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Space and the concept of planning
Vol. ll.No. Printed in Great Britain.
HABITATINTL.
OlY7-3Y75187
2,pp. 11-18.1987.
$~.OO+ 0.00
0 1987 Pcrgamon Journals Ltd.
Space and the Concept of Planning JOSEPH UYANGA ~n~versi~ of Science and Technology,
Fort Harcourt, Nigeria
ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF SPATIAL BEHAVIOUR
Space is in some sense an idea which the mind creates for itself: it is a term without demonstrable meaning or reference independent of the models and concepts by which we bring organisation and coherence to the chaotic world of sensation. This view has not generally been accepted by spatial behaviourists. The opinion appears to have prevailed that space is a quasi-object which must be studied much as, say, a botanist studies plants. Such a body of study would thus be viewed as a “discipline in distance” or a “science of space”. There are objections to this which are of a general nature. Space is manifestly not an object but it is very difficult to say precisely what it is in empirical terms. Recent work therefore has tended to treat space less as an item of empirical investigation than as a tool to be used in such an investigation. Space - like a scale of measurement - is something which the researcher imposes upon his problem in order to clarify and quantify certain kinds of relationships. These relationships are not in themselves intrinsically spatial, however. Distance, for example, is no more fundamental or intrinsic to the process of interaction between places than is time or cost (Sack, 1973). More specifically the “space-as-an-object-of-study” view has been particularly difficult to sustain where the focus of interest has been the analysis of spatial behaviour. It is here that we see most clearly that “near” and “far” and terms like “the friction of distance” do not take their meaning from some objectively defined framework of spatial co-ordinates but rather from the way in which individuals or groups conceive of and interpret their environmental and territorial organisation. Spatial terms in a behavioural aspect turn out to be something like the term “near” in the statement “A is B’s ‘near’ relative” where it is apparent that “near” derives its significance from the system of social relationships we call kinship and from nothing else. In behavioural contexts, space does not exist as an independent variable; for if the objects are removed then the space goes too. To be fair, however, this is not everybody’s idea of how to study spatial behaviour. There have been two distinct approaches in this field. One school of learning theories of Clark Hull and thought - embracing the stimulus-response the token economies and “operant” behaviourism of Skinner - is rigorously positivistic, insisting that behaviour can and should be interpreted solely in terms of physical stimuli open to direct empirical investigation. The other school which traces its line of descent through two well-known psychologists, Kant and Galton, down to Tolman and Piaget - argues that, in some degree, the cognitive abilities of the mind act as free agents, generating ideas, images, concepts and the like; and that we cannot understand spatial behaviour unless we take into account both these “mentalistic” variables and more directly physical stimuli. 11
12
Joseph
Uyanga
My concern at this point is not to speculate on how these apparent differences might be resolved (this is probably a matter for biophysics and neurology), but simply to point out that - for better or worse - spatial behaviourists have thrown in their lot with the second group. Stea and Downs (1970) bluntly assert that “the image is back”. And indeed much of the current interest in spatial behaviour focusses on such topics as the role of environmental imagery and cognitive mapping (mental maps) in guiding behaviour patterns. These are proving both interesting and productive lines of exploration. At the same time they throw up some puzzling problems of spatial planning and analysis which I want to try and discuss in this paper.
APPROACHES
TO STUDIES
OF SPATIAL
BEHAVIOUR
Environmental images, cognitive maps and the like are non-empirical entities. In Tolman’s work in the field of rat psychology (Tolman, 1946), the cognitive map was an hypothesis which seemed necessary in order to explain the way in which patterns of behaviour were acquired. Similarly in current spatial behaviour research the mental map is introduced as a theoretical entity which, it is thought, will help elucidate environmental learning processes and spatial behaviour patterns. In both cases, the onus is on the researcher to specify exactly what behaviour he is trying to explain and to show that he is not multiplying categories unnecessarily. But the planner does have one apparent advantage over the rat psychologist. He can ask his subjects about their spatial images, either directly or indirectly in the latter case by making use of residential preference rankings, semantic differential tests, and so on. From the point of view of trying to explain behaviour, however, spatial images are not in themselves, of very great significance - for individually they are as likely to be effects as causes. That “I imagine X to be further away than it really is because I rarely travel that way” is as likely as the converse; namely that “I rarely travel to X because I imagine it to be further than it is”. If, on the other hand, we examine not the images alone but the way they combine to constitute an ordered whole - a structure - then we shift the analysis onto another plane altogether; for in such a case we deal with a total organising concept which embraces “inner” logical relationships not derived from experience and perception alone. A cognitive structure in this sense is comparable to a hypothetico-deductive model in scientific explanation, which gains its explanatory power over Baconian inductionism precisely because it involves more than a simple summation of facts. Those who believe such structures exist and can be identified often argue that they stem from the creative, organising imaginative powers of the mind - through which the raw materials of perception are moulded into a unified whole. The mental map is, or is intended to be, such a structure - namely, an organised scheme of categories through which individuals or groups of individuals are able to sort out and give coherence to their experiences of the world. But the mental map as a structure - if it exists at all - cannot be reached directly. The questions “do you have a mental map?” or “tell me, what is your mental map like?” are absurd. Gould has asked subjects to rank lists of places in order of residential preference and then tried to extract basic structural regularities from these data using Principal Components Analysis. Unfortunately, there is an important objection to this procedure which Gould himself recognises, namely that the researcher is in the position of having “imposed a particular geometrical structure [the orthogonal component axes] upon [the] information before the search for order and regularity began” (Gould, 1967, p.
