Happy Holidays with a Bunch of Urban Readings

The architecture typology of the year 2011 is the tent, via Urban Affect

SYNCHRONICITY is also going on holidays. Meanwhile, here are a couple of suggested reads/links:


Allison Arieff writes on pop-up urbanism. City of Sound elucidates what cites and neuroscience can learn from each other. Peter Frase imagines four futures of capitalism after OWS, whereas Al Gore and David Blood imagine a sustainable capitalism. Also check out this interview with Thomas Balsley as the person who has designed more POPS (Privately Owned Public Spaces) than anyone else in New York City. Hito Steyerl on art as occupation. The economist explains the strange but extremely valuable science of how pedestrians behave. And finally, in this archive designers list their 3 favourite buildings.

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays, and see you back in the new year! And check out my twitter page for more regular comments.

International Public Space Library

Image source

IPSL book (source)

The International Public Space Library’s (IPSL) ambition is to offerbooks for free in public spaces all around the world. Soft-launched inSeptember 2010, under the light of the recent occupy movement the experimenthas gained new topicality.  Unlikea traditional library, the IPSL has no physical building or location. Each oneof the books, anonymously donated, contains an IPAL label and are left inpublic spaces, free to pick up. Readers are encouraged to return the book afterreading to the library by placing it at another space.

Anyone can donate a book to the IPSLcollection. Just download a PDF copy of the IPSL ex libris here or download the imagebelow, print and affix it inside the front cover of the books you want to shareand spread them (but make sure they don’t get wet). With more publicity this project potentially is able to build up the greatest library of the planet and fromulates a challenging growing spatial configuration of a library consisting of connections and movements of books. "Libraries are not made; theygrow." (Augustine Birrell(1850-1933), Chief Secretary of Ireland)

During the just started 7-day growingexhibition on Strategiesfor Public Occupation by the Storefrontfor Art and Architecture, the IPSL will launch a temporary ‘pop-up’ branch.This temporary library will offer a selection of books to help stimulate theongoing public discussion of economics, politics, society and culture that maybe reflective of the Occupy Wall Street movement and other social movementsthat have been or are currently powered by the free exchange of ideas,particularly through the sharing of books. At Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti Park) theoccupiers established The People’s Librarywith a collection of more thatn 5500 books, unfortunately most of them got missingafter the police raid to clear the park in November.

China's Rapid Urbanization

China's urbanization made visible from atop in this impressing video assembled with data from Google Earth. (link via polis)

Theory & Event - Supplement on OWS

Image Source

The Journal Theory & Event Volume 14 Number 4 published a supplement on Occupy Wall Street that is openly available for three month. Contributions are amongst others Slavoj Žižek on Actual Politics and the journal's co-editor Jodi Dean on Claiming Division, Naming a Wrong.

Walter Benjamin - One Way Street

John Hughes' film One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin (1993) provides a clear and accessible introduction to some of the central ideas in Benjamin's writings. Moreover, Hughes tries to translate some of Benjamin's ideas also visually through fragmentation using sub-frames, graphic overlaps and abrupt colour shifts. Definitely worth watching.

The City 2.0 - TED Prize Winner 2012

For the first time the TED prize winner is not an individual but an Idea: The City 2.0. Unveilling what the city 2.0 might be the announcement on TED reads like a manifesto: 

The City 2.0 is the city of the future… a future in which more than ten billion people on planet Earth must somehow live sustainably.

The City 2.0 is not a sterile utopian dream, but a real-world upgrade tapping into humanity’s collective wisdom.

The City 2.0 promotes innovation, education, culture, and economic opportunity.

The City 2.0 reduces the carbon footprint of its occupants, facilitates smaller families, and eases the environmental pressure on the world’s rural areas.

The City 2.0 is a place of beauty, wonder, excitement, inclusion, diversity, life.
The City 2.0 is the city that works.

So far- I would say - nothing revolutionary. But with the announcemnt of the prize winner TED also calls for contribution on the idea of the city 2.0.Individuals or organizations are called to formulate a 'wish' for this city of the future. The winning 'wish' will be unveiled by the end of February 2012. I am curious to see what the wishes will be.

