Monday, February 10, 2014
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Two Visions of the Future
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| Blade Runner movie poster en.wikipedia.org |
I want share with you some thoughts I had yesterday evening watching the film Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott director). One of the things about being finished with school is that I have more time to read the books and watch the movies that I didn't have time for as a student. Blade Runner was one of the movies. The film is based Philip K. Dick's 1968 book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and is centered around police officer Rick Deckard assignment to "retire" four android slaves who have escaped their off-world colony. The story takes place in 2019, the not too distant future, presenting the City of Los Angeles as this dark, damp, dystopia that has apparently been taking over by a Japanese corporation. I'm going I chalk that one up to the zeitgeist of the early eighties. I read the book along time ago and in the wake of my post on Christopher Hawthorne's article on the movie Her, I found myself thinking about he movie. As circumstance would have it, I checked out Blade Runner from the library and made a point to watch it. It was fascinating to see the author's vision of L.A brought to life.
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| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? book cover dclibrary.org |
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| Slouching Towards Bethlehem book cover en.wikipedia.org |
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| A scene from the movie Her engadget.com |
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| Pudong, Shanghai, China scmp.com |
Both Blade Runner and Her give the audience starkly different visions of the not to distant future. More importantly, they mirror the anxieties and discomforts of the period. Blade Runner is emblematic of a society upended by social and political protests while Her represents the mediation between the past and future. The city of Her is a place stuck in neutral, trying to figure out which way forward. The city of Blade Runner is a vision of a future shaped by dark sinister corporate forces. Now that I think about it, could Philip K. Dick have been right?
http://www.tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com
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Google+ and InstagramFriday, February 7, 2014
Abandoned train tunnels in Paris could get new life as nightclubs or swimming pools
Abandoned train tunnels in Paris could get new life as nightclubs or swimming pools adaptive reuse goes to Paris as abandoned metro tunnels get new life
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Update
Hello Everyone:
I just want to let you know that yours truly went to a fascinating lecture on the life and design legacy of Paul R. Williams. His a a story that needs to be told. I will be writing up a full post and, hopefully, she'd some light on this remarkable figure.
L
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Her Future
touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-78912890
Hello Everyone:
Unbelievable. It's February 4 and we're already at 7,400 page views. This is so fantastic. I can't thank you enough for all your support. I can't do this without you.
Today we're going to look at the architectural future. In Christopher Hawthorne's latest article for the Los Angeles Times, "Spike Jonze's 'Her' a refreshingly original take on the future L.A.," architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne discusses how the movie Her offers a glimpse into the future of Los Angeles, California. Mr. Hawthorne suggests that the Oscar™nominated film bucks the current fascination with all things retro,"...what the British music critic Simon Reynolds has called 'Retromania." Her challenges "Retromania" by giving the movie goer a Los Angeles that's more lonely and less attractive.
Movies that imagine life fifty or hundred years into the future are standard fair for Hollywood studio. Often, they present a dystopic view of urban life. They tend to be violent visions often starring someone named Tom or Vin. These dark foreboding images have increasingly been replaced in the cultural landscape by film and television series such as Mad Men, Downtown Abby, and Inside Llewyn Davis, that try to recreate an historic period or an era that exists in time machine that mashes up elements of the past and present, as in Computer Chess and The Way Way Back. Her disregards the retro trend by plunging merrily and blindly into the future that is neither utopian or dystopian, rather, "...like our own era, and like every era-somewhere in the slippery in-between." Her is set in Los Angeles, some two or three decades from now. The Los Angeles of Spike Jonze's future is a city dense with tall towers and a mass-transit system that would make London's envious. Cars have disappeared from the streets. The protagonist of Her, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) lives in a spacious downtown high-rise apartment and walks or the takes trains everywhere.
The sidewalks and train stations of Her Los Angeles are packed with people. Christopher Hawthorne uses the analogy of a benevolent Robert Moses taking over the political territory of Los Angeles. The crowded sidewalks and train stations are the product of the Mr. Jonze and his production designer K.K. Barrett, who digitally enhanced the city's skyline. Mr. Jonze spoke at length with architect Elizabeth Diller, whose firm, Diller Scofidio+Renfro is designing the Eli Broad contemporary art museum in downtown Los Angeles. Parts of the film were shot in Shanghai's
Pudong district, which has an impressive collection of new skyscrapers and a network of pedestrian sky bridges that have allowed the director to film without the interruption of gawkers.
Mr. Hawthorne notes, "The double setting also highlights the movie's interest in themes connected to surrogacy: to one person or thing standing for another. The operating system in Theodore Twombly's smartphone and computer is named Samantha and is meant to stand in for a real girlfriend that he cannot find following his divorce. A young woman fills in for Samantha, in what turns out to be a disastrous effort at sexual intimacy between man and his software.
