Norbert Kling The Redundant City

**Norbert Kling** is an architect, researcher, and urbanist. He currently teaches architectural and urban design at the Technical University of Munich, where he received a Dr.-Ing. in Architecture. His research interests include conditions of asymmetric urban change and alternative spatial practices, as well as questions of concept formation, method and process in the spatial disciplines. He is partner at the award winning practice zectorarchitects London/Munich.

# Norbert Kling **The Redundant City**

A Multi-Site Enquiry into Urban Narratives of Conflict and Change

### Supported by the Dr. Marschall Stiftung at the Technical University of Munich

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Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld Cover illustration and layout: Norbert Kling Proofread and copy edited by Karl Detering, Munich Typeset by Francisco Bragança, Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-5114-0 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-5114-4 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839451144

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"To think about the city is to hold and maintain its conflictual aspects: constraints and possibilities, peacefulness and violence, meetings and solitude, gatherings and separation, the trivial and the poetic, brutal functionalism and surprising improvization."

*Lefebvre, Henri (1985) Qu'est-que penser?, translated in: Kofman, Eleonore and Lebas, Elizabeth (1996) Lost in Transposition, p.53*

# **Introduction** Contributing Towards a Broader Understanding of Urban Transformation

Urban theory emphasises the dynamic nature of cities. Processes like restructuring, densification, segregation, gentrification and the contesting of urban centralities are core issues in current discourses on cities. Social, environmental, economic or political questions are broadly studied in their connectedness to urbanisation and urban transformation. Change is an ever present urban condition. Change is also related to conf lict. People negotiate and fight over change. Materialities and fixations of different kinds exert resistances towards change. Institutions are challenged by and seek to control change. Urban conf lict and change are more than anything the products of collective human action and of the processes humans conceive to structure their lives and the world.

Against the background of continuously shifting conditions of conf lict and change, descriptions of and assumptions about spatial transformations have to be constantly re-examined and revised. Researchers and theorists from different backgrounds devise concepts to develop a better understanding of urban phenomena and to share their ideas with others. However, the complexity and recursive nature of urban processes raise major difficulties in representation, analysis and conceptualisation, not without consequences for their conceptual integration into architectural and urban theory and operational integration into urban practice. If change is an omnipresent aspect of urban reality, and if conf lict is connected to change in multiple ways, to what extent, and in which ways, are they addressed in architectural and urban theory?

Although a significant number of concepts in architecture and urbanism are related to change in one way or the other, it seems that conceptualisations of conf lict are underdeveloped. This is even more the case with joint conceptualisations of conf lict and change. If they are studied in combination, change is often established as the main topic, whereas conf lict is relegated to a supporting or subsidiary function. The reason for this might be twofold: change is such an evident phenomenon in the built environment that assigning it a key role in research does not require much justification1 ; at the same time, change is closely related to what architects and urbanists do in practice. The actions which they employ in their work, such as designing, communicat-

1 Speaking for the social sciences, Hans Haferkamp suggests that "change is such an evident feature of social reality that any social-scientific theory, whatever its conceptual starting point, must sooner or later address it." (Haferkamp and Smelser 1992, p.2)

ing, mediating, and the outcomes of their actions, such as a transformative process, a development plan, a design proposal, are all related to – and subject to – change. There is a long list of practically and instrumentally informed questions that may be raised as part of an architectural or urban enquiry into change. At the same time we may speak of a general tendency in architectural and urban conceptualisations to couple the problem of conf lict exclusively with that of conf lict resolution. Architects and urbanists are frequently seen as experts who handle and solve complex problems. Their professional identities are tightly related to the idea of the problem solver who describes and eliminates conf licts through spatial planning and 'design solutions'. If we look at the history of architecture and urbanism as institutionalised professions, we realise how they have over time, and under the surveillance of legislative and economic actors, adopted an extensive legal and administrative framework to avoid, manage, mitigate and resolve conf lict. The framework is geared towards economic optimisation, smooth integration of workf lows and the distribution of risk. The conceptualisations of conf lict based on this identity are of limited theoretical range. Where contractual dependencies and the implicit agreement about problem solving define the framework of action, normative questions about the broader implications are not raised. As a rule, this is also the case in statutory planning consultations and institutionalised community involvement as part of building projects. Issues that are not considered material to the case are bracketed out and not admitted to the process. In applied and demanddriven forms of research funded by the building industry, development agencies or housing corporations, researchers are frequently commissioned to produce practical recommendations for conf lict resolution, for maintaining efficiency despite conf lict, and for the analysis and discussion of best-practice projects.

However, if conf lict is predominantly perceived as something that interferes with established norms, working routines, administrative processes and added-value chains, without questioning the larger frameworks that enable and sustain them in the first place, and without questioning the full depth of the motives and interests of the parties involved, research perspectives are severely narrowed down and outcomes pre-defined. Here, macro-scale perspectives on conf lict are excluded, together with the many different ways of 'doing' conf lict and change at the micro scale.

In "La révolution urbaine" Henri Lefebvre challenges the dominant forms of space production, complete with the concepts, institutions and processes that are related to them (Lefebvre 2003 [1970]). Written in the midst of the late 1960s social unrest that emanated from Paris and other large cities, he criticised the implicit anti-urban intentionality inherent to the capitalist restructuring of space, together with its stabilising mechanisms of conf lict mitigation and resolution. For Lefebvre, "[…] there is nothing harmonious about the urban as form and reality […]" (ibid., p.175). In strict opposition to the modernist approach in architecture and planning, in particular in respect of practices of segregation that attempt to "[…] resolve conf licts by separating the elements in space" [ibid.), Lefebvre proposed that the urban must be conceptualised "[…] as a place of conf lict and confrontation, a unity of contradictions […]" (ibid., p.175f). He emphasised the dynamic and integrating power of the urban condition, as well as the potential of conf lict to act as a driver of positive change. Today, almost fifty years after Lefebvre and other contemporaries formulated their criticisms of what they perceived as an anti-urbanity, we may claim that over-simplified perspectives on conf lict continue to dominate our concepts of urban change. This inf luences the way public

debates about urban conf lict and change are conducted. It also contributes to the formation of blind spots in urban analysis and fails to provide incentives for developing new concepts.

If we look at other theoretical fields, beyond architecture and urbanism, we notice the diversity in joint conceptualisations of conf lict and change. They range from grand social theory to situations of the everyday. Perhaps the most extensive and prominent example is the Marxist perspective, in which conf lict and change are connected to class struggle, revolutionary process, accumulation and restructuring (Harvey 1975; 1982). Lefebvre's notion of conf lict and change relates to this tradition, foregrounding and extending the socio-spatial implications of the theory (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]; 2003 [1970]). Karl Popper's anti-totalitarian theory of the open society emphasises pragmatic action as a driver of change, and utopianism as a source of conf lict and violence (Popper 1947). Ralf Dahrendorf, who draws on Max Weber, Karl Popper and others, speaks of contested shifts in the balancing of "entitlements and provisions, […] rights and opportunities" (Dahrendorf 2008 [1988], p.ix), whereby "the battles for more life chances provide the theme of the modern social conf lict." (ibid.) Political theorist Chantal Mouffe understands conf lict as constituent of modern society, and proposes "agonistics" as a vehicle of change within a multipolar world (Mouffe 2013). In social systems theory, Niklas Luhmann conceptualises autopoiesis as a fundamental form of change, in which communications that contradict each other may establish a conf lict (Luhmann 1995 [1984], p.288). Symbolic interactionism assumes that meanings are produced through intersubjective interaction, which in itself defines a condition of continuous change. And if the collective production of meaning is disturbed, it is the participants' "commitment to stability" that activates mechanisms of conf lict resolution so that interaction is "realigned" (Dellwing and Prus 2012, pp.33f)2 . Joint conceptualisations of concept and change have also informed the urban sociology perspectives on space and the city. Georg Simmel suggests in "The Sociology of Conf lict" and other writings that conf lict is a fundamental principle of socialisation and in this sense of collective life in large cities (Simmel 1904, p.493f; Simmel 1950 [1903]). The history of urban sociology, since its various beginnings at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, could be reconstructed on the basis of its conceptual approach to conf lict and change. Manuel Castells suggests its general orientation has shifted "from the discipline studying social integration to the discipline specializing in the new social conf licts of postindustrialism." (Castells 2002, p.11). Both fields of research in urban sociology, the production and integration of differences, and the contradictory and conf lictual aspects of the urban, continue to be of relevance for the research on the mutual relationship of urban environments and social processes, as well as the conceptualisations of urbanity (Siebel 1994). The editors of the volume "Negotiating Urban Conf licts. Interaction, Space and Control" suggest in the introduction that

"Cities have always been arenas of social and symbolic conflict. As places of gender, class, ethnicity, and the myriad variations of identity-related dif ferences, one of the major roles they are predestined to play is that of a powerful integrator; yet on the other

2 Here, Dellwing and Prus refer to the writings of Gary Alan Fine, Erving Gof fman, Randall Stokes and John Hewitt, and Anselm Strauss.

hand urban contexts are, as it were, the ideal setting for marginalization and violence." (Berking et al. 2006, p.9)

Joint conceptualisations of conf lict and change are characterised by their multiplicity – different theories and research perspectives emphasise different aspects in their relationship. In some theories, conf lict is the key driver of change, in others it is change – or the absence of change – that are seen as the sources of conf lict; some concepts are based on asserted causalities between conf lict and change; some concepts infer practical, and therefore normative consequences from the relationship, others remain on the level of theory. Despite the fundamental differences in approach and conclusions, what these theories and concepts have in common is the view that conf lict and change cannot be conceived as isolated objects. They suggest that conf lict and change are mutually related to each other.

Taking both conf lict and change into consideration holds the promise of a fuller understanding of phenomena of urban transformation, as opposed to considering change alone. The first part of this book, therefore, sets out to explore the rich yet dispersed body of narrative knowledge about conf lict and change in the field of architecture and urbanism. With reference to the writings of Catherine Riessman (Riessman 2008), Willy Viehöver (Viehöver 2011) and others, narratives are defined as instruments used to conceptualise, communicate, integrate, memorise, instrumentalise, or politicise issues for an audience, that is, issues that are of broader concern. Accordingly, the analysis is focussed on the narratives produced and used in architecture and urbanism to conceptualise, communicate, integrate, memorise, instrumentalise, or politicise the phenomena, practices and situations of conf lict and change that are relevant to their disciplinary fields. Some of these narratives maintain an abstract and theoretical level, while others are more focussed on the interactions of change and design, or the practical aspects of professional work. The exploration aims at identifying and assembling the concepts and positions they contain about conf lict and change.

Research in architecture and urbanism cannot be considered a routine or pre-given process. Architectural and urban knowledge serves different and at times contradictory ends. It is spread across different "cultures of knowledge" (Biggs and Büchler 2011, pp.68f), or "knowledge landscapes" (Dunin-Woyseth and Nilsson 2011, p.80). Rather than perceiving this as an impediment to research, I take multiplicity as a resource to work with, based on the understanding that the urban is an open construct that defies closure (Lefebvre 2003 [1970], p.174). Urban issues cannot be grasped in isolation or from a single perspective. Reductionist research approaches which tailor research problems in such a way that they become rigorously demarcated objects are of limited range in urban research contexts.

In view of these epistemological and methodological difficulties, research perspectives are required that can handle openness and conditions in which the researcher does not have previous knowledge of the phenomena under study. In our case, this is provided by the social science research perspectives of grounded theory methodology (GTM) (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss 1987) and situational analysis (SA) (Clarke 2005; Clarke, Friese and Washburn 2018). SA itself draws on social worlds/arenas theory (Strauss 1978b) and discourse theory (Foucault 1981 [1970]; Keller 2011a and 2011b). For the purpose of this research project, I combine GTM and SA with a critical urban perspective and add different analytical and interpretative instruments of architectural and urban research, to form a multi-site/multiple-methods approach. In the research design, critical-interpretative enquiry is conjoined with the scrutiny of empirically-driven research. The project engages with different bodies of knowledge, research materials and questions, without resorting to demarcation, categorisation, and closure.

