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Introduction
The public space is an essential part of the urban morphology; it is the lung of the city. Through history, there was a concern about designing the activated public space. In the 19th century with the development of industry sector, a new functional theory of urban planning had appeared to recognize and to zone the city areas, activities, and economic
sectors. Industry impacts and immigration to cities during the 20th century provoked the zoning approach obsolescence. It became not able to compete with the increasingly changing in city lifecycle. Thus, public space started aging and slowly hibernating.
On another hand, the people themselves in the cities had suffered from the impact of work conditions, pollution and taxes. They began to feel disappointed, depressed and alienated.
Those kinds of economic, environmental and psychological effects on the consumers of the city have manifested the question about the role of Public Space in improving the emotional steadiness of human being. On the contrary, the public space that should be created as an outlet for the city has become the more worryingly status. It has suffered from many problems such as the waste disposal; lack the capability to exploits the potentials of greenery and loss of sense of diversity alike.
Predominantly this problem had not appeared in the ancient cities due to the simplicity of lifestyle and the rareness of city activities. Therefore, most of the public open spaces were agreeable with everyday life conditions at that time. Public spaces like the agora, the forum, the plaza and the souk were fixable, sensible and comfortable. It involved mixed activates that enriched the sense of place. This heterogeneous or hybrid space can consider as the area where complex and multiple social and technological conditions overlaid; It looks like an adequate answer to the city dilemma. This paper arises a question about the demand to revitalize our living spaces and to go with creating a heterotopic space that helps to reactivate the dead areas and refreshing the city blood cycle. It adopts the concept of hybrid space as a substitutional option; the paper started with clarifying the architectural concept of hybrid and heterotopia then highlighted the definitions and the terminology that related to these concepts. Then it manifests the past attempts that applied the idea of hybrid space to give more attention and reinforcing the raised thoughts. The zoning based space has become fossilized, obsolescence and unmatchable with requirements of contemporary life. The paper analyses this kind of zone principally to compare with the new trend of design the public space.
The core paper questions are; how could create an open space that a liable to everyday life? And how could transform and upgrade the old ones?
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Hybrid space and Heterotopia concepts
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Definitions, Terminology, and Beginnings
Etymologically, the term hybrid has been used in English since 1601. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, it came from Latin hybrida, genetically; it is an offspring of two animals or plants of different races, breeds, varieties, species, or genera; A hybrid of two roses; a person whose background is a blend of two diverse cultures or traditions; something heterogeneous in origin or composition: composite hybrids of complementary DNA and RNA strands a hybrid of medieval and Renaissance styles; something (such as a power plant, vehicle, or electronic circuit) that has two different types of components performing essentially the same function drives a hybrid that gets really good mileage.
Nowadays, the hybrid space has a multilayer meaning depends on the purpose of the study, in the sense of technological milieu, it mean an area involves information that flow within it; it is an objective synonym for the virtual space. It is “space that is manifested in the physical world, but embodies digital information to make invisible social aspects of a coworking space visible." (Bilandzic, 2013) This kind of embodied hybrid space is "physical environments blended with ubiquitous computing technology.” (Bilandzic, 2013)
In the sense of the built environment, the hybrid space can be defined as an area involves mixed-used activities such as work and leisure - shopping, etc. and it might have mixed-concerned perspectives such cultural, social and technological.
The term heterotopia might is not common in the architectural literature, although it had a philosophical origin from the 1960s when Michel Foucault gave a lecture through architectural studies circle 1967, but it did not publish until 1984.
Foucault in his speech described our age as the age of space. He referred to Gaston Bachelard`s phenomenological viewpoint about lived space to describe this kind of heterogeneous space “…. We are living not in a homogeneous and empty space but, on the contrary, in a space that is laden with qualities, a space that may also be haunted by fantasy." (Faubion, 1998)
He argues that there are real places, in every culture and civilization, these actual places; " …are designed into the very institution of society, which are sorts of actually realized utopias in which the real emplacements, all the other real emplacements that can be found within the culture are." (Faubion, 1998) He called this space a heterotopia as opposed to the utopia that according to him has no real place.