The City As A Palimpsest: Teufelsberg

+52° 29' 49.89", +13°14' 27.64"

Strolling around Berlin is not a journeythrough history it is the simultaneous experience of various histories. Ergo,many urban theorists refer to the city of Berlin as a palimpsest.

Recently, lured by a sunny autumn Sunday, Itook a long walk in West Berlin’s Grunewald – The Green Forest. At 3000hectares it is the largest green area in the capital. With its old oak trees noone would expect a rich history on this site – if it wasn’t Berlin. Out of theflat sea of trees raises the Devil’s Mountain – the Teufelsberg - 80 m abovethe level of the surrounding and completely flat Grunewald. The Teufelsberg isone of the highest elevations in the city. I approached the site from S-Bahnstation Heerstraße, the north-eastern part of the Grunewald.
Soon after youenter the forest, the paths guide you upwards until you reach a vast plateau.You find yourself on a flat meadow. Very flat. However it’s not the Teufelsbergyou ended up- it is the Drachenberg –named after the most popular activity there: kite flying. From the plateau youhave a beautiful view over the city. If you look back where you came from, in immediateproximity, you experience the first evidence of the multiple histories ofBerlin which will become apparent on this excursion. Within one’s reach,embedded in the forest: Corbusier’s  Unitéd’Habitation (1956-1958), the monumental statement of modern living.  And right behind, quite disturbingly inscale, the Olympicstadium reminds you immediately of Berlin’s past as the imagined WelthauptstadtGermania. As my goal is the Teufelsberg I continue walking. Down the hill,back to the level of departure and upwards again to reach the peak of theDevil’s Mountain. On a clearing in the forest another monumental structureerects in front of you. Still having Corbusier in mind, I am surprised: Did themaster also built a chapel in Berlin?

Coming closer it becomes clear, it’s not aforgotten Corbusier relict standing on the hillside of  Teufelsberg. The concrete structure isa 10 metres high climbing sculpture built in 1970. Fascinated by theserendipitous experience I follow the path over a small bridge which is openingthe view again towards the Olympic Stadium, the Unité and a cooling tower of aclose power station. Despite its presence, the stadium is only the mostapparent reminder of the nazi period. The other relicts of the city’s dark pastare covered under your feet. Both the Drachenberg and the Teufelsberg are notgeological elevations but artificial mountains – so-called Schuttberge  or Trümmerberge. The debris of onethird of Berlin’s buildings that were destroyed during World War II are buriedunderneath the picturesque landscape. During the period of rebuilding Berlinafter the war from 1950 to 1972, up to 800 truckloads per day piled up to theartificial mountain. The reason for transporting the rubble to this particularsite excavates another layer of history: The unfinished WehrtechnischeFakultät, a massive university building designed by Albert Speer  also as part of “WelthauptstadtGermania”, lies under the debris.  The mountain is a burial ground for buildings (approximately15,000) and history. In 1972 the debris mountain got ‘naturalised’ and treeswere planted. Immediately the whole area was used as a sporting ground for manyBerliners. Especially in winter the mountain has been used for sledging orskiing –  a skiing lift included.In 1985 even a skiing worldcup slalom took place. On the southern slope of thehill even a vineyard was laid out. Nowadays all of this has vanished.

But let’s continue to the highlight of ourtour: The derelict listening station erected and in operation during the ColdWar by the NSA (National Security Agency) andthe British army.  Consisting of 4geodesic domes (with the highest - the radar tower - being 69 metres) the NSAand the RAF were able to surveil radiocommunication up to 600 kilometres - far beyond the Iron Curtainfrom the Teufelsberg. With their strategic point on the highest elevation ofWest Berlin, in all directions was “East”. It is rumoured that the station waspart of the global ECHELONintelligence gathering network.

When you enter the site, you are impressed byits sci-fi aesthetics of the geodesic domes. The ground is overgrown by pioneerplants, the adjacent buildings are half collapsed, with broken windows andimpress with an amazing variety of street art. In some buildings hugeincinerators and document shredders are still reminiscent of the past, wheretons and tons of sensitive information was collected – and destroyed.

If youvisit the site, the highlight is most definitely climbing up the radar tower.Half way you reach a plateau with two of the geodesic domes. Apart from theimpressive view over the city of Berlin, the domes are giving your visit analmost dramatic sci-fi moment.  Uponentering the partly vandalised domes you are witnessing an impressive not-of-thisworld acoustics many artists have already beenexploring.