The research project evolves along two connected iterative-cyclical processes based on the GTM model. In the discursive-interpretative process, urban narratives of conf lict and change are assembled and discussed in essay-like units. The selection of narratives is based on the GTM principle of theoretical sampling. The exploration does not work with definitive fixations, nor does it seek to establish a comprehensive systematics based on categories. It follows an open mode of enquiry in line with the project's overall methodology. The first iterative-cyclical process leads to the production of a positional map, which is based on the SA repertoire of analytical mappings.

The positional map presented in this book assembles, for the first time, a broad range of concepts to do with conf lict and change in a single visualisation. It evolved step-by-step in the explorative process. The map is conceived as an intersection, or analytical space of convergence, in which the concepts contained in some of the most inf luential narratives in architecture and urbanism, as well as the lesser known narratives, are condensed into individual positions. The intensity of change and the corresponding foregrounding of conf lict in each concept are devised as ordering principles for the setting out of the positions on the map. The pattern produced in this way is not homogenous. It reveals a proportionalising tendency, or bias, in the conceptualisations, as a large number of concepts equate the intensity of change with the intensity of conf lict. The pattern also shows densely populated areas circumscribing two voids. They occur, firstly, in the region of low intensities of change in combination with high levels of foregrounding of conf lict, and, secondly, in the region of high intensities of change in combination with medium levels of foregrounding of conf lict. Areas which have been treated only marginally by architectural and urban theory are in this way made visible. The voids could be understood as conceptual vacuums. They indicate that the theorisation of conf lict has remained almost unexplored for conditions of low and high intensities of change. For these positional regions, the narratives of conf lict and change are strangely silent.

The findings and discussion in the first part of the book point to four main issues:

Firstly, since the dissolution of the modernist paradigm of unlimited growth and rapid change led to the insight that urban problems cannot be approached through growth-based scenarios alone, conceptual alternatives to high intensities of change have gained in significance. The map shows that the region of low intensities of change is to a large extent occupied by depoliticised positions that do not pay much conceptual attention to controversies and urban conf lict. However, concepts of change with high levels of foregrounding of conf lict beyond the proportionalising bias seem to be of particular relevance if the urban condition is understood to define a highly contested field.

Secondly, some concepts in the narratives are developed and theorised in such a way that they do not easily transgress disciplinary boundaries. Issues that are not considered 'architectural' or related to design problems are regularly excluded. The keeping separate of material and social worlds and the anxious maintenance of disciplinary boundaries makes it difficult for concepts to travel and connect. This imposes limits

for architecture and urbanism's ability to contribute their spatial and other specialist knowledge to broader discourses and public debates.

Thirdly, the growing significance of process-led urbanism and the steady formation of contested spaces in which conf licting interests intersect demand new conceptual approaches to conf lict in architecture and urbanism. Understandings are required which go beyond the idea of conf lict as a temporary condition that disappears with conf lict resolution. In this situation, rather than insisting on the disciplines' expertise in 'problem solving' according to their own narrowly defined terms – which all too often has resulted in disappointment and frustration – the disciplines must put greater emphasis on detection, spatio-temporal analysis, communication, and actively working with conf lictual conditions of change. The knowledge produced in this way should be shared and debated with others in the sense of urban "matters of concern" (Latour 2005).

Fourthly, the concepts represented in the positional map do not seem to adequately address certain observations of asymmetric urban change I made at the outset of my enquiries. In particular, the contrast between the outward inactivity in the Parkstadt Bogenhausen housing estate in Munich in comparison to the substantial transformations in the surrounding area could not be explained and raises new questions. Further and different research is required to engage with this phenomenon. This is the task of the case study which I present in the second part of the book.

How, then, can we conceptualise the pattern of change in the Parkstadt Bogenhausen housing estate if we consider dynamic processes and conf licts to be at the core of the urban condition? How, in doing so, can we challenge the voids and the proportionalising bias in the narratives of conf lict and change, connect material and social worlds with each other, and conceptually move beyond problem solving?

In the course of pursuing these questions in the second part of the book, I engage with different sites of analysis, in particular the collectively negotiated process of change itself. Methodologically, I continue to work with SA and GTM and expand them with additional research steps. In terms of analysis, SA assumes that all elements constitutive "*of* the situation are *in* the situation" (emphasis in original, Clarke 2005, p.71). The situation to which I refer in the case study is thus both a conceptual representation of social and material reality, as well as a site and unit of analysis – the transformative process of the Parkstadt Bogenhausen housing estate. Engaging with urban issues means engaging with different processes simultaneously and across different scales. The meso level is of prime research significance if the urban is understood as collective process and not as mere aggregate level of individuals. Social worlds/arenas theory and SA offer a unique perspective on collective processes, and therefore also, as I set out to demonstrate in this book, on the collective processes through which spaces are co-produced and changed. SA itself integrates social worlds/arenas theory, to form an explicit theory of conf lict. It has the capacity, among other things, to represent and analyse controversies, negotiations, commitment and collective action. It assumes that issues of broader concern are negotiated between and through social worlds that partially and temporally participate in arenas. The research approach which I follow in this book understands architecture and human actors as mutually co-producing spatial situations. Architecture and the built environment, equipped as they are with a multitude of institutionally, culturally, economically and otherwise produced properties, ref lect back on situations, as do human actors with their presence and underlying intentions in those situations.

Theorising on the constitution of space through the establishing of spatial relations in action, Martina Löw proposes that this "[…] is not as a rule done in isolation, but takes place in processes of negotiation with other actors. Negotiation of power structures is an immanent aspect of this process." (Löw 2016 [2001], p.191) Consequently, the case study combines actor-centred perspectives with the analysis of structural and material conditions. It traces collective processes together with the estate's trajectory of spatial transformation, based on a set of interrelated questions: Which internal and external factors inf luence a housing estate's process of change? How do human and non-human actors interact in order to produce the observed condition? What are the structural conditions in the process? What can we learn from the housing estate's changing, or non-changing, spatial characteristics? If SA highlights the usefulness of 'sensitising concepts' in empirical research, how could we use all the data and findings to arrive at a new concept of urban change?

Housing estates have an ambivalent relation to the city. They relate to the intrinsic web of social interactions and spatial practices of the everyday, as well as to the more abstract levels of planning thought, institutions, urban organisation, and socioeconomic processes. Research into housing estates is as diverse as the estates themselves. Public authorities, planners, architects, economists, social scientists and others have at all times sought to develop a better understanding of housing estates, be it because of professional or academic interest, or because of statutory, fiscal or other responsibilities. Research agendas have changed considerably over previous decades. They typically address technical problems, questions of design, management, funding, or social issues. However, modes of analysis that apply a very narrow frame to their research object have to carefully assess the theoretical range of their analysis, together with their assumptions about the "context of context" (Brenner 2013, p.92) that acts upon their particular research situation. Likewise, if conditions of change in housing estates are predominantly observed from macrostructural levels, researchers may lose sight of the processes that co-produce change 'on the ground'. The steep rise in rents and property prices in many metropolitan regions has brought housing-related issues back to the centre of public debates, together with fundamental questions like urban justice, inequality, and the right to the city (Brenner, Marcuse and Mayer 2012; Harvey 2012; Trapp 2018; Vogel 2019). Housing estates are directly connected to the political domain, as well as the research about them.

Completed more than sixty years ago, the Parkstadt Bogenhausen housing estate has been organised as a commonhold-type entity according to the 'Wohnungseigentumsgesetz' (WEG) since 1984. With almost 2000 units under a single commonhold declaration, it is the largest of its kind in Germany and forms a contiguous legal and spatial construct in the city, covering an area of 15ha. Like other housing estates dating from the second half of the 20th century, it is located within modernist frameworks of conf lict evasion, simplification, tight-fit-functionalism, and static models of space. The homogenising tendency of the welfare state is inscribed in its spatial layouts. At the same time, it is connected to many different actors, institutional arrangements, and interests. It is characterised by its own ownership constellation, its unique decision-making process, and its contingent future(s). It is connected to the city in which it is located in its own ways.

Munich is currently experiencing a phase of outward and inward expansion. Large scale restructuring and a myriad of small scale interventions transform the appearance and the functioning of the city. This includes the modification of housing estates, which is currently underway on an unprecedented scale, ranging from substantial densification programmes, to upgrading and typological diversification. The Parkstadt Bogenhausen housing estate, by contrast, does not seem to participate in the urban dynamic and clearly deviates from the general pattern of change. However, tight-fit functionalism and other readily available concepts do not provide satisfactory explanations for the observed difference. Assuming that the same overall economic and political frameworks apply in the situation, what kinds of actors, structures and processes have to interact in order to produce a residential environment that resists change and that produces such a stark contrast, or asymmetry? And what, if we consider permanence not as a quality in itself which offers stability and orientation in an ever-changing world, but as a rigidifying restriction to the inhabiting and appropriation of space?

The case study assembles and integrates data from archived meeting minutes and historical material, interviews, participant observation, surveys, and site photography to engage with the above questions. The main body of material, consisting of the minutes of the annual meeting of the housing estate's co-owners according to the WEG, is analysed in the second iterative-cyclical process. This time, the process is based on the standard GTM mode of analysis, which includes the classic tools of theoretical sampling, coding, and memoing. The complementary mappings show the structural conditions and relations in the 'Parkstadt Arena', as well as the overall situational process and the negotiating of common concerns, or 'themes', along a timeline. In the synthesising steps leading towards the construction of the concept, I bring together the conclusions of the GTM process, the SA mappings, the comparative analysis, and the quantitative data; and I exploit the heuristic capacity of the positional map by establishing a dual position and drawing new interpretative connections. The new concept is named 'Redundant City'. It describes the housing estate's unique condition and pattern of change.

The Redundant City has, on the one hand, the legally granted capacity to initiate and develop processes of change, based on the relative autonomy of a collectively exercised, ownership-based authority. On the other hand, collective self-regulation, structural and institutional frameworks, investment-driven accumulation and "dynamic conservatism" (Schön 1971) produce conditions which allow transformations to occur on the micro level, albeit in a very regulated and limited way, while inhibiting changes and interactions on the urban level. Hence, we see empowerment through ownership alongside rigidity, restriction, and stagnation. In the Redundant City processes of change are oriented towards the inside, while interactions with the city are reactive and reduced to a minimum. In the Redundant City, potential spaces of individual appropriation and change are related to potential spaces of stagnation. The Redundant City's pattern of change is fundamentally different to the pattern of other areas in the city and makes it in this sense a space of 'otherness'. It prompts us to think about difference and otherness, through being different and through co-producing a unique condition of asymmetric urban change. The Redundant City conveys the promise of a lasting space of possibilities, because its potential is unlikely to be ever fully realised and used. As the urban level of the Redundant City is likely to remain inactivated, it increasingly may generate desires and 'What if?' scenarios, outside and within the housing estate. The space conceptualised in this way is of broader relevance and has a political dimension. There is an evocative utopian quality to the Redundant City.

I have chosen redundancy to name the concept because it embodies the key aspects of the observed process – ambivalence, conf lict, and change. Whereas the notion of redundancy is neither native to, nor common in architectural and urban discourse at the present moment, it is both widely used and well established in science and technology studies (STS), computer science, engineering, system theory, linguistics, communication theory, and genetics. In these contexts, it is, broadly defined, a surplus considered either as benefit or waste. Sometimes it is understood as creating positive, desirable effects, sometimes it represents the useless, excessive, the ignored. Redundancy is used to pursue different, almost opposing ends. It is often associated with questions about whether we should have more or less of something. I consider it in the context of this critique as surplus in the positive and negative senses together. Part of my purpose in choosing it, therefore, is to maintain the ambivalence inherent in the term. It is intended to make us aware of the Redundant City problematic, its simultaneously enabling and inhibiting characteristics, and the various implications this may have. By explicitly emphasising its different connotations, I seek to establish a conceptual position that is not fixed in a single place and that defies closure in the style of Latour's "matter of concern" (Latour 2005). The term 'Redundant City' functions as a signifier both for the new concept and its socio-spatial referent, the Parkstadt – 'Park City' – Bogenhausen housing estate. Hence, the controversial notion of redundancy is an invitation to critically engage with the Redundant City concept as well as the Parkstadt Bogenhausen housing estate and to connect them to current urban debates.

The observations made in the housing estate seem to confirm Martina Löw's proposition that "spaces, places, and boundaries are enduring precisely because they are socially constructed." (Löw 2016 [2001], p.xviii) At the same time they seem to confirm that resistances in spatial arrangements do not inevitably and irrevocably result in permanent conditions of inactivity and stagnation. For Löw also suggests that if habits and routines are replaced with new ones "[…] regularly, collectively, and with reference to relevant rules and resources, institutionalized spaces and spatial structures can be changed." (ibid., p.191) Hence, one of the underlying assumptions in the Redundant City concept is that changes can be initiated if action is assumed collectively and from within the political arena of urban change.

How, then, can the concept and the different methodological components that helped to produce it be used? Clearly, multiple connections can be made in a multi-site enquiry to answer this question. In order to provide an idea of the scope of uses, in the final chapter of the book I discuss potential applications for the mapping tools, the concept itself, and the assembled body of narrative knowledge of conf lict and change.

The mapping instruments introduced in this research project helped to reveal the structural conditions, resistances, competing desires, conf licts, and the web of social relations that inf luence the situational process of the Parkstadt Bogenhausen housing estate. The mapping instruments could be further developed and applied to the analysis of other housing estates and situations of change. Conceived as community mappings, they could become means of empowerment, collective learning, and catalysts of change. The knowledge thus produced could put communities in a position from which they may more easily raise issues and engage in debates about their built environment and the aspects that intersect there. They could enable members of a specific social world in participative processes to better understand their situation in relation to other social worlds in the arena. The mappings may give actors a better idea about how and in which constellations decisions are made over time. They make visible the effects of pre-structured processes, the distribution of power, "compartmentalization" and "dynamic conservatism" (Schön 1971, pp.31–60), exclusion, or the establishing of a dominant maintenance project. Actors may in this way analyse how resistances inf luence participatory processes, or prevent change from occurring. This may facilitate connecting with the macro-level, the realm of WEG legislation, urban discourses on densification, accumulation, asymmetric urban change, or urban inequality, calling into question the structural conditions of change. Empowered through mapping, users, owner and non-owner residents may find new ways of extending their effective range of action to higher levels of control, of renegotiating power relations in the arena, and ultimately of changing the spatial arrangements and their housing estates. Commonhold-type entities according to the WEG as well as housing estates owned by housing associations or housing cooperatives could make use of the mapping tools. For there seems to be a growing awareness of the need to strengthen, establish, and open up arenas. The formerly widespread practice of managing change in housing estates as top-down process, as had been common practice in the Neue Heimat group and other large housing providers, is gradually giving way to more inclusive approaches. Different levels of participation are understood as one of the means of generating and including new qualities in housing.

At the same time, we see that research in housing, along with programmes of urban restructuring and densification, continue to be based on narrowly defined conceptualisations and dominant concepts of change. Categories of conf lict that do not lend themselves to 'solutions', as well as sites of greater complexity that offer resistances, do not easily lend themselves to research projects. Researchers tend to concentrate on, or otherwise establish, problems that are sufficiently structured and clear, hoping that in this way existing instruments can be used, best practice approaches applied, and faster solutions provided. As a result, housing estates as well as smaller scale housing in dispersed ownership according to the WEG are often left aside in current research on densification and urban restructuring despite their overall relevance. In growing cities, this selective approach may lead to the concentration of densification and restructuring programmes in areas that already have to cope with issues of inequality. This raises questions about who in the urban population has to adapt to transformations, and in which ways, but also about the overall capacity of cities to absorb growth and accommodate change. Here, the concept could contribute towards a better understanding of dispersed ownership constellations and improve the basis of decision-making for urban policies on the spatial distribution of growth.

The prevailing phase of low interest rates in the European Union for both savings and mortgages has made residential property an attractive alternative to other forms of investment for private investors. In Germany, this has led to a rising demand for building land and residential units, in particular in metropolitan regions of cities like Hamburg, Munich, and Berlin. As expectations about valorisation and future returns are high, housing prices and rents are rising steadily. The construction of new commonhold-type property according to the WEG, as well as the subdivision of single ownership residential blocks into multiple private units continues to thrive in this

condition. Subsidised affordable housing that has reached the end of the public funding period is often subdivided and sold on in the private market, which causes rents to rise and accelerates processes of displacement and gentrification. In a move to slow down the effects of subdivision on local neighbourhoods, municipal administrations have set regulations in place that control and restrict the conversions in designated areas ('Erhaltungssatzung', respectively 'Milieuschutz') (Landeshauptstadt München 2016b, pp.36, 133ff). This and other measures, like the capping of rents according to an approved local rent index ('Qualifizierter Mietspiegel'), mirror the difficult relationship between the individual's interests in private property and the common interest in the provision of affordable housing. Since the early 1970s, reformers have demanded property owners assume their social responsibility as required by constitutional law ('Grundgesetz'), and to contribute in an appropriate way to the common good (Hertweck 2018a, p.154; Vogel 2019). The problems and questions related to this basic conf lict, as well as the selective approach outlined above, suggest that a better understanding of the characteristics of and dynamics in commonhold-type property according to the WEG is also in these fields urgently required.

At the time of writing, there are very few, if any cases which use the combination of SA, social worlds/arenas theory and GTM for spatial issues and problems raised from within the architectural and urban disciplines. Accordingly, an intended outcome of this project is to show that they provide a set of useful tools and new perspectives for engaging with urban and architectural research questions.

Summing up, this book explores the rich body of narrative knowledge in architecture and urbanism and confronts this knowledge with an empirically grounded situational analysis of a large housing estate. The outcome of this twofold research approach comprises a new perspective on urban narratives of conf lict and change, an extension of SA mapping tools and their application to spatial issues, and the Redundant City concept, which describes a specific form of collectively negotiated urban change.

The research project is based on the assumption that dynamic processes and conf licts are at the core of the urban condition. It does not provide a solution to a problem, nor does it provide an exhaustive analysis of a demarcated and therefore closed research object. The goal is to contribute to the understanding of dynamic processes in and of spaces and cities. The project engages with processes and structural conditions that drive or inhibit change. It exemplifies how the urban could be conceived of as an open construct, both conceptually and in terms of methodology. It raises the question whether more emphasis should be given to conf lict-oriented perspectives. It stresses multiplicity and questions the dominance of single narratives of conf lict and change by presenting the many other positions we can relate them to and work with in urban theory and practice.

### **Acknowledgements**

The idea for the research presented in this book evolved during my design teaching and research assignments at the Chair of Design and Building Science at Brandenburg University of Technology and at the Chair of Urban Design and Regional Planning at Technical University of Munich. My initial interest in the adaptability of buildings and in problems of density led me to the level of urban processes and the broad theoretical field of conf lict and change. During this time, our architectural practice, zectorarchitects, started to be involved with the activation of a rooftop space in Dalston in East London and with the restructuring of the high street in the Bauhaus city of Dessau in Germany. I also became interested in the pattern of asymmetric urban change I was observing in the Parkstadt Bogenhausen housing estate in Munich as a resident. Together, these factors contributed to the formation of this project and the combination of issues it seeks to address.

The prolonged work on and completion of The Redundant City would not have been possible without the sympathetic support of many individuals and institutions to whom I am greatly indebted. Most of all, I would like to thank Professor Sophie Wolfrum at TUM and Professor Dr. h.c. Jörg J. Kühn at BTU for their unwavering encouragement, for the motivating criticism and conversations, as well as for the generous support during all stages of the research process and beyond. They provided me with inspiring academic homes where I could connect to different fields of urban and architectural enquiry, develop ideas, engage in joint research and teaching, and work with wonderful people. Thanks to all of them.

I wish to thank the Dr. Marschall Stiftung at Technical University of Munich for the generous contribution towards the book and open access publication. I also wish to thank the staff at the Graduate Center and Dean's Office of the TUM Faculty of Architecture for their administrative assistance and accompanying support.

Special thanks are due to Professor Dr. Ulrike Sturm, who throughout has provided practical advice in research matters. She kindly took on the tedious task of reviewing the conference paper on the case study. Her expert knowledge made me attentive to issues of argumentation as well as to current research in the field of commonhold-type housing. I am also grateful to Julia Zillich, who helped me to establish a focus for the research process at an early and critical stage of the project. I would like to thank Professor Dr. Maren Harnack for her encouragement and comments on the occasion of the Porous City conference, Tak Hoshino for a series of insightful conversations about conf lict and urban process at the University of East London, Professor Dr. h.c. Thomas Sieverts for the perspicacious discussions of the term redundancy and the findings of the research, and Professor Dr. Sören Schöbel-Rutschmann for the support during and after the completion of the project.

I would like to thank all participants in Oikodomos and the Oikonet, the global network on housing research and learning, in particular Professor Dr. Leandro Madrazo, for the hospitality at the Brussels conference and the opportunity to discuss key aspects of the empirical research within a multidisciplinary setting at the Manchester conference. Thanks are also due to Professor Dr. Jenny Stenberg and Professor Lasse Fryk for sharing their experience with co-design processes and community empowering research on housing estates. Finally, I wish to mention in memory of Professor Dr. Johan Verbeke that the inspiring debates he and his colleagues initiated have enriched my work in various ways, for which I am very grateful.

The notions of conf lict and change have recurrently informed my teaching in seminars and design studios. I would like to thank the students at BTU and TUM for their interest, contributions and projects. I would also like to thank the members of the PhD group as well as the many friends of the Chair of Urban Design and Regional Planning at TUM for sharing their ideas about design, research, and cities, which was made

possible not least because Sophie Wolfrum and Alban Janson provided a regular and comfortable platform for socialising and debating.

Special thanks are due to Karl Detering and Simon Beesley for their valuable comments, the copy editing of the manuscript, and of two research papers that are related to this project. The team at transcript provided excellent support in all matters related to the publication and guided me smoothly through the publishing process. Thanks to them also.

The collective process of the Parkstadt Bogenhausen housing estate is at the core of the case study element. I am indebted to the residents of the housing estate, not only for the research opportunities and the observations I was able to make over the years of living on the estate, but also for their kindness as neighbours. I wish to thank the participants in the interviews, the members of the advisory board of the estate, as well as the teams in the administration's local branch and head offices for kindly providing material for the empirical study, as well as for the valuable information they divulged in conversations and interviews. I also wish to thank Werner Wittemer and the authors of the 50th anniversary catalogue for sharing their expert knowledge about the history of and life on the housing estate.

Special thanks are due to Carsten Jungfer, for the many years of joint designing and theorising at zectorarchitects. Carsten's appreciative attitude made it possible for me to spend time on academic research while working on live projects in architectural practice, and in this way being able to test ideas against both practically and theoretically informed backgrounds. His work with the students at Oxford Brookes University and the University of East London provided a continuous source of inspiration. I thank him and Paola Mollica for their exceptionally generous hospitality in London. Thanks are also due to Moritz Hauser, who has kept the Munich office busy with architectural work and real hands-on change, as well as for his interest and sympathetic understanding.

Finally, I cannot say how much I owe to Myriam, Julian and Christopher, for their sustained support, sympathy, and attentive care throughout the project. Not only did they actively contribute to my photographic journeys, or make possible extended periods of working, teaching and researching, but through sharing their personal experiences they made me more sensitive to the richness of everyday life on the Parkstadt Bogenhausen housing estate. They encouraged me to see things from ever-changing and fresh perspectives.

