there's our catastrophe

Apr 1

remember when the Associated Press determined that Ann Arbor was the least segregated city in Michigan because its population was 7% black instead of 50% black or 80% black or 20 % black in a state that’s 15% black

by “segregation is a problem” we know everyone means “oh god there are a lot of black people in detroit” not “ann arbor is a majority white city just outside of the blackest city in the country and has been pretty strongly responsible for uneven distribution of resources in the region for a very long time now”

I think the context around the use of the term “segregation” when referring specifically to Black people in the USA, in a specific city, is really important. Having said that, I think it’s relevant that last year I read a lot of policy from Australia, North America and Europe that was concerned with “segregation” or “ghettoisation” or similar concepts in the urban environment. Without exception, an area was considered segregated and in need of a policy response if it had a large population of people of colour or otherwise ethnically marginalised people; without exception, disproportionately white areas were not considered “segregated”. This was also true of poverty: poor people living together are ghettoised and need to be broken out of that with gentrification, rich people living together is just the way of the world. Discourses of “integration” in urban policy are almost all progressive-sounding ways to talk about large groups of marginalised people as a problem. Basically you’re right and this is a huge issue in other places as well.

Mar 22

Richard Florida Concedes the Limits of the Creative Class

immolator:

“The so-called creative class of intellects and artists was supposed to remake America’s cities and revive urban wastelands. Now the evidence is in—and the experiment appears to have failed”

(seriously though - this is a good insight into the kind of grotesque bullshit that has guided urban development over the last decade or so. extensive studies of cities and their challenges replaced with THE CREATIVE CLASS. fuck richard florida)

ahahahaha sucked in

like not that the kind of “revitalisation” florida swore to bring was ever anything other than gross gentrifying bullshit, but it’s nice to see him fail even at that

Jan 12

dorkblogging:

idk i just resent how ~since jane jacobs we’re supposed to hate on massive brutalist (infra)structure. whenever i look at these buildings i can’t help but get sappy idealistic early-bauhaus/constructivism feels and i guess it’s weird but whatever, i’ve made peace with it.

jane jacobs has had the worst fucking influence on urban planning

her entire take on social mix is so toxically under-thought, it literally just comes from being part of a gentrifying wave, being completely unaware of that, looking around her, and saying “quaint village atmosphere!!!”

jane jacobs is the reason or at least the theoretical justification for the “social mix” policies that form the biggest plank of modern state-supported neoliberal gentrification

as in, neoliberalism posits itself as the defender of variety and pluralism against brutalist conformist communist totalitarianism, and jacobs-influenced planning policy is one of the most easily traceable uses of that rhetoric in the recent history of cities and housing

I’m all for critiques of top-down planning processes but what people don’t realise is that jacobs-esque social mix type policies are also top-down and bureaucratic and insensitive to the needs of local people, especially people in need of affordable housing

I could go on about this all day and I have and I’ll probably do it again

Mar 3

on having money

guys, this hugely influential article I’m reading on gay male communities and gentrification (toward an analysis of the role of gay communities in the urban renaissance, by mickey lauria and lawrence knopp) is terrible

firstly, you lose points for putting “urban renaissance” in the title

secondly, although there is some complicated shit going on with the socially marginal middle class and the urban environment, it’s fairly safe to say that gay male gentrifiers are not gentrifiers because they are gay; stereotypes aside, gay men in fact have less earning power than straight men. these dudes are just the gay dudes who have more money.

thirdly, lesbians are less likely than gay men to create distinct gentrified urban neighbourhoods not because of complicated psychosexual reasons that lead them to be more readily integrated into the wholesome suburbs or w/e but because they have less money.

it’s shit like this that makes researchers completely reject any non-economic theories of gentrification.

Dec 8

also, look how cool this picture of jane jacobs is! from jane jacobs and the power of women planners at the atlantic.

wilson-joe:

Portrait of Jane Jacobs for The Architectural Review. Lovely mag, if you can find a copy be sure to pick it up.

the article attached to this picture is quite good, nuanced and critical. really important reading if you are interested in urban life, gentrification, or urban decay. but see also this response to the negative reassessment (misinterpretation?) of jacobs’ legacy. I don’t know what to believe

Jul 14

Cities can be carbon sinks too, not just sources

Urban areas might not be so bad for the environment, as long as there are plenty of trees around.

