Palimpsest city

Memory and everyday life weave realities

Juliana Valentim
Faculdade de Engenharia Civil, Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade
Estadual de Campinas

Abstract – Reclaiming the multiplicity of what a city means, this article works with the palimpsest archetype through the lens of complex thinking to explore how memory shapes reality, rather than merely recalling it. The methodology, based on a literature review, first lays the foundations for how the palimpsest archetype develops in the city, both literally and metaphorically; then examines its relation to the basic concepts of Edgar Morin’s Theory of Complexity; followed by distinctions between memory and history, leaning into its economic and political implications. This allows for a deeper dive into different types of memory: individual, collective, historical, short-term, long-term, organic, voluntary, and involuntary. The last section of the article discusses Lethos and Aletheia vs. Platonism, how they relate to creating reality vs. discovering reality, and the role of daily life in the process of remembering and forgetting, which shapes our tangible and intangible realities. In the final considerations, memory is delineated as an individual and collective means of resistance against commodification processes.

Introduction

The city is largely studied by its functionality, how well greased and coordinated each and every part of this large machine is – parts that have been differentiated, redistributed, inverted, displaced, and accumulated accordingly, as well as rejected as waste products whenever deemed abnormal, deviant, or ill^[1]. From this perspective, capitalist cityscapes are often interpreted in reference to the modernist quote of Sullivan’s “form follows function”^[2], and this machine is the materialization of the hegemonic systems and structures in power. As a matter of fact, that is another interpretation falling parallel to Sullivan’s: form follows power, and a talk about the “relationship between architecture and power must acknowledge at least two aspects: first, architects’ dependency on the economically powerful for their commissions and, second, the mobilization of architecture as a resource by those in power^[3].” ^[4]. As a resource of those in power, it was designed to keep the social order under panoptic administrations and networks of surveillance^[5], designed to deliver a neglected urban experience:

“To be sure, progress allows an increasing number of these waste products to be reintroduced into administrative circuits and transforms even deficiencies (in health, security, etc.) into ways of making the networks of order denser. But in reality, it repeatedly produces effects contrary to those at which it aims: the profit system generates a loss which, in the multiple forms of wretchedness and poverty outside the system and of waste inside it, constantly turns production into “expenditure.”(…) the functionalist organization, by privileging progress (i.e., time), causes the condition of its own possibility— space itself—to be forgotten”^[6]

But as expected, profit is not solely pursued by optimizing the functionality of the city-machine. The ability to commodify virtually everything, even the things that once apparently stood in its path as some form of resistance, speaks to the high level of adaptability of the system. The image of a city is certainly not exempt from undergoing commodification, so much so that there are streetscapes and skylines around the world carefully curated to achieve postcard views that generate tourism-related profit and appeal^[7].

Going further into certain elements of a city’s skyline, such as the case of office towers in global cities, Grubbauer^[8] says that the logic is: more towers need to be built so more towers can be built. It does not matter if the ones that were already built are barely occupied, sparsely rented, or not functioning at all. While we are used to the notion of economic context and economic agents shaping urban form, Gassner^[9] notes that “urban form also has economic agency: finance follows form. Towers are not merely built to respond to an existing or predicted demand for office space but also in order to create further demand.”^[10]. Speculation in these cases works on the imperative of how active the construction sector is at the moment and the promise that the building being occupied and generating revenue over the course of its cycle is just a matter of time. The intention of speculative processes is to stir the imagination and desires until they looks so appealing that the promise, and sometimes the promise alone, is bought: the burden of proof lies in a foggy but always bright future. Commodified skylines of global cities are then objects of appetites, of illusions, but especially of deceitfulness, in the service of transnational elites^[11]. Speculation around skylines and office towers operates on a projected image of success, directly connected to the materialization of symbols of wealth on a spatial level:

“a particular economic imaginary gains plausibility when it is discursively and visually anchored in urban space. In Vienna, for example, office towers are used to both demonstrate the city’s already existing success as an international business location as well as to further attract international actors”^[12]

The urban spaces of contemporary cities more often than not expose how much their exchange value as commodities surpasses their actual meaning, because “The only meaning of the commodity is its price; it has, as a commodity, no other meaning” ^[13]. But it was not always like this, with cities as enterprises, corporations to be administered to maximize profits and results, with the tactics of speculative markets dictating housing dynamics, infrastructure, and green and blue spaces.

