urban warfare, the striated and the smooth

Recently, I saw Jacques Tati's french comedy, Mon Oncle, a film about the post war Paris of the '50's. The film, contrasts the old parts of Paris with the new modern reconstructed parts, ,subverting and parodying the perceived dichotomy of modern architecture versus the traditional city. It uses some of the same arguments that modern architects used against the traditional city, but very subtly subverts them.

The modern city is distinct from the old quarters, by its rational use of space planning, efficient traffic management and uncluttered aesthetic. The people living here are timebound and purpose driven, as against the more idyllic lifestyles of the citizenry of the old city.

Tati's Paris is a city divided neatly between the modern and the traditional-

New rational modern architecture with the old collaged accretions of the past

The smooth automobile roads with the pedestrian city squares

The automobile with the horse cart

The straight line with the meandering curve

The modern purpose driven, time bound man with the Flaneur

Only young children and street dogs, to a certain extent, seem to seamlessly negotiate this divide. This contrast between the two types of space has continued since the last century.

Tati's lyrical and comic critique could be seen as an extension of the post-modern debate of the late '50's and '60's. it ties in with works such as Colin Rowe's Collage city or Venturi's Complexity and contradictions in architecture.

The same dichotomy, but with opposite effect, was used by the early modernists to justify a homogenised modern architecture. Tati's two Paris' could be also seen as the striated and the smooth spaces of Deleuze

This dichotomy of spaces plays out in strange ways in the contemporary ways. In the recent Mumbai terror attacks, it took 60 hours, nearly twice the time it took for the Oberoi trident or the Taj's new wing, for the heritage wing to be sanitised, and brought under control.

The newer hotels, with their gridded rational plans, their repetitive cellular structures were easier to be cordoned and re-claimed from the terrorists. The heritage wing, on the other hand, was easier to be subverted by the terrorists. The alleyways with multiple accesses and staircases, made the Taj a difficult space for the security forces, and an easier target for the terrorists. These were the same spaces, that set the Mumbai Taj distinct from other more modern and equipped hotels.

Urban warfare, revealed the dichotomy of spaces in a far more brutal and tragic way than Tati's films, or debates for or against modern architecture could ever have. As security concerns override considerations of quality of space and may sometimes become a major consideration while designing space, the choice of spatiality will increasingly be governed by their resistance to subversion by terrorists and even rioters. The balance may tip in favour of a gridded striated spatiality, as against a smooth space full of connectivity and possibilities, a new paranoid secure space.

Paranoid space will be a space that can easily be controlled, that limits points of entrance and exit. Paranoid space relies on repetition to eliminate surprise, and is a space of constant surveillance. If the panopticon, exemplified Foucault's societies of control, the new paranoid spaces of hotels, airports, train stations, museums etc. will exemplify our societies of antipower, where a possibility exists that a miniscule group of people could hold an entire city to hostage, by subverting the openess and freedom of public spaces