Environment

Dream Spheres and Urban Development

When she first told me her apartment complex was off NICE road I thought I heard ‘a nice road’. “Oh, great!” I replied, trying to show enthusiasm for surface pavement, “But what is the name?”

“NICE”, she said again, “The toll road, about 3 kilometers from Electronic City.”

There is a lot of ambiguity in India but I can’t say the same for subtlety, especially when it comes to new development. California County, Wall Street II, Prestigious White Meadows, Dream City…these are just a handful of communities I have come across in the past week.

Like many former British colonies, English street names and districts are common in urban India (e.g. Richmond Town, Frazier Town) but it seems, to me at least, that there might be a correlation between the liberalization of India’s economy and the rise in gated communities that make literal references to lifestyles specific to particular geographies. J. Naigar’s and John Stallmeyer’s excellent works on Bangalore helped me understand the city’s explosive growth, particularly in terms of human population and kilometers of land but neither prepared me for the flood of speculative real estate development I have encountered.

Some highlights below:

-Billboards testimonials. These are particularly popular along Bellary Road, from the airport into the city, but also on any toll road—such as the NICE ring road. These testimonials include a picture of an individual in some expressive gesture, such as a head cocked to one side. “I chose to relocate from _______ to Bangalore, and it was the wisest decision I’ve ever made.” A simple, straightforward affirmation. The logic of someone beyond middle age. It seems to recall Bangalore’s former identity as a ‘pensioner’s paradise’, namely because of the year-round good weather. The word is relocate, but the assumption is retire. Retire and invest.

-Radio. “Ooh gawd, Shriti,” begins one radio ad I heard approximately every five minutes for one entire weekend, “I’ve missed the real estate expo and now I’m back to driving all across the city looking at places.”

“Don’t worry Ashita, the expo has been extended for one week more!” Like all classic infomercials, we are told to ‘hurry’ because this ‘opportunity’ ‘won’t last.’

Another personal favorite is one in which a metaphor between finding the perfect wife and finding the perfect property is utilized. By doing his research, and refusing to settle for anything less than perfect, the man gets both the woman and the two-bedroom flat.

Or, here are some favorite snippets from the August 23^rd real estate section of the Times of India (Bangalore edition):

Toast, Cereals and Conversations: Nitesh Cape Cod is located just off the Sarjapur-Marathahalli Ring Road and within walking distance of leading IT offices.

-Niteshestates.com

Get ready to Start your Second Innings at your Own British Colonial Bungalow (sic): Fresh forest oxygen; Zero carbon footprint

-legacyhomes.in

Innovative aquafront: Where happiness Reflects. Exactly Facing the Lake

-innovativeconstructions.in

-Comment: This is not EXACTLY what I would call a Lake, nor is it exactly attractive.

Neo Bangalore—An Address you can flaunt about

Your property can help you fulfill your dreams, just like your family.

-HSBC

Even since my trip here last summer I feel what was a craze has now become an epidemic. That said, it’s hard to know what is aggressive advertising and what is reality. As an employee working in Electronics City, I’m amidst the target population of this advertising. And yet real estate has yet to become the topic of any lunchtime conversation. So is this ‘Exactly facing the Lake’ this ‘Toast, Cereals and Conversation’ a myth?

Regardless of whether or not Innovative aquafront actually faces a lake the reality of this city is uneven development. Bangalorians often talk about how just 20 years back all this area was scrubland. Aside from being called a pensioner’s paradise, Bangalore was also—and is still somewhat—referred to as India’s ‘Garden City’, an image the real estate industry loves to invoke. But can the legend of Bangalore’s garden paradise peacefully co-exist with the reality of high population growth? Can the city successfully attract people, development, and maintain ‘pristine natural surroundings’?

The directions for getting to my co-worker’s apartment were simple. After getting off the NICE toll road I was to turn left at the petrol station and continue down the winding road until I arrived at ‘Sabah Sunscape’.

The thing was, after a few hundred yards from the petrol station the road went from paved, to dirt, and then back to paved. We passed cows, pockets of dense forest, and area cleared for future development. We came to a fork in the road. The driver stopped a man in a white dhoti who seemed to be walking without purpose. “Where is Sabah Sunscape?” he asked in Kannada. The man gestured straight with a good deal of indifference. After a few minutes we came to a gate and two high rises. I got out of the rickshaw and walked toward the security station on the other side of the gate and told the guard the name of my friend. He checked the roster and shook his head. No one of that name lived there. After a few minutes of debate we solved the problem. I was at Sabah Sunbeam, NOT Sabah Sunscape. I walked back to the rickshaw. We continued driving until we finally arrived at an even larger gate set between two concrete pillars. We had arrived at Sabah Sunscape.

Later that night, coming back to Electronics City, I started to wonder what makes a city. If Electronics City does not include electronics manufacturing nor does it constitute an actual city, why does it have the name that it does? Electronics City is supposedly the ‘place’ that put Bangalore in the global marketplace, but for the first 15 years of existence it was considered to be outside the city. Now, Bangalore’s development stretches even further south. Was Sabah Sunscape and its environs really part of this Bangalore city? Historically, Bangalore has always been a low-density city. But that did not mean, I thought to myself, that some gated high-rise apartments located in the middle of nowhere could be part of the city, even if the city boundary will eventually give way and include it. Then again, what right did I, a child of Detroit, have to conclude what is urban and what is not?

Is urban the same thing as city? What is a city anyway?

Sometimes my grandfather likes to tell us about the first house he and my grandmother bought. The street on which the house was built wasn’t completed; they were the first homeowners on the block and because of this, my grandmother got to name the street. She chose ‘Devonshire’ because she thought is sounded very sophisticated.

It’s easy to be cynical of the HSBC quote about family and property, but the fact is that for many people this relationship and its connection to something loosely defined as a dream is very much a reality. Cities are also spaces/places of dreams, or where people go to fulfill something that might be described of a dream. Cities are constantly expanding in order to accommodate all those individuals, all those families, and all those dreams. So, I suppose when I think of it that way I can accept Sobha Sunscape as part of Bangalore and yet, when it comes to the reality of this piecemeal development, these self-contained bio-spheres of swimming pools and tennis courts cropping up in the middle of nowhere, claiming to have the amenities of both urban and suburban life I can’t help but think that these real estate dreams must be destroyed, as the future of the city depends on it.