Cities were once a collective artifact of human survival, and about this collectivity, Cullen^[14] says it was more than just the sum of its inhabitants, because by choosing to live together instead of in isolation (which is the first response in a hostile environment, before you can establish trustworthy relationships), they generated a scale and quality of communal well-being that would not have been possible otherwise.

Living in a community, however, did not immediately mean living in cities. Initially, life in society was structured in nomadic or semi-nomadic tribal groups in search of a stable source of food, safety from the natural elements, and safety from violence within their own group or other groups. The decision to settle permanently in a location changed the whole course of humankind, having as its first evidence the triggering of the Demographic Transition of the Neolithic^[15]. Also called the Agricultural Revolution, or simply the Neolithic Revolution, the lifestyle change from a nomadic one based on hunting and extractivism to a sedentary one based on agriculture and livestock caused a population boom and the beginning of an intricate and complex net of relations between resources, inhabitants, and ecosystemic dynamics, ranging from the modification of the geophysical substrate composition, hydrographic characteristics, and even the selection and concentration of compounds and pathogenic species^[16]. This large net of interconnections and mutual influence between human beings and inhabited spaces is so intense that it might, indeed, have become indissociable. In the words of Rossi, the city is “inseparable from the formation of civilization and it is a permanent fact, universal and necessary.”^[17]

As city-making evolved, Kostoff^[18] explains that a huge part of the process started to be anchored in the development and sophistication of bureaucracy to handle transactions, laws, and regulations that became necessary under the widely accepted theory of surplus for city origins: land and property ownership (either public or private); compulsory purchase of land and property due to the rise of the power of governments; building codes and regulations; development of the first master plans; issuing of property taxes; and administrative structures—but also, more complex infrastructures like irrigation systems and bridges. Economy, bureaucracy, politics, technological advancement, and the physical aspects, they all became inseparable and progressively more complicated as cities themselves evolved. But a simple, organic surplus of the community could not possibly be the only origin of cities. As a matter of fact:

“Sometimes cities are laid out by fiat, as perfect shapes and for premeditated ends. They may aim to reflect a cosmic rule or an ideal society, be cast as a machine of war, or have no higher purpose than to generate profit for the founder. (…) Or this act may be nothing more than a routinized and repetitive event.”^[19].

Cities founded as repetitive events can be found in the path of war of an empire as a way to establish control over the land; colonization of South and Central America, Africa, and Oceania by European countries after massive genocide and enslavement of First Nations also established control so they could exploit the land; railroad cities, after the Industrial Revolution, became quite common, and so on. The repetitive character usually meant the superimposition of an imprint with a set of morphological elements or a set of morphological processes.

Be it as a collective artifact of human survival, a consequence of produce and trading surplus, a reflection of the divine on earth, the genesis of an idealized society, a war apparatus, an aftermath of genocide and exploitation, or a piece of infrastructure for new and pervasive transportation technology—Kostof^[20] elaborates on nine characteristics that answer the difficult question of what a city is. First, it must have an energized crowding, related not to the size but to the density of the city, taking into consideration the geographical and historical context; second, a connection to other cities, because they do not exist in isolation, people travel, trade, etc.; third, an imaginary or physical boundary within which restrictions or privileges may apply; fourth, differentiation or specialization of work; fifth, urban resources, such as surplus, trade, commodities, natural features, and human resources; sixth, written records related to the growing bureaucracy of property, administration, census, etc.; seventh, every city has its countryside; eighth, a monumental framework that could be public buildings, monuments, landmarks, or even the fabric of the city itself; and lastly, buildings and people, not just one or the other—a city without people is a dead place, a ghost town.

Beyond that, to Lynch^[21] and Cullen^[22], the city is a piece of art. This definition is especially intriguing because it necessarily assumes the plurality not only of the artists but also of the spectators, the existence of conscious and unconscious motivations, implicitly embraces emotion, irrationality, experience, imperfection, and perception. But, unlike painting or sculpture, the city is a collective artifact of large scale, made in such a way that the roles of artists and spectators often intersect in the same individual, in a recursive manner of cause and consequence^[23]. Furthermore, the city is a temporal art. Music and dance are temporal arts as well, but they are, in great part, collections of closed intervals, built with more control and intentions that consider this finite disposition for production or stimulation of their aesthetic appreciations. The city, however, almost always runs at open intervals, without a known end or beginning, or semi-open, with just a known beginning or end but not both. If we talk about cities with closed intervals of time, the approach is likely predominantly archaeological because they are cities that rose and fell, civilizations that were swept from the face of the Earth. In these open and semi-open intervals, “the sequences are inverted, interrupted, abandoned, annulled^[24]”.