Melissae Fellet//New Scientist

yesssss

<3 cities, h8 primitivism

Jul 10

Is 'The Bay' An Island?

graftversushost:

zincfingers:

grr argh rant ahead

I think it’s a really interesting post but I think the overlaps in motivation for migrating to those areas ARE much more complex than is presented there. I do think it’s a great study of how raced and classed ‘in-groups’ are created and the author does a good job questioning the assumptions that surround phrases like ‘radical queer’. She also says a lot of insightful things about how people essentialize the Bay Area, etc.

However, I also thought some of the instructions at the end were pretty gross: “Oh, I’m not pointing fingers or anything, but if you have the means to you should really consider moving back the area where you grew up. If you’re resistant to this idea, examine your privilege lol” Yeah, go fuck yourself. I am no longer in contact with most of my biological family for good reason. The place where they live, and where I went to high school, holds no opportunities for me. I’m not going to ‘examine the privilege’ that allowed me to leave that toxic living situation for good. It would be great if marginalized young people had MORE of an ability to be mobile, and class wasn’t such a huge obstacle for so many people in moving to a place where they could be happy and comfortable. But telling everyone else to go back ~~~home isn’t going to solve that problem. Home, roots, and family don’t always mean positive things to people, and it’s NOT always because of unchecked privilege. Nobody has an obligation to stay close to their biological family, in a place they were born into by chance.

Same general idea: “If you can afford it, go live in boring suburbs further away from your friends and other queer people!” Once again, go fuck yourself. Especially for people who came from shitty situations themselves and might not HAVE strong family connections or previous experiences of community, living closely within a community of friends is really important. The author needs to realize that the need for self-care, in cases like this, may trump everything else.

W/R/T “moving home:” I took that as “it’s not about me, so it’s not about me.” I’m “home” now for the time being and I know it’s not safe for me to live and work here in the long run, and I absolutely don’t have a support network that works for me. That isn’t true for everyone who “escapes” from their shitty hometown (sometimes full-fledged city, just not radikewl enough) though, and you know, by moving away we are all complicit in the ongoing problems of our place of origin - it’s still the right decision in the present though for me and I guess for you. I don’t think it’s wrong to ask people in general to think about whether going “home” and helping to make it a better place is feasible for them. I think it’s also a very different question for cis queers than it is for a lot of trans people who don’t want to be tied to where everyone knew us “before” and the constant “did they recognize me” anxiety. So I mean, staying home isn’t good for you or me, but maybe some people should take an honest accounting before moving to where they’ll get laid and party more (there may be a lot of politicized work to do at home anyway).

I appreciate some acknowledgement that gentrification is complicated as fuck and a natural part of capitalism, and what I take from it is again, do an honest accounting and if avoiding being part in that is not feasible for you, then it’s not feasible for you and it doesn’t make you a rotten person (there is no existing outside of capitalism except to lifestylist scumfucks and even then…), and besides, there are ways to help offset the negative effects on the neighborhood you’re gentrifying.

this article is really really good, please read it

re: commentary. yes, but/and

my sitch is that in demographic terms I am in many ways less of a gentrifying force in the hip queer bubble I currently live in than in the “up-and-coming” (spew) area I grew up in (although we’re talking suburbs of a large city rather than small town vs. city, which makes the issue of isolation from queer-normative community less pressing).

but my plan is still to move back there, because the difference is that in the area I grew up in — I know the shopkeepers, I know elderly people, I know people who are different to me — I’m part of a community other than young white liberal Arts educated queer hipsters. I have a real connection to the area. I know all my parent’s neighbours up and down the street. I can’t remember the names of the neighbours to either side of me in my current house. I have no committment to the area and no roots here.

