The technology had kept being a catalyst for the development of urban design for community later after the World War II. Moreover, the theory of contextual design in urban planning of the city of Rome at building scale and city scale marked a considerable success in cartography and was a pioneer opening a brand new technique for mapping that has been using throughout the history for different concepts of modern urbanism. Situationists with their own philosophy for a future city is one of such modern thinking based on the figure-ground method of the Nolli map. Situationists or Situationist International was a group of revolutionaries including artists, intellectuals, and political theorists, well-known in Europe during 1957-1972.[1] They were a group of people proposing an avant-garde city plan of Paris – Situationist City - that they thought it would be a solution for current city problems at the time and created Utopia for the residents. In their theory, to point out the difficulties that the Paris society was facing and to form the foundation for the Utopia, the Situationists created a psychogeographic map in 1957 called Naked City. The map had no scale and did not articulate with Cartesian logic. They cut Paris into pieces and rearranged them based on their experiments and analysis of working class zone, mood, behavior and their choice of the route which was called Drift.[2]

Accordingly, the new map with various fragments pieced together expressed the understanding and relationship between human emotion and the environment. With the help of the new method, the Situationists brought to the notice of the current social structure, the city class occupation and function, the separation of activities, and the unproductivity of the “old” Paris. As Guy Debord, a Situationist, mentioned “unitary urbanism acknowledges no boundaries; it aims to form a unitary human milieu in which separations such as work/leisure or public/private will finally be dissolved”[3], the Situationists’ plan was to create a manifesto of “urbanism that represent a drive to rationalize, homogenize and commercialize Paris.” Their proposal for Utopia or New Babylon revolutionized people’ consciousness of the city. It was a combination of “old” and “new”, embracing the “old” parts worth visiting - the origin – and disposing of bad parts so as to form “unitary urbanism” which was constructed situations creating ambiance for continuous drift. The “unitary urbanism” was created for and created by the participants or the community. Urban dynamics “would no longer be driven by capital and bureaucracy, but by participation” and “the urban environment as the terrain of a game in which one participates”[4]. There is an obvious dramatic change in the community role in the urban planning of Situationist City. While in Nolli map, the community was absolutely disregarded due to the political intention behind; in the Situationist City, the community was a key factor forming the whole proposition and deciding city ambiance and activities. Why did happen? Why was residents’ roll now important in France? It was the combination of reasons and one of them was the change in the society, politics, and economics. At this time France had just stepped into a renewal period after the World War II. During the war, there was a resistance movement in politics that joined all French political spectrum such as socialist, conservative, and communist.[5] After the end of the war, this political revolution needed support from an economic revolution to promote a renewal of France. Thanks to a wide range of plans for economic and financial rehabilitation, France went thru a booming period of economic growth during 1947-1973. As the result, there was a substantial rise in living standards such as a reduction in the work week, the increase of vacation days, the number of houses owned by French families had been growing, and especially the growth of ownership of automobile and computers.[6] The community of France in the 18th century was thoroughly dissimilar to the one of Italy at Nolli’s time. They had freedom of daily life, and with the help of technology, they reflected the progress of civilization and globalization. After being in the very harsh condition of the war, the revolution in any aspect of life including urbanism created an impulse for the people to obtain   better lives. And the Situationist City can be considered as a response to the call of the revolution. This approach contributed to the development of urban design which was planning on bottom-up resident experience and participation.

Not just only France, but the United State at the same time frame also had been trying to find their way to Utopia for the community but with the consideration of using technology. Later in 1978, Rowe and Koetter established their theory of Collage City as a reaction to modernism after the stagnation through the 40’s and 50’s.[7]

First, they presented a critical analysis of current modernist city planning including the ones of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright who “wanted to end the world and begin it anew”. The two planner pointed out that those plans were powerful but failed. Due to a  “retarded conception of science and reluctant recognition of poetics.” To the authors, the problem of contemporary urban thinking showed clearly in binary oppositions between “naïve idealism” and “sterile scientific rigor”, “despotism of science: let the science build the town” and “ the tyranny of the majority: let the people build the town”, the “nature” and “custom”. Rowe and Koetter brought up Disney World and Superstudio as case studies for the future city. Disney World and Superstudio expressed the emerging of post-modern efforts along with 2 opposing themes: townscape and science fiction. The two planners mentioned, “Disney World is nearer to what people want than architects have ever given them”.[8] Here the community benefit again was used as a measure to evaluate modern planning. In their proposal, Collage City was all about people who designed and created spaces. But in lieu of being dependent on data which could be outdated quickly and created problems, the new city embraced the past, the present, and the future fragments of a city as the nature of its development overtimes and was balanced between science and human beings. The strategy of layering and juxtaposing small designs or fragments into a big whole would allow the city to grow and nurture itself through times. The authors also pointed out the urban impact of politics of racial segregation in parts of the country on the contemporary urbanism and vice versa. Unlike Radiant City and Broadacre City which mainly emphasized technology, and different to Situationist City that seemed to miss the idea of self-growing city adapting to future situations, the Collage City can be considered that it had one step further to the sustainable design. Although being different in various aspects, these plans still stemmed from one crucial element - the community – in order to revitalize living environment.

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[1] Wikipedia, “Situationist International”, 2016.

[2] Sadler, Simon, and Koetter, Fred, The Situationist City, The MIT Press, 1998

[3] Gregoriou, Chritina, “Simon Sadler: The Situationist City (1999), review of Situationist City, by Simon Sadler, November 2010

[4] Sadler, Simon, and Koetter, Fred, The Situationist City, The MIT Press, 1998

[5] Encyclopadia Britannica, “French Republic”, lasr updated July 2016

[6] Davis, Mark, How World War II Shaped Modern France, May 2015

[7] Cutler, Ed, “Colin Rowe (1920-99) and Fred Koetter: Collage City”, review of Collage City, by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, April 2010

[8] Rowe, Colin, Collage City, The MIT Press, 1984