Staying on the subject of surrogacy for a moment, Theodore is a stand in for he people who employ him, in the brightly colored offices of the fictitious company BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com to ghost write personal notes to friends and family. At the macro level, Shanghai is a stand in for the Los Angeles of the future. Mr. Hawthorne rightly points outs that the theme of surrogacy is a basic ingredient of the cinema. Actors are stand in for their characters imagined by screenwriters. The action caught in the camera lens stands in for real life. Los Angeles has stood in for other cities because of the generic looking downtown streets. Shanghai, a stand in for Los Angeles? This is an interesting question to consider. Spike Jonze doesn't use Shanghai as a surrogate for Los Angeles because it looks believably dense and development then the present day City of Angels.
Shooting parts of Her Shanghai allowed the director to capture something significant about Theodore Twombly, and the anxieties of modern day Los Angeles. The city is is caught in between two very different types of urbanism: the private and car-centric past and the more public and more connected future. The direction of current development projects points to a future with more and taller buildings, a livelier streetscape, and better public transportation. However, in a statement of the obvious, the process of building a better rail system has a long way to go, we Los Angelenos love our cars. We're trying to bury the private Los Angeles but haven't quite gotten to the public future yet. Alternating between Shanghai and Los Angeles gives this in-betweeness fleshed out form. The city, as seen by the audience, is trapped between two states of being, like our protagonist, feet on the ground, mind in the digital universe.
Placing Her in a state of in-between make the film an "extended and surprisingly kindhearted meditation on how we grapple with major change-personal, cultural, technological and architectural." Mr. Hawthorne posits the reason we've become so creatively stuck is that we're endlessly recycle our own recent past. It's become too easy for practitioners and consumers to recall old material. It's also because own lives have become profoundly and dramatically digitized that we haven't had a chance to stop and make some sense out of what the digital revolution means culturally. This is such a broad, unwieldy, existential question that it's simpler to turn aside and find comfort in the past. "Retromania" can hardly be considered a creativity killer, it's given us some very imaginative and important, most of which appears to inhabit and animate styles gone by rather than imitate them. Think of the books and records being turned out by Gen X and millennial practitioners. Think Haim's debut album "Days Are Gone," which borrows eighties pop and still sounds so good or The Luminaries by twenty-eight year old New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton, which mines Victorian fiction.
In architecture, "Retromania" has made looking forward tougher or more rare. Ironically, younger architects, like their post-modernist predecessors of the eighties, are falling back on historic tropes instead of leading the way forward. Mr. Hawthorne uses the example of FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste), the recently disbanded firm that rescued cheeky historicism from the sidelines of architecture practice.
Another example is the newly opened Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles occupying the former 1927 United Artist tower by Walker & Eisen. The hotel's interior was designed by the L.A. based firm Commune and references twenties architecture with nods to Rudolf Schindler,
Frank Lloyd Wright, Adolf Loos. The hotel's design plan comfortably mixes period styles, layering artwork by contemporary L.A. artists such as pencil drawings by the Haas Brothers.
Seeking comfort in the past in the face of a rapidly more connected, more public world is fine. It reminds us of our humanness. It allows humanity to experience the world through our senses, not filtered through pixels. At some point we have to move out of the past and into the future. Her presents a story of a state of in-between. The Samantha operating system is a stand in for a real girlfriend, Theodore Twombly is a stand in for us, Shanghai stands in for Los Angeles of the future. The cinema industry, as a whole, is a mediator between the real and the what can be. One way to approach the future is that it is a synthesis of the past and present. Another way is to look at the future as something completely new, as Christopher Hawthorne seems to suggest. Either way the future of our cities does not have to be a violent dystopia, they can be a lively wonderful place to be.
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| Joaquin Phoenix in Her engadget.com |
Unbelievable. It's February 4 and we're already at 7,400 page views. This is so fantastic. I can't thank you enough for all your support. I can't do this without you.
Today we're going to look at the architectural future. In Christopher Hawthorne's latest article for the Los Angeles Times, "Spike Jonze's 'Her' a refreshingly original take on the future L.A.," architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne discusses how the movie Her offers a glimpse into the future of Los Angeles, California. Mr. Hawthorne suggests that the Oscar™nominated film bucks the current fascination with all things retro,"...what the British music critic Simon Reynolds has called 'Retromania." Her challenges "Retromania" by giving the movie goer a Los Angeles that's more lonely and less attractive.
