City planning initiatives and redesign of urban structures often
become mired in debate and delay. Despite the fact that cities are
considered to be dynamic and flexible spaces -- never finished but
always under construction -- it is very difficult to change
existing urban structures; they become fixed, obdurate, securely
anchored in their own histories as well as in the histories of
their surroundings. In Unbuilding Cities, Anique Hommels looks at
the tension between the malleability of urban space and its
obduracy, focusing on sites and structures that have been subjected
to "unbuilding" -- redesign or reconfiguration. She brings the
concepts of science and technology studies (STS) to bear on the
study of cities. Viewing the city as a large sociotechnological
artifact, she demonstrates the usefulness of STS tools that were
developed to analyze other technological artifacts and explores in
detail the role of obduracy in sociotechnical change. Her analysis
distinguishes three concepts of obduracy: interactionist, in which
actors with diverging views are constrained by fixed ways of
thinking and interacting; relational, in which change is difficult
because of technology's embeddedness in sociotechnical networks;
and enduring, in which persistent traditions influence the
development of technology over time.Hommels examines the tensions
between obduracy and change in three urban redesign projects in the
Netherlands: a renovated city center that fell into drabness and
disrepair; a highway system that runs through a densely populated
urban area; and a high-rise housing project, designed according to
modernist precepts and built for middle-class families, that became
a haven for unemployment and crime. Unbuilding Cities contributes
to a productive fusion of STS and urban studies.
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