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Moving About in a Technological World:A Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Inquiry o f

Urban Streets and Freeways as Public Architecture

by

Joem W. Kroll

M.A. (University o f Gottingen, Germany) 1976 M.C.P. (University o f California, Berkeley) 1986 M.S. (University o f California, Berkeley) 1987

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction o f the

requirements for the degree o f

Doctor o f Philosophy in

Architecture

in the

GRADUATE DIVISION

o f the

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

Committee in charge:

Professor Galen Cranz, Chair Professor Hubert L. Dreyfus Professor Peter Bosselmann

Spring 2001


UMI Number 3019707

Copyright 2001 by Kroll, Joem W.

All rights reserved.

__ ___ __®

UMIUMI Microform 3019707

Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against

unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road

P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346


Moving About in a Technological World:A Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Inquiry o f


©2001

by

Joem W. Kroll


1

Abstract

Moving About in A Technological World:A Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Inquiry of


by

Joem W. Kroll

Doctor o f Philosophy in Architecture

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Galen Cranz, Chair

In order to improve our dwelling on streets, this inquiry outlines the thought o f Martin

Heidegger (1889-1976) and applies it to central issues o f designing for more inclusive uses

o f our public roads. The inquiry is guided by the question: How can we develop a free and

positive relation to technology? In exploring issues o f technology within the context o f street

design, the study employs hermeneutic, or interpretive, phenomenology which Heidegger

conceived and developed. Each major phase o f his thought can be marked by a concept that

anchors a specific way o f access to our environment: equipment; works o f art (unifying

cultural paradigms); things. These three route markers characterize Heidegger's thought as

a searching movement into ever richer ontologies (understandings o f being). Each o f these

vantage points reveals our public roads in different ways. Following the phenomena

elucidated by Heidegger's three main ontologies, three principal street functions are explored:

(1) everyday street environments as smoothly functioning equipment for moving about, (2)

airports and (automated) freeways as potential works o f art, and (3) streets as public spaces


uniquely suited for dwelling in postmodernism's multiple local worlds. Observation and

interpretation guided by phenomenological concepts provide the major kind o f evidence. The

inquiry suggests two main conclusions: (A) In order to fully express and facilitate the various

social practices taking place on streets, architects, urban planners, and transportation

engineers are advised to develop a thorough understanding o f the phenomena elucidated by

Heidegger's three main ontologies. (B) Our streets and highways need to function as

smoothly interlocked equipment and as things focusing multiple local worlds, while preserving

a status as latent works o f art that may spontaneously emerge as full-fledged unifying cultural

paradigms. By freely accepting a technologically advanced and flexible postmodern world

where we are on the move and dwell via moving, we are more likely to design our streets not

only for safe and efficient travel, but also for regaining joy and delight while moving about.

Journeying is not only about "getting there." It must also be moving.


I dedicate this inquiry to

my parents Ewald and Gerda Kroll

and to my wife Cathy

in gratitude


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction........................................................................................................vi

PART I PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE PUBLIC NATURE OF STREETS........1

Chapter I Phenomenology in Environmental Design Research..................................2

1.1 Environmental Design Research and Phenomeno logy

1.2 Basic Propositions o f Environmental Phenomenology

1.3 Phenomenological Analysis and Semantic Ethnography

Chapter 2 Encountering Streets and Contemporary Street Issues..........................27

2.1 Street Encounters

2.2 Main Contemporary Street Issues

PART II HEIDEGGER ON BEING HUMAN AND THE TECHNOLOGICALENVIRONMENT............................................................................................54

Chapter 3 Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Being-in-the-World, and Spatiality... 55

3.1 Hermeneutic Phenomenology: Basic Terms and Overview

3.2 Environment and Equipment

3.3 Existential Spatiality and Physical Space

3.3.1 Regions, Places, and Public Space3.3.2 Distance, Dis-stance, and Nearness3.3.3 From Existential Spatiality to Physical Space


iii

Chapter 4 Modern Technology and the Work of Art................................................104

4.1 Our Present Ambivalence Toward Technology

4.2 Heidegger's Account o f Modem Technology

4.2.1 The Enframing4.2.2 The Danger4.2.3 The Turning

4.3 Elements o f a Work o f Art

Chapter 5 Dwelling in A Technological W orld...........................................................123

5.1 What Things Do

5.2 Dwelling in Many Ways

PART IE MOVING ABOUT IN A TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD..........................144

Chapter 6 The Street as Transparent Equipment.....................................................146

6.1 Materials, Nature, and Publicness o f the Urban Street

6.2 Signs as Street Equipment

6.3 Streets as Equipment for Walking

Chapter 7 Moving About as a Work of A rt................................................................ 176

7.1 Transportation as Our Potential Work o f Art

7.1.1 Transportation's Central Role7.1.2 The Automobile-Highway System7.1.3 A Work o f Art OfiF Course7.1.4 The Automated Highway System


7.2 Airports as a Future W ork o f Art

7.2.1 Special Features o f Aviation Technology7.2.2 A New Denver International Airport7.2.3 Denver International Airport as a Proposed Work o f Art

7.3 A Resisting Thought

Chapter 8 On the Way to Dwelling on Streets.......................................................... 208

8.1 The Trash Can as a Thing

8.2 The Freeway Thinging

Chapter 9 Implications for Street Designers and Educators.................................. 239

Appendix An Outline o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology..........................................259

1 The Project o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology2 The Subject Matter o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology3 The Method o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology4 The Phenomenon o f World5 Being-in-the-World

Glossary...................................................................................................................................291

References............................................................................................................................... 297

List o f Figures

Figure 5-1 The Shrinking Globe, 1889-1981..................................................... 124

Figure 5-2 Typical Flight Velocities.................................................................... 126

Figure 5-3 A Contemporary Understanding o f Earth and S k y .........................141

Figure 6-1 Signs Destroying vs. Reinforcing Local Worlds............................. 161


V

Figure 6-2 Pedestrian Realms: Broken Up (top) and Out o f Scale (bottom) 168

Figure 6-3 Sidewalks Unavailable in Two W ays............................................... 170

Figure 6-4 Narrowed to Motorized U se .............................................................173

Figure 6-5 Paths to Nowhere............................................................................... 175

Figure 8-1 Trash Cans Just One Block Apart.................................................... 209

Figure 8-2 Trash Containers Attuning Our Proper Ways................................. 213

Figure 8-3 A Gathering o f Bridges and Free Ways............................................220

Figure 8-4 In Loving Memory.............................................................................230

Figure 8-5 A Gathering o f Things....................................................................... 231

Figure 8-6 A Reminder on Dwelling................................................................... 234

Figure 8-7 Plain Street, North Dakota................................................................236

Figure 9-1 Map o f San Francisco and Berkeley, California.............................. 247

Figure 9-2 International Terminal of San Francisco International Airport.... 248

Figure 9-3 Two Examples o f Woonerven.......................................................... 250

Figure 9-4 Kentucky Street in Downtown Petaluma, California..................... 254

(Illustrations are by the author unless otherwise noted in the text)

List o f Tables

Table 2-1 Variety o f Street Encounters...............................................................31

Table 3-1 Modes o f Being o f Entities Other Than D asein............................... 72

Table 3-2 Physical Space vs. Existential Spatiality........................................... 100

Table 9-1 Principal Street Functions and Characteristics................................ 241


Introduction

This inquiry attempts to fill a gap in our thinking about dwelling in a technological

world that is increasingly marked by locomotion. We are spending more and more hours on

the road and in the air. Our vehicle miles traveled increases yearly despite substantial

advances in electronic communications.

Many professions are devoted to accommodating our increasing demand for travel.

Traffic engineering addresses issues o f road capacity, efficiency, and safety. Transportation

planning searches for ways to decrease our dependency on the private automobile by better

integrating land use and transportation, and by making alternative modes o f transport more

convenient and attractive. Airport planning and design tries to anticipate and accommodate

an ever climbing demand for travel by air. These efforts to move us and our goods safely and

efficiently are mainly confined to the important issues o f capacity, efficiency, and safety. Less

tangible aspects o f moving about, such as convenience, comfort, elegance, and especially the

cultural and social dimensions o f our transport facilities, typically fall by the wayside. In

general, our outlook on streets is bland and one-dimensional. All these ways o f moving about

may get us from place to place, but they don't truly move us.

Our instrumental view o f technology in general, and of traveling in particular, is

mainly to blame for this myopic view. We hardly consider "moving about" as a way o f being,

i.e., as a way o f dwelling in a technological world equipped with things for moving about. We

view our streets, airways, and waterways predominantly as conduits for locomotion. This

instrumental view o f transport facilities contributes to an uneasy, ambivalent relation to


technology in general and to the technology o f transport in particular. Fast moving traffic on

unbecoming streets, disrespecting nature, pedestrians, and small stores, and an overly

optimistic belief in sophisticated technology which supposedly solves our mobility problems

are reflections o f our instrumental tunnel vision.

In order to open up and broaden our perspective on how to dwell on streets, I outline

the thought o f Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and apply it to central issues o f designing for

more inclusive uses o f our public roads. Heidegger's thought provides a wide and penetrating

perspective on how we interact with our natural and built environment, how we use space,

and how we may come to grips with technology. Especially in his later writings and lectures

Heidegger explores the question: How can we develop a free and positive relation to

technology? This question is perhaps the most crucial issue with which our advanced

technological societies struggle.

In examining these issues o f technology within the context o f street and highway

design, I employ hermeneutic, or interpretive, phenomenology which Martin Heidegger

conceived and developed. Taking Heidegger as my guide, I propose some answers

concerning the technology o f moving about and dwelling on streets. I present airports and

(automated) freeways as potential unifying cultural paradigms (works o f art), and streets as

series o f multiple worlds in which we move, dwell, and have our being. My suggestions

contribute to collectively developing an affirmative relationship with advanced technology and

provide some guidelines on how to design our urban streets and freeways in a way that

enables us to joyfully move and publicly dwell on them.


viii

The territory I want to explore demands a road map for easier access. My inquiry is

divided into three parts. Two brief chapters (Part I) provide the background for this study.

Chapter 1 gives an overview o f how phenomenology is currently used in environmental design

research, while Chapter 2 introduces contemporary issues o f street use and street design.

In Part H, I outline Heidegger's thought from the perspective o f three major angles.

While his thought must be seen as a searching and evolving whole, it can be divided into three

major phases, each o f which has somewhat different concerns and specific emphases. Based

on his lectures and publications, the temporal sequence o f these phases can be roughly traced

as follows: his early period (1915 to 1930), his middle period (1930 to 1950), and his late

period o f public thought (1950 to 1970). While exploring the essence and general

characteristics o f being human, each stage of his thought has its particular "take on things."

His evolving thinking, which is not a unified or systematic set o f principles or doctrines,

recognizes our human way o f being as inherently environmental. With respect to

environmental analysis and the housing o f our being that is conditioned by its environing

things, each phase o f his thought can be marked by a concept that anchors a specific way o f

access to our environment: equipment; works o f art; things. These three route markers

characterize Heidegger's thought as a searching movement into ever more complex yet

elemental ontologies (understandings o f beings). My study's sequence of chapters, moving

from a focus on equipment, to works o f art, and finally to things, parallels Heidegger's

evolving thought.

Chapters 3 through 8 deal with these three guiding concepts in terms o f theoretical

explication (Part H, Chapters 3 through 5) and application (Part IH, Chapters 6 through 8).


Accordingly, Chapters 3 and 6 (equipment), Chapters 4 and 7 (works o f art), and Chapters

5 and 8 (things) are thematic pairs.

Chapter 3 presents basic terms and an overview o f hermeneutic (or interpretive)

phenomenology, introduces taken-for-granted phenomena such as "being-in-the-world," and

shows how we typically experience "space” in everyday, routine activities using various

equipment. This first theoretical chapter explains the method o f environmental analysis of

Heidegger's early period. Because it elaborates at some length on how we commonly use our

physical environment, Chapter 3 provides essential theoretical background material also for

Chapters 4 and 5 .1 Chapter 4 presents an overview o f Heidegger's critique o f modem

technology. It also introduces the "work o f art" as a cultural paradigm that can unify a

historical culture, e.g., our advanced technological society which is at odds with technological

devices. In Chapter 5 ,1 explain what Heidegger means by "things" and how their disclosure

in practical appropriation can lead to dwelling in multiple local worlds.2

Chapters 6 through 8 o f Part EH apply Heidegger's ontological analyses to crucial but

often overlooked issues o f our transportation environment. Following the route markers in

Heidegger's unfolding understanding o f being (equipment; works o f art; things) I present

moving about in a technological world from the perspective of three principal street functions

that correspond to the three main understandings o f being. Chapter 6 examines roadways and

associated tools for moving about (sidewalks, traffic signals, signs) from the perspective of

1 For a more detailed treatment o f phenomenology’s main concepts, goal, and method, see the Appendix: An Outline o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology.

2 The Glossary (pp. 291-296) will facilitate the understanding o f the main phenomenological terms used in this inquiry.


X

smoothly functioning equipment which allows us to immerse ourselves fully in going about

our business. Chapter 7 searches our transportation environment for potential works o f art

which may be able to unify a heterogeneous and fragmented culture that is replete with

contradictions revolving around technology and mobility. Airports and their abutting

circulation network, linking airways with ways on the ground, and freeways, operating in

traditional or potentially automated modes, are explored as candidates for contemporary and

future works o f art. In Chapter 8 ,1 take up Heidegger’s most potent and elemental ontology

o f things and try to show how humble streetscape features (such as a trash can). Main Street,

back roads, freeways, and postmodern practices o f dwelling and moving about can be

informed by things making places.

Chapter 9 summarizes my findings, charts guidelines for shaping our streets and

highways (Table 9-1), and considers the three principal street functions jointly by examining

their compatibility and overlap. In order to promote appreciation and care for our public

roads, I also suggest some "street topics" that primary and secondary schools may include as

part o f their interdisciplinary curricular activities.

By freely accepting a technologically advanced world where we are on the move and

dwell via moving, we are more likely to design our streets not only for safe and efficient

travel, but also for regaining joy and delight while moving about. Journeying is not only

about "getting there." It should also be moving.


1

PA RTI

PHENOMENOLOGY AND

THE PUBLIC NATURE OF STREETS

‘Tii roads, streets, bridges, buildings, our concern discovers nature in a definite way.”

Heidegger, Being and Time


Chapter 1

Phenomenology in Environmental Design Research

2

1.1 ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN RESEARCH AND PHENOMENOLOGY

This chapter gives an overview o f phenomenology as currently used in environmental

design research, and situates the main body o f this dissertation in a larger academic and

professional context.

Environmental design research is an interdisciplinary field that emerged during the

1960's in response to a variety o f environmental concerns.1 Moore, Tuttle, and Howell define

this field as

the study o f the mutual relations between human beings and the physical environment at all scales, and applications o f the knowledge thus gained to improving the quality o f life through better informed environmental policy, planning, design, and education.2

Due to its interdisciplinary nature and work on all scales o f the human environment,

environmental design research draws upon a variety of theoretical frameworks comprised of

both qualitative and quantitative studies. Phenomenology is one research tradition within

qualitative environmental design research.

When using a phenomenological approach, most environmental design researchers

draw on the works o f Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-

1961). These philosophers were concerned about outlining the general structures o f human

1 For an overview o f this field, see especially the contributions by Proshansky, Wapner, and Moore in Stokols and Altman 1987 (articles numbered 42, 41, 39, respectively). ,

2 Moore, Tuttle, and Howell 1985, 4.


3

existence, including aspects o f human spatial behavior as part o f the more comprehensive

practices o f using equipment, o f building, and o f dwelling.3 Because general existential

structures are its focal point, the research tradition inaugurated by Heidegger (and followed

to a large degree by Merleau-Ponty) has been named "existential phenomenology."

David Seamon, a trained geographer and professor o f architecture, describes the goal

and focus o f existential phenomenology as follows:

A central aim o f existential phenomenology is a generalized description and understanding o f human experience, behavior, meaning and awareness as they are lived by real people in real times and places. The reality o f these concrete experiences and situations are not an end in themselves, however, but a field o f descriptive evidence out o f which can be drawn underlying patterns and structures that mark the essential core o f humanness.4

Existential phenomenology and its application in the environmental disciplines

originated in continental Europe. The original works in phenomenology were not focused on

the environment, but they have important implications on questions regarding "how humans

dwell." Among the first to use a phenomenological approach in environmental studies,

besides Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, are Otto Friedrich Bollnow5 and Christian Norberg-

Schulz.6 The collections o f essays edited by Seamon and Mugerauer (1985) and Seamon

(1993) contain contributions from 29 (mostly North American) environmental design

3 More than any other phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty paid special attention to the human body; for a thorough treatment on this subject, see Merleau-Ponty 1962 (Part One).

4 Seamon 1993, 17; emphasis in italics is Seamon's.

5 Bollnow 1967, and 1971.

6 Norberg-Schulz 1979, 1980, 1983, 1985, and 1988.


4

researchers who follow or explore a phenomenological approach. Their work can be grouped

under the label o f "environmental phenomenology."

1.2 BASIC PROPOSITIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY

The substantive focus and scale o f studies in environmental phenomenology varies

widely. In order to provide an overview of these studies, I have abstracted from them those

concerns and views which are shared by the loosely defined group o f environmental

researchers who employ a phenomenological approach. I present these commonalities in

twelve thesis statements, o r brief propositions, followed by some explanatory comments.

These propositions do necessarily simplify the variety of concerns and views held by various

environmental phenomenologists, but my succinct phrasing o f these propositions assists in

bringing the essential issues into sharper focus.

(1) The evervdav life-world is o f primary importance.

Phenomenologists7 in environmental design research are primarily interested in

exploring the concrete life-world o f human habitats. Issues o f building science, formal

aesthetics, and history tend to play a secondary role, and are typically taken up only to the

extent that they involve, actually or potentially, tangible human experience. O f primary focus

and concern are the phenomena, i.e., the general patterns or structures as evident (though

7 For the sake o f clarity and brevity, I will use "phenomenologists" in the remainder o f this chapter as an abbreviation for "designers and design researchers in environmental disciplines (such as architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, geography) employing a phenomenological approach."


5

often hidden and not easily discernible) in everyday human activities and shared practices.

Vernacular architecture and traditional settlements are therefore germane areas o f study.8

(2) The design profession needs an alternative to functionalism and formalism.

Since its inception during the first quarter o f the twentieth century, the original

pragmatism and innovative functionalism o f architectural modernism has often degenerated

into sterile, formalist designs. Uncritical and mechanistic imitations o f modernist exemplars

resulted in cold, arid, and habitually dwarfing "habitats." An equally uncritical and extreme

response to modernism's sterile legacy subsequently gave rise to shallow self-serving caprices

o f formalism in the guise o f postmodernism and deconstruction.9

Much contemporary design is disconnected from "life in the street" because it

addresses only safety issues and resource efficiency (functionalism), serves as historic set

pieces for corporate image promotion (postmodernism) or is reduced to idiosyncratic self-

expression addressed with tongue-in-cheek to the architectural literati (deconstruction). In

8 See, for instance, the phenomenological studies of Dalmatian towns (Violich) and wells in Ireland (Brenneman) in Seamon and Mugerauer 1985; o f the landscape and indigenous building types o f Catalonia (Nogue i Font) and Northern Greece (Walkey) in Seamon 1993; and o f the adaptive settlements and genius loci o f Rome, Prague, and Khartoum (Sudan) in Norberg-Schulz 1980.

9 Much o f postmodern and deconstructionist architecture can be understood as a quixotic but acceptable response to extreme and unimaginative modernism Extreme and unimaginative products ensue whenever a formerly new paradigm (e.g., modernist architecture) is merely imitated as a style. Postmodernism (as historic formalism) and deconstruction (as idiosyncratic formalism) are, in general, not convincing responses to the liberating original tenets and achievements o f modernism See, for instance, the programs and manifestoes on twentieth-century architecture in Conrads 1980, and Klotz 1988 on the historical setting o f postmodern architecture.


6

contrast to architecture reduced to utilitarian functions, mere image maker, or stylistic

commentary, design informed by phenomenology tends to pay attention to more basic and

"pedestrian" needs and intends to build individual structures and urban settlements which can

house, interpret, and express the common yet multifaceted experiences and social practices

o f everyday living.

(3) A synthesis is needed to bring various environmental disciplines together.

As a counterbalance to narrow specialization, environmental design research informed

by phenomenology may provide a platform for integrating specialized environmental design

research approaches and for "healing the rifts between art and science, seeing and

understanding, knowledge and action, and design and building." 10

Those supporting the use o f phenomenology in the environmental disciplines are

convinced that it can reconfigure and transform the traditional divisions of academic branches

in general and the design fields in particular. Mainly because o f its promise for synthesizing

knowledge and discovering environmental meaning, some protagonists assign to

phenomenology a central unifying role in academia and the applied professions.11

10 Seamon 1993, 1.

11 The arguments for a unifying role o f phenomenology and contributions along these lines demonstrate, as in any emerging field, varying levels o f methodological rigor and results. See, for instance, the contributions by Norberg-Schulz, Seamon, Relph; and Zimmerman on "deep ecology" (in Guignon 1993, 240-269).


(4) Humans need distinct and significant places.

Phenomenologists point to the widely observed and lamented "loss o f place" which

is, more precisely, a loss or an erosion o f place identity. They are convinced that the built

environment is a decisive factor for the physical and psychological well-being o f individuals,

groups, and society as a whole. In order to shed The Geography o f Nowhere (Kunstler 1993)

and return Home from Nowhere (Kunstler 1998), phenomenologists call for designing and

building identifiable places which unobtrusively yet effectively reinforce historical awareness,

social identity, and local culture. Instead o f using the natural and built environment mainly

for purposes o f resource efficiency, phenomenologists encourage to cherish, celebrate, and

nurture the particular genius loci, and to re-create in this spirit.12

(5) Designers build on the users’ implicit knowledge.

Rather than relying mainly on questionnaires and surveys or on their own

preconceived notions, designers need to tap into the users' tacit knowledge or implicit

understanding.13 It is difficult to tap into this implicit knowing- because it is by nature

12 For a specific treatment on discovering, celebrating, and building in the pervading spirit o f a place, see Genius Loci by Norberg-Schulz (1980).

13 Many concerns and issues phenomenology deals with are explicitly shared by researchers who don't consider themselves phenomenologists. For instance, Edward T. Hall (1969) explores The Hidden Dimension in personal interactions, and Michael Polanyi (1962, 1967) traces The Tacit Dimension in everyday activities and in science.


8

"seemingly mundane and not striking." 14 This implicit understanding is a kind o f knowledge

everyone embodies and "carries around" and o f which one is typically not conscious. It is this

tacit embodied knowing which phenomenology wants to make explicit in its general

structures. Environmental phenomenologists want to use these explicit general structures o f

implicit knowing to make our physical environment more livable.15

Design built on the embodied knowing shared in a particular culture can preserve,

enhance, and highlight the users' life-world. It seems that the crux o f phenomenology can

therefore be phrased as follows: How can this tacit knowledge be accessed? The following

nine steps or building blocks are methodological candidates for accessing this tacit knowing.

Except for step (d), which I only use in passing, these steps comprise also my general

approach. They can be identified as follows:

(a) direct, keen, and unbiased observation leading to cautious generalizations;

(b) systematic reflection about these tentative generalizations aided by familiarity

with the history o f thought;

14 Seamon 1993, 11. In "Sacred Structures o f Everyday Life: A Return to Manteo, North Carolina," Randolph. Hester (in Seamon 1993, 271-297) describes the difficulties local residents and hired professionals had in identifying and articulating these "seemingly mundane and not striking" but central elements o f a setting that was ordinary and commonplace.

15 In Chapter 3 and in the Appendix, which outlines hermeneutic phenomenology, I present more specific reasons for the difficulties in accessing this tacit knowledge. In attempting to make this tacit knowledge explicit, a phenomenologist must uncover subtle but pervasive predispositions which direct and govern our ways o f seeing and doing. The difficulties o f this uncovering are further compounded by the circular and essentially open- ended process o f understanding. For instance, in order to clarify and deepen the phenomenological process o f understanding one must submit this process to its own interpretive categories. However, in order to be applicable to environmental design, environmental phenomenology does not have to deal extensively with these important theoretical issues which are outlined in the Appendix.


9

(c) critical appropriation and evaluation of research in environmental assessment

and cognition;

(d) corroboration o f generalized findings through comparative research, including

cross-cultural studies;

(e) disciplined and objectifiable introspection;

(f) surveying and analyzing the arts and literature as copious sources for insights

into the general characteristics o f human nature (i.e., the phenomena);

(g) interpreting the observed phenomena and inferred conclusions in terms o f the

culture that is analyzed;

(h) augmenting these interpretations by appropriate sociological, psychological,

and anthropological knowledge;

(i) and, in general, always keeping a perspective that is as precise as the

phenomena admit and as comprehensive as they require.

These methodological steps or buildings blocks can be traced in the original works of

phenomenology. In theoretical development and practical application, these methodological

components are not so neatly isolated as they appear in the list above and do not follow a pre

ordained sequence. Being subject to the logic o f understanding, these building blocks of

phenomenology necessarily follow a circular or spiral structure in which concepts and

empirical facts are interdependent agents o f a fluid whole that is nourished by an ever

changing, creative tension. This general methodological perspective o f phenomenology is

buttressed by the conviction that method is always subservient to the phenomena it is

employed to elucidate.


10

(6) We learn about places and how people use them bv keen and empathetic observation

and description.

Informed by phenomenological theory, keen and empathetic observation and

description o f shared social practices and settings are the basic method o f applied

environmental phenomenology. Because o f its emphasis on descriptive qualitative data,

environmental phenomenology is at times incorrectly identified with all qualitative

approaches. Observation and description, leading to tentative generalizations, are the basic

vehicles o f investigation in the sciences as well as in the humanities.

Environmental researchers and designers use phenomenological theory with varying

levels o f sophistication, and apply it more or less explicitly, and more or less appropriately.

Partial or inconsistent use o f phenomenological theory is one reason why environmental

phenomenology is occasionally used as an umbrella label for all qualitative approaches in

environmental design research. Phenomenology as a coherent general description o f the

human life world is only one o f several approaches in the qualitative research tradition.

Phenomenology shares with these approaches their common concerns and issues, but it has

its specific "take on things" and, correspondingly, its own terminology.

Phenomenology is a method o f investigation that originated during the first quarter

o f the 20th century and subsequently has lead to a wide range o f theoretical developments and

applications in various fields. Its emphasis on unbiased yet involved observation and

description is shared by many researchers, writers and artists who not necessarily understand


11

themselves as "phenomenologists".16 Their kindred work may serve as inspiration and

stimulation for those who want to employ an explicit phenomenological approach. For

instance, many proponents o f environmental phenomenology consider the poetry, artistic

analyses, and the scientific studies o f Goethe (1749-1832) as a paradigm for their field.

Goethe's way o f describing natural phenomena (e.g., plants, stone formations, colors), places,

and people employs keen observation, engaged concern, an almost naive and open mind, and

ever a sympathetic and intimate "eye" as conditions for genuine knowledge.17

Phenomenologists demonstrate resonant concern and care for the settings they

observe and describe, while trying to avoid subjectivism, sentimentalism, and sensationalism.

They show people in their practical daily involvements, immersed in their world, and

emphasize their shared social practices even when focusing on individual cases or specific

events. A phenomenological description aims at making the explored places, events, and

social practices lucid, transparent, and intelligible on their own terms. Furthermore, a

phenomenological analysis aims at making intelligible an entire world in which people, things,

conventions, and institutions find their place and meaning.

Phenomenological "data" thus quarried may be used as mere stepping stones for

psychological and sociological analyses, or for scientific data processing (statistical analysis)

16 Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the eminent physician and thinker o f ancient Greece, for example, can be regarded as the first and foremost "phenomenologist." He pursued almost every major phenomenon known in his culture with systematic and often tedious passion, due respect for the historical precedent, probing persistence, and with fervent curiosity insisting to know "What is it?"

17 For a recent application o f an explicit Goethian approach, see Mark Riegner's essay "Toward a Holistic Understanding o f Place: Reading a Landscape Through its Flora and Fauna" inSeamon 1993, 181-215.


12

with the purpose o f determining causal relationships. However, a clear methodological

distinction needs to be made between phenomenological findings as part o f a

phenomenological study, on the one hand, and their use as "data" for quantitative analysis,

on the other. The latter is bound to present its results as "objective facts" that are severed

from the life-world. Contrary to the decontextualizing tendency o f science, phenomenology

intends to make an entire world, on its own terms, more intelligible, lucid, and present.18

(7) Interpretation is more important than explanation and prediction.

Understanding is a central feature o f human living and interaction. Understanding

encompasses the entire range o f human experience, from everyday routine activities, where

understanding remains typically and necessarily "tacit," to systematic reflection about, and

interpretation o f this central and pervasive human activity. Phenomenology attempts to

extract and systematize the "natural" and tacit understanding by making it explicit as a central

structure of being human. This higher or second-order understanding (systematic reflection

and interpretation) o f understanding (everyday coping in one's world) is the goal o f

hermeneutic phenomenology.19

Scientific data and principles arise from attempts to better understand our world and

to go about our individual and common business more successfully. Scientific explanation

18 For a more comprehensive justification o f this important methodological distinction o f different kinds o f knowing based on different kinds o f engagement with one's world, see the Appendix, especially The Phenomenon o f World (Section 4) and Being-in-the-World (Section 5).

19 See also Sections 1 and 2 o f the Appendix.


13

and prediction must therefore be imbedded in a comprehensive interpretive framework if they

claim relevance for human living. In attempting to lead to a more comprehensive and relevant

understanding o f our life-world, phenomenology is not, as often misconstrued, an opponent

o f science but a necessary complement.

A phenomenological interpretation aims at making manifest what is implied or tacit

knowledge which is typically taken for granted. While approaching the concrete phenomena

o f the life-world inductively, phenomenology emphasizes its general patterns. Such general,

shared patterns or structures o f c o m m on experience stand in contrast to the abstract,

depersonalized, and decontextualized concepts o f science. However, both scientific and

phenomenological research seek generality and utility, albeit pursuing different purposes.

Science is interested in causal explanation, prediction, and control, whereas qualitative

research, such as phenomenology, is interested in deepening our understanding o f our routine

and cultural activities and thereby establishing meaning. It follows that phenomenology is not

a form of individualism or subjectivism, as often mistakenly charged. Contrary to this

misconception, phenomenology seeks the structure o f social practices, thereby shedding light

on diverse areas o f human experience, including the reciprocal relations o f humans and their

natural and built environment.

Phenomenologists hold that proper understanding is an emic process, i.e., it occurs

"from the inside out," arising from absorbed involvement in one's world and becoming

increasingly explicit with the aid o f systematized and generalized concepts. Knowledge o f the

world one is intimately involved with can never be made fully explicit and objectified. In

contrast to a scientist, a phenomenological observer, analyst, or interpreter remains dependent


14

on the very structures that are to be made intelligible. In contrast to a scientist who is

expected to keep an impersonal distance toward the object o f study, a phenomenologist

remains necessarily linked to the world that is to be understood "from the inside out."

Understanding, even on its higher and self-reflective levels as systematic hermeneutics, is

necessarily circular.

Designing and building must proceed accordingly, i.e., intimate knowing o f settings,

social conventions and customs, and the users' physical and cultural needs and wants must

first be understood before an environment can be designed and built that is congruent with

the users' world. A design and building process that is informed by the primacy o f emic

understanding and interpretation is more likely to be successful than the work o f a hired

outside expert and detached specialist whose role is typically limited to merely technical

issues.

Empathy and receptivity are often regarded as basic requirements for interpretation.

Literature and the arts, which draw upon and express multifaceted receptivity and engaged

involvement, are at times used by phenomenologists as sources for interpretive insight and

design clues.20

20 See, for instance, David Seamon, "Reconciling Old and New Worlds: The Dwelling- Joumey Relationship as Portrayed in Vilhelm Moberg's 'Emigrant' novels" (Seamon and Mugerauer 1985,227-245), and his "Different Worlds Coming Together: A Phenomenology o f Relationship as Portrayed in Doris Lessing's Diaries ofJane Somers" (Seamon 1993, 219- 246). Heidegger, especially in his later writings, quotes poets (such as Holderlin, Hebbel, Rilke, Stifter, and Trakl) for their penetrating perception o f places and insights regarding the nature o f dwelling. For Heidegger's use o f a passage from Rilke that vividly illustrates the phenomenon o f being-in-the-world, see Section 5 o f the Appendix.


15

Environmental design researchers using an interpretive approach tend to demonstrate

"elective affinities" to both artistic expression and vernacular design. They are typically not

much interested in issues o f building science, architectural history, or formal analysis o f

buildings and settlements. While such areas o f research are in principle susceptible to an

interpretive approach, including phenomenology, they hardly attract phenomenologists. In

contrast, places teaming with life and expressing the overt and covert practices o f a culture

attract phenomenologists.21 Phenomenologists are drawn to common places, such as

factories, arcades, and alleys, or to spots at society's fringe, such as favelas, the demimonde

o f red light districts, or even slaughter houses.22 In contrast to a scientific analysis requiring

generality and detachment, a phenomenological description — empathetic yet matter-of-fact

-- o f ordinary places and events can show us vividly and tangibly, as Heidegger (BP 173)

puts it, "in how elemental a way the world ... leaps toward us from the things."

(8) Form follows understanding.

Designing and building is not reducible to specialized knowledge and skills applied to

technical problems o f housing people and organizing human settlements according to

21 See, for instance, Saile's views o f a Pueblo world and Violich's reading of Dalmatian towns (in Seamon and Mugerauer 1985, 159-181, and 113-136), and Nogue i Font's Catalonian landscape experience and Walkey's encounter with the vernacular architecture o f the Builders' Guild in Northern Greece (in Seamon 1993, 159-180, and 129-157).

22 See, for instance, the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) in which Alfred Doblin describes the "hero's" struggles o f leading an ordinary and respectable life after having been released from prison. Ensuing disappointments, temptations o f the underworld, and finally becoming a murder suspect mark the "hero's" struggles which are skillfully mirrored by an eerie description o f life's short stay in a slaughter house.


16

"rational" principles o f resource efficiency and economies o f scale. "Form follows function"

was a professed credo o f architectural modernism. From a phenomenological vantage point,

designing dwellings, work places, and urban environments calls for following the tacit

understanding o f world and culture at hand. Such a tacit understanding can be made explicit

by a conceptual understanding that reflects upon, while necessarily remaining anchored in,

the structures o f the life-world.23 Hermeneutic phenomenology aims at such generalized

understanding.24

(9) Design must reflect and reinforce meaning.

The teaching and practice o f architecture and urban design must focus more on the

pragmatic requirements and cultural values o f the intended users. Places are meaningful to

their users if they fulfill functional requirements and express local cultural values. The

creation o f meaningful and identifiable places is very important, especially in modem multi

cultural and technologically dominated environments. Much contemporary design tends to

limit itself by mostly catering to crass commercial interests, to merely functional needs, or to

novelty effects o f idiosyncratic self-expression. The science and art o f building, as

professional practice and a field o f education, needs to live up to its potential o f creating

23 In Pedagogy o f the Oppressed, Paulo Freire (1990) employs this method for political and educational liberation.

24 For an outline o f hermeneutic phenomenology, see the Appendix.


17

meaningful places which reflect, reinforce, and integrate functional, aesthetic, and cultural

values.25

Building on the tacit understanding of a culture does not produce high-style

architecture but tends to create congruent form. This explains why many o f the world's

vernacular buildings and settlements are generally so pleasing, comfortable, so right and

fitting, and are able to gather and support many social practices simultaneously without

drawing undue attention to themselves. Vernacular form tends to build on the underlying

culture "from the inside out" and thus serves and reinforces it. Phenomenologists challenge

themselves to emulate this seamless fusion o f culture and built form by doing deliberately

what vernacular form — with the aid o f repeated cycles o f trial and error over time -- has

apparently achieved instinctively. Environmental designers consult phenomenological theory

for conceptual tools in order to achieve such seamless fusions o f culture and built form An

environmental phenomenologist, as interpreter or designer, may be regarded as a seamster or

seamstress26 who attempts to bring things nearer to us.

25 An emphasis on environmental meaning is found in phenomenological research as well as in studies that follow other qualitative research traditions; see, for instance, Borgmann 1984 and 1992, Norberg-Schulz 1988, Rapoport 1990a, Stokols 1991, and Seamon 1993 (especially the essays number 5 through 9).

26 I am using a word play Heidegger forged in his "Conversation on a Country Path" (Discotrrse on Thinking, 89-90). In this fictional and probing conversation, a scholar, a scientist, and a teacher explore ways o f thinking which may enable us to regain nearness to natural and manufactured things. Heidegger uses the German word Naherin which means both "seamstress" and "one who brings things nearer." Using and advancing a mode o f thinking that affords nearness, the teacher, while wondering about the stars, intimates to his colleagues that the night is the Naherin o f the stars. The scientist agrees halfheartedly: "... at least for the naive observer, although not for the exact scientist."


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(10) Form expresses meaninpfiil w holes.

As a corollary to discovering and expressing meaning in the natural and built

environment, phenomenological approaches focus on holistic perception and expression.

They encourage designers to pay close attention to the smooth flow of successful everyday

coping activities as well as to building physical environments that conform to and facilitate

such everyday activities. This can be achieved by designing and constructing comprehensible,

meaningful wholes whose parts relate to each other in a graceful and symbiotic manner. Even

when phenomenological inquirers focus on individual elements o f an environment, they see

to it that the whole world to which these elements belong is always present and implied in

their descriptions and analyses.27

In order not to fell victim to the objectivistic approach so dominant in behaviorism,

some environmental researchers and writers employ a decidedly experiential and personalistic

perspective.28 In supporting or defending such a perspective, some proponents o f

27 The work o f some phenomenologists overlaps in part with holistic scientific approaches such as Gestalt theory and general systems theory (see, for instance, Merleau- Ponty 1962). Explanatory simplicity and theoretical elegance are often the motivation underlying scientistic holism. The holism o f phenomenology, however, is rooted in and bounded by the pervading holistic properties o f the life-world itself (for a detailed description o f "being-in-the-world,11 the most holistic phenomenon, refer to Section 5 of the Appendix). Without stretching thinking in analogies too far, I further propose to understand phenomenology as an attempt to see environments as holograms: any fragment o f a holographic image is able to reproduce the entire hologram even if its material vessel is broken into pieces. A holistic perspective is already evident in Georg Simmel's brief 1909 study o f "Brucke und Tiir" ("Bridge and Door," Simmel 1957, 1-7).

28 See, for example, Catherine Howett, "Tf the Doors o f Perception Were Cleansed': Toward an Experiential Aesthetics for the Designed Landscape," in Seamon 1993, 61-73; Tony Hiss (1990), The Experience o f Place; Yi-Fu Tuan (1977), Space and Place: The Perspective o f Experience.


19

phenomenology become embroiled in fruitless disputes about organismic-holistic vs.

mechanistic-analytical approaches. They deem it necessary to defend their holistic,

phenomenological perspective by sporting an anti-scientific stance.29

Phenomenology, properly understood, is not anti-scientific. Being a conceptual

investigation o f the life-world's structures as seen and presented from the perspective o f

humans involved and absorbed in shared social practices, phenomenology (interpreting and

qualitative) can neither embrace nor reject scientific methodology (objectifying and

quantitative). In knowing and honoring its own specific ends, interpretive procedures,

strengths, and limitations, phenomenology can respect and honor scientific research, which

has different goals and therefore different methods, strengths, and limitations/0

Irrespective of their stance toward contemporary science, phenomenologists generally

focus on the interrelationship o f environmental units rather than on these units analyzed in

isolation from the environments in which they function. Phenomenologists prefer to explore

synergistic relations and interdependencies rather than structural hierarchies and causal

relations. Researchers and designers stressing the perspective o f holism and synergistic

interdependence are developing the emerging interdisciplinary field o f phenomenological

ecology.31

29 See, for instance, Relph 1976, 1981, 1987, and 1993.

30 See Section 3.2 Environment and Equipment (below) which, in the context o f discussing modes of being, also briefly describes types of research appropriate for science and phenomenology, respectively.

31 The essays in Seamon 1993, dealing with various environmental concerns and scales, are gathered under the summary title o f "phenomenological ecology;" the ecological orientation is especially prominent in Mark Riegner, "Toward a Holistic Understanding o f


20

(11) Design is the servant o f lived-space.

Phenomenologists reject any preoccupation with merely formal aesthetic issues.

Their explicit or implicit working concept is "lived-space" 32 which emphasizes the

experiential dimension o f spatial encounters. In lived-space, the geometric or physical

properties o f space are an integral part o f the entire setting, i.e., they are manifest properties

that are connected with, and inseparable from, cultural activities. Only under special

conditions (e.g., breakdown o f equipment; detached stance o f a scientific observer) do the

geometric properties o f space become manifest and explicit. When they do become manifest

and explicit, lived-space as smooth practical coping ("flow") in a familiar setting has vanished.

Lived-space, bereft o f "living," then shows itself as the abstract, skeletal space of science/3

Design on the drawing board is intended to eventually become lived-space. Building

documents, in written or graphic form, deal, however, almost exclusively with geometric and

physical properties. Consequently, phenomenologists understand design as a process that

translates features o f lived-space into geometric dimensions and physical properties. Because

o f its reductive character, this translation process necessarily sets aside, or tends to

Place: Reading a Landscape Through Its Flora and Fauna." (Seamon 1993, 181-215)

32 "Lived-space" is a translation o f gelebter Return. Gelebter Raum is Bollnow's (1967) adaptation o f Heidegger's precise but awkward term daseinsmafiige Raumlichkeit (spatiality according to Dasein). Both terms refer to concrete settings in which human living takes place (i.e., where one dwells), in contrast to the abstract, quantifiable properties o f physical or geometric space. Bollnow (1971) enlarged upon the notion o f lived-space in Mensch und Return. My Section 3.3 Existential Spatiality and Physical Space (below) treats more fully the distinction between lived-space and geometric space.

33 The brief chair example in Section 3.2 (pp. 78-79) may further clarify this shift from "lived-space" to scientific space.


21

shortchange, the tacit and less tangible features o f lived-space in favor o f the precision and

manipulability o f physical properties. This translation process is characteristic o f all design

(except one-to-one scale design, such as furniture and product design).

Adequate design is able to account for the overt requirements o f lived-space. Good

design additionally provides also for the tacit and less tangible features o f lived-space, thereby

building on the entire scope o f lived-space. Phenomenologists accordingly insist that creating

fitting environments must have its origin and end in lived-space.34

A servant o f lived-space, design can be viewed as a simplified three-part process. In

this tripartite process, an understanding o f social practices marks the foundation (phase 1),

which is followed by attempts to translate these practices (including their latent aspects) into

building documents (phase 2), which in turn become the "blue prints" for constructing

buildings, landscapes, and urban settings (phase 3) that support or reinforce these social

practices. Much o f contemporary design skips or neglects phase 1, and delights instead in the

glossy glamour o f paper architecture (phase 2 documents as ends in themselves) or in the

temporary novelty appeal o f idiosyncratic compositions (phase 3). Phenomenologists contend

that designing for lived-space does not leave any room for empty aesthetic formalism.

34 I am indebted to Kimberly Dovey's article "Putting Geometry in its Place: Toward a Phenomenology o f the Design Process" (in Seamon 1993, 247-269) as a major source for my argument in Proposition (11). In his Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form (Dovey 1999), he uses the following primary intellectual paradigms: spatial syntax analysis, discourse analysis, and phenomenology.


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(12) Designers are midwives o f culture.

The professional self-understanding o f researchers and designers using

phenomenology rejects the extreme and seemingly polar notions of the designer as

"technological interventionist" and "artistic trend setter." Environmental researchers and

designers informed by phenomenology see themselves rather as facilitators o f everyday

activities which they support and reinforce either by building unobtrusive and utilitarian places

or by making the shared social practices expressly visible in works o f art.35

In contrast to technocratic interventions (as often employed by well-meaning but

misguided urban renewal policies), phenomenology may aid as a catalyst for environmental

change based on an understanding o f the underlying culture at hand. Designers trained in

phenomenology are midwives o f culture by expressing in physical form — and thus

reinforcing — what is going on in that culture.36

35 Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 explore these two broad areas o f design. Chapter 3 examines the phenomenological foundation o f utilitarian designs that are functional, unobtrusive, and transparent to their users. Chapter 4 is an inquiry o f characteristics and requirements o f those designs that are able to function simultaneously as "public works" and "works o f art" in a technological age.

36 I have borrowed from Edward Relph the image o f "midwife" as an appropriate metaphor for the environmentally responsible and culturally attuned designer. Relph concludes his essay "Modernity and the Reclamation o f Place" (Seamon 1993, 25-40) with the appeal addressed to designers and planners to become "environmental midwives." In the effort to reclaim and enliven places as the contexts o f human life, it is wisest, Relph contends (p. 38), "to adopt the gentle and patient manner of an environmental midwife, while rejecting utterly the machine-driven arrogance o f some environmental equivalent to a genetic engineer."


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1.3 PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS AND SEMANTIC ETHNOGRAPHY

This first chapter serves as a general backdrop for introducing Martin Heidegger's

work and those approaches in design research which suggest how his work can be used for

environmental description, analysis, and design. Because semantic ethnography, a method

used in anthropology, has striking similarities with phenomenology, I want to conclude this

chapter with a brief comparison o f theses two approaches. I will begin with a recap of

37phenomenology which is followed by a sketch o f their similarities and differences.

A phenomenological description aims at making the explored places, events, and

social practices lucid, transparent, and intelligible on their own terms. Furthermore, a

phenomenological analysis aims at making intelligible an entire world in which people, things,

conventions, and social institutions find their place and meaning. The general methodological

perspective o f phenomenology is guided by the conviction that method is always subservient

to the phenomena it is employed to elucidate.

Phenomenology is a systematic interpretation o f what is "given" in the life-world, i.e.,

what is "there." 38 As a conceptual qualitative approach, phenomenology can relate to

quantitative research in a threefold manner: phenomenological findings can give rise to, be

stimulated by, or be conducted parallel to quantitative studies of the same subject matter.

37 Professor Galen Cranz uses semantic ethnography in Architecture 110 “Social and Cultural Factors in Architecture and Urban Design,” University of California, Berkeley. For three quarters I was a teaching assistant for this course (1981-82).

38 In a crude but telling way, phenomenology can be characterized as the most radical or purest form o f positivism because it seeks to illuminate nothing but that which is immediately given: the datum, i.e., consciousness (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty); or humans intimately engaged with their world (Heidegger).


24

Pitting quantitative and qualitative approaches against each other, as if they were excluding

alternatives, is misdirected. Phenomenology has specific goals using unique conceptual tools.

Accordingly, its usefulness depends on the stated purpose. As any conceptual framework or

method, it has specific strengths and limitations.

Phenomenology shares many o f its features, including strengths and limitations, with

semantic ethnography.39 Both approaches are well suited for describing a culture or cultural

scenes in their own terms. Their main limitations pertain to quantification and statistical

explanation. Because o f their emphasis on understanding a culture and its language from an

inside-out (or emic) perspective, both approaches employ conceptual and interpretive

methods which are not directly quantifiable. Semantic ethnography and, to a lesser extent,

phenomenology are in principle susceptible to quantifying their specific findings. But doing

so would miss, in most cases, their focus and goal: to achieve an intimate, insiders’

understanding o f a cultural scene (semantic ethnography) or o f essential characteristics o f

being human in general (phenomenology). What semantic ethnography attempts for specific

sub-cultures or cultural scenes, phenomenology attempts for an entire culture in general

terms. Consequently, the basic concepts o f phenomenology40 aim at being comprehensive,

with the result o f frequently appearing abstract.

39 For an introduction to semantic ethnography and 12 case studies, see James P. Spradley and David W. McCurdy, The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society. Chicago: Science Research Associates, Inc., 1972.

40 For an overview o f hermeneutic phenomenology and its basic terms, see Section 3.1 and the Glossary. The Appendix presents a more detailed outline o f hermeneutic phenomenology.


25

Central to both approaches is their emphasis on understanding the structures o f the

life-world and on interpreting their meaning. A good ethnographer or phenomenologist is

able to discover aspects o f human beings o f which they themselves are not aware because

these aspects seem so natural and self-evident. Both approaches share passion and curiosity

about that what members o f a (sub-)culture typically take for granted (e.g., personal space).

Spradley and McCurdy elaborate on the work o f the semantic ethnographer:

The ethnographer doesn’t take anything for granted. He searches for the meaning o f things the foil participant (o f a cultural scene — gloss J.K.) knows but doesn’t know he knows. The ethnographer seeks to make explicit all the things his informant tacitly employs to organize his behavior. It takes a very skilled person with a high degree o f self-awareness to study a cultural scene he has already acquired.41

This important passage highlights the common interests o f both approaches, even

though Spradley and McCurdy characterize only semantic ethnography. Phenomenology and

semantic ethnography emphasize that culture, not any individual, “organizes behavior.”

However, the notion o f “organizing one’s behavior” has a connotation that is, for a

phenomenologist, too intentionalistic. Especially those aspects o f culture and comportment

that are shared and taken for granted are transparent to “the foil participant.” Through

enculturation they have become “second nature” and are so self-evident that it is very difficult

to verbalize the “obvious.” The transparency o f these common practices, which necessarily

stay in the background during routine activities, is a condition for their successful smooth

performance. The transparency o f these background practices also accounts for the

difficulties in making them explicit.

41 Spradley and McCurdy 1972, 34.


26

The semantic ethnographer studies the language o f his informants to reveal the

underlying structure o f cultural categories. The phenomenologist analyzes ordinary and

poetic language as well as taken-for-granted philosophical notions o f her culture and shows

how practices o f self-understanding, including practices opposing such self-understanding,

are embodied in poetic, scholarly, and ordinary language.

A phrase Heidegger uses in his later writings highlights the centrality o f language

emphasized in both approaches: “Language is the house of being. In its home man dwells.”42

My study will introduce phenomenological concepts (e.g., available equipment, world,

spatiality according to Dasein, being-in-the-world, dwelling) and indicate how they can be

used in design and evaluation o f our physical environment, public streets in particular.

42 Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism” (BW 193; GA 9, 313); “language is the house o f being” is used several times in “A Dialogue on Language” (in OWL, US).


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Chapter 2

Encountering Streets and Contemporary Street Issues

This chapter gives a brief overview o f major ways o f encountering streets (Section

2.1) and of main contemporary street issues (Section 2.2) in order to situate the major body

o f my inquiry (Part II and Part HI).

The way we encounter streets shapes our intellectual and physical tools for building,

maintaining, and using streets. The way we experience streets shapes our concepts and means

o f addressing the host o f issues that arise in their multifunctional uses. These often

contentious issues can be addressed in a more satisfactory manner when we have gained more

insights into how we encounter streets, how we use them, and how we dwell on them.

2.1 STREET ENCOUNTERS

The vast and expanding research on street use and street design may be grouped into

seven major types o f encountering streets (see Table 2-1). These encounter types reflect

analytically distinct ways o f using streets which, however, most often overlap and occur

simultaneously. Over time, professional specialization has increasingly taken hold o f these

types o f encountering streets and has crystallized analytically distinct uses o f streets into

protected, often exclusive professional disciplines. While such professional specialization can

generate detailed knowledge and often powerful physical innovations, it can also lead to

further segregation o f street uses, which is a major cause o f the sterility o f the modem

"efficient" street.