With the echoes in my head I climbed up theradar tower, stopping at each floor with its textiles waving in the wind. Thesound of the wind and the sun setting down behind the domes is just one of themost strong experiences you can get at this trip. When reaching the most epicspot – a ‘window’ at the highest point of the tower – you have hopefullybrought your laptop to download the data from the DeadDrop that have been installed ther very recently. What a perfect spot forthese containers usually hidden to transmit secret messages that were typicallyused by spies and now are spread all over.Unfortunately I left my laptop at home hence I could not download what is onthe DD: confidential cold war material! (If anyone is ever going to find theDD, the downloaded material is NOT supposed to be spread over the internet).

 

It is time to leave this unique spot. Thesun has already disappeared behind the horizon. While walking back through thedark forest, which is also known for the high concentration of wild boar hanging around there, I am wondering ifthere is any other city in the world where the notion of the palimpsest is more appropriate or more intense?This excursion truly has been a journey expanding far beyond the couple ofhours of a sunny autumn afternoon.

all Images by SYNCHRONICITY

The Detroit-Berlin Connection

Numerous comparisons have been made between Detroit and Berlin. Especially within the fields of electronic music or the thriving art scene. The Detroit-Berlin Connection is a radio series produced by WDET public radio in cooperation with Berlin Stories,  that looks at the futures of these two cities and speculates on the measures being used to reinvent industrial cities for the 21st century. The series goes beyond the common comparisons in the fields of art and music and outlines other connections by covering also comparisons in Land Use, on Mies van der Rohe, or on The Creative Class. A more general overview gives the radio discussion on What can the Detroit Berlin connection teach us?
Also the other media is worth checking out, to give you a summary on the similarities but also discrepancies between these two distinct cities.
For those with a deeper interest in the topic and living in Berlin, there is a disscussion at the US embassy in Berlin tomorrow 4pm (map). 

Ruins of East Berlin 2008 (source)

Ruins of Detroit 2011 (source)

Manuel Castells: The Crisis Always RingsTwice

Yesterday, sociologist Manuel Castells was giving a lecture at Tent City University at Occupy LSX entitled "The crisis always rings twice: from financial crisis to fiscal crisis to political crisis".

How To Design A Thriving Community

Sustainability still is broadly examinedfrom the angle of environmental concerns. Nevertheless there is a growingawareness of social sustainability amongst urban planners and architects. The Young Foundation recentlypublished a report commissioned jointly by the Homes and Communities Agencyas part of Future Communitiesprogramme on the Design for Social Sustainability. On 55 pages, the reportprovides ‘a framework for creating thriving communities’. In the forewordBartlett Professor Peter Hallargues that under the scope of last summer’s riots in Great Britain we havefailed to create successful new communities within the existing fabric. Hefurther argues that “This study, which might have seemed peripheral andacademic, has become central and urgent. […] The lessons and the recommendations of this report are bound tohave a salience that its authors can never have imagined.” In relation to theongoing urbanization the report poses the question: how can we create newcommunities in new housing developments that will flourish and succeed longinto the future?  In Europe 32 newtowns are being created across 11 countries. Of course, the posed questionshould not be only approached by Western cities. Some estimates suggest that inChina 100 new cities with a population more than 1 million will be created inthe next three years. For example, as part of the Expo 2010 resettlementprogramme PujangNew Town in Shanghai aims to house 500,000 new residents to create One City, NineTowns. Outside Seoul the Incheon Development Area will house 200,000 peopleby 2010, while in Delhi four new satellite cities are being created to dealwith overcrowding and to cater for India’s growing middle classes. It presentsand will present huge challenges for governments to provide decent andaffordable private and social housing in communities that are economically,environmentally AND socially sustainable. But this is not a new challenge. Manyprojects have been developed to design out crime, incorporating socialinfrastructures, considering the role local greenspaces play in wellbeing andso on. However, many of them have failed. Partly because putting into practicewhat is known is difficult, claims the report. Theoretically these approacheswork out, but practically every community is different and therefore socialsustainability cannot be prescribed in the same way as standards for environmentalsustainability.  Hence, it iscrucial to incorporate the specific local conditions. However, the report arguesthat planning for social success and sustainability can prevent or at leastmitigate, the likelihood of future social problems, and in many cases,represents a fraction of the overall costs of development and long termmanagement. After arguing the undeniable, that social sustainability has a case,the report defines extensively the terminology. Subsequently the YoungFoundation tries to lift the debate out of the academic arena and developed aframework that contains four elements that are essential to build new sociallysustainable communities: amenities and social infrastructure, social andcultural life, voice and influence, can space to grow. 