*Figure 1: Barbican Estate by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon 1965–1976, sheltered resident playground below Seddon House, London 2017*

# **I. Research as Situated and Critical Project**

"The urban is defined as the place where people […] find themselves standing before and inside piles of objects, experience the intertwining of the threads of their activities until they become unrecognizable, entangle situations in such a way that they engender unexpected situations."

*Lefebvre, Henri (2003 [1970]) The Urban Revolution, Minneapolis, p.39*

"[…] the spatial turn stands for the insight that all spaces (architectural spaces, urban spaces, regions, nation states, bedrooms, recreation parks, river landscapes, etc.) are always also results of social production: not only in the sense that there are professions that plan and design these spaces, but also in terms of the challenging insight that spaces only become spaces for people inasmuch as they are again and again and again—produced socially. In other words: the constitution of space is a performative act.

[…] How we perform the synthesis between objects, how we span the space between things and people is a highly conventionalized, objectified practice, one that is pre-structured by professions such as planning and architecture."

*Löw, Martina (2016 [2001]) The Sociology of Space: Materiality, Social Structures, and Action. New York, p.vii*

# **1. Problems of Research in Architecture and Urbanism**

### 1.1 Multiple Framings of Knowledge

The framing of knowledge inf luences the modes and methods used to produce new knowledge and the way knowledge is justified. It inf luences the systematics of knowledge organisation and maintenance, as well as the teaching, dissemination, and the possible relations between different bodies and forms of knowledge.

This research project is closely connected to the disciplines of architecture and urbanism. Research in these disciplines occupies different epistemological dimensions and produces and uses knowledge that is framed in different ways. Interpretative, critical and discursively generated forms of knowledge prevail in criticism, history and architectural theory; quantifiable and empirically tested forms of knowledge define the basis for technology-driven applications in architecture and urbanism; design knowledge is produced extensively, but not exclusively, in the design studio. The difference in the framing of knowledge is mirrored by the different meanings assigned to research terminology. If we speak of an experiment in a materials research laboratory, we mean something different than the experiment of developing a curriculum (Knoll et al. 2008; 2011) or the experiment in designing (Schön 1987, p.70), which again is different from the experimental implementation of a transdisciplinary realworld project (Hirsch Hadorn and Pohl 2008, p.117). Similarly, statements of 'truth' make sense in the programming of building construction software, but are of limited reach in the architectural design studio, for "a theory is never proven or legitimised in an architectural design, only tested or extended." (Spuybroek 2008, p.287). The iterative, non-linear and contingent process of designing represents a mode of knowledge production that is very different to the systematic routines of the scientific method (Cross 2001). Its outcomes are often temporary, fragile and therefore unstable. Conversely, architectural and urban practice involves, among other things, the integration of systematic technical and production-orientated knowledge. This knowledge is produced by specialists of various disciplines and the teams who work on the realisation of architectural and urban projects. As part of this process different technologies are developed and used, workf lows and budgets are scheduled, monitored and organised, or compliance with standards and regulations is ensured.

Architecture departments typically accommodate different framings of knowledge, "cultures of knowledge" (Biggs and Büchler 2011, pp.68f), or "knowledge landscapes" (Dunin-Woyseth and Nilsson 2011, p.80). In this academic space, the rationality of technology meets discursive analysis and the ref lection-in-action of design (Schön 1987). The different framings of knowledge do not occur in isolation and co-exist with each other. Priority might be given to one framing over the other, depending on the perspective, research problem and discipline/sub-discipline involved, but we usually find them entangled. The general research outline issued by the Architecture Department at TU Darmstadt in 2009 and reprinted as an editorial in the architectural theory magazine "Generalist" suggests that research in architecture, to which I propose to add research in urban and landscape design, has to integrate different framings of knowledge, methods, and actors, without the reassurance – and the constraints – of working within the scientific system (Fachbereich 15 TU Darmstadt 2009):

"Architecture is a design discipline. Designing is a methodology for solving complex problems, which […] requires empirical and theoretical analysis of the design constraints, but which cannot itself assert a claim to being a scientific method. […] The questions raised in architecture come from neither a single discipline of knowledge nor do they permit themselves to be defined as purely interdisciplinary problems. [Hence it] […] needs the interaction of various methods and instruments, and it seeks, with a view to the specifics of the project, interdependencies among technical, economic, ecological, and societal developments. Whereas the process of traditional research takes place exclusively within the scientific system (either within a discipline or between disciplines), this (transdisciplinary) approach to research decidedly integrates participants from social, non-university, and project-specific practice, and it aims to produce use-oriented solutions and ef fects with social relevance." (ibid., p. 4).1

The complex non-linear and creative activity of design has been the subject of theoretical and self-ref lexive enquiries since architecture and urbanism were established as disciplines, yet it is only recently and gradually that a research-by-design approach has been recognised by institutions as a form of research in its own right, and more specifically, as an academic form of research (Dunin-Woyseth 2005; Verbeke and Jakimowicz 2009). However, while design-led research is gaining in significance, which includes the spreading of "design thinking" into other fields and disciplines (Wolfrum and Janson 2016, p.10), there seem to be growing doubts as to whether the integrative capacity of design still holds. In "The Mutual Limits of Architecture and Science", Kenneth Frampton criticises the analytical fragmentation of architectural questions and asserts that "[…] comprehensive synthesis […] remains the field's ultimate mandate." (Frampton 2000, p.368) John Fernandez observes that "clear and strong divisions between design and technology (and by the way, criticism, history and visual studies and others) have resulted in both productive and debilitating shifts away from the generalist center of design." (Fernandez 2006, p.16) The discipline's technical rationality is itself subjected to a continuous process of transformation. On the one hand, it has benefited from new technologies and ever growing capacities in the processing of data. On the other hand, research problems have increased in scale and complexity. Empirical-scientific methods deployed in other disciplines continue to feed into architectural and urban research, in particular from engineering and from fields concerned with the physicality of architectural and urban production, such as materials sciences, energy and environmental control, traffic modelling, robotics in construction, surveying, but also from the social sciences, or from economics for the managing of budgets and workf lows. Processes of differentiation require architecture and urbanism to integrate a growing number of sub-disciplines and growing amounts of specialist knowledge. Like other disciplines, they seek to respond to the demand for 'verified'

1 Some of the positions on research in architecture that emerged in the Architecture Department at TU Darmstadt were debated in the panel discussion "Forschung in der Baukunst", which was held at BTU Cottbus on 03.02.2010, with Adeline Seidl, co-editor of the Generalist magazine, being part of the panel. Other guests included: Rainer W. Ernst (Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design, Kiel), Karen Eisenlof fel, Heinz Nagler, Wolfgang Schuster (all BTU). The session was moderated by Dagmar Jaeger (BTU).

information from the private sector, local authorities, policy agencies and the political domain.

Where different framings of knowledge interact with each other, fundamental questions about ontology, epistemology, methods, and possible conf licts between them have to be addressed for each research situation anew. Architectural and urban knowledge serves different and at times contradictory ends. Its presuppositions, applicability and theoretical range need to be assessed and communicated by those who produce and use the knowledge. With reference to social theorist Andrew Sayer's concept of "naïve objectivism" (Sayer 1992, cited in Brenner, Madden and Wachsmuth 2011, p.233), Neil Brenner et al. point to the potential fallacies of uncritical modes of analysis, in which researchers "[…] presuppose that the 'facts' [...] speak for themselves rather than requiring mediation or at least animation through theoretical assumptions and interpretive schemata." (ibid.)2 . Research is related to and inf luenced by its supporting institutional frameworks. The multiple framings of knowledge in architectural and urban research raise difficulties, not only in terms of methodological and epistemological complexity, naïve objectivism, the practical challenges of working with and managing different forms of knowledge, or the frequent problem of making choices, but also in terms of how research is evaluated by institutional bodies3 . Research expert Halina Dunin-Woyseth suggests in her paper presented at the colloquium "The Unthinkable Doctorate" held in Brussels in 20054 , that

"[…] architectural research does not fit naturally into the classification of the traditional academic disciplines even if faculties of architecture are incorporated as separate disciplines in the institutions of higher education. One of the prime reasons for this is the issue of assessing the quality of architectural research." (Dunin-Woyseth 2005, p.86)

From outside the discipline, and on a more general level, the Bologna reform has started a process of critical repositioning of research in the design disciplines (ibid, p.91)5 , which not only encompasses the level of doctorates, but the entire system of academic architectural education (Knoll et al. 2008; 2011). Given the dynamic environment in which architectural and urban knowledge is produced and applied, new configurations for research and further diversification will occur. Their critical ref lection and the positioning of research in relation to them is a continuous process. Hence, research in architecture and urbanism cannot be considered a routine or pre-given

2 I return to this problem at a later stage when I connect to Bruno Latour's proposition of a paradigmatic shif t away from "matters of fact" towards "matters of concern" (Latour 2005, p.39). For the rejection of naive objectivism in Reiner Keller's "The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse" see (Keller 2011a, p.271).

3 Non-university agencies that allocate funding and coordinate research projects, for example the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaf t) in Germany, are challenged by the dif ferent framings of knowledge and modes of knowledge production in similar ways as the university department.

4 Professor Dr. Johan Verbeke, then head of the research department at Sint-Lucas School of Architecture in Brussels, kindly provided me with the proceedings of the colloquium during a conference held at Sint-Lucas in 2011. Very sadly, Johan Verbeke unexpectedly passed away in 2018.

5 Halina Dunin-Woyseth assumes a dual perspective based on the situation in the doctoral programme at Oslo School of Architecture, and the recommendations as formulated in the Bologna-Berlin Process for future doctoral research in Europe (Dunin-Woyseth 2005).

process. The presence of different kinds and framings of knowledge needs to be addressed if naïve objectivism and compartmentalised discourses are to be avoided. However, rather than perceiving this as an impediment to research, I share the view of the critics and researchers who take multiplicity as a resource to work with, in particular if we understand urban issues as something that cannot be grasped in isolation and from a single perspective.

### 1.2 Separation of Macro and Micro Scales of Conceptualisation

Regional development plans, zoning plans, urban design and architectural detailing establish a hierarchy of control levels, which are distributed across different scales. Each scale is controlled by different actors and authorities. Each scale deals with different aspects of the built environment. The process of specialisation and compartmentalisation – in the political domain, in social and economic organisation, in the professions and universities – further contributes to the establishment of hierarchies and affects the way actors work with each other. Henri Lefebvre observed in the 1970s that the problem of separation between the architectural, urban and regional levels in the professions produce conditions where "[...] neither common projects nor theoretical continuity are possible." (Lefebvre 1991 [1974], p.12) Kenneth Frampton reaffirms a decade later that "[…] the split between architecture and urban development has led to a situation in which the possibility of the former contributing to the latter and vice versa […] has suddenly become extremely limited." (Frampton 2007 [1980], p.9) Differentiations within the professions, increasing levels of complexity and a drifting apart of methodologies between disciplines continue to contribute towards the widening of the gaps. Formalised representations of spatial organisation are part of this process. Here, the political dimension of scales becomes visible. As reductive abstractions of spatial reality, plans represent a limited number of aspects – and exclude others. Large scale plans have the tendency to smooth over differences and contradictions, and, by means of their integrative capacity, pass on this tendency to smaller scales, that is, to different levels of power. The hierarchy of scales enables institutions that work on large scale plans to exert control over lower scales. Institutionalised representations of space, which are produced within dominant practices and discourses, might thus appear as pre-givens on the lower scales. A reverse directionality is initiated whenever this process is made explicit and power relations are called into question. The exclusion of either large or small scales creates blind spots pertaining to the instrumental continuity between scales, as well as the potential conf licts within the system.

