Thursday, March 20, 2008
the inevitable Rose Kennedy Greenway commentary
The Rose Kennedy Greenway, flower of Boston's Big Dig, is nearing completion and there are a lot of things to say about it in terms of American use of open space, park obsession and urban shame (it's OK that we aren't suburban, really)... thankfully I have this article from the Boston Globe's Tom Keane to take the edge off my bloviation temptation...
Monday, March 10, 2008
big talk about the formal/informal
There's a lot of talk about the divide between the "formal" (i.e., the planned, the controlled, the centralized) and the "informal" (messy, unplanned life), frequently the formal being associated with the first world, mcmansion, gated-community mentality (although the "first-world" status of gated communities is debatable) and the informal embodied in it's most pure form in Brazilian favellas and the dream worlds of Lebbus Woods.
I'm watching a fantastic video of a GSD lecture by Teddy Cruz (fantastic b/c, in addition to the content, I am in my sweatpants, eating dinner, and able to pause-and-rewind). He is giving a fascinating tour of the Tijuana/San Deigo border and the exchange that is going on there - the clash of the corporation-saturated southern California and the disorder of Mexican Tijuana. Drug dealer's tunnels through earth and buildings, entire houses picked up and transported south to make room for new ones, a double-headed Trojan Horse, built for transparency, straddling the boarder. I could go off on a dozen tangents.
He asserts, as many do, that the formal is ignorant of the informal, which is hard to deny. But isn't the formal just a reaction to the informal? Isn't it a clumsy, ham-fisted reaction to the informal, deriving it's existence from the very thing it seeks to squash?
Isn't it more than that, but actually a product of the failures of the informal?
look at the 'formal' systems around you - they seem to sink into the cracks in our "informal' society, where tight social circles fail and crime sneaks in, the formality of police force oozes in after it. Where private/civic organizations fail to provide comprehensive and open education, public education arises. Where the social contract fails to moderate land use, zoning arrives.
The strength of the organic, freely determined will always overwhelm the hollow and the formal, but can we guide and accelerate this to ensure it is as positive as possible?
I'm watching a fantastic video of a GSD lecture by Teddy Cruz (fantastic b/c, in addition to the content, I am in my sweatpants, eating dinner, and able to pause-and-rewind). He is giving a fascinating tour of the Tijuana/San Deigo border and the exchange that is going on there - the clash of the corporation-saturated southern California and the disorder of Mexican Tijuana. Drug dealer's tunnels through earth and buildings, entire houses picked up and transported south to make room for new ones, a double-headed Trojan Horse, built for transparency, straddling the boarder. I could go off on a dozen tangents.
He asserts, as many do, that the formal is ignorant of the informal, which is hard to deny. But isn't the formal just a reaction to the informal? Isn't it a clumsy, ham-fisted reaction to the informal, deriving it's existence from the very thing it seeks to squash?
Isn't it more than that, but actually a product of the failures of the informal?
look at the 'formal' systems around you - they seem to sink into the cracks in our "informal' society, where tight social circles fail and crime sneaks in, the formality of police force oozes in after it. Where private/civic organizations fail to provide comprehensive and open education, public education arises. Where the social contract fails to moderate land use, zoning arrives.
The strength of the organic, freely determined will always overwhelm the hollow and the formal, but can we guide and accelerate this to ensure it is as positive as possible?
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