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Routescape (stråkbebyggelse) 3 (mainly pre-industrial to ca

1960

)

(Surveyed as 8.5 % of the Malmö area and 4.6 % of the estimated population of Malmö in this study) This supermorph contains three morphs:

the

1. pre-industrial village street the late 19th century

2. liberal routescapes based on the liberal reforms in Sweden legislated between 1846 and 1870.

the 20

3. th century largely industrialized or commercialized ground floor plot

One explanation of the intentional connection (the connection between the intentions behind these morphs) that constitutes this supermorph is the building blocks’ relation to a street network, either as landmark buildings or as buildings relating to routes (stråk). This connection can have agricultural, industrial or commercial roots, as I wrote in a previous article, the concept of route has other roots as well (Persson, R.

2004)4. The historical concept of routes and the connections between routes and productive settlements have also been studied by Caniggia & Maffei (2001:194-233). However, the routescape classification I’ve used here is limited to particular eras and the derivation of these particular spatial patterns over time.

For example, a 19th century block relates to the 19th century orthogonal grid, a mid-20th century block of relates to the freeway network and a pre-industrial building relates to the country road network. The reinvention of the morph after 1960 distinguishes between mixed use (housing mixed with either commercial or industrial uses) giving commercial or industrial complexes on the one hand and housing areas on the other.

I have therefore limited the supermorph timespan to ca. 1960.5

One possible submorph division would be into mixed-use housing blocks where the ground floor has largely been appropriated for other uses than housing, but where the building has not yet developed into an entity where traffic is separated for pedestrians and cars like the commercial landmark building submorph. All submorphs, mixed use buildings and commercial landmark buildings should be able to be classified as buildings relating to routes. Reisnert calls for a survey of the submorph access route buildings (tillfartsbebyggelse) (Reisnert et al. 1989:13-14).6

Spatial morph I:1: Pre-industrial village street

This morph is rooted in the time before the conversion of Swedish rural villages through the land reforms (skiften) during the period 1800 to 1850 (Werne 1993:244-279). Basically, this morph was originally constituted by a road through the centre of the village where farm animals were herded towards their grazing grounds. It existed in towns and villages alike, since Swedish towns were largely agricultural until the 20th century. One important landmark relating to the village street is the village church, often situated on the main village street. The village street was originally populated by people who did not own property; i.e. craftsmen who set up shop along the herding route. After the land reforms the outskirts of the cities were also populated by the mobile working class (arbetsfolk utan burskap), who developed routes into a form of working class routescape (småfolksstråk) (Paulsson 1950:104-107; Améen 1964:48-50).

In the typology of Johan Rådberg, this morph is represented either as tradesmen’s and craftsmen’s blocks (handels- och hantverkarkvarter) and is limited to the time period before 1875 (Rådberg 1988:435) or as pre-industrial towns, irregular or grid plans (förindustriell stad, oregelbunden plan eller förindustriell stad, rutnätsplan) (Rådberg & Friberg 1996:47-53, cf. Paulsson 1950:101-104; 109-114). Rådberg’s typology focuses on the fact that the blocks were based on an agricultural economy with combined housing and workplace. Rådberg’s later typology also identifies a number of possible submorphs, such as the medieval block signified by the polar placement of work and housing buildings, and it considers the more regulated grid plan, which in Sweden mainly stems from the 17th century, separately from other pre-industrial morphs.

It is also the type that Rådberg considers the most attractive of all block types (Rådberg 1997:82). In my morphology the pre-industrial village street is limited to such instances where I can identify the street pattern of a main village street, preferably including a church, and such a village street has not been superseded by younger structures in so that the village street pattern has become unrecognizable. The buildings themselves, however, can be from various time periods.

The analogous pre-industrial town street that leads to the pre-industrial town square (cf. Paulsson 1950:97-100, Thomasson 2004:198-203) is not considered a separate morph in my survey, although its historical importance certainly warrants it. It is part of the liberal routescape morph. I made this decision based on the small number of empirical patterns that could be recognized since only Gamla Staden in Malmö proper was a town during the pre-industrial era.

