the familiar three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry. This is in line with a simultaneous use of Newtonian absolute space and relative space-time in various branches of scientific inquiry according to their area of involvement (Bochner, 1973).

Yet the space-time concept, in which the duration in time is included, and the dynamism which this fourth dimension brings to space continue to be attractive to architects (van de Vcn, 1993) and to geographers (Massey, 1994) alike. A 'redis­covery' of the concept of space-time may be attributed to the denial by some social scientists of the relevance of space in social processes. Ever since the 19th century, which was obsessed with history, "space was treated as the dead, the fixed, the undialcctical, the immobile" (Foucault, quoted in Soja, 1989, page 10, as if himself quoting Scheffauer). It remains one of the main preoccupations of the contemporary period to reassert the role of space in social theory. Foucault, with his well-known "spatiaiized thinking" (Flynn, 1994), intended to prove the fundamental importance of space in "any form of communal life" and "any exercise of power" (Foucault, 1993, page 168). When space is seen as a social product, as "constituted out of relations", the spatial becomes social relations "stretched out". There is, however, a dynamism in social relations, which needs to be extended to spatial analysis. It is here that the concept of space-time is employed to allow such dynamism to be introduced into sociospatial relations. As Soja points out, we should not intend "to replace historicism with an equally subsumptive spatialism, but to achieve a more appropriate trialectical balance in which neither spatiality, historicity, nor sociality is interpretively privileged a priori" (1993, page 115). The central argument in the approach to space, therefore, becomes the conceptualization of space integrally with time (Massey, 1994, page 2).

There is no doubt that this interpretation can be as appealing to us today as it was to the avant-garde artists at the beginning of this century. We may have a different outlook now, but we are equally fascinated by the freshness of the extraordinary perspectives that it opens up. Yet we will have to be aware of the distinctions between this interpretation in social and aesthetic understanding and that of the theory of relativity. In the latter, space and time become interdependent at scales and speeds beyond our limited scope and slow pace of daily experience and beyond our even slower social and historical processes. The way we can mean­ingfully introduce the fourth dimension of time into space is by concentrating on the process of its evolution and change. Following the way space has been made and transformed will allow us to add a fourth dimension to our spatial understanding. On the one hand, we will need to study space in the context of the political and economic processes which have produced it. On the other hand, by seeing space as an outcome of, and a contributor to, the daily practices which constitute social rela­tions, we can broaden our spatial understanding to incorporate the fourth dimension. The lived experience of space is one in which time is inherent. The question to ask is whether there are any fixities in this dynamic conception of space.

Space and place Whereas space is seen as an open abstract expanse, place is part of space that is occupied by a person or a thing and is endowed with meaning and value (Goodall, 1987; Mayhew and Penny, 1992). It is the interaction of people with this immediate environment which gives it characteristics distinct from those of the surrounding areas (Clark, 1985). Place is a centre of 'felt value', associated with security and stability,

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where biological needs are met. This is in contrast to the openness and freedom of the undifferentiated space. If space allows movement to occur, place provides a pause. However, despite this contrast between place and space, between security and freedom, the meanings of the two concepts often merge, requiring each other for their definition, as "we are attached to the one and long for the other" (Tuan, 1977, pages 3-6).

The notion of place as an enclosed particular space with fixed identities and meanings has been challenged as lacking dynamism. It is through social rela­tionships and not the qualities of a piece of land that places are defined. "The reality of a place", therefore, "is always open, making its determination an inherently social process" (Logan and Molotch, 1987, page 47). Associated with the static nature of place, critics have stressed, are attention to aesthetics and a rise of reactionary politics (Harvey, 1989). Massey (1994) argues that the nationalist, regionalist, and localist claims to exclusive places, and those who identify places as "sites of nostalgia", as well as the critics of locality studies in geography all rest their cases on a static view of place. They all conceptualize place as timeless and bounded, with a singular, fixed, and unproblematic, authentic identity. Massey, however, argues that, if the dynamism of the concept of space-time is employed, place can be understood as open and porous. Place becomes a moment in the network of ever-changing social relations at all scales. The identity of a place is a particular mix of social relations, hence always becoming "unfixed, contested and multiple". The particularity of a place, she maintains, is "constructed not by placing boundaries around it and defining its identity through counterposition to the other which lies beyond, but precisely (in part) through the specificity of the mix of links and interconnections to that 'beyond'" (page 5).

