Reflections on the lia

loss of place and the north American Winter-city

pp. 183-199

in: Abraham Akkerman, Phenomenology of the Winter-city, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

Recognizing that allegories have been ingrained in city-form throughout its long history means also that attempts to ignore or to eliminate allegories from urban planning and design are misplaced. Particularly vital to city-form are environmental gender allegories. The two spirited urban parables that are at the founding of an affirmative city-form are the Garden and the Citadel, the feminine and the masculine environmental counterparts to Nietzsche's Dionysian and Apollonian dispositions in the arts. In city-form these allegories have been represented by urban voids and urban edifices, respectively, for the feminine and the masculine facets of the city. Past chapters have shown that North-Hemispheric civilizations have gradually but consistently reduced the feminine allegory of the Garden in city-form, by absorbing the competing myth of the Grand Designer.