Etymologically, heterotopia indicates the contraction of ‘hetero’ (another, different) and ‘topos’ (place), the term used in medical and biology literature to describe a phenomenon happening in an unusual environment. Although he never apparently signified to this, "Michel Foucault borrowed the term heterotopia from the medical and biological contexts, and inserted it into his own discourse." (Dehaene, M & De Cauter, 2008) In this sense, the heterotopia might mean the space of difference.
Despite the novelty of the proposal, however, the idea had application`s roots in every culture as Foucault argued. Maybe the clear example the city of Rome as it manifested at the 18th century Map of the city of Rome by Giambattista Nolli (1748);
“The churches of Borromini prominently surrounding the Piazza Navona, the Pantheon a bit further to the east. The church interiors are drawn as cavities within the solid built mass of the city, making for an elegant visual expression of the ambiguous status of these ‘Sacred’ spaces that defy easy categorization within the private-public/black-white binary logic of the map. The Piazza Navona was built on the vestiges of a stadium, the Circus of Emperor Domitian, which demonstrates that heterotopias can over time develop into public spaces." (Dehaene, M & De Cauter, 2008)
Figure 1. Fragment of the 18th- century map of Rome by Giambattista Nolli (1748). Source; (Dhaene and De Cauter 2008)
1.2. Historical Examples Of Hybrid Space Concept
1.2.1. The Agora
The Agora of ancient Athens is the heart of Classical Greece, the native land of democracy. This multi-use significant “Marketplace” featured shops, temples, and public spaces where people met, debated, watched games and spectacles and voted on the most important political issues of the city. The Agora is considered the Classical long life element that witnessed the impact on this civic space, from Neolithic to modern times.
According to Hannah Arendt, the Agora is a symbol of power;
The politics of power brings together people at such places where the freedom of thought is expressed. Public squares & plazas as a podium of power, the arena to spread free thinking has been the imprint from the Grecian agora, the Roman forum to the Medieval Paris and the squares of the Renaissance." (Arendt, 1958)
Hannah Arendt portrays an ancient society divided between the private, and Agora, the political ‘space of appearance’. The distinction between private and public life qualifies the three forms of the activity: labor, work, and action. Richard Sennett describes the agora as a place for democracy;
The other space of democracy was the Athenian agora. The town square consisted of a large open space crossed diagonally by the main street of Athens. At the sides of the agora were temples and buildings called stoas, sheds with an open side onto the agora.
A number of activities occurred simultaneously in the agora - commerce, religious rituals, casual hanging out. In the open space, there was also a rectangular law court surrounded by a low wall so that citizens going about their business or making an offering to the gods could also follow the progress of justice. (Wallenberg, 1998)
In this sense, the agora is not just a physical place; it is a democratic experience in the city.
Sennett manifests his visual impression of Agora; he determines two important aspects; these two principles of visual design - lack of visual barriers but a well-defined zone of transition between public and private- shaped people's experience of language. The flow of speech was less continuous and singular than in the Pnyx. In the agora, communication through words became more fragmentary, as people moved from one scene to another (Wallenberg, 1998.)thirty
Then he passes away on describing his visual journey inside the Agora;
The operations of the eye were correspondingly more active and varied in the agora than in the Pnyx. A person standing under the stoa roof looked out, his eye searching, scanning. In the Pnyx, the eye was fixed on a single scene, that of the orator standing at the bema. At most, the observer scanned the reactions of people sitting elsewhere, fixed in their seats. (Wallenberg, 1998)
The agora of Athena was the place of powerful, democracy and communication; it is multifunctional public space represented as a sign of civic and monument of justice. Bildbände describes it as;
A large, open square where the citizens could assemble for a wide variety of purposes. On any given day, the space might be used for a market, an election, a dramatic performance, a religious procession, a military drill, or an athletic competition. Here administrative, political, judicial, commercial, social, cultural, and religious activities all found a place together in the heart of Athens, and the square was surrounded by the public buildings necessary to run the Athenian government." (Bildbände, 2009)
1.2.2. The Forum
The forum was the center of social and public life; it is the descendant of the Greek Agora. The forum was the place for the communal, political, entertaining and religious activities.
It began as a marketplace then it rapidly became the commercial, political and ceremonial center of the Roman civilization. In the development, it developed into an elaborate architectural space that became a part of all Roman cities.
Unlike the Greek agora that is informal in the plan, and whose buildings are subsidiary to space, in the Roman Forum, the planning is more formal. The buildings surrounding it are typically large and dictate the area. Buildings regularly found in the forum include temples, basilicas, and baths.
