City - Memories and urban places

270 CITY VOL. 4 NO. 2

10 Mariana Mora (op cit.).11 Comandante Ramona, ‘Don’t abandon us!’,

interview with EZLN women, March 1994.12 Conversation with Rosalia, Kinal Antzetik Women’s

Collective, Chiapas, May 1998.13 Castells, M. (1988) ‘Social movements against the

new global order’, in The Power of Identity, Vol. II ofThe Information Age, p. 77 (Oxford: Blackwells).

An earlier version of this article was pub-lished in the Urban and Regional Regenera-tion Bulletin, based around an interactivewebsite (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/curds/urrb/),a co-operative venture between members ofthe CITY network at the Centre for Urbanand Regional Development Studies(CURDS), University of Newcastle uponTyne.

Sophie Style is a freelance researcher, activistand photographer with a particular interest insustainability and social movements. E-mail:[email protected].

Related work will be found in:

‘The Zapatistas: A Rough Guide’ (June2000)

Written by the collective Chiapaslink whovisited Chiapas in 1998, this 100-page bookprovides an accessible account of the Zapa-tista movement and their struggle for auton-omy, with practical advice on solidarity workranging from going to Chiapas as a peaceobserver to letter-writing to direct action. Thetext is interspersed with personal testimoniesand photographs and has extensive links tofurther resources on the Zapatistas and radi-cal social change. Any profits made by thispublication will go to fund projects in indige-nous communities in Chiapas and furthersolidarity work in the UK. Copies are avail-able from Greenleaf Bookshop, 82 ColstonStreet, Bristol BS1 5BB, UK. for £5.00 plus£1.50 (p&p) [ISBN 0 907367 99 2]. For moreinformation, please contact [email protected], or Chiapaslink, Box 19, 82 ColstonStreet, Bristol BS1 5BB, UK.

Memories and urban places1

William Siew-Wai Lim

Cities have enormously complexcommunal histories and memories.They are the sites of many conflict-

ing forces of money, power and energystretching across the various social, polit-ical and economic spheres.

After the failure of the modernist uto-pian vision, notwithstanding Le Corbu-sier’s Chandigarh2 and the daring experi-ments of Brasilia3, we are becomingincreasingly aware of the destructiveeffects such a reductive ideology has on theurban condition. A clean and rational city

no longer seems to be the most desirablecity after all. Urban life is actually based onthe perpetual struggle between rigid rou-tinized order and pleasurable anarchy. His-tory, memories and local identity are amore accurate measure of how much anurban environment is enjoyed by thepeople.

Each city is unique and evokes differentfeelings in its residents and visitors. Eachcity is attractive to individuals in differentmoods and at different times of their lives.Fuzziness4, surprises and the unexpected

LIM : MEMORIES AND URBAN PLACES 271

are the essential ingredients in generating amemorable identity. This notion of placefocuses both on physical environmentalfeatures and the emotional and poeticconnection that people make with suchsettings. From French philosopher GastonBachelard’s analysis that spaces can bepoetry5 to the hypothesis of edge, node andpaths by Kevin Lynch6, memories are seenboth to give meaning to our existence andto orientate us in the spatial and temporaldimensions of our lives.

Yet in the Asian emerging economies,modernization has often become synon-ymous with getting rid of the past. In thelast few decades, many cities in East andSoutheast Asia have developed at a tre-mendous pace. Some, like Hong Kong andSingapore, have acquired a symbolic statusand a physical image that have taken theWestern nations a much longer time toachieve. While this has been hyped as theAsian miracle, it is becoming obvious that afundamental aspect of our environmenthas been sacrificed. In the race to become‘modern’, entire sections of the old citiesare carelessly deleted so as to quickly createspaces for new development. This reflectsthe logic of late capitalism which givesoverriding importance to the economy andthe generation of wealth. Furthermore,those remnants of the past—the estab-lished communities, the traditional socialand urban fabric—are deemed to be eitheruseless or contradictory to this phase ofdevelopment. In most cases, the fastest andeasiest solution is to relocate, bulldoze andthen rebuild.

