Urban Visions and Blind Spots:
Projecting Urban Space seminar
Ákos Moravánszky
The re-emergence of concepts such as ‘the picturesque’ after World War II was a reaction to urban concepts of the Modern Movement, which still addressed social, economical and cultural issues. The focus on the image of the city, which started with publications on "Townscape” in Architectural Review, and continued with Kevin Lynch’s "Image of the City”, Venturi & Scott Brown’s, "Learning from Las Vegas” and Aldo Rossi’s melancholical look at cities of the past, resulted in the splintering of the discipline, in proposals as diverse as New Urbanism and the Generic City. But the seemingly different proposals similarly focus on the image to grasp urban reality. The emergence of the "third dimension” of urban space supposed to re-connect urban design with the social sciences. As goes for all projections, however, urban space as a projection allows urban theory to focus on issues which the projection-makers wish to render visible. Like all projections, it is an ideological tool which hides ist own constructedness. If the concept of urban space is taken as self-evident, without being relentlessly doubted, questioned and defended, it could become a rhetorical device which conceals, and even mystifies basic characteristics of the urban land and the socio-economical "production of surface“ for work, commerce or dwelling.