Upholding the Urban Fabric

Abstract

This chapter begins with discussions of recent treatments of cities as dispositifs and assemblages and I tease out the implications of these treatments for the more colloquial proxy of fabric. I expand the preferred weaving metaphor into a schematic for articulating how the urban fabric can be analytically understood, stretched across three spatial dimensions and one temporal. I connect this schematic with recent work on a framework, Circles of Sustainability, that seeks to describe the domains of cities that warrant sustaining. The resulting matrix offers a pragmatic instrument for critique, assessment or evaluation and suggests ways that a craft of city-making can be rethought. The remaining two chapters take up this challenge in relation to specific areas closely related to craft: technology and aesthetics.