4p. Aspa Gospodini Uth Prd Dp 2002 02_en

Department of Planning and Regional Development, School of Engineering, University of Thessaly Pedion Areos, 38334 Volos, Greece, Tel: +304210 74462, e-mail: [email protected], http://www.prd.uth.gr

Available online at: http://www.prd.uth.gr/research/DP/2002/uth-prd-dp-2002-02_en.pdf

Discussion Paper Series, 8(2):19-36

European cities and place-identity

Aspa Gospodini Assistant Professor, University of Thessaly,

Dept. of Planning and Regional Development, Pedion Areos 38 334, Volos, Greece.

Tel. +30 421 0 74429, fax. +30 421 0 74380 e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Scholars concerned with different aspects of cities (formal, spatial, social, economic) converge in pointing place identity – the city’s distinctive characteristics - as a powerful means to play right with intercity competition in the era of economic globalisation and European integration. To enhance place-identity in European cities, European Union and local governments have been supporting built heritage; financing research and projects on conservation of buildings and historic urban cores. Since European cities are nowadays more than ever being transformed into multi-ethnic and multi-cultural entities, is built heritage - usually reflecting national identities and often exhibiting common morphological properties – still capable to spatially represent contemporary European urban societies? What might additionally be an effective means for creating place-identity in contemporary European cities? This paper examines the potential of innovative design to reflect in space post-modern cultural pluralism, create new place-identities and consolidate new social ‘locale’. It develops the argument that by creating experimental new types of public space, avant-garde design schemes fist, allow themselves to divergent interpretations by individuals and second, become new landmarks both enhancing place identity and promoting economic (especially tourism) development of cities. In these ways, they offer ‘membership’ to all social groups and generate new social ‘locale’.

Key words: place-identity, built heritage, innovative design of space, European cities.

March 2002

European cities and place-identity 21

Discussion Paper Series, 2002, 8(2)

1. Introduction: European cities facing an identity crisis.

In the course of the last decade or so, the functioning of the European urban system has shifted. As suggested by a large number of studies (see for instance, CEC 1992, Jensen-Butler, et al. 1997), European cities have been increasingly linked to forces external to their national boundaries; they appear to function as unified network of urban settlements in competition. There are scholars such as Castels (1993) who believe that the more the national states of Europe fade in their role, the more cities will emerge as a driving force in the making of new Europe. Others go as far as to argue “Europe is becoming a community of cities rather than a community of nations or/and countries” (Simioforidis 1998, p.144).

The functioning of European cities as a global urban system in competition and their enhanced role as the driving force of new Europe, have been accompanied by an increasing identity crisis of cities rooted in two realities:

Mass migrations, legal or illegal, are increasingly transforming European cities into heterogeneous, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies (see King 1993, 1995, Hall 1995, Graham 1998) and

The march to supra-nationality within European Union blurs national identities (Castels 1993, Gillis 1994, Graham1998).

In predicting how European cities may react, scholars’ points of view appear to formulate opposing lines: On one line, Castels (1993) for instance, believes that under such a crisis, European cities will be increasingly oriented towards their local heritage - built heritage, cultural heritage - because first, the weakening of national identities makes people uncertain about the power holders of their destiny, thus, pushing them into withdrawal either individualistic (neo-liberalism) or collective (neo-nationalsim); and second, the consolidation of heterogeneous populations in European cities happens at a period when national identities are most threatened. Similarly, Harvey (1989) believes that the response will be an increase in ‘xenophobia’ and the resurgence of reactionary place-bound politics as people search for old certainties and struggle to construct or retain a more stable or bounded place identity. The protection and enhancement of built heritage appears as one such attempt to fix the meanings of places, while enclosing and defending them.