Intertextual styleee

Intertextuality is a word used to describe the experience of finding one text within another; it is the rejection of closure and the championing of an open, iterative process of dialogue and meaning. I’ve long convinced myself that intertextuality did not come from Julia Kristeva nor Mikhail Bakhtin, but rather King Tubby. I’d argue that the inventor of dub reggae is the real father of deconstruction, the original palimpsest rocker. A radio repair technician by trade, King Tubby begin experimenting with the B-side instrumental tracks of Jamaican 45s, distorting the sounds beyond recognizability and thus, essentially, creating a ‘new’ sound. I think literary theory could learn a thing or two from dub and that cultural studies should give a big up to the pliability and constant evolution of Jamaican music.

Photo of King Tubby from the National Library of Jamaica.

My supreme love and massive respect for Jamaican music was part of the reason I decided to take an impromptu trip to the island this past January. A second reason was a long-standing, school girl crush on Michael Manley and his commitment to democratic socialism. But, there are others: Trevor Munroe (The Politics of Constitutional Decolonization), Eric Williams (Capitalism and Slavery), Walter Rodney (okay, technically not Jamaican), Obika Gray, Louise Bennett…I could go on. My point however is that the Jamaica I wanted to visit had nothing to do with beaches or Club Med and everything to with the urban political, language, and the aural.

The funny thing is, I never made it to Kingston. See, I arrived at a very special place and, even after ten days had passed, I still found it impossible to leave Great Bay in St Elizabeth Parish. The Jamaica that captured my heart had a lot to do with the (clearly un-urban) landscape, even more to do with the wonderful people I was able to meet, and the vernacular-ness I was able to experience.

A quick detour…

Many of us are exposed to Jamaica via online advertisements for holiday destinations. Book a flight to anywhere in North America in the middle of winter and, inevitably, an ad for a Caribbean vacation will appear in your side bar. Mind you, it’s generally not a flight but an inclusive package. The idea, no, fact of Jamaica as a unique, small-island nation quickly evaporates under more general concepts of ‘cheap’ ‘luxurious’ and ‘getaway.’

In 1989 The National Black Business Report covered Prime Minister Manley’s press conference addressing the state of Jamaican tourism. Tourism was the subject of a much larger conversation around the need for foreign direct investment, which was at an all time low. Manley’s Democratic Socialism, his belief that “A country like Jamaica cannot become a just society if you don’t redistribute some of the wealth and some of the benefits, and we’ve begun some of that redistribution,” and the actions he would take to go about achieving this (e.g. education for all, nationalizing utilities, redistribution of land to small farmers) did not sit well with the US, nor did his relationship with Castro. Between 1972 and 1976 Manley raised taxes on family incomes above $12,500 to 44 percent. The middle class was keen to leave and the US was all to happy to invite them to places like Miami and New York. Until the mid-1970s, the US received most its bauxite from the Caribbean, more specifically Jamaica. When Manley decided to raise taxes he didn’t just tax the middle class, he taxed bauxite in such a way that it became the most expensive exporter of bauxite in the world. In addition to driving out the middle class, he also drove away foreign investment. Furthermore, by the early 80s, the US significantly reduced their annual amount of USAID, from roughly 13 million to just under four. This is why, going back to this press conference, Manley is making the connection between foreign direct investment and tourism.

Anyway, I don’t wish to linger too much in the fascinating climate of 1970s and early 80s Caribbean politics but I will just say that, by the mid 80s, a number of factors, including the rising popularity of mass tourism led many small island states to believe that international tourism was the best way to go about achieving international investment. What distinguished Jamaica from some of the other islands was its image as an incredibly violent place, something that would, and continues, to influence visitors to the country.

In that 1989 conference Manley explains to the audience that Jamaica “Has a duty to their guests to make them safe and to help them feel safe…In fact Jamaica is a safe destination but no one could really say there isn’t the sort of incident you might find in New York, or all over the place…we are concerned about some problems we inherent, like harrassment…but the fact remains, and forgive me for having to say this, but I think Jamaica might be just about the most fantastic vacation product in the world.”

There are some (including myself) who believe that much of violence in Jamaica can be traced back to the US, who, in attempt to thwart the country’s relationship with Cuba and the Soviet Union by dismantling the Manley regime, facilitated the entry of arms into the country in order to not only encourage violence and political opposition, but also create an image of violence that would discourage Americans from taking holiday vacations in the country.

The perception of Jamaica as a violent and dangerous place continues to persist today. My point is neither to support or deny violence but rather focus on the how that perception influences tourism within the country. People buy all-inclusive packages because it is easy, but do they also do it because it is perceived as ‘safe’? Either way, I would argue that the experience of Jamaica becomes somehow reduced to the image of the beach, Bob Marley, the Jamaican flag, and a bottle of Red Stripe.

I’m quite sure American travelers to Jamaica have been briefed on the violence within the country, but do they make the connection between politics, tourism, and ideologies of power?

Jamaican music of this time period sure did. And not just in terms of lyrical content, but even more so in terms of structural form. Let me quote en masse from the master theorist of subculture himself, Dick Hebdige:

“Reggae draws on a quite specific experience…It is cast in a unique style, in a language of its own–Jamaican patois, that shadow form, ‘stolen’ from the Master and mysteriously inflected, ‘decomposed’ and reassembled in the passage from Africa to the West Indies. It moves to more ponderous and moody rhythms. It ‘rocks stead’ around a bass-line which is more prominent and more austere. Its rhetoric is more densely constructed, and less diverse in origin; emanating in large part from two related sources–a distinctively Jamaican oral culture and an equally distinctive appropriation of the Bible. There are strong elements of Jamaican pentecostal, of ‘possession by the Word’, and the call and response pattern which binds the preacher to his congregation, is reproduced in reggae,” (Hebdige, 31).

Now, since I mentioned my love for King Tubby, let me quote again:

“Reggae began to slow down to an almost African metabolism. The lyrics became more self-consciously Jamaican, more dimly enunciated and overgrown until they disappeared altogether the in the ‘dub’, to be replaced by the ‘talk over’. The ‘dread’, the ganja, the Messianic feel of this ‘heavy’ reggae, its blood and fire rhetoric, its troubled rhythms can all be attributed to the Rasta influence….It was during this period of growing disaffection and joblessness, at a time when conflict between black youths and the police was being openly acknowledged in the press…With dub and reggae, this rebellion was given a much wider currency: it was generalize and theorized,”(Ibid, 36-7).