What follows are the lucid diagramsdescribing the four elements of the framework (All images © by The Young Foundation)

 
Although further research is needed in therealm of social sustainability, the Young Foundations framework might be a hugestep forward on this terrain. It suggests a structured procedure which referencingfor every urban planner, designer and policy maker, as these issues will be oneof the main challenges of this century.

Related to this and the potentialpreventions of future disasters like the recent riots read Technologyand Urban Warfare in the archive.

Is Britain becoming Los Angeles?

Recently the architect RichardRogers attacked the British government’s planning reforms and warned thatBritain could 'very easily' become to resemble the ghettoes of Los Angeles with'rust belts and towns joining each other'. Cities such as Birmingham and MiltonKeynes, Bristol and Bath would also begin to merge under the current prospectof the policies and foster an enormous sprawl. Rogers argues that 'cities arethe engines of the economy, the heart of our culture and places of innovation.If the framework is not greatly improved it will lead to the breakdown andfragmentation of cities and neighbourhoods as well as the erosion of thecountryside.' Until now the fears over the plans had been limited to thecountryside. Rogers is the first person to voice concern about the effect uponmajor cities, as the Mail online article tells. Instead of uncontrolledplanning, Rogers pleads for the re-development of derelict areas and buildingsin the inner cities.  I would doubtthat Lord Rogers also had in mind the benefit cuts that result in an exodus ofinner-city working class people to the city’s fringes, as discussed in myrecent post. Maybe I do himinjustice, but I would have reasonsto believe that he is not (always) thinking of re-developments that benefitthe socially and economically disadvantaged.

The Demonization and Ghettoization of the Working Class

The modern British working class has becomean object of fear and ridicule. Their demonization as feckless, criminalizedand ignorant by media and politicians alike has also become acceptable by the gentrifiedyoung middle-class, who otherwise praises itself with tolerance and acceptance.This fact has become stereotyped by one hate-filled word: chavs. Owen Jones’well-argued debut thatI have read just recently explores how the working class has developed from astrong part in British society to the ‘scum of earth’. In the media, throughcharacters like Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard or Jade Goody the contemporaryworking class gets ridiculed to a chav caricature. But also in other parts ofEurope the sneering at the socially deprived is everyday media-life. In Germanycountless docusoaps are relying on theinterest of viewers to mock and caricature the under class.  Jones argues that this development wasinitiated through the downfall of the previous strong British (trade) unions evokedby the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher at the end of the 1970s andcontinued by Tony Blair’s New Labour and has recently also been associated with David Cameron’s term of the Broken Britain. However, Jonesaspiration lies beyond explaining how the working class has become demonized,moreover he advocates for a revivified debate about class in general terms.Thatcherism’s - or neoliberalism’s - attempt to eradicate the working classthrough igniting the aspiration for everyone to become middle-class under one’sown stem also has demonized a debate relying on the division of the society byclass.  The aspiration for thefinancially deprived very often just means to ‘own more things’. And thisaspiration means economic growth in the neoliberalist thinking. The“non-aspirational working class” even had no place in New Labour, the partyoriginating out of British working class. Tony Blair declared upon assumingoffice in 1997: “ The New Britain is a meritocracy.” But when Michael Young wrotethe book TheRise of the Meritocracy back in 1958, “Meritocracy” was not intended todescribe a desirable society – far from it. It was meant to raise the alarm atwhat Britain could become. Young warnedthat its consequences would mean “that the poor and the disadvantaged would bedone down, and in fact they have been… it is hard indeed in a society thatmakes so much of merit to be judged as having none.” All these developmentshave fostered growing inequality in British society, one of the most, if not THEmost, unequal society in the Western world. It was not for the government toredress inequalities, because the conditions of the poor would only improve ifthey changed their behaviour. 