Space and the Concept of PIanning
13
272). Here we face the familiar problem that a factor-analytic type procedure is of little help where we lack ideas about what we ought to find and why. What then are the prospects for a theory concerning the structure of mental maps which goes beyond a priori guess work based on the structural exigencies of a particular technique of multivariate analysis? The approach I am going to suggest is one in which images of space and territory are treated as elements in a system of signs and symbols analogous to a language. The planner’s interest in the mental map would be assimilated, in this case, to the wider field of semiology, namely the study of signs and symbols from a most general meta-linguistic standpoint. Semiology appears to offer intriguing possibilities in the search for a general theory of cultural, social and linguistic behaviour. I must confess, however, that the present paper does not make much progress in the avowed direction. In fact the three matters dealt with subsequently are all of a distinctly preliminary nature. Nevertheless I hope there will be enough substance in them to be worthy of some discussion. In the first place I try to show - by historical comparison - that ideas about space and spatial images are not all they seem to be at first sight. Secondly, I stress that spatial cognition embraces a fundamental process of categorisation atid classification, which must be understood in terms of discriminatory and’quantitative procedures belonging to the subject not the investigator. If this is self-evident it is also something about which we have to be particularly clear in planning in order to avoid serious misinterpretation of spatial imagery. There are a number of illustrations of this point. Finally, I indicate a few items from the anthropological and linguistical literature on structuralism which are of methodological interest.
PRACTICAL USE OF THE CONCEPT OF SPACE
Whether or not planning is a science of space, planners are certainly not short of spatial ideas, assumptions and images. The trouble with all these is that they seem misleadingly inevitable - as if we held them only as a result of induction, based on careful and objective inspection of the world. As planners, we should know that this is not so - for do we not simultaneously acknowledge that the surface of the earth is a sphere, and yet continue to think in terms of the curious two-dimensioinal bounded Euclidean surfaces which we call maps? The history of science has many outstanding examples of “spaces” which were chosen and defined for purposes very different from those they came to serve in scientific research. Very often a scientist’s space was in the first instance a precise reflection of his society’s religious beliefs and cultural attitudes, and only rarely did a concept of space develop from the demands of empirical evidence alone. Thus, for example: the Greeks in Aristotle’s time were able to explain certain phenomena, such as the constant circularity of the earth’s shadow during eclipses of the moon, by invoking the sphericity of the earth; but the idea that the earth and heavenly bodies were spheres originated from the mystical conviction of the Pythagoreans that the sphere was a perfect figure and that, because the heavenly bodies ought to be perfect, they ought also to be spheres. The rival notion of a flat earth was likewise originally derived not from empirical observation, but from early astronomical mythology where it signified an ideal plane laid through the ecliptic (Santillana and Von Dechend, 1969). Space conceived of as a kind of absolute container for objects was, for Newton, a theoretical entity in two senses. As an initial frame of reference it was an a priori necessity of his cosmological system. But at the same time it was also - in
14
Joseph
Uyanga
development of an idea from Rabbinic theology - the “sensorium of God”. Modern ideas on relativity can be traced back to Leibniz, who believed that space only existed in the mind, and that the illusion of a general spatial reality stemmed from the fact that God thought all possible spatial relations all the time. In the celebrated correspondence between Leibniz and Clarke, the central issue was whether or not Newton’s views on space were atheistical. Now this is not one of those situations in which the modern scientist has escaped from the curious ideas of his ancestors into the light of day. The uncanny ways in which the models of spatial organisation in current location theory signal back to us the idealised hopes and fears of a rich capitalist industrial society are a warning as to the extent to which contemporary planner’s images and definitions of space and explanations of area1 differential likewise reflect standards and values which are not consciously and explicitly amongst the initial theoretical assumptions of its practitioners. The conclusion from this is simply that it should cause no surprise if the milesper-gallon, pence-per-mile view of space does not hold in, for example, a society lacking wheeled transport and a free capitalist land market. We should not seek, therefore, to render the spatial images and cognitive maps of such a society into the terms and categories of our own particular spatial language - for, if we did, the best we could hope for would be the equivalent of a badly translated poem where we have all the words but not their proper sense. This theme of spatial cognition can be pursued further in its cross-cultural aspect, but in order to do so the problem of the apparent opposition between scientific and pre-scientific modes of thought must be faced. Levy-Bruhl (1910) argued that there are fundamental and qualitative differences between science and magico-religious modes of thought - that science on the one hand and magic and religion on the other represent different kinds of activities carried out with completely different ends in view, and that the former is rational whereas the latter is not. Others are not so confident that this distinction is as clear-cut as Levy-Bruhl makes it. Horton (1967), for example, has drawn attention to the apparent similarities in epistemological status between the theoretical entities of sub-atomic physics and the gods and spirits of African cosmological thought. The proliferation in recent decades of studies dealing with the pharmacopaeias, traditional healing practices and environmental knowledge of so-called pre-scientific peoples (see for example: Conklin, 1954; Elmore, 1943; Rubel, 1960; Stone, 1967; Diamond, 1964) has also served to take some of the force out of Levy-Bruhl’s arguments. Planners, incidentally, have only recently begun to follow the lead given by Waterman’s (1920) pioneering concept (Knight, 1971). Perhaps a fair summary of the present consensus of opinion would be that science and so-called traditional modes of thought do differ; but not - as LevyBruhl thought - in respect of rationality (cf. the articles in the first three issues of Second Order which critically examine the Horton thesis: Pratt, 1972; Horton, 1972; Emmet, 1972; Skerupski, 1973; Horton, 1973; also Marwick, 1972). With regard to explanations of natural phenomena this means that although we may expect the theories of peoples who have not participated in the Western scientific traditions to differ, we may not dismiss them out of hand as the unsystematic or illogical ramblings of minds dominated by superstitious dread. By the most rigorous of empirical standards these theoretical notions can and often do perform significant feats of explanation - provided we are careful not to garble the account. Unfortunately, European observers have frequently made nonsense of mythological explanation by confusing premise and conclusion or by failing in some other way to identify the object of explanation correctly. Santillana and Von Dechend (1969) have shown that many myths which apparently refer to the Earth, oceans, floods and seasons and which, when interpreted at face value,
Space and the Concept
of Planning
15
appear most confused and inconsequential, can be made to yield a great deal of sense when referred to their proper domain of application.
