The Right to the City In Times of Global Peace
A question that came to mind during this past week's discussion on the right to the city, a concept posed by David Harvey, was how can the democratization of this right occur when wide-spread demolition through violent acts is no longer an accepted mean? Historically, since the birth of cities, violent transformation was the way in which change of ownership in the city was accomplished. This violent transformation took the form of wars, street uprisings, or through planned demolition as in the case of Hausmann's Paris. While we are not in a world entirely free of violent conflict as a means of transformation (i.e. Ukraine or Syria), in the wealthy, Western world, there is a reduction of the space for such ambitious transformation due to the order of peace enforced by the power of the global market. By no means am I advocating for a return to violence, I am instead wondering what can be done when the traditional means of taking capital surplus are no longer accomplishable due to the enforcement of the global financial system?
Even in the removal of Russian oligarchs from holding a place to the right of the city will those rights be transferred to other wealthy individuals, not to the common people.
I think this is an interesting question Geoffrey, particularly because it eludes to the idea of reform a city. The simple question I might ask is.....why don't we just build more city? Sounds ignorant at first but if we simply read the terrain of our surrounding area, there seems to be no problem with mowing down tree coverage of the side of a highway to create more suburbs. I am not advocating the mowing of neighborhoods adjacent to the city for mowing sake, but I am stating this notion of buying properties adjacent to cities centers and continuing to grow the city seems to be one that is often overlooked. City edges tend to also be derelict and not well organized. I am curious to why this is but that is a conversation for another day. It seems so simple....build more city. Usually the biggest hurdle to this is zoning in the contemporary context....which is more outdated than the abacus. In fact, I'd say the abacus is more useful.
ReplyDeleteGeoffrey, your analysis almost presents a challenge. Violence feels like an immediate way to instigate change but is also pretty primal and inhumane. I don't have an alternative but I feel like even during my lifetime I have seen a drastic increase in empathy and respect for others. I hope we are slowly moving towards a more utopic vision of cities, where people are the priority and they do not have to fight for basic needs. Maybe these societal shifts will draw a blueprint for architects and people can simply ask what they want. (We just have to eat the rich first.)
ReplyDeleteGeoffrey, it reads to me like you're beginning to bridge into the topic of design as protest. You write about violent uproars and responses, not in a bad light, but in an analytical manner where you're talking about how violence is a last resort, something we use when we feel that all other options have been exhausted. The collective Design As Protest work to facilitate design initiatives that propose solutions to problems that we thought were out of options.
ReplyDeleteYour post speaks to a bit of where design comes in after the fact of violent upbringings - but I hope we can study where design can prevent or mitigate conflicts.
https://www.dapcollective.com/ - idk why this link didn't show up
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