Infrastructure and the Future
Marcel Smets Maybe I’ll just first try to say what in my mind would be civic. It’s a question of where you put your energy, what is your real language. Because the question of visible and invisible is important, but as you want to stress the architects, let’s go to the built environment. Public, in my opinion, would be the lowest grade of necessity. Sarah Williams Goldhagen Do you mean public, like publicly owned? Marcel Smets Like public investments and public space… only what is basically required. You know, you need drinking water in order not to get illnesses, ok? Civic, in my opinion, goes back to a nineteenth or early twentieth century idea— look at the City Beautiful Movement where they were making city buildings. The civic society was something other than the real society. Sarah Williams Goldhagen How? Marcel Smets Well, in the New Deal there is awareness that the state should do enough for all citizens. But there is also, in my mind, something in civic that is related to a symbolic meaning, to a meaning of a state valuing its citizens. And for that reason, it is trying to make the best possible thing, not the minimal thing— the best possible thing because it’s a public and civic value. The level of development of a nation is the level of value that a society attributes to its civic infrastructure. Sarah Williams Goldhagen Ok, so let’s focus in. I think we would all agree that there is public, which simply means publicly owned and politically connected built environment—or initiatives in the built environment—and then there’s civic, which is a set of goals about the body politic and about society. What are our goals with civic infrastructure?
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