In the beginning, in the sixth century B.C., the Roman Forum was simply a marketplace, but religious buildings soon began to be built there.
The Roman forum as a status of collective energy has a profound root of Romans memory. Favro debates:
For the Romans of the republic, every physical location had unique genius loci. This spirit of place drew power from the site`s inherent forces and from the cumulative input of human interaction. As a focal point for communal energy, the Roman forum was not just an open space in urban Rome; it was a container of collective consciousness. The genus of the forum was the genus of state. (Favro, 1988)
1.2.3. The Plaza
Unlike the Agora and Forum, the plaza has proved its viability and continuity. Functionally and morphologically through ages, despite the obsolete of concept, but it is still staunch in the minds of urbanists and planners as part of the structure of the city even today, So as not to almost devoid any city from one plaza or more. “Plazas can host a diversity of civic activities and tend to be multi-purpose. At the city and intermediate levels, they normally are open to public access. City level. Large plazas, often planned by the government or religious authorities, have been common in a wide variety of urban contexts through history." (Stanley, Stark, Johnston, & Smith, 2012)
It developed as essential parts of the cities. Plaza was a very conscious and integral part of city structure. The enduring appeal of the Greek and Roman classical period returned to the city and replaced the structural aspect of the Middle Ages with a pure, symmetrically molded sculptural form. Plaza is an attractive communal space; the word plaza has Spanish origin refer to the town square or central place of gathering. "In Latin America cities, the centers have followed a particular pattern that gives it an important recognition in the shaping of the urban structure. The origins can be traced back to the law of Indies, where the Spanish prescribed for each town a certain structure particularly focusing on the plaza. With the church and city hall as key elements of the colonial Spanish-American city layout." (McAdams, n.d.).
1.2.4. The Arab Souk
The Souk is the economic vein of the traditional Arabic city; it is a "marketplace, which was often shaded and passively cooled and ventilated, the circulation thoroughfares within the campus are shaded and passively cooled. They are also characterized by dramatic natural lighting via their roofs and social spaces." (Elgendy, n.d.) The Souk typically consisted of several shops arranged linearly in a respective sequence connected with residential districts through certain paths to the main souk spine. An essential feature of Arab Muslim cities is a definite uniqueness in the urban layout and a distinct separation between a multifunctional public urban core, and the private zones of residence. The city center incorporates different layers of interconnected Souks, permeable space open to the other, usually organized around a covered market and the principal mosque.
The public space system, based principally on pedestrian movement, were collected the narrow alleys of the Souks and commercial streets that were balanced out by the large central courtyard of the Friday Mosque.
In some Arabic cities like Aleppo, the Hellenistic and Roman eras left their touches in the urban fabric with their visible Orthodox rectangular street grids that still preserved in its covered souks.
The city acquired its compact urban fabric, a commercial core centered on the main souk, considered the longest covered souk in the Middle East, "which was established along the traditional east-west axis of the Hellenistic town, with the main mosque occupying the former space of the agora. The souks consist of some parallel rows of covered market alleys linked by perpendicular connections." (Bianco, David, & Rizzadi, 1988) The old Souks create a heterogeneous but a unified ensemble through its gradual transition with the other components of traditional Arabic city.
1.3. Impacts behind recourse to hybrid space concept
The modern city has suffered numerous dilemmas due to many impacts; we could classify them into three broad categories, economic, environmental, and psychological. Those consequences happened due the effects of an industrial era upon people and city itself. Although the zoning theory tried to treat with those impacts at a planned manner, unfortunately, most of the planning solutions have failed to pursue the increasing influences of the urbanization.
1.3.1. Urban obsolescence
Even though urban obsolescence can be the outcome of altering economies, such as a process predominantly produced by changing moods, technologies, and styles Nevertheless, Obsolescence might be we connected with materialistic objects, especially electronics devices such as mobiles, televisions, computers, games, etc.
"The term obsolescence was first applied in English to the built environment around the year 1910 to help explain the phenomenon of American downtown skyscrapers recently built and still physically sound but brought low by a process of what was called ' financial decay." (Daniel, 2015) The phenomenon shows why the estate sudden lost its economic value due to market competition.
