intense heat and its periodic absenc
Again, show two contrasting points. There either is 'project heat' (intense heating) or there is nothing. There is a gray area where someone can buy heat but they are limited on how much they can use. All or nothing concept?! Here the author is not truly highlighting on that gray area.
Relates to Harvey's The Right to the City. The governments lack of recognizing this city as a city having rights.
"Part of the solution or your part of the problem" kind of article.
hydraulic citizenshi
Abjection is a necessity in order for the production of hydraulic citizenship to occur.
andscapes and built environments canbecome repositories for meanings, identifications and bodily orientations salientwithin a particular group
Everyone uses different environments differently. So different built environments and infrastructures can have different meanings identifications to different people. It just depends on the individual person.
social care that treated sensory well-beingquaampleheat as part of obligations to its charges’ ‘comfort’ and ‘happiness’
At this point heat was not for ones own survival. It was a residents privilege to have heat. Heat was a 'comfort' and it was for their own 'happiness'.
The only thing Icansay that Idomiss is the heat
Now that the heat is gone, that when the residents start to notice it. When intensely given something, people take advantage and almost forget they are even given a gift (the gift of heating in this case).
two built environments – the gradually demolished architecture of theKeynesian welfare state and the gradually emerging architecture of a post-Keynesian urban communitarianism
Symbolical Significance- two contrasting ideas standing together. Here the author is showing how a beat down and a new built environment are standing together, next to each other. This can be shown among people as well. People of higher status should be with people of lower class.
nvestigated how a rapidlychanging urban built environment shapes a new ethics of social care as theAmerican welfare state itself undergoes substantial restructuring
Rapid changing urban built environment looks to be shaping "a new citizen". A citizen without full access to heat. Now they need to pay for their heat and on top of that they are limited to how much heat they can use.
As a condition of lease compliance, a transitioning Hornerresident must now assume financial and physical control of her domestic utilities,including her heating.
These residents are being forced to use their utilities such as heating in order to live in these 'new communities'? How is being forced to using heating giving the resident any sort of control (like it says in this quote) of how they want to or don't want to use their heating.
In the case of infrastructures, the poetic mode means that form is loosened from technicalfunction.
Studies of infrastructure tend toprivilege the technological even if they qualify it by defining urban spaces as hybrid systems ofhumans and machines bundled together through infrastructural networks. Yet one of the mostdynamic aspects of recent anthropological research on infrastructure is the sheer diversity of waysto conceive of and analyze infrastructures that cumulatively point to the productive instability ofthe basic unit of research.
Poetics is thus a rearranging of the hierarchy of what signification within thespeech event is dominant at any moment. Discourse operates on many levels simultaneously, butspeech acts release differing meanings in their poetic function than they do in their referential oremotive functions.
The infrastructure was built as a stable base for the continued flourishing and prestige of the community. Thus the hierarchy was established in order to keep the stability of infrastructures.
Poetic Function Vs. Emotional Function...Couldn't poetic function use emotional function in order to get the message across? Just a thought.
But infrastructures also exist as forms separate from their purely technical functioning, andthey need to be analyzed as concrete semiotic and aesthetic vehicles oriented to addressees
Here Brian Larkin has described that infrastructures matter, having effects and affects far beyond their technical functioning, providing opportunities to constitute the political through different means. The infrastructure was then felt to be double-visioned. Political and Poetic.
Focusing on the issue ofform, or the poetics of infrastructure, allows us to understand how the political can be constitutedthrough different means.
What exactly does Larkin mean by "poetics of infrastructure"? Is there a specific definition or idea he was aiming for...or was he literally referring to the aesthetics of infrastructures and how we understand infrastructures?
t in an agonistic city, where agreement is thin on the ground, a little more kind- ness may be what we should hope for and what we can get, whereas love is a bridge too far
The end of the article rose many questions for me. Was love really what previous urban societies were striving for? What is the states opinion? What if the state doesn't want love or kindness, but rather obedience and labor productivity?
kindness has to be built into the spaces of cities
Thrift argues that kindness is not merely urban mores, but also something to do with the built environment.
Directly related to everything we have learned thus far. Don't you all think so?!
I want to think of kindness as a social and aesthetic technology of belonging to a situation, rather than as an organic emotion
Here, Thrift is arguing that instead of a politics in bare civility or love/altruism, what we need is a politics of kindness. However, he has an interesting definition for "kindness". He defines kindness as “a social and aesthetic technology of belonging to a situation” rather than an "organic emotion".
they often sit very uncomfortably togethe
This shows an interesting contrast that, where as, cities can be seen as bringing people, things, and the built environment closer together, they can also be seen as seperating the three since there may be some uncomfortability.
not preclude a good deal of general misanthrop
Affect is important to "human interactional intelligence" (139). Here empathy merely means being alive to the presence of affect. Not just being empathetic to positive affects, which is opposed to the negative affects (meaning that sociality does not mean "liking").