The chav charicature: Little Britain's Vicky Pollard pictured as a teenage mum in front of a council estate. Image Source: BBC

 Looking at British cities renders inequalityand also the demonization of the working class visible. The urban councilestate tenant has become the prototype of the chavcaricature. Jones argues that Thatcher’s Right to Buy schemeadded to this fact. Through this policy, which gives council estates tenantsthe right to buy the home they are living in, in areas where demand for housingexceeds supply, the stock of social housing was depleted faster than it wasreplaced. The remaining stock of council housing was concentrated inundesirable areas with little employment opportunity, further isolating andstigmatising the tenants. Due to the shortage in council homes only the poorestof the poor are entitled to move into a subsidised home, a fact that hasdrastically reduced the diversity in these areas. Instead of working againstthese developments in Cameron’s conservative led government this crisis willget more severe. The Tories called for the scrapping of lifetime counciltenancy agreements. Instead only the most needy would be eligible for five-yearor, at most, ten-year agreements. If it was decided that their conditions hadimproved sufficiently, they could be turfed out of their homes and made to rentprivately. Jones suggests that “Council estates would become nothing more thantransit camps for the deprived”. Through these policies combined with plans tocap benefits to workless families, low-income people face eviction fromrelatively richer areas, forcing them into effective ghettoes. According toestimates by London councils, as many as 250,000 people were at risk of losingtheir homes or being forced to move. This form of social “cleansing” would bethe biggest population movement in Britain since World War II.  Jones speculates that these facts arenot only economically motivated but also politically, since it would lead toand exodus of Labour voters from London. But critisims also comes from withinthe party, as for example London’s mayor, the Conservative Boris Johnson, cameout publicly to say that he would not accept “Kosovo-stylesocial cleansing” in the capital. There is a reasonable fear that underthese circumstances London and its still diverse neighbourhoods like theborough of Hackney for example develops towards a homogenised urban inner cityarea with a belt of ghettoes of low-income people at the fringes, comparable toParis and its belt of banlieues.

These types of displacement have a profoundimpact on the cosmopolitan character of cities. They add to the contemporary developmentthat cities are under threat to loose their capacity to foster diversity andbring together people of different classes, ethnicities and religions throughcommerce, politics, and civic practices, as argued by SaskiaSassen. The growing ghettoization of the poor and the rich – albeit in verydifferent types of ghettos – leaves the middle-classes to bring urbanity tothese cities. And the middle-classes arguably are not always the most diversegroups in the city. Sassen argues further, that displacement (from countrysideto town or from the city centre to the fringes or even within the city) doesnot add to a rich diversity but rather becomes a source of insecurity.

Owen Jones’ book makes us well aware ofthese insecurities contemporary society is facing. Although the case heestablished is very UK specific it is a topic that addresses most of Westerngovernments - and cities. In his closing statement he anticipated a revolutionthat the current occupy movement is leading:

“At its heart, the demonization of theworking class is the flagrant triumphalism of the rich who, no longerchallenged by those below them, instead point and laugh at them … But it hasnot be this way. The folly of a society organized around the interests ofplutocrats has been exposed by an economic crisis sparked by the greed of thebankers. The new class politics would be a start, to at least build acounterweight to the hegemonic, unchallenged class politics of the wealthy.Perhaps then a new society based around people’s needs, rather than privateprofit, would be feasible once again. Working-class people have, in the past,organized to defend their interests; they have demanded to be listened to, andforced concessions from the hands of the rich and the powerful. Ridiculed orignored though they may be, they will do so again.”

The last weeks have shown that the globaloccupiers have found a way to organize to defend their interests. And theworking class is part of it. The city is the very site of this revolution.


Related to the decline of British working class: Aditya Chakrabortty's recent article on why Britain doesn't make things any more. 

Ulan Bators ‘Ice Shield’ to Influence Summer Climate

As a result of global warming Mongolia’scapital Ulan Bator suffers from unbearable hot summers caused by the so calledthe urban heat island effect. Mongolia’sgovernment is about to launch a bold project to influence the summer climate intheir capital as theguardian reports today. In giant blocks of ice geoengineers intend to“store” sill freezing winter temperatures that will aid to cool and water thecity as it slowly melts during the hot summer months.  It will be tested if the city gets cooled through the ice insummer and how much energy-intensive air conditioning can be reduced.