The concept expanded to cover built environment in early 1930 when planning literature "began publishing essays on (obsolete cities) and (obsolescence in cities). The term synonymous with (blight) was applied to areas deemed substandard in economic, physical and social measurements, a condition generally attributed to suburban competition that drew resources away from city centers. The solution to urban obsolescence was most often demolition." (Daniel, 2015) Thus, when the building or place has treated as an economic commodity, pessimistically it will yield to the law of supply and demand according to market competition, that mean it will reach to maximum validity and will be expired, decay or obsolescence and may be at the worst possibility, it will die.
The city of Detroit is a stark example of modern urban collapse due to economic decline; it was cars industry city; giant corporations had established there. As the capital of the Twentieth Century, 1940s-era Detroit was an industrial behemoth, after World War II, Detroit, the phenomenon reached its climax. "Since 1950, Detroit has lost nearly a million people and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Vast areas of the city, once teeming with life, now stand abandoned." (Sugrue, 2005) Because The manufacturing industries that considered the backbone of the American economy had automated production and transferred factories to suburban and rural areas, and progressively relocated in the low-salary labor markets of underdeveloped countries such as the American South and the Carib¬bean.
“The complex and pervasive racial discrimination that greeted black laborers in the “land of hope” ensured that they would suffer disproportionately the effects of deindustrialization and urban decline. For a large number of Afri¬can Americans, the promise of steady, secure, and relatively well-paid em¬ployment in the North proved illusory." (Sugrue, 2005)
The decline of the American industrial cities increasingly accelerated after the oil crisis of the 1970s; the manufacturing industries lost hundreds of thousands of jobs.
"Detroit was not a global city like New York or Los Angeles, where in the 1970's and 1980's, a large, internationally linked information and service sector emerged to replace manufacturing jobs." (Sugrue, 2005) In contrary, the manufacturers and governmental policies left Detroit and the small cities facing their inevitable fate.
"There is nothing economically or socially inevitable about either the decay of old cities or the fresh-minted decadence of the new un-urban urbanization. On the contrary, no other aspect of our economy and society has been more purposefully manipulated for a full quarter of a century to achieve precisely what we are getting." (Jacob, 1961)
The period between 1970 and 2000 experienced a severe collapse of the residential structure in the city "more than 161,000 dwellings were demolished in Detroit, amounting to almost one-third of the city's occupied housing stock -- that's more than the total number of occupied dwellings today in the entire city of Cincinnati. And demolition activity continues today." (Philpott, 2010)
"This city is never coming back; whatever happens, next will be without urban precedent because the context of the city no longer applies in this place where history has finally run out." (Herron, 2012) By this, sad and pessimistic tone Jerry Herron summarized the feeling people of the city toward what happened to the capital of the 20th century.
1.3.2. Recycling wastes disposal
Significantly, the roots of most environmental problems come from modernization after the industrial revolution. Waste disposal, Air pollution, global warming, etc. through history, human needs, and requirements have changed, and usage of the built environment usually modifies those needs and demands. And as a casual byproduct of those demands, Wastes appear as an urban dilemma affecting dramatically on human health.
Wastes are ingredients that are not main products for which the primary consumers has no further use regarding their commitments to fabrication, change or consumption, and of which they want to organize it. Waste disposal is critical environmental impasse cost the societies a lot of mislaid on different sides, economically, mentally and healthily. It is one of the severe charges usually paid for urbanization and industrial progress.
Most of the wastes were thrown into rivers, public spaces, and even streets that caused serious environmental problems affected the health of the residents and became the disposal or recycling it, the priority of the municipalities of the cities.
The economic prices of managing waste are costly, and commonly paid for by municipal governments; money can often be saved with more powerfully considered assembly means, changing vehicles, and with public tutelage.
Environmental solutions can decrease the cost of controlling and reduce waste capacities. Waste recovery (that is, recycling, reuse) can control economic costs because it avoids extracting raw materials and often decrease the transportation costs.
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Hybrid Space Concept Vs Zoning Space Concept
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The Zoning-Based Space: Theory and Application
Zoning theory is the land use regulations, regional planning theory was born from the womb of academic theories of the urban economies, the economic literature is dealing with the land as property or a commodity has a market value, not as a human value. The theory is the invention of a political process, and it serves the interests of those who control that process. It is "method of land use regulation undertaken by local governments. It divides a jurisdiction into geographically contiguous ‘zones’. The local zoning ordinance prescribes what may be done in each zone and what may not be done. The great majority of the population of the US lives in communities that are zoned." (Fischel, n.d.)