Neil Brenner argues that the detachment of research focussed on small scale phenomena from research concerned with large-scale sociospatial processes, geopolitics and geoeconomics, has contributed towards a crisis in urban theory and urban sociology (Brenner 2013, pp.90–94 and p.97). Brenner identifies the "analytical black-boxing" (ibid., p.93)6 of what he refers to as "context of context" (ibid., p.92) within the realms of (micro-)contextual and place-based practice as being symptomatic of this tendency (ibid.)7 . According to Brenner, insufficiently defined concepts and "[…] the

6 Brenner uses the expression "analytically 'black-boxed'" (ibid.).

7 Neil Brenner explicitly refers to research activities based on actor-network concepts as pioneered by Bruno Latour, and research drawing on the notion of "assemblage" as conceptualised by Gilles Deleuze.

fragmentation of urban realities in everyday political-economic and cultural practice is being replicated relatively uncritically within the discursive terrain of urban theory." (ibid.) With reference to Kenneth Frampton's (2000, p. 368) criticism of architectural research, I suggest that the problem of rejecting "macrostructural forms of argumentation" (Brenner 2013, p.92) has to also be dealt with in architecture. The jumping over or ignoring of intermediate scales, and the assuming of an 'external' position represent two variations of the bracketing out problematic. Confronting the phenomenon of Parisian banlieues and suburbanisation, Henri Lefebvre observed in 1968 that "[…] sociological thinking and political strategy, and so-called planning thought, tend to jump from the level of habitat and to inhabit (ecological level, housing, buildings, neighbourhood and thus the domain of the architect), to the general level (scale of land use planning, planned industrial production, global urbanization), passing over the city and the urban." (Lefebvre 1996 [1968], p.123) The possibility of empirically reconstructing and following interactions across different scales is at the base of Lefebvre's proposition to move analytically, in urban analysis, "[…] from the most general knowledge to […] the city and conversely, particular and specific knowledge of urban reality to its global context" (ibid., p.105). Lefebvre's analytical focus embraces micro and macro, specific and global, in a double movement through different scales and times. His notion of movement suggests that, complementary to rupture, there is the possibility of continuity. Arguing along similar lines, Edward Soja asserts that "the appropriate response to the micro vs. macro choice is thus an assertive and creative rejection of the either/or for the more open-ended both/and also... ." (Soja 2000 [1996], p.310) Venturini, Jensen and Latour argue that the micro-macro perspective, if it is used in models that assume agents at the local level to be incapable of understanding processes at the macro level, may result in the privileging of positions external to both levels (Venturini, Jensen and Latour 2015, para. 1.5). It gives power and control to those who observe and analyse collective phenomena from the outside – scholars, modellers and external public officials – and it raises expectations that the initiatives for change and propositions for the restructuring of patterns of interaction should be brought forward by the neutral, observing outside, rather than by individuals or groups that act in the situation (ibid.). We see such dynamics operating in mediated planning processes in which external agents are expected to provide the larger picture, adjust the rulesin-use for better outcomes, or assist in the production of a consensus that is then supposedly more appropriate to the situation than if it was developed through the creative and self-ref lective, but prejudiced, capacity of the participants themselves. Criticising reductionist simulations based on "thin concepts" (ibid., para.1.9), Venturini, Jensen and Latour assert that "[…] contrarily to what most social simulations assume, collective action does not originate at the micro level of individual atoms and does not end up in a macro level of stable structures." (ibid.) They emphasise the two-way continuity between scales and the intricate and heterogeneous nature of the network through which actions are distributed (ibid., para. 1.11). Yet whatever complexity the tools or models we apply to our analysis may assume, there are limits to what we can know about the city. In view of this problematic, Edward Soja suggests that "understanding the city must involve both views, the micro and the macro, with neither privileged, but only with the accompanying recognition that no city – indeed, no lived space – is ever completely knowable no matter what perspective we take" (Soja 2000 [1996], p.310).

In multi-scalar thinking problems are related to each other across different scales. Conceiving a perspective that emphasises the analytical continuity between the extremes, and that neither privileges the micro, nor the macro, nor assumes an external position, may help us to develop a deeper understanding of urban processes. I readdress these issues upon assembling the methodological assumptions of situational analysis further below, as well as in my discussion of control levels in the field of change.

### 1.3 Institutionalised Dominance of Static Space

Architects, urbanists and the planning professions work with multiple ideas of space and integrate new perspectives on space into their concepts. However, their work is situated within institutionalised frameworks that have at their base an understanding of space as neutral and static entity. Hence, it seems that despite the efforts being made to revise and further develop ideas of space, we are confronted with the tendency in architecture, and maybe to a lesser degree in urbanism, to engage with the problems of space in over-simplified ways.

In the introduction to this thesis, I have argued that change is an ever present condition in the urban environment; that change is inf luenced by collective human action and of the processes humans conceive to structure their lives and the world; and that urban practice, as well as theory, are challenged by the dynamic nature of cities. Outlining an urban sociology for the twenty-first century, Manuel Castells asserts that "spatial transformation must be understood in the broader context of social transformation" (Castells 2002, p.11). According to Castells, "space does not ref lect society, […] it is a fundamental dimension of society, inseparable from the overall process of social organization and social change." (ibid.) To what extent, then, do established instruments and frameworks accommodate social and transformative dimensions in their conceptualisations of space? While the reality of post-industrial and post-growth restructuring projects as well as the spatial turn in the social sciences led to a rethinking of the urban condition as dynamic and open process (Selle 1994; Fezer and Heyden 2004; Ministerium für Landesentwicklung und Verkehr des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt 2010), we could argue that participants in institutionalised forms of architectural and urban practice continue to work with the all-pervasive model of Euclidean space, which defines space as an empty container into which objects and subjects may be placed and related to each other through measurement. Within this space, the Cartesian coordinate system is fixed to an assumed origin of space, which rests on itself and controls what is around it. Movements are described by means of vectors that are locked in position and follow the Euclidian operations of translation, rotation or ref lection. The space thus defined is coherent, static and neutral. Like time, it is understood to be free of ideology and of subjective bias.

Static space can easily and accurately be reproduced in plans and physical models. It is used for quantifying space, for establishing property rights, for controlling the distribution of uses, for eliminating conf licts, in short, for conventional zoning and planning. It has shaped the instruments through which institutions and professions control and organise space today. The practicability of working with static space, along with the routines established around it, including our learnt perception, reinforces the claims of the model to represent space 'as it is'.

Henri Lefebvre argues this kind of reduction and abstraction of reality is directly related to the commodification of space and the requirements of exchangeability (Lefebvre 1991 [1974], pp.337f, p.341). He highlights the contradictions in the resulting urban environments, which embody multiform fragmentation on the one hand and the striving towards homogeneity on the other (ibid., p.287). Lefebvre seeks to sensitise us to the far reaching effects of leaving aside the temporal and unstable dimension of space, of eliding the differences that contribute towards the production of space, of ignoring human agency and intentionality, of defining political problems of space as problems of engineering, of ignoring the hegemonic and stabilising structural effects which are reproduced with abstract space, of leaving aside the dimension of the everyday and the close-knit web of interactions and human relations that unfold in space and that co-produce space. He argues for a reconceptualisation of space as an extension of human agency, as site and means of intervention, action and change. He proposes an analytic "[…] shift from *things in space* to the actual *production of space* […]" (emphasis in original, ibid., p.37) wherein actors combine their critical conceptualisations of space with the realisation of "counter spaces" and the development of alternative urban practices (Lefebvre 1991 [1974], pp.381f, p.419).

Since Lefebvre formulated his ideas in the 1970s, many critical projects have been conceived that approach space differently. Concepts of spatio-temporality have informed new ways of thinking about the built environment (Harvey 2000, pp.182ff). Process-oriented framings of spatial interventions have been proposed and tested (Heinemann and Schmidt 2004; raumlaborberlin, Maier and Heidelberger Kunstverein 2008; Wolfrum and Brandis 2015). Institutionalised frameworks and models of space are increasingly challenged by groups and actors who see the opportunity to (re-) connect their spatial agendas to the social and political, and in this way to strengthen the impact and relevance of their work. They demand established processes be opened up to accommodate different ways of 'doing' urbanism and architecture (Awan, Schneider and Till 2011).

# 1.4 Positioning of Theory in Relation to Material and Social Worlds

Jane Jacobs suggests that "When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense." (Jacobs 2011 [1961], p.372) The work of architects and urbanists routinely engages with material and social issues. If their work exceeds certain levels of complexity, they cooperate with specialist consultants, sometimes with engineers, who advise on structural stability and the physicality of materials, and sometimes with sociologists, who advise on questions of the social. Based on the institutionalised division of labour they reproduce – unintentionally – what Latour criticises as the "bifurcation" of reality (Latour 2005, p.38), in particular if the specialists emphasise the incommensurability of their domains. This bifurcation separates "the social, or the mind" from "the material, or the natural" (ibid., p.34). Latour argues that the sciences are caught up in modes of enquiry that fail to add to what is given in experience as a result of this condition, and further, that they tend to disqualify what is given in experience (ibid., p.24f). In view of the reductionist perspectives produced in this way, Latour suggests that "what is important to remember is that bifurcation is unfair to both sides: to the human and social side as well as to the non-human or 'natural' side […]" (ibid., pp.15f). Theorising about the epistemological relationship of architecture and society, sociologist and architectural theorist, Albena Yaneva observes similar reductionist effects in cases where one side is used to explain the other (Yaneva 2012, p.37). We could further claim that reductionisms in architecture are connected to the tradition of generating systematising bodies of knowledge, as for example in typology studies, or more recently, in parametrically defined urban models. These approaches seek to control complexity on the basis of predefined categorisations, which often results in the exclusion of issues that do not fit the methodology and the systematics of categories.

However, the growing sensitivity for the mutual relationship of the spatial and the social, in combination with the availability of digital means of analysis and representation, has helped to establish a series of new research perspectives. The emphasising of relational aspects in all things produced by humans has inf luenced actor-network theory, assemblage or situational analysis. In the recent past, we have seen the emergence of a series of architectural and urban research projects that seek to overcome, implicitly or explicitly, the division between the material and social worlds, by means of raising questions that transgress traditional disciplinary boundaries (Harnack 2012; Hebert 2012; Heiler 2013; Wolfrum and Brandis 2015). Similar tendencies are at work in the social sciences, where the sociocentric perspective, with its exclusive focus on interaction or communication, gives way to perspectives that put more weight on materiality, space or the human body (Delitz 2009; Stenberg and Fryk 2012; 2014; Löw 2016 [2001]). In choosing to leave the safety of compartmentalised thinking, they open up new trajectories for architectural and urban analysis. Theorising about the constitution of space, sociologist Martina Löw suggests that

"The observable processes of space constitution in modern society can only be explained when space and society are not defined as two separate realities. If space is defined as uniformly given, then change seems to involve dissolution and destruction; if space is conceived as territory, then society is lost from sight; if space is equated with the actual place, the macrosociological perspectives are inconceivable. It is only when the systematic division between space and action is overcome and space (or spaces) are recognized as social products that it will be possible to understand the various dimensions of constitution." (Löw 2016 [2001], p.103)

It seems that a new generation of research is reemphasising the connectedness of the spatial, the social and the material in different fields. Not only has the spatial turn in the social sciences established new perspectives on the spatiality of the social, it has also opened up new ways for architectural and urban theory to (re-)connect to the social sciences. Perspectives based on relational concepts of space share the understanding that materialities are consequential. In doing so, they connect to the constructivist paradigm in sociology which offers a theoretical framework for the relationship between the material and social worlds. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann argue in the conclusion to their 1966 classic "The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise In the Sociology of Knowledge", that humans, or in the words of Berger and Luckmann, "man" is

"[…] predestined to construct and to inhabit a world with others. This world becomes for him the dominant and definitive reality. Its limits are set by nature, but once constructed, this world acts back upon nature. In the dialectic between nature and the

### 34 The Redundant City

socially constructed world the human organism itself is transformed. In this same dialectic man produces reality and thereby produces himself." (Berger and Luckmann 1966, p.183)

If we understand "reality", or rather, "realities"8 as a contingent product of collectively sustained processes, we acknowledge that they are in constant transition. This means that architecture, as one aspect of reality produced by humans, cannot be assumed to be static. An understanding of architecture that takes into account the consequential aspects of materiality, as well as the effects of social action on space and on the material world, is not trapped in the opposition of architecture and society. In doing so, it gains access to a whole set of new questions, through which it may challenge reductionist approaches to space and the ontological bifurcation of the world.9

# **2. Learning from Criticisms of Scientific Knowledge Production**

# 2.1 Shared Histories of an 'Aesthetics of Matters of Fact'?

At the outset of this chapter, I addressed the co-existence of different framings of knowledge in architectural and urban research, together with the implications, problems and possibilities this may raise. I concluded that research in architecture and urbanism is not a pre-given site, routine or process. Based on the understanding that the way the sciences are perceived in general also affects the understanding of research in architecture and other design-led disciplines, I propose to include in my methodological outline the criticisms of the production of scientific knowledge by Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and Bruno Latour, among others. Rather than restating their arguments, I concentrate on the concepts which I believe are related to the kind of research I intend to pursue and that are in this sense of relevance for the epistemological and methodological positioning of this research project. I also establish parallels between architecture's and urban sociology's shifting claims to scientificity.

