European City
A self confident society, public space and market have been a yardstick
of the European urban civitas since antiquity. As a stronghold of civil
emancipation, cultural variety and economic innovation it mirrored the
superiorly-regarded history of European civilisation. If the normative
model "European society" had counted as a global export model for a
long time, it finally seemed to have served its purpose as a
backwards-looking utopia and cover for 19th Century society. However in
the past few years it suddenly returned in a flood of publications,
congresses and political objectives, which see the European city as an
appropriate template for city development in the 21st Century. Current
discourses on the "European City"however, have many blind spots. The
alternatives discussed remain caught between medieval market forces and
current "event city". They seem to exhaust themselves between urban
entertainment mall and Siena myth, between urban sprawl and block
development, between the social nightmare of "Ameicanisation" and
social housing construction of communal large companies. The specific
segregations and restriction patterns which characterise the European
city in its various historical forms is however ignored.
|