The first appearance of the theory had been in Europe at the end of 18th century after the industrial revolution. "The precursor to modern zoning first appeared in Europe in 1891 when the German city of Frankfurt implemented a comprehensive plan that divided the city into different districts with varying building and use restrictions tailored to intended area uses." (Ryan, 2002)
Then the concept had transferred to the United States and also spread all over the world, Ryan explains the planning of the American cities;
Los Angeles followed in 1909 with a city plan that designated one residential and seven industrial districts. In 1916, the rapid rise of American zoning was triggered by New York City's adoption of an ordinance designed to curb the increasing traffic congestion and decreasing light and air associated with proliferating skyscrapers and to limit the incursion of sweatshop factories into the posh Fifth Avenue commercial district. (Ryan, 2002)
Euclid v. Ambler Realty Company case considered the first significant evidence relating to the applying of the zoning regulations in United states that been the start point for most of the municipalities to adopt the zoning regulations. "In 1926, in the landmark Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. case, the Supreme Court formally recognized municipal zoning regulations as a constitutionally incident to the police power when enacted pursuant to validly implemented land use plans that advance a legitimate public interest." (Ryan, 2002)
The industrial era, especially in Europe, after that in the United States, had converted the features and morphology of the cities consequently; the influence of industry, urbanization, the automobile new infrastructure, the zoning regulations, and middle-class richness had provoked this change. Herndon determines five sectors that had been motivated:
The industrial revolution, however, brought about a fundamental shift in development patterns that realigned the structure of the built environment and, particularly in the United States, eroded the set of common principles that historically structured urban form. This transformation was spurred primarily by five factors: industrialization, urbanization, advances in transportation, zoning ordinances, and the rise of an affluent middle class. (Herndon, 2011)
Although the undoubted intents of the zoning theory to protect the public health from the pollution hazard, the city has lost its ability to self-adapt with new changes and necessities of the inhabitants, due to lack of integration and the inflexibility of those regulations.
2.2. Lack of Integration
Most of the 19th and 20th century's urban areas are zoning based, they have been less adaptable to the changeable life requirements and human conditions, economically, environmentally and psychologically alike. The zoning based space has a single- activity such as public or private, workspace or leisure space, etc. the impacts of the industry and the migration to cities during the 20th century provoked the zoning approach outmodedness. It was not able to compatible with progressively changing in urban growth. The zoning theory depended in its conceptual primary on segregation, not integration. Therefore, city sectors and activities already have isolated, and the zoning based spaces have become fossilized, obsolescence and unmatchable with the requirements of contemporary life.
Therefore, hope and desire to realize an urban integration among city sectors has become the urgent concern for urban postmodernism designers. These belief and desire are underlying in the hearts of those who dwell; they are the ones who had suffered from the scourge of functional theories that economists, in a capitalist conscious, had inset to the literature of urban planning. "The shift away from the segregation of land uses and back toward the integration of them has established mixed-use development as an important paradigm in the planning and development worlds. In fact, many people view it as a panacea for the problems confronting our fragmented urban areas." (Herndon, 2011)
Diversity and integration become urgent demands of the societies as a reaction to the segregation and monotone of zoning theory regulations.
Thus, the construction of public space might initially adopt a rather functional approach, focusing on the social connectivity and communication and supporting diverse activities, avoiding single-activity areas and class-definite buildings that may exploit the social life of public spaces.
"Density, diversity, and concentration of activities will all play a role. On a micro-scale, this integration of activities, functions and their users in and around public spaces may spark collective actions that mutually stimulate and inspire each other" (Gomes, 2011)
2.3. Hibernation of the Public Space
Ironically, it seems that the zoned public space, in the present city, has consumed visually, financially, and environmentally. It has suffered enough from the impacts of the urban economy policies, the territorial isolation and personal benefits of the bloated class.