~P~RATIONALISAT~ON OF SPATIAL CONCEPTS
It is apparent that nobody treats life as an indecipherable jumble of objects and events. Society imposes its own abstract order on the individual’s stream of perception through a process of naming, classifying and quantifying. To name something - to put it in its place in a scheme of things - helps us cope with the otherwise baffling uniqueness of our experience. Learning a culture is the process of learning to categorise experience in this way. Levi-Strauss (1962) addresses himself to the problem of how societies which lack writing and the other communication media of technologically advanced civilisations can code and transmit the abstract ideas and information which underlie social and cultural organisation. His answer is through the symbolic manipulation of patterns, divisions and distinctions which occur in nature - for example, the physical characteristics differentiating species of plants and animals, which are made to serve as vast mnemonics for the communication of theoretical thought. This process involves both “concrete” classifiers such as plants and animals and “abstract” classifiers such as numbers, direction and the cardinal points (LCviStrauss, 1962, p. 142). The mention of direction and the cardinal points is an indicator of the particular significance of spatial relationships in this coding and categorising process (cf. Levi-Strauss, 1963; Kuper, 1972). Geographical features such as rivers and mountains are named, territory organised and landmarks identified not only to guide the traveller but also to give concrete and continuing expression to certain kinds of values and relationships basic to the functioning of society. It is here the idea of the mental map begins to assume a new significance - for it can be viewed not only as a repository of practical and perceptual information but also as a means of expressing that complex abstraction we refer to as a “way of life” or at least those aspects which come under the heading of man:land relationships. Nor is this significance restricted to pre-literate societies, for the mental map is a characteristic mode of pre-literate thought that we carry with us into the world of literacy. The problem of a theory of the mental map reduces on this view to the question of interpreting the principles which govern the naming, classification and ordering of territory and places. The difficulty lies in determining the mathematical and logical principles which are implicit in a particular system of spatial taxonomy that we do not understand at all well the principles appropriate to a taxonomy with which we are more familiar. The planner, dazzled by his proficiency in calculus, may insist on analysing cost and mileage (kilometreage?) relationships in terms of a curvilinear co~~~~~u~. London Transport and the Nigerian lorry driver understand space/distance differently. Distance is classified discretely - up to this point is a 5p ride and beyond it is lop - take it or leave it! Or to take another rather different and less trivial example, consider the principles of farm size measurement. In the European context, farm size is, in the short run at least, the most nearly constant of all the variables affecting production. The need for a standard unit of area1 measurement - such as the hectare - and the value of measuring sizes of farms in terms of a hectare scale seem self-evident. Our first thought then concerning yields is to measure inputs and outputs on a “per hectare” basis. But when we think about it, there is nothing inevitable in such a procedure. Yields per man hour or per n spent are just as illuminating if not more so. The instinct always to first record the BAB 1122-e
hectareage, together with the fact that it is generally the most commonly available farm statistic, are in part reflections of the particular circumstances of European land tenure practices and property law. By contrast, farm sizes in the derived savanna areas of north-western Yorubaland are not fixed in the European sense. Within the context of the rotational bush-following system, the farmer can and does make larger or smaller farms according to variations in factors such as the thickness of the original vegetation cover, soil fertility and rainfall. For example in a drought year (like 1973), when yields and weed growth are both well below normal, the farmer will adjust to this situation by increasing the size of his farm as the season progresses. In dealing with the cross-cultural comparison of spatial quantification procedures, a major pitfall we must beware of is that of treating in spatial terms what more properly belongs to the domain of time. Many societies have found time-based estimates of distance perfectly adequate for their needs - although these temporal measures are not always as straightforward as we might think. The Yoruba had standard temporal expressions to indicate the distances separating their major cities. These would appear to indicate exceedingly slow rates of travel even for a transport system based on human porterage - until it is understood that a reckoning convention was employed in which a day’s “travel” was always followed by a day’s “rest”. Ikale Yoruba villagers still employ time scale exclusively for measuring distances over water although they now commonly use miles to measure land distances - thus reflecting an understandable distinction between miles-pergallon and paddle-strokes-per-hour means of travel. These illustrations serve to introduce several questions of a general nature. For example what, in any given society, are the kinds of scaling procedures employed in estimating variables such as distance and area? With what degree of accuracy and refinement are such measures known? How widely is this knowledge distributed? To what extent are time and distance convertible? To what extent and in what circumstances are such conversions carried out? Can time and space variables be noted in our kind of planning context? Is the idea of spending time anything more than a culture-bound concept? And why, incidentally, do we never spend space -only use or waste it? Is it because we see land as much less of a wasting asset than time? What kind of political, economic and social regionalisation procedures do people apply to the territory around them and do these procedures vary from