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1.3. Reversible time

1.3.1. Resistance to change

During the 19th century, the development of research into planned layouts in the historical sciences ran parallel to a growing interest in ancient plans and morphological analysis within the emerging field of urban design. This interest appears to have drawn on a critical approach to industrial-era town design, in which settlements expanded beyond historical limits in the form of medieval and modern walls (Choay 1965; Cohen 1993). The desire to act on the forms of towns and cities went hand-in-hand with a desire to maintain a “legacy” state, or even to recreate an initial state from a contemporary “decayed” state. Certain town planners believed that the application of a historical plan would rejuvenate, or even resurrect, a former state. In 1936, for example, P. Lavedan criticized the vitalism present in his own earlier words as it did not correspond to planned cities:

[...] historical fatalism has its roots in the assimilation of the city to a living being. A city is seen as a living thing which, like all living things, is born, grows, and dies; it is a child, an adolescent, then an old man. I myself accepted this comparison for many years, even in the first edition of this work; now, however, I find it to be unacceptable. [...] On the contrary, a city can be rejuvenated or even resurrected. While all men start out as children, many towns do not have a “childhood”, being in possession of their full strength from the outset, like Athena springing fully-formed from the mind of Zeus; the existence, or even the very notion, of these planned cities has no place in the fatalist approach. (Lavedan 1959, p. 13)ssss1


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