Workshop 15: Spontaneity and design in the making of Mediterranean port cities
Abstract
The common characteristics of Mediterranean port cities follow urban complexity and social diversity, through which it is possible to mention a common urbanity during the nineteenth century. The residents tended to feel more affinity with each other around an inter-subjective construction and representation of the city idea. With the transition from a setting of urban complexity and social diversity to the nationalist policies of nation-states, it became difficult to sustain the distinctive peculiarities of a Mediterranean port city, which in turn resulted with a lack of common social, economic, cultural and spatial characteristics.
This workshop intends to search on the one hand the common characteristics of Mediterranean port cities with a special emphasis on their urban transformation during two centuries from the nineteenth century, the period of modernization especially for the Eastern Mediterranean port cities and their incorporation to the world economy, until the present day. This includes questioning the social, economic and spatial changes in these cities through focusing on the role of urban planning and social classes and urban morphologies, produce during transformation process.
Description
Throughout history, the Mediterranean world has been perceived as a vast conglomeration of tiny sub-regions and larger groups of sub-regions; however, its distinctiveness lies not only in its fragmentation but also in its connectivity. Thus, the port cities of the Mediterranean are not isolated entities but rather nodal points of exchange with the rest of the world and, most importantly, among themselves.
Research into the social, economic and spatial characteristics of port cities has grown over the last two decades. The modernization approach focuses on the development of a port city as a resultant form of interregional and international relations, in which the diffusion process operates at the level of values and norms, culture, consumption patterns and politics, with little attention paid to the structuring effects of the economic relations that the port city embodies (Findlay et. al., 1990). However, Mediterranean port cities were conceived as a result of an imperialist exploitation process, serving as a conduit between their hinterland and the imperialist core. The development of capitalism and of a bourgeoisie has been correlated with the evolution of port cities, and the prosperity of a port city depends upon the momentum of bourgeoisie development. From this perspective, port cities are a spatial expression of core-periphery relations in which they serve as an essential intermediate stop from where commodities are transferred to and from the agrarian periphery and the industrial core. As such, trade was the principal mechanism for their incorporation into capitalist circuits (Keyder et. al., 1993).
In this setting, the common characteristics of Mediterranean port cities follow urban complexity and social diversity, through which it is possible to mention a common urbanity. Socially, the residents of Mediterranean port cities tended to feel more affinity with each other than they did with the inhabitants of non-port cities, characterizing them as locations of cultural exchange where people from different parts of the Mediterranean world met, mixed and influenced one another. As a result, they became a ‘model of conviviality’ (Tabak, 2009) in which the maritime society and culture were determined by a specific, short-lived conjuncture of global economic factors, rather than by its actors (Fuhrmann and Kechriotis, 2009). The conviviality of Mediterranean port cities evokes the notion of cosmopolitanism, although an ambiguity is present that is reminiscent of a pluralist society, a dynamic contiguity of groups rather than a melting pot that functioned on the basis of the recognition of the autonomy of the different ethno-religious communities (Driesen, 2005).
However, urbanism does not refer to a way of life associated with residence in an urban area where relationships forged by size, density and heterogeneity replace community ties. Rather, it denotes an inter-subjective construction and representation of the city idea – a cultural attitude toward city and urban life that introduced a distinctive model of urban growth, which led to ‘spontaneous development’, excluding typical land-use zoning; ‘spaces of immigrants’, causing illegal housing formations not only in the periphery but also in the city center; and ‘urban competition’ (Leontidou, 2001). At the turn of the nineteenth century, port cities such as Istanbul, Izmir, Alexandria, Athens-Piraeus, Algiers, Beirut, Barcelona, Tel Aviv, Naples, Genoa and Marseilles were agglomerations where land use was intense and dense regional, national and international communication networks converged (Driesen, 2005). The popularity of the city centre and the subsequent street life is evident both in the urban landscape and in land use, with small squares interspersed throughout the urban landscape within walking distance of both central and peripheral areas, rather than the presence of large parks (Leontidou, 2001).
With the transition from a setting of urban complexity and social diversity to the logic of nation-statehood, the ethnic and religious mosaic of the era was shattered, making it difficult to sustain the distinctive characteristics of a Mediterranean port city (Tabak, 2009). During this process, especially over the last century, structural changes in the economy and the proliferation of digital technology in communication networks have generated significant impacts, such as the dispersal of population, production and consumption over space. Commercial and industrial growth have forced larger ports to develop beyond the urban centres where space was scarce (Driesen, 2005), which, in turn, has resulted in an increasing separation between the city and port, with the latter being closed to the general public (Munoz, 2003).
