Image of a City: Problems of Old and New Relationships

Abstract

Of the four basic urban paradoxes suggested by G.M. Lappo, the author of this article considers the one according to which cities strive to preserve their antiquities, but they cannot refuse to implement the newness that crowds out the oldness. The latter is regarded as a tangible heritage in stone (conditionally and collectively as “cultural stones”) that affects people, their minds, assessments, and behavior no less than the creators, transformers, and destroyers of cities affect them. Similarly, antiquity affects novelty, which imitates, frames, rejects, or destroys antiquity, and there are many examples of how it happens. The text is based mainly on examples of Russian cities (12 in total) of different ages, sizes, status, and destinies. Questions are raised about what is better for the city, its old and new “stones,” permanent residents and guests: either conservation of authentic stones even in ruins or their return to the living urban fabric; either protection of worn-out buildings or their renovation and modernization; which urban type is more convenient in this context — storing at least in its core features of an era of relatively rapid creation (simultaneous city) or full of different-time layering and restructuring (palimpsest city). A change in type cannot be spoken, although it definitely has an effect on the conflict of interest and how it is resolved. One of the conclusions is that the advantages of a historic city should not interfere with its current life, development and comfort of townspeople. However, crude and tasteless imitation of antiquity, as well as neglecting it, are also extremes, and the barbaric destruction of cultural memory in stone is simply ugly and unacceptable.