Closed City Systems and Overdetermination

Over-determination
Introduction
The concept of over-determination accurately depicts an eye-catching issue regarding the planning and development of urban centers. The main aim of urban planners is to develop urban centers that provide essential services in a safe, clean, and efficient manner while offering a platform where the economy is supported. This aim is not realized because cities are susceptible to social ills, economics, and government policies. However, according to Sennett (2020), the aspect of over-determination has made urbanists continuously ignore a crucial element of creating wholistic urban centers by focusing on buildings that are fit for their purpose while neglecting change. Such city architectural design results in closed city systems that separate the people it brings together. It is, therefore, crucial to address this issue by applying, reflecting, and evaluating the over-determination theoretical concept using a real-life site. This paper discusses Queens Street, the Cardiffs city center's central hub of interactions and business activities.
Research direction
The researcher collected observable information on Queen street design based on the style of architecture, public and private realms, expansion plans, and modernization process. The data was then placed in the context of the Open city by Sennett (2017) to determine whether Queen street can be regarded as a closed or open city.
Closed city systems and overdetermination
According to Bennett (2020), there is a significant flaw in modern city designs despite city designers and planners having modern technologies, tools, and materials to support structures. Additionally, they have modern machinery, heating, and lighting systems. The peculiar thing to note is that modern cities are no better than ancient ones despite significant improvements in planning technologies. Creativity in city planning has been impeded by over-determination by parties and regimes aiming to create closed cities. Their overdetermination can be deduced as an attribute of closed city systems.
As earlier indicated, overdetermination is a critical factor when addressing closed city systems. Closed city systems are composed of delineations, restricted zones, and gated community structures within such a city. These urban designs result in brittle cities through the over-determination of regimes that want power, order, and control. These cities limit exchange between groups bearing economic, social, ethnic, and religious "substances ."The renewal and growth of cities also result in closed city systems. In most modernizing cities, this process has led to the displacement of people due to demolitions of old buildings to create land for new buildings (Sennett, 2017). The old buildings were built and designed through overdetermination and over-specification of function and forms pressure, therefore unable to stand the test of time and change of functions. It is regarded as a decay of modern city fabrics compared to past architectural design, leading to erasure rather than adaptation.
The advantage of closed systems is that they provide equilibrium similar to a market concerning the pre-Keynesian proposition. In closed systems, resources are well managed and monitored, eliminating wastage and over-commitment. There is integration of components under closed systems and unlike in an open system, the integration involves eliminating materials that do not fit. It creates rules and guidelines in a closed system defining economic, architectural, historical, and social items that either fit or do not fit into the system (Sennett, 2017).
Open city systems
The term open generally allows exchange, change, mutations, conversion, and transformation depending on the subject. In a social setting, open systems allow auto-poiesis through which human beings become more creative and individuative by mutual exchange of values. However, this definition by Niklas Luhmann refers to the exchange of verbal value rather than what open systems in build forms entail. In an urban setting, this definition would portray a city as a colloid that allows the interaction between the architectural design and the social behavior present. Open systems lack the overdetermination motive since they shun restrictions, control, ethnic, class, and social segregation.
According to Jane Jacobs, an urbanist, the advantage of an open system is that crowding and diversity in the form of packed squares and streets encourage innovation (Sennett, 2020). The unexpected encounters trigger the change in the safety, economic, health, technological, and education sectors. An open city also allows adaptations of existing buildings and new structures in public spaces that are fragmented within a city.
There are three approaches to creating open systems in cities: incomplete form, unresolved narrative, and ambiguous edges. Incomplete form refers to building a connection between the architectural form and the function while eliminating overdetermination. It results in forms shifting their historical function to adapt to new changes. On the other hand, unresolved narrative discourages linear forms of city planning and sequences to follow during city design. The last approach involves a critical review of ambiguous edges distinctive as Borders and boundaries (Sennett, 2017).
Borders and boundaries
It is an approach to creating an open city system or modifying an existing city to an open one. Recent urban designs tend to emphasize boundaries to generate control through over-determination. The resulting cities limit exchange between groups bearing economic, social, ethnic, and religious "substances." Moreover, borders lead to social stratification whereby different classes are placed in rigid spaces in urban centers. Recently, creating borders has been challenging due to prioritizing security through gated communities, tall buildings, and apartments to create maximum floor space and transport systems that demarcate the cities (Sennett, 2017).
Walls in ancient cities rose when weapons and artillery were invented. The walls served as a shield to protect residents from the enemy. However, the walls were not boundaries but borders since they were porous and allowed trade and collection of taxes. For instance, in the cities of ancient Rome and Aix-en-Provence, people built inside and outside the walls but did not prevent the people from exchanging goods. In modern times, the walls have been replaced by massive transport channels such as multi-carriage roads, overpasses, and expressways (Sennett, 2020).
To better understand the walls in these modern times, a city like Istanbul, which has a high density of buildings, has created borders by permitting activities from the buildings to run in its streets. This crammed street offers a platform for interactions that allows social and economic exchange between individuals of different races, ethnicities, and origins. On the contrary, Sao Paulo erects boundaries by decongesting its streets by removing favelas or slums and replacing them with gated community housing (Sennett, 2020). Although this will help reduce crime, it will contribute to the isolation and limiting interactions between residents. Several remedies are being explored to create borders in cities using the "smart cities" technology.
Smart cities use strategies such as pedestrianization to encourage interactions by integrating traffic and people. In pedestrian zones, shopping centers are created to experiment on the best ways to eliminate edges. Technology is also employed in intelligent cities to control traffic expansion using computerized traffic barriers such as pistons and bollards that create space for pedestrians at convenient times. Using such technology makes it possible to create borders in rigid cities just like it was in ancient cities like Rome, where Romans defied the walls and continued interacting (Sennett, 2020).
Building designs are also an essential factor to consider when addressing the issue of border creation. Modern gradual replacement of stone buildings with glass buildings offers a false sense of porosity. In reality, the glass buildings in most cities are boundaries since it is possible to see what is happening inside but impossible to interact with activities inside the buildings.
The aspect of how we view cities is also essential in creating porosity through borders. The landscape view can create walls and boundaries depending on how city planners perceive it. Water and water bodies have served a great purpose in developing significant cities like London, New York, Mumbai, and Istanbul. There were many interactions in trade, recreation, and transport around water bodies around the nineteenth century until city planners converted them into aesthetics. Exchanges of people at water places were replaced with observation, with most people preferring to reside in buildings that offer a view of water scenery at a distance. Some city designers have gone to the extent of evicting people who block the scenic views of these waterfronts, for example, in Mumbai, where street vendors and dwellers in waterfronts were evicted (Sennett, 2020). Buildings that offer cosmopolitan views of the city landscape boom with residents in city centers and ar...