Urban
disorder and vitality
Francesco Indovina*
In City, Territory and Architecture, 2016
Abstract
The concepts of order and disorder applied to urban
and territorial issues involve complex definitions. Why do
cities,in spite of the effort made to give them order, even though from time to
time this order has been codified in different ways,end up being untidy? In the
context in which the two concepts will be used in this paper it is not possible
to imagine them as alternatives, but they are taken as dialectically
constituting territorial reality. “Order” and “disorder” oppose each other
but do not clash with each other. In the hectic organisation of urban and
territorial reality one stimulates the other and each, in opposing, determines
change. The inclination towards order (or tendency towards order) tends, on the
one hand, to “repair” the disorder but, on the other, brings out the conditions
for disorder to show itself again and materialise with its problems but with
the vitality implicit in change. Change brings disorder but public commitment through
institutions cannot but aspire to recover a level of order, hopefully, more
advanced. Order and disorder are closely linked with each other, one producing
the other in a circular process. The urban, precisely because of its constituent
construction (social, productive and economic variability; clash between powers
and options of models of society) cannot be stable, but the continuous recovery
of “order” responds not only to functional needs, but also to ethical options:
we should not consider all urban “order” as positive, compared with negative
disorder; there are
experiences of oppressive and coercive urban order. It
is always disorder that determines better levels and quality of order. Though
it may be the dynamic factor of every urban condition, we must remember that it
always requires new order from which to start out again. Disorder, however it
is identified, constitutes a permanent fact, inherent in the urban condition; it
is neither the result of wrong planning (sometimes also this), nor of a
perverse will, but rather of the dynamic mechanisms of the city itself.
Keywords: Alternation between order and
disorder, Urban space organisation, Vitality
© The
Author(s) 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided
you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a
link to the Creative Commons license,
and
indicate if changes were made.
*Correspondence: indovina@community.iuav.it
Department of Architecture, Design & Urban Planning, University
of Sassari, Palazzo del Pou Salit, Piazza Duomo 6 Alghero, 07041 Sassari,
Italy
Indovina City Territ Archit (2016) 3:18 Page 2 of 7
Urban development, the
work of planning and organizing
the city
and territory, is characterised by a strong vocation
to impose order. When
an urban planning instrument
defines
what, where, when and how it is possible to
“realise”
some change in the organisation of space it ends
up
modifying what exists and imposing a new kind of
“order”.
We tend to think of “physical” order but actually,
it is a
case of order that has a variety of aspects, including
the
indications of “meaning” space organisation
produces.
Urban development, giving order to settlement, is
extremely ancient and arose with the first
settlements,
even though the discipline was codified in modern
times:
from an activity without a code that responded to
social,
economic and life requirements and ones based on
functionality
and representation, to a discipline often based
on self-determination.
In the cultural history of the discipline certain
traits
can be picked out in which an interest for functional
order seemed to prevail, though in fact the attention
for
the city and territory that this activity has adopted
is the
overall one involving functionality but also social
structure,
co-habiting, power, culture, and sacred and profane
rites. Each kind of urban order, in its divisions and
construction,
may have been the source of conflicts, oppression,
liberation, marginalisation and exaltation (Indovina
2016).
The question that forces us to reflect is very simple:
why do cities, in spite of the effort made to give
them order,
even though from time to time this order has been
codified
in different ways, end up being untidy?
Open Access
The concepts of order and disorder applied to urban
and territorial issues involve complex definitions,
and to
understand them it is worth referring to some facts.
Cultivated land shows us a tidy territory, and it is
immediately understood that this comes directly down
from the organisation of agricultural production, from
the techniques used and the social relations
characterising
farming work. The orography of the territory, too,
with the crops compatible with the different heights
above sea-level, serves the purpose of spatial design;
its
appearance, colours and scents change with the change
of seasons or the change in production and technology
adopted. Basically, there is a “strength”,
agricultural production,
with very limited alternatives, giving particular
spatial solutions. “Dry walls”, which surround fields
or
enclosures and which we marvel at, are also a rational
and reasonable solution for the use of stones
unearthed
by the plough; land reclamation gives substance to
spatial
construction. Just as canals and ditches serve the
purpose
of taking water where needed, while rows of trees
consolidate
their banks, and lanes and farm-roads aim at the
movement of men, animals and machinery, depending on
the need.
Spatial order in the country, often admired, is the
result
of a need; it satisfies that expressed
by production which
presents very limited alternatives. Change is not
excluded
(crop variation, agrarian science achievements, use of
new technologies, etc.); the point may even be reached
of
building a new agrarian landscape with order that is
different.
Cultural movements linked with tradition sometimes
oppose these changes, harming the intrinsic nature
of the agrarian landscape, which is destined to
change.
Needs and reduced alternatives may be
considered key
categories in determining the agrarian landscape, but
we
are not dealing with two categories that could be
imagined
to be playing the same role in determining the urban
landscape.
In the city it is not possible to pick out such a
binding,
decisive need, or, rather, there is a great number
of
highly diversified needs and they express
inhomogeneous
content and justification; not only, but they are
needs
that are not compelling like in the country, as each
one is
compatible with various alternatives, therefore
with different
models of urban organisation. The urban condition
is characterised not by the absence of production but,
rather, by the organisation of this production, by a
greater
presence of functions, greater unnaturalness of the
context,
the existence of functions integrated with each other
and, at the same time, of functions that are
antagonistic
or incompatible, but above all by the high
concentration
of people with characteristics, projects, needs and
desires
that are different from each other. Differences that
are
also manifested as an expression of power (economic,
social, cultural, political, institutional, etc.) able
to leave a
footprint on urban organisation.
If each function were free to leave its own
“footprint”
on the urban territory, it is clear that the result
could not
but be a sort of marsh where footprints overlapped and
depended on the weight of the bodies (the interested
parties)
creating them. Presumably, however, footprints have
to follow rules (we might say the “plans” or any other
instrument managing the territory), but it is only an
assumption that rules can accurately steer the bodies
and
therefore the respective footprints. The doubt is not
suggesting
the fact that rules can be slack (this, too), or that
bodies move deliberately opposing the rules (this, too),
but the fact that the “needs” of the single bodies
change
over time in a process of interrelation between them,
and
that the possibilities offered account for the needs
of the
single body and the encounter of various bodies.
It should be pointed out once more that while for the
country order is imposed by production, for the city,
as
well as production, the multiplicity of social
subjects are
important, as is the prominence of the service
functions,
events, needs, etc. that are projected onto the organisation
of space. Urban space organisation requires a spontaneous
directive; agricultural
order, we might say, is
given, while urban order has to be constructed. Urban
order contemplates: the need to guarantee hygiene and
the best exposition as regards the climatic situations
of
the place; the possibility of carrying out and
developing
productive and economic activities; “power”
representation;
the citizens’ life needs; the intention to
differentiate
places by the presence of different social strata; the
development
and localisation of services; the need to avoid
mixing functions little or not at all compatible with
each
other, and so on.
Contemplation that is not always consistent, not
always
progressive, and not always attentive to the general
interest.
The history of the city teaches how changeable it can
be, in its shape and organisation, and how the change
is
the fruit, mainly, of change in social structure,
production
organisation and power organisation itself. Urban
space organisation appears as a “passive” outcome of
these changes, not as being determined by a factor
that
imposes change. The dynamics (the change) of the city
and its organisation have to take into account its
“hard”
part: the built city, its history and its works: each
new
order does not wipe out the past but fits into an
existing
context (hopefully, respecting it), perhaps giving it
a
purpose (from various points of view, including
social) in
the new reality. Change is at the same time
destructive
and protective; the present also has elements of the
past
and, fortunately, elements of the future (which we are
not
perhaps able to recognise).
Indovina City Territ
Archit (2016) 3:18 Page 3 of 7
Urban organisation actually undergoes the effects of
continuous alternation between order and disorder. In
the context in which the two concepts will be used in
this
paper it is not possible to imagine them as
alternatives,
but they are taken as dialectically constituting
territorial
reality. “Order” and “disorder” oppose each
other but
do not clash with each other. In the hectic
organisation
of urban and territorial reality one stimulates the
other
and each, in opposing, determines change. What we
mean to say is that the inclination towards order (or
tendency
towards order) tends, on the one hand, to “repair”
the disorder but, on the other, brings out the
conditions
for disorder to show itself again and materialise with
its
problems but with the vitality implicit in change.
Order and disorder are closely linked with each other,
one producing the other in a circular process. They
are
like Siamese twins: one takes pains to find the most
comfortable position for itself, but this does not
mean
it is comfortable for the other, too; the latter
reacts and
achieves a more comfortable position for itself but
uncomfortable for the other. This metaphor might make
clear how the dynamic relation between order and
disorder
is continuous, not linear and may never find a point
of stability.