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| A scene from the movie Blade Runner underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com |
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| A scene from Her apnatimes.com |
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| Pudong, Shanghai, People's Republic of China commons.wikimedia.org |
Mr. Hawthorne notes, "The double setting also highlights the movie's interest in themes connected to surrogacy: to one person or thing standing for another. The operating system in Theodore Twombly's smartphone and computer is named Samantha and is meant to stand in for a real girlfriend that he cannot find following his divorce. A young woman fills in for Samantha, in what turns out to be a disastrous effort at sexual intimacy between man and his software.
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| Office scene from Her movie.ma.com |
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| Aerial view of Pudong scmp.com |
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| Looking at his reflection hollywoodreporter.com |
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| FAT Architecture fashionarchitecturetaste.com |
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| Lobby of Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles articles.latimes.com |
Frank Lloyd Wright, Adolf Loos. The hotel's design plan comfortably mixes period styles, layering artwork by contemporary L.A. artists such as pencil drawings by the Haas Brothers.
Seeking comfort in the past in the face of a rapidly more connected, more public world is fine. It reminds us of our humanness. It allows humanity to experience the world through our senses, not filtered through pixels. At some point we have to move out of the past and into the future. Her presents a story of a state of in-between. The Samantha operating system is a stand in for a real girlfriend, Theodore Twombly is a stand in for us, Shanghai stands in for Los Angeles of the future. The cinema industry, as a whole, is a mediator between the real and the what can be. One way to approach the future is that it is a synthesis of the past and present. Another way is to look at the future as something completely new, as Christopher Hawthorne seems to suggest. Either way the future of our cities does not have to be a violent dystopia, they can be a lively wonderful place to be.
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Google+ and Instagram Monday, February 3, 2014
Emerging Poor Mega-Cities
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/job-and-economy/2014/01/why-so-many-mega-cities-remain-so-poor/8083
Hello Everyone:
Today we're going to look at emerging mega-cities. Specifically, why so many of emerging mega-cities are so poor. The steady of urbanization has been the big story of global economic development over the past several decades. Couple with the increase in urban centers is the development of the mega-city. In an article for Atlantic Cities titled "Why So Many Emerging Megacities Remain So Poor," Richard Florida looks at why cities in the "Global South," despite the increasing urbanization, remain so poor. Both urbanists and economists consider urbanization a good thing. In the history of cities, albeit Western cities, such as London, Paris, and New York, much of the story centers around progress and prosperity. However, Mr. Florida points out, "...those concerned with the 'Global South' have rightly pointed to the persistent poverty in some large, dense cities of Africa, Asia, and Latina America..." The basic question is "If urbanization really helps drive economic development, why do many global cities remain poor?"
This is an essential paradox that Harvard economist Edward Glaeser addressed in his current research as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, published this past December. Prof. Glaeser begins by drawing attention to the recent upswing in what he refers to as "poor country urbanization." Using 1960 as the baseline for his analysis, the poorest countries were typically the most rural. Urbanization occurred at a rate of under ten percent in most of the countries that had a per capita income of below $1,000. By comparison, presently there are no poor countries with rates of city living that low. Prof. Glaeser cites United Nations data that followed a huge increase in urbanization rates in under developed countries beginning in 1950 with a rate of eighteen percent to forty-seven percent in 2011.
In the years between 1960 and 2011, cities such as Karachi, Pakistan; Dakar, Senegal; and Port-Au-Prince, Haiti have rapidly grown. In particular, Dhaka, Bangladesh and Nairobi, Kenya have greatly swelled in a way where generally poor countries see urbanization concentrated in one mega-region. In several charts presented with his paper (which can be viewed via the provided link), Edward Glaeser demonstrates the divergence between urbanization and national prosperity has been focused in developing nation over the last fifty years. The first chart presents the positive relationship between baseline levels of urbanization in 1960 and economic develop over time. There is a correlation in the overall positive relationship. Prof. Glaeser explains, "A ten percent higher level of urbanization among these poor countries in 1960 is associated with .23 log points faster growth between 1960 and 2010...The robust correlation should give us pause before embracing policies aimed at reducing the level or urbanization in a country."
The next pair of charts compares urbanization rates to Gross Domestic Product per capita for 1960 and in 2010. (amounts are in 2012 dollars). In 1960 chart, the points are not as tightly clustered like the 2010 chart. "Not only has the overall level of urbanization increased, but the growth has been particularly dramatic among particularly poor places," states Prof. Glaeser. The graphs are not statements for a declining connection between and income. Instead, explains Prof. Glaeser, they demonstrate how significant the curious rise of very poor urbanizing nation has been. What is the explanation of the recent shift?