Without exhausting the multiplicity of conceptions about the city, the paths that seem to diverge and visions, at times conflicting or incompatible, coexist—one does not necessarily invalidate the other. Together, they bring out the complex reality of the urban environment: unitas multiplex, the association between unity and multiplicity, the very nature of what is woven together^[25]. All these paths that seem to diverge, each one in its own way, tell us that the city is more than its materiality, its tangible half, its apparent concrete reality.

Materials and methods

This article utilizes the palimpsest archetype through the lens of complex thinking to explore how memory shapes reality instead of recalling it. With methodology based on a literature review, we start with the foundations of the palimpsest archetype, moving on to the basic concepts of Edgar Morin’s Theory of Complexity, followed by distinctions between memory and history, emphasizing the economic and political implications. This allows for a deeper dive into different types of memory: individual, collective, historical, short-term, long-term, organic, voluntary, and involuntary. The last section discusses Lethos and Aletheia vs. Platonism, as well as the role of daily life in the process of remembering and forgetting. In the final considerations, memory is ultimately delineated as an individual and collective means of resistance against the commodification processes and structures of the city as a machine, which, by design, delivers neglected urban spaces and urban experiences.

Results

Palimpsest city

In the category The cities and memory in the classic work of Ítalo Calvino^[26], “Invisible Cities”, one in particular incites the imagination: Zaira. Our explorer Marco Polo begins the account of Zaira to Kublai Khan, saying that no description containing merely the physical characteristics of it would be able to convey anything truly relevant. Zaira is not about walls and pavements, Zaira is made out of the relations between built elements and the events that took place in these elements.

In the city, memories and histories overlay one another without erasing the ones that were there before them—similar to the process of the production of a palimpsest. A palimpsest is an already written scroll that is reutilized for new content, but the layering is imperfect because the ink of the previous text can never be fully removed, and the scroll can never be a blank canvas again. The palimpsest approach^[27] invokes the superimposition of cultural layers as part of an ever-changing social fabric, and it has been utilized in several disciplines also as a metaphor through which one reads the re-inscription of multiple layers of the built environment^[28]. Chen^[29] expands on the importance of the palimpsest archetype, highlighting that not only spaces but also memory and the human brain itself are palimpsests.

Under the effect of Morin’s^[30] dialogic operator, in the palimpsest city, shapes, flows, histories, intentions, chances, habits, and ruptures that seemed to be apart are reunited and brought together for interpretation and experience. These noises from the past interact in curious ways with the layers of meanings—between chaos and order, yesterday and today blur their boundaries into one another and feed the imagination of countless cities that could have been or still those that can come to be:

“Architecture frees us from the embrace of the present (…) buildings and cities are instruments and museums of time. They allow us to see and understand the passing of history and participate in temporal cycles that transcend our individual lives^[31]”

The palimpsest city is hologramatic, as Zaira, because a “description of Zaira as currently is should contain the entire past of Zaira”, in other words, one cannot dissociate the part from the entirety – the part is in the whole, and the whole is in the part. The hologramatic city rejects the hyperspecialization and fragmentation of traditional science, based on the paradigm of simplification; it surpasses the reductionism that only sees the parts and the holism that only sees the indistinct mixture of the whole^[32].

To the process of accumulation of layers and layers of history, memory, and spatial narratives of the palimpsest city, Tucci^[33] gives the names of sedimentation, an analogy to the long geological process of sedimentary rock formation in nature. A very interesting aspect of sedimentary rocks is that, despite the long formation process, each layer has the potential to preserve the characteristics and/or clues from the period in which they were deposited, with the fidelity of the clue’s preservation, as it were, inversely proportional to the intensity of possible metamorphic processes^[34]. In other words, there is a possibility of something remaining and reaching our present moment practically untouched, as if it were frozen in time; and for us to experience this part and connect to the whole density, the essence, the heart of it. This hologramatic character will be revisited in the next sections, especially in the involuntary memory part, according to Proust.

Despite the whole being in the part and vice versa, to Tucci, these layers may not be visible in every part; there are places, however, that are like transversal cuts in geological structures, leaving all the layers exposed: these are the tectonic windows. Through the tectonic windows, we can read, interpret, extract, and relate meanings from past and current layers. Another widely used term that may share correspondences with the concept of tectonic windows is places of memory, since they enable, like tectonic windows, the association, reading, and interpretation of different temporal layers. However, inherent in the concept of places of memory is the prerogative of places with and without memory, or, at least, places denser or shallower in memory than others. While in the concept of tectonic windows, we are talking about the visibility and invisibility of layers without determining a priori their existence or nonexistence.