The dialectic of the Siamese twins applied to the relation
order/disorder is easy to share, but in fact presents
a
large number of aporias and many consequences. A
comfortable
position for one of the children, as we said, risks
being uncomfortable for the other, and when the former
achieves a better position, it affects that of the
other
child. No position exists that meets the demands of
both.
On the one hand, imposed order presupposes within
itself a principle of stability; we could say that the
enforcement of order does not have aims that are just
immediate but also future ones, but, as has been seen,
this claim appears to be contradicted by the character
of the territorial processes that are by nature
dynamic,
featuring changes and movements not always
predictable.
The economic, social, demographic, cultural,
technological
and power mechanisms involving the city and
territory are of such an innovative impact
that they cannot
but cause change, i.e. a challenge to the
pre-existing
order. But there is more, the irruption of change,
namely
disorder, should be taken as positive or at least inevitable.
If we were to assume that the enforcement of order
were aimed at improving the organisation of the city
and
territory and ultimately at improving the living
conditions
of those inhabiting and “using” that territory, we
would need to consider any challenge to order as a
prospective
worsening of those living conditions. But it does
not seem to be like this, not only because disorder
arises
round those who have settled in the city or territory
and
use it, with the prospect of improving their
condition, but
above all because the inevitable innovation, may, in
general,
be considered ameliorative.
Highly complex economic, social, political and
cultural
designs are projected onto the city and its transformations.
It is impossible that the city be domesticated and
dominated by a single interest, even when this appears
as strong, and when it avails itself of the strength
of economic
and political power. The overall design always
seems incoherent or, rather, is the outcome of
compromises
between different interests and strong points. But
from these strengths, their compromise, their
agreement
or disagreement, from the conflicts, the city takes
shape and gives itself organisation, a type of order.
Order
that seconds evolution but, at the same time, creates
contradictions.
Fundamentally, urban order is not independent from
the requirements of various kinds (economic, social,
cultural
and of life) that the city produces; but none of these
needs tends to fully prevail, precisely due to the
opposing
dialectics of the various requirements; urban order is
not
the outcome of mediation between the various
requirements
but, rather, gives rise to a solution that includes
spaces for the interests of each to be realised, whilst
simultaneously leaving antagonistic spaces.
Whatever meaning we wish to give to these statements,
we cannot ignore the fact that men and women occupy
“space” and organise it according to material and
intellectual
needs. The reality that springs from it is neither
fortuitous or spontaneous; its
content is different in proportion
to the growth of knowledge and the type of coexistence
chosen (or imposed), to the regime regulating
production relations, but also the phase of culture.
What
is seen around us, from the cities to the country,
represents
what has come down to our times from thousands
of years of work on constructing, adapting,
destroying,
reconstructing, modifying and enlarging, to which the
species has applied itself so as to overcome all obstacles
that, on the one hand, “stepmother nature” has placed
against the achievement of the welfare of the species
and,
on the other, power (economic, but not only) that has
continued to hinder the achievement of freedom.
Each change, however, rapid or slow, does not wipe out
the past organisation of space, but there are
phenomena
of continuous transformation and adaptability. The
organisation of space is a continuous task of conservation-
destruction-innovation-construction: what
is preserved
is not always appreciated; often what is destroyed
produces criticism, regret and the quest for revival;
innovation,
though real, is presented not rarely as an illusion;
what is built seldom gains general approval. It is
certain,
however, that a static state does not exist; were this
manifest
it would be the sign of a remoteness from the
continuous
flow of evolution and innovation.
Indovina City Territ
Archit (2016) 3:18 Page 4 of 7
The field of spatial order is not one of “rational”
choices
(depending on epochs) but rather of “political”
choices.
The city and territory are a field of tensions and
conflicts;
however much the species is civilised it remains
divided
by interests, often contrasting, that aspire to
“appropriating”
space, and spatial organisation that bears witness to
their power (or absence of power). This is social
“typology”
that is projected onto the space: its
conflictivedemocratic
or rather pacified-authoritarian features (or,
more to the point, where the conflicts are repressed)
find
their configuration in space organisation (Fregolent
and
Savino 2013).
In modernity the instruments for giving order to
space,
apart from being refined, are a way of reducing discretion,
namely the will to overcome, or more simply the
achievement of the interests of one party to the
detriment
of those of the collectivity or of other single
individuals.
It is obvious that discretion is founded on power,
and also in advanced democracies power (especially
economic power) is not eliminated, but the “rules”
that
dictate space organisation, which should be valid for
everyone,
certainly put ties on or at least hinder the success
of single powers. At least, this is their intention
(doubts
and criticisms may be put forward on the respective
realisation, but everything depends on political will
or
weakness).