In his article “The Popular Culture of Illegality: Crime and the Politics of Aesthetics in Urban Jamaica (2012), Rivke Jaffe makes an insightful connection between the dons (informal political leaders…somewhat akin to Italian mafia or Japanese Yakuza) of Kingston and soundsystem culture. Jaffee attributes the ‘almost supernatural’ or iconic status of dons to a unique urban aesthetic of performative music culture. What I would like to focus on is the unique structure of having both a DJ and a selector.

Growing up in Detroit, I had my own unique experience with DJ culture, particularly through Detroit techno. This form of dance music is also, in my opinion, about intertextuality where no one DJ is Author. Rather, each DJ acts as an author of an experience–a single moment in time and space. A track may be reproduced, but it is never repeated. History then, becomes layered, textual, but never linear.

The early reggae records contained one side with lyrics and the other was the instrumental version. This was so that the track could be played live, with the DJ adding his or her own lyrics according to the context, the atmosphere of the moment. Jaffee points out that DJs will often, in the middle of a track, give a big up to a celebrated don of the neighborhood. Sometimes, the lyrics become a story or a narrative of how that don came to power.

What I found interesting about my encounter with the Jamaican soundsystem was just how much I liked the talkativeness and performative within DJ culture. Here in the US, I’ve never liked MCs (Beastie Boys excluded, obviously). I find it jarring, disruptive and often in bad taste. I think, as I reflect on this, it’s because the MCs I hear have nothing substantive to say. Not that their Jamaican counterparts always have something substantive to say–but whatever they do say always sounds good. You can literally slurp down the riddims cause they are that smooth. I think it’s because they remain situated within the context, by context I mean the situation, the audience, the moment. So although many Jamaicans are critical of the direction reggae music has taken in the past decade (e.g. dancehall is all bling with no substance)–coming from my perspective I found Jamaica’s music scene ripe with substantial lyrical style. Music is, I feel, about communication. Watching the unspoken communication between the DJ and the selector, between the selector, the DJ and the audience, was really an amazing experience. A friend of mine explained that the job of the selector is to size up the audience and make sure everyone in the room gets at least one song. You feel it. There is the collective that is constantly dancing, but sometimes, depending on the call outs and the track, there are some who come into the foreground and then recede again into the background so that what you feel is both fleeting and steady.

A Comprehensive Ideal of Self-Determination

Last week Susan Fainstein gave a talk on her new book, which revisits the major theme of her career–the just city–by trying to develop an urban theory of justice. Her criteria are diversity, democracy, and equity, three philosophical principles (or questions) she develops from the work of John Rawls, Martha Nussbaum, Nancy Fraser, and Iris Marion Young. I’m not entirely familiar with all these writers nor have I read Fainstein’s book. Her lecture, however, caused me to revisit the question I continually struggle with, namely the role of urban planning, which in this context, can be posited as whether urban planning helps or ultimately hinders the actualization of a just city.

Many people often ask me what exactly urban planning is anyway. Although I’m ultimately unsure, I keep two working definitions in mind.

Urban planning is about the distribution of resources.

Urban planning is an intervention meant to disrupt the current conditions within the built environment.

The former I’ve learned in school, the later I’d describe as empirical observation. There is a temporal quality to each, the former (the more traditional definition) suggests a need to plan long-term and comprehensively, to think carefully about how want, need, and demand for resources might change over time. There is an economic assumption (i.e. supply and demand), a spatial assumption (i.e. distribution), and an alluding to the ethical (i.e. that universal rationality will guide us in our decisions and actions). To achieve this requires a bird’s-eye view of the environment, to undertake such distribution we must distance ourselves from the actual existing space and context. In this sense, definition one lends itself to a top-down, urban planning-as-expert approach.

The latter for me is ambiguous, it accepts that urban planning is potentially liberating and potentially destructive. An intervention could be planned or unplanned, immediate or long-term. It moves away from the assumption of a universal rationality and allows urban planning to be done by anyone, using almost anything.

The one author I have read from Fainstein’s list is Young, a brilliant thinker on ideas of democracy, inclusion, and justice. Two points Young continually circles back to are the ideals of self-determination and self-development. However, nowhere did (and I would argue can) this ideal surface in Fainstein’s examples (geographically summarized as London, New York, Amsterdam, and Singapore) and, when I think of it, I find this absent in others who are writing about urban planning and the just city. Let me be clear. I’m not questioning whether these authors do or don’t support ideals of self-determination and self-development, I am questioning whether or not urban planning (planning actualized) is not inevitably in conflict with these ideals.

Let me try to be more clear. The ideals of self-determination and self-development are democratic ideals as in they are a product of the American revolution and hundreds of years of philosophical thought, and actual history. Urban planning, if we adhere to the first definition, is also based on democratic ideals, namely, the distribution of resources for the greater good of society. But of course, this is in direct contradiction to the ideal of self-determination. How can you be self-determined if someone else, someone who claims to be an expert, chooses where, when, and how your resources are distributed? Some may call this the capitalist-democracy contradiction, I would like to, if possible, extend this contradiction, move it away from systems of governing to something perhaps more fundamental.

For Spinoza, freedom was understood of as necessity and self-determined, which is distinguished from in-determined or what we might call un-freedom. I think Young would approve of Spinoza’s definition of freedom and I think this definition is how I understand the relationship between urban planning and the just city. In other words, planning as an intervention, an intervention that is a necessity, a necessity that is so obvious it is done almost without planning. What do I mean? I mean that by accepting that second definition of urban planning we understand that the people running Dollar Van Demos in Flatbush, Brooklyn, the entire site of Dharavi, India, Bansky, anyone who is intervening/altering the urban environment out of some feeling of necessity is essentially contributing to an urban theory of justice through urban planning.

In this way, I hope to begin thinking more about Andy Merrifield’s claim that the right to the city is too narrow a concept. I would like to remove the ‘planning’ from ‘urban planning’ so that I may dismiss the idealism associated with planning (i.e. that we can plan for a better, a more ‘just’ future) and focus on the urban, which comes with its own set of ideals that eventually need to be unpacked and challenged.

Intentional String Theory (aesthetic with no inside)

Can aesthetic reveal truths? Or is it that when we find truth (an instinctual, fleeting feeling of certain ‘rightness’) we also find aesthetic? I think both are possible, but, at this moment, I feel the urge to state that aesthetic can never be intentional. When we create for aesthetic and aesthetic only, it disappears. It disappears and is replaced by some vulgar representation of truth.

