[-empyre-] "Urban resilience"

Tue Mar 6 04:34:49 EST 2012

Before going back to commons, I'd like to add that resistance movements
could (or should) be analyzed in terms of city sustainability. I found the
p2p urbanism really interesting.

As far as I know, there are few resistance movements related to some kind
of urbanistic thought in South America (in fact, a notorious urban
continent). In Brazil, the Sin Tierra movement, one of the biggest
resistance movements of the continent, is rural based. In Montevideo there
is a strong coop housing movement called FUCVAM where the owners build
their own houses, unfortunately under the model of disciplinary project
buildings typical from post-war urban planning that makes impossible any
kind of real contact with the rest of the urban net. There is a big amount
of occupations in downtown old (and not so old) buildings where people have
almost no political or community organization living under criminal codes.

On the other hand, public transportation corridors from downtown to the
outskirts proved to be successful in Medellín (Colombia). Lately, a public
office to be built in the middle of a Brazilian favela got an important
award in a sustainable architecture competition. (
http://arq.clarin.com/arquitectura/Solidarios-sustentables_0_595140704.html).

Maybe the analysis of urban occupation within the frame of sustainability
could offer interesting clues about urban resilience.

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you Antonas and all for so interesting views! I want go back to the
> concept of commons, which is one of the most important concepts in urbanism
> and in politic. The idea of a common wealth based on the work of everyone
> is an old concept negotiated after the transition between Feodalism and
> Moderniy.
> When Tomas Moore wrote his Utopia and Tomasso Campanella wrote the City of
> the Sun they paved the way for another thinking based on justice and
> sharing as virtues.
> The capitalism generated in Europe after the Reformation was a doctrine
> based on greed and accumulation, totally contrary to the utopian thinkers.
> Max Weber wrote "The Capitalism and the Spirit of the Protestantism", an
> important book finding crucial vinculations between the separation from
> Rome and the etablishing of independent cities and states.
> But the change or transition was not easy or bloodless, thousands of
> peasants and low nobility paid with their lives in Munzer, Castilla and
> other parts of Europe.
> The rebellion of Castilla in Spain against the emperor Charles V was among
> the most succesful rebellions, etablising an autogestionated ruling and
> questioning the right of royalty and the high nobility to take taxes and
> recruit soldiers for wars.
> I think we must go back to the concept of commons to redefine private
> property and the ownership of goods and land.
> Ana
>
> On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Antonas Office <antonasoffice at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> We delve into questions that have no answers anyway. But there is a
>> perspective that can make sense. I tried to work a bit on urban issues in
>> Athens which is an emblematic city for the future. Its common ground is
>> somehow dissolved already in an interesting way. In order to act in an
>> urban background the concept of occupation is crucial. But what is evident
>> in Athens is this agenda of occupation is to be deepened with an elementary
>> at least common structure. I am more and more troubled with the concept of
>> an uncritical occupation of everything. