Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar.

Lisbon 2009

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE WALK IN THE ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC SPACE

Rita Ochoa
CER POLIS Universidade de Barcelona; DECA Universidade da Beira Interior. Rua David de Sousa, 17, 1 D, 1000-105 Lisboa, Portugal, E-mail: a.rita.ochoa@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Many authors have written about the walk: Rousseaus Rveries, Xavier de Maistres Voyage autour de ma chambre, the flneur in Baudelaire and Benjamin, Cesrio Verde and Pessoas walks in Lisbon, the surrealists deambulation, the drive proposed by Debord, Taking into account the different meanings of the walk but also the objectives of the PhD research, a specific methodology was constructed. The process consisted in an entire year of walking in the city (Lisbon and Barcelona). It had an evolution: beginning with an informal walk it changed to a more precise and orientated walk. The methodology got autonomous and transformed into a practice with proper rules, playing with the days, the hours, the speed of the steps, the way of photographing and drawing, the way of observing and thinking about what was seen. KEYWORDS: Methodology, walk, public space, public art, waterfront

Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar. Lisbon 2009

1 THE WALK AS A WAY OF APPREHENDING URBAN SPACE

Walking conditioned sight, and sight conditioned walking, till it seemed only the feet could see. (Smithson in Careri, 2002: 145)

In a conception of Public Space that refuses a merely morphological approach, the direct contact with territory is fundamental for its analysis. The act of walking makes a better involvement with territory possible, as well as allowing a more comprehensive perception of spaces multiple dimensions. The physical walk allows the mental walk, stimulating thought and making possible the contact of the body, as an element of measure, with the space. Like the architectural experience, the urban experience involves not only the physical presence but also the movement, the movement of all bodies the individual body and the social body. Walking emerges as a critical tool, a way to observe the urban landscape (the eyes in the feet referred by Smithson). Without this introduction of movement, spatial perception stays limited to a unique vision. It is fundamental to tread on the ground, to go through the space, finding its multiple dimensions. It is also fundamental to understand how urban space can be moulded by different eventualities: the different lights during the day, the weather, the memories evoked by a certain space, the proper state of mind of the observer. At its limit, space is never totally perceived, because its perception is dependent on the moment that it is experienced. 1.1 The subject of the research The transformations that have been occurring in the waterfronts of postindustrial cities, in the twenty-first century global era, are related to the study of water cities, to its dynamics and to its specificities. A factor that has a strong influence in these dynamics is the existence of a port. Different than what happens today, cities at first had a closer relation with their ports. The territorial model of the industrial city breached the physical and symbolic harmony between the cities and water (Remesar, 2002:14). Now, cities are trying to return to that close relationship. As S. Kostof states in 1992:
We are getting a fresh glimpse of the rediscovery of the waterfront an effort to bring city and harbor together in a more intimate relationship reminiscent of these older days. (46)

Various authors identify three main phases of urban development in port cities, which reflect the relation of the city with the waterfronts:

Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar. Lisbon 2009

Industrialization of territory1

Corresponds to the rise and development of industrialization, related to the intensification of port activity and the creation of accessibilities: first, railroad infrastructures; after, road infrastructures (forming a port + industries + accessibilities system). In waterfront cities specific areas of industrial vocation start to appear, isolated from the rest of the urban structure. Its the most relevant moment of separation between city and waterfront. II Deindustrialization Corresponds to new necessities of port technologies, originating in the removal of the port (as well as industries) from the cities, searching for deeper waters and ampler lands. With the economical crisis of the years 1970-80 and with the prevalence of tertiary activities, the industrial ensembles get functionally empty, resulting in vacant spaces: expectant lands, deactivated buildings, obsolete infrastructures. III Reconversion of port/industrial areas (postindustrial city)
Old spaces are being defiled, and new spaces are being defined, including those associated with deindustrialization, environmentalism, reinvigorated nationalism, diminished democracies, cyberspace, NIMBYism and minority-led social movements. (Dear, 2000: 1)