On the opposite line, there are scholars (see Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996, Graham (ed.) 1998, Graham, Ashworth, Tunbridge 2000) who believe that linking the struggle of European cities for place identity to conserved urban landscape has been a conventional and largely unchallenged wisdom. Built heritage is a contested entity; manipulations in the production of built heritage in European cities have rendered it an entity that is most nationally identified and even morphologically standardised; thus, it

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UNIVERSITY OF THESSALY, Department of Planning and Regional Development

seems to be unable to work as a means of establishing and consolidating place-identity in our post-modern, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural European urban societies.

2. Destabilising built heritage as a dominant means of

creating place-identity.

For more than three decades now, built heritage in European cities has been a focus of attention in the discourse of architecture, urban design and planning - particularly in the 80’s during the heydays of ‘Post-modern Movement’ and the typological approaches in design (see Krier 1978, Rossi 1982, Vidler 1978, Rowe and Koetter 1978, Colquhoun 1981). European Union has been also supporting built heritage of cities by launching special programs1 and financing research and projects concerning conservation, renewal and revitalisation of historical centres, traditional urban cores and buildings. Reflecting all these, built heritage has constituted in almost all European cities, a great field of design interventions.

In the last decade or so, built heritage has been yet emphasised for its great potential of promoting economic development of cities, and particularly urban tourism development (see Ashworth and Tunbridge, 1990, Prentice 1993, Morris, 1994, Ashworth and Larkham 1994, Herbert 1995). In the framework of intercity competition and new urban politics (NUP) (see Cox 1995, Boyle and Rogerson 2001), the task of urban governance has increasingly become the creation of urban conditions (physical and economic) sufficiently attractive to lure prospective firms; and as such conditions, improvement of the city’s image and especially enhancement of its built heritage, have been considered particularly critical in providing the city with distinctive physiognomy - marking the city’s differences among other cities. In the emerging post-fordist new urban economies 2 (see Mc Neil and While 2001), the most widespread and flourishing one is economy of leisure and culture, much based on tourist exploitation of the city’s built heritage. In McNeil and While (2001) words, “urban regeneration has become a growth industry in itself ….derelict industrial sites have been turned into heritage parks, old canals and waterfronts with warehouses have become cultural centres, restaurant and housing areas…” (McNeil and While 2001, p. 298). Similarly, as Zukin (1995) writes, “with the disappearance of local manufacturing industries and periodic crisis in government and finance, culture and built heritage are more and more the business of cities – the basis of their tourist attractions and their unique competitive edge” (Zukin 1995, pp.1-2).

1 As such Programs, one can mention URBAN, Urban Pilot Projects, CIED. 2 As ‘new urban economies’, McNeill and While (2001) present a fourfold typology: agglomeration economies , informational and Knowledge-rich economies , technopoles, urban leisure economies.



However, nowadays - while proceeding into more advanced phases of economic globalisation and European integration and facing an increasing transformation of European cities into multi-ethnic and multi-cultural entities - the potential of built heritage as a means of establishing place-identity and enhancing the city’s physiognomy may be questioned:

It is axiomatic that the historic cities of Europe did not emerge into modern world through some kind of natural process or Darwinian evolution. On the contrary, their physical configuration was indeed created, developed and transformed by someone for some purpose. Built heritage, as Graham (1998, p.43) states, is ‘that we have chosen to conserve from the past’. This raises questions about what were the criteria of selection in the production of built heritage in European cities and with what effect on the present:

In many publications (see Tunbridge 1984, Tunbridge, 1994, Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996, Ashworth 1998, Tunbridge 1998, Graham, Ashworth, Tunbridge, 2000), built heritage is considered to be a contested entity. Much of what we see today as built heritage in European cities is a product of manipulation and it represents a deliberate encoding of symbolic meaning. Investigating how built heritage has been produced and who is the producer of conserved European urban landscape, Ashworth (1998) suggests that the answer might be conceptualised through three broad ideas concerned with the exercise of power in European societies:

The concept of ‘political legitimation’ - as introduced by Habermas (1996) - where governments as well as individuals feel a need to justify their exercise of power, or just their very existence, through an appeal to particular aspects of the past that appear to confer that right.