one person to another? How are boundaries conceived and defined? And so on. When we have dealt with matters such as these, we should be beginning to develop an understanding of the materials out of which spatial appreciation and mental maps are formed. Without this kind of insight, however, quantitative analysis of spatial ideas and images for planning purposes would continue to be imbued with false promise. I am conscious that, whatever the preceding arguments do or do not achieve, there are at least two important issues outstanding. First, if a mental map can be treated as a structure, something along Levi-Straussian lines, in practical terms what methods do we employ to uncover this structure? Secondly, what kind of relationship might we conceive between spatial structure and behaviour? I will limit myself to a few bibliographical notes in respect of the first question and a wild guess in respect of the second. The literature on structuralism is voluminous, difficult and contentious (cf. L&i-Strauss, 1963; Piaget, 1970; Hall, 1971; Nutini, 1971). It is also brim-full of method of the most mathematical kind. Perhaps it is possible that something of the sort employed in Chomskyian transformational grammar might provide an initial foothold or two (Chomsky, 1965)? The work by Altmann et al. (1970) on the partition of space in Nimboran is important in this context. We might also
Space and the Concept of Planning
17
consider some of the anthropological literature with profit. Fischer’s (1961) work on “Art styles cognitive maps”, for example (cf. Kuper, 1972; Ohnuki-Tiernay, 1972; Sankoff, 1971). Information theory may also have its uses (Levi-Strauss, 1962; Cherry, 1957). Let us in conclusion turn to the all-important question of a link between structures and behaviour. Part of my purpose in this had been to argue - and I should have been more explicit in this respect - that perhaps in planning we have thrown out “rational behavioural man” a little too hurriedly. In our concern to assign a new kind of perceptual freedom to the actors in spatial behaviour models, we run the risk of overemphasising ideographic elements. Should we insist on this kind of emphasis in the study of mental maps, it will be difficult to demonstrate that the link with behaviour is anything more than contingent. It would be more profitable, perhaps, if we were to consider Chomsky’s theory of language, where it is suggested that, despite their surface dissimilarities, all languages appear to manifest certain structural principles which conceivably derive from the logic implicit in biological and neural structures (Chomsky, 1972). If it were possible to demonstrate such universal principles of “deep structure” for the mental map - that is, if it were possible to demonstrate that mental maps were not subjective and irrational efflorescences but that their variations from person to person or culture to culture reflected the selective operation of principles drawn from an all-embracing family of classificatory procedures grounded in biological reality - then we should have a most powerful theory of spatial behaviour within our grasp. Perhaps it is appropriate therefore that I should close by supporting this speculation with a quotation from the distinguished French microbiologist Jaques Monod, who considers that recent experimental work has begun to indicate a neural basis for the mental ability to classify objects and relations according to abstract categories. He argues that “these contemporary discoveries, therefore, in a new sense and in a different context, support Descartes and Kant against the uncompromising empiricism that has dominated science for the past two hundred years, casting suspicion on any hypothesis positing the innateness of cognitive frames of reference . . . Certain contemporary ethologists still seem attached to the idea that the elements of animals’ behaviour are some of them innate, some of them learned . . . This conception is completely mistaken . . . When behaviour implies elements acquired through experience, they are acquired according to a programme, and that programme is innate - that is to say, genetically determined . . .” (Monod, 1972, p. 143) And no planner can afford to ignore this.
REFERENCES Akiwowo, A., “Observations
on the Sociological Enterprise in Nigeria”, NISER Mimeo, 1969.
Altmann, C., Domotor, Z. and Riska, A., “The Partitioning of Space in Nimnoran”, Beitrage zur Linguistik und Informationsverarbeitung, 12, 1970. Armstrong, R.G., Yoruba Numerals. London, 1964. Bascom, E., Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West Africa. Bloomington, 1969. Berlin, B., Breedlove, D.E. and Raven, P.H., “Covert Categories and Folk Taxonomies”, American Anthropologist 70, 290-299, 1968. Cherry, C.. On Human Communication. Cambridge, 1957. Chomsky, C., Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, 1957. Chomsky, N., Problems of Knowledge and Freedom. London, 1972.
Clark, C. and Haswell, M., Economics of Subsistence Agriculrure. London, 1964. Colby, B.N. “Ethnographic Semantics: a Preliminary Survey“. Current Anthropology 7, 3-32. Conklin, H.C., “An Ethno-ecol~gieal Approach to Shifting Agriculture’“, Trunsucr~o~, New Yurk Academy of Sciences, 2nd Series 17, 133-142, 1954. Diamond,
S., “Anaguta
Linguistics 2,31-38,
Cosmography:
The Linguistics and Behavioral
Implications”,
Anf~ropoiogica~
1964.
Diamond, S. (ed.), Primitive Views of the World. New York. 1963. Anthropological
Durbin, M., “The Goals of Ethno-science”.
Linguisrics, 8, 22-31,
1966.
Elmore, F.H., “Ethnobotany of the Navojo”, University of New’ Mexico, Monograph Series 1, No. 7, 1943. Emmet, D., “Haunted Universes”, Second Order 1, 34-42, 1972. Fishcher, J.L., “Art Styles as Cultural Cognitive Maps”, American f~~zt~~ropofogjsf63. 77-93, 1961. Preferences”, Journal of Regional Science 7. 1967.
Go&d, P., “Structuring Information on Spacio-temporal Gregg, J.R., The Language Systems. New York, 1954. Hammer,
M., ‘Some
Anthropolog~l68,
of Taxonomy:
Comments
362-373.
an Application of Symbolic Logic to the Smdy of Classificatory
on Formal
Analysis of Grammatical
Semantic
Systems”,
Amer~cun
1966.
Horton, R., “African Traditional Thought and Western Science. Parts 1 and Z”, Africa 37, 1967. Horton, R., “Spiritual Beings and Elementary
Particles -
A Reply to Mr. Pratt”, Second Order 1, 21-33,
1972.
