Borders and boundaries have shaped the built environment throughout history, directly as moats, walls and fortifications and indirectly, as in the infamous racial redlining.
In history books we learn about the wars between Sparta and Athens, two city-states with different cultures which couldn't be more different from each other. The one inland and inward, agricultural with mandatory military service and serf who had to feed the military. The other on the water, trade oriented with a fleet without compulsory service and a system that let parts of the population vote. The one martial and relying on an enslaved workforce, the other with aspirations for democracy.
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| Reimagined ancient Athens: A maritime power open to the world |
The hostilities between the two cities lasted 27 years, interrupted by an uneasy six year truce. In the end the two most powerful nodes of the ancient power center were diminished. Still their legacy reaches deep into modern time. The Athenian Solon is remembered to this day as a wise man for his laws which equalized political power including the cancellation of debts and the abolition of debt slavery. He also created opportunities for some common people to participate in the government of Athens, laying the groundwork for democracy in Athens.
The epic battles of the
Peloponnesian War seem quaint today, especially from the American perspective of a powerful nation that spans 3000 miles across. Sparta and Athens are not even a 100 miles apart by air, both easily fit into a day trip for a US tourist with the ambition of discovering Europe in a week.
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| Remigained Sparta: Mountainous, inland and isolated |
World war I and II, both much shorter but infinitely more destructive than the Peloponnesian War, pitted almost all European nations against each other in an array of hostilities. Even though the motives were confusing, the role of power, the military and the people was an element in both world wars and the revolutions of the time. Millions died for goals which are hard to comprehend, except, just like the ancient wars, the battles were territorial with proxies pitting cultures and ideologies of military might against freedom and democracy. For over 60 years it looked like that the old feuds were resolved towards democracy, trade and openness. Nevertheless, it had been proven that territories can have borders and still function. Just as neighborhoods, cities and states in the US all have their boundaries which control identity, zoning laws or whether there is a death penalty or an open carry law. Those invisible borders work with complete openness, without patrols or walls. For centuries the lands united with invible borders have become larger and larger. It isn't crazy to ask if borders couldn't be open on a national or even global scale as well.
Attempts were made: Europe tried to emulate the United States and become one by currency and with national parliamentarian democracies as the preferred style of governance. Europe and the Americas were united in various treaties, the Cold War ended when the nemesis of "the west" faltered and for a while it looked like that the entire world would become one "global village", much in the way as astronauts saw it from their orbit around the earth. Then came a resurgence of right wing parties and the vote for a British exit from the union. A new leader at the head of the most powerful nation on earth discredited the concept of the global village and ended several treaties of global responsibility.
In the long arc of history, the concept of territory and border, of "us against them" has been an overwhelming formative element. It has shaped villages, cities and countries physically, whether the borders were physical or not. One could say that their importance diminished over time, but in the larger context the idea of open borders most prevalent in the post World War II period is just the blink of an eye, no matter that this period is a lifetime for most everybody alive today.
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| Ruins of Clydebank, Scotland, 1941 after German air raid |
Sparta and Athens remain illustrative for several concepts dating as far back as the time when Hellas was the leading force around the Mediterranean Sea, city-states, trade, colonies and the term metropolis ("mother city").
The privileged contemporary western tourist can travel the globe as it were a village and check off the ancient Greek ruins from the bucket list of cultural education after posting some pictures to Instagram.
But the underlying stories are harder to detect. Well known is Olympia as the place in Greece in which feuds were buried for peaceful games and companionship. Or the Stoa in Athens, the place of democratic discourse.
Our fictional tourist may also visit WW I battlefields as drastic monuments how deadly borders can be. The story of the German and British soldiers who
left their WW I trenches for a couple of hours on Christmas eve 1914 to celebrate their common humanity before the issue of borders forced them again to shoot each other the next morning.
Space tourism is still a bit off, but an early space image showing earth in its totality warmed the hearts of peoples around the world, both, for the scale of the conquest, which, for the first time, lifted humanity beyond the surface of the world and for how quaint the world looked. What had seemed so vast and so inescapable was small after all. Unfortunately, that feeling and understanding wouldn't last before borders and divisions took over again.
