User:Claxhanson/References

A guide to infrastructure and corruption

- Alejandro Cartagena

Epilogue

Urban infrastructure is a gear of political power. Its aim is to conquer the territory of the city and hold dominion over certain city relationships. Public space is more than just a polygon delineated by coordinates, it is a factory of social realities. There would be nothing problematic about this power if it weren’t exclusive. Those who build the city exercise a regulatory power over our mindset and our everyday experience. The rhythms that regulate our hours, "our place" in society and the type of roads we take on our daily commute are manifestations of this control.

Behind urban infrastructure are countless relationships of power as well as a certain repertoire of knowledge, speeches, fashion and images that tend to justify plunder or destruction. Therefore the overpass and throughway turn out to be the material outcome of coalitions between a wide range of ideas, beliefs and relationships, which constitute its true power: they represent the city on the continual path of progress.

This is how planners, partners and administrators end up making public spaces an ideological issue. Progress is no longer a visual representation but a political reality that influences what should or should not take up space in a city. This is an anarchical control - not anarchist - as its order depends on a battle with no rules, in which the winners are those who manage to impose their will and have sufficient strength to repel any resistance. Ultimately, this control wil implode because it systemically denies life and memory their rightful place.

Consequently, those who build the city are the fortunate winners in a cacophonic bidding war. The guidelines are dictated by construction companies that will raise the avenue in spite of public opposition. The end results are cities that are ideal for doing business but not for living.

The affected parties have no choice but to resign themselves to the inevitable or simply to move out. Progress is hard to dispute although it erases all reference to proper living; the products are dreg-cities, burrs stuck to the production line.

The road you take

The panorama viewed form a vantage point is the ultimate expression of authoritarianism. The landscape of the metacity is compromised of staggered mounds of dust. This ugliness cannot be fathomed. It is viewed out of the corner of ones’s eyes but felt throghout one’s entire body. The city is a producer of realities. Sometimes the inhabitants manage to slip past the fence and dance on the worksite. However, arid spaces usually produce equally arid relationships. The city is a plain, opened up on the dissecting table. Few are the surgeon’s advisors. He makes a pretty penny eliminating ludic and fanciful relashionships, but his work is to insert spaces for work and consumerism. There is no place for living because no one takes it into consideration when adding to or eliminating from the space. There is no other path. This is the road you take.

The Dispossessed

Light is the greatest plunder. The annoying neighbor has moved in just across the street. He hogs all the sunlight. He lays all memory to waste. The street as a place to play is but a memore that will be forgotten upon the death of the last witness. Then there will be no one asking if life was better before the neighbor settled in. The neighbor who doesn’t let you sleep, who fills our cracks with dust, and observes the neighbourhood from his monumental arrogance. I am the overpass, the appartement building, the 24/7 store. I have triumphed over the failed attempts of those before me. Weaknesses that deserved to disappear. Silence thrown finally into submission. Appropriation by dispossession would not be so peaceful without justification of the laws and the support of the security forces. All existing energies are thrown into this competition. Talent and hours are devoted to the construction of a new overpass. The animal that lives here is one of the dispossessed that cannot get out. Trapped in traffic, he has been stripped of everything but his place.

The Funambulist magazine

Weaponized infrastructures

“A construction project is worth a battalion” said French General and colonial administrator Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934), a key strategist of French colonialism in Vietnam, Madagascar, and Morocco.

Architecture and colonialism

The two editorial arguments of this issue are simple: colonialism is not an era, it is a system of military/police, legal, administrative, social, and cultural system of domination; and, architecture is not (only) an aesthetic vessel, it is an apparatus organizing and hierarchizing bodies in space.

De-platform-ization, Ethics and Alternative Social Media :

"Against the totality of networks and corporately owned social media, what are workable strategies and ethical approaches that allow for alternative ways for our social life to emerge?"
http://display.cz/en/events/de-platformization-ethics-and-alternative-social-media

Here and Now? Explorations in Urgent Publishing

Key notions of relations, trust, and remediation : https://networkcultures.org/makingpublic/2020/05/20/here-and-now-explorations-in-urgent-publishing/

Yona Friedman

L’architecture de survie (une philosophie de la pauvreté)

"Who has the right to decide, and the power of agency over architecture?
How to ensure this right to those to whom it belongs?
How to do it in a world that is heading towards increasing poverty?
How to survive in such a world?"

Year: 1978 The commission for designing David d’Angers High School enabled Friedman to verify his ideas for self-planning by a group of future users.
In different stages and by a set of rules the users decided on the lay-out of the building.

The complete diagram Themes:
- Self-planning
- principles of Mobile Architecture
- Urban networks