MANIFESTO
1. We do not have an ideology; we challenge and reframe urban narratives. 2. Our practice: research, think, transform, reassess. 3. We define the city as an evolving process that is not confined by three-dimensional forms. 4. Our scope of the emerging urban realm values the individual as integral to larger systems. 5. We recognize every individual as a maker of the city with agency to design our collective environment. 6. We facilitate conversations between those who design, those who build, and those who use everyday. 7. We situate our research at the intersection of knowledge and experience to inform our practice. 8. How we think about cities transforms what we do.
I touch down in a city new to me. The urbanism creates a paradox of simultaneous connections and separations. The conurbation continues without perceptible boundaries; there exist few clear points of engagement. I experience a fleeting encounter with a man in a gas station, convenience store, but this interaction cannot sustain me! There must be more to this place; I forge ahead. Continued attempts to orient myself across the space result in more obligatory consumption. Finally a break in the environment; I find slight liberation at the sea. However, the water only partially contextualizes the vast space behind me. I descend into deep thought. An answer lies in the human others. We are all a part of the others. Let the others become us. Manifesto.
Y ? T I T C S A I G BEIN OEX
C OF L O A T GO E E H K T H TA T I T W I S E O D AT H W
Combined with the dominating presence of neoliberalism rampant throughout the rapidly developing western world, the path to co-existence is fractured; urban populations are unable to maintain even a basic sense of sustainability, let alone a clear future of co-habitation. Systems of informality, weak ties, which compensate for the inadequacies of the formal political economy, are severed in such a way that a path to reconstruction seem painfully out of reach. How is this crisis addressed? What is the first / next step toward the recognition of a need to co-exist? From where does the necessary radicalization to repair such a fractured system stem? The acknowledgement of there strength of weak ties by those who have been marginalized and disenfranchised is a place to start. This process can lead to achieving a system of co-existence, at least amongst those who have received the greatest disservice.
In the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, full of new and old business executives, congressmen, and government professionals, I pick up a copy of the local newspaper (the Beacon Hill Times) and it reads: In the Aftermath of two recent attempted robberies on Beacon Hill, more than 75 residents joined police, elected officials and community leaders at a public meeting at Mount Vernon Street firehouse Thursday night to discuss what Captain Bernard O’Rourke of the Boston Police Department described as an “aberration” in the neighborhood. At approximately 9:55 p.m. on May 19, a victim stated she was walking her dog and talking on her iPhone when a group of black and Hispanic teenagers approached her at the corner of West Cedar and Mt. Vernon streets, according to police… “The response here tonight is impressive and important,” [City Council President Mike] Ross said. “The best defense is to know your neighbor…so you can tell who does and doesn’t belong in your community.”
Who is it that doesn’t belong? I walk the streets as if I’m on another planet.
Joggers plugged in to ipods next to police on horseback, sanitized and polished, modern streets still frozen in time, a security guard making minimum wage as he guards digitized billions, and neighbors in continuous loops of feedback, looking over their shoulders late at night in fear of the “Other” who doesn’t belong The hypostasis of an artificial double, the clone will henceforth be your guardian angel, the visible form of your unconscious and flesh of your flesh, literally and without metaphor. Your “neighbor” will henceforth be this clone of hallucinatory resemblance, consequently you will never be alone again and never have a secret. “Love your neighbor as yourself”: this old problem of christianity is resolved — your neighbor, it’s yourself. Jean Baudrillard, Seduction
What knowledge is being circulated? How is it being circulated? Who is circulating it? Who is beneffiting from such processes? All of these questions are critical as we being to assemble the ‘future city’ out of the current one. Industry City has a very specific and very visionary idea of how this future urban space is crafted – mostly out of an idealized urban imaginary lens of nostalgia. This construction of the urban prioritizes a future city which reinhabits the city with industry, a return to the manufacturing heyday, without all the unnecessary negative effects, pollution, low wages, unattractive spaces, etc. The industry City can remedy all of this with a vision of industry through the lens of the corporatized city. Is this the reality of how the Industry City will manifest, though? How can small scale manufacturing be shoehorned into this image of the future? As well, who is making this decision? Who does this process, this vision benefit? The knowledge transferring between stakeholders is heavily one of corporate economic drivers, disregarding the human aspect of these knowledge constructions. It is important to recognize the huge benefits this type of knowledge infusion can have, especially on cities stuggling from vast and vigorous post-industrial decline. In the making of urban society, in this post-post-industrial city, the return to industry must happen with the maker in mind, not just new economy of the future city.
São Paulo is a different beast from New York. So why do people compare it as Brazil’s “New York?” At one point I considered the city more like Los Angeles, but even then, why do cities need to resemble other cities in order to be “known?” There are some cities actively trying to market themselves as other cities, like Abu Dhabi’s grand gestures to attract the Louvre, Guggenheim, and Tate museums of Paris, New York and London. There are other cities that are perceived as such places, like Vancouver being known as the “Hollywood of the Pacific Northwest.” And the are cities distancing themselves from their counterparts, like Charlotte pushing to develop less like Atlanta. Is this the fault of man? Is this the fault of the city? Can the city really be at fault? Or should we even be blaming cities for using other cities as inspiration?