The ‘dominant ideology thesis’ - as introduced by Abercrobie et al. (1982) - which argues that a governing dominant group imposes its values upon a governed subordinate group.

The ‘cultural capital thesis’ - as introduced by Bourdieu (1977) – which extends the above two ideas by postulating the existence alongside the economic realm of a cultural capital composed not only of the artworks and buildings of a society, but, more fundamentally, of standards of taste that selects and interprets them.

In the above framework, built heritage of European cities has being ‘filtrated’ over a period of time; and as an outcome, much of what exists nowadays as conserved urban landscape is reduced in meaning. Describing the ways reduction of meaning has occurred, Ashworth (1998) introduces the terms ‘eradification’ and ‘museumification’. By ‘eradification’, is meant the destruction or disappearance of artefacts, spaces, buildings and elements that has occurred either involuntarily (e.g. due to war or other natural disasters) or voluntarily (e.g. due to modernisation, change of political regime, change of cultural paradigm). By ‘museumification’, is meant the shift in the function (and in some cases, in the form as well) of artefacts, spaces, buildings and elements that has

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occurred on purpose - in order to transform the meaning of the conserved schemata or/and use the conserved schemata as tourist/economic resources. As typical cases of museumification, Ashworth presents the Christian Orthodox churches in the former USSR, the Church of Haghia Sophia in Constantinople and almost all fortification walls and castles in European cities (Ashworth, 1998, pp.267-268).

The main principles or objectives underlying the manipulation processes of built heritage - or ‘eradification’ and ‘museumification’ to use Ashworth’s terms – seem to be a) imprinting of national identities onto the conserved urban forms and b) creating distinctive ‘physiognomies’ in cities by means of built heritage. Whether successfully fulfilled or not, these two objectives seem to have in the course of time ‘gifted’ European cities with special heritage characteristics undermining nowadays the potential of existing built heritage to generate place-identity in post-modern multi-cultural European societies:

a. Contesting built heritage for nationalism and nation state’s interests.

According to Gillis (1994), national identity involves a widely shared memory of common past for people who have never seen or talked to one another in the flesh. The sense of belonging to the same nationality depends as much on forgetting as on remembering - the past being reconstructed as a trajectory to national present in order to guarantee a common future. As Woolf (1996) suggests, a national identity is an abstract concept that sums up the collective expression of a subjective, individual sense of belonging to a socio-political unit: the nation state. Nationalistic rhetoric assumes not only that individuals form part of a nation (through language, blood, choice, residence, or some other criterion), but also that they identify with the territorial unit of the nation state (Woolf, 1996, pp.25-6). This is one reason why landscape and especially urban landscape, are understood as a ‘terrain’ where national identities can be created or enhanced. A second reason is that urban landscape, like a text, constitutes an ordered assemblage of objects and thereby, can act as a signifying system (Eco 1986, Duncan 1990, Barnes and Duncan 1992, Ashworth 1998), or, a ‘highly complex discourse, a language’ (see Barthes 1986, p.92) in which a whole range of economic, political, social and cultural issues can be encoded (Daniel 1993). And finally, a third reason is that a national identity is created in particular social, historical and political contexts and, as such, it is a situated and socially constructed entity – a narrative. The power of a narrative - such as a national identity - rests on its ability to evoke the accustomed, to appeal to ‘our desire to reduce the unfamiliar to the familiar’ (Barnes and Duncan 1992, pp.11-12). It is exactly this ability (attribute) that can be exhibited by urban landscape and built heritage in particular, and thereby, can make them powerful narratives in themselves, capable to support and enhance a broader narrative: a national identity. Explaining this, Graham (1998) writes that landscape narratives – including built heritage narratives - facilitate the creation and enhancement of national identities by



‘denoting particular places as centres of collective cultural consciousness’ (Graham 1998, p.40).