Specifically, the idea of the project is toartificially create “naleds”.Naleds are thick slabs of ice that naturally can be found in far northern areaswhen rivers push through cracs in the surface to seep outwards during the dayand then add an extra layer of ice during the night. Through this process theselayered ice slabs continue to grow in thickness as long as there is enoughwater pressure to penetrate the surface. Due to their thickness of more than 7metres they melt much later than regular ice.

image source

The climate manipulating project tries torecreate this process by drilling bore hole into the ice that has started toform on the Tuul river. The water will be discharged across the surface addinga new layer of ice on top. The drilling will then be repeated at regularintervals throughout the winter.

Robin Grayson, aMongolian-based geologist argues that "if you know how to manipulate them,naled ice shields can repair permafrost and building cool parks incities."

While naleds have served industrialapplications before, as military bridges in North Korea or as platforms fordrilling in Russia, the Ulan Bator climate experiment is unprecedented.

This giant project lines up with other hugeclimate manipulation projects like the raincontrol operation for the Olympics by the BeijingWeather Modification Office.

Technology and Urban Warfare

In the article that boldly claims to answer "how technology can help us redesign our cities – and lives" the guardian recently posed the question if the devastation of the British riots last summer could have been tackled earlier or even been avoided. Space Syntax answers in the affirmative. Space Syntax believes that through their computer-aided analysis they are able to provide information for authorities to predict the location of future social disturbances. This sounds great; although it might be difficult to believe, that their advanced technology has the capacity for doing that. Space Syntax claims that the spatial layout of urban spaces and buildings excerts a powerful influence on people's behaviour: "The way that places connect is directly related to the way that people move, interact and transact". The unrefusable critique of this architectural - or spatial - determinism is that it mitigates other influences on human behaviour like social or economical imprints.Speculatively, with the technology created by Space Syntax the authorities, might become even more effective in monitoring and controling their citizens. On the one hand this might help to better tackle crime and as well informs an approach of CPTED (Crime prevention through environmental design) but on the other hand there also lies a danger of relying on new technologies as a means of fighting an urban war. In the latter, the authorities and politics lose sight of tackling the real problems and causes. As for the guardian article, I would say that the glorification of technology in the future or also current redesign of our city has to be seen much more critical. In this context there is a thin line between  the use of technology as a means to improve urban living and as a means of urban warfare. Our cities will have smart buildings, smart grids, and consist of smart materials. But concepts like SmartWater that appear to be deriving right out of the last episode of CSI are reality, and I would assume these are opening the doors for further control of urban citizens.

"Bundled, Buried, and Behind Closed Doors"

mammoth recently pointed at this documentary short by Ben Mendelson and Alex Chohlas-Wood portraying the telco hotel at 60 Hudson Street in Manhattan. The former hotel is now a huge internet hub and, as the documentary speculates, may be an "outpost of a global empire". Within the physical infrastructure of the internet, 60 Hudson Street shows facinatingyly the "tendency of communications infrastructure to retrofit pre-existing networks to suit the needs of new technologies". Amongst Mendelson's and Chohlas-Wood's interviewees are Saskia Sassen as well as Stephen Graham whom we know well for his contributions on military urbanism and splintering urbanism.

Metabolic Architecture Repairing Itself

Image source

Protocells are able to help building bottom-up materials that form a living architecture. A quite bold claim by Rachel Armstrong from the Bartlett  in this, admittedly not very current, TED talk.
 
At the Bartlett, she is specialising in non-Darwinian techniques of evolution and the challenges of the extra-terrestrial environment. Armstrong is summarising that their research intends to generate, 

"metabolic materials to counterpose Victorian technologies [to build up] architectures from a bottom-up approach. Secondly these metabolic materials have some of the properties of living systems, which means that they can perform in similar ways. They can expect to have a lot of forms and functions within the practice of architecture. And finally, an observer in the future, marvelling at a beautiful structure in the environment, may find it almost impossible to tell whether this structure has been created by a natural process or an artificial one"

In her talk she suggests that it might be possible that Venice repairs itself. Let's hope that this amazing city will not sink before the protocells are ready to petrify the wooden piles it is build upon.

