Flesh and Stone

1. Urban history is a story of the body's experience in stone.

Flesh and Stone is a history of the city told through people’s bodily experience: how women and men moved, what they saw and heard, the smells that assailed their noses, where they ate, how they dressed, when they bathed, how they made love in cities from ancient Athens to modern New York.

Body shapes cities. The physical sensations and experiences of human bodies have profoundly influenced the design and organization of urban spaces throughout Western civilization. This history explores how people's relationship with their own bodies – their desires, vulnerabilities, and perceptions – is mirrored in the architecture and planning of the cities they inhabit.

Body-troubles in stone. Western culture has struggled to fully embrace the dignity and diversity of human bodies. This struggle is reflected in urban design, where attempts to impose order or control often manifest as spatial constraints or exclusions based on idealized or feared bodily forms. Sensory deprivation in modern cities, for example, is seen as a symptom of this historical "body-trouble."

Master images and resistance. Societies often create generic "master images" of the body (like the "body politic") to define social order and justify power. These images, when translated into urban form, tend to repress diversity. However, the inherent physical idiosyncrasies and contradictory desires of human bodies resist these master plans, leading to alterations and subversions of urban space that ultimately help dignify differing bodies.

2. Ancient Athens linked the naked body, voice, and civic space, but used physiology to justify social exclusion.

The Greeks used the science of body heat, that is, to enact rules of domination and subordination.

Nakedness as civilization. In Perikles' Athens, the exposed, naked male body was a symbol of strength, dignity, and civilization, contrasting with the clothed "barbarian." This ideal was tied to a physiological belief that "body heat" was the source of vitality, action, and intelligence. Hot bodies (male citizens) were seen as superior to cold bodies (women, slaves).

Spaces of exposure. Athenian urban spaces reflected this ideal of exposure.

• The Parthenon was sited for maximum visibility.
• The agora was an open space for diverse activities and debate.
• The gymnasium trained young men's bodies and voices for public life, including honorable, non-penetrative sexual love between equals.

Exclusion by physiology. The "one-sex body" model, where male and female differed only in degree of heat, was used to justify the exclusion of women and slaves from public life. Women, being colder, were confined to the domestic interior, while slaves were thought to become dull-witted and incapable of speech due to their condition, fitting them only for labor.

3. Ritual offered marginalized groups in Athens hidden spaces for bodily dignity and community.

Ritual constitutes the social form in which human beings seek to deal with denial as active agents, rather than as passive victims.

Beyond the public gaze. While the male citizen's body was celebrated in the open, those deemed "cold bodies" or excluded from public life found dignity and agency in hidden ritual spaces. These rituals transformed traditional myths through spatial practices, offering a different experience of the body.

Rituals of transformation:

• The Thesmophoria: Women gathered in dark huts on the Pnyx hill, near the male assembly space. Through fasting, sexual abstinence, and contact with putrefying pig carcasses, they transformed the stigma of their "cold" bodies into dignity and affirmed bonds among themselves, acting "as citizens."
• The Adonia: Women gathered on rooftops at night, a normally empty and dark space. Using aromatic spices and celebrating the death of Adonis (a symbol of fleeting pleasure), they reclaimed their sexual desires and powers of speech, creating a temporary, anonymous community through dance and laughter.

Mythos vs. Logos. These rituals operated through "mythos" – telling tales and performing actions without claiming personal responsibility, fostering trust and communal bonds. This contrasted with "logos" – reasoned debate where speakers were responsible for their words, often leading to mutual suspicion and rhetorical manipulation in public political spaces like the Pnyx.

4. Roman power built visual order and geometric forms based on the body, demanding belief and obedience.

From the geometer’s ruler thus came Rule; the lines of bodies, temples, and cities seemed to reveal the principles of a well-ordered society.

Image and authority. Roman imperial power relied heavily on making itself visible through monumental architecture and public works. The emperor's legitimacy was tied to his building achievements, creating a "teatrum mundi" where people were expected to "look and believe."

Bodily geometry in stone. Roman design drew on the Vitruvian idea that the human body is structured by geometric symmetries (circle and square). This was translated into architecture and urban planning:

• The Pantheon's symmetrical interior and central oculus.
• City planning based on an "umbilicus," intersecting main streets (cardo and decumanus), and a grid layout, reflecting the body's structure.
• Temples and public buildings designed with strong frontal axes, directing the viewer's gaze and movement.

Order and control. This geometric, linear order disciplined bodily movement and perception, creating spaces where people were meant to "look and obey." The Forum Romanum evolved from a diverse marketplace to a ceremonial space where political action was replaced by pantomime and visual display. This imposition of fixed, repetitive visual order aimed to convey the fiction of an "Eternal City" amidst social instability and fear of unruly bodily desires.

5. Early Christianity sought spiritual transformation by transcending the body and worldly place.

The Christian’s journey in life took shape through transcending all physical stimulation; as a Christian became indifferent to the body, he or she hoped to draw closer to God.

