Colonial town planning imposed order by reducing life to discrete spatial functions

Evidence

Within these containers, items can then be isolated, enumerated, and kept: three large animals and three small per courtyard; two beds end to end (and hence two persons) per room; even the positioning of pots, water jars and food supplies was specified in the French plans. The dividing up of such items is also the breaking down of life into a series of discrete functions – sleeping, eating, cooking, and so on – each with a specific location. The order of the reconstructed village was to be achieved by reducing its life to this system of locations and the objects and functions contained there, of a framework and what was enframed. The apparent neutrality of space, as the dimension of order, is an effect of building and distributing according to the strict distinction between container and contained. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 162

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the architectural discipline-work theme in Mitchell’s Chapter 1 (enframing, order as spatial arrangement) and to Foucault’s disciplinary spatiality.
• DEEPTHINKING: The final sentence — that the apparent neutrality of space is itself an effect of the container/contained distinction — dismantles the taken-for-grantedness of spatial order in a way that rewards rereading.