The rapid changes from pre-industrial tomodern provided neither the time norspace for careful reflection. In many Asiancities, a totally new landscape has beencreated in the span of a few decades. Incontrast, West European cities haveevolved over centuries. The Europeanshave developed a profound respect for theirurban landscape, and often successfullyresisted demolition efforts even in the mostadverse conditions after World War II. The

result is a creative juxtaposition of old andnew where the urban landscape can be readas an accretion of human efforts andmemories. However, Europe is presentlyundergoing tremendous pressure to hastenthe pace of development and to upgradethe economic efficiency of its urban struc-ture. The rapid disappearance of memora-ble urban places in recent years has becomea matter of comment.

Impact and repercussion

What are the repercussions of deleting ourvisual memories along with our physicalenvironment? Without resorting to senti-mentalism and nostalgia, it can be said thatevery human being desires some degree ofsecurity in their surroundings—a sense ofknowing and belonging. For the more seden-tary people, especially the poor, the lesseducated and the aged, this attachment to afamiliar environment becomes very impor-tant. Their relative immobility increases theirneed for psychological attachments to placesthey know well, including those of theiryounger days. In the face of rapid develop-ment, nearly all familiar sights have beendestroyed. This has resulted in a severedislocation and insecurity for them. Thisgeneration has no control over their environ-ment and their imprints on the physicallandscape are wiped out. Dislocating resi-dents from a place that holds special meaningfor them is a traumatic experience. In Singa-pore, a newspaper reported recently thatresidents of a 40-year-old housing estatepetitioned against the government’s decisionto acquire their land for redevelopment.Many residents felt aggrieved because therelocation would ‘make us lose our homes,fracture the support network of our friendsand neighbours and impose unneeded,unwanted and unknown changes into ourlives.’

For the younger generation who hasgrown up in these substantially reconstruc-ted cities, the surroundings hold little in the


way of collective memories that can bepassed on to them. They suffer from amemory vacuum, a loss of a recent past thathas been destroyed. Whatever memoriesthere are tend to be personal, fleeting andtenuous. The power of media allows them toreach out and imbibe foreign culture andtaste. They become seduced by images andpictures of other exotic places, displacing thefeeling for their own surroundings and con-text. This negative aspect of today’s urbanenvironment where the dislocating forces ofglobalization and information technology areprevalent is becoming increasingly wide-spread amongst Asian cities.

The younger generation is also unable toshare their parent’s childhood or teenagememories because the places where theirparents had played or lived are now gone.These places provide important memorylinkages as well as a psychological bondbetween generations in the process of passingon family traditions. In rapidly changingsocieties that have reinvented themselves in aspan of one generation, the pre-industrialparents who still believe in traditional values,for example the cane for instilling discipline,cannot understand their post-modern chil-dren, who are immersed in informationtechnology and enjoy great freedom in crea-tive expression. Visual memories provideimportant psychological linkages necessaryto increase the level of communicationbetween generations who live in two totallydifferent worlds.

Complexity of memories

When time is equated with money, and youhave so little time, memories are often seen assuperfluous, nostalgic and irrelevant. Cer-tainly, memory by its nature is abstract andlife is full of absurdity, tension and contra-diction. Memories disappear and reappear.Some die along with the people who remem-bered. Some die as a result of that physicalmanifestation, an artifact, a tree, or a house,being removed or destroyed. Sometimes,

memories change unconsciously over time aspeople remember differently, for politicaland cultural reasons. The concepts of timeand space, memories and place are fuzzynotions that evade any linear or predictablehistorical chronology. Indeed, when memo-ries are considered seriously, they can some-times complicate urban design decisions andin turn slow down the pace ofdevelopment.

The Bund in Shanghai presents an inter-esting case of how memories exist as anotherlayer beyond the common urban designissues. Historically, the Bund was the mostprestigious area located within the extra-territorial sector during the colonial era,where many important foreign corporateheadquarters were located. The buildings onthe Bund were copies of the varied Westernstyles from revivalism, neo-classicism to ArtDeco of the same period. These foreignimpositions had absolutely no relationshipwith local context and culture. They repre-sented nothing less than a repressive Euro-centric cultural arrogance. It was not surpris-ing that many Chinese intellectuals at thetime considered these projects as symbols ofmisery and exploitation.