Horton, R., “Levy-Bruhl Among the Scientists - A Reply to Mr. Skorupski”, Second Order 2, 14-30, 1972. Knight, C.G., “Ethnogeography and Change”. Journal of Geography 70, 47-51, 1971. Kuper, H., “The Language of Sites in the Politics of Space”. American Anthropologist 74, 411-425. Lane, M., ~fr~cluraljsrn: A Reader. London, 1970.
1972.
L&&Strauss, C., La Pens&e Sauvuge. Paris, 1962. Levi-Strauss, C., Suuctura/ Anthropology.
{Trans. Jacobson and Schoepf). New York, 1963.
Levy-Bruhl, L., Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societb Inferieures. Paris, 1910. Litteral. R., “Rhetorical Predicates and Time Topology in Anngor”, Foundatio~~s of Language 8, 391-410, 1972. Marwick, M.G., *‘Anthropologists’ declining produc&ivity in the sociology of witchcraft”. American Anthropologist
74, 378-385,
1972.
Mond, _I., Chance and Necessity (Trans. Wainhouse). London, 1972. Nutini, H.G., “The Ideological Bases of Levi-Strauss’s Structuralism”, American Anthropologist 73, 537-544, 1971.
Qhnuki-Tiernay,
E., “Spatial Concepts of the Ainu of the North-Western
American AnrhropoZogis~ 74, 426-457.
coast of Southern Sakhalin”,
1972.
Piaget, J., S~ructura~~sm. New York, 1970. Pratt, V., ‘Science and Traditional African Religion”, Second Orcier 1, 7-19, 1972. Rubel. A.J., ‘*Concepts of Disease in Mexican-American
Culture”, American Anthropologisr 62, 795-814,
1960.
Sack, R.D., “A Concept of Physical Space in Geography“, Geographical Analysis 5, 16-34, 1973. Sankoff. G., “Quantitative Anaiysis of Sharing and Variability in a Cognitive Model”, Ethnology 10.389-408, 1971.
Santillana, G. and Von Dechend, H.. Hamlet’s Mill. Boston, 1969. Skorupski, J., “Levy-Bruhl Among the Scientists”, Second Order 2, 3-13, 1973. Stea, D. and Downs, R., “From the Outside Looking in”, Environment and Behavior 2, 1970. Stone, R.H., “Yoruba Concept of the Natural World in Relation to Learning”, Ph.D. London, 1967. Tolman, E.C., “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men”, Psychological Review 55, 189-208, 1948. Turner. T., “Piaget’s St~cturalism”~ American Anrhropology 75, 351-373, 1973. Waterman, T.T., “Yurok Geography”, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, 16, No. 5. Berkeley, 1920. Weise, G., “Campa Cosmology”, Ethnology 11, 157-172, 1972.
HABITATINTL.
OlY7-3Y75187
2,pp. 11-18.1987.
$~.OO+ 0.00
0 1987 Pcrgamon Journals Ltd.
Space and the Concept of Planning JOSEPH UYANGA ~n~versi~ of Science and Technology,
Fort Harcourt, Nigeria
ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF SPATIAL BEHAVIOUR
Space is in some sense an idea which the mind creates for itself: it is a term without demonstrable meaning or reference independent of the models and concepts by which we bring organisation and coherence to the chaotic world of sensation. This view has not generally been accepted by spatial behaviourists. The opinion appears to have prevailed that space is a quasi-object which must be studied much as, say, a botanist studies plants. Such a body of study would thus be viewed as a “discipline in distance” or a “science of space”. There are objections to this which are of a general nature. Space is manifestly not an object but it is very difficult to say precisely what it is in empirical terms. Recent work therefore has tended to treat space less as an item of empirical investigation than as a tool to be used in such an investigation. Space - like a scale of measurement - is something which the researcher imposes upon his problem in order to clarify and quantify certain kinds of relationships. These relationships are not in themselves intrinsically spatial, however. Distance, for example, is no more fundamental or intrinsic to the process of interaction between places than is time or cost (Sack, 1973). More specifically the “space-as-an-object-of-study” view has been particularly difficult to sustain where the focus of interest has been the analysis of spatial behaviour. It is here that we see most clearly that “near” and “far” and terms like “the friction of distance” do not take their meaning from some objectively defined framework of spatial co-ordinates but rather from the way in which individuals or groups conceive of and interpret their environmental and territorial organisation. Spatial terms in a behavioural aspect turn out to be something like the term “near” in the statement “A is B’s ‘near’ relative” where it is apparent that “near” derives its significance from the system of social relationships we call kinship and from nothing else. In behavioural contexts, space does not exist as an independent variable; for if the objects are removed then the space goes too. To be fair, however, this is not everybody’s idea of how to study spatial behaviour. There have been two distinct approaches in this field. One school of learning theories of Clark Hull and thought - embracing the stimulus-response the token economies and “operant” behaviourism of Skinner - is rigorously positivistic, insisting that behaviour can and should be interpreted solely in terms of physical stimuli open to direct empirical investigation. The other school which traces its line of descent through two well-known psychologists, Kant and Galton, down to Tolman and Piaget - argues that, in some degree, the cognitive abilities of the mind act as free agents, generating ideas, images, concepts and the like; and that we cannot understand spatial behaviour unless we take into account both these “mentalistic” variables and more directly physical stimuli. 11
12
Joseph
Uyanga
My concern at this point is not to speculate on how these apparent differences might be resolved (this is probably a matter for biophysics and neurology), but simply to point out that - for better or worse - spatial behaviourists have thrown in their lot with the second group. Stea and Downs (1970) bluntly assert that “the image is back”. And indeed much of the current interest in spatial behaviour focusses on such topics as the role of environmental imagery and cognitive mapping (mental maps) in guiding behaviour patterns. These are proving both interesting and productive lines of exploration. At the same time they throw up some puzzling problems of spatial planning and analysis which I want to try and discuss in this paper.