Alien body of Christ. Early Christians, like Origen, emphasized the radical difference between Christ's body and human bodies, arguing that Jesus was free from sexual desire and suffered only out of compassion. This contrasted with pagan gods who embodied human passions. Faith was seen as a process of becoming, a "pilgrimage through time," turning away from worldly attachments.

Beyond sight and place. This spiritual journey involved transcending physical sensations and attachments to place.

• Conversion was an "illumination" by God's light, which blinds the beholder to worldly images.
• Christians were "sojourners" on earth, their true city in heaven, echoing the Jewish tradition of wandering.
• The pagan command to "look and believe" was rejected; Christian faith was an inner, invisible state.

Equality in vulnerability. Despite the emphasis on transcending the body, early Christianity affirmed the equality of all human bodies in their shared vulnerability to suffering and poverty. This challenged pagan hierarchies based on visible measures like sex or wealth, seeing all bodies as equal in the sight of God, regardless of their physical state or social status.

6. Medieval cities fostered Christian community and compassion, creating sanctuaries for suffering bodies.

The religious community did not comprehend the whole city, but served rather as a place of moral reference...

Compassion in the flesh. The High Middle Ages saw a shift from the "alien body of Christ" to a focus on Christ's suffering body, fostering identification with human pain. This "Imitation of Christ" movement made the body an ethical yardstick and promoted compassion for others, seen by some doctors like Henri de Mondeville as a physical response ("syncope").

Spaces of care. This new ethos of compassion shaped urban religious spaces:

• Cathedrals like Notre-Dame became centers of popular piety, emphasizing visibility of rituals.
• Hospitals and almshouses expanded, opening their doors to strangers and the urban poor.
• Cloister gardens, traditionally spaces for melancholic contemplation, became open sanctuaries for the sick and homeless, embodying a mix of inwardness and outward care.

Community of strangers. Unlike earlier, more exclusive religious settlements, urban Christian communities, particularly mendicant orders and lay almoners, actively engaged with the diverse and suffering bodies of the city's poor and transient population. Confession became a personal, empathetic exchange, empowering the parishioner. These spaces and practices served as moral anchors in a rapidly growing, often chaotic urban environment.

7. Economic individualism in medieval cities introduced flexible space and time, challenging fixed social and religious order.

The phrase “each man is a devil to himselfʼ in the market makes the story curious.

Freedom of the bourgeois. The medieval city, particularly through trade, offered a new kind of freedom – freedom from feudal dependence and the right to property earned by individual effort. This gave rise to the "bourgeois," a cosmopolitan figure engaged in a dynamic, often unpredictable economy.

Space of flux. Urban economic space reflected this dynamism:

• Streets were often chaotic, shaped by individual assertion rather than overall plan.
• Shop walls became permeable surfaces for display and exchange.
• Markets and fairs, while regulated, were sites of intense competition and shifting fortunes.

Time of opportunity. Economic activity introduced new concepts of time:

• "Change time" and "clock time" (measured labor hours) contrasted with the fixed, narrative time of Christian history.
• The corporation, defined by a flexible charter, embodied the right to change and adapt over time, transcending fixed function and place.

Self-destructive competition. The cleric Humbert de Romans saw the market man as a "devil to himself" because unbridled economic competition, driven by individual gain and operating in a fluid, unpredictable time and space, could lead to self-destruction and alienation from the fixed, communal values of Christian belief.

8. Renaissance Venice used spatial segregation to manage fears of difference and bodily impurity, linking community to repression.

Community and repression: Venetian Christians sought to create a Christian community by segregating those who were different, drawing on the fear of touching alien, seductive bodies.

Fear of the Other. As Venice's wealth grew through international trade, it attracted diverse foreigners, including Jews. Following military and economic setbacks, Venetians displaced their anxieties about moral decline and bodily vices (like syphilis, associated with sensuality and usury) onto these outsiders, particularly Jews.

Impurity and touch. Jews were stereotyped as carriers of disease and moral corruption, their bodies seen as impure and their touch defiling. This fear of physical contact was reflected in social rituals (bowing instead of shaking hands) and legal restrictions.

Spatial containment. To manage this fear while retaining the economic benefits of foreign trade, Venice implemented spatial segregation:

• The Fondaco dei Tedeschi concentrated German merchants under surveillance.
• The Jewish Ghetto (Ghetto Nuovo, Vecchio, Nuovissimo) was created as a sealed, isolated space, using canals as a moat and locking gates at night.

Urban condom. The Ghetto functioned as an "urban condom," containing perceived impurity to protect the Christian community. Unlike the Roman Ghetto, which aimed at conversion, the Venetian Ghetto's primary purpose was isolation. This act of repression, however, inadvertently fostered a new sense of collective identity and self-determination among the segregated Jews, transforming an "accursed space" into a "holy place" with its own synagogues and cultural life.

9. The scientific revolution's focus on bodily circulation inspired urban planning based on flow and health, promoting individual mobility.