In the last few decades, this negative aspectof the Bund has gradually receded. The Bundnow serves as a glittering backdrop to a hostof riverside activities that are immenselypopular with foreigners and Chinese yup-pies.8 To many, the architecture in the Bundis the best and most exciting in Shanghai.Their praise is now a source of pride for theShanghainese. As a public space, it alsopresents a new phase of Shanghai culture andaspirations. The Bund has been for a longtime, and will continue to be, one of the mostimportant urban symbols of Shanghai. How-ever, with the passage of time, its symbolicsignificance has changed. This complex dual-ity between its latent past and the trans-formed present will continue to have anunseen but definite impact on its future.

In capitalist economies, the most com-monly contested places which face thisdilemma of memory and development are the


downtown historical districts. Following thelogic of market forces, most of these areaswill be considered high-value real estates.They must therefore make way for moreintensive high-rise development. Their dem-olition appears rational and is often stronglysupported by the rich and powerful. How-ever, once destroyed, they cannot bereplaced. Attempts at reconstruction arefutile and make mockery of traditions andthe conservation of memories.

To illustrate the ignorance in the conserva-tion, repair and reconstruction of historicalstructures, I shall refer to an ancient village inCentral China. This village had a mon-umental city wall with beautiful archwaysand historic relics. The city wall is considereda rare heritage treasure and the villagersforked out money themselves to repair theaging wall. However, the wall was destroyedand completed reconstructed with new mate-rials, turning something very special into aworthless thing. A Chinese architectlamented: ‘I cried when I saw what theydid’.

However, it is interesting to note thatJapan has managed to maintain much of thetraditional urban structure under the pres-sures of modernization. Japan seems tofunction just as well as other modern eco-nomic powers even though its urban struc-ture remains totally chaotic and inefficientin the eyes of Westerners. In fact, Japan’surban layout does not follow any modernistplanning principles.9 Rather, the planninghas evolved from respecting existing roadsand built structures. New developmentsexist mainly as a layer along major transportarteries. Behind these modern offices andskyscrapers, narrow backstreets and tradi-tional environments are left very muchintact. Buildings along these old streetsremain low and small. Established commu-nities which consist of mixed-incomegroups continue to live and work amongstthese back lanes. Instead of wholesale devel-opment, this Japanese model of skin-deepmodern development protects the memoriesand built structures of the past. In this

sense, urbanism in Japan, like many Asiancities, is divorced from the common West-ern perception of modernization.

Politics of memories

The different layering of memories reflectsdifferent interests, people and time periods.These differences surface as a series ofpower struggles that determine in the endwhose histories, memories and heritage arepreserved.

The politics of memory, involving activeforgetting and deliberate inventing, creategenuine problems for historians and thesociety in general. Official history tends toreflect what the right and powerful havechosen to remember. Memories of the poorand marginalized can often be seen ascounter-productive to the quest of attaininga Western-based modernity. This was thecase in Singapore during the 1970s whenthe young nation determined single-mind-edly to become a global city.10 Slums andsquatter settlements as well as the tradi-tional downtown were demolished to makeway for urban redevelopment and the affec-ted were relocated elsewhere in high-riseflats. Rem Koolhaas in his book, S, M, L,XL, describes Singapore’s dramatictransformation:

‘Almost all of Singapore is less than 30years old; the city represents theideological production of the past threedecades in its pure form, uncontaminatedby surviving contextual remnants. It ismanaged by a regime that has excludedaccident and randomness: even its nature isentirely remade. It is pure intention: if it ischaos, it is authored chaos; if it is ugly, itis designed ugliness; if it is absurd, it iswilled absurdity. Singapore represents aunique ecology of the contemporary.’11

It is not surprising that heritage and memo-ries can be seen at potentially controversialflashpoints. Memory by its nature is


abstract and life in a rapidly changing soci-ety is full of surprises and absurdity. Forpolitical reasons, one might even choose toforget and reinvent. It is the difficulty ofconceptualizing history as a net genealogy,especially in many ex-colonial countries,that tempts us to forget and simplify. AnAustralian academic wrote recently,

‘In Indonesia, but of course elsewhere too,the politics of memory, or active forgettingand imaginative re-remembering producegenuine problems for historians. . .Forexample, what many people recall of thePKI [Parti Komunist Indonesia] and thekillings is very different from what thegovernment insisted theyremember. . .There was one correct versionof the events of September 1965 and thenthere was what the government calledsubversion.’12