I remember one time as a young teen, I was alone at home when I fell very ill. I was able to stumble out into the street and find someone I knew to take me to the doctor. I couldn’t do that here. Nor could any child I had. Not with the take-and-move-on young adult renter’s life I’m living. I am, I hope, going to live a life that extends past my late twenties. I want to be around children and old people. I want to live somewhere where I feel like I can have a future and a past rather than one endless hedonistic present.

I take the core of the original post to be that, for queers, community across difference is a more worthy and useful goal than community around similarity — which essentially reproduces a hegemonic norm, just a different one, where thin young abled white “alternative” queers with access to tertiary education are centred and everybody else is marginalised. the idea of “radical community” is a sham and a fraud. the communities that are important are the broad and fractured ones I’m already part of, not the ones I could attempt to build with the .0001% of the population that agrees with my take on Gramsci and likes my haircut and doesn’t ask “so, do you have a boyfriend?”.

obviously taking personal responsibility can sometimes cross over into individualism or martyring yourself or weird appropriation of “authentic” and pure lifestyles (like anti-capitalist middle-class intellectuals seeking employment in the trades because it’s more politically sound than being a writer or something). graftversushost makes a good point re: the complicated nature of keeping in touch with one’s past for trans people. I’m generally uneasy about critiques of queer spaces coming from queers who are actually able to live in straight world if we have to. I mean, I’m cis and more or less normatively feminine and have had serious relationships with cis men and probably will again sometime down the line, averages being what they are. Giving up queer spaces simply would not be as much of a sacrifice for me as it would be for many of my friends. I think queers like me — invisible queers, queers who are sometimes in hetero or hetero-appearing relationships — need to stop being so hung up on proving that we’re just as queer as anyone and have a real think about the very real expanded opportunities and mobilities we have. not everything is about individual identity, some things are about collectivity, how other people treat you and how you move through the world.

anyway, this is something I’ve thought a lot about and changed my mind on many times. but ultimately I keep coming back to the conclusion that I need to stop thinking about how I can be blameless and start thinking about what I can do, and what it will cost me and others, and is it worth it? & I think those questions, at least, are ones anyone can ask themselves, wherever they are.

(via saltmarshhag-deactivated2013011)

Jun 1

"children at play" signs put our children at risk//tom vanderbilt//slate

o-song:Traffic engineers don’t like ‘children at play’ signs - it’s the various council chambers and the like that put them there. And the reason traffic engineers don’t like them is because people ignore them anyway. Instead, they say, the roads themselves should be engineered so that people driving on them are being cautious in the first place.

Apr 12

ghettomanifesto:

Activists respond to sit-lie with DIY benches

Sometime before 1 a.m. on April 11, a group of activists installed handmade benches at 10 different locations throughout San Francisco as a political statement against the city’s sit-lie ordinance. The law, approved by voters last November, prohibits sitting or lying down on city sidewalks.

A spokesperson from the group offered to share images of the benches with the Guardian on condition of anonymity. The person noted that the benches were built by hand using wooden pallets found on the side of the road. The images were sent in an email with the subject line, “Angry queers protest sit/lie with public art.”

The do-it-yourself bench installation was accompanied by a statement. “These benches are more than places to sit,” the message reads. “They are a visible resistance to the privatization of public space.” It goes on to list a number of reasons behind the action, beginning with, “We believe that public space should be for everyone, and right now it is being taken away from those of us who need it most. Those of us whose presence in San Francisco has made our city the radical and creative haven it has been for decades. Those of us who have the least access to private spaces (which continue to get more and more unaffordable) and whose safety nets (like our shrinking public services) are being continuously destroyed.”

there's our catastrophe

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved. ⚑ ♀

Richard Florida Concedes the Limits of the Creative Class

“The so-called creative class of intellects and artists was supposed to remake America’s cities and revive urban wastelands. Now the evidence is in—and the experiment appears to have failed”

on having money

Cities can be carbon sinks too, not just sources

Is 'The Bay' An Island?

"children at play" signs put our children at risk//tom vanderbilt//slate

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved.

⚑ ♀