28

Based on my research and professional work in transportation planning and

engineering,1 I have identified seven main types o f encountering streets. By listing and briefly

discussing various ways o f experiencing streets, I want to indicate the astonishingly wide

spectrum o f street usage. Acknowledging the wide variety o f street uses acknowledges also

the legitimacy o f professional specialization while guarding against its exclusiveness and

limiting demarcations. I want to use the list o f street encounters (Table 2-1) as a matrix for

creative combinations and professional cross-fertilization which, I hope, can lead to more

multifunctional, expressive, and enjoyable streets.

I present these encounter types (1-7) in increasing order o f self-awareness and

reflexivity on the part o f the users. The users’s way of encountering streets ranges from being

almost entirely unconscious o f the physical infrastructure (street as utility channel) to

deliberately shaping it via urban design, which is a secondary yet engaging mode o f

encountering “the street.” The street is a place where a lot can happen. Accordingly, streets

can be encountered as:

1 As a civil engineer associate/traffic engineer (City o f Petaluma, California; 1987-89)I worked in various areas o f traffic operations (e.g., safety, circulation improvements, traffic calming) and on transportation planning for new suburban residential developments. Since 1989, I have been working for the City and County o f San Francisco as an assistant transportation engineer (9 years) and as a transportation planner (2 years). My main work areas have been traffic engineering support for private and City building projects, encroachment permit review for various installations on sidewalks (e.g., street furniture), coordination o f land use and transportation facilities, and traffic routing plans, specifications, and cost estimates for street reconstructions


29

(1) Utility Channel

The street fulfills many important functions that are not visible and obvious. A variety

o f utilities are embedded in the public right-of-way. Under their pavement, urban streets host

conduits for fresh water, waste water, storm drainage, water for fire suppression; gas lines;

electricity; telephone, cable TV, and other communication lines. These "life lines" are buried

in the street. Consequently, we are typically not aware o f them and take them for granted. We

become aware o f these underground utilities during their malfunctioning. When we know that

a gas main is punctured or a water main is broken, our awareness is heightened and we are

in a state o f alert. We expect that after construction, repair, or maintenance these utilities

become "buried" again in order to discharge their duties and fulfill their vital functions for us.

Rarely do we encounter street utilities directly or for a prolonged period o f time. The

street as a utility channel is an invisible entity for the typical street user. We are "on top" o f

these utilities when we can forget them More than in any other way of using streets, we take

their underground utility for granted.

Civil engineering and construction are the main professional fields responsible for

designing, constructing, and maintaining underground utilities. The specialized expertise

developed in these fields is one contributing factor for the "remoteness" o f the underground

infrastructure which is out o f sight for the ordinary street users. Indeed, if the street as a

utility channel is working properly, its underground gear does not see the light o f day.


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(2) Commonplace

During most o f our everyday activities, the street is a shared public space for

conducting a variety o f pragmatic activities. Our residences abut streets and are accessed by

them. We use streets to go to work, to friends, and to entertainment. Not only do we use

streets to reach specific stores, we occasionally also shop on streets buying newspapers,

snacks, and refreshments from street vendors. We meet friends, acquaintances, or tourists

on streets. I f the climate allows, we also frequent street cafes, enjoying the drinks and food

as much as the social scene.

The street is an unobtrusive stage for diverse activities. We park, repair, and care for

our cars on streets. Children use residential streets for bicycling and various other kinds o f

play, even though the typical residential street is not designed for playing in the roadway.

During all these activities, the street remains in the background, ie., the street itself is not the

focus o f our activities. Precisely because it does not feature prominently, the street can

function as a smooth conduit for our everyday social practices.

The street is a central element o f the urban physical infrastructure. The public rights-

of-way amount to a large percentage (about 25% to 35%) o f a city's entire surface area. This

fact in itself, one should assume, may establish the street firmly in our awareness. Yet -- as

in the case o f utility channel — we take the street for granted, because we are directly and

frequently engaged with it during the course o f the day.


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-------;--------- -— --------------- -

Street Encountered As Professional Practice Prevailing Human Activity

Utility Channel civil engineering, construction

using underground utilities without being aware o f them except during breakdown

Commonplace person-environment studies, sociology, environmental psychology, anthropology

everyday social practices; dwelling in the public realm

Circulation Network transportation planning, traffic engineering, geography

accessing places for work, entertainment, recreation; distributing goods and social services

Stage for Artistic Expression

street performers providing entertainment, social commentary; expressing cultural identity

Forum for Political and Community Action

civic parades and fares, political demonstrations; political science

expressing political opinions; building o f community

Historic Setting architectural and urban history

experiencing and expressing cultural identity through time

Medium for Shaping and Expressing Community Life

urban physical planning, architectural and urban design

affording a variety o f street uses by providing synergistically balanced settings

Table 2-1 Variety o f Street Encounters


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The street as commonplace is studied by sociologists, anthropologists, environmental

psychologists, or by environmental designers who are conducting sociological,

anthropological, or psychological studies. In response to the felt need o f design that is based

on research, an interdisciplinary field emerged during the 1960’s. That field came to be

known as “environmental design research” or “person-environment studies.” The latter term

better indicates by its very name the dynamic relationship o f its subject matter.

As an aid to primarily architects and urban designers, the field o f person-environment

studies investigates social, psychological, and cultural dimensions o f the built environment.

These dimensions are considered from the perspectives o f being either an ingredient or a

result o f design. The built environment is seen as both dependant and independent variable

in the design process. In either case, designers assume that if these factors are properly

accounted for, the resulting places will be more livable. Being a blend o f various disciplines

and methodological perspectives, person-environment studies endeavor to explore the

complexity and dynamics o f settings and to point out those design elements that foster safe,

pleasant, and vibrant environments, including streets.

While the architectural and urban design tradition has relied in the past mainly on

internal professional criteria and on creative inspiration, person-environment research

attempts to put design on a more objective foundation. In order to do so, this

interdisciplinary field has to collect, create, and integrate an ever growing amount of

qualitative findings and quantitative data. As a result, research-based design has become

increasingly specialized, thereby contributing to a widening gulf between design researchers

and practitioners. The greater the amount o f available data generated by design research, the


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harder it becomes to design straightforward, unique, and fitting places. The challenge of

dealing with proliferating research-based design information is exacerbated by the emergence

ofi or demand for, multicultural environments.

Is the generation o f more data the answer to this challenge? Hardly. More relevant

conceptual frameworks and qualitative studies is the perspective pursued in this inquiry.

Phenomenology, as applied to the design professions, shares with other person-environments

approaches the task o f translating the generalized understanding o f everyday common

practices into concrete physical settings that house these practices.

(3) Circulation Network

Streets allow us, one way or the other, to get somewhere. Most o f our locomotion

is indeed accomplished on streets or below the road surface. Even subways use the public

rights-of-ways, mostly their lowest levels. Such locomotion from “A” to “B ” is typically an

onerous rather than a pleasant experience. In a fine grained circulation network, the origin

and destination choices are almost limitless, and we take "any way" to minimize space, time,

and discomfort. The street is used as a means for accessing places for work, entertainment,

and recreation, and for distributing goods and services throughout an interconnected

circulation network. The joy ride and taking the "scenic route" is an exception rather than

the rule. The feet that we view streets in such an instrumental fashion may be a reason why

we have so little pleasure and satisfaction during the journey, and why we want to make the

trip as short and as fest as possible. However, acknowledging the pragmatic role o f streets


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as circulation networks does not necessarily exclude a more comprehensive appreciation o f

streets.

Up to about the third quarter o f this century, the relatively young and burgeoning

profession of traffic engineering has produced a systematic and unified body o f principles and

standards for designing urban streets, rural highways, and freeways. This unification o f

design principles and standards was achieved, however, by promoting narrowly defined

functions o f streets (e.g., maximizing vehicular capacity and safety) and by eliminating or

neglecting many o f the other important purposes o f streets. Traffic engineering's goal of

building and maintaining an infrastructure for the safe and efficient movement o f goods and

people has relegated all non-motorized functions o f streets to “memory lane.” The

opportunities o f experiencing "inefficient," walkable streets are limited today to fleeting

vacation episodes mostly in other, less motorized societies, or to encountering them, second

hand, via Helen Levitt's black-and-white photographs, Norman Rockwell's charming, innocent

paintings, or via Disneyland.

Since about 1975, the cost o f catering to this narrow conception o f the street as a

traffic channel has become very apparent, and professionals and the public alike have

demanded the taming o f the automobile in order to make streets more livable. Those traffic

engineers who are loyal to human needs rather than to perpetuating dated professional biases

are responding to calls to civilize the street. But our speedy society, focused on economic

performance and enamored by technological gadgetry, tends to favor roadways whose

performance can easily be quantified and whose benefit-cost ratios can easily be

demonstrated, given a narrow set o f performance criteria. The new generation o f "automated


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highways" is already on the horizon, and is pushing us fast toward their "early deployment."

Yet even the limited principles o f traffic engineering, if used properly, can provide a powerful

set o f tools for shaping new streets or modifying existing ones. The design concepts "traffic

calming" and "woonerf' (Dutch for “living yard,” or livable residential street) demonstrate

that established and emerging traffic engineering principles can be part o f the overall solution

o f designing streets for more kinds o f users and uses.

(4) Stage for Artistic Expression

The street in its urban setting can be designed “according to artistic principles”

(Camillo Sitte). Some streets may even be experienced as art (see, for instance, Wayne

Thiebaud’s paintings o f streets). Independent o f their degree o f artistic merits, streets can

function as stages for artistic expression. Buildings and the spaces between them can form

the physical shell o f artistic life on the street.

Street art — if not cast in concrete as pavement pattern, in bronze as sculpture, or

in brass as poetry plaque -- is sporadic, unpredictable, and temporary. Poetry readings,

musicians, dramatic performances, pantomimes, and the painting o f murals turn out to be

fresher and more invigorating if their creation is left unplanned, i.e., not planned by civic

authorities or corporate sponsors.

Street art's mercurial nature is best untouched by planning hands. However, urban

planners and designers can create opportunities for artistic expression to take place. Small

urban places, adequately scaled plazas, or just engaging sidewalks and crowded street comers

may provide the stage for such fleeting performances. Instead o f depending on urban


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authorities "to look the other way" when pedestrian circulation space becomes "dangerously"

congested via these pleasant obstructions (which require "critical pedestrian mass" in the first

place), designers can build-in such potential stages as part o f comprehensive urban design.

Building overhangs and recesses for weather protection and visual focal points are possible

design elements. Subway stations make for good acoustics, but are typically unpleasant

places to stay and listen. The streets above — busier, noisier, and often dirtier — fere much

better in terms o f providing places for temporary dwelling, observing, and listening. More

arcades could be built to foster such unscheduled and unannounced entertainment. Of course,

we can’t be guaranteed that the afforded opportunities will actually be used by the pedestrian

artists (and only by them) who want to entertain, stimulate, and to provoke critique, laughter,

and donations.

We have no set standards for the creative life on the street other than those imposed

by civility and creativity. Design, however, can anticipate “the street as stage” and build in

opportunities for public, creative expressions. If such stages are provided, great streets can

self-confidently parade their greatness, and even mediocre streets may become great, if only

temporarily. Great streets are alluring impresarios but no guarantors for the creative life on

the street.

(5) Forum for Political and Community Action

The street can become the focal point for shared concerns and joint action. In this

sense, the street has a political dimension. Streets provide a platform for civic and military

parades and for presidential inaugurations (Pennsylvania Avenue). Streets are often the stage


37

where political opinions are expressed, and where social changes are demanded or even

initiated. Not only the French Revolution was ignited on the capital's streets. In Buenos

Aires, mothers and wives demonstrated silently but staunchly against the human rights abuses

o f Argentina's military regime. Masses demanded political freedom and change in the streets

o f Budapest, Prague, Bucharest, Berlin, Leipzig, and Peking. We remember the picture o f

Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank in the streets o f Moscow, presenting himself as the bulwark

o f Russia's political and economic freedom.

The street as a focus o f a nation's or city's political life presents itself most often in

less dramatic ways. The political and social life o f a community may express itself through

a fere or parade along Main Street. Merchants and residents are concerned about the physical

features and maintenance o f their streets as an important factor in protecting economic vitality

and quality o f life in a neighborhood. Involved residents are concerned about the local

ambience. They gather to build a consensus for common goals and means for achieving them.

Those residents and merchants care for their shared streets as defining elements o f their

community. They dwell on those streets. They make their streets their business.

In order to achieve community consensus regarding goals, actions, and resources, the

involved citizens do not rely mainly on systematic research for evaluating alternative visions

and means. The prevailing communication and decision making process is essentially political

in character. Requests and ideas are solicited, expressed, discussed, and evaluated at home

owner association and neighborhood meetings or at the formal planning commission and city

council meetings. The discussed ideas and requests frequently involve street matters. They

range from low-income housing to streetscape features (e.g., trees, benches, bus shelters,


38

lighting), from establishing a community watch to installing various traffic calming devices.

Speed bumps, traffic diverters, and "preferred" truck routes are subjects o f extensive and

heated debates.

Standards and criteria exist for the installation o f stop signs, traffic signals,

recommended street widths, radii, and lighting. These standards and criteria, however,

address only the technical aspects o f the street's infrastructure. With respect to specific

community preferences, no standards are "correct" other than those formulated or accepted

by the concerned residents themselves, and are valid only as long the shared consensus lasts.

This activist approach to street design and maintenance is particularly successful in

combination and alliance with urban design and transportation professionals. Professional

expertise can widen the range o f options and means for evaluation and simulation o f planned

environments. The degree to which a street is made "livable" depends mainly on ability and

willingness to actively care for the neighborhood. Making streets livable rests on the

determination o f those who live along a shared street to demand attention, resources, and

implementation. The common street provides opportunities for democracy from the ground

up.

(6) Historic Setting

A street can serve as a window to a community's past. In allowing its past to be

present, a street affords more personal and tactile encounters than a museum or a library can

ever provide. Individually and collectively, the street names, building frontages, pavement

materials and their conditions relate the past. Yet, these stories are not forced upon the


39

passers-by. These ever changing stories typically remain in the background and become

animated only upon request. Architectural and urban history are systematic and formal

requests to let the street speak of its past. For the general public, the street's history remains

tacit. By keeping its history in the background yet summonable upon request, the street can

perform its pedestrian, utilitarian functions. Monuments and easily recognizable landmarks

o f the city can stand out only on the basis o f their relatively bland surroundings. Yet even the

Coliseum, the Eiffel Tower, and Big Ben are taken for granted by the urban resident.

Historically important streets, such as the Champs Elysees, Kurfurstendamm, RingstraBe, or

Pennsylvania Avenue, express cultural identity diachronically through time, and extend

opportunities for synchronically experiencing this temporal identity. I f the street is to serve

its multiple purposes, however, its history must not force itself upon its users. The stories

a street may tell have to remain optional.

Architectural and urban history can provide insights into the workings o f a "past"

culture and can trace a setting through its transformations over time. As a side benefit, a host

o f design ideas may be culled from a street’s successive adaptations for the benefit of

contemporary practice. By examining and interpreting how streets have served past

communities, contemporary design can be enriched, relativized, and challenged to provide

working answers for our communities today.


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The "pack-donkey’s ways" 2 o f the past have made place for Haussmann's stately

avenues and Le Corbusier's modem, straight, and fast motorways. Yet, the widespread

disenchantment with the modem street has lead to recalls o f the "pack-donkey’s way"

rehabilitated as the artistic street, the garden street, and as Main Street. Neo-traditional

neighborhood design, even in its half-hearted and compromised recall o f the past, is a tenable

response to the public's rejection o f the barren mono-functional street and to the public’s

reminiscence o f historical precedents. Neo-traditional streets, due to their adaptive ability to

accommodate the automobile, can provide a new link to our circulation network and to our

immediate past.

Even though the historical research on intra-cultural and cross-cultural studies is vast,

only cautious generalizations can be drawn regarding potential successful applications o f a

historical precedent to specific contemporary design problems. No specific design solutions

can be distilled from the bulk o f historical street studies. The historical perspective in street

studies is primarily not interested in directly affecting existing or future conditions. The main

goal of architectural and urban history is the understanding o f a past setting on its own terms

and its change over time. This academic field reconstructs and preserves a vast pool of design

ideas as an incidental benefit for contemporary design practice.

2 In his The City o f Tomorrow and Its Planning, Le Corbusier (1982,18) extols straight roads and denigrates winding roads: “The winding road is the Pack-Donkey’s Way, the straight road is man’s way. The winding road is the result o f happy-go-lucky heedlessness, o f looseness, lack o f concentration and animality. The straight road is a reaction, an action, a positive deed, the result o f self-mastery. It is sane and noble.”


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Streets are historic settings within a larger historic context. But only a few specialists

view streets "historically." For most o f us, the street provides a practical and unspectacular

passage through lived space and time.

(7) Medium for Shaping and Expressing Community Life

Contrary to architectural and urban history, all other ways o f encountering streets

mentioned above have a keen interest in, or a potential for, directly affecting the physical,

social, and artistic characteristics o f streets.

Architecture and urban design, as academic field and professional practice, tends to

acknowledge all types of street encounters. Only on the basis o f this broad acknowledgment

is it possible to use the street as a medium for both: shaping and expressing community life.

Street design is explicitly or implicitly always also urban and community design.

Therefore street design must respect all functions o f streets and all ways o f encountering

them Urban designers' main challenge consists o f taking streets seriously as integral parts

o f communities and as determining factors o f the prevailing quality o f life. While various

interest groups make sure that streets fulfill their functions as efficient and safe circulation

arteries or as stages for civic pride and festivities, it is particularly easy to overlook the quiet

but important demands of the street as "commonplace" (2). Even when seemingly

unimportant street details (such as widths, parking pattern, curbs, lighting, signs, and trees)

are the specific focus o f contemplated actions, the entire physical, economic, and socio

cultural life o f a community is at stake.


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The particular challenge urban designers and architects face today is the very difficult

translation o f the overall multicultural community vision(s) into physical forms that actually

produce the desired outcomes without producing unintended side or aftereffects. The

modernist movement in city planning, for example, shows how the intertwined ideals o f

spatial separation o f land use, clarity, speed, comfort, and efficiency can, when achieved, lead

to unanticipated and undesirable results from which the modem city still suffers today.

Since Camillo Sitte's City Planning According to Artistic Principles, 1986 (Der

Stadtebau nach seinen kunstlerischen Grundsatzen, 1889) urban designers have been

postulating various ideal features o f civic design elements, including streets. But the last 100

years have seen continuing shifts in professional opinions, ranging from romantic, organic

settings to sleek and fast motorways, from functional, rational street hierarchies and back to

multi-functional, "neo-traditional" streets.

The shifting and conflicting views o f street purposes, design principles and features

reflect not only a generational succession o f urban designers. The polarizing and often

contradictory demands we make o f streets reflect a society that continues to shift emphases

and tradeoffs between efficiency, engineering logic, artistic principles, and livability. Still

today, at the beginning o f the 21st century, a short-sighted efficiency bias tends to win the

street battle in the United States, and unfortunately also in many developing countries.

However, demands are becoming louder and more pronounced for building streets that invite

a variety o f uses. This can be achieved by understanding human needs and practices, and by

building civic structures, development clusters, and circulation networks that mutually

enhance and synergistically respond to each other.


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Street design is a professional practice drawing upon a wide range o f professions such

as architecture, urban design, city and transportation planning. It is a medium for shaping

and expressing community life. For professional designers as well as for the community

activists, designing streets is also a distinct way of experiencing them. The process o f

studying, designing, building, and modifying streets is a unique and perhaps the most

deliberate way o f encountering streets.

2.2 MAIN CONTEMPORARY STREET ISSUES

Over the last several years, two issues have emerged in surveys as the main concerns

o f residents in the San Francisco Bay Area: traffic congestion, followed by crime. It can be

taken as a sign of good times that traffic congestion has consistently overshadowed all other

concerns such as armed conflict, racial tensions, hunger, education, unemployment,

epidemics, etc. A recent poll conducted by the Bay Area Council (October 13-22, 1998)

confirmed transportation as the number one concern o f Bay Area residents.3

Two o f the three top contenders on this recent list o f public concerns (transportation,

education, crime) are associated with our public streets. In the following, I briefly summarize

our contemporary concerns about streets and their use under four headings:

J Diana Walsh, “Residents rate transportation worst problem: Bay Area poll reveals record-high anger over region’s overrun roadways.” San Francisco Examiner, December 10, 1998, p. A-23. In this poll, Bay Area residents responded to the question “What is the most important problem facing the Bay Area today?” as follows: transportation (40%); schools, education (14%); crime (12%); overpopulation, crowding (9%); housing (8%); environment, pollution (6%); economy (6%), homelessness (5%), drugs (3%).


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A. The Street as a Shared Realm,

B. Street Safety,

C. Aesthetics, Maintenance, and Identity o f Streets,

D. The Future Street: Smart, Neo-Traditional, or Merely Virtual.

A. The Street as a Shared Realm

The street remains today a source o f both great utility and considerable frustration.

We expect a lot from our public streets. We count on streets to facilitate shopping and our

various social obligations. We expect that they transport us to work, entertainment, and

relaxation in the shortest amount o f time, at the least cost, and at the highest level of

convenience. We want development to take place, and buildings to be retrofitted or

remodeled. Yet we expect an unobstructed roadway when we pass the construction site. We

want others to use public transportation so that we may enjoy a high level o f service on urban

streets or on freeways.

Many o f us enjoy a vital and bustling downtown shopping district, but we become

very frustrated when we can't find parking spaces. And when we finally do find a parking

space we may be annoyed that the allowed parking time is restricted. Motorists become

enraged about parking control officers who enforce the permitted parking duration in order

to create parking turnover, which is a condition for economic vitality and a matter o f equity

with respect to access. Someone’s route to work, which includes some residential streets as

shortcuts, may be perceived as a neighborhood invasion by those who live along these

residential yet public streets.


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The street is a public realm o f cooperation but also o f conflicting values and interests.

Traditionally, the street has accommodated conflicting demands, partly because o f the

advantage o f physical proximity, and partly because o f necessity.

Improved and expanded transportation technologies (the subway, the street car, the

automobile) gave to the modernist planner momentous options: functional separation o f land

uses and distinct street hierarchies, followed by widespread sub-urbanization which requires

the use o f the private automobile and increases our dependence on it. In the aftermath o f this

modernist solution to perceived urban stress, streets have become straighter, wider, and

faster. The public rights-of-way became increasingly populated with cars, and less and less

with people. The modernist streets are as indistinguishable from each other as are the steel

and glass skyscrapers arising from the same belief in spatial segregation, speed, and

individualized transport.

The futurist credo expressed through the modernist street gave way to the realization

that the streamlined street is not a place where one wants to be and dwell. The modernist

street is a space engineered almost exclusively for locomotion. Recently, we have begun to

realize what we have lost by delivering the city, town, and countryside over to the

automobile. Today's challenge is one o f designing public places and streets that acknowledge,

accommodate, and tame the car while re-admitting other hidden and suppressed functions o f

the public street.

Readmitting historical uses to the ecology o f the modernist street does not happen

without tension and conflict. The accommodation o f pedestrians, bicyclists, public transport

riders, and the handicapped community has to occur often at the expense o f the auto's


46

previously unchecked reign. Increasing the number o f “species” in the street's ecology means

curtailing the dominance o f private motorized vehicles.

A new equilibrium o f cars, bicycles, and pedestrians is emerging on streets (as on a

woonerf or a pedestrianized street, now common again in Europe). Frequently, those streets

don’t have any curbs. The elimination o f curbs signals to everyone that people and cars are

to mingle on the same level. This new equilibrium in the street's ecology signifies a trend

toward equity among various types o f street users. While the elimination o f curbs cannot be

seen as a general remedy for achieving such equity, it indicates, however, the possibility o f

a peaceful co-existence among various street users. The shared roadway is a general model

for taming and integrating the car as a useful but harnessed member o f the heterogeneous

community o f street users.

B. Street Safety

The street is a place o f life and death. Automobile accidents cause many fatalities and

injuries: in the USA alone, about 40,000 deaths and 100,000 injuries occur each year. We

want safer cars and roadways, we want calmer and less traffic in our neighborhoods, Le., on

"our" street. We are concerned about our children's safety.

We are bombarded daily with news o f robberies, shootings, rapes, and other assaults

occurring on our streets. I f streets are not directly implicated in these crimes, they are cited

as accomplices, e.g., as places where a bank robbery took place, where a car chase started or

ended, or where a famous person was killed, by car or bullet. We are familiar with "bad


47

streets," i.e., places where “bad things” are almost expected to happen. We may view these

“had streets” as the shadow counterparts o f the ritzy and glitzy shopping districts.

Streets are places o f crime, at least o f potential crime. Various security devices on

store doors and windows, car alarms, locks on steering wheels, automatic car door locking

mechanisms, and remote head light switches testify to the level o f perception and

preoccupation with crime and security on streets.

C. Aesthetics. Maintenance, and Identity o f Streets

In contrast to our homes and work places, we commonly experience streets as places

o f transition, as a spatial channel to get from “A” to “B." We typically don't dwell on streets.

The street itself as an enjoyable place to be, is rarely a chosen destination for the North

American traveler.

Consistent with a widely held view o f the street as a place o f transition suitable for

tramps and suspicious transients, we have made many o f our public streets into uninviting

places, by design or default. In order to keep undesirables out o r away, many streets in

suburbia (including access roads o f shopping malls) don't feature sidewalks at all. Anyone

who walks despite such impediments is, in the eyes of many, a shady individual and persona

non grata. In literature, television shows, and newspaper reports, today’s outcasts are often

cast as characters without motorization.

Given this ingrained bias, public officials find it difficult to convince their

constituencies to pay for beautification and maintenance o f public streets. Ongoing

maintenance is less “visible” than freeway widening, building overpasses, and installing traffic


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signals. This relative neglect in terms of maintenance and cleanliness seems paradoxical when

considering the many hours residents spend on improving their own front yards, be it for

personal satisfaction or economic improvement o f their homes. "Curb appeal" is an essential

factor in real estate transactions. Well maintained street frontages yield higher selling prizes

o f homes. On the small, private scale, the issue o f maintenance, care, concern, attention to

detail and continued investment is obvious and generally accepted. Concerned citizens and

public officials repeatedly experience road blocks, however, when they want to extend the

same level o f care to the public realm at large.

Suburban communities have been built that often feature residential enclaves

“protected” from the rest o f the community by high walls along an arterial road. Myriad dead

end streets in these freely chosen ghettoes are to ensure privacy for residents and a confusing

labyrinth for outsiders and intruders. This anti-social, private gesture is a gesture of defense,

and a rejection o f the public at large and the public road connecting to it. Shopping malls

show their backs to traveling motorists (e.g., along U.S. 101 at the Corte Madera shopping

mall) signalizing their status as an exclusive enclave. In contrast, the high-rise public housing

towers in Marin City, a few miles south, are fully open to public view.

The shortcomings o f the modernist street have become obvious to design

professionals and the public alike. As a result, a rediscovery o f the public street is on its way.

Today, many designers, planners, and developers are driven to strengthen or enliven Main

Street after we have destroyed it by catering to the shopping malls. Not long ago, we ripped

out street car tracks to make way for the "more advanced" technology o f private motorized

transportation. Today, communities are fighting for Federal dollars to build street car lines


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(e.g., in Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Portland). We expect economic

turnabouts, even small economic miracles, from putting rail back into the public street. San

Francisco’s Third Street Light Rail Project, for instance, is to connect the underdeveloped

Bayshore and Hunters Point neighborhoods with downtown and the rest o f the City's transit

network. High hopes are riding on this public investment.

Do these efforts amount only to a nostalgic romanticism evoking the "good old days"?

They certainly reflect a call for small-scale development responsive to community needs, for

more real choices in moving about, for places with identity and unique character, and a call

for neighborhoods that are well connected to each other. “Traditional Neighborhood

Development” 4 is a response to modernism's functional separation o f land uses and to the

widespread over-dependence on the private automobile. It remains to be seen, however, if

“Traditional Neighborhood Development” is a promising beginning or merely a marginal

adjustment within the modernist segregation paradigm.

4 “Traditional Neighborhood Development” (TND) is a recently rediscovered model of physical planning that seeks to enhance community character, reduce dependency on private automobiles, and facilitate walking, biking, and use o f public transportation. TND can be achieved by providing a mix o f land uses, higher (6-12 dwelling units per acre) than typical suburban residential densities (1-5 dwelling units per acre), narrower streets, and design elements that foster neighborhood ambience (e.g., street orientation o f homes, front porches, back yard garages, alleys, off-street walkways, and shared street space where feasible). For suggested TND design guidelines, see Institute o f Transportation Engineers 1999b and Burden 1999. Vuchic (1999) discusses various policies, principles, and examples of Transportation fo r Livable Cities.


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D. The Future Street: Smart. Neo-TraditionaL or Merely Virtual

While various attempts are underway to reclaim the street as a multipurpose, shared

place available to the entire community, new economic and technocratic forces are emerging

that want to turn the streets and highways into "smart" traffic corridors. A consortium o f

high-tech corporations and the Federal Government are spearheading this program under the

banner o f "Intelligent Transportation Systems" (ITS). A fragmented and disjointed surface

transportation network, heavily lopsided in favor o f the private single-occupancy automobile,

might form, according to ITS promoters, one integrated system with the aid o f sophisticated

electronic hardware and software. ITS supporters expect that the integration o f the surface

transportation network can be achieved through extensive use o f “smart” information

technology, such as electronic fare collection, central traffic management centers, traveler

information systems, and vehicles equipped with fully automated control systems driving

conveyer-belt-like on automated freeways . ITS critics point out, however, that roadway

congestion is not caused by inadequate capacity or lack o f information about roadway

conditions but by sprawl, lack o f coordination between land use and transportation planning,

and by inefficient road usage (low vehicle occupancy). Rather than calling for advanced

technology, these critics are calling for integrated, regional transportation planning and a

more efficient use o f the existing surface transportation infrastructure through mass transit

and ride sharing.

The electronic age promised us less need for locomotion o f physical things, yet the

local roads and highways increasingly suffer from traffic congestion. Teleconferences were

supposed to substitute for, if not entirely replace, face-to-face meetings. Automated


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freeways, the latest technological fix “to make traffic congestion obsolete,” would allow a

doubling o f vehicles on "smart" computer-guided freeways. The solution to the congestion

problem would be achieved by electronically controlled, close spacing o f vehicles. The

likelihood o f rear end collisions, ITS promoters claim, will be reduced significantly by

advanced vehicle control systems or entirely eliminated by fail-safe design. According to this

“intelligence scheme,” “eyes on the street” are going to be replaced by electronic eyes. But

who monitors what these electronic eyes see? Furthermore, who enjoys what they see on the

streets and freeways?

Most o f these high-tech fixes will make the street less tangible and less real, because

we will rely less on our senses, direct observations, judgments, and decisions. The streets will

be populated by technological devices rather than by people. Instead o f spending funds on

making streets more usable for a variety o f users, on basic maintenance and street

beautification, we are to spend them on complex and expensive electronic gadgetry embedded

in or alongside the roadway. This is at least the vision o f the powerful ITS-lobby. Instead

o f making streets more walkable, we risk making them more virtual.

A continuous disregard for the street as a public space is mirrored in these high-tech

proposals which imply the view that highways as well as streets are principally traffic

conduits. In line with this narrow instrumental view o f streets, the ITS enthusiasts urge

legislators, politicians, and traffic engineers to revamp our streets and spruce them up

electronically. This electronic drapery, however, is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy:


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1) by making streets electronically “smart” and "intelligent," we deny their role

as teacher (Grady Clay 1987, 155-169) and thereby further reduce their

potential for direct tangible experience;

2) by counting on advanced information technology, we further reduce the social,

political, and aesthetic dimensions o f streets;

3) by increasing the streets' vehicular throughput electronically, we reduce our

opportunities to build communities that minimize the need for traveling,

especially traveling in vehicles transporting only one person;

4) by filling the roadway and sidewalks o f streets with electronic devices, we

supposedly can dispense with humans to vitalize them. Who needs a walkable

downtown or neighborhood when you can buy electronically while viewing

the merchandise on a TV program or on your computer, appreciate exciting

and inviting cities on TV or video, and drive to your health club for a “stair

masters” workout? Who needs to live in a historic setting, asks the urban

technocrat further, when you can summon the entire recorded history at your

fingertips on the “information super highway”?

The call for traditional neighborhood development goes forth at the same time the

traditional, "un-intelligent" street is to receive its electronic make-over. Preservation emerges

when the cherished things become threatened. "Tradition" emerges when a shared practice,

previously taken for granted, is in danger. The call for traditional neighborhood development,

irrespective o f its actual merits, makes sense in the context o f the encroaching electronic

super highway, be it the one paved with asphalt or the one paved with information.


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Collectively we have a choice to make the public street more virtual or more real,

more informational or more telling, more fleeting or more experiential, more high-tech or

more tangible.

It is the task o f this inquiry to show how phenomenology can contribute to more

public, vital, and engaging streets which are able to function as [1] supporting background

for our shared social practices (Chapters 3 and 6), [2] works o f art (Chapters 4 and 7), and

[3] as things, humble or high-tech, for dwelling in multiple worlds (Chapters 5 and 8).


PARTE

54

HEIDEGGER ON BEING HUMAN

AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT

Thinking is threatened by three dangers.

The good and hence wholesome danger is the neighborhood o f the singing poet.

The wicked and hence most acute danger is thinking itself. It must think against itself, o f which it is only seldom capable.

The bad and hence confusing danger is philosophizing.

Martin Heidegger, A us der Erfahrung des Denkens

(GA 13:80; transl. J.K.)


Chapter 3

Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Being-in-the-World, and Spatiality

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3.1 HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY: BASIC TERMS AND OVERVIEW

This section introduces main concepts o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology in the form

o f a concise overview.1 It constitutes the conceptual foundation for my entire inquiry,

especially for Chapters 3 and 6.2 In Chapter 6 ,1 show in concrete examples how the concepts

introduced in Chapter 3 can assist in understanding and designing streets as transparent

equipment for moving about.

A clarification o f Heidegger's central concepts, such as world and being-in-the-world,

is necessary for apprehending his analysis o f "derivative" concepts such as environment

[Umwelt], equipment [Zeug], and spatiality [Rdumlichkeit]. These secondary terms - all

fundamental conceptual tools for the design professions - are explained in the following

Sections 3.2 and 3.3. Heidegger’s concepts o f the “work o f art” (Chapter 4) and “dwelling”

(Chapter 5) do not necessarily depend on the terminology introduced in Chapter 3, but they

can be much better understood if the meanings o f phenomenology’s basic terms have been

clarified. Section 3.1 offers such a preparatory clarification.

1 The detailed commentary o f Division I o f Being and Time by Hubert Dreyfus (1991) is an essential background for my understanding o f Heidegger, especially o f his early writings and lectures.

2 In the Appendix the reader will find a more systematic outline o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology. The Glossary provides definitions and clarifications o f the main terms used in this inquiry.


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For the sake o f clarity, I will first briefly introduce Heidegger’s subject matter (general

characteristics o f being human). I will then sketch his method (phenomenology) and

introduce the central terms world and being-in-the-world?

In his major systematic work Being and Time, Heidegger analyzes the main

characteristics or structures o f being human. He calls these general characteristics

existentials. "Existence” is Heidegger's technical term for humans' way o f being.

Phenomenology is the title o f the method, or analytical procedure, which Heidegger uses to

elucidate these general structures.

The subject o f his analysis is human nature in its essential characteristics. Heidegger

implies that these general structures reflect the nature o f people in modem Western

civilization, if not of humans in general. Heidegger’s term for human being is Dasein, which

he defines as follows: "This entity which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring

as one o f its possibilities o f its being, we shall denote by the term Dasein" (BT 27, SZ 7).

Many readers o f English translations o f Heidegger’s work have difficulties in properly

distinguishing between being and beings. In order to facilitate understanding o f this

distinction, the German terms Sein und Seiendes are best translated as being and entities

(rather than beings). Entities can be divided into humans and non-human entities. Heidegger

defines being as "that on the basis o f which entities are already understood" (BT 25-26, SZ

6). The notion of being is subject to much confusion or misunderstanding. Hubert Dreyfus’

3 Where a basic term is first defined, it appears in bold type face in this section. The page references in parentheses after quotations refer to Heidegger’s works (English translation, German original) as listed and identified in the Bibliography.


57

explanation is very useful in demystifying this seemingly enigmatic notion: “Being is not a

substance, a process, an event, or anything that we normally come across; rather, it is a

fundamental aspect o f entities, viz. their intelligibility.” 4 We tacitly understand entities such

as towns, people, streets, o r automobiles based on our everyday experiences, and do not

necessarily average our past experience to know what a town, person, street, or an

automobile is. Entities such as these have become enmeshed in our background practices that

we take for granted. Our understanding o f entities is embodied in the way we typically deal

with them This embodied understanding is an ever present part o f our background practices

o f which we have no explicit awareness during everyday practical activities.

Being, the intelligibility o f entities, typically remains tacit. Tradition and culture are

those depositories that grant us pre-reflective and unthematized understanding o f these

entities. Heidegger conceives his phenomenology as a systematic conceptual attempt to

make manifest and explicit what is typically "taken for granted as being self-evident" (BP 58,

GA 24:80).

Phenomenology draws on this pre-reflective, embodied understanding o f Dasein and

non-human entities when it makes this understanding conceptually explicit. Making this pre-

reflective, non-conceptual understanding explicit in conceptual terms is one o f the major

challenges phenomenology faces.5

4 Dreyfus 1991, xi.

5 Being, the intelligibility o f entities, can be made manifest also in non-conceptual ways, for example, in creative literature, poetry, paintings, movies, and program music. In Section 5 of the Appendix, I briefly indicate how creative literature can make abstract concepts o f phenomenology, such as being-in-the-world, palpable by means o f empathetic description.


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What is typically "taken for granted as being self-evident" is our embodied knowing

and our socially shared skills, i.e., our background practices. Because they are so pervasive,

they are mostly unnoticed and transparent. An example o f such background practices is the

embodied knowledge which members o f a specific culture share in keeping an appropriate

distance pertinent to the type o f social occasion. Gestures and other non-verbal

communication, instantly understood by members of the same culture, are also part o f our

tacit background practices.

Why does Heidegger characterize his analytical approach as interpretive or

hermeneutic phenomenology? Phenomenology is the practice o f reading or laying out the

general characteristics o f existence, i.e., Dasein’s way o f being. In other words,

phenomenology is an explicit discovering o f that which Dasein already understands, but either

forgets or covers up while engrossed in everyday activities.

Phenomenology can be characterized as a conceptual tracing o f how Dasein in its

everydayness encounters its physical and social environment. Its goal is a theoretically

unbiased description o f Dasein’s everydayness. Phenomenology expresses this goal in its

maxim “To the Things Themselves!” This maxim is, however, neither a call for scientific

positivism nor for subjective introspection. “To the Things Themselves!” demands nothing

other than the study of Dasein on its own terms, i.e., how it understands itself.

In order to do so, phenomenology must maintain an inside-out perspective when it

describes and interprets Dasein’s essential features. Dasein always interprets itself in one way

or another. This (usually unthematic) self-understanding is one o f Dasein’s main features. The

conceptual elucidation o f Dasein and its existence, its way o f being, must therefore be


59

interpretive as well. Hermeneutics is the study o f the methodological principles o f

interpretation. Because Heidegger uses interpretation when uncoiling Dasein’s self-

understanding in its various levels and aspects, he calls his method Interpretive or

hermeneutic phenomenology.

As stated before, phenomenology is primarily interested in Dasein’s everydayness, that

is, in the way it is ordinarily absorbed in its routine coping activities. Dasein’s immersion in

its familiar world is reflected in the semantic components o f the common word “Da-sein”

which Heidegger adopts for us human beings whose self-understanding is inextricably tied to

the surroundings that harbor and engage us: Dasein is that entity whose being (Sein), i.e., its

intelligibility, is "there" (da) with its world. Dasein’s world is a pre-reflectively and directly

understood nexus o f social practices, available tools, and concerned practical involvement.

For Dasein in its everyday coping activities, the world is not an object for disinterested

study or investigation. Rather, Dasein practically relates to its world and comprehends it

prior to any self-conscious cognition. Furthermore, the phenomenon named world makes it

possible for Dasein to deal smoothly and successfully with everyday things. Heidegger

characterizes Dasein’s world as follows: “The world as already unveiled in advance (typically

not explicitly -- gloss J. K.) is such that we do not in fact specifically occupy ourselves with

it, or apprehend it, but instead it is so self-evident, so much a matter o f course, that we are

completely oblivious o f it. World is that which is already previously unveiled and from which


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we return to the entities with which we deal and among which we dwell” (BP 165, GA 24:

235). 6

By way of a stringed series o f definitions and explanations o f terms, we have arrived

at being-in-the-world which is the most fundamental characteristic o f Dasein's everyday

existence. In common, non-deliberate, successful coping activities, Dasein is always among

its things o f use. Dasein is already “out there” with the things it is intimately involved with.

Being absorbed in its world, Dasein transcends conceptual distinctions such as subject and

object, inside and outside, cognition and “world.” 7 Such dichotomies can claim validity only

outside o f Dasein's world, for instance, when one assumes a detached, theoretical stance.

Heidegger’s main focus is, however, Dasein’s everydayness.

Dasein’s primary interest (from Lat. inter esse, to be in or among) is its intimate being

with or among its commonplace things. Dasein exists in its world. In order to emphasize

the unity o f Dasein and world, Heidegger creates the compound noun being-in-the-world:

“Dasein exists in the manner o f being-in-the-world, and this basic determination o f its

existence is the presupposition for being able to apprehend anything at all.” (BP 164, GA 24:

234) In other words, if we want to understand how Dasein relates to itself, to others, and to

its environment, we must acknowledge the unitary phenomenon o f being-in-the-world as

6 I have made improvements to the translation o f the last sentence.

7 “World” (in quotation marks) signifies Dasein’s world viewed from the objective, detached perspective o f science. Heidegger calls Dasein’s primal, thing-bound absorption in its world originary or ontic transcendence because, prior to any deliberation, Dasein has delivered itself to the interlocked entities it deals with during concerned practical activities. For a more developed discussion o f this (phenomeno logically understood) worldly absorption, see Sections 4 and 5 o f the Appendix.


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Dasein’s basic mode o f existence and, hence, as the source o f its intelligibility. As far as our

everyday coping activities are concerned, being-in-the-world reflects the way we are.

Because I am interested in analyzing streets in the way we typically encounter them,

i.e., as involved and practically engaged users, the phenomenon of being-in-the-world guides

the conceptual perspective o f my entire thesis, especially in Chapters 3 and 6. I conjecture

that our built environment, including local streets, commercial strips, and freeways, can be

much improved if designers work with an "understanding from within," i.e., if they recreate

Dasein’s perspective, first in their minds, then on streets. My thesis wants to show how

planners, architects, and engineers can develop such a design perspective through a dialogue

with phenomenology.

That dialogue is inspired and spurred by a positive answer to the following question:

Can this elemental phenomenon of being-in-the-world be enhanced deliberately and housed

by environmental design professions such as architecture, urban design, and landscape

architecture, including highway engineering? The housing o f being-in-the-world is especially

relevant for issues discussed in the remainder o f Chapter 3 and its application counterpart,

Chapter 6. Based on my research and my professional experience in transportation

engineering and city planning, I have come to know firsthand that good environmental design

cannot guarantee but enhances opportunities for experiencing being-in-the-world. Good

environmental design accommodates and reinforces Dasein’s world. It tailors the physical

environment to suit being-in-the-world. Conceiving and constructing such fitting design

requires, however, a prior understanding o f Dasein for which to make hospitable places.

Therefore I put much emphasis in this study, especially in the conceptual Part II (Chapters 3


62

through 5), on this requisite understanding before I turn more concretely in Part HI (Chapters

6 through 8) to the question o f how design can accomplish the task o f building places that fit

Dasein.

In this preparatory section I have presented a brief sketch o f hermeneutic

phenomenology, defined its basic concepts relevant for my study, and indicated in general

terms how phenomenology informs the subsequent chapters. In sum, hermeneutic or

interpretive phenomenology

• analyzes the a priori or the "fore-structure" o f understanding,

• deals with what is typically hidden, covered-up or with that which is taken for granted

in our background practices, and

• analyzes essential structures or characteristics (existentials) o f Dasein's everydayness.

• Phenomenological understanding is circular. One horizon o f understanding opened

up by phenomenological hermeneutics modifies our previous understanding which in

turn leads to a modified view o f Dasein and its world.

• Our background practices cannot be made totally explicit or transparent. Dasein is

not a computer program one could ever get totally clear about because every level o f

understanding is embedded in a "prior" or more fundamental level o f understanding.

Dasein and existence cannot rest at a definitive closure. There are no fin a l

interpretations. Dasein and its understanding is open-ended.


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3.2 ENVIRONMENT AND EQUIPMENT

Having sketched the phenomenological concepts o f the world and being-in-the-world,

I can now proceed to Heidegger's account o f environment [Umwelt], equipment [Zeug], and

o f availableness [Zuhandenheit]. These three closely related concepts are essential

components o f a phenomenological account o f spatiality [Raumlichkeit] which I present in

Section 3.3.

"That world o f everyday Dasein which is closest to it, is the environment [Umwelt]."

(BT 94; SZ 66) Umwelt literally translated means "around-world." It is the world environing

Dasein, i.e., the world that immediately surrounds us in our involved, practical dealings. In

everyday transparent coping, we are so absorbed in our concerned activities that the

environment and consciousness appear to have merged into mere transparent coping. When

our activities are functioning smoothly, this merging o f "consciousness" and "environment"

may reach identification. "I am what is around me" is Wallace Stevens' paradoxical phrase

characterizing this phenomenon.8 This phrase is paradoxical because it uses "I," "me" and

"around" while implying that they disappear. The paradox arises due to language which states

an identification o f "I" and "what is around me," yet cannot help but use terms o f semantically

non-identical parts and separate units of an environmental whole. This paradox is one of the

challenges Heidegger's phenomenology and its concepts face.

Heidegger wants to give a systematic account o f the various ways or modes in which

the environment is given or experienced, depending on our stance towards the things around

8 "I am what is around me" is the first line o f Wallace Stevens' poem "Theory." Stevens 1997,70.


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us. Furthermore, this hypostatized merging o f "consciousness" and "environment" is, as we

shall see, a statement made from a stance outside o f practical concerned involvement. Seen

from within this involvement — a "perspective" whose way o f seeing is typical o f our

everyday successful coping activities "consciousness" and "environment" as separate

components of an originary whole are secondary, derived phenomena, and are, as I shall argue

with Heidegger, not primarily given. For this reason, I have stated above that the

environment and consciousness appear to have merged into mere transparent coping when

we are absorbed in our concerned activities. A phenomenological analysis uncovers the

alleged merging o f consciousness and environment, or o f subject and object, as a statement

made after and about practical concerned involvement which is ever an undivided and non

aggregated phenomenon: being-in-the-world. In his study o f the know-how and art of dealing

with technological devices, Robert Pirsig describes this unitary phenomenon o f being-in-the-

world or "pure Quality" as follows:9

Phaedrus felt that at the moment o f pure Quality perception, or not even perception, at the moment o f pure Quality, there is no subject and there is no object. There is only a sense o f Quality that produces a later awareness o f subjects and objects. At the moment o f pure Quality, subject and object are identical, (emphasis in italics mine)

Keeping this unitary phenomenon o f being-in-the-world in mind, let us now turn to

Heidegger's analysis o f how we primarily encounter equipment and the environment.

9 Pirsig 1976, 284.


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The environment as the world closest to us is encountered in absorbed dealings

[Umgang] 10 with intra-worldly things. This closeness is not a matter o f physical proximity,

but a matter o f active concern and care. The intra-worldly things are not merely perceived,

but are manipulated in absorbed practical coping to get something done. The manipulation

o f the things o f use [Gebrauchsdinge], or equipment, in absorbed practical activity has its

specific kind o f knowledge: tacit knowing.11 "The kind o f dealing which is closest to us is,

as we have shown, not a bare perceptual cognition, but rather that kind o f concern which

manipulates things and puts them to use; and this has its own kind of'knowledge'." (BT 95;

SZ 67) The quotation marks qualify this kind o f knowledge as pre-reflective, embodied

know-how that typically remains unthematic, yet is always present in everyday transparent

dealings.

Phenomenology wants to make this tacit knowing explicit, and can thus aid architects

and urban designers in imagining their design products, e.g., public places and streets, from

the perspective o f the users. Environmental designers need to conceptually understand this

10 The translators' footnote on Umgang may be helpful. "This word means literally a 'going around' or 'going about', in a sense not too for removed from what we have in mind when we say that someone is 'going about his business'. Dealings' is by no means an accurate translation, but is perhaps as convenient as any. Intercourse' and Trafficking' are also possible translations." (BT 95, footnote 2) Given Heidegger's intention, however, I find the two latter translations misguiding renderings o f the much more palpable and earthy Umgang which connotes spatiality [Um- (around, about)], motion [-gang (going)], practical circumspection [Umsicht], and things comprising our immediate environment [Umwelt] ready for use in order to [um zu] accomplish something. "Dealings" is the best available translation o f Umgang.

11 For the role o f "the tacit dimension" in everyday life and in science, see Michael Polanyi 1967 and 1962.


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tacit knowing (which they, too, embody) before they can imagine, draw, modify, or explain

their designs.

What are the nearest things that such a knowing "knows"? "The nearest things that

surround us we call equipment." (BP 163; GA 24, 232) When we encounter equipment

[Zeug] in absorbed and smooth everyday coping, it is "available" or "ready-to-hand"

[zuhanden]. "Availableness" [Zuhandenheit] is Heidegger's term for the mode o f being o f

equipment in which Dasein typically encounters it in everyday successful coping. When we

encounter entities by way o f observation and experimentation or through theoretical

reflection, everyday practical activity has stopped and we "stand" detached from them.

Entities thus encountered are merely "occurrent" or "present-at-hand" [vorhanden].

"Occurrentness" [ Vorhandenheit] is Heidegger's term for the mode o f being o f entities that

are encountered in this detached stance.12 "Availableness" and "occurrentness" are the two

main modes o f being o f entities other than Dasein, with "unavailableness" and "pure

occurrentness" completing the modes as elaborations or special cases ofthe two main modes.

These categories, listed in Table 3-1 below, are essential for Heidegger's entire fundamental

ontology and, consequently, for his account o f how we understand the environment,

equipment, and spatiality.

12 The adjectives zuhanden and vorhanden literally mean "at-hand" and "before-hand." The text of Being and Time translates "ready-to-hand" and "present-at-hand." These

translations are able to retain the connotation o f "hand" which Heidegger employs. They are, however, clumsy, especially in their form as nouns ("readiness-to-hand" and "presence-at- hand"). "Available" and "occurrent" are less concrete but smoother terms which I will use henceforth. I have changed the quotations accordingly.

Reproduced with permission o fthe copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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The following explication will focus on "availableness" and "unavailableness" o f

equipment because these modes have — especially when contrasted with "occurrentness" and

"pure occurrentness" — implications for general design guidelines which may serve as

building blocks o f a normative theory o f design informed by phenomenology.

Heidegger distinguishes four modes o f being o f entities other than Dasein. I will be

using the street environment and moving about to exemplify these four modes. Equipment

that is encountered in smooth successful coping is "ready-to-hand" or available [zuhanden].

For an experienced driver, for instance, shifting gears is a smooth, effortless, and "mindless"

activity. Manipulating the clutch and the gearshift lever in a synchronous way is so familiar

that it is completely transparent to the driver. In smooth successful coping activity, there is

no thought, just shifting. The equipment o f driving is ready-to-hand, or available. That is,

o f course, not the case during learning to drive a stick shift car. During learning, the

unfamiliar gear for manual operation is very much on one's mind to the point that an

inexperienced driver is totally wrapped up in it and therefore insufficiently aware o f what else

is going on around him. The learner is preoccupied with successfully manipulating particular

tools until, through practice, sufficient familiarity is reached that allows the driver to forget

them and move on to higher levels o f driving skills. Then, tool using becomes automatic and

transparent.

