Urban Past, Present, and Future in Black and White: The Utility of Figure-Ground

Of all the media through which city planners engage with urban history, figure-ground representation is the simplest and most ubiquitous. The technique uses monotone cartography to show the footprint of buildings, three-dimensional solids appearing as figures against a blank ground. Such is the nature of urban space that the Gestalt becomes reversed as the eye reads the pattern of streets, squares, parks and gardens, perceiving voids as figure and solids as ground. The technique lends itself well to diachronic analysis in which the complex variety of historical maps is reduced to consistent black and white imagery that can be compared over time.  In twentieth-century figure-grounds the destructive impacts of the automobile on urban space shows up with startling clarity. Postmodern urbanism has used figure-ground proactively to show how lost urban space might be restored, a classic example being the Stadtwende triptych - past, present, future - exhibited by the City of Berlin at the Venice Biennale of October 2000. With examples from Berlin and other settlements, my presentation will show how figure-ground is being used to promote historical awareness in planning for city futures.