Tuesday, March 9, 2010
West Oakland: Upscaling Neighborhood, or Reviving Industrial Hub? | Planetizen
conflict over appropriation/organic models of development and top-down authoritative approaches here:West Oakland: Upscaling Neighborhood, or Reviving Industrial Hub? | Planetizen
Saturday, March 6, 2010
DAN HILL on EMERGENT URBANISM
In response to DAN HILL on EMERGENT URBANISM on the City of Sound Blog I wrote the following, relating to where I want my thesis to be directed towards this year.
Ground Up communities can be exclusive without the interventions of top down planning. Natural organisms do not develop into complete homogenity. The contestation of space - in Derridean thought as in nature - is essential for the development of community, and it's character, and will exist, weather we enter into a techno-driven planing model, the traditional authoritarian model, or a grass roots evolutionary/system theory model.
I too find the trend in the last 20 years to limit the discourse of emergent urbanism to 'apps' and input driven parametric designs frustrating.
I find recent projects like SenseableCity's work and even the GRL; clever and entertaining and they do provoke further dialogue... but since Cedric Price's Fun Palace, I am still struggling to find significant haptic enabling of urban community beyond the constraints of the configurable home or the exclusive efforts of various sub-cultures, which require either the circumvention or peaceful disobedience of restrictive stereotypes/policy to enable them to express ownership or appropriation of space.
Surely we can develop methods for 'exploiting' (I hate that term, I hope you can understand it in this context) these placemaking practices for the development of new urban models. There's 20 years of literature and experiements to support it and there's plenty of precedent that we can use to 'market' it (again, a sensitive term - please take it out of it's contemporary context) to both authorities and corporate administrators of public space alike.
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Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Urban Wilderness Action Center » Blog Archive » Quiet Within the Noise
I noticed this event through a freinds' facebook page and thought I'd contribute to the debate.
My own contribution (consisting of a surprisingly unbalanced anti-social approach) is awaiting approval from site admin but my comments regarding divergent assumptions on the part of a small collection of participants of the event are here:
Urban Wilderness Action Center » Blog Archive » Quiet Within the Noise: "It is interesting to observe the different culturo-social definitions which people are placing on the term ‘wilderness’. An interesting read on the divergent attitudes to ‘landscape’ is IMAGINED COUNTRY; SOCIETY CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT by John Rennie Short. In it he addresses the concepts of Wilderness versus City versus Landscape, and then conducts Historo-cultural case studies in ‘English Novels’, The ‘American “Western”, and Australian Landscape Painting.
The qualitative and political connotations we attached to our definitions of an Urban Wilderness will greatly effect the outcome and methods we pursue to achieve it."
My own contribution (consisting of a surprisingly unbalanced anti-social approach) is awaiting approval from site admin but my comments regarding divergent assumptions on the part of a small collection of participants of the event are here:
Urban Wilderness Action Center » Blog Archive » Quiet Within the Noise: "It is interesting to observe the different culturo-social definitions which people are placing on the term ‘wilderness’. An interesting read on the divergent attitudes to ‘landscape’ is IMAGINED COUNTRY; SOCIETY CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT by John Rennie Short. In it he addresses the concepts of Wilderness versus City versus Landscape, and then conducts Historo-cultural case studies in ‘English Novels’, The ‘American “Western”, and Australian Landscape Painting.
The qualitative and political connotations we attached to our definitions of an Urban Wilderness will greatly effect the outcome and methods we pursue to achieve it."
Friday, February 19, 2010
The Eclectic Alliance
Jane Jacob and Christopher Alexander had quite revolutionary views of the city, similar to the new urbanism movement that is developing more momentum now. In this Planteizen article (here on planetizen) the link is discussed between the social views and ideals of 3 groups are discussed:
*western films depicting the urban hero
*the ideals of Jane Jacobs in the 60's
*and New Urbanists in the turn of the millenia.
I point out that there are other groups which perform active roles that run parrallel and conplimentary to Jane Jocobs' and New Urbanist thought. The KravMaga movement, and some other martial arts movements through history have arisen out of a desire for social justice, peaceful streets and safe neighbourhods. Many other sub-cultural cliches also have extremely open and interactive adgenda's despite the negative stereotypes which they so often seem to attract.
Jane Jacobs', Christopher Alexander, New Urbanists, Martial Artists and Fringe-Sub-Cultural Groups make a Beautiful Eclectic Alliance.
While you are there, be sure to read many of the other interesting articles on Planetizen. I recommend subscribing to their newsletters :)
*western films depicting the urban hero
*the ideals of Jane Jacobs in the 60's
*and New Urbanists in the turn of the millenia.
I point out that there are other groups which perform active roles that run parrallel and conplimentary to Jane Jocobs' and New Urbanist thought. The KravMaga movement, and some other martial arts movements through history have arisen out of a desire for social justice, peaceful streets and safe neighbourhods. Many other sub-cultural cliches also have extremely open and interactive adgenda's despite the negative stereotypes which they so often seem to attract.
Jane Jacobs', Christopher Alexander, New Urbanists, Martial Artists and Fringe-Sub-Cultural Groups make a Beautiful Eclectic Alliance.
While you are there, be sure to read many of the other interesting articles on Planetizen. I recommend subscribing to their newsletters :)
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