Another example of the availableness o f equipment is driving on a freeway under ideal

conditions: smooth pavement, good visibility, and few vehicles. When, furthermore, signs

and pavement markings are legible, when the on-ramps and off-ramps allow comfortable

driving due to proper horizontal and vertical roadbed alignment (superelevations), and when


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drivers keep a safe distance and indicate lane changes through signaling, near perfect driving

conditions are reached. Under such conditions, the freeway as equipment for long-distance

automotive travel is available for the participating motorists absorbed in transparent driving.

In such smooth, transparent functioning, there are no "subjects" conscious o f "objects," nor

is there any thematic awareness o f equipment.

The example o f shifting gears focuses on an individual person absorbed in successful

coping in an everyday environment. The freeway example serves to show equipment in its

publicness, i.e., in the way it is collectively understood and shared by many drivers

simultaneously. The two examples also show how equipment becomes available through

smooth interconnections with other equipment. In transparent functioning, no individual

pieces o f equipment "stick out" as unwieldy obstacles or as objects for reflective awareness.

Athletes can experience such transparent interaction with nature, equipment, or team mates

as "flow." 13 Transportation engineers and planners categorize such transparent and

frictionless movement o f vehicles as "free flow" (Level o f Service "A" or "B").

Transparent everyday coping encounters — unthematically -- an equipmental whole

or equipmental nexus14 rather than individual and isolated pieces of equipment. One "takes

in" this network o f equipment through Umsicht which should be interpreted as "engaged

13 For an account o f such transparent, smooth interaction with things or people, see Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s 1990 study Flow: The Psychology o f Optimal Experience.

14 In the following I substitute "equipmental whole" or "equipmental nexus" for "equipmental contexture" (Basic Problems) or "totality o f equipment" (Being and Time) which are unnecessarily abstract and arid translations. Zusammenhang literally means "hanging together;" hence adequate English terms are "nexus" or "whole," and Zeugzusammenhang (equipmental nexus or equipmental whole) designates the way various equipment "hangs together" in order to serve a practical purpose.


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awareness o f one's surroundings" rather than as "circumspection," as in the following

translation: "The view in which the equipmental nexus stands at first, completely unobtrusive

and unthought, is the view and sight o f practical circumspection [Umsicht], o f our practical

everyday orientation." (BP 163; GA 24, 232) An equipmental nexus is accessed via engaged

circumspection and concerned involvement, not through theoretical interest or curiosity. This

insight o f hermeneutic phenomenology has important consequences for environmental design,

especially for architecture, which is particularly dominated by fashions, styles, and

ideosyncratic expressions rather than by concern for accommodating the world o f the users

in its everydayness.

In everyday practical activities and smooth coping, natural or built entities are not

encountered as objects for inspection or appreciation, but as equipment transparently serving

a purpose. "Circumspection uncovers and understands entities primarily as equipment.... We

say that an equipmental whole environs us. Each individual piece o f equipment is by its own

nature equipment-for — for traveling, for writing, for flying." (BP 163; GA 24, 232-233) An

item o f equipment serves a particular function. However, the usefulness o f each item o f

equipment depends on its seamless linkage to other items of equipment. An integrated nexus

of equipment is at least as important as the proper functioning o f each individual item of

equipment. To illustrate his point, Heidegger traces a nexus o f equipment with which he as

author, writing in the mid 1920s, is intimately familiar: "ink-stand, pen, ink, paper, blotting

pad, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room." He concludes:

These "things" never show themselves proximally as they are for themselves, so as to add up to a sum o f realia and fill up a room. What we encounter as closest to us (though not as something taken as a theme) is the room; and we encounter it not as


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something 'between four walls' in geometrical spatial sense, but as equipment for dwelling.15 Out o f this the 'arrangement' emerges, and it is in this that any ’individual' item o f equipment shows itself Before it does so, a nexus of equipment has already been discovered. (BT 97-98; SZ 68-69)

In contrast to the availableness o f equipment that characterizes smooth coping,

Heidegger’s analysis o f Dasein's environment singles out three other modes o f being o f entities

other than Dasein. While entities in the mode o f occurrentness and pure occurrentness lose

their serviceability as equipment, it is the unavailableness o f equipment which lets equipment

be encountered thematically. During absorbed successful coping, there is no equipment and

no thematic reflective awareness. Equipment is transparent. Equipment is being encountered

explicitly and thematically as soon as it becomes unavailable. Through further

decontextualization into an object o f experimentation and reflection, equipment loses its

equipmentality [Zeughafiigkeit] altogether in the mode o f (pure) occurrentness (modes 3 and

4). Unavailableness o f equipment (mode 2) can show up in three ways: equipment can be

conspicuous, obstinate or obtrusive. In the following, I briefly illustrate these three types of

equipment problems (see also Table 3-1 on page 72).

(2.a) When equipment malfunctions it becomes conspicuous [<aujfallig]. Your car

does not start the first time you turn the ignition key. Giving more gas, you try a second time,

and the car starts. You are able to get going again by making minor repairs or adjustments.

Equipment can become conspicuous also when you use someone else's car whose seat and

rear-view mirror may need adjustment. You forget about these adjustments as soon as they

15 Each item o f equipment Heidegger discusses has a concrete and down-to-earth meaning. In line with the pragmatic connotation intended also in Wohnzeug, I have substituted "equipment for dwelling" for "equipment for residing."


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are done, and you are on your way.

We discover equipment — on occasion literally for the first time — when it becomes

unusable. Heidegger traces how we discover equipment thematically:

"We discover its unusability... not by looking at it and establishing its properties, but rather by the circumspection o f the dealings in which we use it. When its unusability is thus discovered, equipment becomes conspicuous.... Pure occurrentness announces itself in such equipment, but only to withdraw to the availableness o f something with which one concerns oneself — that is to say, o f the sort o f thing we find when we put it back into repair." (BT 102-103; SZ 73)

(2.b) If the engine still does not start, practical deliberation is necessary to eliminate

the disturbance. The vehicle which is supposed to drive you to where you need to go is now

obstinate [aufsassig]. In its obstinacy [Aufsassigkeit] the car is "there" in a disturbing way.

"Did I leave the lights on last night?" "Is the car out o f gas?" Since the fuel indicator shows

sufficient gas, you may use another available car with which to jump start your obstinate one.

I f you get the car going again by the jump start or by a small repair, the breakdown is

temporary, and the equipment for driving can recede again into transparent functioning.

(2.c) If the jump start is unsuccessful and if other attempts to start the engine don't

work, the car now becomes obtrusive [aufdringlich] in its permanent breakdown. You stand

helplessly before the car you are seriously concerned about. You have to call outside help.

In its obtrusiveness [Aufdringlichkeit], the broken equipment evokes practical concern. Such

concern does not exist when equipment is occurrent during systematic observation (as in a

series o f tests in a laboratory), when purely occurrent in pure contemplation (as an exhibit in

a science museum), or when it is available in transparent coping. Equipment becomes

thematic and a matter o f practical concern when it is unavailable.


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Mode of being What happens Dasein's stance

1. Availableness Equipmentfunctioning smoothly.

Transparent coping. Absorbed in practical activity. Manipulation.

2. Unavailableness Equipment problem:

(a) Malfunction(conspicuous:car does not start at first).

Get going again (after making minor adjustment).

(b) Temporary breakdown (obstinate: battery dead, car needs a jump start).

Practical deliberation. Eliminating the disturbance.

(c) Permanent breakdown (obtrusive: unable to fix the problem).

Helpless standing before, but still concerned.

3. Occurrentness Everyday practical activity stops.

Detached standing before,Theoretical reflection. (Wonder.)

Skilled scientific activity. Observation and experimentation.

4. Pureoccurrentness

Rest.Getting finished.

Pure contemplation. Just looking at something. (Curiosity.)

Table 3-1 Modes o f being o f entities other than Dasein(adapted from Dreyfus 1991, 124-125; Table 3)


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Let us further characterize the three types of unavailable equipment by using examples

which illustrate the publicness o f the street as a nexus o f common and shared equipment for

moving about. (As in the example o f the private automobile above, the number 2 followed

by a small letter at the beginning o f the next three paragraphs refers to a particular equipment

problem outlined in Tabie 3-1 above: 2. Unavailableness.)

(2.a) Motorists are accustomed to traffic signals displaying the color green, yellow,

or red continuously for the duration o f several seconds. I f motorists see a flashing red

indication at a familiar intersection whose traffic signals normally don't flash, they are alerted

to a malfunctioning traffic signal. By drawing attention to its malfunctioning, the traffic signal

equipment makes itself conspicuous by annnoucing its limited usefulness. Motorists must

yield to opposing traffic when feeing a flashing red indication, or proceed with caution when

facing a flashing yellow indication. The intersection functions as a stop sign controlled

intersection when all approaches display a flashing red. In any case, by design or as a result

o f malfunction, a flashing signal indication prompts drivers to be alert and circumspect. For

a moment, absorbed and transparent driving is interrupted but is typically restored after the

driver has made the appropriate adjustment. For a moment, traffic signals and other vehicles

have become thematic.16

16 The traffic signal equipment which makes its own malfunctioning conspicuous to the motorists can be seen as a special case o f availableness o f equipment (mode 1), because from the perspective o f signal design and programming, it functions properly by indicating its partial malfunctioning. The flashing signal is, by design, conspicuous to the drivers while serving as equipment functioning smoothly on a higher level o f operation, which in turn is able to make the maneuvers at the intersection as safe and smooth as possible, given the partial malfunction.


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(2.b) When something is in the way o f travel, a fallen tree, for example, the street

as circulation equipment becomes obstinate. Or somebody may be double-parked, thereby

blocking traffic in one lane. After getting around or removing the obstacle, which may

involve skillful action, some deliberation, or some effort, normal driving activity can continue.

The breakdown was only temporary.

(2.c) When a driver is circling the block in need o f a parking space and is unable to

find one, then cars, other drivers, occupied parking spaces, and indeed the entire equipmental

nexus o f moving about, become obtrusive. The previous smooth driving suffers permanent

breakdown, even though the vehicle itself operates perfectly from a mechanical point o f view.

The obvious fact o f continued driving in search o f an available space — the missing link in

completing the trip — underscores the obtrusiveness o f the driving that gets nowhere. The

driver may be passing the entrance o f the building where he needs to make the errand, but

helplessly moves on due to lack o f (legal) parking. The spatial proximity to one's destination,

which is so close yet remains out o f reach, highlights the breakdown o f linking trip origin and

destination. The worldly character o f the street as an interconnected set o f related equipment

and driving skills was previously taken for granted and not noticed during smooth successful

driving. Now, in obtrusive unavailability, the world o f moving about in this urban

environment is encountered explicitly. In its unavailableness, this particular world is now lit

up and announces itself; it is the same world which, during transparent functioning, was

hidden and tacit.

When an item o f equipment becomes unusable, the entire reference nexus o f

equipment is disturbed, and while this nexus was previously unnoticed or tacit, it now


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becomes explicit. The nexus has been alerted circumspectively and manifests the particular

world, moving about in an urban setting in our case, as that "wherein concern always dwells.

The nexus o f equipment is lit up, not as something never seen before, but as a whole

constantly sighted beforehand in circumspection. With this nexus, however, the world

announces itself." (BT 105; SZ 75) Heidegger continues:

Similarly, when something available is found missing, though its everyday presence has been so obvious that we have never taken any notice o f it, this makes a break in those referential wholes which circumspection discovers. Our circumspection comes up against emptiness, and now sees for the first time what the missing article was available with, and what it was available for. The environment announces itself afiesh. (BT 105; SZ 75)

The foregoing explication o f the three types o f unavailableness o f equipment shows

how the world is lit up through equipment receding in its availableness, and how the world

becomes deprived o f its worldliness and thereby thematic and explicit. The world is thematic

and explicit only when equipment has become unavailable. During transparent coping, Dasein

has no thematic reflective awareness o f equipment, o f its availableness, nor o f the world;

equipment just withdraws and becomes transparent.

The peculiarity o f what is proximally available is that, in its availability, it must, as it were, withdraw in order to be available quite authentically. (BT 99; SZ 69)

Absorbed in practical activity, Dasein encounters "what is proximally available" (equipment)

as transparent or withdrawn. Once equipment is not available anymore (as in mode 2 and

subsequent modes), one can see that one had been dealing with equipment that was

encountered in transparent functioning. As soon as equipment is encountered thematically,

it has already lost its equipmentality [Zeughaftigkeit], and the world has lost its worldliness

[Weltlichkeit]. One encounters equipment authentically only while being in the world. Being-


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in-the-world (originary transcendence) is a disclosing [Erschliefieri\ which allows Dasein to

discover [entdecfcen] entities. In absorbed successful coping activity, Dasein is disclosing its

world. This disclosedness o f the world is a condition for Dasein to discover intra-worldly

things at all, such as equipment.

Reading Table 3-1 from top to bottom, one can trace equipment in increasing stages

o f decontextualization, or deprivation o f its worldliness [Entweltlichung]. When equipment

has become obtrusive (mode 2.c), Dasein is perplexed but still concerned. When Dasein loses

this concerned involvement it encounters entities that are merely occurrent [vorhanden].

Occurrentness [Vorhandenheit] (mode 3) is the mode in which entities become the object o f

systematic observation, experimentation, and reflection. In the mode o f occurrentness,

entities can still appear as equipment (as in the case o f an automotive laboratory), however

only as equipment that is stripped o f its worldliness. Everyday practical activity and concern

has now ceased. Then, it becomes the specific challenge o f engineering and design to re

create in this artificial setting the worldliness o f this item of equipment — if only in

approximation and in essentially decontextualized fashion — in order to improve the

transparent functioning o f this equipment in its typical environment.17

17 It is a major design challenge to respond to the nexus, or environmental setting, o f equipment (e.g., vehicles, furniture, private or public places) and to emulate the equipmental whole in experimentation or simulation. A phenomenological analysis, such as attempted here, can provide insight into this generic problem and can provide a conceptual structure for dealing with specific design issues. In addition to examples presently discussed and those in the following section on existential spatiality, I provide some phenomenological applications in Part HI o f this inquiry.


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When commodities (such as automobiles) have been produced, and when their

physical properties are being studied scientifically, they become objects o f pure contemplation

and are now encountered as bare facts and sense data, for example in economic or accident

statistics (mode 4). A piece o f equipment is now a purely occurrent object. Having reached

a final stage in the deprivation o f its worldly character, equipment is finished as far as its

immediate pragmatic usefulness is concerned. Automobiles may be viewed in rest as finished

products in showrooms or, if aged to a respectable vintage, in a science museum. Such

equipment suspended in pure occurrentness is now an object o f pure contemplation or

curiosity. Items o f equipment which are purely occurrent are "Cartesian" bare facts and sense

data which can be classified and catalogued. Totally decontextualized entities whose physical

properties have been studied scientifically can be formalized and expressed as mathematical

functions (e.g., the behavior o f cars in breaking or crash tests).

To apply these four-fold modes o f being of entities to an architectural example, let us

briefly consider the Greek temple. This time, we will trace the temple in increasing degrees

o f worldliness. As a "must" on a guided tour to "experience the cradle o f Western

civilization," the Greek temple is encountered as an item o f curiosity in pure occurrentness

(mode 4). The historical world, which gave rise to this structure, is gone, even for

contemporary Greeks. That is also true for a group o f archaeologists who are excavating an

ancient site. For these archaeologists, the temple site to be excavated is the object o f skilled

observation and reflection (mode 3), perhaps even o f wonder and excitement, but the temple

is still not part o f a world as encountered in transparent everyday activities (mode 1). We can

only infer such a worldly encounter from our historical sources. For the Greeks o f antiquity,


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the temple was a common part of their built environment- A war or an earthquake may have

damaged the temple and made it unavailable (mode 2) as equipment for Greek citizenship

practiced in daily routine (mode 1).

To further illustrate these four basic modes o f encountering the environment, I select

an example from the near environment: the chair.18

One's stance vis-a-vis one's environment determines the way one encounters it.

Following Heidegger, we have identified four basic stances: 1. being absorbed in successful

everyday activities; 2. feeing malfunctioning or breakdown o f equipment and being stuck, but

still being concerned about one's routine coping activities; 3. being engaged in detached

observation, experimentation, or theoretical reflection; 4. just looking at something in pure

contemplation.

One's stance vis-a-vis one's environs corresponds to the following modes o f being o f

things one deals with: 1. things are functioning smoothly as available equipment; 2.

equipment becomes unavailable; 3. things are manipulated as occurrent objects (as in

scientific experiments); 4. things are encountered as purely occurrent objects for pure,

uninterested contemplation.

Depending on my stance toward my surroundings (depending on what I am "up to"),

a chair shows itself in different ways, as sketched in tire following example. 1. When I use

my chair in my study, it unobtrusively supports me in my reading and writing because it

18 For a recent study o f the chair from a social, cultural, and ergonomic point o f view, see Galen Cranz, The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body and Design. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.


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withdraws subserviently into the background. 2. When I drive the car o f somebody else, visit

the dentist, or go to a library or lecture hall, I may need to adjust the seat or select a different,

more fitting chair, otherwise I will suffer not only a temporary impediment but a breakdown

o f my intended activity. 3 .1 design or test a chair as part of an ergonomic study. 4 . 1 see

Pharaoh's Chair, or a chair pin as jewelry.

Depending on my stance, I encounter my environs in different modes o f being: 1. the

chair in my familiar study where everything has its habitual place and is easily available; 2.

a familiar environment that needs minor fixing (e.g., a chair's height or angle), or a new

commonplace environment (e.g., my friend's car; a library) to which I may have to adjust in

order to make it available to me; 3. an ergonomics lab equipped for chair research; 4. an

encyclopedia, a museum, or the actual historical setting in which I encounter Pharaoh's Chair

which is, however, decontextualized. I may approach this chair with indifference, curiosity,

or awe. The curiosity or even fascination this object may produce in me is possible because

it is beyond the circle o f my everyday activities and because it remains free from the

objectifying grip o f science.

Environmental phenomenologists are primarily interested in studying the workings o f

interconnected equipment in everyday, common environments in order to improve their

smooth functioning and availableness (mode 1). They are interested in environmental

malfunctioning or breakdown (mode 2) only in so far as they can learn from it for the benefit

o f reestablishing or maintaining mode 1 encounters. By distinguishing the four modes o f

being o f entities, phenomenology can identify and characterize detached reflection,

observation, and experimentation (mode 3), but the proper means o f mode 3 investigation is


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science.19 Casual observation and disinterested curiosity are ways of encountering bare facts

or decontextualized artifacts (mode 4).

We have discussed the four modes o f being o f entities other than Dasein at some

length because they are useful in reevaluating our traditional assumptions about how we

understand and shape our immediate environment Traditional ontology has sought to ground

intelligibility in pure occurrentness (mode 4) on the basis o f which the other three modes are

said to become accessible and understandable. Traditional ontology, epitomized in

Cartesianism, holds that we primarily and usually encounter purely occurrent entities out of

which we build our everyday world. Much research in contemporary behavioral and cognitive

science is dominated by traditional ontology, which is reading Table 3-1 with an intelligibility

arrow from bottom to top. In contrast, phenomenologists contend that intelligibility descends

from top to bottom (from mode 1 to mode 4) and that this direction o f intelligibility has to

be followed in any attempt to make sense o f our everyday world.

Because this basic proposition has important consequences for understanding our

shared commonplace practices, Heidegger exerts so much effort in analyzing Dasein's

everyday world and being-in-the-world as the primary environment wherein Dasein typically

dwells. His examples o f using various items o f equipment (a hammer, a living room, a lecture

hall, a sidewalk, a railway platform) serve the purpose o f showing how we actually encounter

our near environment and how we deal with things in everyday practical concern.

19 Phenomenology can be viewed as a mode 3 activity which operates, however, on a higher level o f reflection than typical mode 3 activities (e.g., science). If “normal science” (Kuhn 1971) were to engage in meta-level reflection, as phenomenology does, such reflection would disturb science’ paradigmatic way of doing things.

Reproduced with permission ofthe copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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We have illustrated the three types o f the unavailableness o f equipment because the

complementary terms of conspicuousness, obstinacy, and obtrusiveness o f equipment are

important for design that is informed by a phenomenological approach. Expressions such as

inconspicuousness [Unauffalligkeit], non-obstinacy [Unaufsassigkeit], and unobtrusiveness

[ Unaufdringlichfceit] characterize the way equipment is primarily and usually encountered in

transparent coping. Inconspicuousness, non-obstinacy, and unobtrusiveness signify a

"positive phenomenal character" (BT 106, SZ 75) o f those environing things that are

encountered as available [zuhanden]. This "positive phenomenal character" o f equipment

expressed by these privative terms can be employed as general concepts in designing and

evaluating places and settings.

Private and public places which successfully accommodate utilitarian purposes, such

as a workshop, a playground, or a street, are networks o f interconnected items o f equipment

which typically are inconspicuous, not obstinate, and unobtrusive. Design that is intended to

serve utilitarian purposes opposes that kind o f architecture and urban design which is mainly

built as self-conscious "art." 20 Self-consciously artistic design wants to draw attention to

itself to the sponsor, and, o f course, to the artist rather than to serve merely "pedestrian"

purposes. Self-consciously artistic design distracts from rather than aids our everyday coping

activities. Such design reduces our daily things o f use (mode 1) to objects o f curiosity and

mere "looks" (mode 4). For the purpose o f facilitating smooth transparent functioning o f

20 Chapter 4 deals with the work o f art as a shared cultural paradigm in the context o f modem technology. Chapter 7 examines our transportation environments for potential works o f art.


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various types o f equipment that make up our environment, design should generally avoid or

minimize features that result in conspicuous, obstinate, or obtrusive environments.

Conspicuousness may be an appropriate intentional design characteristic, however, if it serves

as a safety feature (as, for example, prominent signs and locations o f fire extinguishers and

emergency exits, or the flashing traffic signals described above) which in turn facilitates the

environment's overall smooth functioning.

In the context o f environment and equipment, we have discussed the four modes o f

being of entities other than Dasein in order to better understand the unitary and most

fundamental phenomenon o f being-in-the-world. We have now gained some insight into

being-in-the-world as “a non-thematic circumspective absorption in references or assignments

constitutive for the availableness o f an equipmental whole.” (BT 107; SZ 76) Heidegger

points out that such absorption requires that our practical concerns are embedded in a context

with which we are at least minimally familiar:

Any concern is already as it is on the basis o f some familiarity with the world.21 In this familiarity Dasein can lose itself in what it encounters within-the-world and be taken by it. (BT 107; SZ 76)

I understand this cryptically formulated passage as follows: Any concern in

circumspective absorption takes place on the background o f some familiarity with the world;

and this familiarity is nothing but non-thematic, embodied, practical understanding o f one's

world.

21 I have modified the translation o f this sentence to stay closer to the original: Das Besorgen ist je schon, wie es ist, a u f dem Grunde einer Vertrautheit mit Welt. BT translates: "Any concern is already as it is, because o f some familiarity with the world."


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An underlying question o f this chapter, and indeed o f this entire inquiry, is whether

this basic phenomenon o f being-in-the-world can deliberately be enhanced and housed by

architecture and urban design. Based on my research and my professional experience in

transportation engineering and city planning I conclude that environmental design is that

professional field which is uniquely capable and equipped not to guarantee but to enhance

opportunities for experiencing being-in-the-world.

The general field o f environmental design is charged with improving our physical

environment. Good environmental design practice, by gleaning its principles and attributes

from the unitary phenomenon o f being-in-the-world, facilitates our everyday transparent

coping activities. This general phenomenological design perspective leads to the subsequent

question o f how design can accomplish this task in concrete physical terms. I suggest some

answers to this question in Chapter 6 (The Street as Transparent Equipment). My suggestions

incorporate insights gained from Dasein's spatiality to which we turn next.


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3.3 EXISTENTIAL SPATTALITY AND PHYSICAL SPACE

Heidegger's analysis o f spatiality [Raumlichkeit] and space [Raitm\ follows, and

parallels, his account o f environment [Umwelt\, equipment [Zeug], and of availableness

[Zuhandenheit]. In Being and Time and his Marburg lectures, these latter concepts in turn

are preceded by examinations o f "being," "world," and "being-in-the-world." The order in

which Heidegger analyzes these concepts reflects a progression from general to more specific

concepts. This conceptual order expresses his conviction that existential spatiality, our

everyday way of encountering space in engaged activities, can be understood properly only

after the more encompassing concepts have been explicated. His analytical procedure thereby

parallels the embeddedness o f our everyday spatial encounters (Dasein's spatiality) in being-in-

the-world. Existential spatiality is an essential but only one dimension o f being-in-the-world.

Just as equipment is transparent in successful coping activities, space typically remains

transparent and unthematic in our everyday dealings.

In this section, I will lay out the reasons for the necessary transparency o f physical

space in Dasein's everyday dealings. I will try to show, furthermore, that physical space (Le.,

geometric, objective, or scientific space) obtains a legitimate status on the basis o f a clear

demarcation between existential spatiality and physical space. These phenomenological

investigations of "space" are to serve as a theoretical foundation for improving the design and

maintenance of our public settings, streets in particular.

In the sections o f Being and Time and his early lectures that specifically deal with

spatial issues, Heidegger (a) describes how we encounter space in our everyday coping

activities (Dasein's spatiality), (b) shows that Dasein's spatiality takes place on the


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background o f shared or public space, and (c) demonstrates that physical or scientific space

can be understood as a derivation, or a "deworlded” mode, o f existential spatiality. In the

remainder o f this chapter we will focus on these spatial issues.

3.3.1 Regions. Places, and Public Space

Heidegger's analysis o f existential spatiality, in contrast to physical space, parallels his

discussion o f available and unavailable equipment encountered in engaged activities, on the

one hand, and occurrent objects studied via detached observation, experimentation, and

reflection, on the other. In other words, existential space relates to physical space as

absorbed practical involvement relates to detached observation.

To recapitulate, available equipment is accessible, ready-to-hand [zuhanden] to be

used. Heidegger uses the common word zuhanden as a technical term that derives its

analytical strength from its rootedness in common practices as reflected in language.

Heidegger's use o f the term zuhanden, an adjective literally meaning "at-hand," designates

equipment that is ready-to-hand or available. Zuhanden and Zuhandenheit (availableness)

capture the concreteness, immediacy, and manipulability o f everyday equipment.22

Available equipment implies proximity. The presence o f available equipment is,

however, not a matter o f geometric distance but o f practical engaged involvement. Each item

22 Being and Time translates "zuhanden" as "ready-to-hand;" Dreyfus (1991) suggests "available." The clumsy "ready-to-hand" and the abstract "available" unfortunately lose zuhanden's apt connotation o f tangible and palpable things o f everyday use. Despite these shortcomings, I will continue to use the word "available" for lack o f a better alternative translation.


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o f equipment has its associated place in order to be available for its user. "In each case the

place is the definite 'there* or *yonder' ["Dort" und "Du"] o f an item o f equipment which

belongs somewhere." (BT 136; SZ 102) Where each item o f equipment belongs depends on

its place within the equipmental nexus which makes up a "region" [Gegend\. Heidegger

defines a "region" as the "whither" \Wohin\ of equipment. This "whither" allots items o f

equipment their specific places within a nexus of places [Platzganzheit\ .

This 'whiter', which makes it possible for equipment to belong somewhere, and which we circumspectively keep in view ahead o f us in our concemful dealings, we call 'region' [Gegend]. (BT 136; SZ 103)

A region, such as a workshop, structures interconnected items o f equipment and their places.

The place where each item o f equipment belongs is defined by the regional whole. A region

organizes the places and orients its users. We encounter a region before any particular places

within this region. A surveyable portion o f a town's Main Street, for example, is taken in

"whole and at once" before one makes out any individual components o f the street such as

stores, street furniture, and people using the street in various ways.

Something like a region must fir s t be discovered if there is to be any possibility o f allotting or coming across places for an equipmental whole that is circumspectively at one's disposal. (BT 136, my italics; SZ 103)

The discovery o f particular places o f equipment depends on prior discovery o f the region as

the whole environment within which the interrelated items o f equipment are placed. Our

access to the things o f everyday use proceeds from the environmental whole to its constituent

parts. This whole, however, is not a mere aggregate o f isolated environmental bits. A region

is a unified and coherent environmental entity (a gestalt) and a referential whole that allots


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places to various items o f equipment and thereby provides overall orientation for the users

o f this particular region.

In an early lecture, Heidegger exemplifies the relationship o f region and places of

equipment by describing how we typically encounter a room. We use individual items of

equipment within a referential whole which assigns places to these individual items and thus

makes them accessible to us. In this lecture, Heidegger calls our habitual understanding of

a referential whole familiarity:

My encounter with the room is not such that I first take in one thing after another and put together a manifold o f things in order then to see a room. Rather, I primarily see a referential whole as a coherent unit,23 from which the individual piece o f furniture and what is in the room stand out. Such an environment o f the nature o f a coherent referential whole is at the same time distinguished by a specific fam iliarity. The coherence o f the referential whole is grounded precisely in familiarity, and this familiarity implies that the referential relations are well-known. Everyday concern constantly attends to these relations in using them and working with them; one dwells in them.24 (HCT 187; GA 20, 253)

This is a key passage in Heidegger's account o f Dasein's spatiality, i.e., o f our everyday spatial

encounters. In the following, I will explicate some o f the major implications o f this passage.

23 Being and Time translates geschlossen as "closed" and Geschlossenheit as "closed character." While these translations are literally correct renderings, they unnecessarily create severe difficulties for understanding this important passage. The original text suggests that geschlossen be translated as "whole," "complete," "round," "unbroken," "linked," "consistent," or, as I prefer, "coherent." I have accordingly modified the translation o f this passage.

24 I have smoothened the translation o f this clumsy sentence (last sentence in quote): Das alltagliche Besorgen geht als Verwenden von, Hantieren mit, diesen Bezugen standig nach; man halt sich in ihnen auf. Being and Time provides a literal but awkward translation: "Everyday concern as making use o f working with, constantly attends to these relations; everyone dwells in them." (HCT 187; GA 20, 253)


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When I encounter a room, I do not first gather a multiplicity o f sense data which I

subsequently synthesize into a spatial unit that I then recognize as a room. I simply encounter

the room at once as a unified, coherent whole. My skill for encountering a room and for

dealing with its layout and furniture is activated automatically on the basis o f fam iliarity with

many rooms. My skill for encountering an environmental whole (a room, street, or landscape)

and for dealing with its individual items of equipment is a result o f many years o f

acculturation. A familiar setting prompts an associated comportment that is fairly predictable

and consistent. A person's longitudinal and a groups' cross-sectional behavior patterns

illustrate this predictability and consistency. My comportment in a living room vs. in a

bathroom or garage, for example, is typically not a deliberate act but an automatic response

on the background o f "primary familiarity, which itself is not conscious and intended but is

rather present in [an] unprominent way" (HCT 189; GA 20, 255-256).

The unprominent, tacit way I encounter a specific type o f room, say a living room, is

not only consistent regarding an individual's comportment, but is also consistent among most

users o f a specific cultural group. This is the case because "my" background familiarity is not

o f my own making but shares a common or public understanding o f dealing with

environmental settings such as streets, institutional buildings, and residences. Upon closer

examination o f background familiarity it becomes evident that everyday dealings with the

world are “not so much a matter o f anyone's own particular world, but that right in our

natural dealings with the world we are moving in a common environmental whole" (HCT 188;


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GA 20, 255).25 This common environmental whole accounts for "that familiarity in

accordance with which Dasein ... knows its way about' [sich 'auskennt'] in its public

environment" (BT 405; SZ 354).26

Our background understanding and familiarity with our everyday environment is

"present in an unprominent way" (HCT 189; GA 20,255-256). This tacit understanding and

spontaneous familiarity is not the result o f a conscious and intended act. Our typical spatial

encounters are grounded in practical involvements that are o f concern to us. We have learned

earlier that Dasein is that being that is concerned about its being, and that it goes about its

cares on the background o f shared understanding and practices. We do not first encounter

geometric space and then discover our available things o f use. In our involved dealings with

our everyday world, the geometric or objective space o f science remains necessarily hidden.

25 I have modified the translation o f this quote considerably. In particular, I have substituted "dealings with the world" for the misleading "preoccupation with the world" as rendering for Umgang m it der Welt. Furthermore, I have translated in einer gemeinsamen Umgebungsganzheit as "in a common environmental whole" rather than as "in a common totality o f surroundings." Note that the adjective gemeinsam (common) is also italicized in the original text.

26 In my reading o f Heidegger's writings, I emphasize the public character o f our spatial experience because many Heidegger studies unduly portray Heidegger's early work as an undergirding o f a modem isolated "I" that creates his own private world (existentialism). In line with this emphasis, I have presented the quoted passages and comments above as arguments for the seemingly self-evident propositions that

(1) our "individual" spatial experiences rest on a public, common, and mostly unthematic understanding o f our everyday environments, and that

(2) our regional orientation [gegendhafte Orientierung] and the places within this orientation are laid out on the basis o f Dasein’s practical concerns.


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Prior to any explicit knowledge o f objective space, we encounter a network o f usable things

surrounding us.27

The regional orientation o f the multiplicity o f places belonging to the available goes to make up the aroundness — the "round-about-Ms" — o f those entities which we encounter as closest environmentally.... The "above" is what is "on the ceiling"; the "below" is what is "on the floor"; the "behind" is what is "at the door"; all "wheres" are discovered and circumspectively interpreted as we go our ways in everyday dealings; they are not ascertained and catalogued by the observational measurement o f space. (BT 136-137, my italics; SZ 103)

Before any manipulation o f equipment or any observational measurement o f space can

"take place," Dasein must have "taken in" a region (e.g., a workshop, a block o f a

commercial or residential street). This taking in o f regions happens automatically and

spontaneously on the basis o f our familiarity with similar settings. Dasein's everyday concerns

discover28 regions prior to discovering the places o f individual items of equipment. It is a

region "in the first place" which gives items o f equipment their places, their coherence and

structure, and thus makes them truly available for the users. Therefore Heidegger can

conclude that the background availableness o f a region must have the character o f

inconspicuous familiarity [Charakter der unauffdlligen Vertrautheit] "in an even more

primordial sense" than the available equipment embedded within this region. (BT 137; SZ

104)

27 For a "derivation" o f scientific space from Dasein's spatiality, see the following Subsection 3.3.3.

28 Heidegger uses the word "to discover" [entdecken] in the sense o f transparently coping with available equipment. When Dasein successfully uses regions, places, and equipment, it discovers them for its everyday dealings. Discovering, in this sense, does not mean revealing something that was hidden before, but appropriating things of use to smoothly accomplish a routine task. In the present discussion I am following this pragmatic meaning.


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Inconspicuous familiarity is a necessary feature o f any environmental background that

is able to support smooth, everyday coping activities. We will explore in Chapter 6 how

properly functioning signs in an urban fabric (Section 6.2) and how sidewalks as transparent

equipment for walking (Section 6.3) depend on this inconspicuous familiarity o f the

environing background.

3.3.2 Distance. Dis-stance. and Nearness

In the previous segment we have learned how regions and places are laid out

according to Dasein's everyday concerns and care. Dasein does not experience space as an

abstract complex o f geometric distances between occurrent objects. The environmental

things Dasein deals with on the basis o f everyday concern and inconspicuous familiarity are

things o f practical use. In smooth transparent coping, the things Dasein uses spatially are not

objects occurrent in space. In successful everyday coping activities, pure geometric space

always remains hidden and necessarily overlooked. It is therefore an individual's practical

involvement with items o f equipment which determines their nearness and remoteness vis-a-

vis this individual.

Central to Heidegger's analysis o f existential spatiality is the notion o f Dasein's

tendency to bring things within its range o f involved practices. Heidegger discusses this

pervasive yet tacit tendency of Dasein by coining a new word from Entfemung, the German

term for "distance." By writing Entfemung as Ent-femimg, Heidegger highlights the negative

sense o f the prefix ent-. His wordplay E nt-fem ung then means "the establishing and


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overcoming o f distance, that is, the opening up o f a space in which things can be near and

far." 29

In attempting to approximate Heidegger's coinage, the translators o f Being and Time

render Ent-fem ung as "de-severance".30 Hubert Dreyfus proposes "dis-stance" as an

improved translation o f Ent-fem im g. "Dis-stance" captures Heidegger's wordplay as much

as possible: in "dis-" it captures the negative sense o f ent-, and its spelling is close to and its

pronunciation is identical with "distance." In the following I will use "dis-stance" (used as

technical term without quotation marks) as my preferred translation o f Ent-fernung.

A distinction needs to be made here which Heidegger implicitly makes yet often blurs

through ambiguous formulations. In his discussion o f Dasein's spatiality, he does not

sufficiently distinguish ontic distances between an individual Dasein and specific items o f

equipment from Dasein's ontological dis-stance. Dasein's dis-stancing is opening up fields o f

activities in which specific items o f equipment can be near and far. Distances vis-a-vis a

specific Dasein change all the time, while dis-stance (an existential) does not. Heidegger's

blurring o f the ontic and ontological level o f discussion is largely responsible for the difficulty

o f his analysis o f Dasein's spatiality. By observing this distinction, we may be able to focus

on the substantive difficulties inherent in the subject matter.

29 Dreyfus 1991, 130.

30 See also the translators' discussion (BT 138, footnote 2) regarding the difficulties o f translating Ent-femung.


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Heidegger states in a concise phrase: "Dasein is essentially dis-stancing [ent-femend]"

(BT 139; SZ 105).31 Dis-stancing is the vanishing o f famess [Feme] o f things by bringing

them into the sphere o f Dasein's concerns, and thus bringing them near to Dasein. The

vanishing o f famess o f things implies, however, that Dasein also recognizes their remoteness

[Entfemtheit]. Dis-stancing brings things near, that is, makes them available to Dasein by

establishing a field o f practical involvement in which things can show up as present, i.e., as

near and far. As part o f bringing things near, "dis-stance discovers remoteness" (BT 139; SZ

105). Where the distinction between near and remote things is blurred (as in the instrumental

understanding o f technology), things cannot be truly available.

"In Dasein there lies an essential tendency to nearness." (BT 140; SZ 105) Dasein

tends to establish a coherent field of concerned activities in which things can be near and far.

Dasein's dis-stancing establishes and overcomes distances between Dasein and its environing

things, and thus makes them truly available. As an existential, a basic structure o f Dasein, dis-

stance has no degrees but makes it possible for Dasein to encounter items o f equipment at

different degrees o f accessibility. The degree o f each item's accessibility, in turn, is

determined by Dasein's degree o f practical concern, involvement, and absorption.

Dasein's dis-stancing is fundamentally different from the objective measurement of

geometric distances between physical objects. This is evident, for example, in the way we

31 "Dasein ist wesenhaft ent-femend...." Being and Time translates: "Dasein is essentially de-severant...." Hubert Dreyfus (1991, 131) suggests: "Dasein is essentially dis- stancial..." I am using "dis-stancing," the present participle of "to dis-stance," as a translation o f ent-femend, the present participle o f ent-fem en. Thereby I preserve the grammatical structure o f the original text.


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estimate distances. In our everyday dealings, we are not concerned about precise geometric

measurements. We unthematically use distances on the basis o f our practical concerns and

daily chores. In order to indicate a particular distance, we use expressions such as "a good

walk" [ein Spaziergang], "a stone's throw" [ein Katzensprung], or "as long as it takes to

smoke a pipe" [e/we Pfeife long] (BT 140; SZ 105). Today members o f an automotive

society say, for instance, that one's friend lives "ten minutes away." This estimate typically

implies a drive with an automobile. The objective distance could range from about two to ten

miles, depending on factors such as type o f road, road and weather conditions, and congestion

level. "Ten minutes away" bypasses any need for assessing an objective distance, because the

dis-stancing driving is all that matters. That which is dis-stanced by a "ten minute drive"

retains its availableness for us and reaffirms its /w/rawordly character. I present this example

to illustrate how the recognition and overcoming o f ontic distance is made possible by

Dasein's inherent "drive" for ontological dis-stance.

Because our spatial encounters are gauged by our concrete concerns and involvement,

an objectively long distance can be encountered as much shorter than an objectively shorter

distance which, for some reason or other, is "hard going." Even the same way (e.g., daily

commute on the bus), under the same objective conditions, can vary in length and quality

from day to day for a commuter, depending on what he is concerned with while traveling this

particular way. He may be in a hurry to "get there," pre-occupied with things to do once

arrived at the office, engrossed in a pleasant conversation or the newspaper, or napping.

Under the same objective conditions, a traveled distance can be encountered quite differently


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depending on one's mood, comfort, and concerns.32 The objective distances between

occurrent objects do, therefore, not coincide with nearness or remoteness o f things that we

use in everyday activities. Stating this difference is not to favor "subjective" against

"objective" factors which may determine the quality of any particular environmental

encounter. On the contrary, the concept o f Dasein's spatiality dissolves the false dichotomy

between subjective (person centered) and objective (physical) environmental factors by

highlighting the underlying unity o f person and world in being- in-the-wo rid. Dasein's

spatiality implies that the experienced quality, appropriateness, or fit o f a particular setting is

mainly a function o f our circumspective dealings, concerns, and practical involvement. Items

o f equipment which we encounter as intraworldly things, i.e., through engaged practical

activity, are things we are near to. We dwell among them. A guiding issue, mostly

unarticulated, in architectural and urban design is the question: How can we physically

accommodate and facilitate such dwelling?

What is objectively and presumably closest to us is something that we typically

overlook or overhear, as, for example, glasses immediately in front o f our eyes, a telephone

receiver while tele-conversing, or the noise o f the motor while driving a car. Glasses

immediately in front o f our eyes are so close yet simultaneously so remote that finding them

can at times be difficult and perplexing. I f equipment is to be truly available and functioning

smoothly, it must be inconspicuous, and that to the point o f remaining transparent in

32 In my paper "Mood Places: 'Affectedness' as a Condition for the Possibility of Environmental Perception" (Kroll 1994) I have elaborated on the way mood situates us in our environment.


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successful coping activities. Being oblivious to the equipment it uses, Dasein is truly with it.

For this reason, I characterized (in Subsection 3.2) equipment that is truly available and

functions smoothly as transparent.

Equipment that is available for use has the character o f inconspicuousness. To

illustrate this point Heidegger takes the example o f the street as "equipment for walking"

[Zeugzum Geheri].

One feels the touch o f [the street] at every step as one walks; it is seemingly the nearest and realest o f all that is available, and it slides itselfj as it were, along certain portions o f one's body — the soles o f one's feet. And yet it is farther remote than the acquaintance whom one encounters "on the street" at a "remoteness" o f twenty paces when one is taking such a walk. (BT 141-142; SZ 107)

Heidegger concludes from this example:

Circumspective concern decides as to the nearness and famess o f what is proximally available environmentally. Whatever this concern dwells with beforehand is what is nearest, and this is what regulates our dis-stances. (BT 142; SZ 107)

The second sentence o f this passage contains one o f Heidegger's ambiguous

formulations. He should have avoided the plural "dis-stances" [Ent-femungen] and should

have used the singular "dis-stance" [.Ent-femung] o r the gerund "dis-stancing" [das Ent-

fernen] for Dasein's basic structure that is at issue here. Furthermore, Heidegger should have

used "distances" [Entfemungen] for the geometric span between an individual Dasein and the

specific items o f equipment it manipulates. Heidegger's main point in this context can be

restated as follows: It is circumspective concern which establishes a field o f absorbed

involvement in which, through dis-stance, things can be encountered as far or near.

In addition to establishing distances for or near, our circumspective concerns organize

our spatial orientation [Ausrichtung] o f right/left, above/below, and front/back. Dis-stancing


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orients Dasein within a region by letting things be near and far, thus making the places o f

individual items o f equipment accessible. As is the case with dis-stance, orientation is made

possible by, and in turn facilitates, Dasein’s practical absorbed involvement in its world.

"Circumspective concern is a dis-stancing that orients." 33 (BT 143; SZ 108)

In everyday coping activities, Dasein delivers itself to its world; it is absorbed in it.

The spatiality o f Dasein's world is a matter o f practical concern and involvement, not a matter

o f dealing deliberately and consciously with physical geometrical space.

Orientation as well as dis-stance, as modes o f being-in-the-world, are guided beforehand by the circumspection o f concern. Out o f this orientation arise the fixed directions o f right and left. Dasein constantly takes these directions along with it, just as it does its dis-stances. (BT 143; SZ 108)

Directions such as right and left, above and below, front and back, depend on the location of

one's body.34 These directions are fixed relative to an individual's centered lived space in

which his distances to specific items o f equipment shift constantly. Dis-stance as an

existential, however, does not shift. Heidegger's statement that dis-stances constantly move

along with Dasein is therefore ambiguous and potentially misleading. Heidegger could have

33 Das umsichtige Besorgen ist ausrichtendes Ent-femen. Being and Time translates: "Circumspective concern is de-severing which gives directionality." This translation shows how problematic "de-severing" and "directionality" are as renditions o f Ent-femen and Ausrichtung. My translation above tries to preserve the active sense o f the gerund das Entfemen that is qualified by the participial adjective ausrichtendes ("orienting"). Ausrichtung provides more than a mere direction for one's attention and manipulation; it concretely situates and orients us. Therefore, I translate Ausrichtung as "orientation" rather than "directionality."

34 Heidegger does not enlarge on Dasein's "bodily nature" ("L e ib lic h k e itquotation marks are Heidegger's), but briefly acknowledges that this '"bodily nature' hides a whole problematic o f its own" (BT 143; SZ 108). For a detailed phenomenological analysis o f the human body, see Merleau-Ponty 1962, Part One.


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avoided this ambiguity by clearly distinguishing between ontic distance and ontological dis-

stance. Ontic distance is a result o f each individual's centered activities. By contrast,

ontological dis-stance is an essential structure o f being human, and thus shared and public.

The centered spatiality o f each individual human being establishes its bodily orientation and

shifting distances from specific items o f equipment. It can do so because it moves in a public

realm of accessible equipment which has already opened up the possibility o f each private

stance. The centered spatiality each Dasein carries around with it depends therefore on public

space in which it already dwells. We will see later (Section 6.1) how public streets must be

designed to accommodate and enhance our centered spatiality we carry around.

3.3.3 From Existential Spatiality to Physical Space

Regions and the places o f equipment made accessible by dis-stance and orientation

have the character o f inconspicuous familiarity. In smooth successful coping, Dasein is

absorbed in its world. Even though Dasein deals with a multiplicity o f things all the time,

Dasein does not encounter them as abstract "spatial entities" or "physical objects" but as

concrete and interlaced items of equipment that have their places in a field o f engaged

activities. Proximally, Dasein never discovers the spatial dimension o f equipment. In

everyday coping activities, the spatial dimension stays necessarily "hidden" in the background.

The hiddenness o f geometric space is a condition for successful coping activities. This

spatiality o f practical involvement is the background on the basis o f which physical or

geometric space can come to the fore and be dealt with explicitly.


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Physical or geometric space begins to emerge when equipment becomes unavailable,

i.e., when smooth transparent coping is disturbed. Despite the disturbance of transparent

coping, however, unavailable equipment is still encountered in the mode o f concern (see also

Table 3-1 on page 72).

Different types o f professions approach “space" quite differently. They deal in fact

with different types of “space," either with physical space or with existential spatiality. These

types o f space and their main characteristics are listed in Table 3-2 (page 100). Design

professions such as architecture, engineering, and construction measure, calculate and

manipulate spatial entities as physical space. In contrast to theoretical disciplines such as

geometry and physics, however, these design professions also have to account for Dasein's

existential spatiality. When these design disciplines thematize this spatiality, they do so,

Heidegger implies, still circumspectively [umsichtig]:

The spatiality o f what we proximally encounter in circumspection can become a theme for circumspection itself as well as a task for calculation and measurement, as in building and surveying. Such thematization o f the spatiality o f the environment is still predominantly an act o f circumspection by which space in itself already comes into view in a certain way. (BT 146; SZ 111-112)

In contrast to abstract spatial disciplines, the design and building professions — even

on a theoretical level (as in this inquiry) — deal with space still circumspectively because

(1) they design, or at least are able to design, settings that support Dasein dealing

with its environment circumspectively;

(2) they must they must proceed with care and concern during construction in

order to implement the design in a safe and efficient manner and to give form

to existential spatiality envisioned by the designer.


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Physical space Existential spatiality

Geometrical space, the space of the

occurrent.

I Homogeneous, no center.

Pure extension.

Three-dimensional multiplicity o f

positions.

Measurements o f distance.

Lived space, the space o f the available.

Personal: centered in each o f us.

Orientation (up/down, right/left).

Remoteness/nearness o f equipment.35

Public: has regions and, in these, places.

Degree o f availability.

Table 3-2 Physical Space vs. Existential Spatiality (from Dreyfus 1991, 139)

Only by means o f further abstractions from Dasein's everyday world ("de-worlding"

[Entweltlichung]) through science is it possible to discover pure space and the three-

dimensional multiplicity o f possible positions. The process o f discovering this pure and

homogeneous space o f science begins when equipment (e.g., a street), by circumstance or by

design, becomes unavailable (as a result o f a traffic accident, for example). Subsequently, this

process o f "de-worlding" progresses to laying bare occurrent space by subjecting existential

35 Dreyfus' Table 4 (1991,139) reads here "Remoteness/nearness o f objects" rather than "Remoteness/nearness o f equipment." I have made the change to emphasize the association of physical space with objects, and o f existential spatiality with equipment as used things.


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spatiality to further successive abstractions (plotting o f debris, measuring the lengths o f tire

marks, etc.). Heidegger elaborates:

When space is discovered non-circumspectiveiy by just looking at it, the environmental regions get neutralized to pure dimensions. Places — and indeed the whole circumspectively oriented nexus o f places belonging to available equipment — get reduced to a multiplicity o f positions for random things. The spatiality o f what is available within-the-world loses its involvement-character [Bewandtnischarakter], and so does the available. The world loses its specific aroundness; the environment becomes the world o f nature. The world,36 as a whole o f available equipment, becomes spatialized [verraumlicht] to a nexus o f extended things which are just occurrent and no more. The homogeneous space o f nature shows itself only when the entities we encounter are discovered in such a way that the worldly character o f the available gets specifically deprived of its worldliness. (BT 147; SZ 112)

This process o f progressive deprivations o f Dasein's worldliness is what Heidegger calls "de-

worlding" [Entweltlichung]. The geometric-mathematical space o f science is literally, and

necessarily so, "a world apart" from Dasein's spatiality.

The successive abstractions from Dasein's spatiality reveals occurrent space.37 This

geometric or physical space can come into view when our everyday practical concerns cease

and when we overlook the equipmental character o f the things that make up our spatial

36 I have omitted the quotation marks around 'world' to make the use of quotation marks in this sentence consistent with the meaning Heidegger gives it earlier. This is one o f many passages in which Heidegger is inconsistent concerning the usage o f world vs. "world." See Subsection 3.2.1 above for an explanation o f the difference.

37 For the purpose o f the present discussion, I use the terms "geometric space," "physical space," "scientific space," and "occurrent space" synonymously. See also Table 3-2 (Physical Space vs. Existential Spatiality) earlier in this section. In line with Descartes' strict dichotomy between consciousness (res cogitans) and physical objects (res externa), occurrent space has also been called "Cartesian space." According to Descartes' ontology, the world is made up o f objects extended in space which are intelligible through the analytical processes o f consciousness. The detached consciousness tries to apprehend these objects "extended in space." For Descartes, consciousness and the physical world, including everyday things o f use, are entirely distinct spheres. See "The Phenomenon o f World" (Section 4 o f the Appendix) for a brief summary o f Heidegger's critique o f Descartes' dualism.