São Paulo's Highline

Picnic on Elevado Costa e Silva. Image source.

The city of São Paulo is famously known for its congested streets and highways and as well its tremendous lack of public space. In the 1970s the Elevado Costa e Silva (also known as the Minhocão - the 'big worm') was built to relieve the load of the traffic in the city centre. Right from the beginning the infrastructural project has been very contested, since the elevated highway was boldly erected in the inner cities street canyons leading the traffic only few meters away of the windows of the neighbouring buildings. This fact has rendered an ongoing discussion to destruct the highway ever since it has been built. In order to compensate the infrastructural misplanning the city government has decided to close the route from Monday to Saturday during nighttimes and also during daytimes on Sundays only a few years ago. Hence the 2.2 miles long Minhocão has become a space for leisure in the city where public space is scarce. For many residents the highway, paradoxically, has become a retreat from the chaos of the congested city to enjoy a minimum of leisure time. Hence especially on Sundays the park is packed with runners, dog walkers and even picnickers. Therfore each week a linear park evolves comparable to New York City's Highline - both are successfull, but the Minhocão doesn't need an awarded design firm for its public activation.

all images by Paolo Batalha

Nevertheless in recent years the dismantling of the expressway is demanded from various fronts, including São Paulo's Major. Also filmmaker Fernando Mereilles advocates for its destruction. The Minhocão famously featured in his film 'Blindness',  since for him it 'is a perfect image to represent the madness of a city built and inhabited by the blind'. In case it is possible that the traffic can be dealt with, the destruction might be a good idea. Nevertheless, what Mereilles - who interestingly also is an architect and urban planner - and the other supportes of the highway's destruction are not thinking of is to compensate the use of the Minhocão as a public space. 

Film still 'Blindness'. Image source.

This post is part of an ongoing research on urban picnicking. More to come soon.

Occupy Wall Street - The community and their clearing

Filmmaker Alex Mallis gives insight in the protesters' everyday life. Only in a few weeks time OWS formed a remarkable community with highly developed infrastructures at Zuccotti park. Amongst the most obvious of the emerged infrastructures are food provision, personal hygiene, and sleeping camps. Moreover the protesters also initiated a highly developed media centre at the square, with electricity from gasoline powered generators. Furtheron they have organised their own health-care with sponsored medication, and as well - since protesting and sleeping on the concrete floor has implications on the protesters' body - a massage studio. Collective cigarette rolling and musical entertainment are also amongst the activities and services the occupation of Zuccotti Park provides. Watching the short documentary very much brings into mind how informal settlements in other cities of the world work. Strinkingly, the OWS protesters generated a thriving urban space in a remarkable short period of time. What sets the OWS space apart from other informal settlements is that the mainly young protesters can tap into recources that less medialised communities are not able to access. The internet and even the installation of a shipping address (The UPS Store, Re: Occupy Wall Street, 118A Fulton St. #205, New York, NY 10038) has supported the rapid infrastructural development at Zuccotti Park.

After it was announced that the police will be clearing the privately owned public space of the protesters so that the parks owner can clean and do repairs, OWS has mounted an online effort to get the resources they need to clean up the park themselves before the police will take action on friday. The single proper reaction to this announcement. OWS is asking people to donate brooms, lots of brooms, mops, squeegees, buckets, waste bins, dust pans, trash bags, and they could use some power washers too either to bring them to the plaza or to ship them to their address (via amazon possibly).
In course of the announcement of the clearing of the plaza the letter from the park owner Brookfield Properties to NYPD leaked yesterday. Unsurprisingly they no longer tolerate the occupation. Their reasons are mainly circulating around that the 'public space' has to be clean and neat to be able to serve the local population again - which in fact are the Wall St brokers (who also were sending complaints to the owner). Hence cleanliness and locality might overcome freedom of political expression with potentially massive impact. And NYC Mayor Bloomberg approves. We are waiting with bated breath what will happen.

Finally, here is a link to the transcript of Slavoj Zizek's recent speech at Zuccotti Park.