Seeing Fred Sandback’s string sculptures at DIA Beacon strikes me as pure aesthetic because they were not created for the sake of aesthetic, but rather out of a desire for truth. They arrive at aesthetic by way of challenging certain truths about space and geometry, by becoming a physical manifestation of a conceptual paradox. What do I mean? Using taut pieces of string, Sandback makes cartesian forms that stretch across entire rooms, down the long, vertical hallways of DIA, and all the way to the top of the ceiling. Each piece takes up space, but eludes the actual occupying of it, we feel intensely fulfilled looking at these beautiful shapes, objects, but note the irony–essentially, nothing is there.

One can hardly see these pieces; at a distance, our eyes immediately gravitate toward other works, especially Jean-Lun Moulene’s Body (not literally!). Most of the strings are white or off-white; consciously positioned in response to pre-exisiting walls and lighting so that the awareness of these pieces occurs only once we are upon them, when we are close enough to see what is (and what is not) there.

The aesthetic arises from what is and what is not, it is the experience of viewing, even interacting with the work. What makes DIA so pleasing is the space, we can walk 350 degrees around the Serra’s or Beuys’s and yet, the presence of the Institution is strong. Signs that forbid touching are numerous, our encounter with the work thus remains relegated to the visual experience–save for Sandback whose work we can walk through, over, under….we can utilize almost any preposition in relation to his work simply because it’s not really there.

The string becomes the mediator between the space and the human, the string then is intentionality. According to Sandback, his intention was to “assert a certain place or volume in its full materiality without occupying and obscuring it.” Insanity right?! The quote, ripped from its context sounds like a defiant architectural student, all theory, no practice. But, see, Sanback actually constructs this abstraction, and by constructing it, the work reveals a certain truth.

But what about aesthetic? It’s there, but is it deliberate? I’m tempted to ask what came first, the concept or vision? I think we usually think of these as sharing the same side of the same coin but I’m tempted to call them different sides of the same coin–a kind of Janus face of artistic creation. Vision is just that, it starts with a visual reference; we may not know yet what it means, but we see it, strong and clear. Concept on the other hand starts with a question, a riddle that must be explored. It takes many tries until we find the right way of representing this concept, and even then we most certainly are left unsatisfied. This, I think, is where aesthetic is the strongest, when the visual is born of a question. I think this is why I feel so close to Sandback’s work, because he started by asking many questions, about space, presence, absence. By answering these questions however, he produces even more, so that we are, like these pieces, always occupying something that can never actually be filled.

Occupy Wall Street

“Che Guevara was not a communist,” a girl says without glancing up from her cell phone, nodding in the direction of a group of five people wearing occupy the hood shirts; the face of Che in between the words occupy and hood. From where I sit, it’s too loud to hear what someone might have said to provoke this comment, which seems to float upward and hover in this atmosphere of politically charged statements. But don’t get me wrong, no animosity is felt between the two groups, or any of the groups occupying Wall Street. For me, this is the basis of the occupation’s success. I decide that the phrase–this is what democracy looks like–now a staple to the movement, is in fact incredibly apt. The whole reason this is a democratic space is because there is nothing reductionist about it. Unlike other protests that have occurred in North America over the past decade, OWS is about inclusion; if the environment is your thing, anarchy, Jesus, well, you’re welcome into this space. To see Zucchoti Park is to see complexity, but, in a society based on spectacle, image making, and concrete statements, the complexity is constantly being reduced, for both good and bad.

Take for example, this dichotomy of 1% and 99%. The logic behind this is inclusion, the argument that pretty much everyone is part of the 99%. But to say that that 1% (often referred to as bankers) is not concerned with the 99% is to simplify something of great complexity. How much funding for NYC arts and cultural organizations come from that 1%? You like the Bang on a Can marathon? Did you go see The Creators Project this weekend? Stop by the IBM Think exhibition at Lincoln Center? How about Target’s free Fridays at MoMA? I’m told by an elderly man that this is class warfare. I must muse over this. I’m hearing the word working class a lot, but I’m pretty sure the working class no longer exists. All of us, even that 1% on Wall Street, work for a wage that is determined by market forces. Whether that wage is minimum or maximum it is a wage that is spent on means of consumption (food, clothing, shelter) of many different scales. In the end, it is a wage that determines and is determined by the forces of production and reproduction.We are blaming individuals as opposed to institutional structures, and even then, I find it problematic to see our institutional structures as entirely negative. Which is why, when I go to hear Brian Holmes speak over by Mark di Suvero’s sculpture I’m both fascinated and disturbed by the whole act of repetition, the communication technique used at the General Assembly meetings.

Because loud-speaker devices cannot be used, in order to be heard throughout the Park, the human speaker must pause after every sentence or two and let the audience repeat it so that the statement ripples through the crowd. Now here was someone who’s work and ideas I absolutely love, yet, I initially felt uncomfortable engaging in this act of repetition whose origins seemed to be somewhere between the game Telephone and famous 20th century dictators. Isn’t this form of communication just one of the many things we are standing up against? We must think before we repeat, right? Yes and no. Voices are suddenly being heard for the first time. People who wouldn’t usually listen to each other are. Everyone has a different agenda, but, by repeating what each person says, we are acknowledging the many diverging opinions that make up this space. The General Assembly is a huge component of Zucchoti Park’s democracy. The more General Assemblies you go to, the more you understand and appreciate the structure of these meetings. There’s a vocabulary of hand gestures that allow individuals to silently express themselves, wiggling fingers for agreement, thumbs up and down…confirming that this is an ongoing process of direct democracy.

“We need to find new forms of refusal,” Holmes concludes.

The crowd repeats it, as do I, and then the moderator opens the meeting up to questions. A flabby man with grey sweats and a blue shirt that says Army in white lettering steps over the people sitting, through the people standing, and makes his way next to Holmes. He cups his hands together. “I’m doing a television show and need three volunteers.”

The crowd repeats it. “I’m doing a show and need three volunteers.”

“To be interviewed about Occupy Wall Street.”

The phrase barely reaches its second repetition before a sea of hands shoot up. An unsettling wave of skepticism momentarily washes over me as I’m reminded of Zizek’s cautionary note during a different General Assembly, “Don’t fall in love with yourselves, carnivals come cheap.”

I whole-heartily support OWS. I am proud and humbled by this collective movement and yet I cannot align myself with any one statement I hear being made. I am, in fact, so uncertain about the world that I don’t know how to speak. But my confusion is not entirely a problem for me. As awe-struck as I am by Occupy Wall Street, I’m equally awe-struck by contemporary history, structures of powers and individuals that have brought us to this current state. It is so fascinating I risk treating it as I would a good novel; anticipation, horror, wonder, and shock, the plot is so engaging I forget I am actually a part of it.