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| The earth as seen from space (NASA image) |
An epic conflict between those who internalized the finite system earth as small and vulnerable and those who see the earth as a place of endless growth, exploitation and expansion ensued and still continues.
In many ways, the feud tracks lines of attitude similar to ones between Athens and Sparta. For that reason it is interesting to remember, which of those ancient powers won the battles and which shaped the legacy.
The Peleponnesian War ended with Sparta as the victor. In fact, Sparta won twice against the Athenians, before and after the six year truce, which had interrupted the war. Eventually the Athenian experiment of democracy ended in an oligarchy, similar to the one of Sparta.
Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.(Theodore Parker, "Ten Sermons of Religion", 1853)
Religion and enlightenment share teleological thinking which sees history and science as a progression towards perfection. Even if that would be true,the path forward is not straight. It knows giant dips and reversals. The Middle ages "forgot" much of what Hellas and Rome had achieved for hundreds of years before the Renaissance began to unearth past knowledge once again. The Renaissance and then Enlightenment made Athens the long-term winner with its legacy of voting, trade, criticism, questioning and discovery. Enlightenment and openness have brought the world progress and prosperity never seen before. Diverse open cities worldwide have triumphed over tribalism and segregation.
Today, though, Sparta with its emphasis on the military, insular closed-system thinking and an economy striving for independence is on a victorious march, once again. One just has to follow the discourse and elections in the US, in Hungary, in Austria, in Russia, Turkey and now in Brazil.
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| Berlin wall during the Cold War |
With the steady progression of Spartan thinking borders gain importance as well, invisible ones delineating urban zip codes and large visible ones. Walls are no longer just photogenic objects for Kodak or Instagram moments of tourists walking through the tight gated medieval cities in Europe or climbing the Great Wall in China, a perspective made possible after the most infamous wall had come down in 1989: The deadly barrier between two parts of Germany which was maybe the ugliest wall ever, motivating the Republican President Reagan to famously demand of the Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev "to take it down". The Soviet Union disintegrated shortly thereafter.
Just 18 years later, walls become, inconceivably, an acceptable device for territorial policy again. Other members of the human race who, by genetic code and science, are almost identical to us, are again seen as a menace, even or especially, when they are poor, uprooted and dislodged from their territories. Propelled by nothing but despair behind them and hope in front of them, without possessions, except for the clothes on their bodies, they seem most frightening to some.
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| US Mexican border wall |
Humans, stripped of everything except their naked humanity, make powerful, rich and highly armed territorial states defenseless, lest they want to resolve to untenable barbaric measures. The Europeans had to learn this lesson until Turkey bode their work for them and closed its territory for passage, holding European democracies hostage since. African refugees floating on tiny vessels across the Mediterranean sea raise questions of borders and humanity every week.
The US hasn't been so lucky, no country wants to be the fall guy to save the richest nation on earth from having to absorb potentially a few thousand hapless peasants. Why should Mexico or Guatemala save us by exercising violence against women and children? Without violence, the stream could swell to millions, of course, as it had happened in Austria, Germany and other European countries who had their borders open. It is hard to see how a humanitarian attitude can coexist with the concept of "border security". It, taken seriously, inevitably leads to the horrendous conditions which existed along the communist wall in Germany and still exist in Korea.
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| "Caravan" of migrants April 2018 in Mexico |
Of course, borders also help. They allow some jurisdictions to declare themselves sanctuary cities or states.
Planning for a world which is a village, in which every country is a neighborhood seems Utopian. Yet, the territorial alternative in which nationalism trumps shared responsibility for the planet and its citizens in favor of national violence and nationalistic advantage, it appears to be the only sustainable option in which we remain human.
While all this may sound too political on a design and planning blog, especially in the time of an election, these are the most fundamental questions for planners and architects and everybody planning any type of sustainable, equitable and resilient future. How small the territory may be that needs to be planned and designed, whether it is the building (office, school), the neighborhood, the city, state or country, openness versus separation, inclusion versus exclusion is an important metric that ultimately shapes the design. As Churchill once observed, the design, in return, will then shape people.
By the way: The city of modern Sparta is a forgotten backwater with a population of 17,000. Athens is the capital of Greece, an international metropolis with a population of 664,000 in a region of nearly 3 million people.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
