CITY - WAYS OF SEEING
THE MEMORY OF THE CITY AS AN ENACTED PROCESS [A TEMPORAL MOMENT]
[ESSAY KINETIC CITY – RAHUL MELHOTRA]
It is interesting to realize the nature of the hybrid city, how everyone constantly tries to claim one’s rightness or image in a city space. The Ganesh festival when the entire city becomes a backdrop [the static imagery], during the procession of the idol is fascinating. It marks the notion of a cyclic time in the city. Mehrotra addresses the duality of the permanent entity and the temporary/momentary entity and how both play with one’s memory, a new viewpoint to a city space.
IMAGE REF: https://www.aarome.org/it/node/4078
THE CITY AS AN AUTOMATIVE COLLECTIVE IN AN EQUITABLE MANNER
[GREAT CITY TERRIBLE PLACE - RANJIT HOSKOTE]
Hoskote emphasizes on how by separating the “us” and “another” one starts breaking the collective and thinks about it in a very narrow-minded sense. The segregation of gated communities into these smaller territories [hyper-protected buildings] disrupts the collectiveness of a city where the real story is of exclusion, inequity, and indifference of the city elites to the subaltern classes. He stresses on equitable manner which talks about equity in terms of opportunities, living conditions, access to services, institutions and economics which encourages a collective approach.
THE EXISTENCE OF CITIES IN A NON-PHYSICAL SPACE
[PERSONAL INSIGHTS ON CITY AND MOTION]
The idea of cities as “places in motion” and people using the city as a respite from their family conditions is intriguing. It breaks free from the generic conception of “city as outside and home as inside”. Hence, the concept of the city as a shared public space becomes fundamental and questions the pretense of governance as a restrictive body imposing de congestion. This confronts the dichotomy in a city of it being crowded yet people experiencing loneliness.
ANALYSIS
[CITY AND THE COLLECTIVE]
All three takes on the idea of "seeing a city" depict a sense of a collective approach on the cityscape. A city is a place for imagined equity, as it offers dreams to millions. All the three ways of perceiving the city revolves around the aspect of shared public spaces and generates a viewpoint of building consciousness in a city. It also addresses the multiplicity and the hybrid nature vested in a city. It mainly helps one realize the importance of the factor of scale in a city and the necessity of a bottom up planning system through a collective opinion of the public over the existing Neo-Libral top down design approach.
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