And this brings me back to the present. The physical place that is being occupied. This first thing I’m struck by is the high level of functionality, which seems absolutely organic, something I would have never thought possible. There’s a clothing donation and distribution box, a food area, a sanitation section. I’ve decided this is where I belong, on the logistical side of things, because at the end of the day, what draws me to OWS is it’s ability to create a working space. I’m happy to wash some dishes, to sort trash, simple tasks that are in themselves reductions and binary but help distract me from the larger binaries that remain unanswered.

A few Saturday’s ago, I went to the Au Bon Pain nearby to get a coffee and, like the other 50 people, to use the bathroom. Since late September there’s been twice the amount of staff at this franchise, but no one is getting time and half for their extra hours. I ask the guy behind the register if it’s been annoying to have so many more clients. He shrugs his shoulders, “Nah, it’s cool.” In the 45 minutes I sit drinking my coffee, the staff empty the bathroom trash three times. As I get up to leave an elderly police officer walks in from outside and gets into the men’s line. His head is down but I can see his face which looks sad, tired or perhaps just indifferent. He has a frail body, wiry hair, and thick glasses. Looking at him, I’m reminded of my grandfather. He waits behind two high school kids wearing classic Jordans, dark rinse jeans, and white tee shirts hand painted to say Occupy Wall Street. They’re carrying plastic H&M bags and cameras. The kids observe the cop, trying to decide if and how they should react to his presence. But the cop doesn’t even look up. He keeps staring at the ground as he walks into the stall, confrontation has been avoided, either intentionally or unintentionally. In the end, the boy and his friend seem okay with that.

New forms of refusal means not placing blame in obvious places. This cop, like these teenage boys helps constitute this 99% that everyone is speaking of. Class structure is just one of many structures flourishing under our present socio-economic system. As Karl Polanyi makes clear in The Great Transformation, early capitalist society was not just about an agitated working class. There was also the peasantry. Although both groups were essentially exploited under this new economic system, they were not in solidarity. For some, the question was hours in the work week, for others it was a question of land laws and agrarian tariffs. Occupy Wall Street will continue to be a success so long as it continues this pattern of inclusiveness. This inclusiveness must stretch across many spheres and must ultimately reach even that so called 1%. It’s a system, not people, that needs to be destroyed. For that to occur, 100% must understand why. Trying to include everyone is obviously messy and complex, but not anymore messy than our current system. To keep binaries such as 1% and 99% is just another way of keeping structure of “us” and “them,” structures that will inevitably retain class-based, racially based, occupation-based, gendered, religious sentiments.

One of the greatest critiques of the protest is that there is no clear objective, no singular demand, and therefore, no way to gauge whether conditions have been satisfied. I completely disagree with this critique. I think to make change we need to get even messier, so that people no longer know who’s part of the 99% and who’s part of the 1%. Hopefully, this will become so confusing that the complexity of our current structure is weakened to the point that the only thing left to do is move forward.

634-5789

The best part about Planner’s Network conferences is the organization’s ability to connect participants to a diverse range of projects and issues underway in the host city. This year’s theme on regional economic development was emphasized in the various excursions that took place throughout Memphis. Some highlights:

Shelby Farms Greenline

On Saturday about eight of us had the good fortune of biking the Shelby Farms Greenline, a former rail line turned urban greenway. Our hero of the day was Kyle Wagenschutz of Revolution Bikes (read their history and see why they are seriously revolutionary) who led us through the City’s Midtown and East neighborhoods, along the Wolf River, past two penitentiaries, and to the Farm–all the while interjecting interesting historical facts.

Wolf River, made famous by Jeff Buckley’s body.

Shelby Farms is the aftermath of the Shelby County Work House/Penal Farm, which was established in 1819 by the County as a facility designed to change human behavior. According to County history, in 1883 private contractors hired inmates to build roads and rail lines. The county was paid 10 cents a day for this labor, allowing the Farm to be entirely self-sufficient. By the mid-twentieth century however, this penal model was considered outmoded, but as google maps illustrates, Shelby had already cultivated quite a love for correctional institutes.

Where would you like to serve out your term?

In 1970, the 4,500 acres of Shelby Farms was declared surplus land (seeing as how there were four nearby prisons) and put up for private bids. According to Kyle, one idea floated was a safari park. This vision was eclipsed when former mayor Bill Morris and Park Superintendent Tom Hill found a very good deal on some 200 buffalo back in 1989. The buffalo continue to populate the land and are in fact available for adoption (in the metaphorical-pledge-a-donation-kind-of-way) to help raise funds to combat a parasite due to rampant inbreeding. On this particular day, we had the good fortune of seeing the Park set up for Israel Festival.

The park is considered one of the largest urban parks in the country–mind you the only thing perhaps remotely urban about it is that it has a Master Plan (and a plan to make it less urban at that) but with James Corner leading the redevelopment, maybe nearby inmates will have a chance to appreciate some marvelous Diller Scofidio + Renfro benches (!!!)

Another highlight was getting treated to lunch at the High Point Hub Cafe by the super nice and innovative Charles McVean of the Aerobic Cruiser Hybrid Cycle, which, by resembling a moving couch perhaps really is a viable alternative to the car…

Chicago-based geographer Andrea Craft tests it out.

Kyle and Charles are surrounded by conference participants.

Soulsville Community Charrette

The name Soulsville reflects the commonly held belief that this geographic area in South Memphis is in fact the birthplace of American soul music. Soulsville’s impressive legacy of civil rights activism and home of the first African American College, first female educational institution, and, of course Stax Records (call 634-5789!) has not safeguarded the community against the poverty, disinvestment, and suburban flight in the past 30 years. However, despite adversity, if there is one thing this Charrette emphasized, it was the innovative thinking that is occurring on a neighborhood level.

On our tour we saw the Lemoyne-Owen College community garden–a reminder of food desertification within Soulsville. The Memphis Black Arts Alliance took over an old firehouse slated for demolition and helped initiate community-sponsored murals that not only draw attention to the rich musical history, but also beautify aging infrastructure. My personal favorite site was just off Beechwood Avenue and South Bellevue. Next to the SMA citizen’s charter is a coin laundry facility that will soon begin offering social services such childcare and home ownership advice. The idea behind this is that people do their laundry when they have one or two hours of downtime, these facilities thus become places for social exchange. Providing such services in a well-used neighborhood facility allows for more widespread access.

