ARCH354 CULTURE OF CITIES LECTURE 1 WHAT IS THE CITY? WHAT IS CULTURE? WHY STUDY THE HISTORY OF THE CITY Naciye Doratlı

WHAT IS THE CITY The words city and urban both derive from Latin: city from civis (citizen), and urban from urbs (city). One implies an act of dwelling, the other a site. “ a city is a relatively large, dense and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals”(Wirth-in Kostof, 1991) “ a city is a point of max. concentration for the power and culture of a community” (Mumford) For the privileged, a city reflects and allows expression of their status in a degree of governmental autonomy, as site of freedom from ties to the land, or site of commercial expansion and intellectual development. Cities represent dense agglomerations of social life.

WHAT IS THE CITY Cities are localities marked by complex webs of human relationships and interchange. As a result of complex relationships, many different and even unexpected events and experiences can be realized in cities. This represent one of the conditions underlying the rise of particular cities at particular moments in time to high levels of creative energy, in either cultural or economic affairs.

Cities have always played a privileged role as centers of cultural and economic activity. From their earliest origins, cities have exhibited a conspicuous capacity both to generate culture in the form of art, ideas, styles and attitudes, and to induce high levels of economic innovation and growth.

CITIES They have been hubs of trade and transport, defensive outposts and centres of manufacturing and cultural production. In the nineteenth century: Cities such as London, Paris, Madrid and Berlin centres of political power (reflecting the rise of nation-states in Europe) Delhi, Algiers and Buenos Aires nodes of colonial power and contestation – all centres of commercial expansion

CITIES In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, new movements in art, music and literature emerged in metropolitan cities: Paris, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Barcelona and St Petersburg

CITIES There are also university cities and cathedral cities, or cities which arose as major crossing points of a river or as ports, ancient cities such as Troy and Knossos known from their archaeological sites. Cities outside the dominant classifications of Western imperialism such as Djenne or Zimbabwe (both in Africa) were nonetheless nodes of trade and power.

CULTURE Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate") is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions.

CULTURE However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses: - excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as HIGH CULTURE - an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning - the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.

CULTURE In the twentieth century, "culture" emerged as a concept central to anthropology, encompassing all human phenomena that are not purely results of human genetics. Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two meanings: (1) the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and (2) the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively. Following World War II, the term became important, albeit with different meanings, in other disciplines such as sociology, cultural studies, organizational psychology and management studies.

CULTURE CULTURE People learn culture. What has been suggested, is culture's essential feature. Many qualities of human life are transmitted genetically -- an infant's desire for food, for example, is triggered by physiological characteristics determined within the human genetic code. An adult's specific desire for milk and cereal in the morning, on the other hand, cannot be explained genetically; rather, it is a learned (cultural) response to morning hunger. Culture, as a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society, acts rather like a template (ie. it has predictable form and content), shaping behavior and consciousness within a human society from generation to generation. So culture resides in all learned behavior and in some shaping template or consciousness prior to behavior as well (that is, a "cultural template" can be in place prior to the birth of an individual person).

CULTURE This primary concept of a shaping template and body of learned behaviors might be further broken down into the following categories, each of which is an important element of cultural systems: - systems of meaning, of which language is primary; - ways of organizing society, from kinship groups to states and multi-national corporations; - the distinctive techniques of a group and their characteristic products.

CULTURE? CULTURE? Anthropologists and other social scientists offer many different definitions of "culture." Most people understand that culture has something to do with the customs and beliefs of a group of people. It is common to explain a holiday tradition, a spiritual belief or a child-rearing practice as part of someone's cultural background. An individual's culture strongly influences his or her behavior, beliefs, attitudes and values. This is not a surprising statement; we all have an understanding that many of our present-day beliefs and behaviors have their roots in what we learned growing up in our own particular cultures.

WHAT IS CULTURE? WHAT IS CULTURE?

Broad Categories of Culture 1. defines culture in terms of a particular way of life; 2. defines it as a system of symbols, meanings and codes for communication; 3. defines it as products of adaptation to a set of given environmental conditions.

Material and Non-material Culture Material and Non-material Culture Culture can be broken down into two main categories: material culture and non-material culture. Material culture refers to the tangible products of a society, such as food or cuisine, clothes, tools, home, city etc. Analysis of these products can reveal much about a society and its underlying values. Non-material culture refers to the non-tangible products of a society that both reflect and impact people’s behavior, such as language. While the distinctions between these two categories are useful to make, it helps to keep in mind that they are not always cut-and-dry: a book, for example, could be analyzed as both an element of material and non-material culture. A book has physical attributes, such as its size, cover, artwork, and overall design, that reflect material culture; the values and ideas contained within it, meanwhile, reflect non-material culture.

IMPORTANT CULTURAL COMPONENTS IMPORTANT CULTURAL COMPONENTS Belief Systems Value System Language and Communication Style Health Beliefs Family Relationships Sexuality Gender Roles Religion Level of Acculturation Political Power

Urban Culture Urban Culture Urban culture is the culture of towns and cities. All over the world, past and present, these settlements have behaviours and cultural elements that separate them from otherwise comparable rural areas. Culture is a phenomenon that tends to have intensely place-specific characteristics thereby helping to differentiate places from one another. CULTURE is a POWERFUL MEANS TO CONTROL THE CITIES.

Cultures aren’t fixed or fixable. They are barely measurable. While you can identify the preconditions that led to Renaissance Italy; Early twentieth century Paris; The San Francisco techno ‐ hippie culture; Hong Kong cinema; The Seattle waste explosion; Melbourne laneways; The music scenes of Manchester; it will never be possible to replicate them.

Cities create culture????? Culture creates cities ??????