Religion and cities

Preserving identities in a religious precinct

Vinod C P
UD 621

Religion
It is widely perceived that Science and religion are on opposite poles, creating a duality between faith
and fact. Science by definition is "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic
study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and
experiment3", making it as a method or way to explain and understand the natural phenomena-or in
other words reality. Whereas Religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world
views that relate humanity to an order of existence : a method to understand the life, and after life,
which makes a parallel with science, and making religion as a science of life.
"In every culture, in every epoch, human beings have yearned for heaven - the dwelling place of the
gods, mirror of our hopes and desires.4"
How a religion gives shape to the quest of after life is through belief. belief in an ultimate super power
where our all answers lies. This beliefs further ask for a way of living, through which we can complete
our quest. Though this frame work of religion we are connected to the universe: a world after life and
the world with life. Now this way of life further forms a social order and ultimately becomes the
deciding factor of built environments.
Now the built environment is centered around a sacred space, which pulls the community around
towards it- a manifestation of faith holding its disciples, and a an outer space around the sacred space
where the idea of daily life is contested with the idea of afterlife.

Sense of place/spirit of place/identity

"The clarity with which the settlement is perceived and identified can be termed as the sense and it
depend upon spatial form and quality culture& experience and current purpose of the observer" (Kevin
Lynch, in Good city form)

However in the theory of phenomenology, the environment is concretely defined as place and
the things which occur there take place. Norberg-Schultz, defines the place as total qualitative
phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the none of its single characteristics,-"material substance,
shape, texture and color"

Sense of place and spirit of place (Norberg-Schultz, Genius loci) are linked dramatically by Elvira
Petroncelli (Transformation process and spirit of the place: Historic ambits) and according to him "the
spirit of a place is more about the intangible values of a territory is built up and consolidated through the
stratification of uses and meanings that are deposited in places according to the evolution of the
communitys ways of living" and is "independent of the physical support", where as the sense of place
relies on the "spatial form and quality" . i.e., the meaning of a place or genius loci is diluted in Lynch's
discussion of place where as the Schultz explored the character of the place purely based on that.
The idea of transforming a place (environment) with respect to its spirit, can have two different
approaches
1. Internal : The very core of the identity/spirit itself under the process of transformation
2.External : with different forms/faces in different time period starting from political, cultural,
economical and technological
In both cases the changes in the linkages (here the religion) that bind people and places correspond in
the formation of new identities and claims, which in turn creates new spaces and new powers. The
perspective of impact of religion on power is much different from what David Harvey explains in Time,
Space and sources of social power. In fact the relation between religion , power and space is more
complex as well as thin in nature, in contemporary context.
Another radical form assumed today by the linkage of people to territory is the unmooring of identities
from what have been traditional sources of identity, such as the nation or village. This unmooring in the
process of identity formation engenders new notions of community, of membership and of
entitlement."( SASKIA SASSEN ,1996)

Religiosity and place

Most literature on sense of place focuses on secular societies and their physical environment, and very
little on how it may be affected by religion. In most studies, the importance of religion to sense of place
has been overlooked or diminished Jiven and Larkham (2003) claim that people, individuals as well as
society, integrate the features of topography, natural conditions, "symbolic" meanings and the built form
through their value systems, to form a sense of place. According to Ebaugh and Chafez (2000) and
Bowen (2002), although the role of religion in modern society has been questioned by secular sectors, its
importance has in fact considerably increased. Mazumdar and Mazumdar (1993) studied the
relationship between religion, identity and attachment to sacred places, and found religion to provide
symbolic meaning to places, which distinguishes certain physical environments from otherwise similar
ones. Mazumdar and Mazumdar (2004) claimed religion to be an important part of people's private and
public lives, and may affect life-style choices such as places of worship, places for social interaction or for
community participation. 5

From the above observation it is rather replace the sense of place with spirit as described by Schultz,
where the religion exert more theological concepts to the character of the place. However the
important link between the identity of place and the religion and the community which is bounded by it
is well established through these observations.

Rituals and spaces

Apart from the sense that the religion exert, the spatial configuration that evolve out of it is more
important. The spaces that are, related to a religion in a setting, for rituals which is "reminding people of
the basic values which the group rests upon, and renewing commitment to these values on the part of
members" and making them "aware of their membership" (Bocock 1970). In a nutshell we can see the
physical manipulation of space and form from a religion. The repetitive nature of rituals and festivals
associated with religion do thrust the importance of a defined spaces, and such production and
reproduction of social activities is needed to create and maintain the sense and identity of a place, the
capability of receiving different content is again a key factor for the survival of the place. Indian cities,
especially old city cores are adaptive to various conditions and that capability has made them surviving
through the time. we have many examples to showcase how cities transforms and receive multiple
layers of culture, religion, as well as architecture and make them as a part of their identity and maintain
the sense of their urban spaces. We have the city of Banaras, which has been surviving for more than
3000 years, where the Ghats are the form-space manifestation of rituals, and has multiple religious
doctrines that guided the city from time to time.
The important link between a city as a whole and the religion, as we can observe across the world is the
mysticism: Pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate
reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. 6 The
whole city will be a manifestation of this pursuit where as the urban spaces forms the bricks formed by
the rituals as well as the social activities.
This whole hierarchical system is well described by Amos Rapoports model for levels of meaning in the
built environment. Rapoport identifies three levels of meaning in built environments: high-level meaning
describes cosmological and supernatural symbolism that may be encoded in buildings and city layouts,
middle-level meaning refers to deliberate messages about identity and status communicated by the
designers and constructors of buildings and cities, and low-level meaning describes the ways in which
the built environment channels and interacts recursively with behavior and movement. These levels are
not independent and mutually exclusive, and in most cases individual cities and buildings conveyed
meanings on two or three of the levels. (Michael E. Smith, 2007)
The whole gamut of how ideas are transformed in to spaces in cities should be read along with the
"levels of interpretation". Religion here brings an idea of life, to its disciples, and to make an effective
use of this, social systems framed by rituals and customs are created. Now the defined social system
manipulate spaces which falls under the later two levels and the idea of life and universe create the first
level. This meaning levels together forms the identity of religious precincts, if not the cities. It is also
important to understand that all these meanings will not be present to our naked eye, and the

interpretation may wary for every other individual, but the real essence is the idea of life, that the
religion brought forward.

De-territorialization and re- territorialization

When referring to culture, anthropologists use the term deterritorialized to refer to a weakening of ties
between culture and place. This means the removal of cultural subjects and objects from a certain
location in space and time. It implies that certain cultural aspects tend to transcend specific territorial
boundaries in a world that consists of things fundamentally in motion.
According to Arjun Apadurai and Hernandez"cultural distancing from the locality, is intensified when
people are able to expand and alter their imagination through the mediatization of alien cultural
conditions, making this culture of remote origin one of a familiar material. This makes it difficult for a
local entity to sustain and retain its own local cultural identity, which also affects the national identity of
the region." However according to the concept of phenomenology, any place should be capable of
receiving different content, which in the above context of sustaining the local entity contradict with the
spirit of the place. These transactions creates networks that allows mixing of culture and identity with
more speed, leading a networked urbanism (Stephen Graham & Simon Martin, Splintering Urbanism )

1. Elvira Petroncelli Transformation process and spirit of the placeHistoric ambits

2. Norberg-Schultz, Genius loci
3& 5. www. wikipedia.org
4. John Ashton , Tom Whyte The Quest For Paradise: Visions of Heaven and Eternity in the World's Myths and Religions.