This period corresponds to the search for solutions to occupy the vacant lands resulting from deindustrialization, with a consequent attempt to connect the city and the citizens to the waterfront. What had been before zones of industrial prosperity, situated in the urban periphery, are now central spaces, in discussion in urban politics, an added value in the cities strategies of revitalization, due to their proximity to the water. Taking into account this general framework, my PhD research intends to analyze the articulation between city and waterfront as well as the role of public art in this articulation (and in the monumentalization of the waterfront)2. Assuming that the waterfront has to be connected with the rest of the city areas, the research is intended to understand how this exportation of the waterfront to the interior of the city is processed; to characterize public spaces that perform that articulation; and to find how the water is perceived, as a constant reference, in those public spaces. 1.2 The walking methodology an attempt to base the methodology on the walk
1

In general, the industrialization of territory begins at the end of the 18th century, reaching its maximum complexity during the Industrial Revolution (with the introduction of mechanization). 2 In my research, public art is considered in a more inclusive position (that is also the position of CER POLIS University of Barcelona). It refers to all the elements that charge the urban landscape; it considers some presences that, although having not been intentionally produced to be public art consist as such, therefore have earned proper meanings, because of their symbolic charge, as well as of their influence in the proper profile of the city. Besides, the concept of adopted public art refuses the point of view of the isolated piece; it is always considered as a participant element in public space, establishing specific relations with the urban environment.

Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar. Lisbon 2009

The research has as main methodological option the direct contact with territory. The act of walking and its systematization were the fundamental primary sources used, making possible a more complete apprehension of urban space, according to the aspects in study. To go through, to see and simultaneously to interrogate what is seen; to register what is seen; to relate, to interpret and to evaluate what is seen. Many of the decisions and conclusions related with the research were made on site. So, the act of walking, beyond methodological option, became itself the research subject. In postindustrial water cities, the citizens are intended to get closer to the waterfront, substituting the obsolete industrial urban tissues for new public spaces and making possible a better physical and visual relation with the water. The walk is the way to test that relation, to prove with my own feet if the pedestrian mobility and the intended continuities between the interior of the city and waterfront have or have not been obtained. But this raises a simple question: How to walk? According to these initial premises, to base the methodology on the walk and the displacements to the territory, an investigation was considered concerning the different aspects of the walk and its possible ways of relation to the urban space (in particular to public space). So, an analysis of literary and artistic works and contemporary experiences related to the act of walking was carried out. 1.2.1 The experience of the walker the walk in different literary contexts The act of walking appears in literature, as an object of writing (descriptions of journeys, expeditions, walks) but also as a literary method (the literary walk). Movement, thought and writing are present in different moments of History, since Aristotle, where the teaching was given by walking, following trills (peripatos). As M. H. Guimares systematizes in her PhD Thesis: In the Enlightenment, the walker finds refuge and redemption in nature; in Neoclassicism, the walk/journey has as purpose the enlargement of knowledge (for example Almeida Garret travels trough Portugal, inspired by Xavier de Maistres Voyage autour de ma chambre); in the Romantic period, the walk in nature is a way to moral and philosophical reflexion. The quest in the act of walking is the walk, not its destination (2002:17). In the scope of the Pre Romantics, Jean-Jacques Rousseau represents a mark in the history of walking: le marcheur romantique, the lonely walker, in the search of landscape to forget everything, even himself. The movement of the footsteps allows the movement of the spirit; physical walking allows mental walking. In Les Confessions, in the scope of his last journey from Paris to Chambrry, Rousseau describes the pleasures of wandering life (La vie ambulante est celle qui me faut) and the profit of the walk by foot:

Jamais je nai tant pens, tant exist, tant vcu, tant t moi, si jose ainsi dire, que dans (les voyages) que jai fait seul et pied. La marche a quelque chose qui anime et avive mes ides : je ne puis presque penser quand je reste en place ; il faut que mon corps soit en branle pour y mettre mon esprit. () Je

Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar. Lisbon 2009

dispose en maitre de la nature entire ; mon cur errant dobjet en objet sunit, sidentifie ceux qui le flattent, sentoure dimages charmantes, senivre de sentiments dlicieux. (1959: 162)

