Intimate city and its capacity to bring us 'home to ourselves'

Intimate city

its capacity to bring us ‘home to ourselves’

Silvana Tuccio, January 2015

Many names define a city: it may be smart, livable, eco, sustainable, world heritage and even make the top ten. Invoking another means having a reason for calling a city by the least probable name: the intimate city.

When you are talking to someone do you ever hear: my city, said? In just two words the city becomes theirs—forgetting that they came into the city. Thus, the urban in Rome, Buenos Aires or Melbourne is considered so close as to say: my city, my home city, the city I grew up in, the city where I was born, the city I know well, my adopted city.

In his writings, Jorge Luis Borges describes the areas of Buenos Aires he is most familiar with, to then include unfamiliar areas—after all it's still Buenos Aires. Writing about Borges, Franco La Cecla notes that even when he is describing cities other than Buenos Aires, Borges is still describing Buenos Aires. In a poem, Borges alludes to the fact there are places in the city that have been witness to his 'defeats' and 'humiliations'. Eventually, between Borges and his neighbourhood, the courtyards he has sat in and the marble steps from which he has admired sunsets, there is no separation—he and the city are one.

Travelling to a city, a tourist will want to get a sense of its ‘life’, even that of the past. Once home they will have a memento, a postcard, a photograph attesting to their having been “close.” In the vein of Borges’ musings, a place is rather like a memento—we may have a photographic memory of it and write recollections on the postcard of life; we may go past it daily and get a feel for what once was; or, if it remains saturated with oppression, hurt or betrayal, we may avoid it. A local will marvel at what a tourist marvels, a chasm between them.

Evoking Walter Benjamin and the figure of the flaneur, Giorgio Agamben talks about wandering streets without a care in the world. He explains that: “The space of the city is where we lose ourselves, though it is also the place where we can refind ourselves.”  As tourists we may have walked into neighbourhoods, and when it was time, a taxi took us back. In a known city we may have retraced steps, but also discovered new paths. In a city we call home, as events take us from one part of the city to another and back, it may seem as if we are getting close to accomplishing what remains to be done. When we are 'lost' or ‘exploring’ or just ‘being’ the movement through city streets takes us in the direction where we most need to go, where we are most comfortable, excited or satisfied; this passage  brings us 'home to ourselves.' Franco La Cecla would call the experience mente locale— the space that we are aware of when geographic location coincides with the mind asking itself: ”Where am I?” Or, in the case of the flaneur, there would be no question, but rather an unstated presence: “I am here.” In writing a biography, Agamben rather pours over maps, even juxtaposing multiple cities, like Rome with Paris. He notes that we hear the same sounds, voice the same concepts, and the streetscape in an area is the same as it was centuries ago, and so, we are hardly aware of time embedded in language, photographs and buildings.

In the novel Invisible Cities, written by Italo Calvino, Marco Polo is conversing with the Kublai Khan, describing the cities the Khan has conquered. The Khan’s satisfaction turns to fury when Polo reveals that he has been describing Venice all along . Rather like Borges, Marco Polo has focused on the city he knows well, and by allowing it to inhabit the imagination, he made it visible. By the end of the conversation, Marco Polo had one thing left to say:

The  inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and  learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space. (Calvino, 1972)

Thus, in the “inferno” of living, the “who and what” is none other than “I” (who am aware) and the “city” (steeped in memory).

Writing about Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk, much like Agamben, traces the events of his life in the layout of the city, where he recalls encounters, people and quiet reflection. In the novel Museum of Innocence Pamuk tells the story of Kemal, all the while describing the city streets, neighbourhoods, cafés and confiding feelings like a friend. In fact, Kemal extends an invitation to his readers to partake, understand and even forgive the unskillful way that he has dealt with life. At the intersection with the visible, he reveals love, obsession and failure, and a trace of human contact between apartment walls.

Perhaps, by finding our exact place in a field of relations we become aware that we are the creators of that space—there is an intimate knowing. Could it be that our vulnerability is the vulnerability of the city, our resilience the resilience of the city, and our intimacy an expression of its vitality, as well as its capacity to “bring us home to ourselves.”

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Like Marco Polo talking to the Great Khan, I now address my partner in conversation. I have been musing on the way in which the invisible might be harnessed from the very source that produces it—space. It is where, Italo Calvino, suggests the energy for overcoming “the inferno of the everyday” might be found. And, as Agamben suggests, awareness of the city makes time available and the city knowable. In this way our presence in the city is accountable.  

As you know, our present time is characterised, amongst other things, by the pursuit of low-carbon living, resilience and a culturally engaging environment. You have developed models of urban contexts and processes that meet the challenges of living, moving and dreaming in the city, imagining it livable for generations. For you, a city has brought climate change onto the agenda, brought the systems of life, layers of existence and cultural stratifications into alignment. So, in considering space and time, along with the memory they harbour, as a resource, the question that I would ask [before fury is sparked] is:

What capacity for knowing the city will bring us ‘home to ourselves’, if it is not intimate, and might the energy harnessed have the power to free the current story about life on earth?

References:

Interview with Giorgio Agamben by Roberto Andreotti and Federico de Melis for Haecceitasweb.

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972

Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City, London: Vintage International, 2006

Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence, London: Vintage International, 2008

Franco la Cecla, mente locale,. Per un antropologia dell'abitare, Rome: eleuthera, 1993