APPROACHES
TO STUDIES
OF SPATIAL
BEHAVIOUR
Environmental images, cognitive maps and the like are non-empirical entities. In Tolman’s work in the field of rat psychology (Tolman, 1946), the cognitive map was an hypothesis which seemed necessary in order to explain the way in which patterns of behaviour were acquired. Similarly in current spatial behaviour research the mental map is introduced as a theoretical entity which, it is thought, will help elucidate environmental learning processes and spatial behaviour patterns. In both cases, the onus is on the researcher to specify exactly what behaviour he is trying to explain and to show that he is not multiplying categories unnecessarily. But the planner does have one apparent advantage over the rat psychologist. He can ask his subjects about their spatial images, either directly or indirectly in the latter case by making use of residential preference rankings, semantic differential tests, and so on. From the point of view of trying to explain behaviour, however, spatial images are not in themselves, of very great significance - for individually they are as likely to be effects as causes. That “I imagine X to be further away than it really is because I rarely travel that way” is as likely as the converse; namely that “I rarely travel to X because I imagine it to be further than it is”. If, on the other hand, we examine not the images alone but the way they combine to constitute an ordered whole - a structure - then we shift the analysis onto another plane altogether; for in such a case we deal with a total organising concept which embraces “inner” logical relationships not derived from experience and perception alone. A cognitive structure in this sense is comparable to a hypothetico-deductive model in scientific explanation, which gains its explanatory power over Baconian inductionism precisely because it involves more than a simple summation of facts. Those who believe such structures exist and can be identified often argue that they stem from the creative, organising imaginative powers of the mind - through which the raw materials of perception are moulded into a unified whole. The mental map is, or is intended to be, such a structure - namely, an organised scheme of categories through which individuals or groups of individuals are able to sort out and give coherence to their experiences of the world. But the mental map as a structure - if it exists at all - cannot be reached directly. The questions “do you have a mental map?” or “tell me, what is your mental map like?” are absurd. Gould has asked subjects to rank lists of places in order of residential preference and then tried to extract basic structural regularities from these data using Principal Components Analysis. Unfortunately, there is an important objection to this procedure which Gould himself recognises, namely that the researcher is in the position of having “imposed a particular geometrical structure [the orthogonal component axes] upon [the] information before the search for order and regularity began” (Gould, 1967, p.
Space and the Concept of PIanning
13
272). Here we face the familiar problem that a factor-analytic type procedure is of little help where we lack ideas about what we ought to find and why. What then are the prospects for a theory concerning the structure of mental maps which goes beyond a priori guess work based on the structural exigencies of a particular technique of multivariate analysis? The approach I am going to suggest is one in which images of space and territory are treated as elements in a system of signs and symbols analogous to a language. The planner’s interest in the mental map would be assimilated, in this case, to the wider field of semiology, namely the study of signs and symbols from a most general meta-linguistic standpoint. Semiology appears to offer intriguing possibilities in the search for a general theory of cultural, social and linguistic behaviour. I must confess, however, that the present paper does not make much progress in the avowed direction. In fact the three matters dealt with subsequently are all of a distinctly preliminary nature. Nevertheless I hope there will be enough substance in them to be worthy of some discussion. In the first place I try to show - by historical comparison - that ideas about space and spatial images are not all they seem to be at first sight. Secondly, I stress that spatial cognition embraces a fundamental process of categorisation atid classification, which must be understood in terms of discriminatory and’quantitative procedures belonging to the subject not the investigator. If this is self-evident it is also something about which we have to be particularly clear in planning in order to avoid serious misinterpretation of spatial imagery. There are a number of illustrations of this point. Finally, I indicate a few items from the anthropological and linguistical literature on structuralism which are of methodological interest.
PRACTICAL USE OF THE CONCEPT OF SPACE
Whether or not planning is a science of space, planners are certainly not short of spatial ideas, assumptions and images. The trouble with all these is that they seem misleadingly inevitable - as if we held them only as a result of induction, based on careful and objective inspection of the world. As planners, we should know that this is not so - for do we not simultaneously acknowledge that the surface of the earth is a sphere, and yet continue to think in terms of the curious two-dimensioinal bounded Euclidean surfaces which we call maps? The history of science has many outstanding examples of “spaces” which were chosen and defined for purposes very different from those they came to serve in scientific research. Very often a scientist’s space was in the first instance a precise reflection of his society’s religious beliefs and cultural attitudes, and only rarely did a concept of space develop from the demands of empirical evidence alone. Thus, for example: the Greeks in Aristotle’s time were able to explain certain phenomena, such as the constant circularity of the earth’s shadow during eclipses of the moon, by invoking the sphericity of the earth; but the idea that the earth and heavenly bodies were spheres originated from the mystical conviction of the Pythagoreans that the sphere was a perfect figure and that, because the heavenly bodies ought to be perfect, they ought also to be spheres. The rival notion of a flat earth was likewise originally derived not from empirical observation, but from early astronomical mythology where it signified an ideal plane laid through the ecliptic (Santillana and Von Dechend, 1969). Space conceived of as a kind of absolute container for objects was, for Newton, a theoretical entity in two senses. As an initial frame of reference it was an a priori necessity of his cosmological system. But at the same time it was also - in
14
Joseph
Uyanga
