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The Open City: a city which encourages adaptation and intervention

According to Richard Sennett city’s fail to meet society’s needs when they are over-determined and leave no opportunity to be adapted, both physically and socially, by its citizens.

Sennett claims that this over-determination of a city’s form and function, which has been realised most notable in the modernist urban design projects of the early twentieth century, results in what he calls a ‘Brittle City’. Such a Brittle City degenerates quickly, due to the lack of interventions and adaptations made by the inhabitants and can also be seen to represents a wider view of society which is closed. He champions the idea of an open city, one which allows people to partake in its development and to adapt it at will. While the open city would feel like Naples, the closed city would feel more like Frankfurt!

His ideas ideas are highly influence by Jane Jacob’s. He gives three strategies for creating an Open City:

1. Creating porous walls - where the distinction between inside and outside is blurred dn intentionally ambiguous.

2. Creating incomplete form - where buildings can additions made to them.

3. Creating narratives of development - whereby the urbanist creates spatial stories, complete with unexpected twists and turns, so that the inhabitant feels like he is on a journey of discovery.

4. Creating democratic space - where people can meet and interact.

 

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