In his last work, Les Rveries du promeneur solitaire, Rousseau writes about his memories as a walker in certain circumstances of his life, about the pleasure of walking, the increase of sensations, the rverie and the self-consciousness, free of social restrictions. Isolated from civilization, looking for his pleasures in nature (recrer lhomme naturel), the movement is the movement of the body in nature and the promenade solitaire is a selflegacy in the act of writing. In the nineteenth century, an interest in the urban landscape starts to appear. The urban characteristic is the causal agent for the act of walking and has its origin in the appearance of the greatest urban centres in Europe. The walker of the city isnt already interested in the knowledge of the past; he turns to the present and the curiosity of daily life. Charles Baudelaire created the flneur, a figure that reflects the period of

Industrialization. The flneur is someone who goes from one place to another, moving and finding refuge and anonymity in the crowd of the big city, which allows him to hide his solitude. That anonymity allows him to maintain the distance needed to study the daily life of the masses, in the streets of the big metropolis. The flneur has no motive, doesnt carry the memory of his past and doesnt have specific achievements or directions. He moves by curiosity and is interested in trivial things, detached from the social and economical conditions of Parisian society. Hes at the same time an outsider, as described in the poem The swan, in Les Fleurs du mal (Baudelaire, 1992: 221). Later, Walter Benjamin reflects on the way modern cities appear from the memories of the past, but also from the trust in the future. In Paris, capitale du XIXe sicle: le livre de passages, he describes the transformations that the French capital suffered, and presents the flneur as a social reflex of those changes. Benjamin takes possession of Baudelaires metaphoric image of the flneur to propose deambulation through the city as an expression of a new urban way of seeing, but also as a new way to understand modernity. To Walter Benjamin, the city is the physical concretization of the human dream of the labyrinth. It is not important to know how to be guided in the city; on the contrary, to get lost in the city, as to get lost in a wood, requires learning. In Baudelaire or in Benjamin, the walk is a way but its also an end; the journey can be an end, when the flneur decides to lose himself in the city and assumes this experience as a source of sensations (Lopes, 2008: 72). Also Lisbon appears in literature as a city of deambulations. Cesrio Verde, in his single work, O Livro de Cesrio Verde, describes similar elements in Lisbon as those that appeared in the Paris of Baudelaire: the crowd, the suburban places, les magasins. In O

Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar. Lisbon 2009

Sentimento dum Ocidental, Cesrio Verde describes a state of melancholy associated with the walk:

Nas nossas ruas, ao anoitecer, H tal soturnidade, h tal melancolia, Que as sombras, o bulcio, o Tejo, a maresia Despertam-me um desejo absurdo de sofrer. (1964: 103)

Lisbon is represented as a corrupted city, as later it will be by Fernando Pessoa: the city as space of transition, showed in the Livro do Desassossego, where Fernando Pessoa/Bernardo Soares describes a search, a deambulation without any obvious destination, in places far from the touristic centre, as for example the streets of the Customs area. In another work with very different characteristics of Fernando Pessoa, O Que o Turista Deve Ver, a walk of one day through Lisbon is proposed, to several places in the city. This walk should be done by car. With expressions like: our car speed up (2007: 95); our car takes us now quickly (103); some minutes more and (91); the author gives a speedy rhythm to the trip, different if it was done by foot. At the same time, the notion of time is extended, because of the many proposed places to visit, but also because of the detailed descriptions of the monuments, gardens and notable buildings. 1.2.2 The walk as an aesthetic act

The act of walking, modifying the meanings of the space crossed, is the first aesthetic action made by Man; it allows him to inhabit the world. But only in the 20th century is the proper act of walking assumed as an aesthetic act. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Dada group proposes visits to banal places of the city, excluding historic, picturesque or sentimental interest, representing a way to achieve the desacralisation of art, the union of the sublime with the everyday. In 1921, the group organizes a non-religious pilgrimage to the catholic church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. In 1924, the same Dadaists propose the walk with an oneiric and surreal component, directing deambulations through obscure places of the city, which they called unconsciousness zones in space. These are not walks previously elected to a certain place, like the actions before, but irregular and erratic walks in certain territories. For the surrealists, deambulation consists in achieving, by walking, a state of hypnosis, an intentional loss of control. It is a medium through which to enter into contact with the unconscious part of the territory (Careri, 2002: 84). The city can be crossed, as the mind, to reveal a non-visible reality. In the 1950s, the Situationist International explored getting lost in the city as an anti-art possibility, an aesthetic but also political way to subvert the post-war capitalist system.

Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar. Lisbon 2009

In 1956 Guy Debord presents the Thorie de la Drive as a method to explore the city, to inquire, supported by psycho-geography concepts, the psychogenic and emotional effects that the urban context produces in individuals. The city appears as a space where alternative behaviours can be tested, opposed to the classic notions of journeys and routes. The final objective of the drive is to transform urbanism, architecture and the city (Debord, 2007). The drive critiques and aspires to overcome the surrealist deambulation, accepts the hazard, but isnt based on it, because its submitted by its own rules: Fixing previously the directions of penetration in the environmental unit to be analysed, based on psycho-geographic cartographies; The space extension of inquiry varies, from the minimum unit of a neighborhood to the whole city and its peripheries; It should be done in groups of two or three people who have reached the same level of awareness; The average duration is defined as one day, but can be extended to several weeks or even months, considering influence factors such as weather variations (those which cannot totally stop the drive), the possibility of taking pauses, or taking a taxi to increase personal disorientation (Debord, 2007). The drive follows a tradition of artists and theorists: ever since Baudelaire and the idea of the flneur (adopted later by Benjamin), passing by the Dadaists and their excursions to common places, onto the surrealist deambulations. It doesnt pretend to be an artistic activity, but a practice that permits a new apprehension of urban space. During the second half of the 20th century, artists start to pay attention to architectural space and landscape, using the walk to interact with territory. In 1966 the report of Tony Smiths journey at a highway under construction appears, followed by several routes through the desert and also through urban peripheries. The highway is assumed as a sign but also as an object where the crossing is made; on the other hand, the proper act of crossing, as experience and as attitude, is converted into form.

I chose to make art by walking, utilizing lines and circles, or stones and days. (Long in Careri, 2002: 145)

Walking, as experience or as object, is also constant in the work of Richard Long. In 1967s A Line Made by Walking, which consists of a drawn line in the grass, the sculptural object is absent; the act of walking, as a reading but also as an instrument to write in space, is converted into art. Long combines two activities: the sculpture (the line) and the walk (the action). The frontier between architecture, sculpture and landscape tends to be blurred: his common camp of action is the symbolic transformation of territory; the walk is a way to perform this transformation. The body is an instrument to measure space and time, the owners perceptions but also the external agents: the temperature, the winds, the sounds.

Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar. Lisbon 2009

The territorial transformation doesnt necessary implicate a physical change. The crossing doesnt have to leave permanent signs; it could act on the world in a more subtle way, acquiring a symbolic dimension. 1.2.3 Contemporary experiences of walking in the city

Passing to concrete experiences of interacting with public space through the direct contact with territory, two references were considered: the work developed by the Research Center CER POLIS of University of Barcelona and the activity of the Stalker, in the scope of Nomad Observatory. In the two cases the walk is proposed as a way to (re)discover and to study urban space. However, the objectives and methodologies are quite different. In the investigations of CER POLIS, the exploration of urban space through the contact with territory is one of the main methodologies used. With the final intention of intervening in public space with knowledge of the context, the first proposition is to analyze the space, through recorridos, walks of observing and discussing the territory. The information obtained is confronted with other information (obtained preferably from primary sources) and organized into graphic schemes (urban atlas, chronologies, time lines). In a different field of actuation, the Nomad Observatory organizes activities related to urban themes, specifically exploratory routes in different cities3, assuming the practice of walking as an instrument to know metropolitan territory. As F. Careri writes:

When interfaced on foot, the metropolis becomes a world with large uncharted regions, composed of chaotic territories, where speculative development stands side-by-side with archeological sites, hightension cables and high-ways intersect with Roman aqueducts, modern industrial ruins offer shelter for a flora and a fauna that never lived on the city before. (2002: 178)

Its the walk experience that permits access to the urban landscape. But here, there arent necessarily projected intentions. In this sense the spirit of the activities of the Nomad Observatory is different of that of CER POLIS, where the aesthetic intention is not present and the walk aims at the final objective of founded actuation in public space.

