Medieval vs. Postmodern Cities

Walking through San Gimignano was unlike anything in the 21st century. The roads wind up and down hills, seemingly aimlessly, and yet they all lead to the center. The differences between the medieval cities and the postmodern ones come from the method of transportation at the time that they were being built. Walking and horses were the main methods of transportation during the medieval period, with cars and trains being the main methods of transportation when planning a postmodern city. This affects the width and windiness of the roads, the flow of the whole space, and the overall layout, size and density of the city.

One of the most obvious differences between a medieval and postmodern city is the width of the roads. The roads of Milan are much wider because they need to fit either two or four lanes of traffic, as well as sidewalks for pedestrians, because they can’t walk in the middle of the road. In the medieval cities the streets were much narrower because the main mode of transportation was walking, so they didn’t need all the width for large vehicles. Another effect of the city being built around walking was how windy the streets are. That’s not to say that in Milan or other postmodern cities don’t ever have roads that curve, but the majority of roads in Milan are straight, because it is easier for cars to drive in straight lines. These two elements also kind of connect because the smaller width of the medieval cities allows for the sharper curves in the road. But another that hit me while walking the roads of Asolo and San Gimignano was how hilly they were. We were constantly walking up or down hills, and I didn’t really stop to think about it until my calves were burning. But they didn’t have to account for engines having to push vehicles up the hills, so they could just build with the landscape (all they had to account for was their legs to get up the hills, everyone must have had very toned legs back then).

In Foucalt’s discussion on place, he says, “but among all these sites, I am interested in certain ones that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they all happen to designate, mirror, or reflect” (Michel Foucalt, 24). He talks a lot about the change from place to movement, but here he says he is particularly interested in places that have a relation to all other places, and I think there is no better example than roads. Roads connect everything to one another-- homes, stores, restaurants—and affects the flow in between all these things as well. Because San Gimignano was designed without cars, shops open directly to the street, and so do individual homes. There is no separation between where you live and where you go to work or to relax. This may even connect to the lack of individuality and privacy they had in the medieval times. In the shame culture of the medieval times people had no space of their own because they could be punished at any time for no reason. Whether this was cause and effect or merely correlational doesn’t matter, but the roads connecting one place so directly to another gives the town a much more personable feel. You can walk in a shop and the owner is sitting right there ready to talk to you. Then you can walk across the street to get lunch and then walk right into your home, and all of this is because there are no cars.

But just the existence of cars has reduced the need for a small sized city, because now you don’t have to walk from one side to the other, you can simply drive or take the subway to the other side. LA’s urban sprawl is a great example of this, the existence of cars has made it so that there is no true center, because there is no longer a need to have everything important within walking distance of each other. “Today the site has been substituted for extension which itself had replaced emplacement” (Foucalt, 23). Foucalt discusses that from the medieval to the postmodern there was a switch from a single place to movement and vectors. This motion is in complete contrast to the medieval city, where everyone lived over their place of work and didn’t have to travel nearly at all. These medieval cities are so small that you can easily walk from one side to the other, whereas in Milan it was almost a necessity to take the subway to get nearly anywhere. From density to size to flow, every aspect of these cities have been affected by the transportation they were built around.

Works cited:

Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces." Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22-27.