We mean to maintain that in order to achieve urban
order (however defined) the existence of a set of
rules is
taken for granted, which indicate the ways in which
the
city is organised so as to enable its efficient and
effective
functioning, with the satisfaction of everyone or
preferring
some (this is a variable of politics). While it is
obvious
that these rules vary over time and in space, it
should
be emphasised that their application is a
manifestation of
politics or, if preferred, a way of governing. It seems
misleading,
in effect, to believe that the existence of “good
rules” can guarantee space organisation coherent with
the (abstract) aims of the said rules. The rules
relating
to space organisation have ambiguous features, they
are
both perceptive and programmatic,
and this
ambiguity
can in no way be eliminated given the way they are
applied. The guarantee of the results proves closely
linked
with the expression of a specific political will (an intention)
and the management of transformation processes
(another aspect of political will). But the ordered
condition
is only temporary; disorder tends to emerge from the
tidy mesh.
When the variation (the urban dynamics) is complex,
of considerable size and speed, this cannot but cause
disorder
(with respect to the previous order). In short, the
characteristics of urban transformations that
determine
disorder are: quantity, i.e. the
size of the changes compared
with the size of the city; speed, i.e.
transformation
time is a very important feature; density, also
understood
as the concentration of change phenomena.
In recent times, with the establishment of liberalism
also at the level of organisation of the territory, so
that
organised spaces may seem like a conflict between
individuals
(the other side of the coin is collaboration), it
has not been possible to deny the existence of
processes
of exchange, integration, collaboration and
competition,
and conflicts between individual interests. At the
same
time, it must be acknowledged that stakeholders (very
powerful groups) exist and that the struggle for space
appropriation is not only interpretable as the result
of
“competition” between individuals but, rather, as a
political
clash between more or less codified interested
parties,
while social conflicts appear as the initiative of the
social
forces (economically the weakest) to defend the
general
interests (Belli 2016).
By this we do not mean to ignore the strength and
importance of the individual and along this path the
possibility
of partial processes of self-organisation
(well-tempered
individualism can be good for space organisation,
too), but just to emphasise once more that space
organisation
responds to requirements of a collective, social,
functional and cultural nature, and that as such,
space
cannot but be organised according to collective
(planned)
political processes. And that if self-organisation
processes
go beyond aspects of little importance they determine,
even if not intended for this purpose, breakdowns
in the collective organisation of space.
As we have already said, disorder, as considered here,
can take on different aspects but is nevertheless
characterised
by the “rupture” of an order that corresponds to
a society’s systems. It cannot be picked out as an exclusively
negative element, for it actually
represents positive
distortions, too, of the systems set up, and can
introduce
elements of dynamism and innovation and translate
social transformations into spatial terms also; in a
certain
sense it corresponds to the vitality of a specific
urban
condition. From this point of view it should not only
be
considered the establishment (against the
collectivity) of
specific, easily identified individual interests (often
speculative
on the economic plane, “degrading” on the social
plane, and frustrating from a cultural standpoint)
but,
rather, a “composition” of many things, the
expressions of
the (precarious) equilibrium that
society has achieved in
a particular phase.
We thus need to think that the phenomena that
encourage disorder belong both to the exogenous and
the endogenous categories: new technology may require
changes in the organisation of the city (namely: new
order), but “requests” may be seen to emerge directly
from the citizens and the organised social forces that
require changes in urban order to improve their
specific
Indovina City Territ
Archit (2016) 3:18 Page 5 of 7
urban life condition. The political nature of this
demand
places it on the terrain of the comparison and strength
relations.
The city (and the territory) are no more than an
exercise
field for various options maintained by different
forces, often with alternative objectives; it is
indeed due
to the presence of opposed forces that the city, in
general,
and up to now, has never completely responded to
the interests of one party. Just as the Siamese twins
seek
but do not find a position that is comfortable for
both,
the city moves continuously between order and disorder,
between ruptures and recomposition.
Perception of order and its advantages and of disorder
and its disadvantages is not only not immediately
clear, but can only be the outcome of a reflective
process,
which cannot but bypass individuals to take on the
complete, complex urban society and its values. If it
were
true, as we have mentioned more than once previously,
that (functional, aesthetic, social) order did not, in
the
past evolution of the human species, constitute a
spontaneous
event but the outcome of a project, then we
would
need to devote some thought to this. If urban
dynamics,
however defined, are on one side a challenge (partial
and/or total) for this project, then, on the other
side, they
actually expect a new project at the same time.