2 THE CONSTRUCTION OF A PERSONAL METHODOLOGY 2.1 Field Work

The most recent route was a Walkshop in Lisbon: a Walk of two days beside the guas Livres Aqueduct followed by a synthesis Workshop to analyze the impressions and collected registers.

Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar. Lisbon 2009

Taking into account these different meanings of the walk but also the objectives of the research, a specific walking methodology was constructed. The process consisted in an entire year of walking in the city (Lisbon and Barcelona). First, it was necessary to choose where to walk: which articulation structures with the water would be studied. With that objective, a series of routes were carried out parallel to the waterfronts. Twenty structures in Lisbon were chosen as were ten in Barcelona. Then one route for each articulation structure was carried out, observing and photographing while walking. The contact with territory started almost without rules or predefined objectives. The walk began informally, without thinking too much about it. The first achievements were only to cross those different ways to the waterfront, to observe and to think about them. While the fieldwork was evolving, certain procedures, some specific ways of analyzing what was observed, as well as some criteria to traverse urban space appeared. The methodology got autonomous and transformed into a practice with proper rules, playing with the days, the hours, the speed of the steps, the way of photographing and drawing, the proper way of observing and thinking about what was seen. The walk progressed to a directed walk, with proper rules, like the Situationists drive almost a performance, in the meaning of having a fixed procedure, possible to adapt to different situations, in different moments. It can be systematized in the following aspects4:

Basic conditions: Because of time availability, almost all of the routes were done in the afternoon and on the weekend5; The routes were done independently of atmospheric conditions and of darkness; The routes were done alone.

Before each displacement: Observing the plan of the city to perceive the main relations of the study area with the urban context; Forming an idea concerning the historical evolution of the area.

General indications to the accomplishment of the routes are presented here as indications to follow (as if they were rules). Obviously, these procedures dont constitute a rigid behavior. Through this way of description, a certain homogeneity that happened in the procedures adopted should be translated. Only in the way of photographing (described in one of the following points) was a constant procedure intentionally looked for, with the objective of expressing a better reading of the routes in the work files.
5

It was assumed that, by choosing specific hours and specific days, some homogeneity in certain space characteristics would exist, eliminating some urban states (greater movement of people, different experiences and routines, some specific illumination and light). However, this was considered an advantage, in the sense of providing a greater term of comparison between the different spaces.

Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar. Lisbon 2009

In the place: Walking in waterfront direction. As a general rule, starting at the moment where a perception of the water begins to exist; Ending next to the water. In the cases where this isnt possible (in some situations the city is in fact closed off from the water), ending the closest possible; The step is not one of strolling6. The mind must be focused on whats being observed. As in Rousseau, the physical walk makes possible the mental walk. The thought follows the walk (most of the conclusions and ideas were achieved on location); Walking continuously and photographing simultaneously. To transmit a logical idea of the route, all the photographs must be taken in the same direction (turned to the waterfront), in a cinematographic/sequential perspective of the route, including edifices and public art (always in relation with the urban context). The photographs must be taken, intentionally, in a neutral way, avoiding particularly framings, special ambiences or moments. People and cars must be always included, and a flash cannot be used. The posterior treatment of images will not be done. Photos also must be taken horizontally, at the height of the observer and without approaches (zooms).