Lastly, I must acknowledge the amazing Southern hospitality of the University of Memphis planning department, particularly the extremely hilarious Ken Reardon, who is probably not an actual Southerner, but nonetheless went out of his way to ensure that everyone had a good time, which is maybe why I never actually saw his bow tie tied.

Deep Sea Sovereignty

Sovereignty is about power, boundaries, and sight. To possess we must define what it is we are possessing, to define we must see. How can one truly govern what one cannot see?

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a story about one man’s attempt to possess the unpossessible, which, on a surface level, is all that is below the surface (i.e. the deep sea). On a deeper level, it is about the characteristically masculine battle with his unsovereign unconscious. Verne is an unquestionably brilliant writer; we have grandiose 19th century themes of power, technology, and the obsessive controlling of nature, all of which is elucidated via Captain Nemo’s deep sea adventure in the Nautilus, the ultimate vessel of technological sovereignty.

Take for example chapter 22: the Captain allows his captives (i.e. the Professor, the Canadian Ned Land, and Conseil, the Professor’s faithful Dutch servant) to leave the Nautilus and visit the land of Papua New Guinea. The attempt to hunt local game draws attention from the native Papuans, who follow the men back to the Nautilus. The Professor is quite anxious and brings this to the attention of the Captain.

‘Ha, it is you, professor? he said to me. ‘Well, have you had good sport? Have you botanised successfully?’

‘Yes, captain,’ answered I, ‘but we have, unfortunately, brought back a troop of bipeds, whose neighborhood appear to me dangerous.’

‘What bipeds?’

‘Savages.’

‘Savages?’ answered Captain Nemo in an ironical tone. ‘And you are astonished, professor, that having set foot on one of the lands of this globe, you find savages there? Where are there no savages? Besides, those you call savages, are they worse than others?’

To his astonishment, the Captain is more irked by the Professor’s judgment than his fears. Nemo dismisses him with the reminder that while aboard the Nautilus, there is nothing to fear.

‘M. Aronnax,’ answered Captain Nemo, who had again placed his fingers on the organ keys, ‘if all the natives of Papua were gathered together on that shore, the Nautilus would have nothing to fear from their attacks.’

Over the course of the chapter, both Professor and reader are wondering how exactly the Captain will prevent the Papuans from entering the Nautilus. In order to replenish air reserves, the vessel will soon need to open its panels, thus exposing itself to the ever increasing presence of natives.

‘I have given order to have the panels opened.’

‘What about the Papuans?’

‘M. Aronnax,’ answered Captain Nemo tranquilly, ‘it is not so easy to enter the Nautilus through panels, even when they are opened.’

The lids were opened on the outside. Seventy horrible faces appeared. But the first of the natives who put his hand on the balustrade, thrown backwards by some invisible force, fled, howling and making extraordinary gambols. Ten of his companions succeed him. Ten had the same fate. Conseil was in ecstasies. Ned Land, carried away by his violent instincts, sprang up the staircase. But, as soon as he had seized the handrail with both hands he was overthrown in his turn.

‘Malediction!’ he cried. ‘I am thunderstruck.’

That word explained it all to me. It was no longer a hand rail but a metal cable, charged with electricity. Whoever touched it felt a formidable shock, and that shock would have been mortal if Captain Nemo had thrown all the current of his apparatus into this conductor (131-2).

This is one of many examples in which the Nautilus is literally the vessel of Nemo’s power. While the Professor and Nemo are similar in many regards (men of science, technology, and systems of meticulous classification), both reader and Professor quickly become enamoured with Nemo’s ability to control every situation, to transform the bottom of the sea into his own sovereign state.

Sovereignty at this time in Europe involved the ability to take land from those considered less organized, to see and identify what was uncontrollable and control it. It was, in short, colonization. While Nemo and the Nautilus represent the ultimate patriarchy, there is an ambiguity to what such patriarchy entails. Several examples, such as Nemo’s challenge to the assumption of what is ‘savage,’ leads us to believe that Nemo’s deep sea sovereignty is about power, yes, control of course, but also a skepticism toward 19th century social rationalities. His sovereignty appears to the reader as ‘just.’ (‘Do you believe that I ignore the existence of suffering beings, of races oppressed in this world, of miserable creatures to solace, of victims to revenge?’ he rhetorically asks the Professor one day).

But, as the story continues, we see that actually it is the Professor who possesses greater rationality. Through his conversations with the Professor, we see that Whatever might be the motives that had forced him to seek independence under the seas, he was still a man! (217).

While his underwater kingdom represents sovereignty in its freedom from external control, Nemo is unable to control the desire to demonstrate his power, and for his captives, particularly the Professor, to acknowledge and be awestruck of that power. Nemo’s journey to the South Pole becomes the ultimate display of power.

‘Ah professor!’ answered the captain in an ironical tone, ‘you are always the same! You see only obstacles and difficulties. But I affirm to you that not only will the Nautilus be set free, but it will go farther still!’

‘Farther south?’ I asked, looking a the captain.

‘Yes, sir, it will go to the Pole.’

‘To the Pole!’ I cried, unable to restrain a movement of incredulity.

‘Yes,’ replied the captain coldly, ‘to the Arctic Pole, to that unknown point were all the meridians of the globe meet. You know whether I do all I please with the Nautilus.’

Yes. I knew it. I knew that man pushed boldness; to temerity…It then came into my head to ask Captain Nemo if he had already discovered this Pole, which no human being had set foot upon.

‘No professor,’ he answered, ‘and we will discover it together’ (259).

Verne’s choice of the deep sea is the perfect stage for exploring the murky depths of human psyche and terra unknown. In the beginning, Nemo appears to us as superhuman in his ability to control not only that which is around him, but what is also within him. The Nautilus is a vessel of progress, but we begin to see that it is also a vessel of stagnation. Captain Nemo’s mastery of the environment is largely superficial, in his head. His renunciation of society, his choice of alienation over integration means progress as such is submerged in subjective interpretation.

Captain Nemo, leaning against a moss-covered fragment of ruin, remained motionless as if petrified in mute ecstasy. Was he dreaming about the long-gone generations and asking them the secret of human destiny? Was it here that this strange man came to refresh his historical memories and live again that ancient existence? (226)

When we arrive at the South Pole, the one place Nemo believes he will truly be at home, [a] master of unbound space (255), disaster begins.

His countenance, habitually so impassive, revealed a certain anxiety. He looked at the compass and manometer in silence, and put his finger on a point of the planisphere in that part that represented the South Seas.