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environment. In keeping with his workshop example as a model for any nexus o f equipment,

Heidegger uses the hammer to illustrate the switch from existential spatiality to physical

space.

In the "physical" assertion that "the hammer is heavy" we overlook not only the tool- character o f the entity we encounter, but also something that belongs to any available equipment: its place. Its place becomes a matter o f indifference. This does not mean that what is occurrent loses its "location" altogether. But its place becomes a spatio- temporal position, a "world-point", which is in no way distinguished from any other. This implies not only that the multiplicity o f places o f available equipment within the confines o f the environment becomes modified to a pure multiplicity o f positions, but that the entities o f the environment are altogether suspended38. (BT 413; SZ 361- 362)

During everyday coping activities the environing work world circumscribes and

"defines" the linked places o f available equipment. When involved activities cease, this

pragmatic "definition" o f equipment and their places is suspended, and items of equipment are

now discovered as occurrent objects that occupy geometric positions. The withdrawal o f

everyday concern and involvement thus results in the "de-worlding" o f Dasein's world, and

brings pure geometric space to the fore.

This suspension o f available equipment through abstract, homogeneous space is a

legitimate enterprise o f theory, and Heidegger acknowledges its legitimate place in science.

By acknowledging the legitimate place o f physical or geometric space, he brings into sharper

38 " ... sondem das Seiende der Umwelt wird iiberhaupt entschrdnkt." The English texttranslates abstractly " ... but that the entities o f the environment are altogether releasedfrom such confinement." I translate entschrdnkt as "suspended" because it better fits the meaning o f this sentence. Once the places of available equipment are reduced to a pure multiplicity o f indifferent spatio-temporal positions, the environment (Um-welt, the surrounding world) has lost its involvement-character. Then Dasein's world as a whole o f available equipment is suspended.


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focus Dasein's spatiality, i.e., the spatiality o f everyday coping skills (lived space). In

Chapters 6 and 9, I will demonstrate how a focus on Dasein's spatiality and the contrast

between existential spatiality and physical space can be used as guides for outlining the

specific challenges and opportunities o f environmental design.


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Chapter 4

Modern Technology and the Work of Art

In the previous chapter, I have shown how we typically encounter our spatial

environment during our routine coping activities: we are absorbed in a pre-reflectively and

directly understood nexus o f social practices, available tools, and concerned practical

involvement. Following Heidegger, I have called this nexus world. When we are in it, we

take the world for granted, including the items with which we are intimately involved. The

world and our equipment are transparent to us during routine coping activities. Our everyday

world must indeed be transparent to us if we are to perform our ordinary tasks smoothly and

successfully.

Components o f our built environment, including our public streets and freeways, fulfill

not only important pragmatic functions we expect o f them In addition, they have significant

social and cultural dimensions to which our society, proud o f its technological achievements,

tends to pay little attention. I will argue in Chapter 4 that this neglect is a result o f an

instrumental or technological understanding o f technology and that a unifying cultural

paradigm, a “work o f art," can assist us in overcoming the currently dominant mis

understanding o f technology.

In this chapter, I attempt to specify main characteristics o f a non-technological

understanding o f technology. Some o f Heidegger's later writings serve as a basis for

discussing the predominant instrumental understanding o f technology and for outlining ways

to go beyond it. O f particular interest in this context are his essays "The Question Concerning


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Technology," "The Turning," "Memorial Address," and "The Origin o f the Work of Art." 1

I present transportation as a unique manifestation o f the instrumental understanding o f

technology and indicate (in Chapter 7) avenues to overcome this instrumental view within our

existing practices o f moving about.

The automobile-highway system and aviation, the system o f our air-ways, embody and

focus the dominant practices o f our time, thus potentially serving as a unifying cultural

paradigm, a "work o f art.2 Our highways and airways as a crystallization o f a commonly

shared understanding o f being can be brought into focus by design principles that are gleaned

from our practices. These design principles are able to provide a visible and tangible

expression o f a non-technological understanding o f technology. Such an understanding can

be physically embodied in a "work o f art." Such an artwork, if generally and positively

accepted, could lead to overcoming technological understanding even amid technology.

1 "The Question Concerning Technology," and "The Turning" are contained in Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (QCT), orig. "Die Frage nach der Technik" in Vortrage und Aufsatze (VA) and "Die Kehre" in Die Technik und die Kehre (TK); "Memorial Address" is contained in Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking (DT), and "The Origin o f the Work o f Art" in Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (PLT), orig. "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" in Holzwege (HW).

2 In Chapter 7 ,1 will present the planning and design o f the new Denver International Airport in the form o f a brief case study and test o f the "transportation as our work o f art" hypothesis.


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4.1 OUR PRESENT AMBIVALENCE TOWARD TECHNOLOGY

We produce and use increasingly sophisticated technological devices in our everyday

life. These devices are supposed to make living more comfortable, safer, and more enjoyable.

Technology promises decreasing toil, more leisure and increasingly disposable income.

Increases in productivity made possible by technological innovations are directed toward

cultural enrichment for the greatest number o f people possible and for raising the standard o f

living for everybody, so at least the socio-technological credo goes. Because homo techno-

logicus has to earn his livelihood less and less with the sweat o f his brow, technology has

become a kind o f secular release from the Fall. Modem man brings about this annihilation o f

the Fall by his own ingenuity and effort. Modem technology — as it is generally understood

and self-consciously celebrated -- is that ever increasing self-empowering force which allows

us to return to paradise, now self-made, and to enjoy all its fruits, too.

Despite these promises and the all-pervasive effects o f technology on our daily living,

advanced industrial societies retain an uneasy relationship with technology. On the one hand,

we hail and embrace technology wholeheartedly and allow our lives to become increasingly

dominated by it. On the other hand, we rebel, more or less, visibly, against this ever

increasing dominance.

The prevalence o f drugs, especially among yuppies and among those who make their

livelihood from their sale, the young urban unemployed, can be understood as another set o f

techno-chemical fixes that are used in the hope o f overcoming the leveling, desensitizing

effects o f technological implements with which we fill our lives. Consequently, our high-tech

culture expresses a pervasive demand for thrills, for highs with "ecstacy" and "crack." All o f


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these and less dramatic self-induced peak-experiences are the mirror image o f a life's flatness

vis-a-vis indifference brought about by the ubiquitous rule o f technological devices.

Following Heidegger's analysis o f technology, I want to show that it is not technology

itself but rather a technological (or instrumental) understanding o f technology which is cause

o f the widespread, if only subliminal, discontent with technological civilization. Elements o f

a non-technological understanding are then presented using transportation technologies,

streets, highways, and airways, as a focus for non-technological practices and as a vehicle for

overcoming an instrumental, confining understanding o f technology.

4.2 HEIDEGGER'S ACCOUNT OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY

4.2.1 The Enframing

Our pronounced enthusiasm for technological devices and equally pronounced

resentment toward them reveal our uneasy relation to technology. What is needed, according

to Heidegger, is a free relation to technology. A free relation can be prepared by an

understanding which sees and works through the technological understanding o f technology.

At the base o f our technological culture lies a deep contradiction: we want to force

every-thing, our-selves included, under calculable and manipulable control, yet none of us or

no-thing is in control o f this controlling. We live in the cybernetic age, yet there is no

helmsman. The way we act collectively is through democratic voting, the outcome of which

is a vector o f wills rather than an "optimal" solution as social engineering would like to have

it. This formal decision process often leads to a mediated but binding outcome which,

however, no one really voted for or can identify with. The formal political process and the


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allegiance to an equally formal balance o f power is our common denominator for collective

action. The process itself and its results are fragmented and incremental, adjusting the status

quo at the margins without pursuit o f a particular long-range common goal.

We in Western advanced industrialized societies see ourselves, individually and

collectively, as the shapers o f our living conditions, as the executors o f whatever happens to

be the content o f our will. We are the movers and shakers, and are ostentatiously proud o f

it. We have disposed o f any transcendent entity dominating or influencing our fate. Our

ambitions and courses o f action, understood as arbitrarily available, are subject to our will

alone. We, as modems, enjoy this contingency, are proud o f it, and seek to enhance our

ability to playfully redefine our self-made image which is, by design, as disposable and

replaceable as a styrofoam cup. The stock market o f metaphors by which we live trades only

with those images which reassure us that we are in control. We define ourselves as both the

subject and object o f a continuous experiment, a perpetual motion o f make-believe. Neither

a primordial nature nor a teleological view delimits our self-perception: we are open-ended.

The present age with its dangers and opportunities is not understood anymore as

Schicksal, as a sending. Previous Western epochs allowed human beings a more receptive

role. Humans understood themselves as dependent on forces larger than themselves. In our

Western culture a series o f understandings o f "homo sapiens" or "animal rationale" have

emerged: Homeric hero, Athenian democrat, cosmopolitan Roman, medieval Christian,

Renaissance discoverer and conqueror o f other continents as well as his own subjectivity,

Enlightenment controller o f all nature through technology informed by science. These

particular understandings o f what it means to be human are, narrow and exclusive as they may


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be, a clearing which opens up, and closes, ways o f encountering our world and understanding

ourselves. Previous epochs in Western history believed these defining understandings to be

out o f man's control, i.e., sendings. N ow we assert they are and always were up to us. This

is the mark o f the age o f "humanism" and modem technology.

From its beginning in the 5th century B.C., Western metaphysics tried to spell out

what the "being o f beings" really is. The history o f metaphysics produced an array o f reified

concepts which were posited as being the foundation behind (meta) all that there is (physis).

The most influential o f these metaphysical concepts that have come down to us are: physis,

the Idea o f the Good, Energeia, Essence, Spirit, Substance, transcendental Subjectivity,

empirical Objectivity, and Will to Power. Our technological and scientific era has finally done

away with metaphysical questions and answers. Despite some marginally surviving enclaves

o f metaphysical thinking (even in science), metaphysical concerns are no longer at the center

o f our self-perception and ambitions. Even the metaphysical comfort which previous cultural

epochs craved and enjoyed seems to be history. Metaphysics reduces things to mere

epiphenomena: the tangible things we encounter are proclaimed to be unreal. Metaphysics

tends to put us into an estranged relation to things by making them objects o f our positing.

Heidegger tries to show that technology, the ultimate danger, can save us from the influence

o f metaphysics which misled Western civilization for 25 hundred years.

Technology dissolves all objects into a set o f interlocking functions which themselves

become variables in even larger frameworks. We learn o f systems, and we learn that we are

systemic parts o f their multiple subsystems. Objects — understood as physical entities

posited by the ordering subjectivity — have vanished into variable placeholders o f systems


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o f functions. As the orderer o f this order, man makes himself part o f this ordering in which

everything and everyone becomes standing reserve (Bestcmd), i.e., a resource to be used

efficiently. These systems o f functions exist only in relation to their environment which itself

is a system composed of other functional subsystems. The cybernetic age has turned tangible

things into functional relationships by an increasingly sophisticated "architecture o f

complexity" 3 and executes its all-encompassing feed-back ordering in the name o f "will to

will" (Nietzsche).

Modem physics has found "physical matter" to be a function o f (1) the questions

being asked and (2) the experimental set-up which forces nature to respond with a set o f

answers whose general character has been defined in advance. "Normal science," the major

bulk o f all research in any particular field o f knowledge, defines the relevant questions and the

strategies to solve them.4 Normal science itself is conducted in a system o f institutional

set-ups which order and control the knowledge business. Researchers, teachers, and

administrators as well are defined as variable and disposable placeholders in the busy-ness of

knowledge procurement and enhancement. In this all pervasive Enframing (Gestell), objects

3 The title and thrust o f Herbert Simon's essay "The Architecture o f Complexity" (Simon 1982) is programmatic for the dominant understanding o f science and technology. Modem technology shows an enthusiasm for complexity and its enhancement. Systems theory, a brainchild o f World War II logistics and developed in the 1950s, has been an influential movement in high technology and the social sciences. It derived its popularity from its mission to control and manage complexity, in space and here on earth, the very complexity technology is feeding.

4 I am using "normal science" in the sense it has been introduced by Thomas Kuhn 1971.


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and objectifying subjects (Enlightenment model) have been dissolved into the same standing

reserve: everything and everyone is a resource to be used efficiently.

Thus, technology has overcome the metaphysical stance towards beings. Metaphysics

is aiming at spelling out the "real" substance o f things. Even the quest for metaphysical

comfort has largely been overcome. For Heidegger, this is a positive result. At the same

time, this technological understanding o f beings denies (as every metaphysics does) that it is

only one understanding among many possible alternatives. Today science and technology

present themselves in the form o f a teleology: all previous interpretations o f beings are

categorized as /^re-scientific understandings which, through the gradual grip o f reason, were

able to divest themselves of their mytho-poetic residuals and which have finally, through many

stages o f distillation, culminated in our present technological understanding.

The self-understanding o f our age is technological and ahistorical: it denies that it is

historically contingent and presents itself as a global process o f rationalization. Its universal

mission as "progress" is fortified by schools and universities. It is exported, for hard currency,

to less developed countries, formerly called "under-developed." Language aptly bears witness

to this "having made progress," an improved grade patronizingly attested by those who deem

themselves advanced. Indeed, Western technology and its ahistorical, instrumental

understanding have become global, universal phenomena.

4.2.2 The Danger

At the root of our civilization and its discontent lies, according to Heidegger, our

instrumental and technological understanding o f technology, not the prevalence o f


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technology itself. Technology is the way we predominantly see the world and relate to things,

to ourselves as well. This predominant technological understanding denies for us the

possibility or mocks the adequacy o f alternative ways o f being. Perhaps every age in the

history o f Western culture, by necessity, denied and repressed alternative understandings o f

what it means to be human. Every historical "paradigm o f being" is both a revealing and a

concealing, a disclosure and a closure. Every understanding puts its stamp and seal on the

practices o f a particular historical culture, thereby excluding or blending out alternative

self-interpretations. Wallace Stevens says o f this compartmentalization aphoristically: "Each

age is a pigeon-hole."5

Utilitarianism has understood technology as the application of the "laws o f nature" for

the efficient satisfaction o f human needs and wants. In today's systematic, bureaucratically

organized discoveries, "natural laws" are already understood against the backdrop o f their

future utility. Scientific institutions, even basic research, have the enhancement o f resource

efficiency and power in mind, which amounts to increasing efficiency and power fo r its own

sake. Therefore Heidegger claims that in the present age technology is ontologically prior to

science.6

Heidegger wants to make visible how we, in the age o f subject-object Enlightenment

technology, had posited everything in front o f us (Vor-Stellung) in such a way as to increase

our manipulative power. In the age o f modem technology, we have transformed this subject-

5 Stevens (from Adagia) 1997, 900.

6 Since about 1970, however, non-instrumental views o f technology have increasingly become vocal; see, for instance, Pirsig 1976, and Borgmann 1984 and 1992.


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object dichotomy into a system o f efficient resources. The ever increasing self-catalyzing

efficiency by means o f which we treat everything and everyone as an efficient resource has,

however, no particular goal other than to enlarge the muscle power for enhancing the efficient

hordering o f things and people. We speak o f progress but we are blind to its circular

self-justification. As integral parts o f this total enframing (Ge-Stell), we understand ourselves

eas those who are ordered and fixed by means o f our own ordering and fixing.7

Yet, contrary to other contemporary critics o f technology, Heidegger does not

rcondemn technology, despite its ubiquitous de-humanizing effects. Heidegger just wants to

identify technology as the ultimate danger. What, then, is this danger?

Every historical culture favors one particular understanding o f being at the expense

o f alternative ones. Technology — in its technological, instrumental interpretation —

conceals, more effectively than previous self-understandings did, its power to repress

alternatives. Technology generates myriad ways o f concealing its cunning power to conceal.

It is the efficient totalizer and normalizer. Technology, in its instrumental understanding and

practices, is the omnipresent invisible dictator. It has the first and last say. Its

self-perpetuating instrumental understanding threatens to flatten even non-technological,

non-efficient practices (hiking, listening to music, playing with children, meditation, and other

"non-productive" activities and passivities). The pervasive instrumental view o f

"technological society" undermines these practices by subjecting them, subliminally or overtly,

7 Gene technology opens up another round in our open-ended journey to become an ever more efficient orderer and fixer.


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to the calculus o f "How to become younger, more productive, 'creative,' and thereby more

efficient and 'successful'?"

Why does Heidegger say we are hoodwinked by our instrumental view o f modem

science and technology? Technology as the totalizing and self-catalyzing enhancement o f

efficiency perpetuates itself just for the sake o f ever more efficiency: it has no specific goal.

All "goals" are already ordered and fixed only as intermediate goals. "Ends" are fixed and

instrumentalized in a complex knot as productive inputs o f optimization algorithms. The

cycle o f self- empowering power has nothing as its end. Technology, in its impoverished

guise, is movement without end, employing us as cerebral hamsters on a gigantic treadmill.

Heidegger can therefore show modem technology in its instrumental self-interpretation to be

nihilistic. I f we work and live for nothing (nihil) other than this eternal return o f the same,

collective and individual activities become indifferent and therefore meaningless. The

sugar-coating o f this barely concealed nihilism has become more and more obvious.

However, technology as such is not to be blamed for the distress in our high-tech civilization.

Heidegger, in an interpretive move analogous to his analysis o f being-in-the-world in Being

and Time, clearly identifies a distorted understanding as the source o f technological society's

predicament. The instrumental view is precarious because it portrays technology as a neutral

instrument at the disposal o f our will. Such a neutral view denies us an understanding o f the

Enframing as a particular historical revealing or clearing. We begin to advance a new

understanding, Heidegger suggests,


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above all through our catching sight o f what comes to presence in technology, instead o f merely staring at the technological. So long as we present technology as an instrument, we remain held fast in the will to master it. We press on past the essence o f technology. (QCT 32; VA 40)

This neutral, instrumental view o f technology comprises the danger in our

technological society. The ultimate danger arises when we are unable to see the totalizing

and levelling effects o f using technology as a neutral instrument, and when we ultimately insist

that each understanding o f being, including the neutral, instrumental view o f technology, is

at the disposal o f our presumably autonomous "will to will."

4.2.3 The Turning

The cause o f our distress is not technology itself but its twisted interpretation and use

as an allegedly neutral agent. I f this is case, then unwinding this twist may overcome the

self-inflicted impasse o f our technological culture without having to get rid o f technology

(which does not seem to be possible nor desirable anyway).

Such an untwisted understanding has to freely accept, first o f all, technology as the

way things show up for us and the way we encounter them We have to appropriate this way

as our way. That means that we have to accept the instrumental understanding o f technology

as the ultimate danger.

Secondly, an untwisted, relaxed understanding of technology understands itself

historically, Le., as one understanding o f being among many possible ones. Such an historical

understanding denies, however, that we can freely pick and choose any packaged identity

from a supermarket called "history."


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Thirdly, we have to realize that technology as one way o f being is not up to us. This

realization is perhaps the one most alien to the dominant understanding o f our humanistic

culture. Heidegger tries to remind us that technology, as a world-historical event, is not at

the disposal o f our will. We have to accept technology therefore as a given, a gift, a sending

(Schicksal).

Such a receptive, non-voluntaristic understanding o f the historically given is a

necessary condition for overcoming the sterilizing and flattening dominance o f technology.

Technology thus understood is not anymore a neutral instrument for the pursuit o f arbitrary

purposes at the disposal o f our will, but a given o f the history o f being (Seinsgeschick).

Once the instrumental understanding o f technology is overcome by working through,

not against it, a free relation to technology can emerge: technology is then understood neither

as mankind's triumphant pinnacle nor as an unalterable fete which has to be simply endured.

A free relation to technology allows the co-existence o f technological practices and the

attention to things and activities which fell outside the grip o f the Gestell, the Enframing. A

re-discovery o f these marginal practices can undermine, or at least soften, the grip the Gestell

has over us. Non-efficient practices can remind us that the (still dominant) Gestell, through

our very practices, tends to cover up that it is a given, a sending. After all, while not in

charge o f the play, it is us who are enacting the Gestell, in each and every act.

Heidegger suggests that the cultivation o f insignificant and humble practices (das

Geringe) can put the Gestell into proper perspective only if these practices are both

sufficiently different from yet related to the Enframing, the Gestell. A reformed type o f

practices, Heidegger suggests, has to embody therefore a non-technological understanding,


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yet needs to take place freely within our world o f technological devices. These reformed

practices (hiking, listening to music, playing with children, meditation, for example) are

actually neither "new" nor overtly different from our "old" ways o f doing things. These new

ways are the old ways, just revised and revisited.

Such an understanding o f technology is posf-technological in the following sense: it

reflects an understanding o f technology that (1) has worked through its instrumental bias, and

(2) thus duly accepts technology as our way o f encountering our world. In such a reflective

and non-voluntaristic way we can turn technological objects into technological gifts. This we

can do for ourselves. But what about our culture as a whole? Heidegger holds out the hope

that marginal practices within the given and reinterpreted context o f the Gestell may become

that which can save us from our present nihilistic culture.

In Part HI, I suggest how streets can aid in inducing and expressing a free relation to

technology. I f experienced as a work o f art, streets or a network o f highways may create a

new cultural paradigm (Chapter 7). I f experienced as “things,” roads may prompt humble

practices and become their hosts (Chapter 8). In either case, streets can facilitate a post-

technological grasp of technology. What are, then, the main components o f an artwork that

can inform our public ways to become conduits and stages for revisioning technology?

4.3 ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART

The turning in the face o f the ultimate danger consists o f its realization as ultimate

danger, followed by an acceptance o f technology as a given. The tremendous power o f

technology as the ultimate enframing equipped with its sty devices to conceal its own nature


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is broken by receiving even this twice concealed cover-up as a gift. This realization,

according to Heidegger, occurs suddenly: it seems to be akin to a transformation, a kind o f

secular conversion (QCT 44). This turnabout o f the danger, brought about by clearly facing

it, turns the ultimate danger into a saving power.

Heidegger seems to imply that this turning happens as an individual act (QCT 44).

Even if this turning should occur in many individuals, our overall cultural practices would

likely remain unchanged. Therefore, overcoming the Gestell on the cultural level requires a

physical and public manifestation. Such a manifestation must tangibly embody technology in

its posf-technological sense. Streets are an excellent candidate for a technological

environment that can be used and enjoyed in such a non-instrumental sense.

A non-instrumental understanding may occur in subliminal and in manifest practices.

Technology's post-technological self-understanding can provide the subliminal and sustaining

background for expressive manifestations that reflect a common, underlying change in our

outlook on technology. A public manifestation o f an acknowledged common background

would amount to an emergence o f a new cultural paradigm. A post-technological cultural

paradigm, collectively gathered and focused through the medium of creative expression,

would be, in Heidegger's agnostic terminology, a new "god." An embodiment o f a commonly

shared new cultural paradigm would, if commonly recognized as such, be a "work o f art."

A work o f art — in the sense used throughout this chapter — works through the

fruitful tension between two opposing forces which Heidegger names world and earth* World

See especially his "The Origin o f the Work o f Art" in PLT (first published in HW).


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is the name for our tendency to totalize, normalize and rationalize everything. World wants

to bring everything and everyone into one lucid, coherent and explicit whole. The totalizing

and normalizing nature o f world does not tolerate any anomalies and irritating deviations.

Earth is the balancing force which refuses totalization, normalization, and flattening through

world's abstractions and ordered clarity. Earth brings forth resisting anomalies which force

world to give up or soften its totalizing ground plan. Thus earth forces world to open up new

horizons and interpretations. While world gives structure and predictability, earth makes sure

that this structure is alive and continuously rejuvenated.9

A work o f art as a new cultural paradigm is, according to Heidegger, not to be

understood as a stimulus for aesthetic "experiences" nor as a sensational creation by a

free-floating genius who manages to impress us, for a while, by his "progressive" metaphor.

Heidegger sees the artist as a receptive and articulate organ who listens to what is going on

in her culture and who is able to focus its tacit self-understanding in physical form. A work

o f art is tacit culture made visible by unifying ongoing practices and giving them focused

physical expression by design.

The artist, as understood by Heidegger, is therefore not the self-styled creator o f the

latest metaphor to live by -- as proponents o f a playful nihilism (e.g., Nietzsche, Derrida,

Rorty) would have it. His creation consists o f synthesizing existing practices or social

9 Heidegger’s account o f the struggle between world and earth in a work o f art, developed in the 1930s, resembles remarkably Thomas S. Kuhn's account o f the creative tension between "normal" and "revolutionary" science. For this surprising similarity, see his The Structure o f Scientific Revolutions. Second, enlarged edition. Chicago: The University o f Chicago Press, 1971.


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institutions into a new constellation. This rearrangement o f cultural material, often merely

an ensemble o f humble things, resembling driftwood that nobody recognized or cared for, can

provide a mirror with the help o f which (potentially) anyone can recognize his world, see it

afresh, and thus reaffirm it. A work o f art, then, is not a matter o f an individual exerting his

will in fancy exercises o f "happy nihilism" (Nietzsche). Because the work o f art is a material

focus o f serious concern that reflects the subliminal self-understanding o f a historical culture,

it reinforces identity and offers meaningful differences.

Reinforcing identity o f for example, the diverse culture(s) of North America, can take

place, if I understand Heidegger correctly, only on the basis o f an already existing, and at least

minimally shared, common ground. Art, therefore, cannot create identity out o f nowhere, it

can only highlight and thus reinforce it.

Talking about a work o f art in other than general terms is difficult because an artwork

in Heidegger's sense does not exist (yet) for our age. In order to indicate what such a cultural

paradigm could be, Heidegger has to resort to an exemplary building type that served as a

cultural center for a historical people o f Western civilization.

In his "The Origin o f the Work of Art" ("Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes"), originally

delivered as a series o f three lectures between 1935-36, the Greek temple figures as a

paradigmatic work o f art. The temple of classical Greece fulfilled several functions at once:

utilitarian, social, political, spiritual, and, in a celebrated yet unobtrusive way, also aesthetic

functions. These various functions did not relate to each other in mere additive fashion. This

exemplar o f art worked because it gathered all these functions into one integral tangible

artifact. Seeing the Greek temple as an "interesting" piece o f archaeological discovery, as a


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"must" on a Bildungsreise (educational journey) or a Mediterranean cruise, results in

encountering it only in an impoverished mode, as a decontextualized object. Even reverently

classifying the temple as a "great" masterpiece of Western architecture, from which to borrow

(or steal) freely, as if it were a free-for-all quarry, amounts to debasing and decapitating it as

art that has worked for a historical culture. The Greek temple, in ruins or reconstructed,

cannot be a work o f art for us. It emerged over time in a specific cultural context. Emulating

the temple's structural facility, proportions, or various stylistic features, and transplanting

them into a contemporary setting testifies to its remaining radiance, and to our artistic

poverty.

In order to exemplify Heidegger's view o f how architecture as a work of art can

gather a historical culture, let me quote at length from "The Origin o f the Work o f Art" in

which Heidegger describes a Greek temple, perhaps the temple at Paestum:

Standing there, the building rests on the rocky ground. This resting o f the work draws up out of the rock the mystery o f that rock's clumsy yet spontaneous support. Standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and so first makes the storm itself manifest in its violence. The luster and gleam o f the stone, though itself apparently glowing only by the grace o f the sun, yet first brings to light the light o f the day, the breadth o f the sky, the darkness o f the night. The temple's firm towering makes visible the invisible space o f air. The steadfastness o f the work contrasts with the surge o f the surf, and its own repose brings out the raging o f the sea. Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as what they are.... The temple-work, standing there, opens up a world and at the same time sets this world back again on earth, which itself only thus emerges as native ground.... The temple, in its standing there, first gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves. (PLT 42-43; HW 27-28)

Architecture as a work of art is not added to an already existing setting. Phenomenologically

speaking, the reverse takes place: the setting comes into its own through the work. A


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medieval cathedral in a European town had this gathering power, too. The light radiating

from the gathering power o f such architecture as artwork can only glimmer today because

"the world o f the work that stands there has perished" (PLT 41; HW 26).

Each historical people needs to bring forth its own work o f art in order to provide

cultural identity and unify its diverse social practices. In Chapter 7, I will examine

transportation, especially the automobile-highway system, as our potential work o f art. An

expansive automotive world, consisting o f seemingly unending, interlaced highways, offers

an unprecedented degree o f mobility even to the average citizen who prefers to motivate and

move himself. I will ague in Chapter 7 that the automobile-highway system, as our potential

work o f art, may generate a similar unifying capacity today as the medieval cathedral or the

Greek temple generated in their times.


Chapter 5

Dwelling in A Technological World

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In the last chapter I have explored main characteristics o f a work o f art and its role

in our technological age. A work o f art understood as a shared cultural paradigm is able to

unify a historical culture. Before our current technological age can find a commonly shared

work o f art (most likely in transportation), we must develop a free or non-instrumental

understanding o f technology. Such a free understanding is best nourished by being in the

presence o f humble things that can teach us how to dwell Designing and building which rest

on our ability to dwell will result more likely in environments that reflect our culture.

In Chapter 5 I attempt to reformulate Heidegger's notion o f dwelling in the context

o f postmodern technology, o f which our contemporary streets are a part. As a preparatory

step, I will indicate the relevance o f rediscovering and reaffirming material things as focal

points in a highly technological world. In this chapter I will mainly draw on Heidegger's

essays "The Thing" (1950) and "Building Dwelling Thinking" (1951).1 In Chapter 8 (Part ID)

I will develop more concrete examples o f how things can provide focal points for meaningful

social practices and how sophisticated technological devices may be used in the emerging

postmodern understanding o f technology. Highways and urban streets will serve as an

appropriate forum where this new technological dwelling can take place.

1 Both essays are contained in Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought. Translations and Introduction by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1971. All references (PLT) in the text are to this edition. These essays were first delivered as lectures in the years indicated above in parentheses.


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5.1 WHAT THINGS DO

Over the last 100 years, we have increased our traveling speed by a factor o f 1000

(Figures 5-1 and 5-2 below). We are exploring further and further reaches o f "space." With

increasing speed, we are moving not only goods and information but also ourselves. "All

distances in time and space are shrinking," (PLT 165) observed Heidegger almost 50 years

ago. Events from far away reach us within minutes, or occur before our eyes in "real time"

if we are properly connected to the "web," the expanding world-wide electronic network.

1889

Pan Amarican Airways

Sailing ship B/y U S. Army aircraft

72 days

Figure 5-1 The Shrinking Globe, 1889-1981

(Source: Institute o f Transportation Engineers, 1992b, 15)


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We are generally celebrating this shrinking o f distances and time as achievements of

our advanced technology. The advanced industrial societies are good at this miniaturizing

process, proud o f it, and want to become even better at it. Supersonic flight for commercial

airliners is about to be superseded by hypersonic flight at 6,700 miles per hour.2

It seems that we are or can be virtually everywhere and anywhere. But if one is

virtually everywhere, one is really nowhere in particular, at least not long enough to take the

place in or allow the place to take us in.3

If everything becomes equally accessible, no thing is really near and dear. With

increasing speed and shrinking distances, we tend to loose the experience o f nearness and,

consequently, the experience o f famess. We then equate nearness with proximity. We

measure distances and time, and increasingly also ourselves, predominantly in quantitative

terms. Nearness and famess become positions on a sliding scale o f distance quanta. Things

are reduced to objects that can take up arbitrary geometric positions.

What is left in this process o f objectification is uniform distancelessness "in which

everything is neither far nor near -- is, as it were, without distance" (PLT 166).

2 According to KCBS Radio (San Francisco, September 11, 1998), hypersonic flight at 6,700 miles per hour has recently been conceptually developed and proposed for long distance air travel.

3 We have allowed our natural and built environment to become an agglomeration of interchangeable sites with no identities. The reduction of uniqueness and local character has been lamented by many observers, for instance by James Howard Kunstler in his Geography o f Nowhere. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.


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4100 m i / h a

3200 -

Experimentalrocket-powered

airplanes2SOO

2400n

§ 2 0 0 0

1600

' l **■

1200

Schneider Cup races (seaplanes)

800Conventional

airplanes

1970196019401920 1930 19301900Year

Figure 5-2 Typical flight velocities (Source: John D. Anderson, Jr, 1985, 44)


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Extending Heidegger's anamnesis we may suggest that the many discontents in our

speedy civilization — in which we chronically "have no time" — result from lack o f

nearness. We are almost daily increasing our mobility and access to people and sites tangible

or virtual. The sites and locations we access can be marked today with any degree o f

precision through the global positioning system. We surround us with an abundance o f

objects. What we lack in our post- or hyper-modem world, however, is nearness. We

experience nearness, Heidegger argues, by being with things. By means o f objects we

increase and express our control o f the material universe. Things, on the other hand, bring

us nearness. How do things accomplish this?

In his writings and lectures, particularly in his later essays, Heidegger typically does

not begin an analysis with definitions. Following the pragmatic maxim o f phenomenology "To

the Things Themselves" (discussed in Chapter 3), Heidegger reminds us what a thing is and

what it does by presenting simple examples from everyday practices. He examines, for

instance, a wine jug to show how a modest thing gathers people and activities around itself

into the local world o f peasant life. An old stone bridge serves as another example. In the

context o f peasant life, Heidegger wants to demonstrate that and how our lives are gathered

and focused by things around us. Things, rather than objects, give our lives tangible

delimitations, that is, meaningful boundaries, locations, and orientation: "In the strict sense

o f the German word bedingt, we are the be-thinged, the conditioned ones. We have left

behind us the presumption o f all unconditionedness." (PLT 181)

In contrast to a mere object, a thing gathers people, equipment, and practices into a

local world. By "worlds" late Heidegger means "coherent, distinct contexts ... in which we


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perceive, act, and think. Each such world makes possible a distinct and pervasive way in

which things, people, and selves can appear and in which certain ways o f acting make sense."4

As outlined in Chapter 3, early Heidegger called each such world an understanding o f being.

Throughout his three distinct stages o f thinking Heidegger maintains that disclosing or

revealing worlds is the essential characteristics o f humans.

Things assemble a local world and make it visible. A thing is a focal point around

which a local world can establish itself. When a thing gathers humans, their equipment and

interactions into one local world, it performs an activity which Heidegger calls "thinging." In

performing its unique functions, a thing makes a world accessible, that is, brings it near.

"Thinging is the nearing o f world." (PLT 181) What is lit up or made accessible through a

thing is a distinct local context. When a thing things, people, equipment, and practices are

brought into their own, i.e., they function according to their own (eigene) nature and faculties.

Heidegger calls such a process or event Ereignis (which means occurrence, happening, or,

taken literally, the process o f coming into one's own). What Heidegger has in mind when

using Ereignis is therefore suitably translated as "appropriation." In order for a thing to "do

its thing," humans need not necessarily be conscious o f its thinging. We will observe the

pervasive gathering power o f things in the examples to follow.

4 Hubert L. Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa, "Highway Bridges and Feasts: Heidegger and Borgmann on How to Affirm Technology." M an and World 30: 159-177 (1997), 160. In addition to Heidegger's later writings, especially those on technology and our material culture, this essay has been a major guide for my Chapters 5 and 8.


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Heidegger contends that a thing things in four ways. He calls these four dimensions

or aspects of practices: earth, sky, divinities, and mortals. These four aspects are distinct yet

interconnected. Their unifying interplay is what Heidegger calls the fourfold (das Geviert).

Heidegger derived these archaic sounding terms from the poetry o f Friedrich

Holderlin (1770-1843). In the previously quoted essay "Highway Bridges and Feasts,"

Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa have reinterpreted Heidegger’s poetic notions in the

context o f modem and postmodern technology. Drawing on their interpretation, I will

describe the main characteristics o f the fourfold and indicate how a thing things. In Chapter

8, one o f the three application chapters o f Part HI, I will present urban trash containers and

freeways as things, and will show how they establish a world around themselves and how

architects, urban designers, and highway engineers can more frilly bring these things into their

own.

Earth refers to "the taken-for-granted practices that ground situations and make them

matter to us." 5 In order to facilitate our everyday routines, these grounding practices are

hidden and typically remain in the background. Thus earth harbors, conceals, and protects

these tacit practices. Being withdrawn, sheltered (geborgen), and taken for granted is a

requirement for these practices to do their ground work. An example o f earth is the concept

o f "personal space" used in environmental psychology. "Personal space" refers to the area

surrounding a person which that person seeks to keep free from the intrusion o f others. The

boundaries o f this area depend, o f course, on the occasion. Furthermore, "personal space"

5 Dreyfus and Spinosa, "Highway Bridges and Feasts" 166.


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is in feet interpersonal as we know from being around people from different cultures.

Grounding practices such as "personal space" are a tacit dimension o f interpersonal behavior

that is framed by culture rather than by individuals. Casual and systematic observation,

research and reflection can make these tacit customs explicit. But in order to "unearth" these

implicit conventions one has to temporarily step outside o f successful everyday practices and

not take them for granted. I f these earthy background practices could not be taken for

granted in everyday activities, everything else would have no firm ground and would matter

little.

Sky refers to "the disclosed or manifest stable possibilities for action that arise in focal

situations." 6 Functioning as a diametric complement to earth, the sky opens up to us

numerous possibilities for individual and collective action. The English language expresses

this understanding by phrases such as "the sky is the limit," or "reach for the sky." However,

these open possibilities are not random or arbitrary. While maintaining one's overall sense o f

person, one is free to assume various social roles (e.g., professional, husband, parent,

environmentalist, musician), easily move among them, or create new ones. These traditionally

established or newly created possibilities are not mutually exclusive. One may choose among

them. "What is manifest like the sky are multiple possibilities." 7 These manifest possibilities

are stable social institutions accepted within a specific culture or subculture and arise out o f

meaningful activities toward which our attention and focus is directed.




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Divinities engender "the special attunement required for an occasion to work." 8 We

may think o f baseball, football, or soccer games. Each game fosters its own kind o f

attunement. Different street types (e.g., commercial arterial, stately boulevard, residential

street) have their own attunements or public moods, and so have different travel modes

(single occupancy automotive driving, van pool, taxi, public transportation, ferry, air travel).

We are familiar with the hushed silence in a place o f worship. Relaxed attentiveness is a

public mood we expect while driving on freeways; on residential streets, we expect the driving

to take place in an air imbued with neighborly consideration and circumspection. Carried

away by the shared, synchronous rhythm encountered, for instance, at a party, rally, or

carnival, one effortlessly slips into the specific attunement presented by each occasion or

setting. To get into the groove, a conscious decision is not required; it would in fact be

counterproductive.

The attunement one gets "into" is not o f any individual's or o f the group's making. It

is given to us by our culture. When we are in tune with the shared present moment, the

common activity may be received as a gift. When a party is "in synch," we say that everyone

is "in the swing o f things" and "in the groove." In a groovy situation like this, the Romans

felt Bacchus present; the Greeks implicated Dionysus or Eros.

Music is one o f the best ways humans get in time with a common undertaking or

occasion. Recall a military march or a football band, funeral music, wedding music, or music

in the elevator or supermarket. Upon hearing the music only for seconds, the invoked

occasion is almost tangible. We may even be attuned to the attuning power o f music. The



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orchestra o f an opera, when tuning its instruments, gets itself and the audience attuned to the

overture which in turn attunes everyone to the acts to appear on stage. Muse has descended.9

Mortals are human beings who are aware o f their finitude and fragility without letting

such awareness inhibit their outlook via undue self-consciousness, morbid attitude, or

assumed fixed identities. Dreyfus and Spinosa state: "By using this term, Heidegger is

describing us as disclosers and he thinks that death primarily reveals our disclosive way of

being." 10 Only human beings can be mortals. Being aware o f their finitude all the time is

neither necessary nor desirable, since mortals preserve this awareness as a latent

understanding that can be recalled as the situations require or proffer.

The fourfold {das Geviert) gathers earth, sky, divinities, and mortals into one. The

fouribld can be understood as the union o f "the aspects o f practices that gather people,

equipment, and activities into local worlds, with roles, habitual practices, and a style that

provide disclosers with a sense o f integrity or centeredness." 11

Heidegger reminds us how these four aspects of our practices, folding into one, reflect

each other. When a thing things, these distinct yet interdependent aspects playfully mirror

each other. When the fourfold in its mirror-play gathers these four aspects of activities

around a thing, then people, equipment, and local worlds come into their own {er-eignen

9 On how street furniture can attune us to an urban setting, and on how freeways can attune us to long-distance travel, see Chapter 8.


11 Dreyfus and Spinosa, "Highway Bridges and Feasts" 171 -172.


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sich), i.e., are truly appropriated. Heidegger calls this process appropriation (Er-eignis).

Appropriation happens in a focal practice gathered around a thing.

5.2 DWELLING IN MANY WAYS

A contemporary reader may argue that Heidegger described the workings o f simple

things o f a pre-modem world thereby skirting the vexing issues o f living in a technological

world. How can we relate today to the increasingly sophisticated technological things, small

and large, that surround and engage us 24 hours a day? How can we dwell in a technological

world without violating our nature as world disclosers? This section explores some answers

to these central questions o f our high technology culture and offers some general suggestions

for redesigning the physical features and cultural roles o f ground transportation. Some more

specific examples, focusing on urban streets and streetscapes, are worked out in Chapter 8.

In order to make his conceptual analysis o f dwelling as the fourfold staying with

things more concrete, Heidegger uses examples from the peasant world of the Black Forest.

In his later writings his illustrations tend to focus on things such as an old stone bridge, a wine

jug, a farmhouse, a bench along a country path, and his modest mountain cottage in the Black

Forest. Heidegger reports on simple conversations with peasants and lumbeijacks who give

him straightforward advice in a few words or with a mere gesture regarding the question, for

instance, whether he should accept a teaching position in the capital. These provincial things

and settings may be shrugged off as nostalgia for the simple country life. Because o f

Heidegger's penchant for this country life, many critics have discarded his arguments. He


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certainly was enamored with this peasant life that he new from childhood, but the biographic

origins o f many o f his examples are not the reason why he presents these things in his lectures

and writings. He recalls them because they illustrate the kind o f dwelling he and his 1950s

audience were stillfam iliar with. These peasant things were vivid examples o f a dwelling that

was set in and congruent with a historic culture. Heidegger does not recommend to emulate

these peasant things and practices in order to create a cozy refuge in a fast-track culture.

Contrary to the opinions o f some critics, his later writings (from about 1950 on) do not

advocate escapism.

Heidegger describes a Black Forest farmhouse with much admiration and reverence

as a thing that houses the local peasant world in an exemplary manner. But immediately after

his glowing description o f the 200 year old dwelling he warns:

"Our reference to the Black Forest farm in no way means that we should or could go back to building such houses; rather, it illustrates by a dwelling that has been how it was able to build." (PLT 160)

The point Heidegger is making with his peasant illustrations is the following: fitting

architecture and settlements can be built only on the basis o f a dwelling that is rooted in a

historic-cultural context. Heidegger affirm s the primacy of common practices over merely

sound construction or vogue design. The very title o f his main essay on this topic "Building

Dwelling Thinking" suggests Heidegger's thesis: Our culture-infused dwelling is the source,

center, and end o f our thinking and building practices. Heidegger expresses this conviction

succinctly in the conditional statement: "Only if we are capable o f dwelling, only then can we

build." (PLT 160)


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This is a statement full o f implications. To be capable o f supporting our shared

practices today, architecture and urban design must be based on an understanding o f the

culture at hand, and must neither be limited to sound, utilitarian structures nor be degraded

by capricious creations o f new styles. Even modem designing and building must be embedded

in dwelling. I f designers and artisans are not sensitive to the cultural embeddedness o f their

craft, environmental alienation ensues.

How can we listen to our common dwelling and glean hints in order to properly build?

How can we dwell among technological things without succumbing to technology's power

to turn us and our things into mere resources? As soon as we have sketched the contours o f

dwelling in a technological world, we are on the road toward a public architecture that is in

tune with our practices. As in previous chapters o f this inquiry, Heidegger and recent

reformulations o f his thought may serve as our tour guide.

Heidegger's later writings attempt to work out -- from various perspectives such as

the history o f being, technology, dwelling-building, the arts and especially poetry — a

positive, free relation to technology. In order to see how technological things thing, we must

understand, Heidegger implies, the important difference between an instrumental and a non

instrumental understanding o f technology. I suggest in the following explication that the

instrumental understanding o f technological devices has been or still is the prevailing view o f

modem technology, whereas a non-instrumental understanding is emerging in various

practices that have been labeled, for lack of a better term, />as/modem.

The instrumental understanding of technology is built on a subject-object dichotomy.

Within this modem instrumental understanding, human beings perceive themselves as


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autonomous subjects with stable, fixed identities and "professions." They invent, produce,

and organize objects for satisfying various kinds o f desires. Even if the mass-produced and

organized objects are able to satisfy the desire o f humans (in most cases the satisfaction is at

best temporary, calling for a never ending assembly line o f desire creating goods), they are

still standing over and against the consuming subjects.

Recent advances in electronics and information technology have made even humans

part o f the system o f flexible resources, or, as Heidegger says, o f the standing reserve.13 If

everything and everyone is a flexible resource used in endless disaggregation and

reaggregation, there are no more subjects and objects. When subjects seeking to maximize

satisfaction vanish, so do objects that are used exclusively as instruments. Analogous to a

gestalt switch, objects have made room for things to emerge.

Within this non-instrumental, postmodern understanding o f technology human beings

do not see themselves anymore as having a fixed, neatly circumscribed identity. Such human

beings, in concert with high technology, are able to assume multiple identities and skills which

are solicited by each situation at hand. While their poly-identity is not stable, it may be

regarded as meta-stable. These human beings do not use technological devices primarily for

their satisfaction but as flexible resources enabling them to exercise adaptable and ever

expanding skills. In a spirit o f congenial affinity with these flexible resources and high-tech

12 For a more detailed account o f Heidegger's analysis o f modem technology, see Chapter 4.

13 For Heidegger's analysis o f flexible resources, or standing reserve (Bestand), see The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1971, especially the essays "The Question Concerning Technology" and "The Turning."


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gadgets, these performers, inventive and adaptive as chameleons, are at their best and come

into their own when they reveal and honor the postmodern world as a series o f open

possibilities.

Having overcome the modem subject-object dichotomy, the postmodern

understanding o f being provides us with unprecedented possibilities, but it can also lead to

danger. Being freed from a fixed identity humans may loose themselves in an endless process

o f adaptation, transformation, and flexibility enhancement. The temptation o f this

postmodern fluid identity lies in simply moving between high technology skills and practices

without serious engagement and commitment. Exercising this fluid high-tech identity without

focus and commitment, however, negates or works against our essence as world disclosers.

For Heidegger, loosing, obstructing, or undermining this essence is the greatest danger.

How can we preserve our nature as revealers o f coherent, distinct contexts or worlds

amidst postmodernism's liquidation o f formerly fixed cultural institutions, roles, and identities?

The dissolution o f a fixed identity enables us to develop multiple skills which in turn open up

a variety o f different worlds and associated focal practices. This postmodern horizon o f

unending flexibility allows not only the exercise o f diverse skills, but, far more importantly,

the use of our typically "dormant" background skill o f disclosing worlds. This background

skill is indeed our safeguard for not being totally consumed by functioning as a pliant

resource. We need to preserve our essence as world revealers. This essence may become

manifest only at rare occasions, but it must remain available as an anchor in the creatively

turbulent waves o f postmodernism. We can preserve our fundamental disclosive skill if we

augment our elastic technological identities by nurturing pre-technological identities and allow


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for a shifting back and forth between these identity styles. As long as we are receptive to

non-technological things thinging (e.g., trees, flowers, animals, family gatherings, art, music,

crafts) we understand technology as one among many possible worlds in which to dwell. On

the basis o f this inclusive understanding o f various worlds, focused by various things each

thinging differently, we will not elevate technology (e.g., computers and the internet) to a

unifying "work o f art," i.e., a cultural paradigm that through its force and pervasiveness

dwarfs or invalidates other local worlds and focal practices (e.g., folk dancing, gardening,

hiking, sailing, organizing around community concerns).

Humans who understands themselves as mortals are aware o f the fragility,

imperfection, and impermanence o f everything on earth, including the most sophisticated

technological devices. Mortals recognize limits, safeguard against presumed absolutes, and

thus keep themselves open to the widest spectrum o f identities, skills, and experiences.

Mortals can develop an appreciation for high-tech devices as well as for the most humble

things and practices. This inclusiveness o f world understanding and the pliant but engaged

commitment to local worlds is the main characteristic o f humans understanding themselves

as mortals dwelling in a technological world.

How can this postmodern, non-instrumental understanding o f technology be made

manifest in our environment? More specifically, how can transportation facilities, highways

and streets in particular, aid in the emergence o f this free and decidedly positive relation to

technology?

In order to suggest some answers to these important contemporary issues we will take

up an example Heidegger uses. According to Heidegger, the West has developed a series of


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overarching understandings o f being. In rough chronological order these total understandings

may be briefly sketched as follows: wild nature; things needing human nurturing; things as

crafted products; beings as creatures (Medieval Christianity); objects organized to satisfy the

desires o f subjects; technological devices and humans as flexible resource. The last two

models refer to the epochs o f modem and postmodern technology, respectively.

In "Building Dwelling Thinking," Heidegger associates the major epochs with a bridge

type. He does not mention a bridge type for the era o f modem technology. But we may

assume that he had in mind the solid, imposing iron structures o f the Eiffel Tower and railroad

bridges. For the last stage in his series, high technology, Heidegger uses the freeway bridge

(Autobahnbrucke). Flying unimpededly over other segments o f the freeway system, the

freeway "bridge," also called "fly-over" by highway engineers, creates a system o f sprawling,

non-stop interchanges that changes the countryside into an accessible commodity: "The

freeway bridge is harnessed and coupled to the network o f long-distance traffic which is

calculated for maximum speed." (PLT 152)14 The freeway and its grade-separated inter

changes smoothly bridges the multiple directions o f bustling traffic twenty-four hours a day.

By enhancing mobility, options, and opportunities — drivers responding with a debonair shift

o f merely 90 degrees to freely merge into another highway ~ the freeway bridge is indeed

an exemplary postmodern thing. Reviewing his list o f bridges, Heidegger summarizes how

each one o f them things:

14 "Die Autobahnbrucke ist eingespannt in das Liniennetz des rechnenden and moglichst schnellen Femverkehrs." Heidegger 1954,153. I have altered the translation to stay closer to the original meanings o f the words, especially "einspannen" (to harness, to yoke).


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Always and ever differently the bridge escorts the lingering and the hastening ways o f men to and fro... The bridge gathers, as a passage that crosses, before the divinities — whether we explicitly think o f and visibly give thanks fo r, their presence, as in the figure o f the saint o f the bridge, or whether that divine presence is obstructed or even pushed wholly aside. (PLT 152-153)

Each thing things according to its own mode of revealing. Like every other thing,

"the bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals." (PLT 153)

Put another way: "Bridges escort in many ways." (PLT 152) We will see in Chapter 8 how

the postmodern freeway "bridge" things.

I close this chapter with an image o f a contemporary understanding o f earth and sky

(see Figure 5-3 below). Rigo, the artist, created this mural in 1998.15 Since his artistic

identity evolves from year to year, as Rigo told me, the artist’s name changes accordingly.

Having been painted on two elevations o f this building at the south-east comer o f 31x1 Street

and Mission Street (San Francisco) in 1998, this mural was created by Rigo 98. Responding

to my questions, Rigo generously provided the following information which I am

paraphrasing. I will conclude our discussion about dwelling in a technological world with a

brief interpretation o f this mural.