Memory and History

Although they often appear together or are used interchangeably in certain situations due to the similarity of content, it is necessary to establish a distinction between history and memory and, subsequently, formalizations about individual memory, historical memory, collective memory, and narratives and how they interact in the construction of reality. The first distinction between history and memory is that while the concept of history in its essence is linked to the broad structure of production, maintenance, and revision of scientific knowledge and, therefore, a cultural and collective construct, memory in the first instance is an individual biological process in which the construction of personality, individual identity, learning processes, and immediate and long-term emotional and physical reactions to tangible and intangible environmental stimuli are anchored.

As a construct of traditional science, history seeks the abstraction of the subject, aiming for an impartiality that might be more idealized than executable to ensure the quality, at least nominal, of the facts; memory, on the other hand, makes no sense whatsoever without the subject’s experience, thus, the intensity of the subject’s relationship with it determines its relevance. In these terms, while history stems from a progressive movement of exclusion of the subject from the object of study, memory inserts the subject and works from the biases endowed with authenticity, recognizing the impracticality and impossibility of completely removing the subject from the object of study. The primary source of what is considered impartial facts has traditionally been historical documents, but they are not innocuous, independent of the medium. Historical documents are a montage resulting from the conscious or unconscious manipulation of the history of each period and the society that made it, but also the effort of historical societies to compel a specific image of themselves to the future; in the end, there is no such thing as document-truth—all documents are lies—and it is up to the historians to not let themselves be fooled or tangled in naiveté^[35]. Friedman^[36] goes as far as to say that all modern historiography is mythology, given that history per se is the process of imprinting the present onto the past.

Pesavento^[37] agrees with Le Goff when he says that history as a scientific discipline carries in a generalized and comprehensive way the pretension of affirming what has been and, consequently, the administration and/or construction of collective memory. Ježernik^[38], however, emphasizes a lighter, yet necessary view of this scientific field, as the one responsible for helping shape human beings into inquisitive, curious creatures, capable of working through the flaws and gaps and finding direction and meaning. Note that Pesavento and Le Goff stress the authoritarian aspect of the discipline, while Ježernik focuses, perhaps, on the subject’s ability to subvert structures, instead of accepting it as it is, and asks what it is.

Besides being subjective and biological, memory is a natural, spontaneous, disinterested, and selective activity since it retains only what is necessary from the past to connect with the present^[39]. Despite its similarities with Halbwachs regarding the characteristics of memory, such as spontaneity and vulnerability, Nora^[40] fundamentally diverges from Halbwachs regarding the movement of time and the assumed chronological evolution. For Nora, memory is life itself, constantly updated within an eternal present, which would be the same as expressing the futility of concepts such as present and future. However, memory is historicized, that is, imprisoned by history and in temporal lockstep with it—the submission of memory to history has become so ubiquitous that the reason memory is so much talked about lately is precisely because it no longer exists.

Le Goff ^[41] classified memory into three categories: individual, historical, and collective. Individual memory was discussed in the previous paragraphs and will be revisited in the next section. For now, let us focus on historical and collective memory. Both are periodicized into five chronological phases of evolution: ethnic, oral, medieval, written, and contemporary. Collective memory is periodicized by Le Goff according to the phases of historical memory: oral transmission, written transmission on tablets, transmission on simple cards, mechanized transmission, and electronic serialization.

At this point, albeit indirectly, Nora’s controversial statement resonates with Le Goff’s analysis of systematization. When Nora speaks of the extinction of memory, he is not referring to individual memory but rather to the death of historical and collective memory: memory that has undergone both a cumulative process of diminishing the individual’s sphere of influence in relevant decisions and actions within their group and the increasingly less organic involvement of forms of collective memory transmission. The first happens because of the societal transition from small ethnic groups to a multipolarized global culture, which inevitably creates a gradual distance from individual memory to historical memory. The second happens because of the shift from oral transmission to today’s electronic serialization, which does not rely on our neurophysiological capabilities (considered unreliable) and is virtually capable of producing and storing data that has technologically surpassed human capabilities for many decades. After this brief historical overview, Nora will likely seem less controversial and more like a messenger of news that is not all that fresh.