Cities may have, as I will argue, a large reservoir of enmity but they also have a surplus of hope, an uncon- scious hunger for the future as well as the past.
Western cities are continuously modulated by repair and maintenance in ways that are so familiar that we tend to overlook them
This quote ties with the quote "it would be possible to argue that cities are constantly adding new circuits of adaptability" found on page 136, which suggests that cities are not as unstable as they may appear, since their cycles of maintenance and repair introduces a form of adaptability.
Some of the land taken from black families has become a country club in Virginia,”
This relates to Harvey's The Right to the City. This shows how black families do not have any rights to their own city. Instead it is stripped away from there.
Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history
Sooo in order to make amends for a wrong doing, for a reparation, we need to tell people to fix their own self-image?!
It’s very hard to accept white supremacy as a structure erected by actual people, as a choice, as an interest, as opposed to a momentary bout of insanity.
He preferred to take his chances with war. He was stationed in California. He found that he could go into stores without being bothered. He could walk the streets without being harassed.
I find this rather interesting. Once he got "power", from the military, he was no longer bothered. Social status may be at play here?! Another interesting fact is that his background of low class no longer matters, its where he is at in his life right now which is part of the armed forces.
Elegant Racism
Is there even such a thing called "Elegant Racism"? Since when is racism good? I do not agree there is any way to "better" racism.
Even the incoherent, bland and monotonous suburban tract development that continues to dominate in many areas now gets its anti-dote in a ‘new urbanism’ movement that touts the sale of community and boutique lifestyles to fulfill urban dreams. This is a world in which the neoliberal ethic of intense possessive individualism, and its cognate of political withdrawal from collective forms of action, becomes the tem-plate for human socialization
the government’s right of eminent domain has been abused in order to displace estab-lished residents in reasonable housing in favour of higher-order land uses, such as condominiums and box stores.
The government taking people out of their homes to built new infrastructures, the sad thing is that we gave the government that right, their power. We are the ones that want to change our built environment to things "we" want so people are loosing their homes because of us...
One step towards unifying these struggles is to adopt the right to the city as both working slogan and political ideal, precisely because it focuses on the question of who commands the necessary connection between urbanization and surplus production and use.
The answer to the last question is simple enough in principle: greater democratic control over the production and utilization of the surplus.
Is that really the best answer?! Greater control and surplus may be costly in regards to the social stability, don't you think?
Through a system of highways and infrastructural transformations, suburbanization and the total re-engineering of not just the city but also the whole metropolitan region, he helped resolve the capital-surplus absorption problem.
The right to the city had to mean the right to command the whole urban process, which was increasingly dominating the country-side through phenomena ranging from agribusiness to second homes and rural tourism
We live, after all, in a world in which the rights of private property and the profit rate trump all other notions of rights.
I here want to explore another type of human right, that of the right to the city.
The right to the city had to mean the right to command the whole urban process, which was increasingly dominating the country-side through phenomena ranging from agribusiness to second homes and rural tourism
Relating back to the main idea and title that we have the right to change our own built environment. This is just expanding on that idea.
to create a movement to build another kind of world—including a dif-ferent kind of urban experience.
Again showing the dialectical relationship between society and our built environment.
social consequences,
Maybe the social consequences arose by not included the African Americans in?! I understand its a different era...but its something to look at.
This project successfully absorbed the surplus and assured social stability, albeit at the cost of hollowing out the inner cities and generating urban unrest amongst those, chiefly African-Americans, who were denied access to the new prosperity.
Here it shows the difference in social status. Sounds like the surplus and social stability was only found within the white communities. African Americans were ignored and not seen.
bringing new products from housing to refrigerators and air conditioners, as well as two cars in the driveway and an enormous increase in the consumption of oil.
Looks pretty similar to the world, rather lifestyle, we live in today.
Above all, it entailed the reconfiguration of the urban infrastructure of Paris.
This shows how the economic situation is a factor in the decisions to change our built environment.
A great deal of energy is expended in promoting their sig-nificance for the construction of a better world.
This can relate to Foucault's, Panopticon, when showing how a disciplinary society uses alot of force to keep people in check which is costly and takes a lot of energy to run.
it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.
This connects with the idea that our built environment is a dialectical relationship. We have the "right" to create it, yet through time the environment shapes how we react, which then allows us to reshape the environment to that of our new understanding that our environment gave us.
sutprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals,
Interesting hypothesis...which sounds to be true. Very interesting!