Postscript Oct 22: The clearance of the park could have been prevented. Here is a link engaging as well with the community that evolved since the start of the occupation of Liberty Plaza: It tells us more about the barbers, cigarette rollers and other volunteer workers.

Occupy Wall Street - Zuccotti Park

Zuccotti park during the Occupy Wall Street protest. Image source.

Zuccotti Park in Manhattan's financial district has become the locus for the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests in the last few weeks. Protesters have gathered, prostested and camped out there to make their demands visible in public. Yet, in contrast to other recent social movements the site of protest is not a public space in its common sense. Zuccotti Park is privately owned, named after a real estate development lawyer who has been active both in governmental affairs and in private development. The park, which is actually a paved plaza, is owned by Brookfield Properties, in conjunction with its ownership of One Liberty Plaza, the adjacent high-rise commercial tower. Arguably the park is a privately owned public space, a quasi public space that is so common in city centres of the great capitalist cities. Nevertheless, and interestingly, the space is still a site to enact democratic action.
OWS's spatial setting is different than those of other urban movements like the arab spring which is closely connected to Tahrir Square for example. OWS' site was chosen deliberately due to its symbolic character, as being right in the middle of New Yorks financial district. The occupation of Zuccotti park IS already the occupation of a piece of Wall Street.
Besides, the park has quickly become a tourist attraction.
Also Peter Marcuse has written a worth reading comment on the protest.
Zuccotti park after the post 9/11 refurbishment. Image source.

Tower of David

Squatters on the Skyline (via NYT):

Facing a mounting housing shortage, squatters have transformed an abandoned skyscraper in downtown Caracas into a makeshift home for more than 2,500 people.

Mapping The Crime

Last week police.uk launched a map of every single crime recorded in December last year in England and Wales. The phenomenal reaction to the launch caused the crashing of the website. With a resolution down to the street level everyone is now able to track the safety of their neighbourhood. Updated monthly the maps can be filtered according to different sorts of crimes and even Anti-social behaviour incidents are mapped. I wonder what impact this has on for example real estate prices or neighbourhood watching. If you're looking for a flat wouldn't you check the crime map before? Policing Minister Nick Herbert said the Government was determined to provide as much detailed information as possible. "We can't sweep crime under the carpet," he said. "We have to tell the truth about crime and where it is happening and give the information and the power to the public." Apart from informing the public, access to this data might also fuel fear and the suspicion and mistrust to your neighbours. It even might be possible to identify crime victims due to it's accuracy.
In response to the crash of the website the guardian launched their own map with the feature of comparing different areas and crimes .

Militant Modernism

Berlin Hansaviertel

During a recent research I came across to an incredible collection of vintage postcards depicting mostly modernist buildings in Germany, France and the Netherlands. The postcards mainly dated from the 50s, 60s and 70s show less known modernist structures in a sometimes almost romantisising manner. Advertising the new way of living, nowadays the depictions appear less unattractive for a general viewer. Taufkirchen close to Munich

Lelystad Kantoorgebouwen

The failure of many modernist housing induced a trend towards building of diseneyfied pre-industrial public housing. This trend is especially apparent in Great Britain. In Prince Charles' experimental town Poundbury designed by Leon Krier and built in the 1990s the houses follow a pastiche of various traditional anti-modernist styles. In strong opposition to these developments is Owen Hatherley's book Militant Modernism, a manifesto for a rebirth of socialist modernism. As the Guardian reviews: 'Hatherley's book is an intelligent and passionately argued attempt to "excavate utopia" from the ruins of modernism'. The book refers to built and un-built examples of the Smithons, the Park Hill estate in Sheffield, Heygate in London or the Bevin Court designed by Tecton. Apart from the the chapter of the industrial and brutalist aesthetics in Britain, Hatherley references Russian Constructivism in architecture, the Sexpol of Wilhelm reich in film and design and the alienation effects of Brecht and Hanns Eisler on record and on screen - all aruing for a Modernism of everyday life. As written on the book cover: 'This book is a defence of Modernism against its defenders (...) it attempts to reclaim a revolutionary modernism against its absorption into the heritage industry and the aesthetic of the luxury flat.'

Royen

Royen

Royen

Royen

Pratteln

Montelimar

Ludwigshafen

Berlin

Montepulciano


All Images by Hansaviertel