Phenomenology of the Winter-City: Myth in the Rise and Decline of Built Environments

229 Pages·2016·2.78 MB·English

by  Abraham Akkerman (auth.)

Abraham Akkerman
Phenomenology
of the Winter-City
Myth in the Rise and Decline of Built
Environments
Phenomenology of the Winter-City

Abraham Akkerman
Phenomenology
of the Winter-City
Myth in the Rise and Decline
of Built Environments
Abraham Akkerman
Department of Geography and Planning
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon , Saskatchewan , Canada
ISBN 978-3-319-26699-2 ISBN 978-3-319-26701-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26701-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015957478
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
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To Amitai, Ashira, Kerem, Roni, and Bnayah

Pref ace
This monograph is an attempt to see the history of city form and the history of ideas
within a single context of mutual and ongoing i nteraction. Recognizing the primor-
dial sources of this feedback progression as originating in human development and
the environment, not the least climate and s ky patterns since the Upper P aleolithic
era, myth becomes a focal concern in this study, as it should be. This, I believe,
leads to some profound questions on the phenomenology of the city and on the
notion of p lace in the w inter city of N orth America, in particular. The seeds of these
questions have been sown by the philosopher Herbert S pence r, by the geographer
Carl Sauer, and by the cultural critic Walter Be njamin, a century ago. But ideas on
mind-environment interaction can certainly be traced to the eighteenth century’s
physical geography of Immanuel Kant. A wide scope of issues, ranging from geog-
raphy to psychoanalysis, were addressed in this study as aspects necessary, as well
as illuminating, to the history and phenomenology of the built environment. The
humanistic focus this study attempts to bring to c on siderations of city form yields
recognition of the major role myth and allegory have played in built environments
and in urban planning through history, as they still do to this very day.
I am most indebted to my colleagues and friends at the University of
S askatchewan, my intellectual home for the last three decades. I have greatly ben-
efi tted from the insight and the countless discussions with faculty and students, too
numerous to list, in the Department of Geography and Planning, in the Department
of Philosophy, and in the University Program in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance
Studies. Singled out among the many i ndividuals without whose input this study
would never be as comprehensive as it attempts to be are John McConnell, Bill
Barr, and Robert Bone of the Department of Geography and Planning , Sarah
Hoffman and Eric Dayton of the Department of Philosophy, Priscilla Settee of the
Department of Indigenous Studies, and Frank Klaassen of the Department of
History. My years spent in the planning profession at the Planning and Building
Department (now, Planning and Policy Services), City of Edmonton, were an
invaluable experience, and my thanks go to my colleagues and friends there, fi rst
and foremost, Robert Higgins and Tim Ford.
vii
viii Preface
The unrelenting and inspiring questions of my two children, Zak and Ariela,
since their early childhood, have been the most precious source of muse and whim.
To their children this book is dedicated.
Contents
1 Introduction: Intertwining Consciousness,
Human Body and the Environment ....................................................... 1
1.1 Urban Alienation, from René Descartes to Andrei Bely ................ 1
1.2 Climate as an Urban Concern ......................................................... 2
1.3 Weather as Backdrop to a Cognitive Loop ..................................... 4
1.4 Myth and the Mind-City Composite ............................................... 6
1.5 Civilization and the Fading of Environmental Myths .................... 8
1.6 The Thread of the Present Study .................................................... 10
Bibliography ............................................................................................. 12
Part I Winter and the North in the Emergence of Civic Space
2 Human Posture and the Nightly Sky:
Cosmos in Prehistoric Myth ................................................................... 17
2.1 Introduction and Summary ............................................................. 17
2.2 North Stars of the Late Pleistocene:
The Mythical Beacons .................................................................... 18
2.3 Art and Mind of the Upper Paleolithic:
The Eurasian Venuses ..................................................................... 20
2.4 North Stars of the Holocene: The Mythical Pivots ......................... 22
2.5 Pole Stars and Hemispheric Paradigms
of the Nightly Skies ........................................................................ 25
2.6 The Myth of Axis mundi: A View from Neolithic
Cup- and- Ring Carvings .................................................................. 27
Bibliography ............................................................................................. 30
3 The North, Axis mundi and Gender Myths
in the Rise of Civic Space ....................................................................... 33
3.1 Introduction and Summary ............................................................. 33
3.2 Cup Marks and Medicine Wheels .................................................. 34
3.3 Landscapes of Minds: A Cognitive Feedback ................................ 35
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