One might ask what drives a collectivity to a sort of
Sisyphean torment, namely to the continuous repetition
of an action that is useless: to set up, work for,
commit
oneself to the achievement of urban order that is not
lasting.
One might maintain that this need is the only one
compatible with the possibility of survival of the
species,
which has on the one hand to oppose the forces of
nature that would like to blow it away, but must, on the
other, fight the stimulus towards the disintegration
of
coexistence with a counter-stimulus consisting of
rules,
of norms and values that are not stable but
continuously
renewed, though ever present.
To design and achieve urban order is fundamentally
an option in favour of coexistence. A project that
constitutes
an attempt, not always perfect, to respond both to
demand expressed or implicit, not just of functions
but
also meaning. As can be observed, even though ideas
and specific situations may drive us towards
individualist
exaltation that tends to be unbridled, the species has
an imprinting that
urges it towards coexistence; contemporary
life, increasingly complex, effectively imposes
greater and better regulation (in spite of different
appearances),
entrusting each individual or social group once
more with full freedom in belonging to spheres
previously
regulated and taking on the need to regulate new,
different spheres not considered before.
We have thus reached a crucial knot: urban order
design. Design that will resist
pressure from the “powers”
(wherever located) who would like to “subject” order
to
their own interests or points of view, to assert, on
the
contrary, principles of freedom, coexistence,
solidarity
and equality, though still leaving space for change
(Nel.
lo 2012).
It is possible to return to the dialectic of the
Siamese
twins: the movement of one of the two children
stimulates
the other to change its place; the intervention of a
“third” party (in the case of the city, politics) may
arrange
the two children in such a way that each achieves a
comfortable
situation, even if it is known that it will be of
brief duration as very soon they will move.
Planning is an instrument that in a “coercive” way
defines urban order; generally, in its application it
has
to overcome obstacles of meaning that end up limiting
its action, or to contrast the work of power groups
that
attempt to make it ineffective, or, again, keep
account of
the behaviour of citizens who evade its rules.
The statement that planning is the suitable instrument
to give answers to the problems of the city and
territory
nowadays does not meet with much support. The
prevalent
cultural, ideological and professional tendencies
assert the need for a drastic review of it, or even
its effective
elimination. On one side, it does not seem possible
to oppose the request for a review and modernisation
of
planning systems to take changes in society into
account
while, on the other, we forget that attention to the
changes in society and, therefore, the respective
adaptation
of the instrument of intervention, is a constituent
element of planning itself (even though in practice
this
attention has not always been shown).
We are referring to good planning, which we
would
define as that which pays great attention to the
collective
interest and an improvement in the quality of life of
inhabitants, and is organised using suitable
instruments,
having tackled the democratic encounter in its
approach,
taken into account processes underway and qualified
and
quantified the (negative and positive) effects of its
action.
But good planning also finds obstacles ahead. The
first
is a certain “doubling” that characterises the
attitude of
the “citizen” and his “common sense” as regards the
city.
This “common sense” is loaded with positive expectations
and requests: the territory is to be safeguarded, land
consumption reduced, the landscape protected,
hydrogeological
reclamation to be carried out, the city must
function, suburban decay must be eliminated, limits
and
rules for growth need to be introduced, and the
environment
must be healthy, etc.
Any plan seeking to realise these expectations and
meet the requests expressed, would assert the “values”
contained in them and should be welcomed with
great approval and enthusiasm. But things are not like
this. For every public decision on urban organisation
Indovina City Territ
Archit (2016) 3:18 Page 6 of 7
and reorganisation, for all regulatory action, each
tie or
limit imposed, opposition and differentiation with
varying
degrees of importance arise. These refusals do not
have their origin in the defence of private and
individual
interests, which would be understandable, but are
justified
by collective action to protect the general interest.
Considerable distrust has matured over time in any
public
decision or choice that may also generate “apathy” or
indifference; the notable errors, programmatic
inconsistency,
not to mention the spread of corruption of public
workers, explain this attitude, but it also originates
in
the prevalence of a political culture that denies
public
action true consistency and utility. It should also
not be
forgotten that at the moment in which the great
options
in principles turn into specific decisions, private
interests
tend to emerge. Subjects do not contest the great options,
they would happily see them achieved, but possibly
without
harming their own interests. Political
decision-making,
and therefore planning, finds itself in the situation
of
being appealed to, but at the same time rejected. It
may
be stated that planning finds it enjoys generic
consensus,
but also equally strong opposition.
