Conclusion: Irreplaceable Urban Imagination

In the introduction, I wrote:

Herein lies the city’s power: it is not just comparable to a photo album of memories – it is much closer to an annotated photo album.

In closing, the contemporary city provides us with these annotations in a plethora of ways. First, we may look back to elements of the past and understand the attitudes and perspectives that dominated each era. For example, consider Moscow, where elements from the Soviet past are often functional, minimalist, and defined by order. This suggests an era where the mindset tended towards the practical and was primarily defined by top-down authority.  

Second, we may step back and analyze what contemporary attitudes towards the past reveal about the present. To continue with our example in Moscow, the elements from the Soviet past are frequently bulldozed and replaced with few or no traces left in commemoration. This suggests a contemporary rejection of the past and a desire to move forwards.

Last, contemporary decisions on future development reveal even more about present-day attitudes and perspectives. In Moscow, modern development is defined by creativity, entrepreneurship, and an aspiration to the West. These values point towards a capitalist world, further reinforcing the rejection of the Soviet past.

Altogether, the present is shaped by a certain understanding of the past and a certain set of aspirations for the future. By examining cities and their built environments, we can understand how the different memories, attitudes, and perspectives define the urban imagination. Unlike rural areas, which are less dense, the built environments in cities tend to be the result of the collective rather than an outcome invoked by an individual. Consequently, in each city, there are different eras of thought and design, which can be known as the collective of many human experiences just as de Certeau writes:

Their swarming mass is an innumerable collection of singularities. Their intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave places together. In that respect, pedestrian movements form one of these “real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city.” They are not localized; it is rather that they spatialize. (114)

De Certeau describes how a collection of unique individuals and their actions come together to form cohesive movements, which eventually form the layers within the urban environment – both literal (built) and intangible (attitudes, memories, perspectives). 

Without the city, it is impossible to delve into the past and the future. There is no way to understand how a certain population got to where it is today because each and every turn in the past is rooted in a collective of attitudes and perspectives. The city enables us to dig through these layers and find the defining ideas and opinions of each era as well as the accompanying nuances and idiosyncracies. Ultimately, the city can lead us to begin to understand how a certain situation came to be and where it is headed in the future.