The work is site specific. The parking lot adjacent to the building will make room for

a multistory building 16 which will obliterate SKY and GROUND. The meaning o f this mural

changes over time. People who remember these signs will see them gradually disappear as

15 Telephone conversation with Rigo on October 12, 1999. I am thankful to Debra Lehane (San Francisco Art Commission) for providing me with Rigo's telephone number.

16 Excavation began in December 2000.


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the new construction will be erected from the ground toward the sky. SKY is close to the top

o f the building and signifies an upward movement toward increasingly “less architecture.”

GROUND is close to the bottom o f the building and signifies a downward movement toward

the origin o f the building, its foundation.

Figure 5-3 A contemporary understanding o f earth and sky

(mural by Rig 98; at the comer of 3rd St. and Mission St., San Francisco)


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This art work deals with memory and time by twisting the typical relation between

signs and what they designate. Typically a sign is installed to point to something new or

important, or to a future event. In Rigo's mural, however, SKY and GROUND foreshadow

their own eclipse. The erection o f the new building, which is designed to be very close to the

older building adorned with the mural, will make SKY and GROUND gradually invisible.

Only the memory o f this mural will remain over time.

In the context o f my study, the pair o f signs can be understood as follows. This mural

is an artistic commentary about the processes o f urban development, change, and renewal. We

can take these common urban practices for granted which ground a city’s transformation, or

we can try to resist them In either case, for many citizens they are a matter o f concern,

discussion, and political action. The skyline o f the city testifies to the possibilities and

opportunities that have been taken up, but also points to the sky and light that have been

appropriated by the stalwart skyscrapers. “Only the sky is the lim it!” is an idiomatic phrase

that expresses the bustling building sentiment with youthful vigor and hubris. The diametrical

trajectories o f SKY and GROUND create a tension that attunes us to the two faces o f urban

change: destruction and renewal. The mural highlights the tension o f the interplay between

ruin and rebirth, between hidden foundations and open possibilities. It makes for a fitting

local attunement to this thriving part o f San Francisco (“South-of-Market,” or “Soma’’). The

mural itself will vanish in proportion to the progressing birth of the new emerging walls. This

mural will become even more telling in the face o f its approaching demise. Its attuning power

will come into its own at the very point o f its obliteration.


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This art work confirms us as buoyant city dwellers reaching for the sky and as mortals

by holding up to us the feet that change, dissolution, and renewal are events in which we take

part collectively.


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PART III

MOVING ABOUT

IN A TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD

"Only if we are capable o f dwelling, only then can we build."

Heidegger, Building Dwelling Thinking


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In Part II o f this inquiry, I have given a phenomenological account o f being-in-the-

world and "lived space," the work o f art, and o f dwelling in a technological world. In Part

HI, I will provide concrete applications of the analytical insights gained in the previous

chapters to various aspects o f our transportation environment. Accordingly, I will present

moving about in a technological world from the perspective o f three principal street functions:

1. Everyday street environments as smoothly functioning equipment for facilitating access,

mobility, and public life (Chapter 6),

2. Freeways as our (potential) work o f art, understood as a commonly shared cultural

paradigm (Chapter 7), and

3. Streets as things, i.e., as focal points uniquely suited for dwelling in postmodernism's

multiple local worlds (Chapter 8).

In each chapter o f Part HI, I recap the prior conceptual discussions (i.e., o f equipment,

the work of art; and dwelling among things, respectively) before I present applications

pertaining to various transportation modes and urban scales. Using the three principal street

functions as perceptual guides lets us see urban dwelling and moving about from original and

prolific vantage points. However, streets — messy, unruly and surprising as they are, — do

not follow neatly this threefold classification. In my concluding Chapter 9 ,1 will consider

these principal street functions jointly by examining their compatibility and overlap.


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Chapter 6

The Street as Transparent Equipment

6.1 MATERIALS, NATURE, AND PUBLICNESS OF THE URBAN STREET

In analyzing how we deal with equipment in everyday coping activities, we have learnt

in Chapter 3 that "Dasein... is nothing b u t... concerned absorption in the world" (HCT 197;

GA 20, 267-268). Dasein is us, each and every one o f us. We understand ourselves,

collectively and " individually," on the basis o f commonly shared background practices (being)

which typically remain tacit and unthematic. We have discussed equipment as those

interrelated things o f use which comprise our near environment. That which is closest to us

in our everyday dealings is, however, not available equipment itself, but that towards which

such equipment is being used: the work [das Werk], The work is the "towards-which" [das

Wozu\ o f equipment, such as a house as equipment for dwelling, or a street as equipment for

trading, shopping, gathering, and for moving about. The work (the intended product

emerging) establishes the nexus o f interconnected equipment in the first place.

That with which our everyday dealings proximally dwell is not the tools themselves [die Werkzeuge selbst]. On the contrary, that with which we concern ourselves primarily is the work — that which is to be produced at the time; and this is accordingly available too. The work bears with it that referential whole within which the equipment is encountered. (BT 99; SZ 69-70)

The work lets us encounter not only equipment and its referential nexus, but also what it is

made o f (materials), the macroscopic natural environment (nature), as well as the intrinsic

public character (publicness) o f what we design, build, produce, and utilize.


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In his analysis o f equipment, Heidegger takes most o f his illustrating examples from

the world o f a craftsman's workshop. The shoemaker's workshop, for example, is a private

or semi-private setting. The workshop o f the shoemaker making or repairing gear for walking

[Schuhzeug] was, in the mid 1920s, a vivid example for showing how equipment is available

for a skilled craftsman, how the work lets us encounter the material (e.g., leather) it is made

o f how it "references" nature, and how even a custom-tailored pair o f shoes draws upon and

takes account o f the public world. Today, workshops no longer are our primary environment

o f production. Let us therefore use common public works projects, streets in particular, to

illustrate how publicly undertaken works and implemented designs can reveal materials,

nature, and the shared public world.

When walking on a sidewalk in an urban setting, for instance, we may notice the

materials out o f which the street as equipment for circulation is made. We encounter, mostly

unthematically for sure, materials such as concrete, asphalt, basalt or granite which are used

for pavement or curb stones. In going about our business, we are using sidewalks,

crosswalks, traffic signals, and garbage containers. We do so while taking their availability

as equipment for granted. We also take for granted the materials they are made o f even

when we get in touch with them while pushing the button to activate a pedestrian signal, for

example. As long as we are successfully going about our business, we thematically encounter

neither equipment nor materials. They are typically noticed only during malfunctioning.1 A

1 The trained architect or urban designer may notice various street equipment and materials in a deliberate or "conscious" way. But this happens typically only when "on duty." During everyday activities, the designed environment is for planners, architects, and engineers as transparent as for everyone else.


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cracked sidewalk, for instance (see also Figure 6-2 top, p. 168), lets us encounter concrete

in its strength and brittleness, and when this cracked concrete reveals tree roots, it also reveals

the slow but unyielding force o f nature.

Materials can deliberately be employed in a way which allows the material o f

equipment to shine forth while the equipment itself remains in a subservient role. A red stone

or brick pattern, for example, may clearly yet unobtrusively mark and highlight a crosswalk

or a store entrance. In serving a pedestrian function, the material can thus become manifest

and come into its own. It is available for appreciation, but does not force itself onto those it

carries. In its unobtrusive familiarity, the material is always ready to withdraw again into

smooth functioning.

The equipmental and referential nexus o f the street lets us discover not only materials

but also nature and publicness, often simultaneously. We see the slight cross-sectional

curvature o f the street's roadbed, its seamless transition into the gutter, and know what it is

for, even when it does not rain. The gentle longitudinal slope o f the road and gutter allows

the rain to run through the iron drain cover which lets water but no wheels or people through.

The disappearing water points to the underground utilized to make movement easier above.

The storm drain cover is one o f many openings through which we are visibly connected to the

underground, which in so many ways is tacitly at our service. The raised curb stone restrains

and guides the rain, and keeps us above water and apart from moving vehicles.

Curbs painted red, yellow, blue, white, or green indicate the intended parking use. At

times, a sign reinforces the message. The colored curbs may bear officially stenciled letters

confirming legal authority. Movement is restricted, by the people, for the people. The


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colored curbs as well as miles o f lane striping not only point to common movement and public

intercourse tamed and regulated by markings, signs, and lights. They also summon the

painters, sign installers and electricians who, on call 24 hours a day, fix, replace, or modify

the features o f the street. They do their job for the sake o f the public, allowing people to

move about safely and smoothly in the street. The crews' skilled handling o f tools and

materials ensures that drivers, cyclists, and shoppers can forget about the street to the degree

that they can get totally absorbed in it and be taken in by it in order to go about their business.

The transparent functioning o f the street is the typical mode in which it is available to

its various users. The world o f the street as a vehicle for multiple purposes is transparent for

its users, and has to remain so if smooth functioning is to continue. This world with its

various kinds o f interconnected equipment, materials, and its inherent public character, has

to stay in the background and remain withdrawn in its inconspicuous familiarity "in order to

be available quite authentically" (BT 99; SZ 69). In contrast to street fairs and parades —

which are the exception o f street usage rather than the rule (even in San Francisco) — the

publicness of the street, in its typical mode o f operation, does not announce itself. I f the

world o f the street is to be made genuinely available to its users, it must remain withdrawn

in the background. In Heidegger’s words: "In order for the available not to emerge from its

inconspicuousness, the world must not announce itself." (BT 106; SZ 75) 2 Indeed, the

2 "Das Sich-nicht-melden der Welt ist die Bedingung der Moglichkeit des Nichtheraustretens des Zuhandenen aus seiner Unauflalligkeit." The translators have significantly modified the structure o f this compact and important sentence. I have further simplified the translation by substituting "In order for..." for "If it is to be possible for...". By means o f the accurate but clumsy phrase "If it is to be possible for..." the translators try to preserve Heidegger's transcendental formulation ("...condition o f the possibility of..."). This


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street's inconspicuous familiarity is a condition for smooth functioning o f the street in its day-

to-day operation.

Street fairs, parades, and block parties are exceptional uses o f streets, and they can

retain their significance as deliberate and organized celebrations only if these uses remain the

exception rather than the rule o f street usage. The intentional and planned celebration o f

public facilities, events, and institutions is possible if they remain available as background that

normally can be taken for granted. The authentic uw-thematic "celebration" of the street takes

place all the time in its everydayness. During street fairs and parades, this tacit and commonly

shared taking part becomes a deliberate party. During such celebrations, the public street is

turned into an expressed focal point, now obvious and visibly highlighted for all. What we

commemorate and cheer during street fairs and parades is indeed this everyday mundane and

transparent functioning o f public facilities and institutions which we own and routinely take

over as ours through our daily practices. This taking over or appropriation o f public facilities,

events, and institutions reaches such a degree that we can take them for granted. Where this

everyday commonplace functioning o f the street is not secure and cannot be taken for

granted, as dining external conflict o r internal strife, there is no ground for celebration.

formulation is, however, unnecessarily convoluted and awkward, because it relies syntactically and semantically too much on nouns rather than on verbs. Heidegger's general preference for nouns often results in a semblance o f conceptual abstractness and rigidity which runs counter to phenomenology's tenet o f letting the phenomena show themselves as clearly as possible. The precise but often ungraceful style o f Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) results, however, to a large degree from the labors o f a thinking which tries to free itself from the strictures o f traditional ontology while employing terms that are still bound to this ontology. His lectures o f the same period, e.g., History o f the Concept o f Time (HCT), The Basic Problems o f Phenomenology (BP), and The M etaphysical Foundations o f Logic (MFL), are more accessible but less comprehensive and less precise.


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The tacit celebration o f the street as public forum is observed in its daily use, in its

undramatic repairs, routine maintenance, or minor modifications. And over the years we have

witnessed modifications o f streets, plazas and private places intended to accommodate an ever

increasing range o f users. The street shows this accommodation for instance in the growing

number o f curb ramps, particularly at intersections. For most pedestrians crossing the

roadway, the curb requires only an inconvenient step or an extra maneuver of the stroller. For

others, a curb six inches high can be a major impediment for moving about, especially for the

very young, the elderly, and wheelchair bound citizens.

In order to provide a steady and comfortable passage from curb to curb across the

travel lanes for the unmotorized traffic participants, a portion o f the sidewalk near the

obstinate curb is removed and replaced with new concrete which is poured in such a way as

to provide a maneuverable ramp with a gentle slope, flush with the roadway surface. The

sidewalk equipped with such a ramp is now coming down to roadway level and is thus

reaching out to a more inclusive range of users.

This removal o f an obstinate barrier by a small modification o f a public facility is a

step in broadening the utility o f public facilities as part o f an ongoing effort to increase the

accessibility o f the city as a cultural and commercial organism available for everyone.3 At the

3 One curb ramp costs about $1,000; that amounts to about $8,000 to install curb ramps for a four-legged intersection.. The Federal Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires two curb ramps at each comer in order to promote and facilitate perpendicular pedestrian roadway crossings, especially for visually impaired pedestrians. Adding acoustic signals (chirping sounds) to a four-legged signalized intersection costs about $5,000. I thank Bridget Smith, Tom Folks, and Jerry Robbins (San Francisco Department o f Parking and Traffic) for providing me with these estimates (October 25, 2000).


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close o f the concrete pour, the still moist concrete allows the imprint o f parallel grooves on

the three sidewalk sides o f the ramp so that visually impaired pedestrians can feel their way

around. The three sets o f grooves in the concrete orient these pedestrians in the right

direction for crossing the roadway. At times the fresh concrete even allows a fresh urbanite

to leave a personal footprint or a more cryptic message for pedestrian posterity.

The street's materials are cut and molded to the features o f the human body and its

culturally codetermined requirements for mobility, commerce, communication, and marginal

personalization. This custom tailoring and shaping o f construction materials contributes to

the smooth operation o f the street in order to be ready-to-hand. Improved pedestrian access

can be achieved by building new or retrofitting existing structures. Manipulating the materials

o f the street for accommodating special user groups makes mobility equipment, such as a

sidewalk equipped with curb ramps, a shared and communal facility. By providing and

facilitating access for everyone, the public character o f the street is made even more manifest

and evident.

The street as a facility cut to the needs o f a more inclusive range of users affords a

more fluent movement with which more users can be at ease. Instead o f formerly serving as

circulation space predominantly for the able bodied, the retrofitted sidewalk now promotes

access not only for people in wheelchairs, but also for the elderly, the visually impaired, for

parents with strollers, people pulling luggage on wheels and grocery carts, and — in most

instances as an unintentional side benefit — also for the homeless equipped with shopping

carts serving as their humble mobile homes.


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In summary: The street as an incremental product o f public works can reveal to its

users afresh the various materials it is made o f and the public ways in which they are used.

The mundane and simple layout o f the street alone can show how we collectively

accommodate and manifest nature, that is, nature as we understand it and use its forces. The

way we protect ourselves from nature and make use of its resources and energies in turn

recalls — with every laid brick, raised curb stone, and concrete sidewalk pour — the public

community through which and for which the public works are made. The street as a nexus

o f equipment for moving about discloses in a public way not only its materials but also the

larger environment in which we dwell. Heidegger indicates how publicness and nature are

intertwined:

Along with the public world, the environing nature [die Umweltnatur\ is discovered and is accessible to everyone. In roads, streets, bridges, buildings, our concern discovers nature in a definite way.4 A covered railway platform takes account of bad weather; an installation o f public lighting takes account of the darkness, or rather of specific changes in the presence or absence o f daylight -- the 'position o f the sun'. In a clock, account is taken o f some definite constellation in the world-system.... When we make use o f the clock-equipment, which is proximally and inconspicuously available, the environing nature is available along with it. (BT 100-101; SZ 71)

In referencing the larger environment in which we dwell, the specific material an item

o f street equipment is made o f becomes somewhat immaterial A clock or a sun dial showing

the time in the hustle and bustle o f downtown, takes account o f the specific constellation of

4 "In den Wegen, Strafien, Briicken, Gebauden ist durch das Besorgen die Natur in bestimmter Richtung entdeckt." The phrase "as having some definite direction" is a literally correct translation o f in bestimmter Richtung. It is, however, totally misleading in the context o f this passage. I have modified the translation of this sentence in Being and Time accordingly as "...in a definite way".


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the earth relative to the sun and silently serves as one o f our available tools that can

simultaneously veil and unveil our being-in-the-world.

6.2 SIGNS AS STREET EQUIPMENT

Among all types o f equipment, signs stand out due to their special status. As we shall

see, signs may be regarded as second-order equipment- A sign as a tool for indicating

[Zeigzeug] reveals in each case the context in which interrelated items o f equipment are being

used. By exam ining the functioning o f signs we may gain further insights into the workings

o f equipment in general. We will discuss street signs within the context of moving about. I

will apply insights from the general analysis of signs to basic principles o f sign design and sign

placement. We will begin our discussion o f signs inductively by considering turn signal

indicators of motor vehicles, an example Heidegger uses.5

The turn signal indicators, manipulated by the driver, are located at each comer o f a

car. By their prominent location on the car's body, the signal indicators establish and display

a noticeable reference to other traffic equipment and participants, motorized and unmotorized.

Irrespective of whether the turn signal indicators are used or not, their prominent location

alone evokes the entire public network of equipment for moving about. By means o f

5 "Motor cars are sometimes fitted up with an adjustable red arrow, whose position indicates the direction the vehicle will take -- at an intersection, for example." (BT 108-109; SZ 78) Flashing turn signal indicators were not invented yet in the mid 1920s when Heidegger wrote Being and Time. Instead o f the "adjustable red arrow," I will use the flashing turn signal indicator, its present-day equivalent, since it serves the same referential function. I will modify the quotes accordingly.


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activating the turn signals, the driver indicates to others what his intentions are for the next

few seconds down the road. The other traffic participants can thereby anticipate his

movements and adjust their behavior accordingly. By slowing down, stopping, or by giving

way, they can smooth traffic flow and avoid collisions. An inattentive or inconsiderate driver

who neglects to give a sign o f his intended moves can undermine the entire smooth

functioning o f the local traffic situation from which he also profits and on which he implicitly

relies. Such a driver obviously does not respect the public world o f moving about. It is said

o f such a driver that he is living "in his own world."

A turn signal indicator is an integral and constitutive part o f the entire environment

o f moving about. When flashing, a turn signal o f a private automobile is an inherently public

sign.

This sign is an item o f equipment which is available for the driver in his concern with driving, and not for him alone: those who are not traveling with him — and they in particular — also make use o f it, either by giving way on the proper side or by stopping. This sign is available within-the-wo rid in the whole equipment-nexus of vehicles and traffic regulations. (BT 109; SZ 78)

An available sign, such as a flashing turn signal, prompts us to automatically react to

the traffic situation that it highlights. Without thinking we are reacting to this sign by

adjusting our speed, giving way, or by stopping. These spontaneous reactions to a specific

situation while being on our way, Heidegger suggests, indicate general characteristics of our

being. "Giving way, as taking a direction, belongs essentially to Dasein's being-in-the-world.

Dasein is always somehow directed [ausgerichtet] and on its way; standing and waiting are

only limiting cases o f this directional 'on-its-wayl." (BT 110; SZ 79)


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Signs provide a unique orientation on our way. They are distinguished from other

tools in that they grant us a contextual orientation for our public ways and thereby assist us

in moving about in this context with simultaneously attentive yet absorbed actions and

responses.

Almost always, signs provide a spatial reference, as in the case o f a sign indicating

"One Lane Road Ahead" or a warning sign without any words displaying only a curved

arrow. It is not the spatial assignment itself however, which is the distinctive service o f a

sign. As in the case o f a sign indicating "Rail Road Crossing Ahead - 500 Feet," the sign

orients the participants within the equipmental whole o f roads, vehicles, and traffic

regulations. "Signs always indicate primarily 'wherein' one lives, where one's concern dwells,

what sort o f involvement there is with something." (BT 111; SZ 80)

Signs marking the entrance o f a country, state, county, city, or corporate headquarters

bear witness to where one's concern dwells. Even street name signs, mostly in small towns,

may cue strangers and reassure local residents wherein they live. Each street name sign in

Sebastopol (Sonoma County, California), for instance, repetitively displays an apple,

reinforcing this town's self-understanding as an apple growing community. In Rohnert Park,

another city in the same county, all street name signs in the same city section start with the

same letter, supposedly for a semblance o f neighborhood identity and easier orientation in this

city o f about 50, 000 people. Rohnert Park is planned community built within a few years.

This fast growth shows. The same-letter sign device is a well-intended visual aid which adds,

however, to the monotony and sameness against which these identity tokens have been

installed as a remedy.


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A sign is not just a semiotic device signifying directions, spatial distances, places and

activities. A sign such as "Road Construction Ahead," brandishing black letters on an orange

square standing on one comer, summons the entire nexus o f construction activities and

equipment one finds oneself in and thereby directs us to make appropriate public use o f the

construction site. Such use can consist o f slowing down, watching out for road workers and

machinery, or taking a detour. Put succinctly: a sign highlights a world and thereby enhances

its availableness. As evidenced by carefully designed lettering, shapes, and colors, signs

radiate the projected image o f scenic routes, national parks, international corporations,

Western saloons, and the flowing, streamlined frontiers o f NASA. Advertisers know that

signs are not merely utilitarian devices signifying occurrent objects. They exert much creative

effort on designing signs that promise a world. As we know, the buyer most often acquires

only the promise.

The power to make a world visible and more accessible to its users is at the center of

Heidegger's definition: "A sign is not a thing which stands to another thing in the relationship

of indicating; it is rather an item o f equipment which explicitly raises an equipmental whole

into our circumspection so that together with it the worldly character o f the available

announces itself." (BT 110; SZ 79-80; emphasis in italics mine)

We can now ask: "How do we interact with signs?' The way signs work and users

encounter them points to some general requirements for sign design and sign placement.

We have learned so far that a sign is tool with a special status: it highlights an

equipmental nexus and thereby makes each item o f this nexus more accessible. Despite its

temporary and relative prominence at each instance o f use, a sign remains subservient to the


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entire equipmental whole. A sign sheds light on our everyday dealings in such a way that it

opens up the "aroundness" [das Umhafte] o f a familiar environment and brings it into an

explicit survey [Ubersicht]. Heidegger elaborates:

The sign addresses itself to a being-in-the-wo rid which is specifically "spatial". The sign is not authentically "grasped" Y'erfafit"\ if we just stare at it and identify it as an indicator-thing which occurs. Even if we turn our glance in the direction which the turning signal indicates, and look at something occurrent in the region indicated, even then the sign is not authentically encountered. Such a sign addresses itself to the circumspection o f our concemfiil dealings, and it does so in such a way that the circumspection which goes along with it, following where it points, brings into an explicit "survey" whatever aroundness the environment may have at the time. This circumspective survey does not grasp the available; what it achieves is rather an orientation within our environment. (BT 110; SZ 79)

In a typical everyday situation a sign is properly used, or authentically encountered,

neither by close scrutiny nor by reflection. If traffic participants were to engage in detailed

examination or deliberation o f traffic signals or turn signals, for instance, the familiar

availableness o f the equipmental environment would get lost, and the involved activity of

smooth and safe moving about would stop. A sign, such as a traffic or turn signal, is

authentically encountered through spontaneous action in response to the situation at hand.

By using the words Ubersicht and, in particular, Ubersehen, Heidegger provides an

additional hint about how we authentically "grasp" a sign. The English rendition o f Ubersicht

and Ubersehen, both translated as "survey," does not preserve the significant connotation

conveyed by the preposition iiber. Especially Heidegger's unequivocal use o f the gerund


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Ubersehen 6 (overlooking, glancing over, disregarding, glossing over) suggests that a sign is

authentically encountered when one notices and then overlooks it, Le., virtually ignoring it

in favor o f taking in the relevant context which the sign highlights. For a "glance of an eye"

[Augenblick], the sign lights up the interconnected functioning o f the things around us.

Thematic awareness o f the sign is neither required nor useful. In many situations, thematic

awareness may impede the smooth functioning o f moving about. Through the unique

capability of the tool for signifying, however, we can notice a sign and still be successfully

absorbed in going about our business.

The spatial references o f a sign are subordinated to a referential whole o f

commonplace equipment and public practices. Therefore a sign does not need to convey

exact dimensions even if it pretends to do so, as is often the case o f signs indicating a

distance.7 Taking the indicated dimension o f the sign "Railroad Crossing Ahead — 500 Feet"

literally would in fact be counterproductive. The worldly orientation and circumspective

g lancing over would be lost in favor o f gaining insignificant spatial precision. The pursuit o f

6 Note that in the important passage quoted above, Heidegger uses Ubersicht (survey) in quotation marks, but not Ubersehen. It seems that he feels more comfortable with the gerund Ubersehen (glancing over) in which the preposition uber (over) resonates more strongly and therefore hints much better than "survey" at the proper use of a sign in its context.

7 Contrary to many signs which announce a distance along the path o f travel, indicated dimensions of roadway widths (e.g., o f a bridge or o f a lane through a toll plaza), heights (e.g., vertical clearances o f tunnels or underpasses), and vehicle weights are critical and therefore precise. By prominent location, size, color contrast, and precision of indicated dimensions (e.g., "Clearance 14 ft. 6 in."), signs let the motorists know how literally they want to be taken. This is a subtle yet crucial feature o f the sign in its capability to highlight the situation at hand and prompt appropriate actions. Well designed and placed signs signal to the motorists in an instant in which environment they move about, i.e., "wherein they dwell."


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such precision when approaching a railroad crossing, for instance, can yield only tragicomic

effects because they play on our instinctive understanding o f how to property use such a sign.

Circumspective glancing over, which is engaged yet relaxed, does not focus on a

specific item o f the equipment-nexus, for instance on the sign giving advanced warning of the

approaching railroad crossing or the flashing turn signals. On the contrary, the

circumspective glancing over which achieves that environmental orientation which safeguards

our moving about. Focusing on one item o f equipment can yield more information (shape,

color, exact location, etc.). But this sharpening o f the focus leads to an isolation o f the

(previously available) item from its circumspectivety encountered environment. When such

a sharpening o f focus or gazing sets in, the worldly character of the available equipment-nexus

is lost. Gaining more and precise data results then in a breakdown o f the absorbed and

transparent engagement which signs are supposed to facilitate.8

What are, then, the requirements for a sign to do its job? We will illustrate these

requirements by contrasting a message sign in a neighborhood commercial district (Lombard

Street, San Francisco, Figure 6-1 top) with street name signs and store signs (Minna and

[New] Montgomery Streets, San Francisco, Figure 6-1 bottom). I want to show how signs

can open up and reinforce a local world, on the one hand, and how they can destroy the

genius loci o f a street for several blocks, on the other.

gThe present analysis o f the circumspective encounter of signs in everyday dealings in

contrast to scrutinizing, studying, or designing signs is an extension and application o f our discussion o f the four modes o f being in Subsection 3.2.3 (Environment and Equipment). The distinctions between equipment that is available (mode 1) or unavailable (mode 2) for its users and equipment that is studied as objects (mode 3) or merely contemplated (mode 4) are fundamental analytical categories o f hermeneutic phenomenology.


Figure 6-1 Signs Destroying (top) vs. Reinforcing (bottom) Local Worlds


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A sign can highlight the context o f an equipment-nexus (pedestrian accessible

commercial district with offices above retail stores) with which its regular users are already

fam iliar (see Figure 6-1 bottom). The street names at the building's com er are legible

without being obtrusive. Showing themselves as part o f the building, they squarely indicate

the location o f the building and orient the passers-by. Even though the comer and the

location o f the street name signs are emphasized by a decorative wave pattern, the signs do

not draw undue attention to themselves and remain in line with the horizontal accents o f the

building facade. For those citizens who already inhabit and dwell in this nexus o f various

interlocking equipment (for walking, automobile traffic, commerce), the street name signs

reinforce a familiar context. Moreover, these name signs are noticeable only to the degree

that they draw attention to the entire context at hand, not to themselves. In this way, they

provide a double function: they orient the newcomers and reinforce the local world for those

who are familiar with it.

The success o f a sign in supporting transparent everyday activities depends on the

balance it strikes between announcing itself vs. announcing its context. Heidegger reminds

us of the need for an inconspicuous background for a sign to do its works. As is the case

with the proverbial knot one ties in a handkerchief as a sign to oneself to do a specific chore,

"the sign itself gets its conspicuousness from the inconspicuousness o f the equipmental whole,

which is available and 'obvious' [.selbstverstandlich] in its everydayness." (BT 112; SZ 81)

Sufficient difference and appropriate contrast between a sign and its inconspicuous

background is required. The degree to which a sign must "stand out" from its environment

in order to be noticed depends on the significance assigned to this sign relative to others


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nearby. The degree o f prominence is well balanced in the case o f the "Minna Nail" store sign

(Figure 6-1 bottom). Its dark background makes the sign stand out against the light building

facade while the light color o f the letters harmonize with it. For emphasis repetition is chosen

rather than mere size (a second store sign is partially visible in the lower right hand comer).

Such balancing and blending makes for the success o f "Minna Nails." An absence o f

proportion and response to its immediate environment is the major fault of the large message

sign on Lombard Street (Figure 6-1 top). This oversized sign was installed in early Fall 1998

by the State o f California, Department o f Transportation (Caltrans) to provide information

for motorists traveling northbound on Lombard Street (designated "U.S. 101" for several

blocks in lieu o f a proposed freeway that was to replace Lombard Street). This message sign,

supported by a massive steel pole anchored in the narrow median strip, is almost three stories

high and visible from many blocks away. This sign is out o f scale and out o f touch with the

neighborhood in terms o f material, texture, and message. It draws successfully attention to

itself, but it is doing so at the expense o f the local world. It brings the fast world o f the

freeway into a neighborhood commercial habitat. Instead o f highlighting the environing local

context in its inconspicuous familiarity, the intruding sign insists on making the conspicuous

familiar by invoking a world out o f place. Instead o f shining guiding light on the

neighborhood and making it more accessible, this message sign was installed to shine "Golden

Gate Bridge Congested" into the living rooms and bedrooms o f adjacent motels and

residences. Disproportional in bulk and bearing, this weighty sign forces itself upon the

neighborhood and reduces it to subservient background.


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A suitable street sign announces itself only in so far as it enhances the smooth

functioning o f transparent background practices. A well functioning street sign conforms to

a principle which may be labeled "the law o f appropriate contrast." This "freeway" sign on

Lombard Street is inappropriate and violates the local background activities. In a different

context, this pompous sign would conform to this principle. It needs a fitting location. Its

present posture is an imposture.

Applying this "law o f appropriate contrast" to the commercial strip, I want to submit

the following observations. Many commercial strips in the United States, typically along

arterials rather than along downtown retail frontages, suffer from visual "pollution" or

overload. Too many signs have been placed on such a street. M ore precisely, the visual

chaos is caused by no order or hierarchy o f signs. Almost every sign is o f equal referential

weight to the point that none is realty signifying anything effectively. References abound, but

no structured referential whole exists. On such a commercial strip, we find ourselves in a

"forest" o f signs which mutually cancel or neutralize each other. One might as well have no

signs at all.

An inconspicuous background is valued both by public and private interests in sign

design and sign placement. Various parties compete for the same urban space. Public signs

are often outnumbered and dwarfed by private signs. Even billboards, the extremely large

signs installed mostly for advertising purposes, lose their referential impact on motorists

driving by as soon as visual competition arrives which spoils the prized inconspicuous

background. Newly added boards which attempt to tie the passers-by to the alluring product

or exotic vacation spot result in diminishing appeal o f each individual piece o f visual magic,


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and diminishing returns to the sponsor. Short o f monopolizing the urban vertical space, a

sponsor has to frequently change the content o f the message if he wants to avoid that. W ith

continued display and diminishing novelty and appeal for the potential consumer, the sign

begins to blend into the urban background.

In central business districts, along freeways, and especially along commercial strips,

private and public signs compete for the attention o f motorists and pedestrians. A "forest"

or "jungle" o f signs may be regarded as sensory overload o r merely as an aesthetic nuisance.

For regulating and controlling traffic movements, however, visual clutter is a liability. For

signs such as "One Way," "Do N ot Enter," or "Stop" to do their job, one must be able to

count on their continued conspicuousness relative to their local operational environment.

Without obliterating other items o f the urban landscape, an important traffic sign must stand

out against the background o f other equipment for moving about and the rest o f the urban

landscape. The interconnected nexus o f buildings, roads, and street furniture must add up to

an overall inconspicuous background if vital signs are to be able to do their job. An

analogous requirement applies to the appropriate acoustic environment for police vehicles,

ambulances, and fire trucks. Our discussion suggests a basic but important guideline: In each

case the efficacy o f the visual or acoustic sign to be noticed depends more on controlling the

environmental background, which needs to remain inconspicuous, than on specific features

o f the sign itself.

In summary: Irrespective o f how conspicuously a sign may stand out against its

background, it is this very background and its continued smooth functioning to which the sign

renders its service. Contrary to art which draws attention to itself a sign draws attention to


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itself only for a glance and for the sake o f the whole equipment-nexus o f which it remains a

part. In order to signify successfully, a sign must not be noticed thematically.

Because it ensures and enhances the accessibility o f a network o f equipment, the sign

can be considered a second-order tool. As a stationary pilot or beacon a sign momentarily

highlights the context o f familiar equipment and shared practices, i.e., the world one is

actively immersed in. For a sign to be truly available to its users, the world to be lit up

momentarily must already be familiar.

In anything available the world is always already "there". Whenever we encounter anything, the world has already been previously discovered, though not thematically. But it can also be lit up in certain ways o f dealing with our environment. It is the world out o f which the available is available. (BT 114; SZ 83)

And it is the world in its lit up and reinforced /wconspicuousness (as in Figure 6-1 bottom)

to which the sign remains subservient in a signifying symbiosis.

6.3 STREETS AS EQUIPMENT FOR WALKING

World and available equipment mutually reinforce each other. When the world is

present yet announced, it is folly there. Then we are immersed in our everyday activities, and

the various items o f equipment we are dealing with are transparent to us.

We may assume that it is easy to design for transparent coping activities in which one

is "lost,” i.e., folly immersed. Such an assumption is based on the incorrect conjecture that

"transparent" means approximately the same as "bland," "drab," or "neutral." When smoothly

functioning everyday activities take place, they are not noticed. The following challenge for


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design arises: how to get a handle on an environmental nexus that is, and should remain,

transparent? Designing to ensure transparency can be approached from a negative vantage

point. Answering the question how environing transparency is lost or becomes unavailable

may provide some clues in an indirect manner. I will pursue this roundabout approach in this

section in search for transparent equipment for walking.

During this examination o f streets I will present a few simple, pedestrian examples.

Streets encompass two different types o f circulation space: the roadway for movement and

parking o f vehicles, and sidewalks for walking and access to local property. While the

roadways o f streets receive much attention and resources in our motorized society, sidewalks

are often treated as a fringe issue.

Sidewalks become unavailable to pedestrians because they are frequently not designed

or maintained as functioning equipment for walking. Sidewalks are improperly vertically

aligned, under-scaled and over-paved, obstructed, not contiguous, or they end precipitously,

leading pedestrians nowhere. We will sample each type o f equipmental breakdown.

In North American cities more walking seems to take place on treadmills and "Nordic

Tracks" than on sidewalks. Even if this observation is incorrect, urban planners and civil

engineers need to bear in mind: Sidewalks must not be neglected, if we want to avoid that

even more "walking" and neighbors disappear behind private walls. A broken or abruptly

jutting sidewalk "sticks out" and ends transparent walking immediately (Figure 6-2 top). On

such a sidewalk one may loose one's footing, trip and fell. During good daylight one may be

able to see this uneven surface in advance and avoid falling by going around it (the film role

container placed next to the raised concrete shows a sidewalk projection o f about five inches).


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Figure 6-2 Pedestrian Realms: Broken Up (top) and Out o f Scale (bottom)


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But one's leisurely and absorbed walk is disturbed, not only at this specific spot but for the

rest o f the walk, perhaps even for the remainder o f one's stay in this neighborhood. From

now on, one is on alert for future breakdowns during one's walking. When a sidewalk thus

announces itself in its unavailableness, walking as an activity in which one is immersed has

ceased.

At some locations a flush surface is rare, at other locations it is too abundant. In

attempts to provide for spacious mobility and safety, we often overdesign, leaving a locale

o f asphalt in the wake (Figure 6-2 bottom). This residential dead-end street has a curb-to-

curb width o f 40 feet. At the location o f the playground (the sandbox is partially visible at

lower left comer) the roadway bulges out to 104 feet (2.5 times its regular width),

presumably to accommodate stated or assumed requirements for turning around emergency

vehicles, fire trucks in particular. One may want to justify such large pavement circles on

safety grounds. But turning around fire trucks can easily be accomplished by using their

reverse gear or via the townhouses' driveways, especially by fire department staff who are

trained and skilled in maneuvering in tight spaces. Such abundance o f unneeded asphalt

invites racing behavior (not only from outsiders), and it divides a neighborhood. Insisting on

overly wide roadways in order to accommodate dubious turnaround requirements for

emergency vehicles highlights the need to make turning around unnecessary. This can be

accomplished by implementing a guideline for designing streets that make a neighborhood

truly accessible: if at all possible, do not build dead-end streets.


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Figure 6-3 Sidewalks Unavailable in Two Ways


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If a cul-de-sac cannot be avoided, build a roadway loop large enough (1) for

conveniently turning around emergency vehicles and (2) for inhabiting the dead-end street's

"dead space" by building at least one or two dwelling units in its center. In our case, the

playground might mark the neighborhood as a safe and children-friendly environment if it

were placed in the "dead space" o f a looped street. One may object to such design by

pointing to the playground's increased traffic exposure. But placing the playground in the

center o f the looped street can result in several synergistic benefits: (1) emergency vehicles

can swiftly turn around; (2) by providing horizontal deflection o f traffic, the central

playground can function as an amiable, multi-functional traffic calming device; (3) when going

to and from the playground island (which should have curb cuts and marked crosswalks), one

has to watch only one direction o f traffic at a time; (4) the playground, placed in such a

prominent location rather than being tucked away, makes itself more accessible and discloses

itself to the entire neighborhood as a public place for play and recreation.

Sidewalks dwarfed by overly wide roadways and walkway surfaces punctuating

absorbed walking are not the only obstacles for pedestrians. When walking, we occasionally

have to stop on a sidewalk that ends abruptly, forcing us into the roadway or into the illegal

and unsafe realm o f jaywalking (Figure 6-3 top). Having arrived at the other side, caught

neither by police nor car, we find our narrow path obstructed by power line poles prominently

placed in the center o f the sidewalk next to an elementary school (Figure 6-3 bottom). A

token attempt has been made to widen the pedestrian realm o f two feet on either side o f the

pole by setting one front yard "fence" pole 5 inches back. A t this location the pedestrian

realm can be improved in several ways. (1) The power lines can be undergrounded. (2) The


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elementary school administration may approve that the power line poles be moved to the

street side o f the ample, unused lawn in order for the school and neighborhood to have

adequate walking, wheelchair, and stroller access. (3) The sidewalk can be widened to

provide a clear pedestrian path of travel (I recommend that the unobstructed path has a

minimum width o f 6 feet).

At times pedestrians find themselves banned from their own community (Figure 6-4).

One side o f the street provides no sidewalk, the other side suddenly truncates one's path and

renders the road narrowed to motorized use only. An elementary school is two blocks away

from this pedestrian trap. Driving one's children to and from school becomes necessary under

these street conditions. Passing through this gauntlet sours one's short walk to Cherry Valley

School (Petaluma, California). This is also the way to downtown. Once you decide to drive

to avoid the dead-end sidewalks, you contribute to congesting "Historic Downtown" even

further. You become annoyed because you can't find available parking spaces, and "Historic

Downtown" becomes less accessible, less attractive, and less historic.

These few examples o f sidewalks unavailable for absorbed carefree walking can be

found in Petaluma, California within about one square mile. They are spotted easily, even by

someone who usually drives rather than walks the streets.9 These few examples tell the town

dwellers: these streets are not made for walking. Streets unequipped for walking inform us

citizens that the pedestrian paths lead to nowhere, as shown in Figure 6-5. Shopping malls

9 Thinking phenomenological^ has made me aware o f transparent equipment facilitating being-in-the-world. It has made me also more sensitive to environmental failures or breakdowns, and provides me with clues about making equipment "invisible" for the sake o f being-in-the-world.


Figure 6-4 Narrowed to Motorized Use

(the same location seen from both directions)


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have no use for pedestrians since they cannot carry much merchandise home. Pedestrians are

allowed to walk parallel to the mall, remaining at the periphery of shopping, but cannot walk

into its "center." Instead o f a sidewalk leading to the arrayed stores, we find lush landscaping

(Figure 6-5 top). I f citizens become sick or frail in part because o f lack o f exercise which

walking provides, they have to "go" to a health center and consult with experts on proper

body movements (Figure 6-5 bottom). The path for pedestrians is narrow here (6 inches

wider than the 2-foot gutter) while the signs announcing the paths and ways to health are

filling the extravagant landscape buffer. From what or whom is this buffer shielding? Cars

crossing railroad tracks in close proximity to this foundation and center o f health care could

invoke vitalizing circulation. But the paths for pedestrians on both sides o f Southpoint

Boulevard lead instead to nowhere. They abruptly end even though development has taken

place beyond the railroad tracks. Motorists, however, are not impeded by the pedestrian road

blocks and find at the southern end o f Southpoint Boulevard the State's Department o f Motor

Vehicles.

Pedestrians must be able to take a smoothly linked street network fo r granted in order

for streets as walking equipment to be truly available to them. When streets reveal gaps in

providing transparent walking equipment, a whole neighborhood, even a whole town,

becomes unavailable for walking.


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J PETALUMA HEALTH CAIU f>is J PETALUMA COMMUNITY HEM 111 1,;: | PETALUMA HE AI TH ( t 1 *4 PATHWAYS TI'C'KA\smh

Figure 6-5 Paths to Nowhere


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Chapter 7

Moving About as A Work of Art

Chapter 4 has summarized Heidegger's thinking about technology and the work o f art.

A work o f art understood as a cultural paradigm “gives to things their look and to men their

outlook on themselves.” 1 An artwork, as construed in this inquiry, is tacit culture made

visible by unifying ongoing practices and giving them focused physical expression by design.

In this chapter I want to show that transportation, especially our advanced automobile

highway system, has the potential for becoming a work o f art o f technologically advanced

societies.

7.1 TRANSPORTATION AS OUR POTENTIAL WORK OF ART

7.1.1 Transportation's Central Role

Several branches o f contemporary technology are candidates for becoming a work o f

art: gene technology, fusion o f atomic nuclei as a new source o f virtually unlimited energy,

the internet, space stations. Something unique about transportation technology makes it an

ideal candidate for a future work o f art.

Transportation embodies in a unique way the general character o f our technological

civilization: unprecedented mobility and its celebration. Where transportation is considered

1 Heidegger PLT 43; HW 28.


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successful, it incorporates efficiency, rationalization, change, the linking o f formerly distinct

regions and activities, the shrinking o f distances and consequently the blending o f cultural

differences. Especially in the advanced industrial societies, transportation is a m atter o f

serious concern. Residents in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, for years have been

considering transportation as their number one problem.2 Transportation infrastructure,

policies, and financing are on people's minds and on the ballot.3 The "level o f service" (LOS)

o f traffic flow, expressed as a ratio o f actual traffic volume to theoretical capacity,4 has been

voted the yardstick o f future development and residential growth.5 Traffic management is

2 Since at least the mid 1980's, transportation has been perceived as problem number one for Bay Area residents, according to a poll for the Bay Area Council. The Oakland Tribune, October 21, 1986; A-2. For a more detailed and recent update o f this poll, see Chapter 2, footnote 3 (p. 43).

3 In November 1986, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties voted on an additional 0.5% sales tax for transportation improvements. Berkeley Tri-City Post, October 22, 1986; 1.

4 For the methodology employed to arrive at volume to capacity ratios and associated levels o f service (LOS), see Transportation Research Board 1980.

5 With Measure H having passed in Walnut Creek (November 1986), no future development will be approved unless it can be demonstrated that the level o f service at all signalized intersections during the peak hours will not exceed a volume/capacity ratio o f 0.85 as a result o f development. Research I conducted at the Institute o f Transportation Studies, University o f California at Berkeley (June 1986 - May 1987), under guidance from Betty Deakin and Alex Scabardonis showed that most signalized intersections in Walnut Creek at the time o f the vote already exceeded a volume to capacity ratio o f 0.85 dining the peak hours. Relevant for our discussion here is the observation that one technological device (growth control via quality o f traffic flow) is introduced to curb another one (almost universal access via the automobile) whose ubiquitous availability is equally starkly defended. This is another example o f our ambiguous, if not outright schizophrenic relationship to technology. Apart from the "tragedy o f commons" at play here, the quality o f urban and suburban life that is at issue here. The question o f the possibility o f "dwelling" is misguidedly phrased and debated as a technological question.


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becoming a serious matter also in technologically less developed parts o f the world.6 The

attention given to transportation issues is an indication o f its centrality for technological

society. This attention, and subsequent public plans to improve traffic flow, safety, and

efficiency, in turn will make the transportation system an even more totalizing and flexible

agent o f resource mobilization.

In the following, I will examine the automobile-highway system as a presently

dormant and sputtering work o f art. Airports and airways — streets in the sky connected to

earth — are then presented as a potential work o f art for the next generation to come.

7.1.2 The Automobile-Highwav System

Language reflects social practices. The very word "automobile" (self-mover) reveals

our understanding o f its mechanical workings and can explain the ingrained popularity o f its

use. For Americans, and increasingly so in other countries as well, the auto and the highway

have become second nature.

In contrast to the automobile, public transportation in the United States works, if at

all, only for commuting to and from the decreasing number o f central business districts.

Except for commuting to and from these activity centers, which become increasingly

dispersed, you generally need your auto for purposes o f business, recreation, and for visiting

friends and relatives. Without access to a car, you have only poor access to the economy, to

6 See, for example, Lisa G. Nungesser, "Urban Congestion in Cracow, Poland: The Problem Remains Despite High Mass Transit Mode Split", Journal o f the Institute o f Transportation Engineers, Vol. 56, No. 8., August 1986.


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cultural events and other recreational activities. Without a driver's license, you have, for

practical purposes, no identity. W ithout participation in weekend "low riding" o r cruising,

a suburban youngster is not "in."

In short, without the ability to motivate and move 7 yourself you are a captive in a

free society. You are, in transportation jargon, a "captive rider" because you depend on the

mercy o f merely public transportation. Instead o f being a self-mover, you depend on the

omnibus which is a vehicle for everybody — for "them" as many perceive this mode choice,

thereby declaring it second-rate by definition in a society o f individuals. Indeed, public

transportation is also called "mass transportation" or "mass transit" in technical terms.8 When

you depend on vehicles for "everybody" for your transport, your choice o f time, locations,

7 The nouns motion, motive, m otif motivation, and automobile are all derived from the same Latin word movere (to move). The common source o f these and related term s is not always clear or obvious. But language harbors a common origin and reveals it upon inquiry. Language reflects social practices and background understanding. This insight is given earthly expression in the formulation o f late Heidegger that language is "the house o f being;" see, for example, the essays in his On the Way to Language (OWL).

8 From the perspective o f an individualistic society, "mass transportation" appears to be prim a facie an "inauthentic" mode o f transport, irrespective o f how well a public transportation system works. One's self-understanding as an independent, self-reliant, and well demarcated "I" appears to be violated through any form of ride sharing (e.g., bus, van pool, car pool, jitney). This self-understanding o f many US Americans, especially dominant in the W estern and younger parts o f the country, is one decisive factor often overlooked in the numerous and periodically repeated attempts — for obvious ecological reasons — to increase the number o f persons per vehicle, at least for commute trips. For a suggestive analysis o f our embodied transport practices from a Jungian perspective, see James Hillman's Psychological Fantasies in Transportation Problems. Irving, Texas: Center for Civic Leadership, University o f Dallas, 1979; reprinted in a slightly abbreviated version as "Transportation" in Hillman 1991, Chapter 8: Psychoanalysis in the Street. For a strong defense o f the automobile as "our" mode o f transport, "authentically" based on evolved social practices and forms o f land use in the Western United States, see Melvin M. Webber "The Joys o f Automobility," in Wachs and Crawford 1992. The connection between auto transportation and culture is explored via diverse contributions in Lewis and Goldstein 1986.


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and comfort levels are curtailed. You don't decide anymore alone on your moves. You are

no longer a unique individual, standing out o f the masses. And public sentiment, trying to

nurture an association between mass transportation and collectivism, often suggests that it is

not a long way from being a "captive rider" to becoming a "free loader."

Riding on the freeway in your auto-mobile, compared to mass transport, frees your

ways o f doing things from social constraints. You can do your "own thing" in your self-

moving space bubble; that is at least one o f the illusions which freeway riding is driving on.

In several o f his novels, Jack Kerouac described how riding the automobile can move

the motorists:

It was drizzling and mysterious at the beginning o f our journey. I could see that it was all going to be one big saga o f the mist. "Whooee!" yelled Dean. "Here we go!" And he hunched over the wheel and gunned her; he was back in his element, everybody could see that. We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function o f the time, move. And we moved!

This passage from Kerouac's 1955 novel On the Road 9 exemplifies the exhilaration o f

transport the 1950's offered the growing number o f automobilists. Members o f a high-tech

society, whose identities are bound up with change, have no particular home. Change itself

and "being on the move" becomes the home without a home.10 High-tech nomads dwell via

moving. Daily advertisement urges you to jump on the bandwagon and begin moving your

body through Jazzercise, Nordic Trak Skies, or via homebound bicycles. These more endured

9 Kerouac 1976, 127.

10 For an early acknowledgment o f the impact o f ever changing spatial patterns, see Melvin Webber's essay on "The Urban Place and the Non Place Urban Realm" (Webber 1964).


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than enjoyed movements, the repeated promise goes, will get and then keep you in shape so

that you can count yourself among the "movers and shakers," even if you don't get anywhere.

Let us continue a while with automotive nomad Kerouac On the Road. While

accompanying Dean M oriarty, the novel's hero, on another cross-country auto trip, Sal

Paradise is singing this little song :11

Home in Missoula,Home in Truckee,Home in Opelousas,Ain't no home for me.Home in old Medora,Home in Wounded Knee,Home in Ogallala,Home 111 never be.

Being everywhere is being nowhere, the song suggests. Homelessness and no place

attachment are the other side o f high mobility, at least for a generation that is beat. Yet, Sal

Paradise, Dean Moriarty, and all those James Deans in the country wouldn't have it any other

way. They see themselves as rebels with a cause that moves them. As the beatnik literature

and movies o f the James Dean generation such as "Rebels Without a Cause" indicate, "the

cause" does not have to be well understood or articulated in order to serve as a moving

agent.12

11 Kerouac 1976, 240.

12 Off-beat poems, music and car chases, as portrayed in James Dean's few movies, became a work o f art (in Heidegger's sense) for the beatnik generation. James Dean (1931- 1955), its hero, died at age 24 when his sports car crashed at high speed. I f this "death o f a car's man" had happened only in the movies, it would have made a tragic, albeit somehow appropriate, finish and finale.


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The freeway allows you to pursue your very own trip13 without being obstructed by

people that have a different goal than you. Through grade separated highways, tunneled,

depressed or elevated, cross traffic is moved out o f your way: "they" are on their own trip.

