Urban places
As I patiently wait for my copy of Julia Solis’ New York Underground to arrive, the BBC reports that natural disasters can be a threat to the growing expansion of big cities underground. Although we’re referring to both licit and illicit dwelling in urban spaces here, the risk no doubt remains the same: where can people escape to after this?
And speaking of new forms of urban living, Robert Neuwirth’s Shadow Cities is sitting on my desk waiting to be reviewed. According to the publisher blurb: “In almost every country of the developing world, the most active builders are squatters, creating complex local economies with high rises, shopping strips, banks, and self-government. As they invent new social structures, Neuwirth argues, squatters are at the forefront of the worldwide movement to develop new visions of what constitutes property and community.”
We’re also about to open the urban/suburban question in class. We’ll look at books like Dolores Hayden’s Building Suburbia, Richard Harris’ Creeping Conformity, Kenneth Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier and Mike Davis’ Dead Cities - and focussing on Henri Lefebvre’s Urban Revolution, we’ll discuss how ‘the urban’ differs from ‘the city’ - and what that means to the urban/suburban dichotomy or ‘master narrative’. Should be interesting.