City a place of continuous experiment Cover Image

Miasto miejscem nieustannego eksperymentu
City a place of continuous experiment

Author(s): Magdalena Mikrut-Majeranek
Subject(s): Anthropology, Human Geography, Communication studies
Published by: Instytut Nauk o Kulturze i Studiów Interdyscyplinarnych - Wydział Filologiczny - Uniwersytet Śląski
Keywords: city; place; experience

Summary/Abstract: City is a peculiar microcosmos and mimetic reflection of the world's order. Its establishment was always preceded by all kinds of religious rites hence its sacral side. First settlements on the open space had already been established 9000 year b.c. Throughout the years, cities were isolated with walls, constituting both border separating two worlds and being some kind of internal organization generating feeling of solidarity and social consolidation. Over next centuries conception of the city had been experimented with. In renaissance many books had been written, treating of ideal cities with utopian assumptions. Some of those ideas were brought to life. In XIX century, city walls started to collapse, opening possibility of territorial expansion of the city center. Gradually urban landscape has been changed too. Some building were replaced by others, remainings of the agricultural heritage had been replaced with industrial constructions. However, with time even those lost their importance and were disassembled. Current remainings of that industrial era are being revitalized, which changes not only their looks but also functions. City is subjected to constant transformation, it's like a palimpsest, and good example of which is Croatian's Split. It's a manuscript, written by subsequent generations of human kind, were each generation scraped out some of the text (architecture elements) to rewrite it, making corrections according to social negotiations. This article describes different experiments with city, relating with moving city to another place, changing country's capital, destroying of the villages as a result of dame construction and building of the underwater city, being realization of a dream of sunken Atlantins.

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 24
  • Page Range: 121-134
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Polish