To turn back onto Ashworth’s eradification and museumification, almost all European cities at a certain degree provide evidence3 that by means of these manipulation processes, built heritage has been finally produced, or selected by such criteria so as to constitute a great narrative supporting national identities; and thereby, legitimising the hegemony of nation states and justifying and guaranteeing common political governances over particular land territories – the territories of nation states (see Diagram 1). This kind of imprinting of national identities onto conserved urban forms of European cities nowadays makes built heritage

almost meaningless to the increasingly multi-ethnic, multi-national European urban societies, and

single-dimensioned and poor in meaning to post-modern European urban societies dominated by the ideas of diversity and individualisation.

In Bhadha’s (1994) words, there is a process of ‘DissemiNation’: new communities of interest are evolving in virtue of the divergent and changing identities in post-modern and trans-national urban societies which undermine and eventually negate the ‘out of many, one’ ideology of nationalism and nation-state (Bhadha 1994, p.76).

b. Creating the city’s ‘distinctive’ physiognomy by means of built heritage.

As always claimed by architects, urban designers and planners, conservation of traditional buildings and urban cores - and even neo-vernacular design schemes in some cases - is able of creating distinctive place identity by appealing to the city’s history and heritage – built heritage, cultural heritage – and generating strong environmental images to the both visitors and residents. However, following two centuries of various urban conservation practices in European cities, there are nowadays scholars (see for instance Ashworth 1998, Tunbridge 1998) who believe that urban conservation practices have not generated distinctive urban landscapes but they rather tend to generate morphologically standardised landscapes that do not contribute in the creation of place identities. Ashworth (1998) goes as far as arguing that there is enough evidence to state a paradox: The more urban conservation is practiced in European cities, the more morphologically homogenised cities tend to become, and the less distinctive place identities tend to be. This can be understood in the context of certain parameters working against the effort of creating distinctive place-identities by means of built heritage. These are the following:

3 Examples providing evidence to this are described in detail in Tunbridge (1998), Graham (1998), Ashworth (1998) and Graham, Ashworth, Tunbridge (2000).

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Dominant schools of thought in building restoration, urban renewal and regeneration: Architects, urban designers and planners working on urban conservation projects are - like all other practitioners - conscious of the dominant schools of thought in building restoration, urban revitalisation and renewal at the particular time period; common studies curricula, shared professional training and subsequent networking, help the establishment and transmission of common attitudes at international level (e.g. reflecting international design movements) or at national level (e.g. reflecting national schools of thought - French School, Dutch School, Polish School, etc). As a consequence, restoration and renewal schemes in European cities often exhibit common properties (morphological, spatial, functional) and can be recognised (characterised) mainly by the time of their execution or/and the nation state. Even the design of new buildings schemes, developed on sites within conserved urban areas, reflects the dominant attitudes held at the time on how new and traditional buildings would neighbouring each other. This allows scholars like Ashworth (1998) to argue that restoration, renewal and revitalisation schemes in European cities convey messages more about the dominant attitudes on built heritage held at the time of their realisation rather than about the old structures themselves or/and the historic period in which they were first developed.

‘Standardised micro-scale redesign of public open spaces: In conserved urban cores of European cities, micro-scale redesign of public open spaces (e.g. street furniture, paving materials, signage, greenery, etc.) is often differentiated from that in the city’s new areas. In most conserved urban areas, selected styles in micro-scale redesign of open spaces are neo-vernacular or ‘historistic’. In other cases, there is a ‘modern’ morphology of elements, which is though standardised in all conserved urban areas that have been revitalised and redesigned at the same period; and such standardised morphologies do reflect dominant international schools of design held at the particular period. The standardised styles – whether neo-vernacular or modern - in micro-scale redesign of public open spaces in conserved urban areas tend, according to Ashworth (1998), to constitute a kind of ‘catalogue heritagization’.

Advertised ‘best’ conservation policies and practices: Networks of cities 4 within EU, international organisations and institutions like UNESCO, Habitat, ICCROM, disseminate ‘best’ policies and practices on conservation of historic urban areas. This transferring of policies, practices and techniques tends to reduce rather than increase local distinctiveness and place identity. It helps generating a sort of ‘world heritage’ (Ashworth, 1997).