The problems of urban development in Mediterranean port cities after the foundation of nation states resulted from a lack of common social, economic, cultural and spatial characteristics. The incorporation of Thessaloniki into the Greek state coincided with an active state policy to reinforce Greek sovereignty within the new territories (Hastaoglou-Martinidis, 1997), while the demise of cosmopolitan Alexandria was attributed to the rise of parochial, anti-colonial nationalism in Egypt and the emigration of Greek and Italian entrepreneurs (Starr, 2005). Likewise, in Barcelona, during a period in which a national identity was being revived, the city leaders engaged in a process of city beautification that witnessed the construction of modernist buildings alongside the recovery and promotion of medieval constructions, historic sites and arts. It was a process of urban transformation with a twofold objective that connected, in an interesting manner, the promotion of tourism with the fostering of civic pride and the Catalan national identity (Casellas, 2009). During this same period, the urban development of Athens suffered from a lack of open public spaces in its central areas, a low quality of environmental infrastructure, a dependence on private means of transport, and a significant distortion of the historical and natural topography (Chorianopoulos et. al., 2010).
Urban planning played an important role during the transition into nation states when European, and especially French, planner-architects were active in the Eastern Mediterranean (Hastaoglou-Martinidis, 2011). Urban plans were prepared by the Danger brothers and Michel Ecochard during the French mandate for the modernization of parts of the city centre of Beirut, where governmental administrations needed to be built (Nasr and Verdeil, 2008). In the same period, both the Greek government and the young Turkish Republic were anxious to make a clean break with the past. The plan of Hebard, prepared after the great fire of Salonica, became a vehicle for a common and significant ideological locus by prioritizing the issue of national identity (Lagopoulos, 2005); in addition, the plan of Izmir, prepared by the Danger brothers in 1924–1925 in collaboration with Henri Prost after the great fire of 1922, coincided with the foundation of the Turkish Republic, when the dialectical discourse on modernization and the creation of a national culture became essential (Bilsel, 1996). The plan of Barcelona produced by Jaussely paid attention to monumentality as the main characteristic and aimed at the renewal of the historic center (Monclus, 2000).
In this framework, this workshop intends to search on the one hand the common characteristics of Mediterranean port cities with a special emphasis on their urban transformation during two centuries from the nineteenth century, the period of modernization especially for the Eastern Mediterranean port cities and their incorporation to the world economy, until the present day. This includes questioning the social, economic and spatial changes in these cities revolving around a series of topics and questions:
1-Urban transformation and the role of urban planning
As mentioned about, the Mediterranean port cities were developed spontaneously before the foundation of nation states in the first half of twentieth century and nationalist policies affected the shaping of urban space through urban planning as a means of modernization. The following questions will direct the discussion about the role of urban planning.
• Did Mediterranean port city experience a rupture from its archetypal characteristics after the implementation of nationalist policies through urban planning?
• Did the spontaneity give the Mediterranean port city its distinctive spatial qualities, concretized through a well-connected public space and urban complexity?
• Did urban plans have the same impact on urban transformation of all port cities, or plans and transformation revealed different characteristics?
• Is it possible to mention common design approaches for urban planners and the produced urban environments?
2-Urban transformation and the role of classes
After the foreign trade and international commercial relations strengthened the importance of Mediterranean port cities, they became a place for tradesmen of many different nationalities, during the nineteenth century, which in turn gave rise to a cosmopolitan and multicultural environment. In this period, newly emerging bourgeoisie in the port cities affected the formation of urban built environment through producing special urban quarters and commercial landscapes. Then,
• What were the mechanisms of social classes to affect the shaping of urban built environment?
• Is there a relation between the specialization and modernization of commercial relations and appearance of new urban institutions and new urban environments?
• What kind of social practices and institutions were embodied during the multicultural and cosmopolitan life of Mediterranean port cities and how did they influence the social life?
3-Changing morphologies
During the transformation of Mediterranean port cities throughout two centuries, most of them dispersed throughout the surrounding environment, which turned coast towns of nineteenth century into metropolitan cities of twentieth century. Therefore, they began to produce new urban morphologies. In this respect,
• What kind of urban morphologies developed the nineteenth century port city and what kind of new forms have been produced during the two centennial urban transformations?
• Are there any common characteristics of these morphologies in Mediterranean port cities?
• And furthermore, through which mechanisms were they produced?
Another intention of the workshop is to have the discussed papers as a special issue of an esteemed journal and furthermore the workshop is expected to strengthen ties between scholars of urban studies in Mediterranean port cities, which is the primary objective of Center for Mediterranean Urban Studies at Mersin University.
References
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Page last updated on 04 September 2018