The City’s Image

Of the four main paradoxes of the city, identified by the Soviet and Russian geographer G.M. Lappo, the author of the present article considers the idea that cities strive to preserve the past, but cannot refuse to introduce the new, which displaces the past. “Antiquity” is understood primarily as a material heritage in stone (conventionally and collectively as “cultural stones”). Such a legacy affects people, their consciousness, assessments, and behavior no less than the creators, reformers, and destroyers of cities affect them. In a similar way, antiquity influences newness, which can imitate, frame, reject, or destroy it. The presentation is based primarily on examples of Russian cities (12 in total) of different ages, sizes, statuses and destinies. Questions arise about what is best for the city, its old and new “stones,” its residents, and its visitors: preserving authentic stones, even in ruins, or returning them to the living fabric of the city; preserving worn-out buildings or renovating and modernizing them; and which type of city is more suitable in this regard—one that preserves, at least in its core, the features of an era of relatively rapid creation (simultaneous) or one with layers and reconstructions from different periods (a palimpsest city). There is no use to talk about a change in type, but it definitely impacts the conflict of interests and the ways of resolving it. One of the conclusions is that the advantages of a historical city should not interfere with its current life and development, or the comfort of its citizens. However, a crude, tasteless imitation of antiquity, as well as disregard for it, are also extremes, and the barbaric destruction of cultural memory in stone is simply ugly and unacceptable

Key (lock) · Set (abstract data type) · Work (physics) · Architecture, Modernity, and Design · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Global Urban Networks and Dynamics