In her book, the Death, and Life of Great American Cities, Jan Jacob attacks the zoning planning theory when she describes the city of New York. "Its streets are zoned in the main against "incompatible uses" intruding into the preserves for solidly constructed, roomy, middle- and upper-class apartments.) (Jacob, 1961)
Jan Jacob ensures that this situation noticed in most the American cities "In city after city, precisely the wrong areas, in the light of planning theory, are decaying. Less noticed, but equally significant, in city, after city, the wrong areas, in the light of planning theory, are refusing to decay." (Jacob, 1961)
She attacks city planners apparently when she assumes that cities are becoming a huge workshop or as she described it a (laboratory) of experiments tolerates the bilateral of trial and error, failure and success. "This is the laboratory in which city planning should have been learning and forming and testing its theories.” (Jacob, 1961)
The zoning based space has become fossilized, obsolescence and unmatchable with necessities of present-day. Therefore, the question might; about the future of public space, is it going to the (the hibernation mood) if it fails to reactivate again? Conditionally, if it has a spirit! Moreover, could the urbanists be shifting in focus from quantity to quality of public space?
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Strategies of Deconstructing the Classical Public Space
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Layering and Overlapping
Hybrid space has many opportunities that help the user to improve his mental mood might reflect on positively on the live environment. According to Jader Tolja, who is a present doctor, and psychotherapist focuses on the effect of space on the brain and the body, "As a surgeon, I came to realize that whatever happened to a person physically was very connected to what happened to him on an emotional level." (Tolja, n.d.)
On his research at the department of psychosomatic medicine in Milan from 1970th, he ensures “that mind, body, and space cannot be separated. Whenever there was a change in the mind of a person, not only his body changed, but to our surprise, his perception of space also changed. Similarly, any change in the spatial environment effected a change in both mental and physical states." (Tolja, n.d.)
Thus, due to the connection between user mental health and design of space, clearly shows the role of public spaces in the human being behavior, perception, and feeling. To address this relationship, we need useful layout strategies that are focusing on the features and relationships of public space. "By creating virtual metaphors and mental maps of different spatial layers within postmodern cities, public spaces are experienced as sequential images and overlapping layers of events as they emerge." (Fahmi, 2001)
The layering and overlapping are ones of these strategies that have a crucial role in enriching the public space and make it more attractive, joyful and constructive.
What means by layering is distributing functions and transportation networks in different levels that help urbanists to provide more opportunities for the users to communicate and participate together and give the flexibility to improve the public space.
The multi-layered tactic holds, in essence, the multiplicity of meaning and this diversity stems from the different cognitive understandings of the recipients, this visual experience able to stimulate the inhabitants and visitors alike.
With overlapping, the designer presents a new understanding of the spatial relationships, the zoning boundaries disappearing and a good chance for constructive dialogue between users may gaining.
The town of Almere is a good example of those tactics, Almere is the newest Dutch city situated on a new cultivated land of the Southern Flevoland polder, at about 25 kilometers from Amsterdam. "Comprehensively planned and built as a modern polynuclear city that consists of a conglomeration of six compact urban nuclei/towns. Planned and built in the past three decades, Almere is the last of the twenty-one new towns recently built on the Ijsselmeer polders and represents a quintessential expression of Dutch planning for both the newly created living environments and for the new dwellers" (Newman, 2010)
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the typical, mostly unplanned urban fabrics of the old medieval compact towns were faced with new challenges. It was then that "the Dutch made the transition from their post-war reconstruction efforts in an attempt to shape a new urban society and a greener lifestyle. This transition required new approaches to the development of urban places, and Almere New City is one of the urban “products” of that era." (Newman, 2010)
The development of Almere city acquired many phases, and stills continue, In 1997, the municipality of Almere sure that it was time to start the development of a new center; as the city would grow in the coming decades. A package of necessities was being created. "The new center, ‘Stadshart Almere’ (City heart Almere), should become the main core of the whole city." (Zhou & Commandeur, 2009)
The diversity appeared as an essential concept of the planning, "the northern part of the center, above the railway line, would become a business center. The southern part, between the railway and the artificial lake ‘Weerwater’, would become an area of shops, housing, cultural facilities, and entertainment." (Zhou & Commandeur, 2009)
Seemingly, the concept of layering dominated the layout of function, the essential element of the (Rem Koolhaas – OMA) design is "the vertical separation of functions. The public facilities and housing are situated at ground level; while basements, parking, and service entrances are located at a lower level. The ground floor level is lifted above the parking garages that are positioned underneath. The design contains two main axes, crossing each other at the highest point." (Zhou & Commandeur, 2009)
The social and cultural life has a crucial importance in defining the identity of the city of Almere, and it acquires a great consideration in the design approach of Almere city.
