A city is crooked because it is diverse, full of migrants speaking dozens of languages; because its inequalities are so glaring, svelte ladies lunching a few blocks away from exhausted transport cleaners; because of its stresses, as in concentrating too many young graduates chasing too few jobs … Can the physical ville [city] straighten out such difficulties? Will plans to pedestrianize a street do anything about the housing crisis? Will the use of sodium borosilicate glass in buildings make people more tolerant of immigrants?
Richard Sennett, Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City, 2018 # 4
Crooked city planning
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- More than ever today, nature has become inseparable from culture; and if we are to understand the interactions between ecosystems, the mechanosphere, and the social and individual universes of reference, we have to learn to think ‘transversaly’. As the waters of Venice are invaded by monstrous, mut …
# 9
Monstrous algae meets gentrification: a Tale of Invasion
More than ever today, nature has become inseparable from culture; and if we are to understand the interactions between ecosystems, the mechanosphere, and the social and individual universes of reference, we have to learn to think ‘transversaly’. As the waters of Venice are invaded by monstrous, mutant algae, so our television screens are peopled and saturated by ‘degenerate’ images and utterances. In the realm of social ecology.
Donald Trump and his ilk -another form of algae - are permitted to proliferate unchecked. In the name of renovation, Trump takes over whole districts of New York or Atlantic City, raises rents, and squeezes out tens of thousands of poor families. Those who Trump condemns to homelessness are the social equivalent of the dead fish of environmental ecology.
Felix Guattari, Three Ecologies, 1989Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
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- We would ask to transform and reform the modalities of membership by which the city (cité) belongs to the state, as in a developing Europe or in international juridical structures still dominated by the inviolable rule of state sovereignty […] This should no longer be the ultimate horizon for citie …
of our Imagination