Diagram 1 summarises all the above and schematically presents the processes by which built heritage tends to be destabilised as a dominant means of creating place identity in contemporary multi-ethnic and multicultural European cities.

4 For instance, European League of Historic Cities, The Walled Towns Friendship Circle, Quarters en Crise.



Diagram 1: Processes destabilizing built heritage as a dominant means for creating place identities in contemporary multi-ethnic and multicultural European cities.

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3. Seeking new paths to place-identity; testing innovative

design of space.

Thinking of built heritage as a constructed landscape narrative somehow evoking tradition and the city’s past and reducing the unfamiliar environment to the familiar (as described in paragraph 2), one might conceive of innovative design of urban space as its ‘opposite’ – i.e., formal and spatial schemata somehow dismissing tradition and reducing familiar environment to the unfamiliar. On the ground that post-modern European urban societies are also being transformed almost into their ‘opposite’ – i.e., from nation-state oriented and culturally bounded entities into multi-ethnic and multi-cultural entities thus destabilising built heritage as an effective generator of place identity - can innovative design, representing the opposite of built heritage, become a new post-modern path to place-identity?

Built heritage has been for long an effective ‘tool’ working for place-identity in two ways (see also Diagram 2):

By referring to both national identity and the city’s tradition, built heritage has been invoking something common among individuals – members of a nation-state oriented urban society. In this way, it has been offering a sort of ‘spatial membership’ to almost all individuals and social groups of such a society.

By enhancing (successfully or not) the city’s image and physiognomy – its distinctive characteristics in urban space morphology - built heritage has been promoting economic development of cities as entrepreneurial centres or/and tourism places. In this way, it has been creating a sort of social solidarity (and perhaps civic pride) among individuals, grounded on their economic prospects as members of a developing welfare urban society.

In the new milieu of post-modern, multi-ethnic and multicultural European urban societies, can innovative design well perform in the above two ways built heritage has been performing as a generator of place identity in nation-state oriented European urban societies?

a. Avant-garde design schemes offering equal chances to divergent cultures.

Innovative design of urban space at local or/and international level – whether avant-garde urban design schemes or new architectural forms of buildings in the city – would by definition produce:

formal schemata which are in contradiction to the morphological patterns characterising the city’s landscape (e.g. dominant architectural elements, signs and styles, the



geometries of the street system, the urban block system, the open spaces system, the skyline, etc.), or/and spatial configurations which shift the existing structure of urban space (e.g. shifting the city’s centre or altering the spatial patterns generated by the existing street system, the urban block system, the open spaces system).

The above conditions are often fulfilled by pioneer design projects that mark the era of the passage5 from one internationally established school of thought in design to another. However, since the time period between such passages (changes of the dominant paradigm in design) may be two, three or more decades, the interest has to focus on those design schemes that may fulfil the above conditions yet within the same design paradigm.

In the contemporary design paradigm of Deconstruction, there are design schemes, such as for instance, Frank O. Gehry’s buildings 6 and especially his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Santiago Calatrava’s bridges, towers, museums, exhibition halls, airports and railway stations in many European cities7 and most of all his ‘City of Arts and Sciences’ in Valencia and the Art Museum, in Milwaukee, USA, that are widely accepted as being avant -garde. Scholars points of view (see van Bruggen 1999, Tzonis, 1999, Blanco 2001) converge in that these design schemes are adding to the city experimental new types (formal or/and functional) of public space. Using Blanco’s words, “they create and define new cells of public space that provide the user with new possibilities…..and that makes every such a design scheme an unusual and unique element of the city” (Blanco 2001, p.20, my translation).

As claimed (see Tzonis, 1999, p.168, Calatrava, 2001), a challenging task of such design schemes is to create place-identity in urban areas that have been abandoned, declined or lacking a strong morphological character – a physiognomy.

