Is it Dichotomy?
The content for this week was interesting. I focused mostly on Jeremy Till's "Here, There, and North of Nowhere". Till begins his essay which I believe is a slight commentary on Kenneth Frampton's "Towards a Critical Regionalism" with Till's own intersections of interests. Till begins the essay by stating that everything is either Global or Local and that cities are binary. He also insists that Global is the stronger of the two and that any attempt of local comes as a reaction or resistance to Global.
"Opposites proliferate, but they are always in reaction to the dominant, and thus either in the thrall of it or in retreat from it. Resistance is claimed, but it is really no more effective than a boxer exhausting himself against the swinging mass of the punch bag"
I disagree sheerly because the Local city predates the Global city, and thus the original cities do not react to Global pressure.
Further in the essay, Till quotes Bruno Latour, who describes the fluidity that "allow[s] us to pass with continuity from the local to the global, from the human to the nonhuman"
What I find interesting from this snippet is that Latour is considering Global cities nonhuman. Do you all agree? How can a place be nonhuman if not made for and by humans? Is Latour referencing our submission to the machine and how true Globalism is allowed through the outlet of technology?
Finally, Till resolves the conversation by using the example of Sheffield as a Global and Local city. A team of architects developed a set of scales that range from Local to Global and found examples at every scale within Sheffield.
"1:1 More than just a detail
1:100 One architect to one hundred citizens
1;10,000 These are stories not streets
1:10,000,000 Here, There, and North of Nowhere"
My question here then is what is Clemson, or any college town? Tradition and history make many college towns Local, but the vast reach of students and faculty expands over the earth, making it Global. I personally think Clemson would be a 1:1,000 scale. What do y'all think?
I totally agree with your judgement of Clemson being a 1:1,000 scale. I also disagree that global entities are human. Not just because we build them but because all humans have the same needs and operate in the exact same ways to our core. We need interaction and function best within it. We require water and sustenance. We have a desire to understand the world around us, etc. I think that these universal human needs and characteristics could be an additional argument against the author.
ReplyDeleteI believe based on the theoretical definitions outlined by Till, the city of Clemson itself is very localized. College campuses, like Clemson, that are true 'college towns' are within a city that is in most cases primarily serving the University. I think where these lines become blurred is when a university is located in a city that is more globalized. For example, I think of universities located in Chicago, NYC, Los Angeles, etc. I think your point about the reach of students is very interesting as well, but I think when separating Clemson the city from Clemson the university, I would argue it is a local city with a global university reach.
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