"The area located near the lake is mainly in use as an entertainment zone; this is where the cultural centre, cinema, theatre, and cafés are located. The main axes, linking the train station and the lake, are only accessible to pedestrians and contain shopping facilities. Cafés and restaurants are concentrated at the squares ‘Grote Markt’ and ‘Belfort’." (Zhou & Commandeur, 2009)
Figure 2. Almere master plan source: http:llwww.e-architects.co.uk/holland/almere-masterplan-oma
3.2. Fading The Barriers
The sharpness of the functional segregation of the zoning- base theory affected negatively, on the constant dialogue of the users, it broke the communication. The hybrid public space regarding the new demands of knowledge city, raising a transition and anti-edge tactics to overpass the threshold limitations. “Physical limitations may stem from restrictive opening hours, from the presence of guards, fences or gates which might discourage people from entering the spaces; entrances should be well connected to paths and smoothly transition to the surrounding sidewalk. There are other barriers to access that primarily affect certain user groups, such as stairways or car predominance in residential areas." (Gomes, 2011). Fading the boundaries among different zones, will breaking the tedious separation and activate the social participation.
Urban design consideration should concentrate on finding kind of plasticity of the boundary, the boundary as space, not as a line, space for communicating and interacting. It is the duty of urbanists to produce social modification through the precise identification of the boundary and activation of the edge. The "borders present a new transitory zone that can accept a multiplicity of new ideas that stitch formerly segregated areas of the city together. These plastic edges represent opportunities to strengthen social design through their engagement and manipulation." (Brillembourg, Klumpner, & Sherman, 2011)
This kind of physical flexibility requires considerate by those responsible. Moreover, the transition between different spaces, activities, and areas requires softness and faded edges "Besides the role of buildings and their functions in attracting visitors, a smooth transition between private and public realms can promote opportunities for public space use. The relationship is bi-directional." (Jacobs, 1993) This type of relationship might generate a transition space as a kind of in-between space could use it as a gallery, show area or advertising place. It may on the same level or locate in tiny different level, all of these possibilities stemming from the hybrid space's aptitude to cope smoothly and flexible coexistence with spatial changes and situational development based on the needs of users.
The technical development may impose new thoughts that require this kind of communication, cohesion to break the spatial boundaries of public spaces and overlapping networks and modern communication systems, in this sense Traditional space is no longer as it was and its limits may also have ravaging changes.
3.3. Fragmentation
The variety and multilayer of hybrid public space involve a hierarchical pattern connecting the urban morphology elements with the different level of scales corresponding to a range of human habits. "The patterns found at different levels such as street/block, plot series, plot, building, cell, and structure are not interchangeable, and the long-term success of a design depends on understanding not only the differences but also the relationships between levels.”
Fragmentation here means the continuous grain pattern of the city, not the segregation of parts. It is an important tactic used to emphasize this connection. The direct meaning of fragmentation might give a contrary and confused impression about the intention of this concept, which could be understood as a kind of spatial segregation that unfortunately, could lead to social isolation. Thus, “In this process of dissolution, fragmentation, and privatization, the city suffers a weakening of public space as a civic space, which causes ungovernable territory now filled up with products, inequalities, and marginalization." (Janches, 1985)
On the contrary, the hierarchical fragmentation of hybrid public space focuses on dividing the main space to many smaller connecting areas depending on the hierarchical row that enriches the urban scene and creates a visual surprise. This spatial characteristic might be found it in the traditional cities fabric; it was an environmental solution and urban visual experience alike.
"In a traditional city, public space was made up of a maze of streets and squares which together formed logical sequences and a hierarchized, coherent whole permeated with social meaning." (Dymnicka, 2009)
The contemporary city has significant market policies need kind of tools to enforce the market conflicts. In this perspective, although the fragmentation of public space is a spatial phenomenon, it could also have an economic dimension to improve everyday needs.
