Re-thinking the death in the city

URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY

RE-THINKING DEATH IN THE CITY

1

The ceremonious burial of the dead in graves marked by a cairn, a tree, or a tall rock, formed perhaps the first permanent meeting place for the living….(Mumford, 1961: 85)

INTRO

More than anything else, death, as omnipresent as the religions themselves,

has shaped and reshaped cities. At first glance, this is not topic for urban

studies. French sociologist Jean Baudrillard wrote that modern civilization

strives to move away from death, place it outside of your attention, to get

rid of her presence every minute. We use to talk about cities in terms of

live matter. Cities attract people to enrich, develop and reproduce itself.

And more citizens come, the more death will be. In other words, a death is

also inherent part of the urban environment.

The cemetery is certainly a place unlike ordinary cultural spaces. It is

a space that is however connected with all the sites of the city, state or

society or village, etc, since each individual, each family has relatives in

the cemetery.

ALTERI LOCI

Cemetery is other place, it compresses centuries in one space. It has strong

reference to Heterotopias by Foucault. Heterotopia, literally meaning «other

places», is a rich concept in urban design that describes other places with

respect to normal or everyday spaces. He highlighted the cemetery’s profound

spatio-temporal disruption, a place that encloses an «absolute break with

traditional time». For Foucault, the cemetery is the prime example of a

«fully-functioning» and «highly heterotopian» site in its enclosure of

«temporal discontinuities» [découpages du temps]. Although not mentioned by

Foucault, it is also noteworthy that the cemetery is a major example of a

space that marks a «crossing» or a rites of passage and an emplacement that

paradoxically incorporates both extremes of a «heterochronia», an utter break

with time as well as an accumulation of time through its formation as a kind

of «museum» of the dead.

URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY2

FROM CORE TO OUTSKIRTS

In Christian religion cemetery has always existed. But it has undergone

important changes. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the cemetery

was placed at the heart of the city, next to the church. These places were

important centers of culture and activity for the societies thy served. This

cemetery housed inside the sacred space of the church considers the death as

worth end of terrestrial life and transition to celestial one. It was time

of real belief in the resurrection of bodies and the immortality of the soul,

overriding importance was not accorded to the body’s remains.

On the contrary, from the moment when people are no longer sure that they

have a soul or that the body will regain life, it is perhaps necessary to

give much more attention to the dead body, which is ultimately the only trace

of our existence in the world and in language. As a result, cemetery has

become an arena for the display of wealth. But on the other hand, it is only

from that start of the nineteenth century that cemeteries began to be located

at the outside border of cities. Also cemeteries displacement from the city

was caused by epidemics, e. g. In 1771, due to a plague epidemic, the Senate

forbade burial Muscovites who died of the plague on all Moscow cemeteries.

Outside Moscow, in the same year there were opened more than ten cemeteries:

Armenian, Danilovskoye Dorogomilovskoye, Kalitnikovskoye, Miusskoye,

Pyatnitskoye, Semenovskoye, Transfiguration and Rogozhskoe and later Jewish,

Muslim, etc.

In correlation with the individualization of death and the bourgeois

appropriation of the cemetery, there arises an obsession with death as an

«illness». The dead, it is supposed, bring illnesses to the living, and it

is the presence and proximity of the dead right beside the houses, next to

the church, almost in the middle of the street, it is this proximity that

propagates death itself. This major theme of illness spread by the contagion

in the cemeteries persisted until the end of the eighteenth century, until,

Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Paris

URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY 3

during the nineteenth century, the shift of cemeteries toward the suburbs was

initiated. The cemeteries then came to constitute, no longer the sacred and

immortal heart of the city, but the other city, where each family possesses

its dark resting place.

After 1917, many cemeteries were destroyed in Russia. On the 7th of December

1918, Decree «On cemeteries and funeral» was adopted by the Council of

People’s Commissars, after which the Orthodox Church and other denominations

were removed from the funeral sphere. By 1920s, there were «Sanitary norms

and rules of design and maintenance of cemeteries» that restricted closeness

the cemetery to public buildings, to life.

COST OF DEATH

The more city grows the more acute is the question of death. Moscow is very

remarkable in this case. On the one hand, to die in Moscow is comparable

with 3 months of life, or even more. The city constantly faces the shortage

of place for oblivion. Every year Moscow needs 15 - 17 hectares of land.

Taking to account average market land price,100,000 $ per hectare, for Moscow

administration it costs about 1,700 000 $ a year, and it is without taking to

account an improvement. Moscow owns 71 cemetery, which occupy 1.800 hectares

of land which is equivalent to the territory within Garden Ring. Moreover,

it put restrictions on the character of the built environment: no housing, no

schools, kindergartens, no public facilities 300 m around.

Cemeteries=Garden Ring.

Moscow

Cemetery on the outskirts.

Norilsk

URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY4

On the other hand, closeness to the cemetery reduces the real estate and

mental value of surroundings. Subconsciously people tend to avoid settling

near death. From a marketing perspective the presence near the residence of

the cemetery can be seen only negatively. And there is no difference, it is

a new or an old cemetery. The only exception I could call churchyard near

Novodevichy Cemetery, which is already considered not as a burial place, but

as a historic landmark.

In most European countries place in cemeteries is for rent. Minimal period

is 10 years. Then the term can be any extended. Cemeteries became part of

the urban space, frequently have been used as parks. This happened with

above mentioned Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow and Lazarev Cemetery in

St. Petersburg. Being actually in the center of the city, the cemetery is

completely integrated into everyday urban space. Thus, the practice is not

associated with death, committed in contrast to a place that was originally

intended for a very different. They are part of a kind of paradoxical

dialogue of life and death. These practices, whether consciously or not,

erase the image of death, where it would seem there as anywhere else.

