Urban Imaginary

Definition

The urban imaginary is the set of shared symbolic and aesthetic representations through which a city's inhabitants institute their collective identity. The concept draws on Cornelius Castoriadis's "imaginary institution of society": just as societies constitute themselves as real entities through shared systems of signification (symbols, myths, rituals), cities institute their collective identity through an urban imaginary — and architecture is a key mechanism of this institution. Maria Kaika extends this to iconic architecture: buildings function as "urban totems," narrativising the desires of elites and instituting a "radical imaginary" for a new social order. Inge Goudsmit, deploying Kaika and Castoriadis in the context of Hong Kong's new towns, argues that cultural buildings are "an essential mechanism" for instituting an urban imaginary, and that their absence — the lack of places for collective memory and identity — is a denial of the right to the city.

Key Thinkers

• Maria Kaika — architecture as the narrativisation of elite desire; the urban imaginary as the symbolic dimension of urban life.
• Inge Goudsmit — extends the urban imaginary to cultural infrastructure in new towns; its absence as a right-to-the-city question.
• (Related, not yet paged: Cornelius Castoriadis — the "imaginary institution of society"; the actual imaginary vs. radical imaginary.)

Related Concepts

• Iconic Architecture — the built form through which the urban imaginary is instituted, for better (public icons) or worse (autistic icons).
• Right to the City — the urban imaginary as what the right to the city demands: the collective capacity to produce a city's symbolic identity.
• Autistic Architecture — the urban imaginary produced by footloose transnational elites: self-absorbed, indifferent to the city.
• The Commons — the social form of urban life that a genuinely public urban imaginary sustains.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Who Wins and Who Loses in the Production of Cultural Iconic Architecture?
• Autistic Architecture: The Fall of the Icon and the Rise of the Serial Object
• Architecture and Crisis

Open Questions

• Is the urban imaginary necessarily produced by elites (as Castoriadis/Kaika suggest), or can it be instituted from below — and if so, what forms of architecture and public space enable this?
• How does the urban imaginary relate to the "right to the city" — is the capacity to produce a city's symbolic identity a prerequisite for, or a consequence of, the right to the city?