Understanding Our Changing Cities
Last year I returned to Amsterdam after an absence of just over a year and a half, for the first time as a tourist, not as a student — showing my girlfriend around the places, haunts, cafes and various locales of my experience of the city previously. Numerous features remained in place, the unshakeable face of the city — canals, slim and elegant houses leaning upon each other in a centuries old huddle, escaping the worst excesses of the wind. Yet, so did many of the more tactile elements of Amsterdam, the restaurants and cafes; the people. There were also new developments, most notably a whole new metro line which, for the first time, connects the Noord to the main mass of Amsterdam.
However, one feature I was glad to become acquainted with was a collection of second-hand book stalls set into a passageway at the original university campus on De Wallen. This hidden gem for any bibliophile is a five minute stroll away from the famed red light district and acts as a quiet haven, sheltered from the elements (the wind is a common accomplice to any time spent in Amsterdam) and the supreme confidence of any cyclist/driver along the cobbled, canal lined streets. It was here that I purchased my only souvenir of my trip: a Pelican book titled A Hundred Years of Philosophy by John Passmore. This reader, printed in 1970 stretches from John Stuart Mill up until the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, and tackles Heidegger and Sartre, Russell and Wittgenstein. A real find if you’re interested in philosophy. I read the first chapter on the flight back to the U.K, an overview of the development of John Stuart Mill’s empiricist logic. Without diverging into a lengthy analysis of Mill’s work, a certain passage stuck out, which applied directly to my experience of Amsterdam.
Passmore writes that “just because we have expectations, Mill argues, we are able to construct for ourselves a world which consists only to a slight degree of the sensations we are at the moment experiencing” (p30). In short, we fabricate much of the world which surrounds us as we expect certain stimuli or situations to arise. I write this whilst having the blind up on my bedroom window, I have not set outside yet, but looking at the overcast grey clouds and the slight swaying of the blossoming trees, I can deduce that it’s not too cold or too warm today — maybe i’ll put a jacket on over my jumper. I haven’t seen the forecast, but owing to my experiences of similar days, I can assume this to be the case. Passmore summarizes this element of Mill’s thought with a nice metaphor:
“Suppose we go out of a room; we think of its contents as existing even although we can no longer see them, because we should expect to experience certain sensations were we to re-enter the room” (p30)
This logic holds up when we think of going to visit another place for a few days. We expect our room/home/street/city to stay similar for when we get back. Yet, this feeling also arises with entire cities, especially on a return visit. As I mentioned above, numerous facets of Amsterdam remained the same, but a lot had also changed; it is a city after all. The objective changes in the fabric of the city, no matter how small, have made a large subjective impact upon my recollection of my previous time in Amsterdam. When one is faced with unexpected change, a rupture in the expectation of sensation, there is the initial fleeting notion of grasping at visual clues to make sense of what lies before you; mutterings of ‘I swear it was here’ spring to mind.
This sensation hit home on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. As a student I would frequent a small, family run bakery in order to grab a sandwich for lunch — the best sandwiches I have ever had it must be said. The place would always be full, mostly occupied by individuals with book laden bags and backpacks, jostling for a view of the glass fronted display where the sandwiches sat waiting, ready for picking. For reasons beyond immediate comprehension, this display was set at the back of the bakery and, thus, led to abysmal congestion. I guess this was part of the charm. It was, as far as I have experienced, a traditional, well established Amsterdam bakery, a bit quirky and perhaps a bit old school, authentic without the Edison light lit pretensions of numerous other bakeries. It was modest and brilliant because of it. Therefore it was a shock when I walked past its former location on my return trip to see the hallmarks of an abandoned shop — postered up windows, chipped paint, a lack of light or human presence emanating from it as it would in the past. I looked up and down the street, mentally retracing my steps and positioning from two years previously, half-looking at the other stores on the side of the road trying to make out the entity, whilst slowly realising that it was gone.
To tie this back to Mill’s work, I thought of the street’s contents as I left them and, perhaps naively, I expected them to remain the same for when I returned. I had fabricated a reality based upon my experiences of this street, in my mind why would they change? Yet, the street had changed, and thus so had the essence of it in my view. No longer was it the street that has the amazing bakery on it, it was now the street that had the amazing bakery on it. The reason for its closing — according to a friend who I met with roughly 15 minutes after I had passed its former location — lied in the death of its long time owner and the reluctance of those left behind to continue the business. This news left me with a sense of remorse similar to that of a deceased celebrity you once held admiration for, like a musician you liked during your adolescence, I knew little to nothing of their life, yet I highly appreciated the output of their craftsmanship — be it music or be it sandwiches.
Cities never stay the same, they are entities which shift and morph into new states of existence constantly. The above example is somewhat trivial. I am a lucky tourist who was visiting and looking forward to a re-acquaintance with a gastronomical friend, it isn’t as if my life or livelihood depended on a level of predictable stability. It was a shame, but it had no lingering impact on my life.
Another example of this — there are, I’m sure thousands of examples — can be found in the song I Was Just Here by the band Parquet Courts. Sonically the song is held together by disjointed, jagged guitar tones which jolt around an awkwardly timed drum pattern. With nods to post-punk heros Wire, Gang of Four and The Fall, the lyrics entwine with the instrumentals via a spoken, almost mumbled delivery, detailing the experience of experiencing divergent sensations to what was expected in an urban environment.
For instance the opening four lines highlight the potential burnout of living in a changing cityscape -
My keys don’t work
This knob don’t turn
My eyes feel like
Cigarette burnt.
The change is represented with the literal shutting out of the sanctuary of the home, of private space, and the continued presence and existence within the stimuli saturated realm of the city. However the clearest, and most relevant lyrics of this song, with a relation to what was discussed above come at the end:
I must have lost
My train of thought
You look so nice
Chinese-fried rice
Wouldn’t you know
That place just closed?
I was just here (x5).
What the band do here, so succinctly with strong overtones of Emile Durkheim’s concept of Anomie — is encapsulate the experience of urban change from the perspective of the everyday citizen, in micro level sensory change and how that, in turn, affects their standing in the space. By saying ‘I was just here’, they are saying, how could this change, how can I not have known this and ultimately how do I stay afloat amongst this transition, do I have a place here?
John Stuart Mill and Parquet Courts both capture the meaning of urban change and present two very different ways of understanding the central component of urban life; that it is forever changing in juxtaposition to our experience based expectations of it staying somewhat, the same. I may never be able to have another sandwich as I did in the past, or indeed thank the person behind their creation, but what replaces the now defunct bakery may add to the street in a new and original way which could enhance the lives of those who use it even more. This may be unlikely, but we can hope.