I did not wish to interrupt him. When, a few instances afterwards, he turned towards me, I said to him, using an expression he had used in Torres Straits–

‘An incident, captain?’

‘No, professor,’ he replied. ‘An accident this time.’

‘Grave?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘The Nautilus has split upon something?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘Through a caprice of Nature, not through the incapacity of man. There has not been a fault committed in our manoeuvres. But no one can prevent equilibrium producing its effects. We man resist human laws, but we cannot stand against natural ones’ (277).

Here, we might recall another remarkable novel from the 19th century that uses the polar regions as the site of epic battle between man and nature. It is only in this unforgiving environment that Victor Frankenstein truly realizes that his quest for scientific wisdom and the control of nature has ultimately destroyed everything he cares about.

In this landscape, where water becomes earth, liquid becomes solid, Nemo realizes he is the sovereign ruler of nothing other than the desire to be such. The ice mountain that has turned over and blocked the Nautilus’s passage has destroyed Nemo’s illusion of control. Although the Captain can use scientific jargon to explain the cause of this event (‘When icebergs are undermined by warmer water or reiterated shocks, their centre of gravity ascends‘), he cannot transcend the reality that the iceberg is in fact impassable. At this moment, we see that his sovereignty, much like the sovereignty of 19th century imperialism, is about erasure and fiction. The act of making something legible is what allows for control. It is the ability to erase that which is illegible and rewrite, even at the risk of misrepresentation. The journey of the Nautilus is the journey by which the unconscious passes into the conscious, by which power extends across a geographical territory–until we reach the end of the earth.

Although Nemo has a Habermasean deep-seated cognitive interest in technical control, it is at this point of the adventure that he comprehends that man’s attempt to dominate nature is the most effective form of domination of self. True, the Nautilus eventually frees itself from the icy grips of the Pole, but the Captain must acknowledge that he is no longer in control. The dichotomy between man and nature, conscious and unconscious, ruler and governed is shattered. A slow, self-destructive attitude takes hold of the Captain in that classic 19th century style. But, by this time, Nemo’s legacy has already penetrated the consciousness of his captives.

‘When we return to land,’ added Conseil, ‘blase’ with so many marvels of Nature, what shall we think of the miserable continents and little works done by the hand of man? No, the inhabited world is no longer worthy of us’ (280).

Work’s Cited:

Chorely, R. J ‘Geography as Human Ecology’ in R.J. Chorely (ed) Directions in Geography, London: Metheun.

Gidden’s A. New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretive Sociologies, London: Hutchinson.

Habermas, J. Knowledge and Human Interest. London: Heinmann, 1972.

Verne, J. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. London: Harper Collins, 2010.

Material Proximity

Where does sculpture end and geography begin? That was the unshakable question that developed in my head during a recent trip to the Noguchi Museum in Queens.

A few days prior, I’d been reading Derek Gregory’s Ideology, Science and Human Geography chapter “Structural explanation in geography,” a discussion of Maus and Levi-Strauss’s elementary methods of structural analysis by way of Gould’s argument that it is not the uniqueness of spatial organization, but the numerous similarities amongst spatial patterns that should be considered. After laying the appropriate groundwork, Gregory asks the following:

“Does this mean, then, that spatial structures are simply a product of a universal way of looking at the world–that their basic forms are no more than the limited combinations allowed by the mind’s inner logic of classification?”(104).

Why do I bring it up? Because visiting the Noguchi Museum did more than answer this (okay, probably rhetorical) question, it rendered it almost entirely irrelevant.

“Sculpture,” said Noguchi, “is about a relationship that has nothing to do with message, but people’s place in the world. It is something to be experienced, not just looked at.” Here, we are confronted with the dilemma of human geography. How do you represent cognitive experience? In other words, how do you reproduce the unreproducible?

Geography isn’t just the visual representation (i.e. mapping) of people and objects in the world, it is about giving structure to it.”The geometry of location is also the geometry of explanation,”(Gregory, 74).

In my opinion, what makes Noguchi’s work so breathtaking is it embodies both the universal and the particular. Although we cannot ‘read’ these objects, they are in many ways a geometry of location and explanation. The sculptures embrace the beauty of chance [1] and horror of deliberation [2]. These are forms that arise from contradiction, not dichotomy and leave us with a hint of a Burkeian sublime.

That sublime is, in many ways, extremely personal [3]. Although Noguchi’s work is most probably described as ‘modern,’ his sculptures and landscape designs do not subscribe to some kind of International Style de-emphasis of place. Unlike his contemporaries, Noguchi doesn’t pretend to eliminate himself from the work. Why? Well, to borrow from Gregory, it is because “Spatial order….reside[s] inside the mind and not inside the landscape,”(104) Or, as Olsson believes, because spatial order can “reveal more about the language we are talking in than about the things we are talking about“(53).

I believe Noguchi recognized that to eliminate the self (i.e. the subject) would produce a formless (i.e. meaningless) object, and let’s be clear, abstraction and formlessness are not the same thing.

In 1927, Noguchi moved to Paris to study with Constantin Brancusi. Although he admired Brancusi’s ability to distill as opposed to reproduce form, Noguchi was wary of Branscui’s prophecy (“You are the generation that begins with abstraction”). During the decades in between the wars, Noguchi continued to embrace portrait sculpture, worked with Diego Rivera on murals in Mexico City, and took advantage of the many place-based commissions he was receiving, like the Associated Press Building Plaque at Rockefeller Center.

His deliberate turn to abstraction occurred after moving to the Poston, Arizona internment camp for Japanese-Americans in May of 1940. It was a voluntary move, Noguchi hoped to improve the experience for internees through the teaching of art. However, his success was limited. In a letter to Man Ray (May 30th, 1940) he writes:

This is the weirdest, most unreal situation–like a dream–I wish I were out. Outside, it seems from the inside, history is taking flight and passes forever.

The following November he left Poston. No longer interested in “message-laden work,” he moved to New York, established a studio in MacDougal Alley, and began working on his first illuminated sculptures.

In 1960 he moved to Vernon Boulevard, Queens in order to be near the marble and stone suppliers. He eventually bought the old photengraving plant which is the now the museum.

Noguchi was a man interested in “how to transform but not destroy,”(Noguchi) the material he was working with. This is, in many ways, also the task of the geographer. In both we see what Levi-Strauss describes as the attempt to establish where nature ends and society begins. While one is perhaps more literal than the other, both play off one another and remind us that yes, perhaps Gould is correct.