RETHINKING THE DEATH: LIVING

What is the cemetery about: death, grief or something more? «A cemetery

is not only to be a place for the dead, but also a place for the living»

(Kienast 2002). Dieter Kienast is talking about the cemetery as a dual

terrain. Functionally, it is the place where we lay those who do not leave

among us; therefore it is a place for the dead. But, a cemetery also provides

a place where we address our grieving; therefore it is a place for the

living.

Cemeteries location & real estate prices.

Moscow

URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY 5

By contrast, cemeteries could become the places where life begins, e. g.

City of the Dead in Cairo. More than five million Egyptian live in these

cemeteries, and have formed their own enterprises. In modern times, because

of Egypts housing crisis, a lack of satisfactory and affordable housing for

a rapidly growing population, many poor Egyptians have made these rooms their

permanent homes. People come to live in these cemeteries because they are

inexpensive and practical for a starting point.Egyptians have not so much

thought of cemeteries as a place of the dead, but rather a place where life

begins.

Taking a look to the countries with shortage of territories there is another

attitude to death and burring process, mainly through cremation. There are

the tightly packed cemeteries around Hong-kong juxtaposing the two parallel

worlds of the living and the dead, and the environments in which they must

co-exist. «Hong-kong amphitheater» confronts the idea of cemeteries as

important public spaces and remembrance.

RETHINKING THE DEATH: ANOTHER PLACE

Return to the subject of heterotopia, D. Graham Shane In his book

«Recombinant Urbanism» gives the following description: «A heterotopia is

a place that mixes the stasis of the enclave with the flow of an armature,

and in which the balance between these two systems is constantly changing.

Its function is to help maintain the city’s stability as a self-organizing

system.» In the present book, Shane adheres to this description in his

discussion of the way in which recent heterotopias of illusion (themed

environments, art centers, malls) facilitate the shift towards a more

performative, flexible and mobile urbanism of ‘sites’. In his analysis

heterotopias are specific places, which work according to specific spatial

mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and are thus able to accommodate

specific social transformations.

City of the Dead.

Cairo

URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY8

Cemeteries, whether located within cities, on their outskirts, or completely

separated, have the potential to create connections with the urban and

cultural fabric. Rather than being a source of disease and corruption, this

space for the dead combines physical protection with moral and aesthetic

cultivation.Park of Remembrance on Baykovoye Cemetery in Kiev is an example

of bareness of human memory. It was created by group of sculptors, Ada

Rybachuc and Vladimir Melnichenko from 1967 for 15 years. The main its

content is about the topic of Transition (passage) from life to nonbeing,

or in other words heterobeing. They tried to create Park-memorial: «There

was understanding that people came here with their grief, surrounded by

memories, remembrance, need another: a story about life». In order to safe

existing burialsthey used principles of barrows and terraces. Moreover, it

was need to rethink the way of burial, through fire — return to cremation.

That meant stepping over moral reasons:in Europe after the Second World War

cremation decreased from 75% to 30% because of concentration camps and mass

people destruction.

Recently architects and designers have been involved into Re-thinking the

death topic. The main goal is to change the attitude to deathcare: green

deathcare, rituals (e. g. deadbook), wrappings of mortality, final farewell,

memorials. Cemetery it is not about graves but about breaking down the

boundaries of space between the living and the dead, and connection to the

city it belongs to. Of cause, naturalizing the death as a part of daily life

is not so simple task.

Park of Remembrance.

Kiev

URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY 9

CONCLUSIONS

There’s a myth that many people repeat: it’s taboo to discuss death. The

exact opposite is true — we discuss death and dying all the time. What we

don’t always discuss is our own personal death. For many, burial is a show of

respect for the dead. And when one believes in an afterlife, burial is as a

necessary step to reach that. Then the growing secularism and disbelief have

changed the way we perceive death.

Re-think the death means the same as rethinking the industry, industrial

zones within the city. Death is not «illness», but it’s part of our daily

life, urban routine.

POST COMMUNITY.

Austria

References:

Dehaen, M. and De Cauter L. (2008) Heterotopia and the city: public space in

a postcivil society, London and New York: Routledge.

Foucault, M. (1986) «Of other spaces: utopias and heterotopias», Lotus 48(9)

(1985/6):9G. Sancristoforo.

Kselman, T. (1993) Death and the Afterlife in Modern France, Princeton:

PrincetonUniversity Press.

Project International,Vol. 19 (2009) «Other spaces: heterotopias», Moscow:

Project Russia.

Shane, D. G. (2005) Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual Modelling in

Architecture,Urban Design and City Theory, Chichester: Wiley-Academy.

Yerofalov-Polipchak, B. (2010) Architecture of Soviet Kiev, «The wall of

remembrance», Kiev: A+C.

«Manuel Alvarez diestro documents dense Hong Kong cemeteries»

http://www.designboom.com/art/manuel-alvarez-diestro-documents-dense-hong-

kong-cemeteries-11-0-2013/

«Design for death competition»

http://www.designboom.com/competition/design-for-death-architecture/

http://retromap.ru/mapster.php#right=122010&zoom=10&lat=55.749216&lng=37.6196

92&lang=ru

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D1%81%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%BD%D1%83%D0%B2

%D1%88%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%B8_%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%87%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0

%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0%BA%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%89%D0%B0_%D0%9C

%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B2%D1%8B

http://stat.cian.ru/

URBAN STUDIES: RE-THINKING THE DEATH IN THE CITY10