In contrast to built heritage at a certain degree layered on with concrete meaning from the past, schemes generating new types of public space are more flexible in allowing themselves to new and divergent interpretations by individuals or social groups with

5 For instance, regarding the 2nd half of the 20th century, the passage from Modern Movement to Post-Modernism in the late ‘70s, and from Post-Modernism to Deconstruction in the early ‘90s. 6 Among major design schemes by Frank O. Gehry, one should note Frederick R. Wiesman Museum, Minneapolis, USA (1990), American Centre, Paris (1994), the Nationale-Nederlande office building, Prague (1996), and especially, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1998) and the new Guggenheim Museum, New York (2000-). 7 Among major avant-garde design schemes by Santiago Calatrava, one may refer to the airport Sondica, Bilbao (1991), the Opera House, Tenerife (1991), the Bridge Bach de Roca, Barcelona (1984-87), the airport’s railway station Satolas, Lyon (1989-94), the telecommunication tower Montjuic, Barcelona (1989-92), the bridge Campo Volantin, Bilbao (1990-97), the bridge Alamillo, Cartuja, Seville (1987-92), Trinity Footbridge, Manchester (1993-95), the Railway Station Oriente, Lisbon (1993-98), the Kuwait Exhibition Pavillion, Seville, World Expo (1991-92). Among his most recent major works, one should note first, the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia (1991-), including the Hemispheric building accommodating the planetarium and cinema (1991), the Museum of Arts and Sciences (1991), and second, The Art Museum, Milwaukee, USA (1994-2000).

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different culture. In this way, they may perform better than built heritage in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural urban societies; all individuals (and all cultures) are allowed to start from a common starting point in experiencing and familiarizing new types of spaces. Flanagan’s description (Flanagan, 1998) of the relationship between people and space in the building of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, is characteristic: “Th e building charms and prods people with endless promises of new surprises. ….Gehry has created a cultural exchange fueled by a dynamic daily give-and-take between people and building, instead of the usual one-way pontification, architects usually give…. He lets people piece together their own interpretation (my italics), and invites them to enjoy the pride of composition. Viewers can feel like collaborators, or rather, conspirators in their interpretations. And no reading is right or wrong” (Flanagan 1998, p.113). In this respect, avant-garde design schemes - like built heritage in the past - may provide all culturally different social groups and individuals with a ‘spatial membership’. Thus, they may work as monuments (landmarks) and place-identity generators according to Lefebvre’s definition: a monument has a function of establishing membership - ‘monumental space’ offers each member of a society an ‘image of that membership’ that it constitutes (Lefebvre 1991, p.220).

In the light of the above, it seems no surprising at all that in the last decade, designers like Calatrava, are often invited by European cities 8 hosting multi-ethnic and multi-cultural international events such as Olympic Games or World Expo, to endow the city’s landscape with their multi-interpretable schemes.

b. Avant-garde design schemes promoting urban economic development and consolidating social solidarity.

Through out history of urban forms, design innovations in urban space – whether new architectural forms or urban design schemes – appear as an outcome of economic growth of cities or/and countries. Marking the era of economic globalisation and European integration, a reverse process seems to be taking place: Innovative design schemes can be - and are consciously - used as a powerful medium for economic development of cities. Successful use of innovative design (and redesign) of urban space in for instance, Barcelona, Seville and especially Bilbao, Spain, provide so far evidence9 about its impact on the city’s economic development (see Gospodini 2002).

8 See for instance, Calatrava’s telecommunication tower Montjuic, Barcelona (1989-92), the Kuwait Exhibition Pavillion, Seville, World Expo (1991-92). He has also been invited by the Commision of Olympic Games, Athens 2004, to redesign the area surrounding the Olympic Stadium. 9 For instance in the case of Bilbao, following the opening day of the Guggenheim Museum, there has been a phenomenal increase of visitors (see statistical data in Plaza 1999, 2000a, 2000b) promising the city’s economic growth.