development of an idea from Rabbinic theology - the “sensorium of God”. Modern ideas on relativity can be traced back to Leibniz, who believed that space only existed in the mind, and that the illusion of a general spatial reality stemmed from the fact that God thought all possible spatial relations all the time. In the celebrated correspondence between Leibniz and Clarke, the central issue was whether or not Newton’s views on space were atheistical. Now this is not one of those situations in which the modern scientist has escaped from the curious ideas of his ancestors into the light of day. The uncanny ways in which the models of spatial organisation in current location theory signal back to us the idealised hopes and fears of a rich capitalist industrial society are a warning as to the extent to which contemporary planner’s images and definitions of space and explanations of area1 differential likewise reflect standards and values which are not consciously and explicitly amongst the initial theoretical assumptions of its practitioners. The conclusion from this is simply that it should cause no surprise if the milesper-gallon, pence-per-mile view of space does not hold in, for example, a society lacking wheeled transport and a free capitalist land market. We should not seek, therefore, to render the spatial images and cognitive maps of such a society into the terms and categories of our own particular spatial language - for, if we did, the best we could hope for would be the equivalent of a badly translated poem where we have all the words but not their proper sense. This theme of spatial cognition can be pursued further in its cross-cultural aspect, but in order to do so the problem of the apparent opposition between scientific and pre-scientific modes of thought must be faced. Levy-Bruhl (1910) argued that there are fundamental and qualitative differences between science and magico-religious modes of thought - that science on the one hand and magic and religion on the other represent different kinds of activities carried out with completely different ends in view, and that the former is rational whereas the latter is not. Others are not so confident that this distinction is as clear-cut as Levy-Bruhl makes it. Horton (1967), for example, has drawn attention to the apparent similarities in epistemological status between the theoretical entities of sub-atomic physics and the gods and spirits of African cosmological thought. The proliferation in recent decades of studies dealing with the pharmacopaeias, traditional healing practices and environmental knowledge of so-called pre-scientific peoples (see for example: Conklin, 1954; Elmore, 1943; Rubel, 1960; Stone, 1967; Diamond, 1964) has also served to take some of the force out of Levy-Bruhl’s arguments. Planners, incidentally, have only recently begun to follow the lead given by Waterman’s (1920) pioneering concept (Knight, 1971). Perhaps a fair summary of the present consensus of opinion would be that science and so-called traditional modes of thought do differ; but not - as LevyBruhl thought - in respect of rationality (cf. the articles in the first three issues of Second Order which critically examine the Horton thesis: Pratt, 1972; Horton, 1972; Emmet, 1972; Skerupski, 1973; Horton, 1973; also Marwick, 1972). With regard to explanations of natural phenomena this means that although we may expect the theories of peoples who have not participated in the Western scientific traditions to differ, we may not dismiss them out of hand as the unsystematic or illogical ramblings of minds dominated by superstitious dread. By the most rigorous of empirical standards these theoretical notions can and often do perform significant feats of explanation - provided we are careful not to garble the account. Unfortunately, European observers have frequently made nonsense of mythological explanation by confusing premise and conclusion or by failing in some other way to identify the object of explanation correctly. Santillana and Von Dechend (1969) have shown that many myths which apparently refer to the Earth, oceans, floods and seasons and which, when interpreted at face value,
Space and the Concept
of Planning
15
appear most confused and inconsequential, can be made to yield a great deal of sense when referred to their proper domain of application.
~P~RATIONALISAT~ON OF SPATIAL CONCEPTS
It is apparent that nobody treats life as an indecipherable jumble of objects and events. Society imposes its own abstract order on the individual’s stream of perception through a process of naming, classifying and quantifying. To name something - to put it in its place in a scheme of things - helps us cope with the otherwise baffling uniqueness of our experience. Learning a culture is the process of learning to categorise experience in this way. Levi-Strauss (1962) addresses himself to the problem of how societies which lack writing and the other communication media of technologically advanced civilisations can code and transmit the abstract ideas and information which underlie social and cultural organisation. His answer is through the symbolic manipulation of patterns, divisions and distinctions which occur in nature - for example, the physical characteristics differentiating species of plants and animals, which are made to serve as vast mnemonics for the communication of theoretical thought. This process involves both “concrete” classifiers such as plants and animals and “abstract” classifiers such as numbers, direction and the cardinal points (LCviStrauss, 1962, p. 142). The mention of direction and the cardinal points is an indicator of the particular significance of spatial relationships in this coding and categorising process (cf. Levi-Strauss, 1963; Kuper, 1972). Geographical features such as rivers and mountains are named, territory organised and landmarks identified not only to guide the traveller but also to give concrete and continuing expression to certain kinds of values and relationships basic to the functioning of society. It is here the idea of the mental map begins to assume a new significance - for it can be viewed not only as a repository of practical and perceptual information but also as a means of expressing that complex abstraction we refer to as a “way of life” or at least those aspects which come under the heading of man:land relationships. Nor is this significance restricted to pre-literate societies, for the mental map is a characteristic mode of pre-literate thought that we carry with us into the world of literacy. The problem of a theory of the mental map reduces on this view to the question of interpreting the principles which govern the naming, classification and ordering of territory and places. The difficulty lies in determining the mathematical and logical principles which are implicit in a particular system of spatial taxonomy that we do not understand at all well the principles appropriate to a taxonomy with which we are more familiar. The planner, dazzled by his proficiency in calculus, may insist on analysing cost and mileage (kilometreage?) relationships in terms of a curvilinear co~~~~~u~. London Transport and the Nigerian lorry driver understand space/distance differently. Distance is classified discretely - up to this point is a 5p ride and beyond it is lop - take it or leave it! Or to take another rather different and less trivial example, consider the principles of farm size measurement. In the European context, farm size is, in the short run at least, the most nearly constant of all the variables affecting production. The need for a standard unit of area1 measurement - such as the hectare - and the value of measuring sizes of farms in terms of a hectare scale seem self-evident. Our first thought then concerning yields is to measure inputs and outputs on a “per hectare” basis. But when we think about it, there is nothing inevitable in such a procedure. Yields per man hour or per n spent are just as illuminating if not more so. The instinct always to first record the BAB 1122-e