What has previously been observed as regards urban
dynamics, the speed of change, and the increased
complexity
of the city and territory, challenges planning in
itself, according to some (interest groups and
scholars),
or at least the current form of planning; what is
criticised
is the compulsory nature of the choice of plan.
The idea that society’s dynamism is much more rapid
and does not easily endure the ties of the plan does
not
justify denying the need for the plan; greater and
better
planning is actually required. The request put forward
by various parties to respond to the dynamism of
society
is to develop a flexible plan; this
request only apparently
seems to side with the need for planning; it is
actually the
complete denial of any form of planning.
A flexible planis effectively an antithesis, for it
presupposes
objectives that have not been defined or that may
be continuously redefined according to needs; but
planning,
obviously, is such because it defines objectives and
a strategy to achieve them. If we were to consider the
plan process as formed of defined objectives and
“policies”
(specific public actions) suitable to enable these
objectives to be achieved, in a highly dynamic
situation
with unforeseen changes, continuous reconsideration or
updating of these policies—namely the means to achieve
the objectives—would be necessary and useful. These
are
policies that could be considered flexible and
modified,
according to needs, to achieve defined and
unchanged
objectives. What is
suggested, and would seem adequate
to respond to many specific situations is, therefore,
not
a flexible plan but, rather, flexible instruments to
achieve
predefined objectives (an adjustment able to take into
account environmental dynamics).
It is my personal experience that each action that is
accomplished, even if well targeted, may determine
unforeseen outcomes, some of which can assume a
negative
value, “perverse effects”, not only negative in themselves
but also contrary to all expectations and forecasts.
Unforeseen effects, also when perverse, suggest a
careful
analysis of the mechanisms activated and the responses
of the interested parties involved, and not the
impossibility
of public action. Unforeseen effects, moreover, can in
some cases determine innovations.
It has been maintained that the conflict represents
a positive element in that it expresses at the same
time
uneasiness and a request, provided actions exist and
are
put in place to solve such conflicts.
However, in the present historic phase the conflict
appears also to show a selfish effect: Not In My
Back
Yard (or NIMBY). A work (an oil
pipeline, a landfill, wind
power station, street, refugee camp, etc.) deemed in
some
way necessary is not wanted on one’s own territory,
but
preferred on “another” territory. What seems to
prevail in
these attitudes, very often justified, but not always,
by the
effects these structures could cause in the local
situation,
is a sort of local egoism, the child of a prevailing
identity
attitude that is extremely mean and utterly
short-sighted.
Obstacles to improving and renewing means and
processes
of territorial planning are not thought to exist,
provided improvements and renovation are able to
increase the efficiency and public effectiveness on
the
management of urban and territorial transformations.
It
is not a case of stating an ideological position, but
of the
awareness that the organisation of the city and
territory
cannot but have a public/collective guide, able to
improve
the inhabitants’ living conditions.
Disorder, however it is identified, constitutes a
permanent
fact, inherent in the urban condition; it is neither
the
result of wrong planning (sometimes also this), nor of
a
perverse will, but rather of the dynamic mechanisms of
the city itself. Change brings disorder but public
commitment
through institutions cannot but aspire to recover a
level of order, hopefully, more advanced. The urban,
precisely
because of its constituent construction (social,
productive
and economic variability; clash between powers
and options of models of society) cannot be stable,
but the
continuous recovery of “order” responds not only to
functional
needs, but also to ethical options: only the
“strongest”
(from all points of view) know how to take advantage
of disorder; the weakest usually pay a high price. But
at
the same time we should not consider all urban “order”
as
positive, compared with negative disorder; there are
experiences
of oppressive and coercive urban order.
Indovina City Territ
Archit (2016) 3:18 Page 7 of 7
It is disorder that breaks up all oppressive order,
and
it is always disorder that determines better levels
and
quality of order. Though it may be the dynamic factor
of
every urban condition, we must remember that it always
requires new order from which to start out again.
Competing
interests
The author
declares that he has no competing interests.
Received: 27 September 2016 Accepted: 12 October 2016
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Belli G
(2016) A colloquio con l’urbanistica Italiana. Interviste a B. Secchi, F.
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Clean, Napoli
Fregolent L, Savino M (eds) (2013)
Economia, società, territorio. Riflettendo con
Francesco Indovina. FrancoAngeli,
Milano
Indovina F (2016) Ordine e disordine
(in press)
Nel.lo O (2012) Francesco Indovina
Del analisi del territorio al gobierno de la
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