Aside from the judgment and values assigned to the current state of electronic serialization in which Le Goff places us, and which Nora may lament, it is important to reflect on how necessarily human the construction and reconstruction of historical and collective memories continues to be. Even though the sphere of influence within our groups seemingly diminishes every day, to some extent we are also beginning to understand that not only does the global influence the local, but also the local influences the global; even though the transmission of collective memories seems to grow increasingly inorganic and independent of us, all the structures and systems in which the production and transmission of memories of any category mentioned so far are anchored are still human creations. There might be more mediations between one end and the other, giving the impression that there are no longer individuals in the process, only interfaces, but what lies at the end of it all, after passing through all the filters, at each of these ends, are people, are still people.

Involuntary and voluntary memory

After analyzing the aspects and dynamics of collective and historical memories, Seixas^[42] considers the issue of voluntary and involuntary memories, which, although not explicitly classified by him as belonging to the scope of individual memory, are precisely where they function. Therefore, in this section, approximations will be made to the psychological and biological spheres of memory and how they are reflected on the subject’s scale and social scale.

Voluntary memory is controlled, intentional, rational, and functional. Without short, medium, and long-term voluntary memory, any kind of learning, language, and communication system or the acquisition and transfer of manual, motor, or abstract skills, among many other things, would be impossible. From seemingly simple, routine daily tasks (working memory) to writing a note on the refrigerator (short-term memory, codification, and language) to walking or driving from home to work (spatial memory, motor memory) to catching an object thrown at us (motor memory, in this case also called reflex), everything we do, even in the most ordinary of days, is only possible through the construction and support of memory, and these memories involve complex and coordinated neuropsychophysiological mechanisms within our vast central and peripheral neural networks. Without voluntary memory, it would not be possible to associate two seemingly separate objects and give them meaning, whatever they may be. Assigning characteristics, detecting patterns under predefined classification criteria, comparing, adding, and excluding elements from certain groups—these are all primordial and essentially human thought processes. And through these processes^[43], anchored in voluntary memories, we can create, but above all, we can retain what has been created and continue to create from a new point that is no longer a blank slate. Simmel^[44] discusses this matter in “The Bridge and the Door” by saying that we project our wish for memory within ourselves and outside ourselves: the memory of connection is materialized in paths and roads, reaching its literal and metaphorical peak in the bridge; similarly, the memory of separation is literally and metaphorically materialized in the door.

The understanding and pursuit of optimization of learning processes and consolidation of memory in all their variations have been the target of growing and justified interest in the scientific community, with great emphasis on the emerging discipline of Neuroeducation, which has strong foundations in the work of Edgar Morin^[45].

Ricouer^[46] highlights the common tendency to approach memory from a place of deficiency, even dysfunction, which certainly has adequate arguments in its favor, but there is an undeniable need to also address memory from a place of success. In daily life, memory is the only continuous, conscious, and unconscious organic reference of our own existence. And about the matter of fluidity of memory, interpreted as unreliability by some, Certeau^[47] explains that it is memory at its best, alive, in action; when it stops being fluid, it becomes an echo already.

Proust^[48], however, vehemently professed that true memory, genuine memory, was not voluntary but involuntary. Involuntary memories appear without the effort to remember, either because of an emotional trigger or a situation that favors the reminiscence. Their significance lies in their ability to escape deformation, fading, or erasure in a way that voluntary memories cannot when submitted to the passage of time^[49]. The triggers for involuntary memories differ from person to person, but one fact remains: they come unbidden, unannounced, unedited. Involuntary memory is irrational and devoid of pragmatic value; it cannot be intentionally exploited because it cannot be predicted, quantified, or controlled in any measure – and the system demands at least one of these three factors to even begin to commodify or speculate around something. For Seixas^[50], involuntary memory is made of sudden flashes that recede with the slightest approach of voluntary memory. It is unstable and non-continuous, not concerned about filling in the gaps. Instead, the gaps and voids are accepted and incorporated into whatever is built-in, imperfect, and dense. In the gaps and voids of involuntary memory reside all possible alternatives; these voids are spaces for imagination and projection of our longings. More than any other type of memory, it embraces the hologramatic character that seduced Proust:

“Memory is therefore something that “transcends,” that “overcomes obstacles,” that “emerges,” that erupts: the feelings associated with this journey are ambiguous, but ever-present. There is no involuntary memory that is not charged with affection, and even if the entirety of the past is irretrievably lost, what returns is whole, complete, with its emotional tones and affective “charm.^[51]“.

