The cluster-city

Per Svenssons city of non-gravity

"The unmediated and unplanned clash between self-contained systems based upon opposite logic provides the familiar open and poorly-defined spaces in which the productive disturbance fields' may spontaneously develop something new" Thomas Sieverts 2008

I have been working with a term I call the cluster-city in Hjortekær in relation to the regional city.

The cluster city is a consequence of the regional city, the fragmented urban landscape. It is not a trying to work against the development, but instead exploid and use the strenghts and uniqueness of the new city. In the regional city people can freely choose or "shop" values, urban spaces including housing enclaves, are defined as selectable interest-and identity-based communities. The selection exist as a consequence of the ultimate accessibility in the regional city.

The definition of values can therefore become a important planning tool, or perhaps rather the creation of space for users to invoke values onto.

My idea of the cluster-city in Hjortekær has besides the accessibility, two main values. A valueframework for the city to work within. It is the community and the landscape. The city is divided into a number of smaller enclaves that offers different variations of the valueset. Some rates the community highest, other prioritise the proximity to nature, others are more private and intimate and so on. But the common value framework, the community and the landscape is what ties the enclaves together as one city. You choose the valueset if you choose to live in Hjortekær.

The cluster-city mixes qualities traditionally connected to the rural open landscape as space and scenic beauty with the urban quality as proximity and accessibility of communities and institutions, the grocery just around the corner, the schools and the pizzaria.

The cluster-element, is a hybrid between the parcelvilla roads community, where you have streetparties and you know your neighbor, and the regional citys fragmentation into selforganised enclaves and the accompanying segregation. The city demands a new framework, where the fragmentation can be understood as a segregation within the community. The entropic citylandscape, where clashes, differences and segregation can be a driving force. In between the enclaves is where the dialog occurs, in the edgearea, the freezones, the uncoded commonzones. In the forrests, the clearings, the open spaces, on the squares, the roads and the parkinglots. The citys surplus areas.

Thomas Sieverts is discussing the surplus areas and the edgeareas in this text about his work “Zwischenstadt”.

‘cultivation of the fracture surfaces’ is not an attemt to repeal these fractures and barriers and to harmonize the contradictions in-the framework of an overall picture. Rather, they see something very special characteristic of fracture surfaces: Only through a staging of fracture surfaces and their fragmented nature, is ‘die Zwischenstadt’ classified! This group refers to ‘die Zwischenstadt’ has its own - although quite young - special historical uniqueness, which is essentially characterized by a self-determination and autonomy of its major elements. ‘Zwischenstadt’ implies an important charge as experiential everyday world aswell as on the urban narrative. The importance charge can be used both in form-operating purposes and as a qualifying factor. fracture surfaces and contrasts can be cultivated and staged.

Here is a link to a danish translation of the text, which although a terrible translation, it is quite interesting. Unfortunatly most of Thomas Sieverts work is not translated from german at all, so who am I to complain.