As a means of economic development of cities, innovative design of space is a key factor for all categories and groups of cities; metropolitan cities, larger cities, smaller cities, cities in the core, cities in the periphery (economic or/and geographical) of Europe. But it becomes particular critical in the rather ‘disadvantageous’ group of smaller peripheral European cities without indigenous resources to counter effect ‘marginalisation’ and decline in the process of intercity competition taking place within the unified (global) urban system of Europe. The impact of innovative design of space on the development prospects of cities, and smaller peripheral cities in particular, is related to their potential to be placed on the new urban map of Europe as places attractive to new enterprises, residents and especially to urban tourists (see Gospodini 2002). Avant-garde urban design schemes such as for instance, Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Calatrava’s ‘Cuidad de las Artes y las Ciencias’ in Valenthia and his bridges, towers, airports and stations in Barcelona, Bilbao, Valenthia, Lyon and elsewhere, tend to reinforce an emerging new paradigm concerning the relationship between innovative design, urban space morphology and urban tourism: Irrespective of the particular functions and activities accommodated in space, innovative design of space (whether buildings, or public open spaces) can make urban space morphology in itself and of itself a sightseeing, a tourism/economic resource (see Gospodini 2001).

Thus, it can be said that avant-garde design schemes, in a similar way like built heritage, can promote the city’s economic development, and in this way, generate a sort of ‘social solidarity’ among the residents and local entrepreneurs, grounded on expectations for own economic benefits.

Diagram 2 presents schematically the ways built heritage and avant -garde design schemes may work as place-identity generators in respectively modern and post-modern European urban societies.

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Diagram 2: Juxtaposing built heritage and innovative design as place identity generators.



4. CONCLUSIONS: European cities globalising their

landscape; European identity and new forms of ‘locality’. It can be said that legitimating innovative design as a place-identity generator in European cities might reduce the risk of contemporary European urban societies withdrawing towards their heritage and roots while enclosing and defending themselves in an age of identity crisis (as described in introduction). It can also be said that establishing innovative design of urban space as a place-identity generator would at a certain degree internationalise urban morphology in European cities. Would such a globalisation of urban landscape define a sort of European place-identity? And how this relates to local place-identities and local societies?

Graham (1998) suggests that diversity and multi-culturalism in contemporary Europe results in an increasing fragmentation of identity and allegiance. If integration of Europe might demand an iconography of identity, this would complement and not replace national, regional and local identities. It would embrace and accentuate notions of multiculturalism and complex; it would overlap rather than intersect local layers of identity trying to be, not exclusive but, inclusive of all continent’s people so as to validate and legitimate political and economic integration. It seems that these conditions may be fulfilled by innovative design schemes: They are capable to add new layers of meaning to urban space while widening existing local place-identities; they may reflect in space multi-culturalism thus, piecing together local heterogeneities. In other words, they seem to fit well into what Hall (1995) terms ‘diaspora culture’: A narrow interpretation of the term ‘diaspora’ refers to people who have, for whatever reason, been dispersed from their countries of origin but they maintain links with past through preserving their traditions and seek to eventually return to homeland. In the framework of globalisation and European integration, a wider interpretation of ‘diaspora’, as suggested by Hall (1995), may relate this term to people who have (mostly voluntarily) been dispersed from their homeland, may be unwilling to return and they certainly succeed in “remaking themselves and fashioning new kinds of cultural identity by (unconsciously or consciously) drawing on more than one cultural repertoire” (Hall 1995, p.206).

The encouragement of innovative design schemes to complement and closely co-exist with local built heritage, as landmarks and place-identity generators, would enhance the prospects of European cities to develop, as Massey (1999) and Jacobs (1996) suggest, ‘mixture through history’ and also ‘a focus of a wider geography’ – simultaneously expressing the specificity of place and the links with the world beyond. Thus, from the point of view of urban space morphology, culture and place-identity, this would facilitate the process of integration of European cities into the new (global) urban system of Europe. From the point of view of local societies, innovative design schemes, by creating new urban images and new types of public space while simultaneously offering

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spatial membership to all individuals and cultures of the society, may also generate new forms of ‘locality’.

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