The freeway is designed to allow merging traffic to enter the main flow with a minimum o f

friction. The other "movers and shakers" who, being moved on the same traffic channel and

perchance on the same radio channel, share a portion o f their trip with you as they move in

the same direction, generally maintaining a skillful and collected vigilance in keeping a safe

distance. Keeping a safe distance from one another is a prerequisite for "getting there:"

13 The fantasy that you can do your "own thing" in your self-moving space bubble is a decisive factor on which the continued popularity o f the automobile is driving. As a daily commuter on an express bus, I become, more or less inadvertently, an eyewitness o f what auto drivers are doing in their cars while driving. Especially when the express bus is stuck in traffic, looking down from the omnibus into the crawling solo-mobiles reveals the auto as the vehicle o f choice. Automobilists, while in motion, are doing the following, in rough decreasing order o f frequency: drinking (coffee), using the car phone, eating, smoking, putting make-up on, shaving, reading newspapers or books, writing, talking to oneself (inferred), singing (inferred), drumming on the steering wheel or dash board, picking their nose. The variety o f activities decreases with increasing number or persons per vehicle. Talking to one another is rare. Sleeping, while common on the bus, is a behavior discouraged by the setting; a car passenger rarely sleeps. Keeping to oneself, in contrast, is the most common form o f communion during the typical ride sharing commute. Romance, suggested by frequent or prolonged eye contact, intense talking, or outright fondling, occurs only during the Friday p.m. auto commute, especially Wien such out-of-town driving ushers in a three-day weekend. The omnibus, providing even less privacy than car or van pooling, correspondingly affords a diminished variety o f behavior. Bus passengers sleep or doze, read, or type on their lap-top computer. Given the physical proximity and some choice in seating, talking is surprisingly rare. The cellular telephone, an increasingly used communication tool supplementing locomotion by car, is hardly used on the bus. When it is used, however, the telephone (typically an incoming call) marks a distinct intrusion in the omnibus world. — The increased used o f car phones, lap-top computers, modems, and fax machines turns private automobiles into office-mobiles. This trend worries some transportation planners because the increasing commute hours are used to effectively extend the office hours, which may reduce public pressure to battle recurring traffic congestion and urban spraw l


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going to work, visiting friends or the movies, and getting home. As on the freeway, so in life:

keeping a safe distance is ground rule number one for "getting along." 14 Sophisticated

technology can bring the ordinary but typically buried background practices to the fore and

into drastic focus, including the "natural" consequences o f violating the safe distance law.

While driving on the freeway, however, you are led to forget constraints o f any sort

and tend to fancy yourself as being free to choose your speed, your lane, and the rhythm you

are moved by. And if you offer a ride to someone else, you share your "space," but you are

still in control. Freeway crimes (e.g., robberies, shootings) alone demonstrate that the actual

control at one's disposal is much smaller than is typically assumed. But this fear o f losing

control mobilizes another round o f calls for "getting on top" of the problem and for "getting

the upper hand” over crime by increased police presence, carrying "mace," and equipping your

car with telephone, "the club" or tinted windows. The drive to be and stay in control is a

condition for the widespread acceptance o f the freeway technology. For m ost people, the

freeway fulfills this drive better than any other transport technology. Yet, by giving leeway

to this drive, the freeway in turn increases demand for control.

Through this brief glance at highway safety, its perception by the public, and its

exploitation by the "safety" industry, the automobile-highway system reveals its spiraling and

self-nurturing appetite for the intertwined network o f mobilization, control, and technological

14 This formulation unduly ontologizes the freeway experience by suggesting that this experience is primordially given and that the stationary portions o f living are just derivatives o f the existentially more basic practice o f moving about. This is o f course an exaggeration, even for a highly mobile society. The formulation "as on the freeway, so in life" is used here as a caricature that actually casts some light on our general understanding o f "being-with" others by highlighting a specific safety practice in using the automobile-highway system.


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innovation. In Subsection 7.1.4 on the Automated Highway System, currently being

developed, we will briefly discuss the most recent efforts, actively supported by the United

States Federal government, to drive the electronic highway to its limits, ia ., present limits.

Until we gain control over highway capacity and congestion by way o f electronically

hooking up the vehicle to a steering and guideway network (the new generation o f freeways),

we will have to make do with the existing, less efficient framework. When the freeway is

congested, your freedom o f movement is severely restricted. But even during "forced flow,"

you hold the steering wheel, you choose your acoustic environment, and you still enjoy a safe

distance from the other drivers thanks to your expensive steel cage which, after all, has been

chosen by you. The automobile-highway system nourishes our fantasies o f freedom, mobility,

and individualism.15

If you are willing and able to pay the price, the automobile indeed grants you almost

ubiquitous mobility. Drive-in restaurants, drive-in movie theaters, and drive-in banks allow

you the luxury o f not having to leave "your space."

15 For an unabashed celebration and defense o f the values o f freedom and individualism as afforded by the automobile and the required road system, see Melvin M. Webber, "The Joys o f Automobility," in Wachs and Crawford 1992,274-284, quoted earlier in this Chapter in the context o f individual vs. mass transportation (footnote 8); see also Webber's earlier essays o f 1964,1973, and 1983. The pervasive influence o f the automobile is undeniable, yet few make the case for the automobile as a defining agent o f our culture. Webber’s is one o f the few voices today arguing for affirmatively acknowledging the automobile and its central place in our culture, and for incrementally improving on both. Using different concepts, Webber is in feet acknowledging the automobile-highway system as our work o f art as defined in this chapter and in Chapter 4. Those who pay homage to this system in word and everyday action embrace rather than merely utilize it; hence the grounds for "The Joys o f Automobility."


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Even today, in the face o f tough global competition, the automobile industry remains

central to the U.S. economy. The automobile and its groundbreaking counterpart, the vast

system o f engineered pavement, is the Gestell incarnate. The U.S.-Interstate system alone

has indeed global dimensions: added together, this largest engineering project in history

stretches 1.5 times around the earth.

The above phenomenological fragments may suffice to present the automobile's

central role in our understanding o f being. It is so central that we don't notice it most o f the

time. Is it, then, a work o f art, or are we being taken for a ride?

For a generation which understood itself as beat, the symbiosis o f auto-ways and free

ways was used as a kick. You were getting high on the highways which became instrumental

for the speedy transport o f your emotions. But even amidst the instrumental practices, there

shines forth the kernel o f a new relation to the technology o f transport. Let us listen again

to our beat fellows On the Road: 16

We all jumped to the music and agreed. The purity o f the road. The white line in the middle o f the highway unrolled and hugged our left front tire as if glued to our groove. Dean hunched his muscular neck, T-shirted in the winter night, and blasted the car along.... It was crazy; the radio was on full blast. Dean beat drums on the dashboard till a great sag developed in it; I did too.... "Oh man, what kicks!" yelled Dean.

For those having grown up with autos and freeways, driving today, with a limit of 55

or 65 mph put on our motions, is less ecstatic but no less central. The Los Angeles

metropolitan area is the climax o f the automobile-highway system. In greater Los Angeles,

the centrality o f the auto as a common denominator o f social intercourse becomes more

16 Kerouac 1976, 128.


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visible than anywhere else. To understand the protest in Los Angeles against the installation

o f high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, also known as "diamond lanes" for their symbolic

pavement logo, one needs, as Joan Didion suggests in her White Album,17

to have participated in the freeway experience, which is the only secular communion Los Angeles has. M ere driving on the freeway is in no way the same as participation in it. Anyone can "drive" on the freeway, and many people with no vocation for it do, hesitating here and resisting there, losing the rhythm o f the lane change, thinking about where they came from and where they are going. Actual participants think only about where they are. Actual participation requires a total surrender, a rapture-of- the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over.

The participation in the "only secular communion Los Angeles has" requires the

cultivation of skills just as in any other vocation. In his portrait o f Los Angeles, Reyner

Banham observes: 18

As you acquire the special skills involved, the Los Angeles freeways become a special way o f being alive.... I f motorway driving anywhere calls for a high level o f attentiveness, the extreme concentration required in Los Angeles seems to bring on a state o f heightened awareness that some locals find mystical.

7.1.3 A Work o f Art O ff Course

Despite its somewhat subdued yet continued popularity, the private automobile is,

however, generally not recognized as our collective work o f art. We continue using it as a

great mobility tool, and occasionally celebrate its proud achievements and "its inpact on our

lives," typically in the form o f parading old-timers. Yet we seem to be too conscious o f its

negative consequences to acknowledge the private automobile as our work o f art. Let us

recall some o f the shadows the automobile is casting on our mobility.

17 Didion 1980, 83.

18 Banham 1984, 214 ff.


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• We are painfully aware o f the thousands o f injuries and fatalities per year,19 entangling

us in a deepening quagmire o f financial, legal, medical, and insurance dilemmas.

• The freeways that promised swift access to jobs and recreation are loaded with

congestion and frustration.

• Making room for urban freeways has caused displacement o f many people and

deterioration o f the quality o f life for those who "live next door."

• We are aware o f the enormous appetite o f the auto for gasoline which, even if we are

willing to pay increasingly higher prizes for it, is not renewable.

• Over the years, cars have become more energy efficient and less polluting but with

more and more cars on the road,20 we can't help but see and smell their output. So

we create regional Air Management Districts to coordinate local air quality measures

and to overrule, if necessary, local Home Rule for the greater good o f the entire

region.

19 "Collisions on highways, roads, and streets kill more than 500,000 people worldwide each year, and an additional 15 million are injured. The cost o f American and Canadian accidents (more than 52,000 deaths and 4 million injuries) is estimated to exceed $60 billion annually." Wilson and Burtch 1992, 94.

20 In the U.S. there are currently 190 million registered vehicles (as o f 1993). "There is a registered m otor vehicle for every 1.3 people in the United States, and the average American household has twice as many automobiles as it has children under the age o f twenty." Martin Wachs, "Men, Women, and Urban Travel: The Persistence o f Separate Spheres," in Wachs and Crawford 1992, 86. The United States has by for the highest level o f motorization. In 1985, there were 711 vehicles (cars and commercial vehicles, excluding motorcycles) per 1,000 people. Following suit are Canada (561), New Zealand (545), Australia (540), and West Germany (440). These 1985 data are reported in Wilson and Burtch 1992, 95; see also Table 2-2 in Institute o f Transportation Engineers 1992a, 30.


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• To protect us against the cumulative noise o f the combustion engine, we build walls

between our highways and communities, thereby confining the driver to tunnel vision.

While driving along portions o f1-680 in Contra-Costa County, for instance, your view

of M ount Diablo is diabolically obstructed.

• Attempts to beautify the separating sound walls through expensive materials and

pleasing patterns 21 reveal even more obtrusively the surgical severance between our

"functionally specialized" spheres o f dwelling, working, recreating, and the ways of

"getting there."

• Tunneled freeways and gigantic desolate parking lots near shopping malls attest to the

aesthetic deterioration the car has brought in its wake. Reacting to this haunting

nightmare w ith increasing guilt and decreasing funds, we call for retrofitting

Aesthetics in Transportation.22

• Increased access for the automobile is often gained at the expense o f other, mostly

"softer" transportation modes, such as bicycling or walking. Paving the way for the

private automobile frequently reduces the quality o f or reduces public access to

natural and urban amenities. For decades, San Franciscans and tourists had been

weary o f the Embarcadero Freeway, a double-decked monstrous structure barring

convenient access to one o f the most beautiful waterfronts in N orth America. The

21 A lineal foot o f sound wall (8 foot high, 8 inches thick, with a 3 foot 6 inches concretebase) costs $170 (George Nickelson, Omni-Means, personal communication with the author;October 22,1993). Assuming sound protection on each side o f the highway, the constructioncost for a mile o f sound wall amount to about $1.8 million.

22 U.S. Department o f Transportation 1980.


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enduring cries for its demolotion were countered by long-standing arguments o f its

local benefits in terms o f improved traffic flow and economic gains. As on other

automotive issues, the collective resolve was ambiguous. It needed the jolts and the

cracks o f the Loma Prieta earthquake o f 1989 to arrive at the decision against repair

and in favor o f demolition.

• Private automobile use and ownership patterns not only reflect an economically

stratified society, but also further amplify it. Persons with no or insuffient access to

a private vehicle do not have equal access to the economic pie. Despite the

automobile having become more and more affordable since the invention and mass

production o f Ford's Model-T, the distributional consequences o f unequitable car

ownership have neither been adequately addressed nor solved."

• Our overdependence on the private automobile is directly responsible for urban

sprawl, loss o f farmland, inefficiencies such as long commuting on congested

highways, oil dependency, pollution, and difficulties for child care and working

women.

Alas, if after all the auto-highway system is not a work o f art, it comes closer to such

status than any other contemporary candidate. Despite the centrality and the spell it may have

over us, we clearly continue to have an ambivalent relation to the auto-highway system.

Therefore it cannot be a work o f art in the encompassing sense as discussed in Section 4.3

23 I cannot forget a rumor I once heard, according to which executives in charge o fhiring workers asked the job applicants, as standard procedure, whether they owned an automobile. If they didn't, this "applicant profile" was then taken as "evidence" that the job seeker would not be able to maintain a job.


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(Elements o f a W ork o f Art) and as succinctly defined by Dreyfus and Hall: "Things function

as works o f art when they unify a people and show them their understanding o f being." 24 The

freedom o f movement and the emotional transport the automobile may offer are offset by

ecological and aesthetic concerns, and by vexing problems stemming from people's

displacement and inequitable access to this system. These persisting negative features prevent

the auto-highway system from being openly and unambiguously celebrated as a work o f art.

Furthermore, we feel the need for controlling and taming the auto, at least in close proximity

o f where we dwell. Communities increasingly ask for more traffic calming and control,

especially on residential streets. Can we accept, or embrace, a work o f art that we want to

control?

In short, the private automobile and its vast strata o f asphalt and concrete are not on

a par with the Greek temple in terms o f providing a unifying cultural paradigm.25 A work o f

art "gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves." 26 The outlook the

automobile offers us is one we seem to reject or — perhaps missing a chance for a new

cultural identity — wearily overlook.

24 Dreyfus and Hall, "Introduction," in Dreyfus and Hall 1992, 21.

25 la Asphalt Nation, Jane Holtz Kay (1997) recounts how the private automobile turned from supplementary servant o f our mobility to autocratic master of our public dwelling.

26 Heidegger PLT 43; HW 28.


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7.1.4 The Automated Highway System

I have argued in the last two subsections that the automobile-highway system came

close to becoming a work o f art, roughly during the period 1945-1965. This mobility system

has been serving us with reasonable success as transparent equipment. It is a veritable

candidate for becoming a work o f art. But despite its ubiquity and about 200 million N orth

American daily users, it has not reached the comprehensive status o f a unifying cultural

paradigm.

A work o f art is not a tension free artifact; on the contrary, it lives and thrives on

internal conflict. In a widely recognized work o f art, however, tension, conflict, and ongoing

struggle are not neutralized, but harmonized and thus fruitfully preserved. The preponderance

o f consequences left unharmonized is the most likely reason why the automobile-highway

system of the post World War II era, a promising candidate, did not become a full-fledged and

publicly recognized work o f art. This candidate, spruced up with sophisticated electronics,

has a second chance as the "automated freeway" and is making a new run for becoming a

work o f art after all.

The advanced industrial societies, especially the United States of America, Germany,

and Japan, are currently working on a high-tech update o f the freeway and interstate system.

In the United States, these efforts are coordinated and made public under the name Intelligent

Transportation Systems (ITS) o f which automated freeways are a central and perhaps the

most exciting and controversial part. ITS America, a consortium o f private companies and

the U.S. Federal Government, is spearheading this nascent technology and is pushing "early

deployment" in its publicity campaigns. With the help o f advanced electronics, the new


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marriage o f sophisticated guideways and smart automobiles under automatic control is

supposed to give our ground transportation system a smarter look and a new, "intelligent"

outlook for humankind currently stuck in traffic.

The Automated Highway System (AHS), an integral part o f the overall Intelligent

Transportation Systems (ITS) efforts, is proposed as a solution mainly to traffic congestion

and accidents. An automated highway consists o f a conventionally constructed roadway

equipped with an advanced vehicle guidance system embedded in the roadway. A “smart

vehicle” able to detect and follow the “smart guidance system” will make driving automatic.

Individuals can leave the driving to the intelligent freeway system which takes care not only

o f vehicle steering but also o f adjusting the traffic flow to varying weather conditions and

road conditions (vehicle volumes and spacing, merging traffic, incidents, breaking, and so

forth). Once the driver has programed the auto-computer for the desired destination (i.e.,

selected the exit from the automated freeway), the driver may pursue more rewarding

activities, may access the virtual electronic super-highway via on-board or lap-top computer,

or may go to sleep. Ergonomic panels on the smart-mobile's dashboard indicate the vehicle's

location in the smart network, estimate travel times, suggest alternate routes, and offer other

flexibility options at the driver's disposal. The smart vehicle alerts a sleeping or drowsy driver

when it is time to leave the smooth electronic super-highway and to muster up the courage

and gumption for driving on the traditional "unimproved" roads.

Because the individual smart vehicles are guided through artificial rather than direct

human intelligence, the safety margins between moving vehicles can be drastically reduced.

Doing away with the slow and capricious reaction times o f humans, automation can thus


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reduce the minimum (safe) headway between vehicles from currently 1.5 - 2.0 seconds to 0.8

seconds. This enormous reduction in minimum vehicle headway amounts to a doubling o f

freeway lane capacity. Proponents o f the AHS expect not only a considerable reduction in

accident rates but also a virtually congestion free commute. Egan R. Smith concludes his

study o f the automated highway system (AHS) as follows: 27

AHS deployments on congested urban and suburban freeways can significantly improve speed and travel time on these facilities, and significantly increase facility capacity to respond to future year demand.... The attraction o f the AHS facility results from increased capacity and the facility's ability to sustain a constant comfortably high speed at increased traffic flow.

The AHS has passed beyond its incubation phase and awaits deployment on our

freeways. In August 1997, the world's first AHS public demonstration was performed on a

7.6-mile stretch o f Interstate 15 northeast o f San Diego, California. Several Members o f the

U.S. Congress attended the demonstration and participated as passengers in automated

vehicles. During test runs for this public demonstration, The Press Democrat reports, "...the

program's 10 Buick LeSabre guinea pigs have logged more than 5,000 miles o f automated

travel. Most o f that distance has been in convoy, and mostly 12 feet apart at 65 mph — but

with the easy potential, say test engineers, o f 100 mph with only 6 feet o f separation." 28

This emerging technology leaves many questions unanswered at the present time.

Many o f these questions (such as the interaction o f automated and traditional vehicles,

breakdown of vehicles on the automated guideways) are technical in nature and can probably

27 Egan R. Smith, "Modeling Perspectives for the Automated Highway." Institute o f Transportation Engineers Journal, March 1996, 38.

28 Paul Dean (Los Angeles Times), '"Look, officer, no hands': Automated highway may be around the comer." The Press Democrat, Saturday, July 5,1997, A3.


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be solved in the near future by further research. Legal and institutional issues (e.g., vehicle

crashes due to failure o f the automated guideway or the smart cars) are far from being

resolved. Transportation planning methods and experience provide the greatest challenge to

the AHS technology as a proposed solution to recurrent traffic congestion. In a recent paper,

I have cautioned against the high expectations high-technology companies and the U.S.

government place on AHS, and have argued against this mobility technology because o f low

person/vehicle occupancy ratios accepted as a given, continued use o f the internal combustion

engine, and static supply-demand assumptions.29 My paper concludes:

Maximizing vehicle capacity on high-volume links o f a regional travel network amounts to optimizing a subsystem (AHS) while increasing stress on the rest o f the system. Such stress occurs in the form o f increased vehicular overload or congestion on the "non-advanced" network links (assumed to remain at traditional capacity). Additional side and after effects o f this partial network optimization are: increased energy consumption via induced vehicle miles traveled, increased air pollution, and further settlement dispersion.... The AHS, if built, will be a planning disaster o f the greatest proportion. This "system" is built on technocratic thinking that avoids addressing the causes o f transportation problems and prefers instead to treat, or merely mask, their symptoms through very expensive technology. It is therefore a folly to build automated highways that would only pave the way for electronically cementing gridlock.

Given these serious reservations concerning net benefits, does the AHS have a chance

o f becoming a work o f art? I believe yes, provided the technology o f the AHS becomes even

more sophisticated, and provided regional transportation planning is made more intelligent

as well. In the following I will make a few suggestions on how a system o f automated

freeways can become our next work o f art.

29 Joem Kroll, "Electronically Cementing Gridlock: The Folly o f Building Automated Freeways." Institute o f Transportation Engineers, 51st Annual Meeting o f District 6, San Jose, California, July 5-8, 1998. Compendium o f Technical Papers, 312-311.


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The AHS as currently conceived and developed can incorporate many o f our social

practices that characterize living in a fast, high-technology environment that provides a

multiplicity o f options. The AHS addresses our high expectations for mobility, user-friendly

advanced technology, flexibility, and for personal safety. But the AHS lets us down in terms

o f addressing the land use and transportation dynamics, environmental impacts, and the

continued dependency on fossil fuels. AHS technology cannot deal directly with regional land

use and transportation dynamics. One major change, however, may turn this likely planning

disaster into a possible work o f art, i.e., a manifestation o f the implicit self-understanding o f

our technologically advanced, postmodern society. This m ajor modification o f the AHS

hinges on switching from gasoline powered to electric vehicles. This switch can address the

issues o f air pollution, noise, and oil dependency.

The weak link o f electric vehicles remains the relative low range or, conversely, the

prohibitive weight o f needed batteries for long distance travel. I f designed primarily for

electric vehicles, the AHS could supply electric energy to the smart cars along their way. The

electronic guideway could provide this energy source via a "third rail" mechanism (similar to

a subway system) or via electronic signals or beams. While driving on such automated

highways, the vehicles may store enough energy for completing their journey on traditional

roads after they exit the electrically charged freeways. Such a mobility system would

elegantly unify two opposing tendencies: our drive for community or even secular communion

(the common energy source and guideway), and our drive for independence and individuality

(driving individual, custom-tailored units with unique looks). This high-tech guideway and


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energy distribution system will further charge us up if its energy in turn is supplied from

renewable resources such as hydroelectric, geothermal, biomass, wind, or solar power.

I f the scenario o f thousands of vehicles receiving their "clean" life sustenance from the

same energy source simultaneously in front o f everyone's eyes does not inspire a work o f art

in the making, consider the trump convenience. The intelligent guidance system, while

providing safe and swift mobility while drivers relax, supplies the smart cars with clean

energy, charges their batteries for the remainder o f their trips on un-electrified roads,

identifies the energy receiving vehicles, and presents their owners with a monthly bill (which

the owners may pay electronically while riding on the e-way which is charging them). No

need to fill up at gas stations, to mail checks, or to fight for oil or gas. Such book and house

keeping can be done in the e-mobile which becomes office and dwelling. Myriad moving

dwellings linked together turn the intelligent highway into a public space o f advanced

proportions. I f this proposed technology encourages more ride sharing (the home or on

board computer can find matches), and if this sophisticated technology advances our

understanding o f our common high-tech practices while we are actively engaged with them,

we will be moved by a new work of art.30

30 I owe the idea o f electric instead o f gasoline powered vehicles driving on the AHS to my colleague Jack Lucero Flack who, responding to my AHS critique quoted above, suggested electric vehicles as a way to make the AHS more intelligent (conversation in September 1998). I developed the electrification idea further by making the electronic guideway or roadway the source of propelling and charging the smart vehicles. I am a member o f the Intelligent Transportation Systems Council (Institute o f Transportation Engineers). The idea o f using the smart roadways also as energy source for vehicles has, as far as I know, not been proposed before. The idea o f developing the electronic highway (e- way) into a new cultural paradigm is certainly breaking new ground.


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Leaving the earth, if only for a short while, has been mankind's dream for aeons. In

the following section, we will explore airports and airways, including their required ground

transport linkages, as a possible future work o f art which would make a consummate match

with the newly conceived e-way. This widened horizon may give us further hints as to needed

elements for m aking our ground transportation more uplifting.

7.2 AIRPORTS AS A FUTURE WORK OF ART

7.2.1 Special Features o f Aviation Technology

The high-tech character o f aviation technology is obvious. Our aviation ambitions can

be traced back to the beginning o f W estern civilization when Icarus tried to escape from

imprisonment by means o f wings made o f wax. The wings we rely on also melt; but they do

so only at a higher temperature. The Promethean dream to overcome gravity and be free as

birds in the sky has been realized in this century. It took less than seven decades (1903-1969)

from the first flight to the landing on the moon.31

Aviation has reduced the vast distances between continents to a matter o f a few hours1

flight time in relative comfort. Global totalization has become the norm. Apollo, our high-

tech god o f sunlight and prophecy, helps us see the entire earth as one unit. Finally, we can

make even the earth a part o f the Gestell or a part (or even the focal point) o f a non

31 Whether the Wright brothers were actually the first aviators by means o f a heavier than air dirigible, and whether they were beaten by a few years, is immaterial as to the enormous speed o f aviation development. For an excellent technical treatment and historical overview o f aviation technology, see John Anderson's Introduction to Flight (Anderson 1985).


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instrumental understanding o f being. Future generations may use the earth merely

instrumentally as a filling station or as a transfer point in inter-stellar travel. Ultimate

objectification would then become universal. Or we may, alternatively, view the earth as our

original ground giving rise to aviation and airports, our future works o f art.

Like no other technology, aviation can hold up to us what we as a civilization are up

to: being challenger o f space, the ultimate frontier. Seen in the proper perspective, aviation

can make us both proud and humble. The more sophisticated our airships, the less significant

our "earthly" concerns: we may become "awe-full," in the original sense o f the word as being

filled with awe. This transport may contribute to the melting o f subjective vs. objective

stances into one standing reserve (Bestand) in which we overcome our technological

understanding o f things as mere "objects" on call to be ordered by "subjects." Heidegger

implies a newly found solidarity between formerly opposed "subjects" and "objects:"

Whatever stands by in the sense o f standing-reserve no longer stands over against us as object. (QCT 17; VA 24)

Now we can realize that by treating our everyday things as objects, we have been on the

wrong track all along.

Because o f the temporary suspension o f the earth's pull on us, resulting in both the

elevation and the volatility o f flying, aviation technology requires a tight-knit man-machine

symbiosis that leaves the subject-object dichotomy o f modernism behind. Such a symbiosis

requires, more than in any other area o f technology, ultimate precision, vigilance, and care for

the things our being so visibly depends on. Furthermore, aviation by necessity transcends any

individualistic trip by forcing ultimate cooperation between all agents involved: aircraft


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engineers and mechanics, meteorologists, air traffic controlers, pilots, aircraft personnel, to

name the most important ones. The above features suggest that if a work o f art emerges, it

will do so in the context o f aviation.

7.2.2 A New Denver International Airport

Denver will probably be the first metropolitan area in N orth America which will see

the construction o f a new major airport for general aviation. Many interested parties have a

stake in "doing it right:" the residents o f the region, the local politicians, the Federal Aviation

Administration, the airlines, and future travelers. This section outlines the initial planning

stage and criticizes the underlying planning and design methodology from the perspective

discussed in this chapter. Subsection 7.2.3 will outline some features the new airport should

have in order to serve as a possible w ork o f art for the region.

Like all major airports in this country, the present Stapleton International Airport will

soon reach its operating capacity. The Metro Airport Study, sponsored by the Denver

Regional Council, identified the expansion o f Stapleton International into the federally owned

Rocky Mountain Arsenal northeast o f the city as the best site for the proposed facility. A

decade o f public debate culminated in the preparation o f seven briefing papers for the "New

Airport M aster Plan." 32

The Denver urbanized area has about 1.5 million residents, with Denver itself having

a population o f about half a million, but it is not the population size o f the Denver

32 City and County o f Denver 1985.


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metropolitan area itself which will generate the projected long-term needs. Denver is a

W estern hub for major airlines (the fifth largest airport in the USA). This regional function

has made the present carrier airport obsolete. The major steps in the preparation o f the

Masterplan (aviation demand forecasting, financial feasibility, community and legal issues,

program for long-term development, etc.) have been taken. In 1985, the recommendations

concerning the new carrier airport were subject to the political process. The decisions which

had to be made were difficult because o f the enormous public investment required and the

uncertainty of aviation demand for the new airport brought about since airline deregulation.

55 million enplanements are projected for the year 2020.

The briefing papers for the new airport masterplanning consist o f the following:33

No. 1 W ork Program and Management PlanNo. 2 Forecasts and Airport RequirementsNo. 3 Airport Site SelectionNo. 4 Preliminary Design ConceptsNo. 5 Long-Range Airport ConceptNo. 6 Phase I Development Plan AlternativesNo. 7 Final Recommendations.

Illustrious consulting firms -- specializing in fields ranging from geo-technical engineering,

aircraft noise control, airport access, parking and circulation — have been contracted for

cooperation. Issues brought up and comments being furnished during the meetings o f the

Planning Group, the Advisory Committee and during public hearings have been meticulously

recorded. The work program for the technical issues o f the study consists o f 103 separately

33 City and County o f Denver 1985, Briefing Paper 1, 1.


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identified tasks. The work program for the environmental study alone consists o f nine

additional separate tasks.34

In short, attempts have been made to meet the requirements for sound engineering,

responsible p lanning, and democratic participation. Judging on the basis o f the available

material, I conclude that the highest standards o f comprehensiveness and technical expertise

have being applied. Whether requirements for a new generation o f wide body aircraft with

unusually long wing spans and for super-sonic and sub-orbital aircraft will be taken into

account or not, the present planning process embodies the state o f the "art."

Yet there is no evidence that thought has been given to incorporating features that

reflect aviation as a candidate for a possible new cultural paradigm. Table 3.2.1, Technical

Evaluations Matrix (Year 2020), cross tabulates 19 factors (27 measures o f performance) and

9 alternative sites for the airport. This table is followed by a Ratings M atrix (Table 3.3.1.)

in which even ethereal factors such as "Vegetation Factors" and "Wildlife Resources" are

being considered. Yet "Residences to be Acquired" and "Change in Adjacent Communities"

are the only measures o f performance (expressed in dollar values) for the factor "Social

Effects." A look at the Ratings M atrix (Year 2020) is an invitation for indecision: 169 boxes

with different shades o f grey refuse to reveal the "optimal" solution. The problem o f

aggregating all these micro-evaluations into a convincing overall design scheme is passed over

with silence. Even if a weighting matrix for the 27 measures o f performance is to be decided

upon, the arithmetic outcome may be binding but hardly convincing as a coherent design idea.

34 City and County o f Denver, Briefing Paper 1 ,6 ff.


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Briefing Paper No. 3 on Site Selection concludes with the bottom line. Table 3.3.2

presents a Comparison o f Capital Costs (Million 1986 Dollars, Year 2020). The total costs

projected for the nine site alternatives range from 15 Million (Existing Stapleton, Base Case

1) to 2,348 Million (Stapleton Expansion, Second Creek, Canted Runways)!

Despite the laudable efforts at comprehensiveness and technical know-how,

something is fundamentally wrong with a planning procedure which breaks up the

masterplanning into 100 mini tasks. The procedure is fundamentally flawed because it expects

the explicit decision making about the 100 subcomponents to merge into one objectified

overall design scheme which is supposed to be optimal given the evaluation criteria. Even

explicit and quantified objectification o f the 100 decision fragments will not add up to a

convincing overall design scheme. Following Heidegger, prior to this analytical procedure

a pro-ject, an agreed upon general concept which is "put before" all the minute

categorizations and quantifications, should come first. Such a commonly shared project ~

the specific features o f which may be and should be initially blurry — is able to synthesize the

myriad o f considerations into a unified edifice. Unifying the political debates, public hearings,

and the myriad o f detail decisions during its long construction period and subsequent use,

such an inspirired edifice as synthesizer may function as a regional work o f art. Planning and

designing for facilities o f the magnitude o f the Denver airport without a unifying scheme is

a sterile vivisection even before the edifice can come to life.


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7.2.3 Denver International Airport as a Proposed Work o f Art

The toughest challenge for designing the new airport as a work o f art is letting go o f

the instrumental attitude o f challenging and willful making. A willed or imposed work o f art

is a contradiction in terms. Designers and engineers generate numerous ideas to solve design

problems. However, nobody knows in advance what the work o f art will be like until it is

suddenly "there." If the above characterization o f transportation, and aviation in particular,

as the presently purest manifestation o f what we as a collective are up to is correct, then a few

meta-technological design principles may be distilled from what is "currently going on."

Those design principles, then, would not be imposed; they rather would be gathered from

reflections on our already existing but overlooked micro practices. Such gathering (Greek

legeiri) is the unique logic o f a work o f art.

Following Heidegger's poetic anatomy o f a work o f art (outlined in Section 4.3),

airport design and aviation as a potential work o f art have to embody the fruitful struggle o f

totalizing and resisting forces, i.e., the struggle between "world" and "earth." The interplay

o f these forces may inform the following post-technological design principles for the future

Denver airport.

A Desien Proposal

While the use o f an airport, as well as flying in general, is as smooth, comfortable, safe

and transparent as possible, we are surrounded by friendly reminders o f our finitude,

mortality, and o f our fu ndam en ta lly endangered situation. Flying is a limited release from

"earth." Even while flying we realize that we are still dependents o f the earth (food, water,


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oxygen, fuel, communication, etc.). The flight crew, airline operations, and the airport design

features help make these dependencies unobtrusively visible to the traveler.

More tangible ways o f letting "earth" show itself can be devised. Points o f interest

on the ground are usually pointed out by the flight crew, not so the more important events,

i.e., when something goes wrong. These dangerous instances are the "earth's” protest against

the smooth -- often arrogant — dominance o f the totalizing Gestell, the ultimate danger.

These refusals o f "earth" should be communicated not only to the technical support apparatus,

but to the passengers as well. But revealing "earth" in such a down-to-earth fashion goes

against the grain o f the perceived interest o f smooth airline management — World Airways,

Trans World Airways and the other worldly airlines which assure you, united and with a

smile, that the sky is friendly.

The airport itself conveys a sense o f historic contingency by documenting what has

been there before. Thus traveler and employee are reminded o f our values and trade-ofls. The

history and contingency o f aviation itself is the subject matter o f exhibits placed in the

terminal buildings. The airport is an ideal place to accentuate a feel for individual and

collective transition. Global connectedness is stressed by various design features working on

different communication channels (visual, acoustic, touch related) while equally emphasizing

local ambience. International style architecture is avoided because this global architecture

reinforces the universalizing thrust o f aviation while neglecting to pay tribute to local

conditions and customs. Flying remains an adventure when origin, transfer point and

destination reveal their unique regional differences.


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Denver lies at the eastern foothills o f the Rocky Mountains, which are part o f the

mountain chain which stretches from Alaska to the southern tip o f Chile. The Rockies are

part o f the Pan American spine. Denver as a former American frontier still connects the East

and the West o f the continent. This extraordinary geographical location and place in history

is highlighted through corresponding exterior and interior design. While staying clear o f the

mountains, the runways, taxiways and view corridors o f the terminal buildings are chosen in

such a way that the mountains become present. Artifacts in the lobby and at the gates

recollect the American and Indian traditions and place the Denver region in its history. The

overall design o f the terminal complex recalls these traditions by alluding to pueblo, adobe

or railroad station. The airport and its natural surrounding mutually reinforce each other in

their unique features by letting nature and artifact be distinct yet related phenomena. Each

is autonomous and yet related to its opposite. Their connected autonomy lets each come into

its own.

By way o f the general design features outlined above, the new Denver International

Airport will be more than a way station to be passed through as quickly as possible.

Stapleton International, or whatever name the new airport will carry, will then serve as a

mirror o f our practices and ambitions as well as a means for transport. It will remind us that

when flying the skies we tend to leave "earth" behind or even forget it altogether. The airport

will be smooth and transparent in its utilitarian functions catering to our demands for

efficiency, change and pace. At the same time, "earthly" design features will quietly remind

us what we are up to, and that it does not have to be that way. Thus the airport will mirror

our practices and implicate what they leave out, thereby offering us a meaningful place in


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space and time. Gathering these functions into one technological arte factum , the airport will

be a manifestation o f techne: the coming together o f art, craft, and technology. Denver

International may thus become a regional work o f art.

Horst Berger and Edward M. De Paola are working on the enclosure structures o f the

Landside Terminal. The tensile structure will consist o f 1.45 million square feet o f fabric

roof. In an article reporting on their efforts, Berger and De Paola express their aspiration for

this portion o f the new Denver A irport:35

One o f its most visible features will be the Great Hall o f the Landside Terminal. Tensile structure technology will stand out as a means o f enclosing space efficiently, economically and elegantly. This fabric roo f expresses the integrated nature o f tensile structures — where form and function are identical, where art and technology merge. On the inside, the structure resembles a classic basilica; on the outside, it imparts images o f mountains and tepees. The new Denver Airport will be an enjoyable architectural experience, created by the truly integrated effort o f architects and engineers.

7.3 A RESISTING THOUGHT

A work o f art is a manifestation o f the implicit self-understanding o f a unified.,

historical culture. It may therefore be inappropriate to expect a pluralistic society such as the

USA to find itself in one work o f art. A way out o f this dilemma may be the coming into

being o f many diverse works o f art, each reflecting in their own way a distinct unified

subculture. The ultimately successful works o f art may then be those whose boundaries

intersect with others. Still, the question remains whether one work o f art can integrate and

35 Berger and De Paola 1992, 43.


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unify a pluralistic and fragmented culture. The very hope for the emergence o f one

overarching artwork unifying a pluralistic society may evidence the pervasiveness o f the

totalizing enframing. Seen from the perspective o f middle Heidegger, there either is a work

o f art or we continue to live in a destitute time. Since a work o f art has to emerge out o f our

practices virtually overnight and cannot be willed, we first have to go through our

multifaceted technological fragmentation all the way before a work o f art can come forth and

thereby show us that we have gone through it.36

36 Because the artwork is rooted in commonly shared social practices, it cannot materialize by legal fiat nor by mere artistic inspiration. I resume the artw ork theme throughout Chapter 9, examining the compatibility and overlap o f the three principal street functions, and discuss conditions for the emergence o f an artwork in my concluding remarks at the end o f that chapter.


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Chapter 8

On the Way to Dwelling on Streets

In this chapter I apply the theoretical insights gained in Chapter 5 on "Dwelling in a

Technological World" to two very different street environments. I will focus first on a

modest but important streetscape element: the trash can in the urban fabric (Section 8.1).

Then I will turn our attention to the continental network o f freeways (Section 8.2). My

guiding questions are: How do trash cans and freeways thing? How can an understanding

o f their specific ways o f thingmg aid us in improving our public streets and freeways in such

a way that we may more humanly dwell on them?

8.1 THE TRASH CAN AS A THING

In order to exemplify the archaic sounding fourfold and its four aspects {earth, sky,

divinities, mortals), I will not review Heidegger's main examples, the water or wine jug and

the Black Forest farmhouse. Instead, I will apply these four dimensions o f practices to an

ordinary and often slighted streetscape feature: the trash can. I will interprete the trash can

as a thing in the sense developed in Chapter 5 and will show its specific way o f "thinging."

The original meaning o f "thing" is assembly or gathering. Drawing on this origin, I

will furthermore indicate how this unassuming streetscape item can come into its own as a res

publica, i.e., as a material focus o f public concern and import. The trash cans shown on the

photographs gather local worlds in San Francisco.


Figure 8-1 Trash cans just one block apart, establishing very distinct local worlds.

Mission St. at 4th St.(top); Howard St. at Moscone Convention Center (bottom)


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Grounding Matters

The trash can is a small but integral part o f the urban circulation system. The trash

can aids the circulation o f materials and foot traffic by maintaining basic cleanliness. In

fulfilling these important functions, the trash can harbors taken-for-granted-practices in many

ways. The trash can is generally taken for granted and therefore often disrespected, snubbed,

and even abused.

As beings dependent on food, fluids, merchandise, and information, we need to

depose o f left-overs, bags, containers, wrappings, and paper new and old. If we don't want

to carry trash around or drop things on the ground, we have to find a trash can to depose o f

the refuse. By being available in a convenient yet unobtrusive way, the trash can accepts and

affirms us as producers o f waste. Nowadays, the trash can also gives us the option o f being

recyclers o f various elements o f the earth (Figure 8-1, top). Receiving our waste for

recycling, the trash can prompts and affirms us as the earth's preservers.

Being itself made from elements o f the earth, the trash is a receptacle which conceals

and covers our waste and thereby protects our public ways. Its main value lies in its void that

temporarily stores our refuse and hides it from our view. Its ability to conceal our garbage

is transparent to us, yet we do not want the trash can to be literally transparent.

Standing firmly on the ground, the trash can tacitly holds up to us what we as a public

espouse and assume to be self-evident. We enjoy public places that are alive with people and

various activities. We want these places to be intensively used but also visibly cared for and

well maintained. It matters to us to pass through or dwell in such orderly spaces. It matters


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to us to maintain distinctions between cared for and neglected spaces, between visual order

and clutter, and between clean and dirty places.

Directly and indirectly, the property placed trash can supports various urban activities,

such as walking, shopping, conversing, and the smooth transition from one to the other.

Without forcing a break in our urban flow, the trash can allows for the graceful and civilized

end o f one activity (e.g., deposing o f an ice cream's stick or wrapper) and thereby easing us

into a new activity (e.g., buying and reading a newspaper). The well-placed trash can, in its

own way, provides a proper ground for our urban and urbane ways by offering alternatives

to littering, by collecting trash and hiding it from our view, and by keeping this entire

gathering process in the background.

Opening Possibilities

As long as the trash can is periodically emptied, it provides an opening that is ready

to receive our materials for recycling which benefits our urban and our natural environment.

It functions as a receptacle in manifest ways. The trash can is a visible and persuasive

invitation to keep our urban parks, roadways, and sidewalks clean. It also provides

opportunities for teaching us and our children how to care o f our common ground and for

instilling the unspoken message that keeping this ground civilized matters to us. The trash

can teaches without words.

Even a fu ll trash can announces the possibility o f trash disposal, either by pointing out

the need to seek another empty one or by requiring compression o f its contents to make room

for more waste material. Even if temporarily full, a trash can does not negate its potential for


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its valuable service. On the contrary, a full or overflowing trash container reveals its valuable

service the more plainly and bluntly.

The trash can's service is evident to everyone. Its service, furthermore, is also stable

and generally predictable by the way it is placed. Obvious locations are where people are

likely in need o f waste disposal and where, conversely, they are most likely to litter if a trash

bin is not ready to hand. In general, its most fitting locations are therefore at convenience

stores, transit stops, benches, and at crosswalks. In order to provide an unobstructed

pedestrian path o f travel, the trash can is placed close to the building line or the curb. The

well-placed trash can facilitates several activities (unimpeded walking, keeping clean, and

waiting at neat spots) a t the same time.

The trash can presents waste disposal and recycling as inviting possibilities. Urban

dwellers have the choice to respond to or reject the trash can's open invitation. This humble

streetscape device summons and respects people’s choice. The trash container is not a

straightjacket nor does it call for a jail cell if its summons are not heeded. Urban dwellers

have several options. One can carry one's trash around or take it home. One can deliberately

search for a trash can or wait ft>r one that may come one's way. One can apply oneself and

compress trash to make room for more "contributions" to urban order and cleanliness. One

is also free to litter. The trash can opens up, and simultaneously shows us, these multiple

possibilities, thereby mirroring in a public way our social and political horizons. The streets

o f Singapore, for instance, are much cleaner than ours in the United States. For littering, we

don't get punished by the stick. For littering, we are punishing ourselves by having to look

into our urban mirrors.


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Figure 8-2 Trash containers attuning our proper ways.

Yerba Buena Gardens (top); at Union Square (bottom)


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Attuning the Setting

The look o f the trash can attunes us to its genius loci, the pervading local spirit.

Design, placement, and maintenance o f the trash can establish a behavior setting. The setting

which this thing sets up attunes our perception, mood, and interaction. The way it strikes and

moves us affects us individually and collectively. We sense and respond to its "vibes." An

attractive, clean, and "empty" trash container prompts us to use it, a shapeless, dirty, and

overflowing one repels us even if we intend to depose o f trash.

A trash can that properly attunes its surrounding is unobtrusively available without

drawing undue attention to itself It does not dw arf its surrounding and the local practices

it is designed to support in an unassuming way. In tune with the specific local mood which

the trash can establishes, passers-by tend to use or disregard it. A well designed, placed, and

maintained trash can, unpretentiously yet persistently, solicits silent authority, simple respect,

and an informal loyalty to the public realm.

The attunement the trash can creates by way o f its affective qualities is publicly

granted. Even if the trash can is made by an artisan, the collective attunement it may create

is not o f any one individual's doing or effort. We are attuned to a trash can's feel and

ambience even if we are not aware o f it. Its attunement is "in the air," that means it works

in subtle yet pervasive ways. In order for its civilizing sway to take hold a trash can must

never look trashy.

Figure 8-2 above suggests some o f the efforts with which trash cans may be selected,

placed, maintained, or even modified to increase their attuning power. B oth trash cans are

not only conveniently located for trash disposal and pedestrian circulation, they also reinforce


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the formal local spirit o f place. The trash can’s vertical lattice design (Figure 8-2, top)

highlights the falling water and, by matching color, emphasizes its close connection to the

public green. The square trash can (Figure 8-2, bottom) is actually a standard City model

adapted sufficiently enough to underscore both difference from and connection to the rest o f

the city. Through its overall shape it reinforces its connection to the city. However, its light

green paint (rather than the standard earthy ocher, see Figure 8-1 top) exactly matches the

color o f the adjacent ornate street light pole and complements the red bricks which pave the

way for shopping. Note that the green paint of this shopping district trash container (Figure

8-2, bottom) also covers the area where the City typically displays its insignia.

The trash can at the bus stop (Figure 8-1, top), in contrast, flashes its official seal. It

shows citizens via perforated letters and arrows where to "recycle" (bin on top) and where

to "litter" (main container). The trash can at the convention center (Figure 8-1, bottom)

exhibits its sculpturesque elegance without any exhortation o r pointers. By means o f its slick

bronze surface, and in partnership with the adjacent bronze street light pole mimicking a palm

tree, this container o f civilization and commerce draws together a restricted world o f staged

conventions, exhibits, fashion and other vogue devices. The trash container Fabrique en

France establishes here an island o f exclusive calm in the urban thicket.

In Care o f Mortals

Opening up possibilities for us, grounding and sheltering our taken-for-granted ways

that we inhabit, and attuning us to the mood o f local worlds, the trash can provides a final

service by recalling that the material and social orders o f things can foil or fall short o f our


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expectations, ambitions, and dreams. It can gently remind us that the ways o f civility to which

it attunes and accustoms us are fragile and temporary. When things fail o r show signs o f

intentional damage, the mood o f a place can dramatically change. An otherwise attractive and

well placed trash container that is overflowing, for example, is a sorry site and can spoil the

mood around it. Precisely because a trash can offers us choice, it can also show us how one

can be out o f tune with the decorum that it locates. When we don't respond to its summons,

the trash can disowns us by spotlighting our trashing o f the propriety it requests.

A disrespected, overflowing, or unstable trash can reveals to us that even simple and

robust things are subject to change and decay. A trash bin in obvious need o f maintenance

or repair teaches us that at times the taken-for-granted things and the practices they solicit

cannot be taken for granted and that they need our deliberate care, effort, and dedication to

keep them going. As we need things, so things need "the vigilance o f mortals." (PLT 181)

Cared for and understood with vigilance the humble trash can affirms us as mortals.

As a temporary container o f our refuse and recycler o f our waste, the trash bin may hold vigil

over us and intimate that our possessions and achievements, including any particular instances

o f world disclosing, are temporary, fragile, even disposable. By facilitating our everyday

activities, the trash can tacitly teaches us that things are in flux, move in cycles, and need "the

vigilance o f mortals."

Gathering Into One

The fourfold does not show its four aspects o f practices {earth, sky, divinities,

mortals) in sequence or as separate images. Establishing a local world, the fourfold gathers


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all four aspects simultaneously. When we analyze the trash can in its four distinct aspects,

we necessarily narrow our view o f the way it things. In presenting the unitary phenomenon

o f thinging, we indicate the undivided th inging in four distinct ways only for reasons o f

practicality and clarity. The trash can is one, and as one thing it gathers people, equipment,

and activities into one local world around itself. The trash can creates a ring o f sway. Its

sphere o f influence can maintain stable in the everyday urban flow when it receives our

matter-of-fact and abiding attention.

This brief indication o f how the four aspects o f thinging fold into one local world

completes my interpretation o f the trash can as an urban thing, i.e., as a focal point o f urban

practices. It is one o f many possible ways to describe a th in g thinging. In order to present

a thing that takes hold o f its natural surroundings, I quote below Wallace Stevens's

"Anecdote o f the Jar" (1919).1 His account o f a jar -- confected "... not to console/Nor

sanctify, but plainly to propound" 2 — illustrates in poetic form the phenomenon which

Heidegger calls "a thing thinging." It may be read as a complement to my preceding tale o f

the urban trash can.

1 Contained in Harmonium, a volume o f poems published in 1923. Wallace Stevens 1997, 60-61.

2 Wallace Stevens, "Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction," in Stevens 1997, 336.


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Anecdote o f the Jar

I placed a ja r in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and o f a port o f air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give o f bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Responding to a cue from this jar, I propose to place a trash can in the center o f a

small urban space where it can take its gray and bare dominion. We spend a lot o f private and

public funds on "public art" that often amounts to no more than provocative gesture or

decorative addition to urban streets and plazas. We ponder little on the many urban

sculptures which are to spur our urbane ways. A trash can encountered, at first sight, as a


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sculpture but disclosed as a thing may be a most revealing res publica. Such a trash container

prominently placed in an urban public place may tame the wilderness around it, prompt us to

rise to our public being, and gather our ways and means. As a public focal point this

container may do all this by just being there.

8.2 THE FREEWAY THINGING

After having traced how the urban trash can, a very humble thing often neglected and

shunned, gathers a local world around itself I want to focus now on freeways as public works

which receive a lot o f attention, in positive and negative ways. Based on "Dwelling in a

Technological World" (Chapter 5) I will review the freeway as a thing. My guiding questions

in this section are: How do freeways thing? How can an understanding o f their specific ways

o f thinging aid us in improving them so that we may better live with them in a manner

appropriate for a postm odern age o f mobility and flexibility.

Taking o ff from Heidegger's suggestion o f the freeway "bridge" and the network o f

gracefully interconnecting freeways as civic structures that embody our technological

understanding o f being, I will examine the freeway from the perspective o f the four aspects

o f practices as explained in Chapter 5. I will argue that the typical freeway is open to the sky,

somewhat less hostly to the attuning divinities, deserves just a passing grade on earth, and

fails us as mortals.


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gKSiigii msegvmigH

Figure 8-3 A gathering o f bridges and free ways (Source: University o f Pennsylvania)

The freeways and their "bridge" segments, gently branching off without interrupting

our travel, connect to other freeways which in turn lead to arterial, collector, and residential

streets. This laced hierarchy o f streets, culminating in the freeway in terms o f reach, capacity,

and public expense, takes hold o f the land and makes it accessible to virtually everyone. The

freeway has maximized our individual mobility tremendously. The possibilities the freeway

has opened up with respect to long-distance travel are historically without precedent. Drivers

and passengers who are still receptive to these relatively recent possibilities feel, at least

occasionally, an air o f excitement fueled by so much abundant freedom to move about. Those

who feel escorted by the freeway and its gentle directional options may rekindle the almost


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magical enthusiasm which the futurists celebrated in their early modem visions o f technology

and speed. Some o f them may feel grateful for modem urban designers such as Le Corbusier

who chartered cities to segregate into dwelling towers and open spaces interlaced with

highways.