"The segmentation and specialization of the urban space is, at the same time, the spatial reflection of processes that regard the social and cultural sphere– and which lead to the multiplication of groups and lifestyles – and the effects of capitalism and neoliberal policies, which lead to the reduction of the common goods sphere and the appropriation of them by the market." (Mela, 2014)
Nowadays, the city intends to be a knowledge city or a smart city; this transformation invokes balance between the multi-layers of new networks, functions, buildings, and infrastructure of public space, the “layers` influence, modify and change the city's structural concept and produce fragmentary urban patterns, with historical and topographical factors generating contradictions and tensions." (Fahmi, 2001)
3.4. Juxtaposition and Binary Oppositions
The urban juxtaposition is human phenomenon embodied as a physical structure; juxtaposition here differs from the neighborhood unit that appeared conceptually with zoning-based theory in which inhabitants of the community are gathering according to the economic class. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition as well extends to combining binary oppositions.
Historically, people engage in dialogue without any religious discrimination, sectarian or social. The Southeast Asian archipelago is a good example of urban juxtaposition when
“For several millennia, the Southeast Asian archipelago has been the site of some of the world’s most diverse urban juxtapositions of ethnicity and culture." (Dehaene, M & De Cauter, 2008)
That juxtaposition contributed a cultural interchangeability, unified the heterogeneous society and enriched the urban culture. According to Dehaene, M & De Cauter:
A finely grained hierarchy of social distinctions has historically been mapped according to complex combinations of class, religion, ethnicity, language, and occupation. Since the first centuries of the Common Era, trade has brought different populations together, and towns have formed as a spatial mosaic of distinct ethnolinguistic cultures operating in explicitly segregated urban spaces. (Dehaene, M & De Cauter, 2008)
A binary opposition is a couple of correlated objects or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two ideological opposites are strictly defined and head out against one another. A binary opposition is seen as an essential idea of human philosophy, culture, and language. In this standpoint, the binary oppositions are the most related tools of the hybrid space concept when the public/privet or the work/ leisure are locating together at a juxtaposition relationship.
If the urban juxtaposition has this active role in improving the social relations and developing the cultural cross-fertilization on the level of the city, this role should not be overlooked at the scale of public space.
The implementation of the binary oppositions should not be only in the functional dimension but also includes the social and cultural dimensions thus; the public space becomes a full of multiculturalism and sociability. Batuman explains the relationship between the social events and the characters of space;
Everyday life has a multilayered character, which is a result of the overlapping repetitive cycles that occur in urban space. The same is valid for social events: it is the repetition of such activities in certain spaces that make them public spaces in collective memory. Then, public space is defined by, on the one hand, repetitive spatial practices of similar kind and on the other, the juxtaposition of social relations of different kind. (Batuman, 2015)
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Conclusions
The contemporary city has been suffering from economic, environmental and social-psychological impacts since it missed the compatibility with urgent everyday demands. The zoning-based planning theory that depended on the functional segregation became not valid as much as supposed to be updated with the new knowledge era conditions. This impact has aroused an immediate claim for a hybrid space which able to gather various functional activities in one package. Nowadays, the hybrid public space is the most vibrant theme that been in the heart of the urban studies, research and discussions. Although the concept is not a new, it had appeared in the ancient civilizations in different versions such as the Agora, the Forum, the Plaza, and the Souk. To construct the new hybrid space, or to deconstruct the built one, numerous design strategies should take into consideration like; the layering, the overlapping, fading the barriers, the fragmentation, juxtaposition and binary opposition. Furthermore, in the technological sense, the hybrid concept could embody the virtual public space in a physical form which, means it will be matchable with the smart growth of the new heterotopias. The resilience, the social and the network infrastructure, are the main aspects of the new heterotopia that diversity, mixed-use, and adaptability are constituted its hidden structure.
Acknowledgment
The main idea of the paper was submitted as one of the requirements of the (reconstruction and deconstruction of the public space) course as part of my on-going doctoral study at Girne American University. The course was tutored by Professor Dr. Jose Madrigal. Kindly, I would like to acknowledge and express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Madrigal for his advices, encourage and guidance through my doctoral study.
Conflict of interests
The author declares no conflict of interest.
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How to Cite this Article:
ABDULLAH ALI, F. (2019). From Zoning Based Area To A Hybrid Space; The Transformation Strategies. Journal of Contemporary Urban Affairs, 3(1), 26-37. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2018.4679
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Department of interior design, College of Arts and Letters Cihan University, Erbil, Iraq
