Urban Rhythms  

Neha Mhadolkar, Shaurya Pawar, Vidhi Shah, Vijay Chavan

The term ‘Urban Rhythm' comprises two concepts. ‘Urban’ comes from the early 17th century Latin word urbanus, where urb means ‘city’. ‘Rhythm’, on the other hand, is derived from a mid-16th century French term rhythm and/or from the Greek word rhythmos– rhein meant ‘to flow’. Urban is commonly used in relation to a city and is characterised by it. Rhythm is often thought about more in terms of music or is understood as something that is repeated in a sequential manner though the time interval between each rhythm might not be the same.

In Henri Lefebrvre’s ‘Rhythmanalysis’, he elucidates rhythm as something that is not only repetition, but is situated in time and in space. 

Urban rhythm is conceptualised as the flow of the different forces of the city, formed by societal practices in relation to each other and with the natural forces acting on the city itself. 

Lefebrve introduces two types of rhythms– cyclic and linear rhythms. The cyclic rhythms consist of the natural processes which are connected to life and environment. Our heartbeat, thirst, hunger, seasons and the flow of rivers are a part of these cyclic rhythms. Linear rhythms are produced and constructed by societal practices and human activities. Our entire day is set up in accordance with these patterns. They also come up in the form of celebrations, rituals, laws and regulations in our daily lives. These rhythms collide and interact with each other everyday, forming new relations and experiences. 

We see the interference of the cyclic and linear rhythms in the cities built by the edges of water bodies. Historically, civilizations have emerged in such areas– by the rivers and in the coastal regions of a nation. The people living on these edges used to build houses so as to integrate themselves into the shifting landscapes around them. With the rise of industrialisation, embankments and dams were made to regulate the flow of the rivers. The thought behind making these harsh disruptions come from the clean, single lines made on cartographic maps. These maps made by the British during colonial rule don’t record the monsoonal and post-monsoonal conditions as this period was considered as ‘foul weather’ by them, but are very important in the context of our tropical country. Because of this, even the maps we currently use, which are based on what the British made, lose the shifting geography of a place and the rhythms set between the land and the water.

The decisions regarding these edges are made by the planners who only see this single line on the map and not what is actually present on site. They are made with the bias towards and the perspective of the land and not the water, which oftentimes end up being an entity that is to be kept separate from the everyday rhythms of people and only to be viewed from a distance, where the edge becomes a ‘waterfront’. These single lines on maps are much thicker in reality, and have rhythms of their own which are intertwined with those that of the river. The relationship that people have with the river goes beyond it being something that needs to be controlled and separate. This blurry line of separation between land and water provides various opportunities for more spatial exploration in this edge.

Other examples of this intertwining of the two cycles are seen in the cultural practices that are produced by the rhythms of nature. Activities like fishing and agriculture are curated around the knowledge of cyclic rhythms like seasonal changes, tidal patterns, hydrological cycles (also referred to as the water cycle is the movement of water from on, above and below the surface of earth. This process causes conditions such as rain, snow and mist), the growth and development of the crops and biological processes like photosynthesis and transpiration. Understanding these cyclical rhythms are a vital part of the designing process as they have a huge impact on the nature of the land, thus determining the construction methods needed in that particular space. Heavy rainfall areas have structures which are built on stilts which prevent the rainfall seepage into the structure or have high-pitched roofs to prevent accumulation of water on it. Builtforms are made differently according to the different climatic conditions of that specific place. Festivals, celebrations, movement of people, transportation and leisure based activities are another kind of rhythms that get formed in relation to the natural ones and become a large part of the urban rhythm of a place.

Many planners often overlook these rhythms and imagine cities that are devoid of their existing rhythms. The entangled relationships that are present between the land and the water are thought of as a problem. We often see the construction of new dams and embankments being proposed in the development programmes of the cities and other regions of the country, which are strongly opposed and criticised by many. They emphasise on the significance of riverbanks as 'lifelines' vital to many communities that cannot and should not be controlled. The contrasting perspectives on the future of cities sheds light on the complex interplay between urban development, engineering advancements, technological growth, environmental concerns and the historical significance of rivers in shaping the human experience. This blurry line of separation between land and water thus provides an opportunity to explore different forms of spatialities that can be produced to be in harmony with the existing rhythms of the cities.

Our own bodies have rhythms of their own, what we call as the biological clock. Every living being has similar recurring biological processes within themselves that regulate their own linear rhythms. The term ‘circadian rhythms’ is used to describe this natural clock within one’s self. These rhythms are also entangled and influenced by the cyclic rhythms of nature. The linear rhythms that are rational, numerical, qualitative and quantitative; which are created by our own selves and everything that surrounds us, superimpose themselves on the natural rhythms of our bodies, not without changing them and the spaces we occupy. 