There is a long tradition of relating architecture to art, and a more recent tradition of relating architecture to science. What seems to be a contradiction in classification gives expression to the shared epistemological foundations of the two fields. Enquiring into the nature of empiricism and its origins, Bruno Latour suggests that the mimetic relation of copy and model, as a concept, migrated from the arts to the sciences (Latour 2005, p.41f). According to Latour, art and science jointly contributed to an "aesthetics of matter of fact" as it emerged during the 16th century in parallel with the growing interest in the representation of nature (ibid., p.15). Alan Colquhoun observes that "in the Renaissance both the aesthetic and the constructional codes became subject to systematic theory, and art and science were harmonized through the epistemology of a geometric universe." (Colquhoun 1971, p.87) With the formation and separation of engineering as a new academic discipline during the 19th century, architecture

8 Upon arguing the everyday to represent the "dominant" form of reality (Berger and Luckmann 1966, p.21), Berger and Luckmann propose humans have the capacity to distinguish between "multiple realities" (ibid.).

9 I take up this argument in the section "From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern" below.

effectively lost a core component of its research base – the 'firmitas' as conceptualised by Vitruvius. It responded either by re-emphasising its status as a form of art or by institutionalising research in the newly created polytechnics alongside the faculty of engineering. In building practice, architecture claimed a role that integrates and coordinates other disciplines. During this period we see architectural and urban observations and systematisations in the discipline improve in precision and evolve in parallel to debates on style, aesthetics and social issues. Further reorientations occur during the 1920s with the modernist movement's call to introduce technological and scientific principles to the design process. The Bauhaus contributes to this agenda, in particular during the directorship of Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer (Droste 1991, pp.60f and p.193)10. In 1926, Walter Gropius asserted that "the Bauhaus workshops are essentially laboratories in which prototypes of products suitable for mass production and typical of our time are carefully developed and constantly improved." (Gropius 1926, p.96)11 The architects who signed the 1928 La Serraz founding declaration of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture (CIAM), including Hannes Meyer and Ernst May, claim that "through educational work carried out in schools, a body of fundamental truths could be established forming the basis for a domestic science (for example: the general economy of the dwelling, the principles of property and its moral significance, the effects of sunlight, the ill effects of darkness, essential hygiene, rationalization of household economics, the use of mechanical devices in domestic life. etc.)" (CIAM 1928, p.111). The advocates of this perspective declared architecture to have finally become scientific and the design studio a laboratory. In 1929, on the occasion of the CIAM 2 congress in Frankfurt, which was dedicated to the problem of the 'Minimum Dwelling', Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret demanded customs and traditions in architecture be left behind "[…] to seal new pacts in the scientific world and in that of large-scale contemporary production." (Le Corbusier and Jeanneret 1929, p.33)

"Everywhere, in everything, in our daily research, we lack scientific certainty. Physics and chemistry are the territories which we must prospect in the search for suf ficient truths." (emphasis in original, ibid.)

During this period we see similar tendencies in the social sciences and urban sociology, which sought to improve on their epistemology by aligning themselves with the scientific-positivist paradigm by "[…] developing an elaborate set of assumptions about the making of sociology as a science parallel to the natural sciences" (Clarke 2005, p.28). At the beginning of the 20th century, the many different practices and local cultures emerging in rapidly growing cities shifted into the focus of social research. Urban eth-

10 Magdalena Droste observes that during the fourteen years of its existence, the thematic and pedagogic orientation of the Bauhaus had shif ted from the dualism of art/craf t towards art/technology under Gropius and Moholy-Nagy (Droste 1991, p.60), before the art component gave way to social, economic, political and scientific concerns under Hannes Meyer. By then, architecture was considered a product of collaborative ef fort and scientific analysis (ibid., p.193). Within this general development, parallelisms seem to have existed. For example, upon reflecting on his teaching at the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy explicitly states that the material studies conducted in his course were non-scientific in nature, aiming at reconciling art and technology (Moholy-Nagy 2001 [1929], p.21) .

11 The curriculum of 1925 speaks of "praktische Versuchsabteilungen" (Droste 1991, p.136)

nographers studied these social phenomena on their doorsteps, most prominently the loose network of researchers around Robert Park in Chicago, a city which was then one of the busiest places in the United States and a generator of social, technological and economical change (Häussermann and Siebel 2004, p.45; Gieryn 2006). Thomas Gieryn suggests that the Chicago School12 pursued a dual epistemological approach based on the concepts of "field-site" and "laboratory" (Gieryn 2006, p.7ff). On the one hand, the concept of field-site enabled researchers to define the phenomena under study as "*naturally occurring* – not made up in the course of inquiry" (emphasis in original, ibid., p. 13). On the other hand, the concept of laboratory meant that the findings could be assigned a degree of universality through which they could be transferred to other cities (ibid., p.10). The dual perspective established an epistemological framework that oscillated between field and lab, found and made, here and anywhere, immersed and detached (ibid., p.11). Gieryn observes that "untroubled by relativism or ideological distortions of Truth, Chicago School members took for granted that the city of Chicago possessed an a priori, external and objective reality discoverable and describable by systematic scientific methods." (ibid., p.7)13

In Europe, modernist building and planning principles – rationalised and scientifically legitimised – were applied at unprecedented scale with the onset of postwar [re-]construction and urban restructuring. The state of crisis that was to follow14 produced different, to some extent opposing reactions, which in turn inf luenced the choices available for architecture's relations to science. In some responses, architects exploited newly developed or hypothetical technologies in combination with elements of pop culture. Buckminster Fuller, Archigram, the Metabolists or Yona Friedman, among others, worked with this approach. Others assembled around the Design Methodology Movement during the late 1950s through to the 1970s, which sought to

12 Häussermann and Siebel speak of a network of researchers sharing similar views rather than of a narrowly defined "school" (Häussermann and Siebel 2004, p.45). Thomas Gieryn acknowledges the major influence Robert Park and Ernest Burgess had on the school during its heyday, but points to the dif ferent stages of the school's development and the resulting dif ficulties of speaking of "the" Chicago School (Gieryn 2006, p.8). It is not to be confused with the Chicago School of architecture, which is usually associated with Mies van der Rohe at the IIT.

It is now well understood that the dif ferent strands of urban sociology and ethnography did not develop in isolation. Robert Park, when already an experienced urban journalist and holding a degree in philosophy, attended some of Simmel's lectures on sociology in winter term 1899/1900. Häussermann and Siebel suggest that Park might have been less interested in the dichotomy of urban and non-urban human behaviours as studied by Simmel, but rather in the idea of society being constituted by multitudes of dif ferent relations (Häussermann and Siebel 2004, p.45). Thomas Gieryn also mentions Ferdinand Tönnie's conceptualisation of 'Gemeinschaf t' and 'Gesellschaf t' to have influenced ideas about "[…] the mosaic of small traditional villages that comprise (not without disruption, and pain) the modern big city." (Gieryn 2006, p.9)

13 Adele Clarke takes as an example the Normal Curve to illustrate the kind of interpretative bias involved in the research designs of the early scientific strands in the social sciences: "While the fringes or margins are literally contiguous with the centre, we are led to assume they are not constitutive of the 'normal'." (Clarke 2005, p.24) The field is smoothed out and variations are graphically positioned at either "end", suggesting them to constitute "opposites" rather than parts of the same process (ibid.),

14 Here I refer to the accounts of architectural history by Norbert Huse (2008) and sociologist Tilman Harlander (1999, p.253). See also the controversy about the Pruitt–Igoe housing estate, built in St. Louis, Missouri in 1956, demolished in stages between 1972 and 1976 (Jencks 2011, p.26).

replace that which was conceived as unscientific intuition in the design process with a more systematic approach derived from systems theory and mathematical models (Frampton 2000, p.357; Cross 2001). Cedric Price and systems theorist Gordon Pask proposed deploying cybernetics to approach architectural problems during the early 1960s (Price 2003, pp.69ff; Mathews 2005). Since the 1980s, the Space Syntax methodology by Bill Hillier and others has employed mathematical tools for the analysis of space (Hillier 2007 [1996], p.1). While some understand the postmodern turn as a move away from the undisputed authority of the sciences, towards more complex and pluralistic notions of architecture (Jencks 2011, pp.40ff), technology and the sciences have never ceased to be an inspiration for architects. The gradual takeover of "Digitalism" (Colletti 2011) and the application of information technology in all domains of architectural activity, seems to have resulted in further changes in architecture's relations to science. This embraces questions of method and practice, as well as the speed and extent to which new ideas are shared. Addressing the relationship of architecture to science and art today, Bill Hillier suggests that

"Architecture […] is both art and science in the sense that it requires both the processes of abstraction by which we know science and the processes of concretion by which we know art. […] It is the fact that the architect designs with the spatial stuf f of living that builds the science of architecture into the art of architecture." (Hillier 2007 [1996], p.7)

### 2.2 About Raising New Questions and Taking a Risk

During the period when modernism and its goal of establishing scientific standards in architecture and urbanism emerged, philosopher of science Karl Popper developed a critique of science15 based on the analysis of the production of scientific knowledge. Popper published his work under the title "Logik der Forschung" in Vienna in autumn 193416, but it was not until 1959 that the English translation titled "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" (Popper 2002b [1934]) brought this part of his work to a wider audience. By then he was already well known for his enquiry into political philosophy and his critique of historicism. In "Open Society and Its Enemies", published in 1945 while in exile in New Zealand (Popper 2013 [1945]), Popper argues that essentialist views of history and the belief that history unfolds according to universal laws contribute to the formation of totalitarianism in societies. Returning to the sociology of knowledge and to the critique of scientific knowledge, Popper published "Conjectures and Refutations" in 1963 (2002a [1963]), which consists of an anthology of papers and lectures written by Popper between 1937 and 1960. Although Popper has predominantly written for the scientific community and for scholars in the philosophy of science, some of his ideas found their way into the work of theorists concerned with architecture, urbanism and design. In particular his juxtaposition of the utopian model and incrementalism, and his concept of the open society have been widely taken up in architectural and urban

15 In this critique, Popper partly excludes mathematics and logics, to which he refers to as "pure sciences" (Popper 1953, p.67, p.83).

16 The imprint states 1935. For information on translation and date of publication, see Popper (2002b, p.xii).

theory (Rowe and Koetter 1978, p.122; Selle 1994, pp.49ff; Sennett 2007, p.517; Rieniets, Sigler and Christiaanse 2009, p.25). His concepts of "critical attitude" (Popper 1953, p.64) and learning from past mistakes seem to offer further connections for design-related forms of knowledge.