Conceptualization of place as a contested space with multiple identities offers a dynamism in our understanding of places. It allows us to grasp the diversity and difference of particular spaces within themselves and in relation to their larger contexts. It shows how to contextualize, without fixing, the characteristics of a place. Sennett (1995, page 15) convincingly argues that "Place-making based on exclusion, sameness, or nostalgia is socially poisonous, and psychologically useless", and asks for the use of "more diverse, denser, impersonal human contacts" in place-making. There are, however, limits to the fluidity and flexibility that this model offers. Its dynamism can be limited when the variety of speed of change in various locations around the world is studied. The centre of a world city is often a fast-moving place, with a multiplicity of identities and a potential for plurality and therefore fragmentation of social relations. This befits a large concentration of people and the headquarters of political and economic decisionmakers. The same cannot be said about the remote villages of peripheral countries, where people and places have hardly been touched by modern technology and by commodification processes. Here the speed of change is slower and the dialectical dynamism of the metropolis is absent. Conflict and contrast often find forms of manifestation other than a rapid change of sociospatial identities. Here a place may have a more fixed, but far from dead, meaning. The slow pace of change here means a slower pace of identity change and a more coherent set of relations between social and physical space. This may mean a perpetuation of various forms of exploitation and inequality. This is why a nostalgic view of this apparent sociospatial coherence needs to be bal­anced with a critical stance towards its component parts, to prevent a simplistic, static view of a given circumstance. On the other hand, sociospatial dynamism, as Berman (1982) has skillfully shown, which results from the dislocation and ever-shifting configurations of the modernization processes, can be painful and disruptive.

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There is little doubt that a dynamic conception of place would more realistically represent the multiplicity of social practices and identities. However, there would be fixities at any point in time, as change takes place over time in relation to the existing frames of reference. These are frames that would inevitably change but not all at once. The identities of places, therefore, will be defined and redefined con­stantly in relation to constant changes in historical time. This conceptualization explains why individuals are capable of making decisions in spite of their constant change of circumstances.

We should also be aware of the difficulties of conceptualizing place as a elecentred locality. According to the arguments which see the human subject as decentred, as a site for the interaction of external currents, place may be seen as one such deccntred site. Human beings and places can both be seen as sites for the interaction of diverse social processes. This approach seems to reduce the physical and social dimensions of space (and of human beings) to a discourse at an intellec­tual level, where our knowledge is achieved by abstract processes and discourses, rather than by concentrating on the lived experiences. Arguing against basing knowledge on linguistics, Lefebvre draws our attention to the connection between the abstract body, which is simply understood as "a mediation between 'subject' and 'object'" and another body, "a practical and fleshy body conceived of a totality complete with spatial qualities (symmetries, asymmetries) and energetic properties (discharges, economies, waste)" (Lefebvre, 199.1, page 6.1). Although it is potentially misleading to compare human agency with space, a similar argument might apply to a place, where a physical stock exists with all its social and spatial qualities and which, despite its openness to constant change, reasserts its material totality and interconnections at any moment in time. When viewed in its social context and through its production process, space can have multiple identities and yet be embedded in particular circumstances.

Space and specialization The disciplines involved in the study of space have witnessed a growing gap between their interests in physical and social dimensions of space, a gap which has made it increasingly more difficult for cross-disciplinary communication. The general process of evolution of geography, for example, has seen the separation of human geography from physical geography. Associated with this widening gap has been an increased emphasis on cognitive and social space, as distinct from physical space. Interest in physical characteristics of the built environment, which was expressed in early regional geography and urban morphology, has diminished sharply (Johnston, 1991). Closely related to this loss of interest in physical space, there has been a rising enthusiasm for studying the relations between social pro­cesses and space. For many subareas of human geography, interest in physical space remains minimal. In 'new' cultural geography, as McDowell (1994) notes, a revival of interest in the study of landscape is a major trend, as exemplified by the work of Cosgrove (1984; 1985; Cosgrove and Daniels, 1988; Cosgrove and Duncan, 1994). An equally important, parallel trend in cultural geography, however, influenced by Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall, has been concentrating on social relations, rather than on physical space and its representations. This change in the balance of interest in physical and social space has been a significant feature in the development of human geography. Now, it seems, space, as well as time, is treated by some geog­raphers as an all-embracing concept, an almost invisible dimension to which no overt reference needs to be made: "Given that everything exists in space as well as time,