There is no risk, therefore, that the increase of power created by the panoptic machine may degenerate into tyranny;
I find this hard to believe. Where there is power, there are people trying to gain that power?!
Panopticon
First time panopticon is mentioned...relates back to title. Main idea.
The Panopticon, on the other hand, must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men.
It must be understood this way? But is it really understood as a generalization of power of the mans everyday life?
Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up.
Power is not based on specific people but rather on the "space" or situation that power is necessary?!
space of exclusion
Could a space of exclusion compare to a space that is unoccupied?
space of exclusion
Could a space of exclusion compare to a space that is unoccupied?
the assignment to each individual of his 'true' name, his 'true' place, his 'true' body, his 'true' disease.
What does it mean to be "true"?! This idea of true sounds contradicting. Being true to oneself is being able to have control of ones own opinions and thoughts but that is not that case here in this prison...there are only certain things that are "true".
plague
Who is testing and monitoring the "upper class," the integrants, syndics, and guards, from this "plague"?
It lays down for each individual his place, his body, his disease and his death, his well-being, by means of an omnipresent and omniscient power that subdivides itself in a regular, uninterrupted way even to the ultimate determination of the individual, of what characterizes him, of what belongs to him, of what happens to him.
This may be the little control they have for themselves...knowledge of their disease and illness gives them some power as opposed to not knowing anything...
magistrates have complete control over medical treatment
The average person doesn't even have control of their own biological illnesses...they are being controlled by other people who seems to not care about them and sounds like they would let that person die...
Everything that may be observed during the course of the visits -deaths, illnesses, complaints, irregularities-is noted down and transmitted to the intendants and magistrates.
Why are only deaths, illnesses, complaints, and irregularities noted down?
those who live overlooking the courtyard will be allo-cated a window looking onto the street at which no one but they may show themselves);
So does this mean the home owners can't even look out their own windows without permission?
Only the intendants, syndics and guards will move about the streets and also, between the infected houses, from one corpse to another, the 'crows', who can be left to die: these are 'people of little SUbstance who carry the sick, bury the dead, clean and do many vile and abject offices'. It is a segmented, immobile, frozen space.
Why can only these three break the rules? Maybe, this is showing the different class status. Only the intendants, syndics, and guards are aloud to break the rules maybe because they are the upper class as opposed to the lower class citizens who are locked in their homes.
had placed herself, a female, in the role of questioning the right of these males to enter the bar.
She had questioned them in their own territory. How could she do that knowing its not her territory to control?
It is an affront to be mistaken for a boy instead of the man he so obviously is.
This is quite a different view for women. In fact women like to get carded when they are older because it makes then feel young again...in a way.
They came looking for girls, for action, and they feel no compulsion, once inside this place, to remain.
Reassuring the idea that this built environment needs women in order to run properly!
No sign hangs above the door at Brady's announcing "Male Territory," but such a claim is written into the customs and mores that guide male and female behavior alike.
Its almost like its frowned upon ("no sign") due to the sexism, but that doesn't change the social lives in this built environment.
This does not mean women are not highly valued at Brady's Bar; in one sense they are required ifthe ceremonial life is to function properly.
Hypocrite! In Brady's bar women are seen as inferior to men yet the bar NEEDS women in order for the men atmosphere to "function properly"? Hypocritical? I think so!
As our research progressed we began to discover more and more ways that space reinforced the way our culture defines masculinity and femininity. Territoriality reflected the basic definitions of sexual gender as expressed in the division of labor and social structure of Brady's Bar.
Spaces can define the different gender roles. Sexual gender can be expressed by the different in territories. Would this different in gender roles still be prevalent in todays era?!
You know my uncle doesn't like women behind his bar!"
Difference in gender roles...women are inferior to men? I think not..
Wherever people work, live, or play they stake claims on space and attach meanings to them.
In my social psychology course we are learning this very topic about Hall's argument of social uses of space. A great example of this is when students pick a seat on the first day of classes and continue to use that same seat for the whole semester.
Inside our houses space is divided up and allocated so that even young children mayjj;el a kind of private ownership over certain territory.
In the 20th century even the children of the world have their own territory to claim. Before territory was not so equally divided.
culturally learned responses
An interesting and truthful point that how we use our senses are culturally and socially learned responses.
Territoriality in humans refers to the means by which space is defined, allocated, and maintained; it is a cultural phenomenon.
The definition of territoriality in humans is that of space. Would it be public or private spaces? I assume both.
The ebb and flow of social life in every society occurs in the context of place:
There is a common denominator in every society that our social lives are defined by a significant place.
Phenomenological Perspectives
the phenomenological approach shows our relationship to identity, to ones self.