Transpatial Solidarity (and Spatial Solidarity)

Definition

Transpatial solidarity is Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson's term for the social order generated inside boundaries: because the boundary severs the interior from the settlement's continuous spatial system, interiors affiliate with one another "not by virtue of continuity and proximity but by virtue of analogy and difference" — a transpatial system, "a class of spatially independent but comparable entities which have global affiliations… by virtue of analogy and difference." A transpatial solidarity is therefore "a solidarity of analogy and isolation: that is of analogous structures realised in controlled isolation by discrete individuals." Its mechanics: a stronger and more homogeneous interior structuring of space, a strong control of the boundary, "the internal reproduction of a relatively elaborate model," and words like "ritualised and conformist" — "The essence of a transpatial solidarity lies in the local reproduction of a structure recognisably identical to that of other members of the group. The stronger and more complex the structure, therefore, and the more exactly it is adhered to, the stronger will be the solidarity." Members stay separated spatially and are held together by reproducing the same pattern.

Its opposite is spatial solidarity, which "builds links with other members of the group not by analogy and isolation, but by contiguity and encounter. To realise this it must stress not the separateness of the interior but the continuity of interior and exterior." Here "Movement across the boundary… is the fundamental condition of existence for a spatial solidarity"; encounters are generated rather than limited, the boundary is weakened, the interior weakly structured, and "Informality rather than ritual must prevail" — "A spatial solidarity will be undermined, not strengthened, by isolation."

The pair is not a moral contrast but a dualism generated by the boundary's dual nature (category + control): every building holds both, in a ratio that its syntactic parameters set. The Intimus editors' headnote reads the pair as a programme for the interior: "to overcome the duality of inside and outside, they suggest a shift from segregated interiors emblematic of social solidarity to encountering interiors suggestive of spatial solidarity, and contingent upon movement and interaction of inhabitants across the boundary."

Key Thinkers

• Bill Hillier & Julienne Hanson — the concept's authors: the transpatial system, the two solidarities, and the boundary-dualism that generates them (The Social Logic of Space, 1984/2006).
• Shirley Ardener — the adjacent anthropological account of rule-governed bounded space, whose "overlapping universes" and gate-keeping rules share the transpatial logic of category-based affiliation (see partition-of-space).
• Emile Durkheim — the solidarity lineage the terms descend from (mechanical solidarity of resemblance vs. organic solidarity of interdependence); the spatial translation is Hillier and Hanson's own. Not yet paged (see log).

Related Concepts

• boundaries — the mechanism: the boundary's dual nature (it "creates a category of space – the interior – and a form of control") is what makes both solidarities possible.
• reversal-effect — the spatial condition of transpatiality: behind the boundary the most local scale becomes the most global in reference.
• inhabitant-and-visitor — the interface through which a solidarity's boundary control is administered: inhabitants of the social knowledge, visitors admitted without control.
• building-genotype — the spatial product: a type's genotype bends toward one solidarity or the other by varying syntactic parameters.
• inside-outside-dialectic — the phenomenological counterpart: where Bachelard's dialectic loses its geometrical evidence to lived value, Hillier and Hanson's duality is resolved by movement across the boundary (spatial solidarity) rather than by osmosis.
• dual-symbolic-classification — analogy and difference as the classificatory mode of affiliation, against continuity and proximity.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Buildings and their Genotypes (Hillier & Hanson 1984/2006) — the concept's source: the transpatial system definition (p. 149); "A transpatial solidarity is a solidarity of analogy and isolation" (p. 150); "Movement across the boundary… is the fundamental condition of existence for a spatial solidarity" (p. 150); "Informality rather than ritual must prevail" (p. 150); the editors' headnote — "segregated interiors emblematic of social solidarity" vs. "encountering interiors suggestive of spatial solidarity, and contingent upon movement and interaction of inhabitants across the boundary" (Intimus, p. 148).

Open Questions

• Is the transpatial/spatial pair the same opposition as Ardener's bounded-space logic (rules, isolation, category) versus the unbounded encounter-fields of the everyday — or a different axis? Ardener's boundary exerts influence on those inside; Hillier and Hanson's boundary refers those inside to the culture's principles. Are category-affiliation and cultural reference the same mechanism?
• Which modern interiors are transpatial-solidarity genotypes? The franchise, the hotel chain, the suburban estate reproduce "recognisably identical" structures "in controlled isolation" — does the wiki's everyday-interior cluster contain its most numerous instances, and are they experienced as solidarity at all?
• The editors' headnote recommends the shift "from segregated interiors… to encountering interiors" — but the chapter itself treats both solidarities as functional. Is the editors' reading a prescriptive flattening of an analytic dualism, and does the flexible interior (flexible-interior) belong to the program of spatial solidarity (weakened boundary, informality, encounter)?