We all have a schedule of our own, of work and of rest. The spaces around us are shaped by this convergence of several rhythms that we bring with ourselves. Lefebvre points out the idea of appropriation of space by stating that when space is organised and used for certain processes, the aspects of rhythm, symbols, time and practices are brought up. The space-making shouldn’t be dominating, owning or controlling but it should be about how the people inhabit and use the space in harmony. The linear rhythms of the human body acts as an object of study or rather a tool for observation. The space produces an interconnectedness of physical, mental and social space which involves the idea of the linear rhythms engaging with the cyclic rhythms. The sociological rhythmanalysis emphasises on how these rhythms shape our society and how different tempos define the pace of the linear patterns. The tempo is classified in two types, namely fast tempo and slow tempo. These define the pace of different activities in our daily routine and it varies between work and everyday life. 

We understand that the linear and cyclic rhythms often overlap and produce another new type of rhythm, one that of coexistence and disturbance that shapes the urban spaces around us. It creates different forms of practices, economies, narratives and lives. A question emerges then, why do architects need to understand the urban rhythms? 

Architects deal with the production of space. Any intervention they do on site, it affects the spaces around as well, thus shaping the existing rhythms of the place. It is important for them to understand how these forces work, where they come from and to be sensitive and aware of the implications of every design choice they make during the space-making process. While every intervention in existing rhythms produces differences (they can even be made by the rhythms themselves without needing an event to cause them), architects and planners and all those who are involved in the city-making should do it by learning and adapting from the rhythms that are already established in the place. 

Hernando de Soto alludes to the concept of urban rhythms by talking about how for the auto-constructed settlements on the periphery of cities of the third-world countries, it is difficult for them to obtain legal land rights. He maps the time duration it takes for them to legally own a land, which ranges from an average of 9 to 20 years. In his study, we notice a rhythm that is set from the bureaucratic processes that are involved in the procedure to buy land. This long and tedious process for getting rights to a land gives rise to people finding different ways to extend and make their stay ‘legal’ in the governmental system. By building houses incrementally, making small changes over time to improve their housing conditions, the inhabitants of these auto-constructed settlements slowly collect evidence and rights to obtain land rights in the cities. While building onto this process, many of them produce a substantial economy which is not mobilised. When the government offers them housing in the form of redevelopment projects, it does not take into account the rhythm of incrementality and economic development that happens in these sectors. While the incremental rhythm allows a low-income group to set themselves up within urban spaces, the massive redevelopment projects which require specific infrastructural elements increase the price of land so much that many are not even able to afford these houses. This forceful and indifferent interventions kills the rhythms that had been established in the space and also disrupts those who are connected to it. 

The Arcadia Education Project by Saif Ul Haque Sthapati is a school in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which works with the blurred boundaries between land and water. Dhaka is a deltaic city which receives high rainfall, due to which floods are a common occurrence.  Instead of using conventional methods of construction like raising the land and flattening it, most of the people make houses out of light-weight materials like bamboo and timber and raise their houses several feet above the ground, not disturbing the flow of water. The school which is built on the edge of Dhaleshwari River uses similar logic of building-making. Whenever the water level rises, the school ‘floats’ above.

Though rhythm is a multiscalar term, ‘urban rhythms’ talks about the forces acting as a collective on a larger scale. It can be used to discuss and analyse the ever-changing landscape of urban spaces, in terms of its population, economy, practices and environmental factors. It sheds light on the importance of understanding the existing forces of a city in order to make critical spatial interventions into the rhythms we live in.  The rhythms that exist around us are made by the people themselves who inhabit these spaces. They are the ones who make these cities. The planners and architects who have the power to make intervention in these spaces should make sure that the historical, social and experiential flows are preserved through their designs and that they critically respond to the linear and cyclic rhythms of the spaces.

References:

Baross, Paul. 1990. “Sequencing land development: The price implications of legal and illegal settlement growth.” In Paul Baross and Van der Linden eds. The Transformation of Land Supply Systems in Third World Cities. Aldershot: Avebury. 

de Soto, Hernando. 2000. “The mystery of missing information.” Chapter 2 in The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. London: BlackSwan.

Da Cunha, Dilip. 2019. “Introduction: River Literacy.” Chapter 1 in Ganga’s Eye and Alexander’s Descent: The Invention of Rivers. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Lefebvre, Henri. 2004. “The Critique of the Thing.” In Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday life. London and New York: Continuum.

Michon, Pascal. 2019. “Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis of Everyday Life and Space – Part 1,” Rhuthmos, 14 December 2019. https://rhuthmos.eu/spip.php?article2479

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