This modem vision, however, has gradually eroded since the early 1960s 3 when

individualized freedom and the celebration o f local worlds began to emerge as ends superior

to material satisfaction and the bland sameness o f a universalized "International Style" o f

dwellings, cities, and motorways. Already a generation ago, many people sensed that

contrary to imposing claims and promises o f unbridled mobility, the freeways, especially

where they insisted on penetrating dwelling areas, were cutting off options for individual

movement and access to local worlds. Since then, the ongoing freeway controversy has

demonstrated how much mobility, access, options, and choices matter to us.

We have seen in Chapter 5 that our everyday things must encompass all four aspects

o f practices for an anchored world and complete dwelling to take place. Testing the standard

freeway against the fourfold's quiet demands suggests that even the smooth and elegant multi

3 In response to increasing concerns about the negative impacts o f urban freeways, theFederal-Aid Highway Act o f 1962 mandated that federally funded highway projects be based on a continuous and comprehensive transportation planning process in which all levels o f government are to participate cooperatively. In order to achieve a more balanced surface transportation system, the U.S. Congress passed the Urban Mass Transportation Act o f 1964 (for an historical overview o f urban transportation planning in the United States, see U.S. Department o f Transportation, 1988). These major Federal Acts and following supportive legislation attempted to address the growing concerns about the adverse consequences o f automobile domination in urban areas. Jane Jacob’s observations on The Death and Life o f Great American Cities (1961) mark the first major milestone in the critique o f the modernist city vision in which the car functions as its hub.


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level interstate bridge is found wanting. The lofty freeway interchanges and cloverleafs (see

Figure 8-3) generally do not occasion a feeling o f being lucky and grateful for the fortune and

affluence the freeways spread before us. Even the bridging and interweaving fly-overs do not

elevate us sufficiently to bridge gaps between diverse activities or social and ecological

communities. I f we believe the media, we are stuck on and with our freeways.

Despite their faults and shortcomings, we go on using and building freeways and then-

smooth interconnections because they allows 24-hour, on-demand, uninterrupted travel

through grade separations. These vertical separations o f travel paths are made possible by

calculating and aggregating various resources: material, financial, and human.4 The autobahn

"bridge" exemplifies a postmodern understanding in terms o f our drives for maximum

flexibility, efficiency, and mobility. This bridge swings to the rhythms o f our times. Base

isolators and expansions joints literally expand even further the flexibility and adaptability o f

civic structures to withstand a major earthquake. Yet the way our freeways and their bridging

interconnections support our common drives and focal practices must be deemed unbalanced,

especially in the case o f urban freeways. It may turn out that our contemporary limited

enthusiasm for freeways, and the occasional pointed revolt against them, result from their

inadequate manifestation of the fourfold. The typical freeway does not come into its own,

I am arguing below, because it does not invite all four aspects o f our practices in even

measure. The standard freeway admits the fourfold but only in distorted ways.

4 In line with the postmodern understanding o f technology which emphasizes efficient and flexible aggregation and disaggregation o f resources, more and more Personnel Departments have been renamed "Department o f Human Resources."


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With its multiple possibilities and ubiquitous options covering the entire North

American continent, the freeway does indeed manifest the sky. The praised possibilities,

however, may be considered oversold considering that the joy o f "happily zipping around an

autobahn cloverleaf in tune with technology" 5 is these days more likely to be found in a TV

commercial rather than during the daily commute. But in principle, the autobahn and its

bridging interconnections do manifest our contemporary horizon o f expectations. The

freeway connects us swiftly to choice locations such as the dealing and wheeling metropolis,

the soothing ocean, or elevating places like Heavenly.

The divinities, the attuning ones, descend upon the freeway, albeit with less and less

enthusiasm. When experiencing free flow6 on the freeway, drivers may feel thankful for the

abundant freedom o f moving about and for the ease o f accessing multiple worlds. When a

freeway allows this free flow, displays engaging scenery along its way, and grants us safe and

reliable vehicles and fair weather as friendly travel companions, it attunes us most

appropriately to our prized mobility technology and flexible life brimming with options.

The popular culture has recognized and expressed this attunement by celebrating the

freeway and its graceful interconnections that let us take off into new directions. The

Beatniks were perhaps the first who responded enthusiastically to the freeways' enchantment.

5 Dreyfus and Spinosa 1997, 174.

6 I am using “free flow” as a short form for the technical term "free-flow speed" used in traffic engineering. In “Operational Aspects o f Highway Capacity” (Institute o f Transportation Engineers, 1992a, 117-153), William R. Reilly states: “The free-flow speed is defined as the average travel speed of passenger cars operating under conditions o f low to moderate traffic volume.” (150) At a free-flow speed o f 60 mph and at level o f service A (lowest level o f congestion), a driver experiences a maximum density o f 12 passenger cars per minute per lane (Table 5-41, 151).


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They understood and extolled the freeways as focal things that attuned their free ways. Even

though the enthusiasm experienced On the Road has paled considerably since Jack Kerouac7

reportedly typed his novel on a continuous roll o f paper during an intense creative spell

propelled by speed and movements from coast to coast, the tune o f Willie Nelson's "On the

Road Again" is still being played and generally well received. It still strikes a cord in us,

makes us beat to its rhythm, and attunes us along our ways.

When using a freeway or interchange today at the close o f the 20th century, we

generally do not have the sense o f having received something special. Previous generations

which had less options to choose from were generally more grateful for the ones they had. If

there is a residual sense o f gratitude when being escorted along our interstates, it is commonly

pointing back to us when we pass freeway construction sites and read "Your Tax Dollars At

Work." By now, the typical freeway experience has become too commonplace to engender

genuine excitement. But a multi-level freeway interchange (see Figure 8-3 above) teeming

with hundreds of vehicles that are gracefully changing lanes and purposefully heading in

various directions, can still generate a sense of common achievement and pride. Being

grateful for these flexibility opportunities when they do shine forth, if only intermittently, is

an attunement which the extensive freeway network still affords today.

While the freeway opens up a vast horizon o f options and attunes us to our flexible

technology for accessing a variety o f worlds, dwelling on earth as mortals are aspects o f our

practices which are woefully neglected or blended out by design. The standard highway plans

7 Jack Kerouac, On the Road. New York: Penguin Books, 1976. Published first in 1955, On the Road has been Kerouac's most successful novel.


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cement this neglect right into road alignment, roadside features, and signage by focusing

almost entirely on capacity, information, and safety issues. We typically encounter social and

cultural dimensions o f the road only in arid passages on traffic regulations and via counsel on

legal matters. Freeway adoption signs along highways, proudly naming sponsors and

caretakers, are promising indications that mortals do care for the ground that sustains and

moves them. As a su s ta in in g aspect of our practices, earth is, however, typically not an

integral part o f roadway design. As the freeway adoption signs imply, concerned citizens and

volunteers feel called upon to make up for a typical highways’ “earth deficit” through special

maintenance efforts o f their own.

Conservative and minimalist design degrades the expressway to an expedient channel

for surface mobility. We eagerly accommodate access to supermarkets and shopping malls.

Access to earth, our sustaining cultural institutions and background practices, are not part o f

the design principles found in textbooks on highway engineering. Furthermore, access to

scenic beauty, historic sites, cultural institutions, and dwelling areas is in general interpreted

only literally as a direct physical locomotion from point "A" to "B." Our notion of access has

to become broader and grounded more deeply. It is important that we maintain visual

connection, if only in passing, to what we are given and what we have built. Scenic beauty,

historic sites, cultural institutions, and dwelling areas must nevertheless be present even if we

don't access them tangibly. We must be assured of their background presence so that we can

indeed take them for granted; only then do they ground our everyday practices. Earth is a


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design element that shelters such worldly access and makes it matter to us by preserving it as

withdrawn yet available backdrop.8

As members o f the automotive society we take for granted that we have the flexibility

options provided to us by the private automobile and the pervasive hierarchy o f interlinked

streets. We are accustomed to these options, we pay for them (mostly through gas taxes),

and we feel entitled to them. We become aware of the fact that they do matter to us mainly

when these options are not available to us, even if only temporarily. As a transportation

engineer and commuter, I daily witness the pervasive relevance o f mobility that the public

takes for granted. I witness mobility matters coming to the fore in public meetings where

freeway demolition, retrofit, or widening, and even more localized issues such as parking

patterns, curb side use, and traffic calming measures are passionately debated. Surveys in the

San Francisco Bay Area indicate almost yearly that ground transportation and the

preservation of mobility are at the top o f the region's priority list, outranking important issues

such as education, public health, and crime.9

We may conclude that a high level o f mobility and access are an integral but "hidden"

and taken-for-granted part o f our everyday life. As defining requirements that ground our

highly mobile and fast pace life, mobility and access must stay in the background. They come

8 For a standard textbook example neglecting earth design, see Clarkson H. Oglesby and R. Gary Hicks, Highway Engineering. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1982. The U.S. Department o f Transportation, Federal Highway Administration has recently begun to explicitly address scenic, historic, aesthetic, and cultural factors through Flexibility in Highway Design. Washington, D.C., 1997.

9 For pertinent survey results, see footnote 3 on p. 43.


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to the fore with a vengeance when property access is denied or when the taken-fbr-granted

mobility is missing (or merely perceived to be curtailed): then "road rage" is unearthed.

In the context o f this study, “road rage” can be interpreted as a result o f an

instrumental understanding o f transportation. When drivers are confining themselves to this

instrumental understanding, they use the network o f roads and vehicles merely as a means to

get from “A” to “B”. They don't value the ground transportation network, which they entrust

with their speedy delivery, in its full posf-technological sense. When drivers, by contrast,

develop a post-technological understanding o f transportation technology, then they encounter

the ground transportation network as a web o f things and practices that assists them in

revealing themselves as beings who are on earth with technology.

When we are driven by time and impatience, captivated by the instrumental view o f

technology, we diminish our faculty o f disclosing our world, i.e., our everyday “here and

now.” In most instances o f our contemporary life, our world is a technological one.

However, a pervasive emphasis on “getting somewhere” as quickly as possible prevents us

from experiencing and enjoying the process of moving in a technological world. By way o f

moving through and beyond the instrumental understanding o f transportation technology, we

may elevate driving to a moving meditation 10 and leave "Instrumental City" behind for good

as an obsolete, stress-inducing place o f efficiency worship. When drivers are engaged in the

world o f the road and enjoy moving about in itself, they find no reason for rage but ample

grounds for mutual respect and civility.

10 I have borrowed the term “moving meditation” from K. T. Berger’s illuminating manual Zen Driving (1988).


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In order to infuse more civility on and along the road, these tacit grounding matters

should become somewhat more explicit, at least occasionally, in order to remind drivers,

passengers, and pedestrians that things have not always been this way and that moving about

on earth can be pleasant in different ways and at different paces. Highways and freeways can

be vehicles to get us closer to nature (even if we don't leave our cars) rather than merely

means to commute, cross the country, or flee the cities. Uniform building lines and setbacks

guide our urban moves with more inviting gestures than buildings with drastically varying

heights, gaping spaces between them, or with zigzagging distances from the edge o f the

roadway. When highways and streets are designed for dwelling on earth, they move us in

many ways. Designing and maintaining engaging roadside structures and features along our

highways, rather than only at trip origin and destination, is one avenue o f making moving

about pleasant in itself rather than merely a means to an end.

Our freeways that traverse our countryside or pass over the urban fabric do not

acknowledge us as mortals. Reminders that might acknowledge and affirm us as mortals are

intentionally and systematically eliminated from our transportation facilities. The smooth road

surface on the Interstate Highways, the emergency call stations available at expected

distances, and frequent "traffic updates" on the radio tend to make us forget that on US roads

alone 40,000 people are killed and over 100,000 people are injured yearly. Automobile

accidents are the leading cause o f death in the highly industrialized countries. Yet our high

volume and high speed facilities do not show any signs that let us pass as mortals. In

societies that are less driven by speed and efficiency (e.g., in Southern Europe and developing

countries) crosses along roads mark spots where people have been killed, thereby reminding


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us o f our mortality, building a community with those who have passed on, and affirm in g us

as mortals

Concerned individuals and small groups are presently the only ones who demonstrate

initiative and unassuming leadership in appreciating the wholeness o f our common ventures.

In the remainder o f this chapter I will review a few transportation examples that demonstrate

practices which acknowledge us as mortals.

Lately one may observe that relatives or friends have erected memorial sites for those

who have been killed on our speedy routes. By doing so, they restore a balance in our

understanding and appreciation o f the complete scope o f that which happens on our high- and

byways. These modest roadside shrines (Figures 8-4 and 8-5, next two pages) are easily

overlooked by drivers rushing by. Not knowing the personal significance o f the randomly

gathered trinkets and knickknacks that humanize crash pieces and personalize the fatal site,

outsiders may view these makeshift shrines as kitschy. These humble sites and the private

practices for which they provide a focus for observance are too marginal to make the news.

But if one is driven to return to these humble shrines erected "in loving memory," one notices

that someone cares for them: ribbons and notes have been added, a flag blown to the ground

has been raised again, and fresh flowers grace the freeway site. At least for a small audience,

their gathering power is undeniable.


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7 T lovi*g nsnoftv

GEORGIA NOSES 1185— IW

Figure 8-4 In Loving Memory (US 101, southbound on-ramp, Petaluma, Calif.)


Figure 8-5 A gathering o f things (US 101, northbound, Marin County)


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"Human Factors," a field o f applied research mostly narrowly understood as

efficiency, safety, and comfort enhancing ergonomics, is all what remains o f mortals. A sense

that being human, even in our high-tech world, is fragile and temporary is smoothed by

design, for instance through comfortable horizontal and vertical road alignments. Along

freeways, destination and guide signs are green, offering the same promise as "Evergreen,"

the mortuary on the next block. We seem to accept as a limit only the sky with its multiple

possibilities. The yoked system o f freeways and private automobiles exerts such a presence

with its dominating supermarket options and their bright and radiant signs that all other ways

o f dwelling and moving about are overshadowed.

We understand our roads and highways principally as skyways. Chicago names its

elevated highways indeed skyways. I f roads and highways are reduced, however, to sterile

traffic channels and sophisticated conveyor belts, they transmit the silent but constant message

that the plethora o f high-tech options is all there is. I f you do not want to be consumed by

being an agent of flexibility and adaptability, you have to head nowadays deliberately for the

back roads. Away from the freeways and its gentle curves and evergreen signs, you can

encounter there the rugged, the off-beat, the unique. The neglected bridges, potholes, and

rough edges encountered on those back roads tell you where our collective attention and

resources go, but also where mortals are still welcome.

Public agencies and elected officials, charged with design, operation, and maintenance

o f our public roads, seem to be bent on keeping these facilities free o f properties or

connotations that would affirm us as mortals. But shouldn't we erect a memorial, for

instance, along the former doubled-deck Cypress Freeway (1-880 in Oakland) which was


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leveled by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake? Ought we not remind drivers which bridge

segment on the lower deck o f the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (1-80) was dislodged

by the same earthquake causing one car to fell into the bay? Ought we not visibly

commemorate in gratitude that only one vehicle was lost on that bridge even though at 5:05

PM the rush hour traffic could have easily extracted a much higher human toll? Shouldn't we

publicly and conspicuously celebrate the feet that most o f the time we pass these and similar

feteful locations without any harm?

Official agencies in charge o f these facilities do not want do deal tangibly with these

“grave” matters for reasons o f aesthetics, "safety," politics, and, o f course, legal liability.

Elected officials and public admistrators are glad that destructive events such as earthquakes,

hurricanes, and floods are passing and transient "incidents," but, oddly enough, they do not

want to publicly recognize fragility, transiency, and impermanence!

Shouldn't our public roads and buildings be able to teach us more than how to

shrewdly scurry around in a hyperactive maze? Public works that recognize and welcome us

as mortals, in manners grand or subtle, could not only provide for our expedient circulation

but could really quicken and animate us.

Observing us as mortals along our freeways are still marginal local practices. The

interlinked freeways presently function adequately as focal points but only for the dominant

understanding o f ourselves as flexible resource. We want to use our freeways only as

highways and are moved by them only as skyw ays. We need, however, to widen our

perspective by a more comprehensive understanding and a more earthy appreciation of


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streets, and we need to become more familiar with alternative ways o f dwelling which they

may offer us.

Figure 8-6 A reminder on dwelling

(mural by Rigo 94; 6th Street north o f Folsom Street, San Francisco)

Getting off the speedy freeways and getting on roads that provide less mobility but

more accessibility allows one to enter and reveal novel worlds. Taking roads less traveled

attunes us to diverse practices that are refreshingly different from, and at times diametrically

opposed to, the enticing web o f the interstate, internet, and other international alliances.

When attending to less hasty ways we may realize that we are not dwelling at home when we

are riding the interstate merry-go-round, when we are held virtually in suspense via fleeting


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"in-between" states, or when we make connections around the earth only electronically. We

seem to need conspicuous reminders (Figure 8-6) that we dwell not only in our individual

intercity express mobiles Hash ing along the widespread interstates but also in the local inner

city. To complement our high-tech postmodern dwelling we have to grow down-to-earth and

rediscover how to be streetwise.

Not far from North Dakota's Interstate-94 spanning the North American plains, one

may stumble upon a store on a plain street that is apparently frozen in time (Figure 8-7, next

page). Unexpected discoveries are possible on such plain streets which are named Main

Street in many towns. Those off-speed roads calm the hard beat o f the metropolitan hustle

and provide soothing syncopations. The hand-written Store Hours announce off-the-cuff that

they are not Business Hours conducted and observed as usual. The store keeper does not

manage anything or anyone, but makes a living, is open to commonplace and friendly chatter

and, at times, closes unexpectedly or is not there at all. It is unlikely that this merchant needs

a pager or a pace maker. These Stores Hours, unwittingly scribbled as a vernacular poem,

amount to a folk song in free form and a vade mecum counteracting our haste and waste.

This meandering rhapsody on Plain Street is beating to a drum different from the

speedy ways and flexible means o f our dominant culture. It has been written with endearing

care and much consideration for customers. This store sign is, nevertheless, also a notice of

gentle defiance. The store is open at odd hours and its keeper tends to being there on his own

time.


R eproduced with perm ission of the

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This store's animating accents result from Plain Street's syncopations. In the sound

world, a syncopation is a temporary displacement o f the regular metrical accent caused

typically by stressing the weak beat. By responding to our soft spots, failings and foibles.

Plain Street invites us to humor its Store Hours as a Book o f Hours.

This wandering sign stores the possibility and pens the necessity o f inhabiting and

keeping alive those practices which empower us to resist the flexibility treadmill and to pursue

endeavors that are at odds with perpetual adaptation and transformation. This sign is a public

recollection. It reinforces the urgent message that if we want our postmodern technological

being to amount to more than hollow busyness and hyperactive muscle flexing, we must

assure that focal endeavors, as withdrawn or odd as they may look to outsiders, are tolerated,

accepted, and even nurtured. Inclusiveness in recognizing and appreciating multiple worlds

may become a custom. Habitual practice o f such customs can make them part o f a common

dwelling that overcomes the strictures o f modernism. Preserving Main Street — its rhythms,

smells, and sounds — or reinventing it according to "neo-traditional" principles is one step

in the direction toward a multifarious postmodern dwelling.

Building and m ain ta in ing roadside shrines at the fringe o f highways, rediscovering

Main Street or Downtown dwelling, and enjoying polyphonic attunements and a pulse out o f

step with the 8 to 5 beat, are examples o f marginal practices which counterbalance our

technological understanding o f being which is necessarily biased in favor o f achieving and

enhancing flexibility. Such peripheral projects and fringe activities, taken on and cultivated

by individuals or the public, affirm not only local worlds but, via detour, also our

technological understanding o f being as long as this understanding leaves room for mortals.


238

We can develop a free and positive relation to technology inasmuch as we not only enjoy

being virtuoso chameleons at home in multiple worlds but also retain and nurture our essence

of being their disclosers.

"Only if we are capable o f dwelling, only then can we build." It behooves us to heed

the clues from humble roadside shrines, from oddities on roads less traveled, and from

whatever else Main or Plain Street has in store for us. I f we allow a multiplicity o f focal

practices to inspire and guide our public ways, we have not yet built communities o f mortals

but are well on the way to dwelling in a technological world.


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Chapter 9

Implications for Street Designers and Educators

During the journey through the preceding chapters we have reviewed urban

streets and highways from the perspective o f three principal functions: equipment, works

o f art, and things (as defined in Part II). Each o f these vantage points reveals our public

roads in different ways. The question arises: Which o f the three principal functions

should guide us in our design o f streets? A subsequent issue may simplify the first one

by asking: Since we have hardly mastered the art and science o f building roads that serve

us comprehensively as smoothly functioning and interconnecting equipment for moving

about, isn't it extravagant to expect our streets to become works o f art or even things that

hold sway over multiple local worlds in which we may dwell? Shouldn't we be satisfied

with transparent, efficient, and safe transport and with streets that adequately fulfill these

basic mobility functions? I will explain in this concluding chapter why our streets should

function as smoothly interlocking equipment and as focal points o f multiple local worlds.

The principal street functions reflect three different understandings o f being

which is the focus o f each o f Heidegger's three main phases o f thought. These three

major street functions present our environment in different lights and make it accessible

via equipment, works o f art, or things. Despite the unique access they provide to our

environment, these three understandings o f being are not mutually exclusive. On the

contrary, they overlap considerably.


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In this concluding chapter I will argue

(1) that architects, urban planners, and transportation engineers need to have a basic

understanding o f the phenomena which the three understandings of being

elucidate, and

(2) that our streets and highways need to function as transparent equipment and as

things gathering local worlds, while preserving a status as latent works o f art that

may spontaneously emerge as full-fledged unifying cultural paradigms.

I f one agrees that, ideally, all three understandings o f being should be tangibly

expressed in our transportation environment, one has to face the next challenge: Which

is the logical priority and which is the temporal order of implementation? I will address

these questions by referring to Table 9-1 (next page). This table relates principal street

functions to various street characteristics. It summarizes the basic requirements for each

street function and lists a few transport candidates that lend themselves as most likely

exemplars for each function. It also suggests possibilities for how a utilitarian transport

environment (e.g., a typical commercial arterial street) might be improved by designing

opportunities for a more comprehensive street usage.

Designing for transparent mobility equipment seems to be the easiest task because

such a design needs to take into account only the most basic, utilitarian requirements for

moving about. Once this elementary foundation has been laid, one might proceed to the

more complex levels o f works o f art and things. While a potential work o f art, such as

aviation o r automated freeways, necessarily consists o f smoothly functioning equipment,

it must also actively engage and captivate an entire generation o f users who consider

these ways common ground and identify with them. Our current National Highway


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P r i n c i 1

I EQUIPMENT

p a l S t r e e t F u

WORK OF ART

n e t i o n s

THING

Human Activities Facilitated

transparent everyday coping activities

practices unifying an entire culture

dwelling in multiple local worlds

Basic StreetCharacteristicsRequired

inconspicuousfamiliarity

manifestation o f cultural aspirations

gathering the fourfold

TransportationCandidates

local, regional, and national road network;commercial arterial

boulevard; system o f interstate freeways; automated highway; multi-modal transport facility (e.g., airport)

residential street, woonerf (semi- private dwelling); Main Street (public dwelling);

Basic Means to Achieve Desired Streets Functions

smoothinterconnectedness within and between transportation modes

city, regional, or national public works project that engages society at large

utmost variety o f individual units (stores, dwellings) on the basis of common standards that grant adaptive flexibility

Table 9-1 Principal Street Functions and Characteristics


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System is a long way from being celebrated as such a work o f art. Given its limited

conception as a pragmatic interlinked mobility network, it may never rise to the status o f

an artwork. I ascertain an unbridgeable gap between a transportation system understood

as transparent equipment vs. as a work o f art. No matter how smooth and "invisible" any

equipment for moving about may become, it cannot become an artwork. Transparency o f

equipment is necessary for absorbed successful going about one's business and for a work

of art to fulfill its many pragmatic requirements. Mere transparency, however, bars any

equipment from becoming a work o f art that must be folly present to all.

Despite its dominant utilitarian bent, our present North American transportation

environment has a few examples that indicate the possibility o f a pragmatic transport

system elevating itself to a commonly accepted work of art. A case in point is Route 66,

which connected Chicago with Los Angeles. Having been eclipsed by the faster and

high-capacity Interstate System, many portions o f Route 66 either decayed or froze in

time. Today, the well-preserved portions are very successful tourist magnets. In addition

to still fulfilling its pragmatic function o f providing for local, state and interstate travel on

its maintained portions, Route 66 has several other characteristics o f a potential work o f

art. Travelers are drawn to this longitudinal landmark connecting two thirds o f the USA.

It provides and unabashedly celebrates collective identity centered on the private

automobile. Route 66 is cheered and commemorated in songs, paintings, photographs,

and advertising art. Despite its historic and preservationist leanings, Route 66 give us a

preview o f national status and roadside characteristics that travelers would encounter if,

for instance, the entire US National Highway System were a work o f art. Route 66, being

just a fraction o f the National Highway System and failing to spark similar popular


243

enthusiasm on other US highways, is not a work o f art in the sense used in this inquiry.

“America’s Main Street,” as Route 66 has been labeled, is an exception. “66 is the

mother road,” tells us John Steinbeck,1 and it is there where you get your kicks, assures

us songwriter Bobby Troup. Via its uniqueness Route 66 testifies the more graphically to

the overall artless state o f our National Highway System. By giving us glimpses o f a

contemporary work o f art replete with playfulness, idiosyncrasies, and a relaxed

collective identity, Route 66 indicts the rest o f our ground transportation system, and by

implication our mobile society, as an “Asphalt Nation.” 2

In the previous paragraphs I have described the difficulties o f elevating smoothly

functioning equipment into a work o f art. What about turning transparent equipment into

world-situating things by adding to them, refining, or otherwise modifying them? The

answer is the same as before: No amount o f mere modification can turn well functioning

equipment into things that gather local worlds.

Can works o f art, transcending mere functionalism, be transformed into things

around which local worlds may crystallize? In order for unifying art to work it must

engage an entire culture. Cultures o f the distant or recent past were able to produce such

unifying paradigms. I recall a few examples: the two Temples of the Ancient Israelites,

the Greek Temples and open-air amphitheaters, the Roman coliseums and stadia, the

Medieval Cathedrals; we find less unifying power in the Parisian Boulevards built in the

1 John Steinbeck referred often to Route 66 in his novel The Grapes o f Wrath (1939). For an excerpt from this novel focusing on the “mother road” o f the West, see my reference Steinbeck 1991.

2 I have borrowed this epitaph from Jane Holtz Kay’s 1997 study entitled Asphalt Nation.


244

19th century, the Eiffel Tower, the New York sky scrapers, and the Brooklyn Bridge or

the Golden Gate Bridge. These artifacts could be built on the basis o f a generally shared

understanding o f main cultural aspirations. Today's heterogeneous societies o f the

advanced industrial nations seem to lack unifying cultural practices that could be made

manifest in public works. Attempts at deliberately building a work o f art may even be

considered anachronistic or inauthentic because no unifying cultural foundations seem to

exist. A contemporary observer, surely, has difficulties detecting them.

We may regret not having a work o f art in North America, but I want to briefly

mention a characteristic o f a work o f art that would make its manifestation under present

cultural conditions somewhat suspicious, if not outright impossible. Any work o f art

u n ifie s a culture by highlighting its common ambitions and shared practices. By doing

so, it suppresses understandings o f being that do not fit or surpass the generally accepted

cultural frame, for example: the cosmology centered around the sun rather around the

earth; political and religious practices deemed heretical and threatening by the authorities

that be; revolutionary science. Its totalizing tendency makes an artwork an unsuspected

partner with the enframing technology that turns everything and everyone into objects

(modem technology) or resources (postmodern technology). While a unified culture has

enormous benefits for individuals and society at large, the costs o f unifying

conglomerates tend to be discounted. Heidegger's late thought can be read as a search for

anti-trust arguments. His late meandering and self-critical thinking, having worked

through totalizing regimes in technology and politics, breaks up overarching frames o f

thought and action, and points to the gathering power o f things that establish local

worlds.


245

As we have seen in the preceding discussion, attempting to transmute smoothly

functioning, utilitarian street environments into works o f art or local worlds focused by

things has led us into culs-de-sac. Let us therefore proceed in reverse order. Designing

for the gathering o f the fourfold, as outlined in Chapter 5 and exemplified in Chapter 8,

can yield the most profound and significant built environment. The challenge then lies in

the task o f designing a series of multiple local worlds that are focused by things and also

function as smoothly interlaced equipment. I f engineers, architects, and planners design,

build, and maintain streets as strings o f multiple local worlds, while providing for

sufficient transparency and unifying potential o f our public streets, they can equip our

culture with a well integrated ground transport network that can fulfill all three main

street functions simultaneously.

Let us move from conjecture to concrete possibilities. The Parisian Boulevards,

for instance, have fulfilled all three principal street functions over the last 140 years. The

boulevard is a utilitarian device for moving a large number o f vehicles. Residences,

businesses, stores, and cultural institutions are never for away from this major traffic

artery. Not only is the street environment artistic and well proportioned by multistory

buildings providing a uniform enclosing boundary for the wide street, but the boulevard

is a work o f art. The boulevard’s majestic posture and civil confidence invites cultural

identification not only during parades. The point where several boulevards merge and

where traffic joins and disperses in different directions, as at the Arc de Triomphe, is

truly a civic arch o f triumph. More important, though less celebrated than the civic

grandeur, are the narrow frontage roads (contre-allees) that provide access to local stores

and residences. The series o f local worlds strung along the boulevard lets the traffic rush


246

go by. These local worlds are not in the way o f those urban travelers who head for

distant ones. In turn, the busy traffic passing on the main roadway lets the local worlds

be what they are. Furthermore, the boulevard allows easy switching from utilitarian

commute by car or bus to accessing these manifold local worlds, or to celebrating the

boulevard as a commonly shared work of art by enjoying a relaxed walk on the wide

sidewalks, a cafe or glass o f wine in public, or a parade o f national significance. Such a

street is a public living room. Not by chance did a million people celebrate France's

World Cup Soccer Championship in July 1998 not on soccer fields but on the stateliest o f

boulevards, the Champs-Elysees. The center o f the celebration was the Place de TEtoile,

the ground o f the common stars.

The boulevard does not function perfectly with respect to all main street

functions. But this street type is a good example o f cross-appropriation between worlds

centered on the same civic structure. Building a similar street environment for the 21st

century is our challenge today.

Facing this challenge, we have three basic options. (1) We can be modest and

repeat the boulevard exemplar because its potential is not yet exhausted. Wide and long

streets, such as Van Ness Avenue and Geary Boulevard in San Francisco and University

Avenue in Berkeley are possible candidates in the San Francisco Bay Area (see map on

next page). (2) We can also be more daring by constructing technologically advanced

infrastructure such as airports that connect not only to international but also to local

worlds (see Figure 9-2 on p. 248), or automated freeways which may spearhead a

synergistic relation between electric vehicles and nature preserved and enhanced (3) We

may give up the search for such large-scale transportation facilities that could transform


247

i pE&T’r'fASSSgli l f t l i i i l

SSSfips*m

.Oakland

San

w-'flswosrth'j. •:v*J

llbrai

jfe ,S a n v slorenzoJk,

Figure 9-1 Map o f San Francisco and Berkeley, California

(showing Van Ness Avenue and Geary Boulevard in San Francisco, and University Avenue in Berkeley)

© 1999 California State Automobile Association. Used by permission


248

Figure 9-2 International Terminal o f San Francisco International Airport

(model view), completed in December 2000

(Source: San Francisco International A irport Annual Report 2000, 18-19)


249

themselves into overarching works o f art. Instead o f waiting for their arrival, we can be

content with multiple local worlds as long as they also fulfill basic utilitarian functions

with sufficient ease.

In search for dwelling in multiple local worlds strung along Main Street, for

instance, we can gather a few clues from the Dutch woonerf (living or residential yard).

A woonerf functions as transparent transportation environment by providing direct public

access to and from residences. On such a residential street, automobiles are admitted to

the public shared realm as one among many kinds o f yard dwellers. By design, the

private automobile is treated as an intruder into a space that is shared by pedestrians,

bicyclists, planned or casual social gatherings, children at play, and motorists. A woonerf

is a pragmatic multifunctional public living room. Does it qualify as a work art?

In addition to being a very useful arrangement o f neighborhood units, a woonerf

has the possibility o f becoming a work o f art. In the Netherlands, the woonerf is o f

almost universal appeal because o f its capability o f harmonizing the ambitions o f a

mobile society with the need for traffic safety, residential comfort, and multifunctional

use o f public space. Furthermore, woonerven can be constructed in new developments,

and an existing neighborhood block can be reconstructed as a woonerf with relatively

little expense. While a whole nation, e.g., the Netherlands, may support the concept o f

the woonerf it is nevertheless difficult to see how the woonerf can rise to the level o f a

work o f art. This multifaceted model o f a residential street limits its ascendance to an

artwork by its underlying defensive gesture against the intrusion o f the private automobile

into residential areas.


Figure 9-3 Two Examples o f Woonerven

(the picture at the bottom shows an intersection o f two residential

yards, or living streets)

(Source: Bundesminister fur Raumordnung, Bauwesen und Stadtebau,

Stadtverkehr im Wandel, Bonn, 1986, pp. 30 and 45)


251

The woonerf is about minimizing adverse impacts o f the car and about civilizing

it. This street type does not celebrate the car nor itself Le., the traffic-calmed island in

the sea o f rampant automobility. The woonerf does not manifest overarching defining

cultural aspirations. It is not a work o f art. Nor is the woonerf merely transparent

equipment serving mobility, access, and dwelling needs simultaneously. The woonerf is

a thing It provides a local solution to a general social problem: the taming o f the

automobile within a residential setting.

The woonerf is a local thing than can emerge at many locations. The living

yard’s general design concept can be adapted to various local conditions. The woonerf

shields many residential streets and its multiple users from being mere resources for the

enhancement o f efficiency. The woonerf is a communal center and focus o f serious

concern for its abutting dwellers. A woonerf makes a place for a postmodern,

multidimensional dwelling. By gathering together various previously dispersed and

fragmented social activities (driving, parking, social meetings, spatial separation o f age

groups, etc.) into a h a rm o n iz in g tangible edifice, the woonerf creates a local world that

makes room for “Life Between Buildings.” 3

As we have seen, the w oonerf is a model for finding common ground for various

social activities that the modernist planning paradigm deems to be in conflict. This still

dominant p lann ing paradigm attempts to resolve real or perceived conflicts between

“incompatible land uses” by physically separating them. The woonerf emerged out o f a

social need, was refined by design professionals, and was publicly legalized by City Hall.

3 In Life Between Buildings (1987), Danish Architect Jan Gehl points out basic patterns o f pedestrian life and design elements that make for successful ordinary places.


252

This late 20th century thing is a good example o f how to overcome modernist strictures:

by allowing diverse social practices to come together in a shared, physical focal point that

gathers and harmonizes them in one world.

US Main Streets can learn from the pedestrian example that the woonerf offers.4

Many decaying M ain Streets in the USA can be revived as vitality conduits to energize

distinct local worlds by blending moving about, shopping, residing, and being in a public

forum. The likelihood o f reclaiming Main Street can be enhanced by ensuring not only

the required mix o f land uses, but also a mix o f access to and along Main Street. Too

many towns and cities are only partially successful in maintaining a lively neighborhood

commercial street because the automobile remains the sole or dominant mode o f access.

A truly accessible Main Street, such as 24th, Irving, or Chestnut Streets in San Francisco,

can also be reached and traversed on foot, by bicycle, and by public transport. Compared

with alternative modes o f transport, the private automobile needs much space whiie in

motion or parked. Much o f the space claimed by the automobile can be put to better use

by enhancing the choices o f access along Main Street. Wide and pleasant sidewalks can

4 The Dutch w oonerf (living or residential yard) and the German Wohnstrafie (living street) are actually reinventions based on mixed land uses that were the commonly accepted rule in European cities before the advent o f modernism. The modernist credo, a European fantasy fueled by a desire for speed and “rationalization” o f the life world, found fertile ground for almost unlimited propagation in the USA due to availability o f land and substantial public subsidies o f the automobile-highway system. As the legacy o f modernism has shown, a clinical separation o f land uses leads to sterile work environments, downtowns dead after rush hour, boring suburbs, and chronic traffic congestion. Historically based reinventions such as the woonerf, the Wohnstrafie, or pedestrian zones in downtown areas suggest ways that lead us out o f modernism’s compartmentalization o f our collective life.


253

feature table and chairs and other street furniture, thus converting sidewalks from a mere

utilitarian device and legal requirement into a place for public dwelling.

Different transport modes reveal different worlds or different aspects o f them. I f

we want Main Street to present us multiple worlds in which to move, dwell, and have our

being, we must provide multiple ways o f access to it. In concert with advanced

technology, we may find our way to and around Main Street and cherish the variety o f

goods, services, and communication avenues that postmodern technology makes

available to us within walking distance. By hosting dwelling units above businesses,

Main Street not only enlivens its ambiance, especially during evenings, but also makes

the offered variety more directly available to Main Street dwellers. Furthermore, it

teaches shoppers and visitors that the offered variety is not to be sampled via assembly-

line consumption but is available with integrity as an assembled quilt of shopping, doing

business, strolling, relaxing, people watching, and dwelling (see Figure 9-4, next page).

Main Street can offer the variety and flexibility a contemporary city or town dweller may

wish for: a bakery, a shoe repair, computer store, dry cleaner, travel agency, a flower

store, a book store, and a shop selling coffee and tea. Such a street responds to our

prismatic, multifaceted being. Moving in and out o f these stores, or just passing by their

individual characters that conform to an overall relaxed unity, can be a local event, a

public appropriation. Streetscape features (trees, benches, store porches, trash cans,

newsstands, signs, etc.), windows displaying engaging merchandise, and street vendors

and artists contribute to the coexistence o f multiple local worlds which a postmodern,

non-instrumental environment can offer.


Figure 9-4 Kentucky Street in Downtown Petaluma, California


255

Design, construction, and maintenance o f streets can facilitate such dwelling in

multiple worlds. Postmodernism’s high technology devices, if understood and used in a

non-instrumental way, can benefit all principal street functions. The use and appreciation

o f complex or simple street environments (e.g., boulevards, freeway interchanges; or

modest, straightforward, pleasant residential streets) is a collective acquisition requiring

some training, effort, exposure to good examples, and imagination.

The primary and secondary school system should assist students o f all ages in

appreciating and caring for streets, sophisticated or pedestrian, which we usually take for

granted. In the following I suggest some examples o f curricular activities based on

material discussed in this inquiry:

• children in elementary school personalizing their route to school by painting

sidewalks and murals;

• learning about local history through a study o f streets names, their changes, and

the successive social groups living on those streets;

• comparing historic paintings or photos o f streets with current conditions in search

o f agents o f change;

• visiting local public works or engineering departments to lean about issues o f

design, maintenance, and uses o f streets and highways, as well as students

conveying in words or pictures their perceptions o f streets they are living on or

frequently use to engineers and planners;

• seeing photos or films o f streets and public places in other countries and find

reasons for the variety o f street environments;


256

• children, teachers, and parents brainstorm about improved street usage and curb

side management in drop off and pick up areas, and establish safe alternative

ways for children to get to and from school (safe route to school program);

• seniors in high school making class trips to exciting street environments, for

example, to a stretch o f Route 66, and learn via prior preparation and participant

observation about US geography, history, Native American inhabitants,

population migration, road design, roadside architecture, pop art, and advertising

schemes;

• getting involved in an adopt-a-highway or a neighborhood watch program;

• becoming active in the local planning process (traffic committees, creation or

updates o f General Plans, lobbying for or against highway interchanges,

overpasses, parking garages, etc.);

• in academia, fostering a deepened appreciation o f streets and public places, and

using a broad interdisciplinary approach (e.g., history, sociology, architecture,

philosophy, engineering) in studying streets and ways to improve them;

• promoting continuing education for design professionals and concerned citizens at

university extensions programs, conferences, lectures, public seminars,

professional journals and newspaper articles, as well as by cruising on the

electronic highway in search for getting and spreading “streets news."

This partial list o f possible curricular projects revolving around streets suggests

ways to increase our appreciation, care, and enjoyment o f this important stratum o f our

organized public life. When streets are seen and used as attractive and exciting places for


257

dwelling, as gatherings around a whole gamut o f simple o r urbane things, a renaissance

o f the street as public realm has begun.

Until the arrival o f such a renaissance, the advanced industrial societies have to

come to terms with technology in general and establish, individually and especially

collectively, a free relation to technology in all areas o f society, including design,

maintenance and use o f our public streets and highways. We cannot be tom anymore

between the choice o f artistic and pleasant streets on the one hand and efficient yet

forbidding streets on the other. This dilemma marks the realm where a work o f art finds

its place as a social and cultural keystone. A contemporary work o f art may reveal itself

some day as automatic freeway, as space station or as some yet unknown invention that

uses the Internet as a stepping stone. We may reject a collective artwork, welcome it, or

just wait for “Godot Boulevard.” Given our propensity for mobility and flexibility, a

work o f art, if it materializes at all, will most likely emerge in the context o f

transportation. The electric car, equally in tune w ith advances in artificial and

environmental intelligence, is a fitting candidate for a future work o f art. Since a work o f

art must spontaneously spring forth from our social practices, it cannot be willed or

planned. A work o f art, understood as a manifestation o f the implicit self-understanding

o f a historic culture, cannot be known in advance. It can only be acknowledged

collectively once it is there. We have to be receptive to its unpredictable nature,

unannounced arrival, or eventual absence. One thing is sure, however: we may not rush

it.


258

W hile r e m a in in g receptive to a prospective work o f art, we citizens o f the

advanced industrial societies have to endure our current technological fragmentation and

ambivalence. This incongruity can be softened with respect to its everyday impacts by

nurturing local worlds. True to our penchant for change and locomotion, many o f these

differentiated and unique local worlds w ill likely revolve around streets and associated

mobility technology. Perhaps an ever-denser network o f such locally rooted and

c o m m u n in g worlds, centered around th in g s mobile or immobile, may presage and pave

the way not only for a national but a global work o f art.

By freely accepting a technologically advanced world where we are on the move

and dwell via moving, we are more likely to design our streets not only for safe and

efficient travel, but also for reg ain ing joy and delight while moving about. Journeying is

not only about "getting there." It must also be moving.


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Appendix

An Outline o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology

The main concepts o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology have been introduced in Section

3.1. In order to make the text o f Chapter 3, the first o f the three theoretical chapters (Part

II), read as smoothly as possible, the basic terms introduced in Section 3.1 have been

explained in skeletal form only. In this Appendix, I present a more fully argued outline o f

Hermeneutic Phenomenology which serves as a theoretical foundation for my entire inquiry.

1. The Project o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology

Heidegger understands his early writings and lectures not as a system o f definitive

statements pronounced from a particular substantive point o f view, but as an unprejudiced

search for concepts o f what it means for various entities to be. His early work does not aim

at espousing any particular material theory, but aims at conceptually opening up the very

approach to any possible substantive statements about entities. In this respect, his work is a

formal and transcendental analysis. Furthermore, this opening up — the search for the

conditions o f the possibility o f understanding — is guided by "the analysis o f the matters

themselves," that is, by the way we typically encounter them in their everydayness. Being

guided by "the matters themselves" as given in their everydayness, Heidegger feels justified

in saying "I have no philosophy at all" (HCT 301-302; GA 20,417).1

1 See also his brief rem ark about "the Heideggerian philosophy which does not exist" (G A 9, 69).


260

Heidegger undertakes his conceptual search from multiple focal points (e.g.,

encountering equipment, "space,” "time," talking), yet with one single question in mind: what

does it mean for any entity to be? An entity is anything that is.2 Heidegger wants to analyze

the being o f entities. To state it alternatively: he wants to clarify entities' ways o f being and

to make these ways explicit in their essential structures and in the manner we typically

encounter them. Entities whose ways o f being are thus illuminated can be o f any kind:

"things, people, abstractions, language, etc." 3

To properly understand the being o f entities, that is to say, the specific ways they

present themselves to us, Heidegger takes a step back and first illuminates the being o f that

entity that is asking the question o f being. This entity is us, the human being. "Existence"

[Existenz] is Heidegger's technical term for humans' way o f being. Making explicit the

essential structures o f existence is the topic o f hermeneutic phenomenology.

Heidegger's early work aims at a systematic disclosure and fully developed

interpretation o f the basic structures o f being human. Their exposition is presented under the

2 I am using the terms "entities" and "beings" synonymously for anything that is. Both terms can serve as a translation for the plural o f the German word das Seiende. In general I prefer "entities" despite its abstractness, because it can be less likely confused with "being" (noun), das Sein in German. Sein and Seiendes are more clearly distinguishable than "being" and "beings," hence my preference for the paler but clearer term "entities" instead of "beings" for anything that is. The meaning o f being (das Sein) as Heidegger employs it in his early writings will be outlined in this Appendix. The term being is the most important concept in Heidegger's work, and it is perhaps the hardest to clarify. But some clarification, even if necessarily abstract, is needed if the more detailed and concrete exposition o f the phenomena in the following sections of this Appendix is to make sense. It is the aim o f this Appendix to provide such a clarification and a conceptual foundation for my entire inquiry.

3 Dreyfus 1991,1. In general, the detailed commentary o f Division I o f Being and Time by Hubert Dreyfus (1991) is an essential background for my understanding o f Heidegger, especially his early writings and the recently published lectures given at Marburg University.


261

program o f a fundamental analysis o f existence, and hermeneutic phenomenology is to serve

as the congenial method to lay them bare. Because his method not only uses but also reflects

on the interpretive concepts and processes through a second-order or meta-interpretation,

Heidegger characterizes his phenomenology as hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the study o f

the methodological principles o f interpretation.

Heidegger wants to resume the old but abandoned question “what is being?” His

inquiry encompasses various entities, such as natural things, artifacts, social institutions,

humans and their dwellings and cities. Heidegger's overall task is to provide an undistorted

perspective for answering “what is being?” which is the most fundamental but unanswered

question o f Western thinking, according to Heidegger. N ot science, psychology, or

sociology, but everydayness is to be the judge o f and guarantor for maintaining an

unprejudiced perspective.4 His overarching goal is to achieve a primordial5 foundation for

an elaboration o f the question “what is being?” His intermediate goal, however, is the

clarification o f essential structures o f human existence, because it is we who, in some way or

4 Heidegger does not claim that the perspective o f everydayness in Division I o f Being and Time (and in the Marburg lectures, 1923-1928) is unbiased in the sense o f scientific objectivity. He maintains, however, that the perspective o f everydayness is unprejudiced in the sense o f being able to reveal the way we typically encounter entities and that it is therefore as free as possible from any theoretical distortion o f the phenomena (as brought about by traditional philosophy, behaviorism, or cognitive science). It is generally assumed, for good reasons, that the sciences and humanities can shed light on everyday practices. Heidegger's phenomenology is reversing this epistemological relation by interpreting the sciences and humanities, in fact all comportments o f explicit knowing or knowledge, as a derivation o f everyday practices. The consequences o f this reversal are outlined in the following sections o f this Appendix and explicated more concretely in Chapters 3 through 9.

5 When Ursprung is translated as "source" and ttrsprunglich as "primordial," Heidegger's intended connotations based on the root "spring-" are lost, as in entspringen (to


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another, are already making sense o f entities, human and non-human. This intermediate goal

is the focus o f Heidegger's early writings. The interpretive layout o f essential structures o f

existence is the subject matter o f these writings, and hermeneutic phenomenology is the

programmatic title o f their method.

The method o f an inquiry cannot properly be demonstrated divorced from its subject

matter. Statements on method prior to any substantive investigation can therefore be

presented only in an abstract and preliminary way. The usefulness and appropriateness o f a

method has to be shown in the very process o f opening up the concrete subject matter at hand

(in this inquiry beginning with Section 3.2: Environment and Equipment). In this sense, the

following remarks on hermeneutic phenomenology as a method (Appendix Section 3) can

only serve as a formal overview and outline. A methodological outline requires, in turn, at

least a preliminary notion o f the subject matter, which is sketched in the following section.

leap forth). On the unavoidable loss in these translations (as is the case with most o f Heidegger's technical terms), see BT 399, footnote 3.


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2. The Subject M atter o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology

In going about our daily chores and routines, we encounter entities o f various kinds:

inanimate things., living creatures, other human beings, language, social institutions and

conventions, etc. In our everyday dealings with these entities we always have some

understanding o f these entities, i.e., o f how they show up for us. When we enter a house we

have never seen before, for instance, we have a pre-reflective and unthematized understanding

o f what we encounter and o f where we are. Our daily routine encounter o f entities o f all sorts

is carried, as it were, by an underlying or tacit understanding o f their meaning, i.e., o f what

they are to us. The understanding o f entities we encounter is typically non-reflective and non

explicit.

We say o f entities that "they are" or "they exist." The meaning o f "they are" or "they

exist" remains unexamined and unarticulated in our everyday going about our business. We

always understand in some way how these entities present themselves to us. In our everyday

dealings with entities, we typically gloss over their being. Understanding them always in one

way or another, we gloss over that which makes them intelligible to us. In our routine

involvement with beings (entities), we take the being o f beings for granted. Tradition and

culture are those depositories that grant us such pre-reflective and unthematized

understanding. Heidegger conceives his phenomenology as a stepwise conceptual elucidation

for making manifest and explicit what is typically "taken for granted as being self-evident".6

6 Even though the following quotation pertains to a specific topic, it aptly characterizes the general thrust o f Heidegger's conceptual analysis o f "alleged trivialities." The passage is part o f his account o f "intentionality" as the inherent directedness o f our comportments. "Comportments relate to something: they are directed toward this whereto; or, in formal terms, they are related or referred to." Discoveries such as this one are, "one might think, ...


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The empirical or positive sciences 7 are exploring entities in terms o f their specific

properties in order to arrive at discemable regularities, ideally in the form o f quantifiable laws.

In contrast to the sciences that explore entities (beings) in such a way, the task o f Western

philosophy for 25 hundred years has been to reflect on "being," Le., on that which renders

beings or entities intelligible. "Ontology" is the traditional name for the conceptual

investigation o f being. Such an investigation must presuppose a fundamental distinction

between beings (or entities) and their being. Heidegger calls this fundamental distinction the

"ontological difference." The ontological difference is a necessary cornerstone o f any

ontology.

Since an u n d e rs ta n d in g o f the being o f entities is always already preceding our

dealings with them, an understanding o f being, irrespective o f how detailed or explicit, occurs

structurally "earlier" than any tangible encounter. An understanding o f the being o f entities

is embodied in the ways we deal with them. This embodied understanding can be called our

unsurpassable trivialities which one ought to shrink from pronouncing.... The only thing we care about here is that this trivial identification and what is intended in it should not escape us — that we should perhaps bring it closer to us. Perhaps then the alleged triviality will turn into a total enigma. Perhaps this insignificance will become one o f the most exciting problems for him who can philosophize, who has come to understand that what is taken for granted as being self-evident is the true and sole theme o f philosophy." (BP 57-58; GA 24, 80)

7 Here and in the following brief discussion o f the fundamental difference between ontology and the empirical sciences, I use "science" (Wissenschaft) in the sense o f any systematic investigation that employs an explicit notion o f its subject matter and its method. It is this general, older sense o f science (scientia) which is implied, for instance, in the German terms Geisteswissenschaften (humanities) and Sozialwissenschaften (social or behavioral sciences). In retying on this commonly implied broader notion o f Wissenschaft, Heidegger can present his fundamental ontology as a "science o f being" ( Wissenschaft vom Sein).