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there is no more reason to doubt that it has a geographical dimension" (Diamond, quoted in Richards, 1995, page 5).

The evolution of architecture has also seen the development of a gap between social and physical space. Designers look at space to shape it, tending to be practi­cal and normative in their study of space. For example, Porter and Goodman (1988, pages 6-7) begin their introductory text on design with a brief description of the way our senses perceive the space around us. This is immediately followed by an example of how space is being manipulated in oriental gardens in relation to our sensory experiences. Another example is Colquhoun (1989), who sets out to outline the 20th century concepts of urban space. In explaining these concepts, however, the narrative concentrates on what the designers have wished the city space to be, as distinct from analyzing the results of urban transformation. This is especially apparent when postmodern criticisms are introduced. In design writing, knowledge and practice are tightly related, so that at times they are used interchangeably and are difficult to distinguish.

The architects of the modern movement approached cities in a rather coherent and comprehensive way. These designers saw their space as an integrated one, in its various scales and with its physical and social dimensions. They designed buildings, and objects inside them and landscapes around them, hoping, rather optimistically, that the shaping of space would lead to the creation of a better society. Despite their emphasis on the physical fabric of the city, they were similarly concerned with its social conditions. As evident in the Charter of Athens, it was the social problems of the cities that urged them to seek planned action (Sert, 1944). The exhaustion of the modern movement, however, led to the abandonment of the social dimensions of space, leaving the architects concentrating on the built form. By the 1980s the design professions had largely lost their interest in the social dimensions of built form. In their withdrawal from social engagement and concern with formal­ism, much of architecture became, in the words of Jacobs and Appleyard (1987, page 114), "a narcissistic pursuit, a chic component of high art consumer culture, increasingly remote from most people's everyday lives".

The disciplinary fragmentation and specialization, which followed the integrated approach of the modern movement, needed an increasing multiplicity of professionals to be involved in shaping the environment. This created and enlarged a divide between architecture and other disciplines. Fragmentation of this kind can be seen as a positive development, as it allows a deeper understanding of each subarea in the transformation of the built environment. On the other hand, it potentially leaves large conceptual gaps between these subareas. Urban sociologists, urban geogra­phers, planners, architects, engineers, landscape designers, and interior designers, among others, find themselves with different, at times contradictory, concepts of the space they intend to understand and transform. The compartmentalized specialists feel at ease within the precincts of their own territories, protected from outside intrusions by the walls of jargon, exclusive academic circles, and protective profes­sional institutions. Communities of interest and understanding which develop in this manner help a further fragmentation of approach to overarching concepts such as space. Inevitably, tension arises when a link not only necessary but vital, is being sought across these divides. The dilemma of dealing with space here is whether to accept the conventional borders of specialists and to act within them, with or with­out the collaboration of other specialists in teams, or to move across the boundaries to benefit from the multiplicity of ideas and approaches to space. If it is possible to argue that a unitary concept of space could be encouraged, then these various fields of interest can be linked together conceptually but approached independently.

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Conclusion: towards a common platform The dilemmas of space seem to lie in the way we relate to it: the way we understand, and therefore transform, it. The debates between absolute and relational space, the dilemma between physical and social space, between real and mental space, between space and mass, between function and form, between abstract and differential space, between space and place, between space and time, can all be seen as indicators of a series of open philosophical questions: how do we understand space and relate to * it? Does it exist beyond our cognition or is it conditioned by it? Do we relate to it by our reason or our senses? Is space a collection of things and people, a container for them, or are they embedded in it? Does it represent openness or fixity? Do we understand and transform space individually or socially? How do we relate space and time? In our responses to these questions, we find ourselves divided between rationalism and empiricism, between materialism and idealism, between objective and subjective understanding, between reason and emotion, between theory and practice, between uniformity and diversity, order and disorder, In this sense, space could be seen as an abstract substitute for the world around us, for what we generally mean by our built and natural environments.