The hologramatic character of involuntary memory can be associated with the concept of tectonic windows previously presented, since both bring the possibility of experiencing the completeness of something, almost untouched, even if only a part of it is able to reach us.

Remembering and forgetting

In Plato’s ^[52]classical philosophy, which still strongly resonates today in the axiomatic foundations of classical science, especially in the natural sciences^[53], Plato states that our tangible world is an imperfect copy of an ideal world that exists in an alternate plane^[54]. Through the Myth of the Cave, it is understood that there is always the latent potential to find the Absolute Truth of anything, any mechanism, or any process that exists in our world of copies (also called shadows), because it already exists in the ideal world. Our senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste, and speech – lie, because they apprehend and function within and for the materiality of our world of copies; our flawed sensory interpretations that stem from the organic limitations of our five senses construct the imperfect experiences and interactions with this material world. And it is based on this premise that the division and hierarchy of the arts into liberal and manual in ancient Greece were born, respectively: the more abstract, the closer to the ideal world; the more concrete, the further from the ideal world and rooted in the illusions of the senses and shadows.

This ideal world exists independently of us. All knowledge and truth are, therefore, a matter of “discovery,” not “invention” or creation. At this point, similarities and resonances with the famous story of the apple and how Newton discovered the Law of Gravity^[55]—or, in more appropriate terms, mathematically formulated a law of nature, and the concept of the earthly world and the heavenly paradise of Christian mythology and several other religions, are no mere coincidence. Both assume the existence of a priori universal truths, and our sole mission is to discover what they are and how to access them. But, before Platonism, reality was something else; reality was not a copy of anything pre-existing; reality only existed as long as it lived within each one of us, in a literal and organic form: memory.

In ancient Greek, the words truth, to exist, and to remember all correspond to aletheia, while error, death, and to forget correspond to lethos. Juxtaposed in this way, it is easy to deduce the process of lexical morphology that shows us that aletheia is the opposite of lethos:

ALETHEIA
(prefix) A	+	LETH (radical)
no, negative		forget

In Greek mythology, there are five rivers in the underworld ruled by Hades, each traveled by different souls placed there for punishment or transition to a dignified afterlife. The River Lethe, also known as the River of Oblivion, rises in the cave of Hypnos, the god of Sleep, and flows to the border of the Elysian Fields. The soul worthy of the Elysian Fields must bathe in the waters of Lethe to erase its past life and enter paradise like a blank canvas. Understand that only after the total oblivion of its former life does a soul truly complete the cycle of death, the absolute end, so a new and eternal life can begin. The other souls that sailed the other rivers bound for other lands still carry the memories, torments, desires, and longings of their earthly lives. In other words, they have not completely died, even though they can no longer return to our world. The rivers of Hades teach us that we only truly die when we absolutely forget who we are.

Remembering and forgetting are the two sides of the same coin that build realities in constant editing, conflict, and reconciliation. This reality must first live within us so it can come to existence outside of us. Individual realities and shared realities are woven together to form a collective one that comes to exist through us and for us, as explored in Simmel’s^[56] “The Bridge and Door”. This complex, constantly edited reality, connotatively and denotatively, assumes the duality of remembering and forgetting, assumes the nonlinearity between cause and effect, assumes the entirety of the portion of reality that lives organically and metaphorically within us—that is, this reality is dialogical, recursive, and hologramatic. Memory does not recall reality; it creates it.

In the palimpsest city, what is remembered and what is forgotten? What exists or ceases to exist? What layers of meaning are seized or erased? The first step in remembering is perceiving. Perceiving with the eyes, with the skin, with the ears, with the body, with the imagination^[57] —but in daily life, we become blind to the elements and layers we experience repeatedly, we nullify or weaken the meanings of what has inevitably been covered by the veil of opacity of routine^[58]. Even the most extraordinary of things can start to be perceived as ordinary, given enough cycles of repetition. But then, how is this veil of opacity cast by routine that invisibilizes the layers of meaning of the palimpsest city lifted? It may sound counterintuitive, but as the routine fades, the routine also lights up.

Diagram 1: Quotidian, living, and memory. Source: Author 1, 2025

The “Cities are amalgams of buildings and people. They are inhabited settings from which daily rituals – the mundane and the extraordinary, the random and the staged – derive their validity. In the urban artifact and its mutations are condensed continuities of time and place.”^[59] What is banal and ordinary is also the other side of what is close, familiar, recognized, remembered. And it is between living and memory that the (extra)ordinary is constructed every day (Diagram 1).