[1] He often described his work as “a record of accidents” and would leave a piece alone for years in order to ‘heal’ and allow its beauty to re-emerge on its own. “Let stone be stone” he would say.

[2] At the same time he was also accused of “excessive polish.”

[3] Noguchi was also infamous for keeping his best work for himself, something that infuriated many of his dealers.

Gregory, Derek. Ideology, Science and Human Geography. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1978.

Gould, P. ‘Some Steineresque comments and Monodian asides on geography in Europe,’ Geoform, vol. 17, pp. 9-13.

Olsson, G. ‘The dialectics of spatial analysis,’ Antipode, vol. 6, no. 3, pp.50-62.

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

The title of this post is borrowed from Zizek’s 2010 book, a title that accurately describes the irony of a recent ad in the New York Times. Under the guise of tragedy, Eton Corporation’s “Help Japan by donating an Emergency Radio” illustrates the farce of contemporary consumption and its cultivation of an ‘authentic’ self by promoting consumerism that benefits not just the individual but society at large.

This Palo Alto-based company’s ad is simple, aesthetically pleasing, and tangible (I buy this physical object that is then donated to someone who is in immediate need of it), a relief to the thousands of people who want to help but are overwhelmed by the complexity of international aid relief and skeptical of its impact. One major complaint throughout the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami/earthquake was not that there wasn’t enough aid, but that it wasn’t reaching those who needed it. Eton appeals to the educated consumer who looks at an image of the emergency radio and easily envisions its arrival to a relief center somewhere in Northeast Japan.

As often happens in print journalism, the advertisement conflicts with the message of the article in close proximity to it. “Finding Reassurance in Order” is about the ability for daily life (hair cuts, onsens, bicycle repairing, dental visits) to continue thanks to “a passion for order and civility so deep-rooted that the chaos and despair of 1,000 strangers is subdued to the level of disarray expected at the monthly meeting of a book-lovers’ club,”(A11, 3/26/11). I read this and was reminded of the extreme, meticulous disaster preparedness I came across while living in Japan. The first thing my landlord showed me when I moved into my house was the location of an emergency hard hat, flashlight, water, and, yes, emergency radio.

So it is with some irony that I turn the page and see Eton’s ad. Sure, part of the proceeds go to the American Red Cross, but just how badly do the Japanese need American (or perhaps Chinese?) made short-wave radios? Of course, anyone who chooses to call 1-800-872-2228 is well-intended, and most likely, so is Eton.

A large component to any tragedy is the uncertainty of how to respond. There is the immediate tragedy and then there is the aftermath and the inability to measure if outside efforts are improving or worsening the situation. But, to often, tragedy becomes opportunity. The tragedy-as-farce of Eton’s radio is that in our recognition of tragedy, we unconsciously respond through what we know best–consumption. And, in this way, tragedy becomes opportunity for capitalist investment.

The tragedy-to-farce transition Zizek’s title is referring to is the 9/11-to-financial crises, but the essence of the discussion is ideology and how, in its pervasiveness, it appears to us as non-ideology.

Like Ethos Water:

“Here is an exemplary case of ‘cultural capitalism’: the Starbucks ad campaign ‘It’s not just what you’re buying. It’s what you’re buying into.’ The ‘cultural’ surplus is here spelled out: the price is higher than elsewhere since what you are really buying into is the ‘coffee ethic’ which includes care for the environment, social responsibility towards the producers, plus a place where you yourself can participate in communal life,”(53-4).

The argument is that Ethos water represents quality consumption, thus avoiding the infamous alienation Marx ascribed to the commodity. Ethos water, Toms shoes, and short-wave radios are all examples where “we are not merely buying and consuming, we are simultaneously doing something meaningful, showing our capacity for care and our global awareness, participating in a collective project,”(54). Unfortunately (depending on your angle of course), that collective project is all to often the human capacity to consume.

Simulated History: Sidewalks and Streetscapes

One of my favorite moments of urban life is walking down a quiet street and listening to my shoes hit the pavement. The sound is a softer version of the clop clop I associate with horses and I’m inevitably transported to the 19th century; I imagine walking on down an uneven, dimly lit sidewalk that runs parallel to a car-less street.

Dekalb Avenue

I find the best shoe-on-sidewalk sounds are produced in the oldest parts of the city. Cobblestone in parts of the West Village and D.U.M.B.O are delightful; Fort Greene’s combination of granite sidewalks and brownstones is the best. My fantasy of Victorian England lasts about a block, or roughly 350 feet, when I’m interrupted by Myrtle Avenue.

Mrytle Avenue

The majority of New York City’s sidewalks are made of grey concrete with a 5×5 scoring and a steel-faced concrete curb roughly six inches deep. This layout provides ample room for pedestrian foot traffic, isolates those pedestrians from vehicle traffic, and generally produces a muffled, dull sound. While I certainly appreciate the sidewalks of New York City, the majority of them are uninspiring.

The city’s Design Commission is in charge of designating distinctive sidewalks, or sidewalks that enhance the overall street design and help preserve the historic character of an area. Distinctive sidewalks must pass the engineering test of maintaining structural integrity and being slip resistant. Until recently, I was pretty sure distinctive sidewalks could also be identified by how well my shoes mimic horse hooves.

But I was wrong. Confusion erupted while walking down Clermont Avenue. I was looking at the stoops, decorative ironwork, and dreaming of London. But something was missing. THERE WAS NO NOISE. I looked down on the sidewalk. Wait a minute. Was that really granite?

I came home and went to Design Commission’s webpage. To my horror, I learned that distinctive sidewalks “may include the proposed use, in historic neighborhoods, of tinted concrete to simulate bluestone or granite.” My conclusion: cities are increasingly using the term historic preservation to describe nostalgic delusion. If I hadn’t been listening for that clop clop would I have assumed I was walking on a granite sidewalk? I think I would have and I’m still trying to decide if that’s okay.

In his post, The Geometry of Nowhere, Mathieu Helie points out that the 19th century sidewalks weren’t actually meant for people, but as the transitional space between buildings and streets. Sidewalks still serve this function in many cities throughout the world, it is a space for street vendors and motorcycles; foot traffic competes with hooves and wheeled traffic.

19th Century London streetscape

Chennai Streetscape

So maybe I should just get over my disgust for pseudo historic sidewalks, my nostalgia for the 19th century sidewalk is misplaced anyway. Either way, here are some sidewalks: