A New Way To Understand the City: Henri Lefebvre’s Spatial Triad

Space is all around us. We move through it, live within it and think in terms of it. Therefore, to think of the city is to think ultimately in one way or another, of space. Now, when I speak of space in the following words and paragraphs, I do not mean outer space, the realm of NASA and astronauts, but rather space in the sense of that which everything exists within. Cities are limited entities, although it may feel like it, cities do not go on forever; even LA, Tokyo, London or the Pearl River Delta have their limits where the sprawl ends and the rest of the world begins. So, as cities are not infinite, the space within them is contested. We can’t all live in the so-called ‘nice’ neighbourhoods, hence the housing market exists as a means of differentiating and limiting access to the space. As a result of the contestation of space, different spaces carry different meanings which mean different things for, well, different people. It both exists objectively, but is subjectively shaped by our experience to the extent that its meaning can be completely divergent from person to person. So, how can we make sense of something so urbanly intrinsic, yet untenable as space? <a href="https://will-brown.medium.com/a-new-way-to-understand-the-city-henri-lefebvres-spatial-triad-d8f800a9ec1d">Click Here</a>