After each displacement: Verifying, in the supporting sources used in the research, if there is any public art, beyond what is observed at the place; During the systematization and the analysis phases, in case of doubt, or in the eventuality of having to obtain complementary elements, return to the place. 2.2 Systematization of the field work

The accomplishment of the routes would be reduced to a single moment, if it werent registered in some way. So, it was essential to systematize the walk. For each route (corresponding to each articulation structure in study), a report in a journey diary was elaborated as well as, using the instruments of Urban Design, a work file containing the following elements: Photographic and sequential registry of the route, edifices and public art; Schematic localization plan of the city, relating the articulation structure with the other structures; Structure articulation plan, with the indication of public art and a correspondent longitudinal section (to understand topography, the relation to edifices or other eventual aspects) scale 1:5000; Transversal sections of homogeneous stretches of space (to understand the relation with the edifices, public space dimensions, vegetation or other eventual aspects) scale 1:1000;

In comparison with the other people in the urban space it was possible to detect some differences of attitude for example, in the rhythm of the walk. Frequently, this sensation of difference provoked some reactions by other people; for example in queer situations of going to a place only to photograph some public art, besides other adopted procedures.

Understanding the Post-Industrial City: Metropolis, Urban Renewal, Public Space Joint PhD Seminar. Lisbon 2009

Aerial photography (birds eye view).

2.3 Analysis of fieldwork Based on the described work, an original work base (in Lisbon and Barcelona) was created, analyses of which are now in course. But another question was raised: how to analyse? Beyond the presented research about the walk, similar methodologies in other urban landscape analyses were investigated. It was observed how different authors analyse the space, looking to open possibilities in this stage of the research. Some morphological approaches, but also more phenomenological and sensitive ones, were observed: its potentialities and its procedures. This research will use the systematized information in the work files, but also the information apprehended during the walks: the registries that remained in memory, during the entire process. The importance of walking, of going through, with the physical body, passes to those registries, only possible with direct contact of territory methodologies. There were no visits to libraries or archives, and not many secondary sources were consulted; the challenge is now to use this base of work to achieve the objectives of the research, conserving and reflecting the spirit of its primary source: the walk. AKNOWLEDGMENT Fundao para a Cincia e Tecnologia (FCT) (SFRH/BD/14250/2003). REFERENCES
Baudelaire, C., 1992, As flores do mal, Lisboa: Assrio & Alvim (original edition in french 1857). Benjamin, W., 2003, Paris, capitale du XIXe sicle, Paris: Allia (original edition 1935). Careri, F., 2002, Walkscapes El andar como prctica esttica, Barcelona: Gustavo Gili. Dear, M. J., 2000, The postmodern urban condition, Oxford: Blackwell. Debord, G., 2007, Teoria da deriva in Internacional situacionista Deriva, psicogeografia e urbanismo unitrio, organised by E. Felcio, Porto Alegre: Deriva. Garret, A., 1990, Viagens na minha terra, Lisboa: Replicao (original edition 1846). Guimares, M. H., 2002, Anlise fenomenolgica da obra de Robert Walser Der Spaziergang, Porto: Universidade do Porto Faculdade de Letras. Kostof, S., 1992, The city assembled The elements of urban form through history, Londres: Thames and Hudson. de Maistre, X., 1794, Voyage autour de ma chambre. 18th http://www.gloubik.info/livres/demaistre/voyage-autour-de-ma-chambre.html march 2010,

Pessoa, F./Soares, B., 1998, O livro do desassossego, Lisboa: Assrio & Alvim (original edition 1982). Pessoa, F., 2007, O que o turista deve ver, Lisboa: Livros Horizonte (original edition 1992). Remesar, A., 2002, Waterfronts and public art: a problem of language in The arts in urban development Waterfronts of art II, edited by A. Remesar, Barcelona: Publicacions Universitat de Barcelona. Rousseau, J.-J., 1959, Les confessions in Ouvres compltes, vol.4, Paris: Gallimard (original edition 1782-1789). Rousseau, J.-J., 2001, Les rveries du promeneur solitaire, Paris: Librairie Gnrale Franaise (original edition 1782).

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Verde, C., 1964, Obra Completa de Cesrio Verde, Lisboa: Portuglia (original edition 1887).