hectareage, together with the fact that it is generally the most commonly available farm statistic, are in part reflections of the particular circumstances of European land tenure practices and property law. By contrast, farm sizes in the derived savanna areas of north-western Yorubaland are not fixed in the European sense. Within the context of the rotational bush-following system, the farmer can and does make larger or smaller farms according to variations in factors such as the thickness of the original vegetation cover, soil fertility and rainfall. For example in a drought year (like 1973), when yields and weed growth are both well below normal, the farmer will adjust to this situation by increasing the size of his farm as the season progresses. In dealing with the cross-cultural comparison of spatial quantification procedures, a major pitfall we must beware of is that of treating in spatial terms what more properly belongs to the domain of time. Many societies have found time-based estimates of distance perfectly adequate for their needs - although these temporal measures are not always as straightforward as we might think. The Yoruba had standard temporal expressions to indicate the distances separating their major cities. These would appear to indicate exceedingly slow rates of travel even for a transport system based on human porterage - until it is understood that a reckoning convention was employed in which a day’s “travel” was always followed by a day’s “rest”. Ikale Yoruba villagers still employ time scale exclusively for measuring distances over water although they now commonly use miles to measure land distances - thus reflecting an understandable distinction between miles-pergallon and paddle-strokes-per-hour means of travel. These illustrations serve to introduce several questions of a general nature. For example what, in any given society, are the kinds of scaling procedures employed in estimating variables such as distance and area? With what degree of accuracy and refinement are such measures known? How widely is this knowledge distributed? To what extent are time and distance convertible? To what extent and in what circumstances are such conversions carried out? Can time and space variables be noted in our kind of planning context? Is the idea of spending time anything more than a culture-bound concept? And why, incidentally, do we never spend space -only use or waste it? Is it because we see land as much less of a wasting asset than time? What kind of political, economic and social regionalisation procedures do people apply to the territory around them and do these procedures vary from one person to another? How are boundaries conceived and defined? And so on. When we have dealt with matters such as these, we should be beginning to develop an understanding of the materials out of which spatial appreciation and mental maps are formed. Without this kind of insight, however, quantitative analysis of spatial ideas and images for planning purposes would continue to be imbued with false promise. I am conscious that, whatever the preceding arguments do or do not achieve, there are at least two important issues outstanding. First, if a mental map can be treated as a structure, something along Levi-Straussian lines, in practical terms what methods do we employ to uncover this structure? Secondly, what kind of relationship might we conceive between spatial structure and behaviour? I will limit myself to a few bibliographical notes in respect of the first question and a wild guess in respect of the second. The literature on structuralism is voluminous, difficult and contentious (cf. L&i-Strauss, 1963; Piaget, 1970; Hall, 1971; Nutini, 1971). It is also brim-full of method of the most mathematical kind. Perhaps it is possible that something of the sort employed in Chomskyian transformational grammar might provide an initial foothold or two (Chomsky, 1965)? The work by Altmann et al. (1970) on the partition of space in Nimboran is important in this context. We might also
Space and the Concept of Planning
17
consider some of the anthropological literature with profit. Fischer’s (1961) work on “Art styles cognitive maps”, for example (cf. Kuper, 1972; Ohnuki-Tiernay, 1972; Sankoff, 1971). Information theory may also have its uses (Levi-Strauss, 1962; Cherry, 1957). Let us in conclusion turn to the all-important question of a link between structures and behaviour. Part of my purpose in this had been to argue - and I should have been more explicit in this respect - that perhaps in planning we have thrown out “rational behavioural man” a little too hurriedly. In our concern to assign a new kind of perceptual freedom to the actors in spatial behaviour models, we run the risk of overemphasising ideographic elements. Should we insist on this kind of emphasis in the study of mental maps, it will be difficult to demonstrate that the link with behaviour is anything more than contingent. It would be more profitable, perhaps, if we were to consider Chomsky’s theory of language, where it is suggested that, despite their surface dissimilarities, all languages appear to manifest certain structural principles which conceivably derive from the logic implicit in biological and neural structures (Chomsky, 1972). If it were possible to demonstrate such universal principles of “deep structure” for the mental map - that is, if it were possible to demonstrate that mental maps were not subjective and irrational efflorescences but that their variations from person to person or culture to culture reflected the selective operation of principles drawn from an all-embracing family of classificatory procedures grounded in biological reality - then we should have a most powerful theory of spatial behaviour within our grasp. Perhaps it is appropriate therefore that I should close by supporting this speculation with a quotation from the distinguished French microbiologist Jaques Monod, who considers that recent experimental work has begun to indicate a neural basis for the mental ability to classify objects and relations according to abstract categories. He argues that “these contemporary discoveries, therefore, in a new sense and in a different context, support Descartes and Kant against the uncompromising empiricism that has dominated science for the past two hundred years, casting suspicion on any hypothesis positing the innateness of cognitive frames of reference . . . Certain contemporary ethologists still seem attached to the idea that the elements of animals’ behaviour are some of them innate, some of them learned . . . This conception is completely mistaken . . . When behaviour implies elements acquired through experience, they are acquired according to a programme, and that programme is innate - that is to say, genetically determined . . .” (Monod, 1972, p. 143) And no planner can afford to ignore this.
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