Popper's criticism of observationalist-inductivist empiricism and of inductivist generalisation as scientific method takes as a starting point the view that positive outcomes in an experiment can never conclusively verify a scientific theory – there could always be the yet undetected exception or anomaly challenging the theory (Popper 2002b [1934], p.3ff). Accordingly, in the preface to "Conjectures and Refutations" Popper summarises his conceptualisation of scientific knowledge as follows:

"The way in which knowledge progresses, and especially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by *conjectures*. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted *refutations*, which include severely critical tests. […] Criticism of our conjectures is of decisive importance: by bringing out our mistakes it makes us understand the dif ficulties of the problem which we are trying to solve." (emphasis in original, Popper 2002a [1963], pp.xi-xii)

In this paradigm, the most thoroughly developed method, research approach, theory or design proposition sooner or later become questionable. They are temporal in character and are eventually replaced, through a process of criticism and testing. Popper suggests that "the most important function of observation and reasoning, and even of intuition and imagination, is to help us in the critical examination of those bold conjectures which are the means by which we probe into the unknown." (Popper 1960, p.37). According to Popper, research endeavours that are refuted have not been made in vain. Refutations do not 'nullify', but rather open up new trajectories for research. Based on this chance to build upon past experience and the view that research should focus on the pressing problems of the present, Popper advocates pragmatist problem solving rather than addressing the speculative problems of a distant utopia (Popper 1947, pp.485f). The 'learning from our mistakes' is central to Popper's notion of tradition, for Popper observes that "[…] the tradition of critical discussion is the only practicable way of expanding […] our conjectural and hypothetical knowledge" (Popper 1958, p.204). Ralf Dahrendorf, who refers to Popper's concepts in many of his writings, expands on this idea and applies it to human activity beyond the scientific domain, using the term "Entwurf" (design) (Dahrendorf 1986 [1967], p.II). He stresses that trial and error contribute significantly to the advancement of knowledge (ibid.) and demands, accordingly, that there should always be controversy about the assumptions that inform knowledge and collective actions (ibid.). This relates to Popper's proposition that social and political goals cannot be determined scientifically (Popper 1947, p.482) and that decisions on ends need to emerge from discursive realms beyond science (ibid.). Implicit in this view is the idea of the critical scientist, who engages in this discourse as an active member of the open society.

17 Richard Sennett mentions Karl Popper in one of the versions of "The Open City" (Sennett n.d., p.5). Further connections in this version of the text are made to Charles Darwin, Niklas Luhmann's concept of autopoiesis (ibid.), and the criticisms of Jane Jacobs (ibid., p.6), among others.

Pertaining to the question of when a theory qualifies as scientific, Popper establishes, with reference to ancient Greek philosophy, the distinction between the "dogmatic" and "critical attitudes" (Popper 1953, p.64). Popper suggests that the propensity in humans to detect regularities in the environment, and to project expectations and laws upon nature could be subsumed as "dogmatic behaviour", and the corresponding mode of thought as "*dogmatic attitude*" (emphasis in original, ibid.). This kind of knowledge seeks to exclude observations and propositions that are not in line with the expectations (ibid.). Following Popper, the dogmatic provides stability and protects approximations from being prematurely rejected (ibid.). The "critical attitude", Popper argues, emerged as an alternative in non-dogmatic schools of thought18 and evolved further through cycles of cultural practice (ibid.). Similar to its dogmatic predecessor, the critical school draws from myths, expectations and hypotheses, but it is prepared to question, modify, or reject them (ibid., p.65). In the critical tradition, a theory is passed on together with the encouragement to critically engage with it and improve upon it (ibid., p.66).

If we were to position the productions of architecture and urbanism within Popper's model of the dogmatic and critical, we would, perhaps, find most of them drawn towards the dogmatic, for many of the activities in this field are concerned with the (re-)production of pre-defined outcomes. The corresponding research is directed towards known and widely recognised problems. It is preoccupied with optimisation and practical innovation within given frameworks, with the identification of best-practice projects, and typically includes the search for practical applications of technologies that have emerged in other disciplines. The kind of operational criticism prevailing in this dogmatic field seeks to increase efficiency, profitability and predictability. However, we may also find a number of decidedly critical productions. The critical is not reluctant to challenge existing frameworks and inherited ideas. In critical enquiry, the wider framing is seen as part of the problem under examination. Both orientations, the dogmatic and the critical, rarely occur in pure form. Architecture and urbanism occupy a field where the dogmatic and critical meet. As noted in the section on knowledge production, research in architecture and urbanism can choose whether to emphasise and work towards optimisation and efficiency, whether in this sense to follow the dogmatic route of a pre-defined project, or whether to emphasise the critical and in this way be challenged by epistemological openness. Different orientations are justifiable, for the critical relies on the dogmatic as its prime target, and the dogmatic needs criticism to maintain its capacity to deliver efficiency and reliable solutions to the multitude of recurrent standard problems that architecture and urbanism have to address every day. If seen through the lens of Popper's criticism, research in architecture and urbanism thus offers a series of different routes, each with its specific possibilities and limitations. As indicated by the title of this chapter, and explained in greater detail at a later stage, this research project follows a critical approach in which non-standard, non-predefined questions are raised and worked with.

Finally, Popper's proposal for judging the quality of a theory could be adapted to establish an indicative benchmark for a research project. In Popper's view, the scientific significance of a theory is defined by its explanatory power and the way it stands

18 Popper suggests that the school established by Thales was the first of its kind which did not pursue the preservation of a dogma (Popper 1953, p.67).

up to and relates to criticisms (Popper 1958, p.209). Popper claims that on the level of theory "[…] we do not prefer *every* non-falsified theory—only one which, in the light of criticism, appears to be better than its competitors […]" (emphasis in original, Popper 1953, p.74). Correspondingly, Popper proposes a clearly defined distinction between what he conceives as interesting, or uninteresting theory. He suggests that "[…] every interesting and powerful statement must have a low probability; and *vice versa*: a statement with a high probability will be scientifically uninteresting, because it says little and has no explanatory power" (emphasis in original, Popper 1953, p.77).

In summary, the series of methodological and epistemological principles of Popper's theory of knowledge may inform the setting-up of a research design in architecture and urbanism with the following objectives: to learn from past mistakes as well as existent criticisms of non-dogmatic examiners; to test new research results against past solutions, together with the claims of established theories; and to look beyond known problems and the framings associated with them. In line with Popper, it is justifiable for research to 'take a risk' because concepts with lower probability are more interesting, and because attracting criticism is prerequisite to the process of learning.

# 2.3 Instability of Scientific Knowledge and its Movement 'Away From'

The discontinuous development of the sciences are the subject of a series of key analytical and interpretative writings, which have produced doubts about the stability of scientific knowledge itself. Three years after the English translation of "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" by Karl Popper had been published (Popper 2002b [1934]), Thomas Kuhn initiated a controversy with "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (Kuhn 2012 [1962]). Kuhn's sociology and history of science suggests that scientific research is determined, governed and legitimised by temporal paradigms shared by scientific communities. The paradigm defines the types of problems that are admitted to the scientific process and provides the directions for solving them. Preceded by phases of crisis during which anomalies are accumulated, paradigms replace each other periodically through scientific revolution (ibid.)19. Imre Lakatos, a former disciple of Popper, takes both Popper's and Kuhn's propositions further and speaks of "research programmes" rather than research paradigms, whereby multiple research programs may coexist next to each other. The stabilising mechanism that enables continuity despite pressures of change in this model is defined as a "protective belt", which consists of "auxiliary hypotheses" that are placed around the "hard core" of the programme ('protective belt' and 'hard core' in single quotation marks in the original, Lakatos 1978, p.4, pp.48ff).

Thomas Kuhn suggests that the sciences, during recurrent intervals of crisis and transition, depend on the making of decisions that do not fully rest on scientific principles and that seek orientation in normative categories, such as the "future promise" of a theory (Kuhn 2012 [1962], p.156); that this process is framed by conditions of

19 In a similar way, for Michel Foucault "[…] these sudden take-of fs, these hastenings of evolution, these transformations which fail to correspond to the calm, continuist image" (Foucault 1980, p.112) are periods during which new "regimes" (ibid.) of scientific truth are established through controversy and the reciprocal ef fects of knowledge/power, blurring the certainty of what "governs" (ibid.) scientific statements and how statements govern each other (ibid.).

exceptional confrontation and criticism (ibid., p.147); and that the sciences move away from the concepts that have failed to provide satisfactory explanations of the world (ibid., p.170). Philosopher Ian Hacking highlights in his 50th anniversary introduction to Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" that the moving "away from" seriously challenged the view deeply embedded in the Western tradition that the sciences would follow a rational path of progress "towards" truth in the sense of an all-embracing account of nature and of the world (Hacking 2012, p.xxxv). After the idea of directionality in the development of nature had been questioned by Charles Darwin more than a hundred years earlier – not without lasting opposition (Beer 2008, pp.xxvi–xxxii)20 – Kuhn felt the need to raise the question whether it would "[…] really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal?" (Kuhn 2012 [1962], p.170). The ensuing controversy about scientific relativism is indicative of how challenging the idea must have been at that time.

Similarly, architecture and urbanism seem to struggle recurrently with their own crises of directionality. Popper's rejection of "utopian rationalism" (Popper 1947, p.484), which is based on the view that pursuing utopian ideals results in different degrees of violence in the long term (ibid.), entered architectural and urban theory where it has produced a dilemma. In their broad discussion of utopia in architecture and urbanism, Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter highlight the capacity of 'ideal cities' and utopias to make visible the gap between the actual and the possible and to provide visions of alternative futures (Rowe and Koetter 1978, ibid., p.49). Rowe and Koetter responded by distinguishing between utopia as blueprint "prescription" and utopia as "metaphor" (ibid., p.123)21, which enabled them to acknowledge the problematic of the blueprint while rescuing utopia as an operative model for architecture and urbanism. They suggested that the model, despite its obvious orientation towards the future, also connects with the past and with memory (ibid., p.49). If we relate this proposition to Thomas Kuhn's concept of movements in the sciences, and to the Popperian 'learning from our mistakes', it may define a movement 'away from' the shortcomings and failures of our past architectural and urban concepts, and, at the same time, a movement 'towards' a contingent future that is negotiated within an open and therefore contested field of possibilities. Positioning an architectural and urban research project within such a construct makes explicit that other ways of "doing architecture" (Awan, Schneider and Till 2011) are possible. It is in this context that the role of the researcher as "critical examiner" (Popper 1960, p.37) becomes political, that the researcher enters a discursive arena, and that established research and design routines need to be questioned and put to the test. We could claim that, if research in architecture and urbanism seeks to detach its research object, method or output from such questions, on the grounds of a proclaimed scientificity and dogmatic attitude, it omits an important aspect of research work. And further, if it seeks to work from behind a protective belt to stave off

20 Discussing this problematic in the introduction to Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species", Gillian Beer refers to Creationism or Intelligent Design as alternative, directional conceptualisations of evolution.

21 Rowe and Koetter use the term metaphor together with, or exchangeably with, "image" (ibid., p.14) and "prophecy" (ibid., p.48), or "reference" (ibid., p.14) or "model" (ibid., p.48).

criticism22, it may find it difficult to connect to issues of relevance beyond the narrow confines of a discipline.