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background practices. Phenomenology draws on this pre-reflective comprehension o f being

to make this embodiment conceptually explicit A prior and mostly tacit understanding o f the

being o f entities, i.e., their intelligibility, precedes our everyday practices as well as the

reflective practice to make them explicit and manifest (hermeneutics). Letting the background

practices come to the fore and methodologically reflecting on this conceptual bringing forth

or unveiling is the task o f hermeneutic phenomenology. Heidegger's fundamental ontology,

employing hermeneutic phenomenology as its method, is a systematic dis-covery aimed at

making self-evident and explicit the ways entities (e.g., streets) are always already given to

us. Such an ontology does not advocate a specific worldview, but analytically reconstructs

and clarifies our a priori knowledge, or more precisely, our a priori knowing.

... a priori means that which makes beings as beings possible in what and how they are. But why is this possibility or, more precisely, the determination o f possibility labeled by the term "earlier"? Obviously not because we recognize it earlier than beings. For what we experience first and foremost is beings, that which is; we recognize being only later or maybe even not at alL This time-determination "earlier" cannot refer to the temporal order given by the common concept o f time in the sense of intratemporality. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that a time-determination is present in the concept o f the a priori, the earlier. (BP 324; GA 24, 461-462)

In reconstructing our "before-knowing" or the a priori structures o f our practices,

ontology transcends the specificity o f entities with respect to that which makes them

intelligible to us. In ontology as a transcendental science, "we are surmounting beings in

order to reach being" (BP 17; GA 24,23). This surmounting o f beings is not an abstraction

o f unique characteristics for arriving at an average notion o f a particular class o f beings (e.g.,

dwellings, animals, humans). Surmounting beings (entities) ontologically is a stepwise

process o f making their a priori structure, their being, manifest and express. Consequently

being can be defined as "that on the basis o f which entities are already understood" (BT 25-


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26, SZ 6). We tacitly understand entities such as towns, streets, o r automobiles based on our

everyday experiences, but do not necessarily average our past experience to know what a

town, street, or an automobile is. Entities such as these have become enmeshed in our

background practices that we take for granted.

The history o f W estern thought is a linked series o f attempts at spelling out the

intelligibility o f various kinds or classes o f entities which have traditionally been clustered into

three overarching groups: (1) natural things ("nature"), (2) morality, action, community, and

(3) works o f art. W estern thinking has been struggling in determining what makes entities

intelligible, what constitutes their being, or how they are given to us. Finding a common

denominator for the core o f these struggles, Heidegger can declare that "being is the proper

and sole theme o f philosophy" (BP 11; GA 24, 15).

Philosophy, that is, Occidental ontology, has repeatedly fallen victim to two basic and

grave mistakes or misconceptions. The Western philosophical tradition has understood being

as either (1) some causal agent situated behind or beyond entities, or as (2) one extant entity

among other extant entities. Stated differently, traditional western ontology has understood

the being o f beings as either (1) some factually existing foundation, a kind o f metaphysical

"super Being," 8 or as (2) an entity as present as any other entities, thereby collapsing the

fundamental distinction between being and beings (entities) altogether.

8 In order to guard against this traditional misconception, all major recent translations o f Heidegger's works avoid the previous practice o f capitalizing "being" (noun), since "Being" tends to suggest an entity distinguished by an elevated or supernatural status. In citations from the English translations I will therefore always use "being" even where the translators prefer capitalization, as is the case in Being and Time.


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Heidegger conceives his philosophical work as a continuation o f the age-old effort o f

clarifying our understanding o f the being o f beings. By putting the question o f being on the

footing o f an analytics o f existence, however, Heidegger frames his fundamental ontology as

a radical break with the history o f Western thought. Yet even this radical break, Heidegger

acknowledges, is historical and must interpret itself historically. Understanding the being o f

beings is intimately bound up with an understanding o f time, which understanding in turn is

historically defined.9

The misconceptions o f our philosophical tradition are no mere accidents. They are

rooted in the very course and conceptual makeup o f western thinking as we have inherited

it from the Greek thinkers, Plato and Aristotle in particular. Heidegger repeatedly points out

and demonstrates that the intelligibility o f entities has not been achieved, and that,

furthermore, not even the horizon for asking the question o f being has been properly

prepared. Responsible for this neglect are the two misconceptions mentioned above. Most

importantly, traditional ontology has neglected to reflect adequately on the being o f that entity

who is asking ontological questions: the human being, or Dasein. "This entity which each

o f us is himself and which includes inquiring as one o f its possibilities o f its being, we shall

denote by the term Dasein." (BT 27, SZ 7) Heidegger's radical break with the tradition o f

western th ink ing is marked by his insistence that the paramount task o f any ontology is

9 For Heidegger time is the horizon for the understanding o f being. A phenomenological analysis o f time is therefore central to the analytic o f existence. Since this dissertation focuses on applying hermeneutic phenomenology to design and uses o f public streets, the topic o f time can be disregarded without unduly restricting the main topic. Interesting and quite challenging would be a phenomenological study o f "time in the city," building on Kevin Lynch's 1972 inquiry What Time is This Place?


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making transparent the existential structures o f the inquirer. The inquirer Heidegger is

analyzing is, however, not homo sapiens gazing disinterestedly at objects, but Dasein, a being

intimately involved with its world. Dasein is that being that is "there" (da) with its world.

Dasein is an ordinary German word basically meaning "to be there," "to be present,"

or "to exist" when used as a verb, and "presence" or "(human) existence" when used as a

noun. Employing all o f its semantic connotations, Heidegger uses Dasein as a technical term

for that entity that is "there" with its world: the human being as involved with and absorbed

in its everyday coping activities. The very concept o f Dasein as a technical term already

intimates, at least for a reader familiar with its non-technical usage, what is to be highlighted,

analyzed, and cleared. For making manifest the background structures o f our everyday

dealings with our familiar surroundings, Dasein is a deft and handy term, whereas "human

being," "individual," "subjectivity," or "consciousness" are, as we shall see, too abstract or

simply misleading. When Heidegger uses such terms, he is doing so in the context o f working

out the specific thrust and characteristics o f his ontological analytics o f Dasein in contrast to

related but fundamentally different efforts in anthropology, neuro-physiology, psychology,

or philosophy o f mind which investigate mental representations.

Dasein as the central term and subject m atter o f Heidegger's critical ontology does

not denote a "conscious" subject over and against detached objects, the human body traced

in its daily routines, or an information processing unit dealing with mental contents through

cognitive processes. W hat Dasein stands for in positive terms becomes clearer and more

palpable when I explain the phenomena o f world and being-in~the-world (Sections 4 and 5).

In this section, I roughly sketch the main issues in analyzing Dasein. In order to maintain the


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distinct character o f an analysis o f existence as an "understanding from within," Le, o f Dasein

as seen from the perspective o f Dasein itselfj and for lack o f an adequate English rendition

o f this central term, translators prefer to retain Dasein as a technical term without the use o f

italics. Henceforth I will follow this convention in this Appendix, as I have done in the main

body o f this inquiry.10

In his analysis o f Dasein, Heidegger differentiates two kinds o f investigations and two

kinds o f understanding. An investigation is "ontic" (or "ontical") if it concerns beings or

entities (human or any other kind), and it is "ontological" if it concerns ways o f being that are

fundamental, explicit and shared. An individual's understanding o f his or her own way o f

being is "existentiell;" and a manifest and express understanding o f ontological structures o f

Dasein is "existential." 11 Heidegger is doing existential analysis and not, as some authors

claim, existentialism 12 which focuses on the alleged plight o f individual existence.

In contrast to the philosophical tradition which has demonstrated an inherent tendency

toward speculation and abstraction from that which is actually given, Heidegger bases his

ontology on an ontic entity: Dasein. Furthermore, Dasein is distinguished from all other

entities because ontological understanding is a fundamental feature o f its makeup.

10 For further clarification o f the central term Dasein, see BT 27, footnote 1; and BP 333-337 ("A Note on the Da and the Dasein").

11 For a more detailed discussion o f these fundamental terms, see BT 31 (especially footnote 3) and BT 33 (especially footnote 2); see also Dreyfus 1991, 20.

12 Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre (up to about 1960), and Karl Jaspers are among the best known representatives o f existentialism.


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"Understanding o f being is itself a definite characteristic o f Dasein's being. Dasein is ontically

distinctive in that it is ontological." (BT 32, SZ 12)

Typically and for the most part, however, Dasein's understanding o f itself is pre-

ontological or pre-theoreticaL Therefore, the task o f Heidegger's existential analytics is to

provide a detailed and explicit account o f Dasein's pre-theoretical or tacit understanding o f

itself His fundamental ontology is carried out as an analysis of"existence." Existence is the

name for Dasein's being. Heidegger explains the complementary relationship between Dasein

and existence as follows: "That being towards which Dasein can comport itself in one way

or another as its own, and always does comport itself somehow, we call 'existence'." (BT 32,

SZ 12)13

As existing Dasein is a self-interpreting being that encounters entities — those o f its

own kind and those different from itself — with a pre-ontological understanding. Because

Dasein is a self-interpreting being it cannot be studied as if it were a thing naturally occurring

among other things o f nature. Behaviorism studies humans, whereas existential analysis

interprets Dasein. "Humans" and "Dasein" are not coextensive terms. Even traditional

ontology tends to speak o f Dasein in the sense o f an extant entity occurring in nature. Kant

and Husserl, for instance, employ the term Dasein in the sense o f a natural entity being

present. Heidegger elaborates:

For us, in contrast, the word "Dasein" does not designate, as it does for Kant, the way o f being o f natural beings. It does not designate a way o f being at all, but rather a

13 I have modified the translation in light o f the two marginal notes for this passage found in Heidegger's own copies o f Sein und Zeit as documented in Volume 2 (Sein und Zeif) o f the complete works (GA 2). The standard translation reads: "That kind o f being towards which Dasein can com port itself in one way or another, and always does comport itself somehow, we call 'existence'." (BT 32, SZ 12)


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specific being which we ourselves are, the human Dasein. We are at every moment a Dasein. This being, the Dasein, like every other being, has a specific way o f being. To this way o f the Dasein's being we assign the term "Existenz" "existence"; and it should be noted here that existence or the expression "the Dasein exists" is not the sole determination o f the mode o f being belonging to us. (BP 28; GA 24, 36-37)

Stating negatively that Dasein is foremost not a natural entity does not mean, o f course, that

aspects o f human beings (e.g., functions o f the human body, customs and conventions) cannot

properly be studied by an empirical science, physiology o r anthropology, for instance.

Treating Dasein as a thing o f nature in an ontological investigation, however, misses the very

point o f an existential analytics: Dasein is self-interpretation. Furthermore, in interpreting

itselfj Dasein makes itself transparent and thereby modifies its existence.

By basing his ontology on Dasein as a self-interpreting being, Heidegger is

acknowledging and highlighting Dasein's unique position in any investigation, be it ontological

or ontic. While in the empirical sciences Dasein’s grounding function necessarily remains

tacitly and subliminally in the background, Dasein and its way o f being, existence, become the

keystone and guiding focal point o f Heidegger's fundamental ontology as a "science o f being."

Dasein is self-revealing from the ground up, irrespective o f the kind o f activity.

Dasein reveals itself in its concerned everyday activities (pre-ontological understanding) as

well as in the practice o f doing hermeneutic phenomenology (ontological understanding).

Always disclosing itself somehow and thereby its world, Dasein can be said to be "in

truth." Even when fleeing from or covering up the structures o f its being, Dasein is "in truth,"

because any fleeing or cover-up (inauthentic modes o f being) is possible only on the basis o f


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the more primordial propensity tow ard disclosure or truth.14 Heidegger explicates Dasein’s

tendency tow ard disclosure as follows:

Being is given only if there is disclosure, that is to say, if there is truth. But there is truth only if a being exists which opens up, which discloses, and indeed in such a way that disclosing belongs itself to the mode o f being o f this being. We ourselves are such a being. The Dasein itself exists in the truth. To the Dasein there belongs essentially a disclosed world and with that the disclosedness o f the Dasein itself. The Dasein, by the nature o f its existence, is "in” truth, and only because it is "in" truth does it have the possibility o f being "in" untruth. Being is given only if truth, hence if the Dasein, exists. (BP 18-19; GA 24, 25)

3. The M ethod o f Hermeneutic Phenomenology

Because we and our way o f being — existence — are the focus o f Heidegger's

fundamental ontology, the subject m atter o f an analytics o f Dasein seems close at hand. What

can be closer to us and therefore more intelligible than Dasein? Heidegger addresses this

apparent closeness explicitly: "Ontically, o f course, Dasein is not only close to us -- even

that which is closest: we are it, each o f us, we ourselves. In spite o f this, or rather for just

this reason, it is ontologically that which is farthest." (BT 36, SZ 15) Because it is

ontologically farthest, Dasein requires a comprehensive disclosure.

Phenomenology attempts to make manifest and explicit what is typically "taken for

granted as being self-evident" (BP 58; GA 24, 80): our embodied knowing and skills, or

background practices. Because they are so pervasive, they are mostly unnoticed and

transparent. An example o f transparent background practices is the embodied knowledge

14 Fleeing from and covering up the structures o f its being, resulting in "foiling," are themselves existentials, i.e., essential structures or characteristics o f human being.


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which members o f a specific culture exhibit in keeping an appropriate distance pertinent to

the type o f social occasion.15

Hermeneutic phenomenology focuses on this a priori know-how and makes it the

express object o f investigation. Plato, "the discoverer o f the a priori" (BP 326; GA 24, 463-

464), had called this recourse to unthematized knowing "anamnesis." For Heidegger,

phenomenology is a systematic retrieval o f the "forgotten" tacit understanding that is prior

(Lat. prius) to and the basis o f any specific manifest understanding.

We have heard that the Dasein dwells daily and first and for the most part solely with beings, even though it must already have understood being in that very process and in order to accomplish it. However, because the Dasein spends itself on and loses itself in that which is, in beings, both in itself, the Dasein, and in the sort o f beings that it itself is not, the Dasein knows nothing about its having already understood being. Factically, the existent Dasein has forgotten this prius. Accordingly, if being, which has already always been understood "earlier," is to become an express object, then the objectification o f this prius, which was forgotten, must have the character o f a coming back to what was already once and already earlier understood. (BP 325-326; GA 24, 463-464)

The term "phenomenon" is derived from the Greek verb <pafvecr9ai ("to show itself')

which in turn stems from (ftaivoa ("to bring to the light o f day, to put in the light"). A

phenomenon is something that shows itself in itself. "Accordingly the jta ivopteva or

15 In The Hidden Dimension Edward T. Hall (1969) has explored this tacit embodiment o f social and personal space. As a cross-cultural study o f spatial background practices, "proxemics" is his term "for the interrelated observations and theories o f man's use o f space as a specialized elaboration o f culture" (Hall 1969, 1). Similar to Heidegger's ontological studies 40 years earlier, the purpose o f Hall's anthropological "research on people's use o f space" is "to bring to awareness what has been taken for granted. By this means, I hope to increase self-knowledge and decrease alienation. In sum, to help introduce people to themselves.... All o f my books deal with the structure o f experience as it is molded by culture, those deep, common, unstated experiences which members o f a given culture share, which they communicate without knowing, and which form the backdrop against which all other events are judged" (Hall 1969, ix-x).


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'phenomena' are the totality o f what lies in the light o f day or can be brought to the light...."

(BT 51; SZ 28) As koyoq is a letting-something-be-seen, phenomenology, then, is the

practice o f reading or laying out the phenomena in the way they show themselves.

Heidegger's formal definition o f phenomenology’s task is "to let that which shows itself be

seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself' (BT 58; SZ 34).

I f the phenomena were to reveal themselves indeed by themselves, no specialized

procedure or method would be required other than simple perception. But because the

phenomena are deeply hidden in our taken-for-granted transparent background practices, they

require a special method to bring them to the fore. The phenomena phenomenology wants

to bring to light are therefore just the opposite o f what is typically taken as self-evident.

Heidegger elucidates: "Covered-up-ness is the counter-concept to 'phenomenon'." (BT 60;

SZ 36) Phenomenology, then, is an explicit dis-covering o f that which is already understood,

but is either forgotten in everyday involved activities or covered up.

The etymological derivation o f "phenomenology" sketched above signals its radical

empiricism. Heidegger believes that hermeneutic phenomenology is even more rigorous than

the empirical sciences because it is revealing the "roots" (the a priori structures) o f science

as anchored in Dasein's everyday dealings in its world, or "being-in-the-world" (see Section

5 o f this Appendix). By analytically cutting through the thicket o f distorting theories and the

underbrush o f traditional misconceptions, hermeneutic phenomenology aims at laying bare

and making visible through interpretation what is actually given to Dasein, and only that:


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"The term 'phenomenology1 expresses a maxim which can be formulated as 'To the things

themselves!"’ (BT 50; SZ 27) 16

Any access to "the things themselves" has to take into account Dasein's interpretive

stance toward itself other Daseins, and toward entities other than itself. This means that

Dasein cannot be studied as a thing o f nature analyzed by the categories o f science (e.g., time,

space, causality). Dasein and existence, its way o f being, are analyzed by finding the

structures that Dasein itse lf reveals. Instead o f subjecting Dasein to a preconceived system

o f categories, hermeneutic or interpretive phenomenology studies Dasein on its own terms.

Furthermore, Dasein is to be brought to light how it exists for the most part, i.e., in its

everydayness. In order for phenomenology to bring forth Dasein's existentials, its essential

structures, on its own terms,

we m u st... choose such a way o f access and such a kind o f interpretation that this entity can show itself in itself and from itself [cm ihm selbst von ihm selbst her]. And this means that it is to be shown as it is proximaily and for the most part — in its average everydayness. In this everydayness there are certain structures which we shall exhibit — not just any accidental structures but essential ones which, in every kind o f being that factical Dasein may possess, persist as determinative for the character o f its being. (BT 37-38; SZ 16-17)

The qualifying phrase "proximaily and for the most part" in this quotation is a

translation o f the paired expression zunachst und zumeist frequently occurring in Being and

16 In Phenomenology o f Perception Maurice Merleau-Ponty defines phenomenology as a "philosophy for which the world is always 'already there' before reflection begins -- as an inalienable presence; and all its efforts are concentrated upon re-achieving a direct and primitive contact with the world.... To return to things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge, o f which knowledge always speaks, and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract and derivative sign-language, as is geography in relation to the countryside in which we have learnt beforehand what a forest, a prairie or a river is." (Merleau-Ponty 1962, vii and be)


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Time and in Heidegger's Marburg lectures (1923-1928). Especially in its inproved translation

as "primarily and usually",17 this qualifying phrase reminds the reader that it is Dasein's typical

way o f being or its everydayness which is the focus o f interpretive phenomenology. That

which is taken for granted in our everyday transparent coping is perhaps hardest to reveal.

Our background practices appear so natural that they defy easy and ready articulation. Their

pervasive yet elusive character is an enigma that phenomenology is called upon to bring into

focus and to comprehend analytically.

Time and again it becomes necessary to impress on ourselves the methodological maxim o f phenomenology not to flee prematurely from the enigmatic character o f phenomena nor to explain it away by the bold stroke o f a wild theory but rather to accentuate the puzzlement. Only in this way does it become palpable and comprehensible, that is, intelligible and so concrete that the leads for disentangling the phenomenon leap out tow ard us from the enigmatic m atter itself.(BP 69; GA 24, 97) 18

Systematic investigation has the tendency to canonize its method as "the way to

proceed.” A once congenial approach to solving a puzzle is often later taken out o f context

17 Hubert Dreyfus has suggested this improved translation (Dreyfus 1991, xii) as part o f an ongoing effort among several Heidegger scholars to standardize their English terminology o f Heidegger's central concepts. For the list o f suggested translations o f Heidegger's central concepts, see Dreyfus 1991, x-xiii. On zunachst, see also the translators’ footnote (BT 25). Toward the end o f Being and Time Heidegger explains in section 71 (The Temporal Meaning o f Dasein's Everydayness) the use o f "primarily and usually" (zunachst and zumeist). Using the improved translation, this passage reads: "In our analyses we have often used the expression 'primarily and usually’. Primarily' signifies the way in which Dasein is 'manifest' in the "with-one-another" o f publicness, even if 'at bottom' everydayness is precisely something which, in an existentiell manner, it has 'surmounted'. Usually' signifies the way in which Dasein shows itself for Everyman, not always, but 'as a rule'." (BT 422; SZ 370)

18 I have made a slight correction in the first sentence ("maxim" instead o f "m axim s") and have improved the understanding o f the second important sentence ("the leads for d isen tan g ling the phenomenon" instead o f "the indications for resolving the phenomenon").


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by epistemology o r philosophy o f science, and then ossified as the standard methodological

technique. Phenomenology is not immune to becoming a perfunctory method for elucidating

Dasein and existence. Being true "to the things themselves" requires any method to be

subservient to the phenomena that are to be clarified. Ultimately, method v an ish es to the

degree it has disclosed its phenomena.

There is no such thing as the one phenomenology, and if there could be such a thing it would never become anything like a philosophical technique. For implicit in the essential nature o f all genuine method as a path toward the disclosure o f objects is the tendency to order itself always toward that which it itself discloses. When a method is genuine and provides access to the objects, it is precisely then that the progress made by following it and the growing originality o f the disclosure will cause the very method that was used to become necessarily obsolete. The only thing that is truly new in science and in philosophy is the genuine questioning and struggle with things which is at the service o f this questioning. (BP 328; GA 24, 467)

Even though Heidegger's work (from about 1930 onward) ceased bearing the express

title o f phenomenology, the tenets o f phenomenology guided his approach throughout his

entire work. If phenomenology is heeding its maxim "To the things themselves!" it can indeed

recede as a special method in proportion to the light it is shedding on the phenomena.

Assigning secondary importance to its title and method is consistent w ith the maxim of

phenomenology. Heidegger reformulates the task o f phenomenology in "My Way to

Phenomenology," published about 40 years after Being and Time and The Basic Problems

o f Phenomenology:

In what is most its own phenomenology is not a school. It is the possibility o f thinking, at times changing and only thus persisting, o f corresponding to the claim of what is to be thought. If phenomenology is thus experienced and retained, it can disappear as a designation in favor o f the matter o f thinking whose disclosure remains a mystery." (TB 82; SD 90. In the last sentence I have changed the translation of Offenbarkeit o f thinking from the potentially misleading "manifestness" to "disclosure.")


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Heidegger singles out three basic components o f phenomenology: (1)

phenomenological reduction which leads the analysis from ontic entities to their being; (2)

phenomenological construction which views entities in the perspective o f their being; and (3)

phenomenological destruction which aims at a critical appropriation o f the history o f being

and its concepts (Heidegger calls this third component also his "critical ontology"). In effect

these three components are always present in any phenomenological analysis, even though

they are not expressly singled out as such or do not necessarily occur in this particular

sequence.

Sections 1 through 3 have outlined hermeneutic phenomenology in preparation for the

most central phenomena to be described in the following sections o f this Appendix. Due to

the circularity o f the subject matter itself, most o f Heidegger's concepts define each other,

thereby making a linear outline almost impossible, often stylistically awkward, and logically

repetitive. Describing circular phenomena in linear sequence, holistic features piece by piece,

and Dasein from "within" while rejecting the assumption o f "inside" and "outside" as distinct

and separate spheres — these are some o f the particular challenges hermeneutic

phenomenology is called upon to master. These particular challenges prompt the often

peculiar terms Heidegger coins to get his points across. A t this stage o f the presentation, we

are sufficiently familiar w ith Heidegger's basic terms, and can proceed to the most central

phenomena: world and being-in-the-world.


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4. The Phenomenon o f World

"World" is as central a term in Heidegger's phenomenology as is Dasein. Dasein and

the world it dwells in are co-determining and mutually defining notions.

Self and world belong together in the single entity, Dasein. Self and world are not two entities, like subject and ob ject... but self and world are the basic determination o f Dasein itself in the unity o f the structure o f being-in-the-world. (BP 297; GA 24, 422)

Heidegger uses "world" as an ontological term in contradistinction to both (1) the

ordinary pre-philosophical concept o f world which signifies a set o f equipment, roles, and

practices such as the business world, and (2) the conventional philosophical concept of world

which signifies the totality o f entities o r "all that is the case," as Ludwig Wittgenstein

proposes in his Tractatus.19 When Heidegger uses "world" (with quotation marks), he refers

to the ordinary meaning or to the conventional philosophical notion; when he uses this

concept without quotation marks, he intends the phenomenological meaning as described in

this section. I will follow this convention henceforth.20

19 "The world is all that is the case [1].... The world divides into facts [1.2].... The totality o f existing states o f affairs is the world [2.4].... The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit o f the world [5.632]." These selected concise statements from Wittgenstein's Tractatus (1974), first published in German in 1921, portrait an empiricist and atomistic notion o f "world." This empiricist concept o f world, which became a matter-of-fact doctrine o f logical positivism, is just the opposite o f the phenomenon Heidegger wants to make evident. Heidegger's concept o f world is close to Leben (life) introduced by Wilhelm Dilthey in his hermeneutic psychology around 1890. Leben subsequently evolved into the concept o f the Lebenswelt (life-world) in Husserl's later work and his phenomenological school. As will become apparent in the following, "life-worki" is a term that would, in Heidegger's phenomenology, be a redundant compound or a tautology.

20 Heidegger establishes this convention in Section 14. The Idea o f the Worldliness o f the World in General (BT 93; SZ 65). Frequently, Heidegger violates his own convention.


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Heidegger maintains that the concept o f world, o r the phenomenon thus designated,

has been passed over by W estern thinking, resulting in conceptual distortions and pseudo

problems. A clarification o f Heidegger's world-concept is a basic requirement for

understanding his "derivative" concepts such as environment [Umwelt], equipment [Zeug],

and spatiality [.Raumlichkeit] — all fundamental conceptual tools for the design professions.

Even though the concept o f w orld is more fundamental than its conceptual derivatives, full

elucidation o f the phenomenon o f world can be achieved perhaps only after understanding the

derivative and "more concrete" phenomena.

Before presenting the concept o f world in positive terms, let us first determine what

Heidegger does not mean by this concept. As indicated in the previous quotation, Dasein and

world do not correspond to the traditional distinction o f subject and object: "Subject and

object do not coincide with Dasein and the world." (BT 87; SZ 60)

The intimate and interdependent relation between Dasein and the world can perhaps

be best approached by introducing here the existential [Existenziaf] called "being-amidst"

(Sein bei). As we have learned in the previous section, existentials are defined as the most

general structures or characteristics o f Dasein:

As an existential, 'being-amidst' the world never means anything like the being- present-at-hand-together [Beisammen-vorhanden-sein] o f things that occur. There is no such thing as the 'side-by-side-ness' o f an entity called Dasein' with another entity called 'world'. (BT 81; SZ 55)

"Being-amidst" characterizes Dasein as being intimately involved with the environing things

in everyday skillful coping. Seen from a phenomenological perspective, Le., seen from within

this concerned and transparent coping, the world is not the sum total o f entities forming a

composite object for cognition performed by a detached subject. The synthetic subject-object


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relation welded by such a cognition is the product o f an epistemological stance which has

itself already removed from transparent everyday coping. "Subject" and "object" are

analytical concepts resulting from a theoretical stance whose task it then is to re-combine

"subject" and "object" into a coherent whole via a cognitive theory.21 Heidegger maintains

that such a cognitive-analytical approach cannot adequately reflect our absorbed action which

is typically devoid o f any self-consciousness and "mental" content. The philosophical

tradition which attempts to account for intelligibility by synthesizing discrete elements (e.g.,

subject, object, cognition or perception) is called "Cartesianism," named after Rene Descartes

(1596-1650). Descartes is generally considered the founder o f modem philosophy, which was

based, among other things, on the axiom "I think, therefore I am." Contrary to Cartesianism

and its 20th-century variations, Heidegger wants to demonstrate that and how discrete

elements are understandable only on the basis o f a previously understood world, i.e., a pre-

reflectively and directly understood nexus o f social practices, available tools, and concerned

practical involvement.

The dominant philosophical tradition, ever since Plato's and Aristotle's fascination

with theory, has been elevating the purified theoretical stance to a position allegedly superior

to un-reflective practical involvement. The "Cartesian" tradition, which is in fact as old as

Western civilization itself, thus creates its own problem o f needing to find a cognitive link

between subject and object. Heidegger shows that this so-called purified and presumed

21 In the words o f Mephisto, Goethe mocks in his Faust the inadequacy of the traditional cognitive-analytical approach in studying the world o f living entities: "Who would study and describe the living, starts/ By driving the spirit out o f the parts:/ In the palm o f his hand he holds all the sections,/ Lacks nothing, except the spirit's connections." (Goethe 1963, 199)


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superior theoretical subject-object relation is an impoverished derivative o f our everyday

involved dealings with things o f use [Gebrauchsdinge] that surround us.

By undercutting the Cartesian tradition — still dominant today, especially in

epistemology, cognitive sciences, and artificial intelligence — on the basis o f a pragmatic and

non-cognitive approach, Heidegger wants to make evident that Dasein is always already

amidst the things o f use (tools, equipment), and that the world is always already understood

somehow before any discrete thing o f use can be singled out for detached observation or

theoretical reflection.

Heidegger sees himself in the business o f clearing away long-standing and obstinate

misconceptions which are responsible, in part, for many conceptual distortions in the

theoretical disciplines and, consequently, in education and in professional practice. One o f

these historical misconceptions is the artificial subject-object dichotomy. This dichotomy,

together with its corollary inner-outer hiatus, can be unmasked as a pseudo-problem if it can

be shown that Dasein always already directs itself primarily and usually towards things it deals

with in everyday coping activities. Absorbed in smoothly flowing activities, Dasein does not

admit any fragmentation such as a subject-object split.

The inherent directedness o f Dasein toward things it is intimately involved with, also

called intentionality, is a phenomenon which is not easy to describe. So ingrained are

traditional epistemological notions such as subject and object, or inside and outside, that

doing without them seems impossible when describing Dasein's intentionality, as in the

following passage:

When Dasein directs itself towards something and grasps it, it does not somehow first get out o f an inner sphere in which it has been proximaily encapsulated, but its


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primary kind o f being is such that it is always 'outside* amidst entities which it encounters and which belong to a world already discovered. Nor is any inner sphere abandoned when Dasein dwells amidst the entity to be known, and determines its character; but even in this "being-outside' amidst the object, Dasein is still 'inside', if we understand this in the correct sense; that is to say, it is itself'inside' as a being-in- the-world which knows. (BT 89; SZ 62)

Always "already out there" amidst the things o f use is the basic ontological constitution o f

Dasein (MFL 167). Dasein typically dwells amidst the things o f practical concern. In

involved, practical dealings with things, Dasein has always already transcended the alleged

gap between "subject" and "object," between "inside" and "outside." Hence Dasein dwells

in what Heidegger calls "ontic transcendence" in The Metaphysical Foundations o f Logic

(MFL), his last lecture in Marburg (1928). "For Dasein there is no outside, for which reason

it is also absurd to talk about an inside," he states in a lecture two semesters earlier (BP 66;

GA 24, 93).

Having outlined Dasein's being amidst the things of use and its intentionality or ontic

transcendence, I can now present one o f Heidegger's positive definitions o f the phenomenon

o f world.

The world as already unveiled in advance is such that we do not in fact specifically occupy ourselves with it, or apprehend it, but instead it is so self-evident, so much a m atter o f course, that we are completely oblivious o f it. World is that which is already previously unveiled and from which we return to the entities with which we deal and among which we dwell. (BP 165; GA 24,235; I have made improvements to the translation o f the last sentence.)


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5. Bein g-in-the-Wo rid

Even in the process o f arguing against the appropriateness o f traditional dichotomies

such as inside/outside or subject/object, one is still ensnared in the traditional ontology from

where the thinking in such dichotomies originates. In order to avoid the traditional misleading

terms altogether, Heidegger introduces a compound expression that is to express — as a

unitary notion and in somewhat more concrete terms — Dasein's dwelling amidst its things

o f use: be ing-in-the-world [In-der-Welt-sein].

Dasein is not also extant among other things with the difference merely that it apprehends them. Instead, Dasein exists in the manner o f being-in-the-worldand this basic determination o f its existence is the presupposition for being able to apprehend anything at all. By hyphenating the term we mean to indicate that this structure is a unitary one. (BP 164; GA 24, 234; I have reduced the ample use o f italics in this quote; last italics mine.)

Being-in-the-world is the most fundamental characteristic o f Dasein's everyday existence.

The hyphenation is a linguistic means Heidegger employs to stress the primordial or originary

[ursprunglich] belonging together o f Dasein, world, and "being-in" [In-Sein]. Being-in-the-

world as the basic and unitary phenomenon is ontologically prior to any derivative concept

such as "subject" and "object," "inside" and "outside," and "theory" and "practice." In

everyday, non-deliberate, ongoing coping, these analytical distinctions are already transcended

beforehand; being-in-the-world is another name for this "originary transcendence" (MFL 135).

Thus, being-in-the-world is the source o f intelligibility in general; more precisely, it

is the condition for both (1) involved successftd coping in everyday activities and (2)

theoretical, detached reflection attempting to account for such practice (epistemology).

Theoretical concepts such as "subject" and "object," "theory" and "practice" -- in fact, all

detached, theoretical activities — become intelligible (make sense) on the background o f the


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underlying and unitary phenomenon o f being-in-the-world. (We shall see later in this

Appendix why this is the case.)

This does not mean that Heidegger argues against scientific, analytical procedures in

an attempt to privilege practice vis-a-vis theory. His goal is more fundamental. Through

fundamental ontology, with phenomenology serving as method, he wants to make visible the

"hidden" and taken-for-granted background practices that allow us to make sense o f our

activities, including making analytical distinctions and detached observations in a theoretical

stance. Let us therefore restate again at this point that Heidegger does not deny the

legitimacy and achievements o f science in revealing and explaining natural laws. He rejects,

however, the claim that science can give an adequate account o f Dasein's existence, i.e., o f

how we primarily and usually go about our everyday concerns. Since Dasein is a self

interpreting being, being-in-the-world is a matter o f understanding all the way through, and

cannot property be an object o f analytical and causal explanations built up out o f aggregated

"objective" data devoid o f m ea n in g .22 The evidence and argumentation that warrant this

general statement are presented throughout this Appendix.

On the basis o f the above outline o f the fundamental phenomenon o f being-in-the-

world, or originary transcendence, the concept o f world appears now in a clearer light. We

now understand why the world, seen from the perspective o f our practical, concerned

22 An interpretation o f science as a derivative mode o f being-in-the-world has far reaching implications for science and our technological civilization. I cannot deal with this subject extensively. See Heidegger's explicit remarks on science in Being and Time, and Dreyfus 1991, especially Chapter 6. Heidegger's account o f the existential basis o f science leads to his later critique o f modem technology. Chapter 4 o f my inquiry deals with his multifaceted critique o f modem technology, and Chapter 5 builds on his suggestions for a postmodern dwelling in a technological world.


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involvement, is not an object for Dasein to investigate. In its phenomenological conception,

the world has no independent, "objective" reality apart from Dasein, the generalized, yet ever

concrete, human agent. Dasein and the work! it dwells in are inseparable. The world exists

as Dasein exists. The world is an aspect o f the unitary and underlying being-in-the-world and

has the character o r "coloring" o f Dasein, as described as follows:

The world is not the sum total o f extant entities. It is, quite generally, not extant at alL It is a determination o f being-in-the-world, a moment in the structure o f Dasein's mode o f being. The world is something Dasein-ish. It is not extant like things but it is there, like Dasein [being-there] which we ourselves are: that is to say, it exists. We call the mode o f being o f the being that we ourselves are, o f Dasein, by the name o f existence. This implies as a pure m atter o f terminology that the world is not extant but rather it exists, it has Dasein's mode o f being. (BP 166; GA 24, 237; I have simplified the translation o f the fifth sentence by staying closer to the original.)

"Worldliness" [ Weltlichkeit] is the world's way o f being. As an ontological term, it

marks a structural characteristic of being-in-the-world; hence it is itself an existential.

Worldliness defined as the way the world exists has nothing to do with the ordinary meaning

"worldly" as being devoted to material as opposed to spiritual pursuits. Worldliness as the

world's way o f being corresponds to existence23 as Dasein's way o f being.

Dasein finds itself not through introspection, but through being actively immersed in

the the world. Through th in g s which Dasein encounters within-the-world, or intraworldly

\innerweltlich] things, Dasein encounters itself. This is a simple but basic experience which

serves as a leitmotiv in many literary works o f art, as, for instance, in Goethe's Italian

Journey. In this autobiographical report o f his two-year travel, he repeatedly describes how

he gets to know himself by way o f things. For Goethe, the experience o f overcoming a long

23 Here and throughout the Appendix, I use "existence" and "to exist" as technical terms as defined in Section 3.1 o f the main text.


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standing self-absorption through opening himself to the things around him becomes so

revealing that he seeks it out deliberately, even to the point o f declaring it the main purpose

o f his journey (1786-1788). "My purpose in making this wonderful journey is not to delude

myself but to get to know myself through things [um mich an den Gegenstanden kennen zu

lemen]." 24 Especially the public life and architecture o f Rome becomes the world which

dissolves his self-absorption:

Let me put it like this. In this place, whoever looks seriously about him and has eyes to see is bound to become a stronger character \mufi so lid werderi\: he acquires a sense of strength hitherto unknown to him. His soul receives the seal o f a soundness, a seriousness without pedantry, and a joyous composure. A t least, I can say that I have never been so sensitive to the things o f this world as I am here. The blessed consequences will, I believe, affect my whole future life.... I am not here simply to have a good time, but to devote myself to the noble objects [grofie Gegenstande] about me, to educate myself before I reach forty." (Goethe 1982, 124; the two glosses in brackets are mine)

The role the encountered things around him play in his discovery and development o f

a more authentic "objectified" self appears, however, somewhat skewed in this passage, partly

because o f the novelty o f the discovery and, to a large degree, due to the objectivistic bent

o f the otherwise lively translation which favors penetrating boldness over textual accuracy.

The point o f this passage is Goethe’s discovery o f how important the encounters with things

24 I have altered the translation o f the second half o f this sentence. The translation o f Auden and Mayer reads: "My purpose in making this wonderful journey is not to delude myself but to get to discover m yself in the objects I see." (Goethe 1982, 40; c£ the original text in Goethe 1967a, 45.) In my judgement their translation o f ton mich an den Gegenstanden kennen zu lem en as "to get to discover myself in the objects I see" is too objectivistic, as is the case in the following passage that I quote. Goethe is referring to the concrete things around him encountered as a unitary, vivacious and holistic world that draws him in; he does not refer to objects he merely sees. I have changed the translation accordingly to "to get to know myself through things."


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great and small are for his development which he, before the journey, experienced as being

stuck in circles around his "inner self."

Heidegger's account o f how Dasein can find itself through intimate, active

involvement with the things o f its world can systematically explicate the described "self'-

revelations which allow anyone to "become solid." "We understand ourselves by way o f

things," Heidegger lectures in 1927, "in the sense o f the self-understanding o f everyday

Dasein.... Dasein thus comes toward itself from out o f the things." (BP 289; GA 24, 410) It

is, however, not the things taken in isolation, but as intraworldly things

... in and from which we encounter ourselves. That is why this self-understanding o f the everyday Dasein depends not so much on the extent and penetration o f our knowledge o f things as such as on the immediacy and primordiality [Ursprunglichkeit] o f being-in-the-world.... What is important is only whether the existent Dasein, in conformity with its possibility for existing, is primordial enough still to see expressly the world that is always already unveiled with its existence, to verbalize it, and thereby to make it expressly visible for others. (BP 171; GA 24, 244)

In addition to hermeneutic phenomenology, which aims at conceptual explication,

creative literature and poetry are the means most capable o f verbalizing the immediacy and

primordiality [Ursprunglichkeit] o f being-in-the-world and thereby o f making it "expressly

visible for others." As testimony on this point, Heidegger quotes a passage from Rainer

Maria Rilke's novel The Notebooks o f Malte Laurids Brigge (originally published in German

in 1910). I reproduce here this passage from a recent translation25 that is fresher than the

translation used in The Basic Problems (BP). Notice in the following passage, as Heidegger

25 Rilke 1990, 45-48.


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points out, "in how elemental a way the world, being-in-the-world — Rilke calls it life --

leaps toward us from the things." (BP 173; GA 24, 246)

Will people believe that there are houses like this? No, they'll say I am not telling the truth. But this time it is the truth; nothing has been left out, and o f course nothing has been added. Where would I get it from? People know that I’m poor. People know that. Houses? But, to be exact, they were houses which no longer existed. Houses which had been demolished from top to bottom. It was the other houses that were there, the ones that had stood alongside them, tall neighboring houses. Apparently they were in Hanger o f collapsing, since all support had been removed; a whole scaffolding o f long, tarred poles had been rammed diagonally between the rubble- strewn ground and the bared wall. I don't know if I have already said that this is the wall I am talking about. It was, so to speak, not the first wall o f the existing houses (as you would have supposed), but the last o f the ones that were no longer there. You could see its inside. You could see, at its various stories, bedroom walls with wallpaper still sticking to them; and here and there a piece o f floor or ceiling. Near these bedroom walls there remained, along the entire length o f the outer wall, a dirty- white space through which, in unspeakably nauseating, worm-soft, digestive movements, the open, rust-spotted channel o f the toilet pipe crawled. The gaslight jets had left dusty gray traces at the edges o f the ceiling; they bent here and there, abruptly, ran along the walls, and plunged into the black, gaping holes that had been tom there. But the most unforgettable things were the walls themselves. The stubborn life o f these rooms had not let itself be trampled out. It was still there; it clung to the nails that were left, stood on the narrow remnant o f flooring, crouched under the comer beams where a bit o f interior still remained. You could see it in the paint which it had changed, slowly, from year to year: blue into moldy green, green into gray, yellow into a faded, rotting white. But it was also in the places that had been kept fresher behind mirrors, paintings, and wardrobes; for it had traced their outlines over and over, and had been with cobwebs and dust even in these hidden places, which were now laid bare. It was in every flayed strip o f surface; it was in the damp blisters on the lower edges o f the wallpaper; it fluttered in the tom -off shreds, and oozed from the foul stains which had appeared long before. And from these walls, once blue, green, and yellow, and now framed by the broken tracks o f the demolished partitions, the air o f these lives issued, the stubborn, sluggish, musty air which no wind had yet scattered. There the noons lingered, and the illnesses, and the exhalations, and the smoke o f many years, and the sweat that trickles down from armpits and makes clothing heavy, and the stale breath o f mouths, and the oily smell o f sweltering feet. There the pungent odor of urine lingered, and the odor o f soot, the gray odor o f potatoes, and the heavy, sickening stench o f rancid grease. The sweet smell o f neglected infants lingered there, the smell o f frightened schoolchildren, and the stuffiness from the beds o f pubescent boys. And all the vapors that had risen from the street below, or fallen down from above with the filthy urban rain. And many things brought there by the weak ho use-winds, which always stay in the same street;


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and much more whose origin would never be known. I said, didn't I, that all the outer walls had been demolished except the last one — ? It is this wall that I have been talking about all along. You would think I had stood looking at it for a long time; but I swear I began to run as soon as I recognized this wall. For that's what is horrible — that I did recognize i t I recognize everything here, and that’s why it passes right into me: it is at home inside me.


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GLOSSARY

This Glossary contains the most important phenomenological terms that I use in my inquiry. I have tried to keep their definitions or explanations brief in order to provide the reader with a convenient and readable orientation. However, many terms listed in this glossary remain abstract and ambiguous without their fuller clarification in the main text. Terms which are used in my definitions or explanations and which are defined elsewhere in this glossary appear in small caps. The abbreviations indicating the source o f the Heidegger quotes are identified in References (following this glossary).

available, When we encounter equipment [Zeug] in absorbed and smoothavailableness everyday coping, it is "available" or "ready-to-hand" [zuhanden].

"Availableness" [Zuhandenheit] is Heidegger's term for the mode o f being o f equipment in which Dasein typically encounters it in everyday successful coping activities. (See also Table 3-1 where availableness is contrasted with three additional modes o f being other than D a sein : unavailableness, occurrentness, and pure occurrentness.)

background An understanding o f the being o f entities is embodied in the wayspractices we typically deal w ith them. This embodied understanding can be

called our background practices. Phenom enology attempts to make these practices explicit.

being Heidegger understands being as "that on the basis o f which beingsare already understood" (BT 25-26, SZ 6). Being is a fundamental aspect o f beings (or entities), i.e., their intelligibility.

being-in-the-world Being-in-the-world is the most central characteristic o f D asein 'severyday existence. In everyday ongoing coping activities, D asein , immersed in its w o rld , is already and always among its things o f use. “Dasein exists in the manner o f being-in-the-world, and this basic determination o f its existence is the presupposition for being able to apprehend anything at all." (BP 164; GA 24,234) In other words, being-in-the-world is the manner in which we encounter our everyday routine environment and is therefore the source o f intelligibility in general.


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Dasein

earth vs. world

enframing

entity

existence

existentialspatiality

"This entity which each o f us is himself and which includes inquiring as one o f the possibilities of its being, we shall denote by the term D asein” (BT 27, SZ 7) Dasein is that being that is "there" (da) with its world.

In his discussion o f the w ork of art Heidegger identifies two opposing forces, "earth" and "world," whose fruitful tension and interplay establish the artwork. "World" refers to the organizing and totalizing tendencies o f the artwork, and "earth" refers to those forces that resist "world." While "world" gives structure and predictability, "earth" makes sure that this structure is alive and continuously rejuvenated. — In the analysis o f D a se in and in the context o f dwelling with things, world and earth, respectively, have different meanings. (For "earth" as one aspect o f our practices, see the fourfold .)

The enframing [Gestell] is the mark o f modem technology. Objects and living beings are been reduced to disposable placeholders of the same standing reserve [Bestand] which is turning them into resources to be used efficiently.

An entity is anything that is. I use the terms “entities” and “beings" synonymously for anything that is.

Existence [Existenz] is Heidegger’s term for hum ans' or D esign's way o f being.

Existential spatiality (or D asein 's spatiality) refers to the spatial environment as human beings encounter it in their everyday routine activities. When humans are absorbed in what they are doing, space is not encountered thematically and explicitly as it is in science, engineering, and architecture. (See also Table 3-2.)


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existentiell vs. existential

fourfold

free relation to technology

An individual's understanding o f his or her own way o f being is "existentiell," and a m anifes t and express understanding o f ontological structures o f D a se in is "existential." Heidegger is doing existential analysis and not, as some authors claim, existentialism which focuses on the alleged plight o f the lives o f individuals and their "existentiell" understanding. (See also ontic vs. ontological investigation.)

The gathering power o f a t h in g opens up for humans four dimensions or aspects o f practices: earth, sky, divinities, and mortals. Heidegger calls their unifying interplay the fourfold [das Geviert]. Earth refers to "the taken-for-granted practices that ground situations and make them matter to us." Sky refers to "the disclosed or manifest stable possibilities for action that arise in focal situations." Divinities engender "the special attunement required for an occasion to work." (quotes are from Dreyfus and Spinosa 1997, 166-171) Mortals are human beings who are aware o f their finitude and fragility without letting such awareness inhibit their outlook via undue self-consciousness, morbid attitude, or assumed fixed identities. The fourfold gathers these four aspects o f practices into one union that centers a local world.

A post-technological, or non-instrumental, understanding o f technology does not deny any pragmatic utility o f technology, but accepts technology as our appropriate way o f dealing with the w o rld , i.e., as our current way o f being. This ontological and historicized understanding o f technology does not disavow technological utility, but includes it as one o f many aspects o f technology (beauty and playfulness, for example). A free relation to technological devices is based on such a non-instrumental understanding, which comfortably coexists with a variety o f non- technological, even marginal, practices (crafts, visual arts, religious practices, hiking, bird watching, etc.). Seen from a noninstrumental perspective, technology is one o f the major ways we organize and understand our collective and individual lives in the current historical epoch. (See also technological u n d e r st a n d in g )


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hermeneuticphenomenology

hermeneutics

instrumentalunderstanding

ontic vs. ontological

ontology

phenomenology

The task o f hermeneutic phenomenology is to make the essential structures o f existence explicit. Because Heidegger uses interpretation when uncoiling various levels and aspects o f D asein’s self-understanding, he calls his method interpretive or hermeneutic phenomenology. Through systematic interpretation hermeneutic phenomenology seeks to elucidate our tacit background PRACTICES. On a second level o f interpretation, phenomenology reflects also on its language and interpretive procedures as well as on its embedment in culture and the history o f thought.

Hermeneutics is the study o f the methodological principles of interpretation.

For instrumental understanding o f technology, see technological understanding o f technology.

An investigation is "ontic" (or "ontical") if it concerns beings or entities (humans or any other kind), and it is "ontological" if it concerns ways o f being that are fundamental, explicit, and shared. Heidegger's phenom enology is an ontological investigation. (See also existentiell v s . existential understanding.)

"Ontology" is the traditional name for the conceptual investigation o f BEING.

Phenomenology is a conceptual clarification that attempts to make manifest and explicit what is typically "taken for granted as being self-evident" (BP 58; GA 24, 80), i.e., our backg ro und practices. Stated alternatively, phenomenology is an explicit discovering o f that which D asein already understands, but either forgets or covers up while involved in everyday activities. Its goal is a theoretically unbiased description o f D asein 's everydayness. Phenomenology expresses this goal in its maxim “To the Things Themselves!" (BT 50; SZ 28) This maxim is, however, neither a call for scientific positivism nor for subjective introspection. It calls for a study o f D a se in on its own terms, i.e., how it understands itself. (See also herm eneutic phenom enology.)


295

phenomenon

technologicalunderstanding

thing

work of art

A phenomenon is something manifest, i.e., something that shows itself in itself. The phenomena "are the totality o f what lies in the light o f day or can be brought to the light...." (BT 51; SZ 28) As logos can be understood as a letting-something-be-seen, phenom enology is the practice o f reading or laying out the phenomena o f our everyday environment in the way they show themselves.

A technological understanding o f technology comprehends technological devices mainly as neutral means for achieving something (e.g., goods, mobility, efficiency, capital) and maximizing its utility. Therefore this understanding can also be called an instrumental understanding o f technology. (See also free RELATION TO TECHNOLOGY.)

A thing is a focal point around which a coherent and distinct context, a local w orld, can establish itself. Things gather a local w o rld and make it visible to those who dwell in it. When the gathering power o f things reaches beyond local worlds, things have the potential o f becoming w orks o f art, i.e, shared cultural paradigms. "Things function as works o f art when they unify a people and show them their understanding o f being." (Dreyfus and Hall 1992, 21.)

A work o f art (in the sense used in this inquiry) is a physical manifestation o f shared cultural practices which, if commonly recognized, establish a cultural paradigm. A work o f art is tacit culture made visible by unifying ongoing practices and giving them focused physical expression. In the context o f US history, the railroad was a 19th century work o f art. A work o f art "gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves." (PLT 43; HW 28) In other words, a work o f art is a manifestation o f the implicit self-understanding o f a unified, historical culture.


296

world

worldliness

World [Welt] is a pre-reflectively and directly understood nexus o f social practices, available equipment, and concerned practical involvement. Heidegger points out that we are involved with our world before we are engaged with specific equipment: “The world as already unveiled in advance is such that we do not in fact specifically occupy ourselves with it, o r apprehend it, but instead it is so self-evident, so much a matter o f course, that we are completely oblivious of it. World is that which is already previously unveiled and from which we return to the entities with which we deal and among which we dwell.” (BP 165; GA 24, 235). “World” (in quotation marks) signifies our social and physical environment viewed from the objective, detached perspective o f science. — In late Heidegger, a local world is a coherent and distinct context established and focused by a thing that makes this local world visible to those who dwell in it. (See also earth vs. world in Heidegger's analysis o f the work of a r t .)

Worldliness [Weltlichkeit] is the world's way o f being.


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