Harvey’s revolution helped change the expectations and plans people made for the urban environment.

Body as machine. William Harvey's discovery of blood circulation challenged ancient ideas of innate heat and the soul's location, presenting the body as a mechanical system of flowing fluids and energies. This secular view emphasized the health of individual organs and tissues through free movement.

City as healthy body. Enlightenment planners applied this circulatory paradigm to urban design:

• Streets became "arteries and veins" for the free flow of people and goods.
• Parks were conceived as "lungs" for respiration and purification.
• Urban hygiene focused on cleaning dirt and waste to allow the city's "skin" (surfaces) to breathe.

Freedom through motion. This medical-spatial model aligned with emerging capitalist ideas of individualism and free markets, where the circulation of labor and capital was seen as stimulating and life-giving. Adam Smith's pin factory illustrated how the division of labor, driven by market exchange, created specialized, distinct individuals. Movement and circulation were increasingly seen as sources of individual freedom and self-possession.

10. Revolutionary Paris sought freedom in empty volumes, but this space pacified the body and dispersed the crowd.

Freedom which arouses the body does so by accepting impurity, difficulty, and obstruction as part of the very experience of liberty.

Inventing the citizen. The French Revolution sought to create a new, unified "citizen" body, often symbolized by Marianne, a figure of maternal nourishment and fraternity. This ideal body was associated with free-flowing fluids (milk) and openness.

Volumes of liberty. Revolutionary planners imagined freedom in vast, empty, transparent urban spaces, cleared of historical or natural "obstructions."

• Public squares like the Place de la Révolution were emptied and enlarged.
• Ceremonies were staged in these open volumes, meant to embody abstract revolutionary ideals.

Passive bodies in empty space. Despite the revolutionary fervor, these spaces often failed to engage the crowds.

• The guillotine, placed in large squares, rendered death a passive, mechanical event, distancing the crowd from the spectacle.
• Revolutionary festivals, though designed to choreograph collective action, often resulted in confusion and apathy, as the sheer volume of space made it difficult for people to connect or understand their roles.

Anesthetic freedom. This suggests that freedom conceived as the absence of resistance or obstruction can be anesthetic, dulling the body's sensations and capacity for engagement. True, arousing freedom, by contrast, requires grappling with difficulty and impurity.

11. Modern urban individualism, driven by speed and comfort, leads to sensory detachment and social indifference.

Individualism of this sort, he thought, might bring a certain order to society—the co-existence of people inward-turned, tolerating one another out of mutual indifference.

Speed and de-densification. Nineteenth-century urban planning, exemplified by London's Regent's Park/Street and Haussmann's Paris boulevards, used traffic flow to separate and thin out urban space, privileging individual movement (carriages, later automobiles) over collective gathering. This created class-homogenous, disconnected areas.

Comfort and withdrawal. Technological innovations in transport (smooth carriages, trains) and interiors (upholstered chairs, central heating, elevators) made movement and rest increasingly comfortable and passive.

• Sitting postures shifted from sociable engagement to individual relaxation and withdrawal.
• Public spaces like Cafés and pubs adopted norms of silence and individual detachment.
• Sealed buildings further isolated interiors from the urban environment.

Tocquevillian solitude. This combination of speed, comfort, and spatial design fostered Tocqueville's "individualism," where people become strangers to each other's destinies, existing "only in himself and for himself alone." The body, made comfortable and mobile, becomes detached from the places it moves through and the people it encounters, leading to a pervasive social indifference.

12. True civic connection requires acknowledging bodily insufficiency and engaging with difference, resisting passive comfort.

For without a disturbed sense of ourselves, what will prompt most of us—who are not heroic figures knocking on the doors of crackhouses—to turn outward toward each other, to experience the Other?

Beyond pleasure. The history of the body in the city reveals a tension between the desire for pleasure (comfort, wholeness, order) and the reality of bodily insufficiency (pain, incompleteness, disturbance). While pleasure seeks to avoid stimuli and disengage, civilization, often through urban experience, confronts us with contradictions that make wholeness impossible, prompting engagement.

Pain as witness. Lived pain, unlike other sensations, lacks an external object and resists social definition. It disorients the self and defeats the desire for coherence. Acknowledging this inherent bodily insufficiency is crucial for civic connection.

Civic compassion. Compassion for others, particularly those who are different, stems not from goodwill alone, but from a disturbed sense of ourselves, an awareness of our own lack and vulnerability. This echoes the Judeo-Christian tradition where exile and suffering lead to awareness and engagement with the strange and unlike.

Resisting indifference. The modern city, with its emphasis on speed, comfort, and individualism, encourages passive indifference and the use of "image repertoires" to classify and withdraw from difference. Overcoming this requires resisting the urge for comfort and embracing the "virtue of displacement" – experiences that jolt us out of self-security and make us sensible to the pain and otherness of others, fostering a civic body capable of connection amidst diversity.

Last updated: May 1, 2025