A Singaporean scholar stated forcefully thatit is more accurate to perceive history ‘as arealm of contradictions—unresolved; his-tory as a series of alternatives—abandoned;history as a collection of intimations—refused’.13 This is also a recognition of thenature of heritage, one that has no oneorigin, but is shared and contested by dif-ferent members of the society. While ver-sions of history other than the officialversion are either outdated, subsumed orrepressed, they are not always erased fromthe collective memory. Once in a while,events will occur that resurrect these dor-mant memories. Furthermore, in a contem-porary democratic society, pluralism andtolerance will ensure the survival ofalternatives.

The continuous act of forgetting is anunavoidable human condition. Collectiveforgetting by national governments has fre-quently been carried out to deliberatelyavoid confrontation with unpleasant memo-ries, for example the Japanese atrocitiesduring World War II, to justify suppressiveactions by the authorities or to ostensiblyachieve broader goals. In 1995, the SouthKorean government decided to demolish

the former Japanese Colonial Governmentoffice. Built by the Japanese, this large civicbuilding has been the symbol of Japaneseimperialism and occupation. For decades,the building has been used as the SeoulNational Museum. However, to the Koreanpeople, it continued to be a painful andembarrassing historic reminder of theshame of colonization.

Recently, the decision by the authority todemolish Singapore’s National Library hasincurred, by Singaporean standards, vehe-ment public outcry.14 This is unexpected bythe authorities as the library lacks archi-tectural merit and is not old enough to belisted as a heritage building. However, it hasa rich history of use. The National Libraryhas come to mean something special formany users of the Library, particularly theolder generation, whose memories of placesof their past have now been substantiallydestroyed. Some of the younger generationwho have grown to enjoy the care and artculture in the area also voiced their dis-content. These voices do not reflect anyinstitutionalized view of the Library, butcome from a personal and everyday connec-tion that exists outside any official listing ofnational heritage sites or buildings. Thesymbolic attachments, which have turned anondescript building into a well-loved place,override the concerns of national develop-ment and contest the solutions imposed bythe State. However, the significance of theLibrary as a built object will only continue if,as Fredric Jameson rightly observed, itspublic and its viewers still have a sense of itsmemory.

In Taiwan, a similar case occurred in whichdifferent groups of people staked claims tothe psychological ownership of a place. Inthe decision to improve the historical sites ofTaipei City, government planners encoun-tered the problem of how to upgrade the TaiPei New Park. Historically, it is the site tomany important political and religiousevents. However, it is also a frequent meetingplace for the local gay community. As a cityplanner puts it ‘. . .in the recovery of Taipei’s


historical sites, should the New Park’s sig-nificance for gay people be taken intoaccount and thus become part of the col-lective memory of Taipei’.15 This issue isclearly a contest for recognition of thosepresently marginalized outside the officialversion of history.

Commodification and virtual reality

An accomplice of the simplification anddistortion of collective memories is commo-dification. This is happening with increasingfrequency particularly in cities of Asianemerging economies. Theme parks and Dis-neyland-like projects are created essentiallyfor commercial purposes. The theme parkindustry sells seductive images and con-cocted experiences and signals the increasingloss of the qualities of place. The uniquenessof any locality is negated, because it canalways be replicated anytime, anywhere.American architectural theorist Michael Sor-kin quotes from an advertisement leaflet foran American theme park: ‘If you want to seeEurope, take a vacation to Virginia. . .it’s allthe fun of old Europe. . .but a lot closer!’And when one poses the question, where isHollywood located, the correct answer is:Hollywood is everywhere!16

Sometimes, it is even assumed that suchdevelopments are what the people—oftenmeaning tourists—want, or would havewanted if they had known better. In the end,places are re-engineered to emulate stolenimages of history or just to appear exotic.The greatest worry is not that the resultcaricaturizes the real, but totally replaces thereal. It comes to a stage when people acceptand are convinced by this virtual reality. Ifyou can experience the tropical beach andatmosphere in some theme park nearby, thenwhy bother to visit the real place? Thesanitized and commodified tropical experi-ence becomes, for that person, the ideal andreal tropical experience.

The main reason behind this commodifica-tion of place and culture is clearly the forces

of globalization. In the process, differencesare levelled to a common denominator so asto operate competitively in this global mar-ket.17 Everything can be sold or exchanged.Sacred sites can be sold as tourist attractions.Cultural products are packaged solely tomaximize sales. Even the sun can be sold, aspeople paid to see the first sunrise of theMillennium in New Zealand.

Let me illustrate. Recently, the authoritiesreleased a blueprint outlining the proposedredevelopment of Chinatown, perhaps themost historically important area left in Singa-pore. The proposal is a sophisticated attemptat re-inventing and commodifying traditions,so as to attract local and mass tourism.18

Stylized elements are injected into the con-servation area regardless of its historicalrelevance or significance, creating a festive andexotic atmosphere that attracts the touristdollar. Such a strategy is widely considered tobe an acceptable winning formula. However,this proposal was met with much controversyamongst the public and civil groups, whobelieved that the proposed redevelopmenteffort is an Orientalist interpretation thatdistorts and obfuscates the memories andmeans that have been invested in the area bygenerations of the local population. Ulti-mately, this historic downtown area will be indanger of being transformed into yet anothertheme park. A civil group, the SingaporeHeritage Society, commented that the author-ities’ ‘emphasis on the touristic dimensions ofChinatown has led it to gloss over and discard,in favour of creating a new district that isdistinct, not only for its sharp delineation ofboundaries, but also for its uniformity andsuperficiality.’19

Avenues for action

We are now witnessing the aggressive impactof American-style late capitalism and theunrelenting process of globalization. A lead-ing German academic has recently arguedthat if the global market must create themeparks, then it must at least address the local


context, culture and particularities. Instead ofselling an exotic experience, this art ofimagineering should be put into the serviceof making existing reality visible. Great effortmust still be made to localize the concept oftheme parks and this would involve thecontribution of the local government andprofessionals as well as the concern andparticipation of the citizenry.20

Memories of the people cannot be quanti-fied and assigned an exchange value. As such,the loss of place and the proliferation oftheme parks in our urban landscape must becontested. We must deliberately attempt tosave our cities and historic places. In therelentless push for modernization, space canbe given to our memories and heritage.Instead of wholesale redevelopment, we mustminimize the destruction of the backs,including back lanes, of developed areas. Thisnecessitates the restraining of free marketforces which would otherwise increase thedensity and height of new developments. It isnecessary to preserve large tracts of heritagedistricts, but this must avoid commodifica-tion and be done sensitively. A successfulexample would be Covent Garden in Lon-don, where the existing residents are actuallyre-housed in the same location, contributingto a sense of continuity and familiarityamongst its community.

In addition, we should selectively identifyplaces of memories in the rapidly changingenvironment. We might preserve numerousmodest residences and work places of localartists and personalities as well as historicallymemorable places. We must treat these placesas living museums and as an integral elementof our heritage and social memories. Partici-pation of civil groups and local communitiesshould be actively sought, as they will ensurea fairer and more comprehensive identifica-tion of such new places to be added.

The inclusion of memories as an essentialurban design criterion can be problematic formany policy makers. Unlike the clean andlogical combination of sanitation and eco-nomics, it is an elusive and dynamic concept.When places are redeveloped or transformed,

memories often become obsolete or fadeaway. The history of most places oftenremains fuzzy and is dependent upon thecultural concepts of time. Mainstream his-tory tends to mean what the powerful havechosen to remember. Despite this, it is anessential condition of our existence that wefind ways to connect meaningfully with thephysical environment in an intensely perso-nal manner. And it is for this reason alonethat we must consciously elevate the value ofvisual memories in our urban environmentbeyond the criteria of commodification.

Notes

1 This lecture was delivered at the Royal MelbourneInstitute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia inAugust 1999 and is expanded from a shorterversion ‘Memories and Urban places in AsianEmerging Economies’ delivered at the Asian andPacific Session of the XXth UIA Congress in Beijingin June 1999.

