Right. SO it's obvious i don't write in this much. i don't know. maybe it's just that i have a hard time talking about myself. i had to write a bio for a new student newsletter we're putting together. hardest five sentences ever. i feel i'm not quite the kinda guy to have his own blog. so i'll use this to turn all my pals onto cool shit i find laying around in books and newspaper. the coolest idea i've seen lately. it's in a book called the Blackwell City Reader. actually, the articles i'm going to be talking about are in two books. one is the blackwell book (BW). the other is in one called, simple, the City Reader (LS, for the authors, LeGates and Stout). they're kinda expensive cause they're textbooks so don't buy them. look in the library, or use amazon's new read the book feature to read the article i'm talking about if you can't find it anywhere else.
the first article is called "The islamic City: Historic Myths, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance" by Janet Abu-Lughod. this article is rad because it talks about how ad hoc activity results from the inability of the gov't to address the needs of certain groups of people. ad hoc, in case you didn't know, as to do with focusing on immediate, local needs instead of long term ones. this is a subject i've been getting more and more interested in. the end of this article gives an idea of how planners might go about alowing for the flexibility of communities to pursue this kind of behavior. i think it's cool because it's 1)more 'democratic', that is, the control is more in the hands of the People, and 2) because it's less energy-intensive. this kind of organization just happens automatically, whereas planning requires lots of time and effort and is still just a gross approximation of what the people need.
the next article is called "Social Exclusion and Space" by Ali Madanipour. it's about the balance between inclusion and exclusion, how it's no good to try to be totally inclusive or totally exclusive. this reminds me of itmes when i've tried to live in communal households. it always felt to me that people did'nt have a healthy sense of the need for exclusion. he makes the point that inclusion and exclusion are reciprocal forces; one is made valuable only by the presence of the other. well, that sounds all yin-yang buddhisty and crap, but the reall issue i found interesting was how all this plays out in the real world, how marginalization of certain groups is in some sense necessary, but can also lead to really rad things, like the ad hoc crap i was talking about a minute ago. actually, i need to read this one again. i made a note to myself that "Madanpour's purpose is to find ways to reduce social exclusion. by 'resisting sptial barriers and promoting accessibility...spatial planning can contribute to planning social integration.'" yes. good idea.
oh, i'm getting bored with this.
so my arguement is basically this, in case anyone has read through to this point. public space is always contested (maybe not always, i'm not sure) because planners are unable to meet everyone's needs. so people who have been left out of the planning and maintenance process are always trying to appropriate space and other resources. i think this is what's going on when old asian women collect weeds for fairmount park (presumably for their medicinal value). it's also what is going on when people steal electricity, like they do in mexico city and other places. also when peoplelive on trash dumps and make a (poor)living from collecting recyclables. a friend of mine in Mexico City (DF, for distrito federal) told me today in an e-mail that he recently discovered a community inside the city, not on its outskits, where people have successfully appropriated gov't land and are now living on it in paper shacks. that's how he described it. he actually said they 'stole' it fro the gov't. i assume this means they are squatting, and for whatever reason no one has pushed them off. i'd like to spend some time looking at the different strategies people use in appropriating resources in different parts of the world (especially comparing third-world or semi-third world countries like mexico, and developed countries like the US). does the variation have to do with the way gov't exercises (or doesn't exercise) its authority? or does the variation have more to do with deeper, more complex cultural issues. i've often noticed that in mexico, revolutionary ideas are much more prominent in everyday life. all of the political parties use words like 'revolutionary' or 'reform'. for christ's sake, the party that had been in power for 71 yrs, largely through corruption, is called the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (institutional revolutionary party). now, dont ask me how an institutional revolution works, exactly, but that's a pretty good description of how it works in mexico anyway. everyone loves the idea of revolution, but now one participates in one. kinda like how everyone in the US likes the idea of democracy, but we don't participate in one, either.
well, this is goingon too long. that's it for tonight.
buenas noches.
go and see Motorcycl Diaries
