From Garden-City Concept to Park-City Concept: using the Urban Metaphor in the Text of the City

Abstract

The article considers the city as a text of culture which appears due to interaction of different semiotic codes in urban space. Due to this approach urban space can be regarded as the text which consolidates the results of historic and cultural life of the city with the help of architecture, toponymics, natural phenomena. With regard to multi-aspect nature of urban semiotics it seems reasonable to focus on the urban metaphor as a trope which conveys the main message as a figurative expression. The article studies the metaphor garden-city concept and its se- miotic modifications in XX–XXI centuries. The author attempts to analyze the transformation of this metaphor, which initiated the urban planning conception of E. Howard, into a dead metaphor which converted into a newspaper cliché and, as a result, lost its original semiotic sense. The ideological influence of new urbanism and the necessity of promotion of new housing complexes have stipulated the appearance of this modern variety of the concept: park-city concept. However, this fact allows to concentrate both on the change of approaches to urban planning and on the related changes in the urban text as a text of culture.

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