[Reader-list] Composition of Surat City - 4th Posting

[Rutul Joshi]

4th Posting – Perceptions and the city

City is often referred to as a fabric in urban architecture and planning to explain issues like pattern, composition, structure and integration of the parts. Urban fabric of a city is a living documentation of history. City is consists of diverse co-existing spaces and co-habiting organisms in one geographical location. It is also being viewed as a conglomeration of memories, associations and imaginations manifested in a physical form. 

City and its parts can be understood as determined by a vast process of encoding and decoding based on the perception of the city dwellers. The encoding and decoding brings tangible shapes to the identifiable attributes like the form and structure of the city. The process of encoding and decoding develops the perception of the city dwellers about various spaces in the city associating images and meaning to them. 

The process of encoding and decoding determines city as layers of spaces – spaces that are materialized in physical realm and spaces that are imagined in the virtual realm. A constant interaction between the spaces of the physical realm and the virtual realms, help people develop perception regarding their city and regarding the spaces they use within the city. The spaces developed by the virtual realm are influenced by the socio-cultural practices and political events. 

One is concerned with the perception of the city and its spaces in context of changing society and public culture. A very simple and direct classification of a city is the familiar city and the unfamiliar city. Ones socio-political exposure depicts the familiarity and the unfamiliarity within the spaces of the city. However, this is not as simple as the ‘seen’ city and the ‘unseen’ city. One might have seen all parts of the city, but the psychological and physical comfort levels within that space and ‘sense of belonging’ to it - determines the familiarity and the unfamiliarity. The dichotomy of familiarity and unfamiliarity is also not as stark as the self and the other. In unfamiliar spaces, the self-identity becomes obvious and as different from the others. Sense of unfamiliarity is not always alienating. The unfamiliar spaces also generate curiosity and interest and process of fluctuating between the familiar and unfamiliar continues.


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