The City in the Making

The City in the Making, by Marcel Hénaff, explores the making of the future city. In doing so it bridges the fields of anthropology, philosophy and urbanism, whilst providing a poetic read. It starts by looking at the ancient cities of the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia. Then it moves through time and place to explore how cities have evolved and what this implies for the future of the city. In particular Hénaff questions whether urbanization creates an urban planet or if, ironically, it causes the dissolution of the city.

This book is structured in two key parts, which represent Hénaff’s two approaches to addressing his starting questions. The first approach analyses the model of the city as a world; the second reflects on this analysis through the lens of public space (page ix).

The introduction contends that the city may be considered in three dimensions: Monument, a Machine, and Network (pages 3 and 4). The first approach (the city as a world) thus comprises three chapters and each chapter addresses these separately. Through these Hénaff evaluates the three dimensions in several ways: how they are indispensable to understanding the urban phenomenon; how they allow us to trace transformations through time; and how they give us conceptual tools to study a new paradigm of the city linked to its changes (page 4).  

Beginning the discussion of the first approach, Chapter 1 explores the concept of the city as Monument: as a replica of the cosmos and a place for the meeting of humans and divinity and the heart of a political space (pages 11 and 12). The chapter looks at the foundational models of Ancient Rome, Ancient China and the case of Greece to illustrate how the city became a means of representing the divine world, a symbol of unity and often holiness, and a world in itself (pages 32 and 34).

Chapter 2 examines the concept of the city as a Machine. Here Hénaff shows how the city concentrates a labourer population and itself retreats from nature, labelling the non-urban as nature (pages 39 and 40). He suggests that the city breaks away from heaven and is no longer an analogical double of the cosmos. Instead it becomes the world it makes and through its global success in fact displaces itself (pages 41, 51 and 52). In particular this chapter looks at the economic dynamics, technical system, and administrative rationality of the city.

Chapter 3 turns to the third dimension of the city, that of a Network. Hénaff argues that although a more recent concept, the city even from the beginning must emerge as a network (page 55). Through exploring six key traits of networks, Hénaff asks how relevant the network model is for understanding the city in general. In this chapter, Hénaff considers the role of networks in urban space, the administrative system, and the circulation of information and knowledge (page 66).

Chapter 4 marks the start of Hénaff’s second approach: that of rethinking public space and discovering common space. Chapter 4 gives a critical analysis of public space, and concludes that it represents two parallel concepts: monumental visibility in urban space, and the sphere of public debate (page 80). Both of these play roles in the city as a Network (page 81).

The following three chapters each address a problem of the contemporary city. Chapter 5 considers the crisis of the monumental model and how networks fragment monuments, as do sprawling megalopolises (pages 84 and 89). Chapter 6 reviews changes in the concept of public space and how these create a second problem – the crisis of the public sphere. Here Hénaff highlights how the recent creation of virtual space affects public space, and how this re-establishes connections between the local and the global (page 99). Finally, Chapter 7 discusses the third problem of rediscovering common space. This sees common space as a new concept to represent practices of everyday life in the city, which occur in neither public nor private spaces (page 105). In particular, Hénaff identifies the street as a site of common space.

In his conclusion, Hénaff returns to a reflection expressed at the start of the book: why cities were created in the first place. He then declares that the old purposes of the traditional city have disappeared, and asks what meaning we now give to the built environment (page 115). In response, he considers the future of the city in light of its movement from the monumental age to the virtual age.

Book note prepared by Hannah Keren Lee