Water and the Cityscape

This is a photo from a recent trip to Prague, and the thought-provoking thing about it is the way that water functions in defining urban space. The public part of a community - its streets - are in a way a sort of negative space - they receive their identity by being the little ribbons of non-private property that spider-web through the cityscape. If this is their theoretical identity, then their physical identity is similar - they gain definition from the walls, plazas, and facades that rise up on either side. A street needs to be contained to make pedestrians comfortable. In the same way that diners will choose the corner booth over a center table, people are instinctively more comfortable in a defined street space built to a human scale. Perhaps it creates a sort of safety. Perhaps its coziness evokes the womb. But regardless, this principle in a large way explains the death of the American landscape - as freeways were built through communities like Detroit and New Haven the streets ceased to be human-scaled and the space ceased to be defined as delimiting buildings moved further and further back to accommodate massive parking lots. Cities were no longer cityscapes built for people but moonscapes built for the automobile. So maybe that's one reason so many tourists flock to the old town of Prague - to reclaim the feeling of comforting enclosure that can be experienced in its narrow streets.


This concept of delimitation is part of what's so important about water. The city of Prague is built on a series of bends in the Vltava river, so each riverbend forms a different community as the water effectively delimits the neighborhood from its surroundings. Without these natural frames, Prague's micro-communities would have less individual identity. Water is important because of its effect on the eye - ironically it is both limiting and freeing as it walls off spaces and allows room for the eye to stretch.


Incidentally, this photo was taken during a spring flood, and the island on which I was standing was quickly thereafter engulfed by the waters of the Vltava. I'm not exactly sure what implications that has for "defining space." Consider it food for thought.