# 2.4 From 'Matters of Fact' to 'Matters of Concern'

Recent controversy about post-truth politics (German 'postfaktische Politik') has highlighted the problematic of arguing on the basis of facts. The construct of the post-truth/ factual emphasises the instrumental ignorance of facts on the one hand, while asserting the credibility of facts on the other. However, problems with the latter arise if facts are used as if they speak for themselves – an issue repeatedly analysed and criticised by Bruno Latour in publications and a series of lectures and papers (Latour 2004; 2005; 2008). Based on his analysis of how we produce and use scientific knowledge today, Bruno Latour argues that we should replace the taken-for-granted attitude towards "matters of fact" with the less naïve and less innocent concept of "matters of concern", which does not negate the political dimension and the tendencies of scientific practice (ibid.). In this alternative concept, scientific research is understood as an activity that is closely tied to the conditions in which it takes place, rather than following a linear and autonomous progression of knowledge. For Latour 'matters of fact' are the result of an "[...] amazingly narrow, specialized, type of scenography using a highly coded type of narrative, [...] a very precise repertoire of attitude and attention." (Latour 2005, p.38) Latour understands 'matters of fact' as being located within the artificiality and peculiarity of the scientific model, and as having originated from the epistemological distinction between 'primary' and 'secondary' qualities of objects in the tradition of early empiricism (ibid., p.13). According to this distinction, primary qualities are properties of objects that are independent from the observer and her perception, as for example motion, geometry and other properties related to the Newtonian concepts of space and time. As they are considered to exist in the object itself, this view claims that they can be determined with certainty and that they represent objective facts. Properties that rely on sensory experience in the observer, such as colour and sound, are defined as secondary properties. According to early empiricist view, this experience is connected with subjective judgement and cannot provide objective facts (ibid., pp.12f).23

Latour suggests typical problems and misunderstandings of this distinction to include the assignment of primary qualities to the human as if it was a category of objects (naturalisation) (Latour 2005, p.15), as well as a reductionist attitude towards objects, through treating them as being defined exclusively by their material aspects (ibid., pp.15f). He further suggests that although postmodern criticisms and deconstruction have significantly broadened the scope of critical enquiry, in particular of the concepts of modernity, these criticisms did not succeed in liberating themselves from the modernist divide between what was "social, symbolic, subjective, lived and what was material, real, objective and factual" (Latour 2008, p.6).

22 Patrik Schumacher demands such a protection for what he terms "avant-garde style" respectively "avant-garde research" (Schumacher 2010, p.280).

23 Latour traces back the distinction of primary and secondary qualities to the works of Galileo and John Locke (Latour 2005, p.12), and builds upon criticism formulated by Alfred North Whitehead and Gabriel Tarde, as well as Williams M. Ivins (Latour 2005).

Latour refers to the proposed shift in attitude as "second empiricism" – as opposed to the first empiricism handed down through the history of science (ibid.). He suggests that "we don't have, on the one hand, a harsh world made of indisputable matters of fact and, on the other, a rich mental world of human symbols, imaginations and values" (Latour 2005, p.38). Latour argues that if it is acknowledged that "science is *adding itself* to the world" (emphasis in original, Latour 2005, p.24), a shared territory may be established in which the sciences represent one possibility – among others – "to fold oneself inside" the "f low of experience" (ibid.), rather than accelerating its reduction and disqualification (ibid.). Central to this second empiricism is Latour's concept of 'matters of concern', for which he provides the following analogy: "A matter of concern is what happens to a matter of fact when you add to it its whole scenography, much like you would do by shifting your attention from the stage to the whole machinery of a theatre." (ibid., p.39) Thus, 'matters of concern' come together with information about how, and for which purpose, knowledge is being produced, because "[...] they distinguish clearly the population of those for whom they matter." (ibid., p.47). While 'matters of fact' give authority to those who claim to be in the possession of indisputable knowledge – to "shut the dissenters' voice down" (ibid., p.39), 'matters of concern' build upon dispute and acknowledge the political dimension of objects and artefacts (ibid., p.47). In this sense, 'matters of concern' do not claim to be ahistorical and immune to change.

On the occasion of a keynote lecture given at the "Networks of Design" conference, Bruno Latour suggests that the distinction between 'matters of fact' and 'matters of concern' could be more clearly made through the concept of 'design'.

"When things are taken has having been well or badly designed then they no longer appear as matters of fact. So as their appearance as matters of fact weakens, their place among the many matters of concern that are at issue is strengthened." (Latour 2008, p.4)

According to Latour, there is a transitory aspect in designing, a link to shifts in possibilities and fashions (ibid., p.5). "Designing […] is an antidote to hubris and to the search for absolute certainty, absolute beginnings, and radical departures." (ibid.) Political theorist Chantal Mouffe takes Latour's proposition further, suggesting that the work of designing, of composing and decomposing, is "[…] eminently political [for] it does not take place in a neutral terrain in which the observers could impartially decide if things have been composed in a 'good' or 'bad' way." (Mouffe 2013, p.81)24 Mouffe proposes that conf licting interests in this process have to be understood as articulations of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic struggles (ibid.). Despite these differences in the foregrounding of the political, Mouffe asserts that they both "[…] broadly belong to the same epistemological camp […]" (ibid., p.80). They both seem to agree about the crucial role of criticism in reproductive processes, be it as 'design' or the more politically orientated "articulation" according to Chantal Mouffe (ibid., p.81). Being critical of criticism, Latour asserts that criticism itself has contributed towards the bifurcation of the world. In his essay "Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From

24 In the article "Parteiisches Design" Jesko Fezer establishes a series of connections between Chantal Mouf fe's conflict-centred perspectives and designing, and emphasises the distinction between politics and 'the political' (Fezer 2018, pp.165f f).

### 44 The Redundant City

Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern" Latour seeks to raise awareness for the effects of criticism on that which is criticised (Latour 2004). According to Latour, the self-affirmative routines prevailing in the social sciences have led to a crisis of "the critical landscape" (ibid., pp.237ff), which led him to the formulation of an alternative that is supposed to add to the criticised, rather than subtracting from it:

"The critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles. The critic […] of fers the participants arenas in which to gather. The critic is not the one who alternates haphazardly between antifetishism and positivism25 […], but the one for whom, if something is constructed, then it means it is fragile and thus in great need of care and caution." (ibid., p.246)

For Chantal Mouffe, this concept of criticism does not reach far enough. While for Latour the "adding of scenography" is an epistemological means to see the world as being constructed together with all the supporting machinery attached, Mouffe's interest is more in the machinery itself. In Mouffe's view, Latour's framings remain too narrowly defined, which, according to Mouffe, results in "[…] disempowering political effects because they preclude the possibility of revealing and challenging power relations." (Mouffe 2013, p.81) For Mouffe, criticism is a device to bring about change. Mouffe and Latour both seem to share the view that the production of knowledge cannot be considered a self-evident process. They demand research be accompanied by criticism; they also demand research problems be more broadly conceived, so as to include critical ref lection on the enquiring self and the situatedness of the research project. In this way, research and theory have their blind spots, political tendencies, or otherwise silently accepted presumptions openly addressed, so that they can be approached as 'matters of concern'.

# **3. Assembling Architectural and Urban Research Perspectives**

# 3.1 Approaching the Urban as Open Construct

Urban theorist Neil Brenner suggests that "the urban is a theoretical construct [and] not a pregiven site, space or object" (Brenner 2013, p.96). With reference to my previous remarks on the problems of research in architecture and urbanism, we could assert that urban research is not a pre-given site or self-evident process. In this sense, Brenner emphasises the significance of making explicit how the urban is approached in research, since

25 As part of his analysis, Latour provides the following definitions: "Antifetishists debunk objects they don't believe in by showing the productive and projective forces of people; then, without ever making the connection, they use objects they do believe in to resort to the causalist or mechanist explanation and debunk conscious capacities of people whose behavior they don't approve of." (Latour 2004, pp.240f) According to Latour's analysis, the two strands of criticism are strategically held separate and used at will by the critic, according to his or her momentous tactics (ibid.).

"[…] questions of conceptualisation lie at the heart of all forms of urban research, even the most empirical, contextually embedded, and detail orientated. They are not mere background conditions or framing devices but constitute the very interpretative fabric through which urbanists weave together metanarratives, normative-political orientations, analyses of empirical data, and strategies of intervention." (ibid.)

The conventions and frameworks shared in a research community exert a significant inf luence on the type of questions that are raised or excluded (Biggs and Büchler 2011, p.66). The way the urban is conceptualised has inf luence on our choice of methods, the scale and depth of enquiry, the type of knowledge we seek to generate, and the envisaged nature of possible outcomes. According to Brenner, conceptualising the urban and the positioning of research within this conceptualisation become critical steps that have to precede any empirical and specific engagement with the urban domain (Brenner 2013, pp.96f). One of the first tasks, then, is to theoretically address the urban and to position the intended research accordingly. In order to distinguish the urban from the city, and process from built form, Henri Lefebvre draws a conceptual connection between movement and openness, and rejects the idea that the urban could be approached as closed and static object.

"The urban phenomenon is made manifest as movement. Therefore, it cannot achieve closure. The centrality and the dialectical contradiction it implies exclude closure, that is to say, immobility." (Lefebvre 2003 [1970], p.174)

It seems apparent that such an understanding of the urban cannot work on the basis of pre-defined concepts and methodologies that strive for closure. If, for the purpose of research, the urban is abstracted as a "zone of thought, representation, imagination, or action" (Brenner 2013, p.96), how far will we travel if the urban is limited by our imagination and projections alone? What does it mean, from the perspective of methodology, to think in terms of openness rather than in terms of demarcation and closure? How can we work within this paradigm, and how can we establish an argumentation, a research project? Pertaining to these questions, if we define as our point of departure the urban as a zone of thought which is essentially open, we will have to conceive of ways to exploit its potentiality while addressing the many conceptual and methodological challenges that come along with this decision.

# 3.2 Reframing Critical Theory as Critical Urban Theory

On the occasion of the "Cities for People, Not for Profit" international conference held at the Centre for Metropolitan Studies (CMS) in Berlin in 2008, Neil Brenner discussed the framework for a critical urban theory which connects to concepts that originated in the work of philosophers Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas and others (Brenner 2012, p.18). This discussion does not seem to be self-evident, for Bruno Latour suggested in 2004 that critical theory, as represented by the Frankfurt School, "[…] died away long ago". And indeed, the demolition of the iconic AfE Tower26 in Frank-

26 The 32-storey, 116 m AfE tower (acronym for 'Abteilung für Erziehungswissenschaf t') accommodated from its opening in 1972 until 2013 seminar rooms and of fices of the Social Science and Education

furt in 2014, former academic home to members of the Frankfurt School, does not suggest it could have been otherwise. However, since the days of the Frankfurt School, the concepts of critical theory have migrated to other fields of enquiry, including architecture and urban theory. With the fading of the tradition in philosophy, these strands of critical theory found themselves challenged by the task of advancing the theory from within their disciplines on the one hand, and by means of connecting to each other on the other. Kenneth Frampton, for example, in the introduction to his history of modern architecture, highlights the significance of the ideas of the Frankfurt School for his work as a historian (Frampton 2007 [1980], p.9), as well as for the (re-)politisation of academic research in general. Pertaining to the relationship between architecture and scientific-empirical modes of knowledge production, in "The Mutual Limits of Architecture and Science", Frampton demands that research and architectural practice be confronted with critical theory so that "[…] whether we like it or not, the interface between architecture and science returns to the political." (Frampton 2000, p.368) However, to speak of a clearly demarcated critical theory in architecture and urbanism would be misleading, for there is no single point of reference, no 'school', or unified discourse. Critical theory in this field may be conceived as a shared attitude, as a research perspective which may be used "[…] as a varied terrain in which to reconfigure architecture and its theorised interpretations." (Borden and Rendell 2000, p.16) Neil Brenner provides some orientation in this varied terrain by identifying, among the many sub-concepts of critical theory and with recourse to the root concepts developed by the Frankfurt School, a series of assumptions that could inform a contemporary, reframed critical approach to urban and architectural research (Brenner 2012, pp.15– 19). He suggests that:

departments at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, the academic home of the Frankfurt School. It was designed by the federal architecture department of Hessen and was related to architect Ferdinand Kramer's restructuring plan for the university campus. Kramer, former member of Ernst May's 'New Frankfurt' team and living in exile in the United States since the late 1930s, had been appointed university architect by then rector Max Horkheimer. The concrete tower acquired an iconic status as a site of student protests and political action.