2 Lim, William S.W. (1999) ‘Vision impossible andsocial justice’, Architecture & Design 16(2), pp.121–124.

3 Scott, James C. (1998) Seeing like a State: howCertain Schemes to Improve the Human Conditionhave Failed. Boston: Yale University Press.

4 Lim, William S.W. (1998) ‘Fuzzy vision of a newurbanism’, in Lim, William S.W. (ed.) Asian NewUrbanism. Singapore: Select Books Pte Ltd, pp.128–137.

5 Bachelard, Gaston (rep. 1988) The Poetics ofSpace. Boston: Beacon Press.

6 Lynch, Kevin (rep. 1982) The Image of the City.Cambridge: The MIT Press.

7 ‘Dawson estate residents submit petition’, StraitsTimes, 10 March 1999.

8 Hua, Yun and Chang Quin (1999) ‘A look at thevernacular architecture of Shanghai’, Dialogue:Architecture & Design & Culture 23, pp. 136–140.

9 Lim, William S.W. (1998) ‘Asian new urbanism’,in Lim, William S.W. (ed.) Asian New Urbanism.Singapore: Select Books Pte Ltd, pp. 14–32.

10 Wee, C.J.W.-L. (1999) ‘Ethnic identity inSingapore: From the Universal to “Local” Identity’.Delivered at Embedding Capitalism in New AsianContexts: Authority Structures and Local Culturesand Identities. Singapore.

11 Koolhaas, Rem (1995) ‘Singapore songlines:portraits of a Potemkin metropolis. . .or thirty yearsof Tabula Rasa’, in Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau(eds) S, M, L, XL. New York: Monncelli Press.

PRO DANOVIC: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF BALKAN CITIES 277

12 Goodfellow, Rob (1999) ‘History imitating art,imitating life’, ART AsiaPacific 22, p. 65.

13 Devan, Janadas (1999) ‘Forgetting to remember’,in Kwok Kian-Woon et al. (eds), Our Place inTime. Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society, p.22.

14 (1999) ‘Our city campus: potential andpossibilities’. From proceedings of PublicSymposium on the Physical Development ofSingapore Management University. Singapore:Singapore Management University Planning Office& School of Architecture, National University ofSingapore.

15 Chang, Hsiao-Hung (1998) ‘Taiwan queervalentines’, in Chen Kuan-Hsing (ed.) Trajectories:Inter-Asian Cultural Studies. London: Routledge,pp. 283–298.

16 Hassenpflug, Dieter (1998) ‘Atopias—Thechallenge of imagineering’. Downloaded from theWorld Wide Web in June 1999.http://theo.theo.tu-cottbus.de/Wolke/eng/Subjects/981/Hassenpflug/hassenpflug_t.html

17 Jameson, Fredric (1998) ‘Globalization asphilosophical issue’, in Fredric Jameson andMasao Miyoshi (eds) The Cultures ofGlobalization. London: Duke University Press, pp.54–77.

18 Singapore Tourism Board (1998) Enhancing theChinatown Experience. Singapore: SingaporeTourism Board.

19 ‘Chinatown as theme park?’ Straits Times, 22November 1998.

20 Op. cit., note 15.

William Seiw-Wai Lim is a practising archi-tect involved in architecture, planning anddevelopment economics, as well as an activewriter on a wide range of subjects relating ofthe direction of architecture and issues ofurbanism in Asia. He is the author of fivebooks, including Cities for People: reflectionsof a South East Asian Architect (1990) andContemporary Vernacular: evoking tradi-tions in Asian Architecture (co-authoredwith Tan Hock Beng, 1997). Presently, Lim isPresident, AA Asia, a board member ofLaSalle-SIA College of Arts (Singapore) andan editorial board member of Solidarity-current affairs, ideas and the Arts (Manila).He is also an Adjuct Professor of the RoyalMelbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

Regional wars and chances forthe reconstruction of Balkancities in a global informationsocietyCities and citizens, urbanity andmulticulture in the past, present and futureof Balkan civilization

Milan Prodanovic

‘The Berlin wall has not fallen in theBalkans’. This is a statement thatencapsulates a situation where, in

no small measure, the still dominant

‘nomenclatura’ (state capitalist/bureau-cratic class) maintains its hegemonythrough a systematic misuse of informa-tion and telecommunications technologies

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City - Memories and urban places