The paper suggests several factors in play. Part of the answer what is the significance of the curious rise of very poor nations urbanizing is the a more fully globalizing economy. In particular, the severing of the link between the city the rural communities that supply the urban core with food and resources. Historically, cities have survived and thrived on the surplus food provided by the rural communities. Thus, the rise of New York or London could not have been possible without the fostering of productive and economically viable farm communities. The reverse of this is also true. However, today's vast international shipping networks and interconnected global food supply means that cities are no longer dependent on their own nation's agricultural supply. "It's a broken link," declares Edward Glaeser, this "has allowed for the puzzling and concerning rise of urban cities in some of the world's most stubbornly poor countries."
Because trade had alleviated the need for agricultural productivity, cities can develop despite enormously poor hinterlands. This creates both opportunity-the ability to escape terribly poor rural land-and a challenge. Massive cities can develop at far lower levels of income as we across the world today.
Simply put, "Today, globalization means that Port-Au-Prince can be fed with imported American rice."
According to Prof. Glaeser, many of these poor mega-cities have weaker institutions and problematic governing structures. The end result is that they are far less capable of dealing with the difficult issues they face and prior history point to a far less positive experience than the story of urbanization. The poorer cities have particular challenges in managing the good and bad consequences of density. Density creates positive externalities: easier movement of goods over a shorter distance, spread ideas, and the fostering of creativity. The negative externalities include: higher crime and congestion level and the spread of disease. Historically, cities have able to mitigate these negative effects through greater wealth and/or stronger institutions-everything from physical infrastructure to policing. Prof. Glaeser writes, "Almost all of these problems can be solved by competent governments with enough money." The problem is poorer mega-cities lack both. This is not really rocket science. These emerging mega-cities are often fraught with a corrupted body of institutions that make getting pot holes filled impossible.
Richard Florida concludes by stating that Edward Glaeser, the author of Triumph of the City, remains optimistic about the role of cities in global development. Prof. Glaeser argues that cities give rise to all manner of social movements which have, and continue to, bring about needed institutions, better policies, and more transparency.
The cities of the developed world have been wellsprings for growth of politically-minded groups...Indeed, it is possible that an urban contribution to the growth of institutional quality may be the most important urban benefit.
This article is very timely, given the issue of income inequality has come to the forefront. As more people move into urban areas, it becomes increasingly necessary to address uneven development and inequality. This begins by asking the right questions. By asking the right questions, the insufficient portions of global development can, and must be, linked with appropriate policies, institutions, and strategies. Richard Florida predicts that over the next several decades, billions of people will make their homes in the cities-many in mega-cities and slums where crushing poverty still exists. If we're going to do something about it, let's do it right.
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| London, England tastybloggers.com |
Today we're going to look at emerging mega-cities. Specifically, why so many of emerging mega-cities are so poor. The steady of urbanization has been the big story of global economic development over the past several decades. Couple with the increase in urban centers is the development of the mega-city. In an article for Atlantic Cities titled "Why So Many Emerging Megacities Remain So Poor," Richard Florida looks at why cities in the "Global South," despite the increasing urbanization, remain so poor. Both urbanists and economists consider urbanization a good thing. In the history of cities, albeit Western cities, such as London, Paris, and New York, much of the story centers around progress and prosperity. However, Mr. Florida points out, "...those concerned with the 'Global South' have rightly pointed to the persistent poverty in some large, dense cities of Africa, Asia, and Latina America..." The basic question is "If urbanization really helps drive economic development, why do many global cities remain poor?"
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| Karachi, Pakistan krachiinformer.com |
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| Dakar, Senegal travelblog.com |
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| Port-Au-Prince, Haiti madlynx.deviantart.com |
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| Dhaka, Bangledash thedidisociety.org |
Because trade had alleviated the need for agricultural productivity, cities can develop despite enormously poor hinterlands. This creates both opportunity-the ability to escape terribly poor rural land-and a challenge. Massive cities can develop at far lower levels of income as we across the world today.
Simply put, "Today, globalization means that Port-Au-Prince can be fed with imported American rice."
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| Nairobi, Kenya enjoyourholiday.com |
Richard Florida concludes by stating that Edward Glaeser, the author of Triumph of the City, remains optimistic about the role of cities in global development. Prof. Glaeser argues that cities give rise to all manner of social movements which have, and continue to, bring about needed institutions, better policies, and more transparency.
The cities of the developed world have been wellsprings for growth of politically-minded groups...Indeed, it is possible that an urban contribution to the growth of institutional quality may be the most important urban benefit.
This article is very timely, given the issue of income inequality has come to the forefront. As more people move into urban areas, it becomes increasingly necessary to address uneven development and inequality. This begins by asking the right questions. By asking the right questions, the insufficient portions of global development can, and must be, linked with appropriate policies, institutions, and strategies. Richard Florida predicts that over the next several decades, billions of people will make their homes in the cities-many in mega-cities and slums where crushing poverty still exists. If we're going to do something about it, let's do it right.
Like me on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/lenorelowen
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