Final considerations

In the city-machine, from local to global stages, the hegemonic structures in place prioritize functionality, control, surveillance (from the panoptic to AI), speculation, and commodification to the detriment of the quality of the urban experience and urban spaces. In this context, memory can be a legitimate and powerful counter-element or an axis in which restructuring, transformation, and reclaiming of territories, groups, dynamics, and sociospatial narratives. Narratives play a fundamental role in the construction of realities, as they transit, mediate, and modulate the relationship between memory and history. A narrative interweaves a series of personal experiences to form collective memories, and the potential of a narrative lies in its ability to construct a collective identity that continues to find correspondences in individual identities. Narratives possess both the spontaneity and organicity of memory and the social responsibility of history. Certeau also views narratives as spatial trajectories that tie together the city, building the urban fabric in space and time.

Le Goff ^[60] brings from the field of psychology that remembering and forgetting are conscious or unconscious manipulations exercised by interest, affection, desire, inhibition, and censorship. These manipulations occur at the individual level but also collectively as a society, with profound political repercussions, consolidating power and control of whoever is in charge of the dominant narratives. Amnesia is not only a disturbance that affects the individual but also the voluntary or involuntary loss of collective memory in people and nations, resulting in disturbances in the collective identity.

Blokland^[61] gives two views about the character of collective memory: first, as a shared memory between members of the same social groups, leaning more into the process of recollection of events with one another than the events themselves; second, it can be viewed as a collective mind, a container of stories of a determined group from which an individual does not necessarily have to have lived through to feel they also belong. This collective mind is a great factor in the cultural cohesion of the group that possesses it, being a powerful resource that can, among other factors, be used to legitimize claims over territories^[62].

Therefore, the power of narratives, collective memory, and the repercussion of the interested manipulation of both^[63] has been the hallmark of nineteenth-century nationalist movements that used historical heritage as a tool to invent collective identities and a common past^[64], but also of current governments and ruling classes. Sassen^[65] associates the interested manipulation of narratives and collective memory by governments as a response to the growing competitiveness between nations and regions in the global market, turning heritage and identity into commodities, much like a city’s image, skyline, and high-rise office towers.

The ways in which memory shapes reality may sound abstract or even poetic to those who have been living in apparently stable structures, but in times of political or drastic regime change, the fragility, uncertainty, and deception of everyday reality become clear^[66]. In time, all constructs are proven to be temporary; they can be changed, they can be forgotten: ideological notions, criteria, norms, monuments, myths, the old truth – everything can be destroyed and replaced – everlasting is an illusion^[67]. Even the life of a historical monument is not as predictable as it seems: “the erection and removal of monuments involve not only ‘physics’ but also ‘metaphysics’”^[68]. In this sense, memories mediate spatial transformations.^[69]

Nonetheless, while everlasting may be an illusion, shifting and impermanent realities do not translate as entirely collapsible at any given moment, because we are still here. Because cities are amalgams of buildings and people^[70], not just one or the other, and places are always articulations of social relations that may decay or renew over time, without fixed meaning. These same shifting articulations are the very foundation of a place’s identity – being then place-bound, but not place-based^[71]. It is by using it, living in it, and experiencing the built environment that memories are made and start to give a place one of its many possible identities. One of the many possible identities, because there is no single past, but rather multiple pasts coexisting in the palimpsest city, permeating the present and, at times, diverging substantially from one group to another^[72]. Physical heritage by itself is not enough to forge real identities, to get past the pastiches of historical places manufactured for the sake of a cheap touristic attraction or downright authoritarian control. However powerful the material evidence may be, the collective remembering is still an action^[73], capable of resisting processes of commodification.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements to CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior), CNPQ (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico), and to the Postgraduate Program in Architecture, Technology, and City of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture, and Urban Planning, State University of Campinas.

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Footnotes

1. Certeau 1984 ↑
   

2. Sullivan 1896 ↑
   

3. Jones 2009, p.2521 ↑
   

4. Gassner 2017, p.757 ↑
   

5. Certeau 1984 ↑
   

6. Certeau 1984, pp.94-95 ↑
   

7. Kaika and Thiellen 2006 ↑

8. Grubbauer 2014 ↑
   

9. Gassner 2017 ↑
   

10. Gassner 2017, p.757 ↑
    

11. Kaika 2011 ↑
    

12. Grubbauer 2014, p.346 ↑
    

13. Gassner 2017, p.765 ↑
    

14. Cullen 1983 ↑
    

15. Leew 2017 ↑
    

16. Leew 2017 ↑
    

17. Original quote in Portuguese: “inseparável da formação da civilização e é um fato permanente, universal e necessário.” (Rossi 1995, p.01) ↑
    

18. Kostoff 1991 ↑
    

19. Kostof 1991, p.16 ↑
    

20. Kostof 1991 ↑
    

21. Lynch 1960 ↑
    

22. Cullen 1983 ↑
    

23. Morin 2015 ↑
    

24. Original quote in Portuguese: “as sequências são invertidas, interrompidas, abandonadas, anuladas” (Lynch, 1960, p.11). ↑
    

25. Morin 2015 ↑
    

26. Calvino 1990 ↑
    

27. Lather 2001 ↑
    

28. Sigler 2014 ↑
    

29. Chen et al 2024 ↑
    

30. Morin 2015 ↑
    

31. Original quote in Portuguese: “A arquitetura nos emancipa do abraço do presente (…) as edificações e as cidades são instrumentos e museus do tempo. Elas nos permitem ver e entender o passar da história e participar de ciclos temporais que ultrapassam nossas vidas individuais.” (Pallasmaa 2011, p.49) ↑
    

32. Morin 2015 ↑
    

33. Tucci 2011 ↑
    

34. A set of chemical and/or physical processes that change the composition of sedimentary rocks. ↑
    

35. Le Goff 1990 ↑
    

36. Friedman 1992 ↑
    

37. Pesavento 2004 ↑
    

38. Ježernik 1998 ↑
    

39. Halbwachs 1990 ↑

40. Nora 1993 ↑
    

41. Le Goff 1990 ↑
    

42. Seixas 2001 ↑
    

43. Although it is not exclusive to our species. ↑
    

44. Simmel 1996 ↑
    

45. Morin 2007a, 2007b, 2015 ↑
    

46. Ricouer 2020 ↑
    

47. Certeau 1984 ↑
    

48. Proust 2012 ↑
    

49. Pereira et al 2025 ↑
    

50. Seixas 2001 ↑
    

51. Original quote in Portuguese: “A memória é, portanto, algo que ‘atravessa’, que ‘vence obstáculos’, que ‘emerge’, que irrompe: os sentimentos associados a este percurso são ambíguos, mas estão sempre presentes. Não há memória involuntária que não venha carregada de afetividade e, ainda que a integralidade do passado esteja irremediavelmente perdida, aquilo que retorna vem inteiro, íntegro porque com suas tonalidades emocionais e ‘charme’ afetivo.” (SEIXAS 2001, p. 47) ↑
    

52. Plato’s works “consist of twenty-eight Dialogues and thirteen others of variously uncertain authorship. There are also thirteen Letters, three of which (VI, VII and VIII) are generally recognized as having been written by Plato. Plato’s Dialogues cover a wide range of subjects: duty, courage, virtue, justice, love, beauty, science, nature, rhetoric and the harmony of words with Being and with Ideas; the nature of humankind, wisdom, kingship, legislation, etc” (Hummel, 1994, 2). Published as The Collected Dialogues of Plato (1961), edited by Edith Hamilton, Huntington Cairns, and translated by Lane Cooper. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Princeton. ↑
    

53. Burgin 2017 ↑
    

54. Plato 1961 ↑
    

55. First published in his work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) [Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy], commonly known as the Principia. Publisher: Jussu Societatis Regiæ ac Typis Joseph Streater, London. Available at the Cambridge University Library as the original first edition with annotations made by Newton, and also as a digital copy at: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/newton/2 ↑
    

56. Simmel 1996 ↑
    

57. Pallasmaa 2011 ↑
    

58. Ferrara 2012 ↑
    

59. Kostof 1991, p.16 ↑
    

60. Le Goff 1990 ↑
    

61. Blokland 2001 ↑
    

62. Borges 2017 ↑
    

63. Le Goff 1990 ↑
    

64. Borges 2017 ↑
    

65. Sassen 2002 ↑
    

66. Ježernik 1998 ↑
    

67. Ježernik 1998 ↑
    

68. Ježernik 1998, p.587 ↑
    

69. Certeau 1984 ↑
    

70. Kostof 1991 ↑
    

71. Blokland 2001 ↑
    

72. Graham 2002; Smith 2006 ↑
    

73. Blokland 2001 ↑