Urban Studies
I would like to take up a topic that is not frequently discussed in intellectual circles amongst our generation: the politics of space. No, not space as in Sheriff/Fishstick futuristic jargon, but space as in space here on earth, in our cities and our suburbs, etc. It's too often neglected in political discussion that space matters, a lot. In industrial nations, and America in particular, it matters a whole lot. Those of us who are seniors and will be graduating this year will likely have some decisions to be making as to what space they choose to occupy next year and in future years. Will it be in this country? Will it be in this city? Will it be in a city or a rual area? Will it be in an urban or a suburban area? These choices matter.
My understanding is that our parents --both in the immediate sense of the parents of writers on this blog and the parents of most of kids like us--made one of the most profound collecive decision of the century when they moved to the suburbs. If they made this decision like my parents did a few years ago, they made it with complete ignorance (either incidental or purposeful) of the political consequences of their move.
But this is to ignore that space does not just exist apolitically, but is tied to very political forces indeed: resources and demographics. Where we choose to live matters. Now, I'd prefer not to go into a tirade about how we all have responsilbities to live in the ghetto and send our children to ghetto schools. Why? Because I don't want to live in a crime-infested neighborhood and I don't want to send my children to a school where the majority of children have to worry about being fed or where their father is, etc. This is not a good environment for a school. Still, as a generation I think we need to pay attention and in fact do something about the politics of space. We can't just vote in the ballot box.
So "what is to be done?" as Nicholai Cherneshevsky once wrote. I'm not sure, exactly. But let's not pretend that there isn't a problem, and that we have nothing to do with the problem, and that we can't do really practical things to help mitigate it: we can live in cities; we can embrace integrated living; we can start our own charter schools that teach the principles that Milton Friedman has handed down to us. I don't know.
But for God's sake, we should start talking about these things (and ultimately doing things) more and about nanotechnology, literary theory, and the singularity less. The trouble is we don't really have access to a serious discourse of poverty. Why? Because we suck. But let's not feel bad about that, because we're all (to quote my own facebook) super smart and super nice. We're better than the generations that have come before us. We're fitter, healthier, and more productive. We (or at least one of us) have shown the ability to throw kick-ass parties helping out the victims of circumstance. We can destroy our bodies with merciless abandomnent, and yet live to at least 22 to talk about, and indeed, celebrate it. And celebrate we will--tonight, brokebackmountain style. Yeeeehaw.
My understanding is that our parents --both in the immediate sense of the parents of writers on this blog and the parents of most of kids like us--made one of the most profound collecive decision of the century when they moved to the suburbs. If they made this decision like my parents did a few years ago, they made it with complete ignorance (either incidental or purposeful) of the political consequences of their move.
But this is to ignore that space does not just exist apolitically, but is tied to very political forces indeed: resources and demographics. Where we choose to live matters. Now, I'd prefer not to go into a tirade about how we all have responsilbities to live in the ghetto and send our children to ghetto schools. Why? Because I don't want to live in a crime-infested neighborhood and I don't want to send my children to a school where the majority of children have to worry about being fed or where their father is, etc. This is not a good environment for a school. Still, as a generation I think we need to pay attention and in fact do something about the politics of space. We can't just vote in the ballot box.
So "what is to be done?" as Nicholai Cherneshevsky once wrote. I'm not sure, exactly. But let's not pretend that there isn't a problem, and that we have nothing to do with the problem, and that we can't do really practical things to help mitigate it: we can live in cities; we can embrace integrated living; we can start our own charter schools that teach the principles that Milton Friedman has handed down to us. I don't know.
But for God's sake, we should start talking about these things (and ultimately doing things) more and about nanotechnology, literary theory, and the singularity less. The trouble is we don't really have access to a serious discourse of poverty. Why? Because we suck. But let's not feel bad about that, because we're all (to quote my own facebook) super smart and super nice. We're better than the generations that have come before us. We're fitter, healthier, and more productive. We (or at least one of us) have shown the ability to throw kick-ass parties helping out the victims of circumstance. We can destroy our bodies with merciless abandomnent, and yet live to at least 22 to talk about, and indeed, celebrate it. And celebrate we will--tonight, brokebackmountain style. Yeeeehaw.
posted by Robot at 4:41 PM
2 Comments:
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I have to agree that this is a concern of primary importance to me, as well. Geography and architecture, as people's interactions with the space around them, are not only crucial determining factors of quality and life and experience of space, but are clearly themselves determined by deeper structures at hand.
The degredation of the urban centers and move to the suburbs of America that occurred in the post-war boom and more prominently even in our parents' generation did not spring forth from the head of the god, fully impoverished, so to speak. These problems have serious causes related to class and racial divides, and in fact I would say are largely a result of the expansionistic drive, the "self-valorization" of capital and market forces. The need for industries and markets to grow beyond their to maintain a "competitive advantage," without heed to any issues of sustainability and equity, themselves create the physical expansion outwards, into the suburbs and zero-lot subdevelopments. It is an anachronistic view that presupposes that people moved out of the cities due to crime, poverty or the like (all of which found root in the vacuum left by the new commuters). What we actually see in the 'sprawl' is the perpetuation by the captains of industry, economic planners (e.g. the GI Bill) &c. of a certain "dream" of land/home ownership, the image itself creating the libidinal desire for the commodity form. No malice even need be presumed on the part of the former, but it is clear that none was needed to strike the deathblow to our nation's urban centers and with it all those unfortunate enough to be trapped in their walls (or rather outside the subdivision gates).
Any serious appropriation of the problem must examine it at its root, we cannot "orientalize" the urban center, pretending that we contribute to its health merely by building a new stadium or mall. The urban luxury loft dwellers entertain grandiose illusions of 'giving back' or 'rejuvination' but there is no translation to actuall effect for the city, the organic whole. As long as urban renewal remains some circular flow of capital waved above the heads of those actually in need of renewal we only turn the city into the new suburbs and push our borders further and further out
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