So what is the space of urban design, amid these dilemmas and fragmentations in the conceptions of space? Which side of these dilemmas should we identify with if we arc engaged in designing and shaping urban spaces? it is possible to leave these gaps and fragmentations as they have developed and as we find them. We could listen to a word of wisdom which warns us against generalization tendencies: "the concept of space is so ubiquitous, and is reached by so many avenues and channels, that it would be stifling and sterile to force upon it metaphysically a single logical schema, which, even if acceptable today, might become unsuitable tomorrow" (Bochner, 1973, page 300). In this case, we will have to seek a pragmatic notion of space, one which would be suitable for our immediate task of urban space design. In doing so, we may have to either use a very narrow, practical conception of space, leaving other conceptions aside as irrelevant to our specialist interests, or have to live with the fragmentation and divide in the concepts of space, especially when dealing with complex problems of urban space, and risk loss or disorientation.

Yet we are aware somehow, at least instinctively, that we cannot afford to remain in a cocoon of our own or of our discipline, profession, or tribe. From across our differences, we need to communicate and to arrive at a mutually understandable narrative. To be trapped in difference and not see the common threads that link human beings will prevent us from creating a better social and physical environ­ment. It is therefore not only possible but also necessary to try to find a more unified approach to space. This does not need to be necessarily the building up of a grand narrative, disregarding the gaps and conflicts, arrived at a priori and imposed on a diverse range of concrete situations. A unified concept of space could be arrived at by realizing, as I have shown in this paper, that many aspects of the dilemmas of space are exaggerated and can be bridged. We are aware of the differ­ences which exist in urban space and in our approaches to it. So we may not arrive at a completely unitary concept of space, as Lefebvre would have wished. Yet we know that, to have an 'objective' grasp of the difference, we will have to negotiate constantly with our social and physical environments in our everyday experiences. It is by concentrating on this process of daily life, at its intersection with the politi­cal economy of urban development, through which space is made and remade, that we can expect to move towards a wider, more dynamic, platform of understanding.

It is only in a fragmented static concept of space that we see social processes as separate from physical and mental space. If, however, physical and mental spaces

352 A Madanipour

are both socially produced, then both are subject to the process of the production of space. They are by definition the component parts of a more comprehensive conception of space: a physical space which is produced by complex bureaucratic and financial systems of a development process and is used and attributed with meaning through everyday life. There will be no need to use the conventional dualities of physical versus mental or physical versus social space. A more unified approach can see space as the objective physical space with its social and psycho­logical dimensions. It will be an integrated concept with which the ways societies perceive, create, and use space are addressed simultaneously. This concept of space will be the most direct approach to offset the limitations of the dematerialized conceptions of space by offering a social and psychological context for material space.

However, this conceptualization will not be complete until the dimension of time is taken into account. By analyzing the social processes involved in the making of space and place, the element of time will be integrated into our understanding. The conception of space which we arrive at in this way is dynamic, where space at all its possible scales, from global space to the microspace of daily routines, are all constantly changing yet embedded in their social context, allowing multiple but interrelated identities. It is this dynamic conception of space which would allow design with change and for change while embedded in concrete social and physical contexts. It is with such a dynamic conception of space that charges against urban design can be challenged: charges which see it as a reactionary set of activities, seeking only visual improvement of small urban places and aiming at aestheticizing social processes and political concern in urban development processes. With this conception, we can hope to arrive at a common platform in understanding urban space, one which could link various groups who are interested and involved in explanation, interpretation, and tranformation of space, allowing them to enter a dialogue.

Acknowledgements. I would like to thank Andrew Meade at the Architects' Journal for kind permission to reproduce Le Corbusier's A Contemporary City, and my colleagues at Newcastle University for their helpful comments on a draft of this paper. Another version of this paper will appear in my forthcoming book, Design of Urban Space, to be published by John Wiley later this year.

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