The blocks Rådberg labels either as tradesmen’s and craftsmen’s blocks or as pre-industrial towns I have often referred to other groups such as the less regulated “own your own home” blocks or the liberal routescapes, depending on whether I have deemed the building blocks to refer more directly to a route or not. It is thus a more narrow definition than the ones Rådberg use.7

Spatial morph I:2: Liberal routescape

With the advent of liberalism in 1846, craftsmen could set up shop along the routes as well. A common practice was that landowners sold plots along the main roads to and from the towns, thus creating routes for the commoners, working class routescapes (småfolksstråk), which have played a large role in 20th century planning, especially in Malmö, where several such routes are main commercial streets today. This morph includes the submorphs street houses (gatehus). A street house was built by the craftsman who was going to live in it. A mason built a brick house, a carpenter a wooden one, later combining home and workplace (Paulsson 1950:494; Werne 1997b:85-91). Long, low working class buildings (arbetarlängor) are included in this group as well (Paulsson 1950:121 – The Scanian (southern Swedish) working-class building was a brick building) although they evolved morphogenetically into row house blocks. Yet another possible submorph is the railroad based town center. The station building was associated with the central parts of a village or town by architectonic means: broad streets, open squares, parks, exclusive housing, hotels and office buildings. Blocks that were converted during the conversion of merchant houses in the central parts of the city during the late 19th century could sometimes have significant office or shopping uses warranting submorph classification of a city block (Paulsson 1950:416-429). I classified these blocks under the morph “largely industrialized or commercialized ground floor plot”.

In Johan Rådberg’s typology this morph is represented either as tradesmen’s and craftsmen’s blocks (handels- och hantverkarkvarter) and is limited to the time period before 1875 (Rådberg 1988:435, cf. Paulsson 1950:101-104) or as pre-industrial town, irregular or grid plan (förindustriell stad, oregelbunden plan eller förindustriell stad, rutnätsplan) or even as Closed grid block with yard buildings (stenstadskvarter med gårdshus).

The typology Rådberg uses for small town blocks with yard buildings (småstadskvarter med gårdshus) is also referred to this morph in my classification. Another type that Rådberg classifies is the shantytown (kåkstad), where he points out that these were built on areas outside the borders of the city proper (cf. Améen’s analysis of Malmö’s “outside the border building” (utomgränsbebyggelse) municipality Sofielund (Améen 1964:124-129) (Rådberg & Friberg 1996:47-57; 75-78; 133-134).

Thus Rådberg does not recognize the need to classify buildings erected as a result of the liberal reform in 1846. I have felt the need to do this because of the characteristics of spatial invention the buildings and patterns resulting from the liberal reform represent in Malmö.8

I also classified some of the closed grid block with yard buildings as liberal routescapes, namely the mixed use buildings that line the historical highway routes that run through Malmö. There is thus an empirical overlap in my classification between the historical function and Rådberg’s building type classification. This overlap follows from my use of routescape as a conceptual tool since the concept in itself is not limited to building types (Persson 2004; cf. also what Caniggia and Maffei would call a higher hierarchy, that of the production landscape (Caniggia & Maffei 2001:194)).

Spatial morph I:3: Largely industrialized or commercialized ground floor plot.

The landmark building and its commercial use on the ground floor, where access to a route has two distinct meanings: both the route as a logistical asset and the route for consumer access are critical and typical for this morph. I have limited the morph to building blocks that are both residential and commercial excluding monofunctional industrial and commercial building blocks. It is a matter of scale to determine where a single building or building block is considered part of a liberal routescape and where it warrants classification as a largely commercialized or industrialized ground floor plot, and the classification is not always easy to make.

Shop windows on the ground floor or commercial signs in abundance are telltale signs of a commercial block on a trivial level. The intentional spatial process where merchant houses (handelsgårdar) were converted into shopping streets (butiksgator) during the 1870s as described by Bosse Bergman (2003:23-25) would be associated with the development of shopping centers, two morphs with the same supermorphic intention. For my purposes, I deemed that there is a plausible link between these morphs. Rådberg does not identify this morph, largely industrialized or commercialized ground floor plot, as a consistent type.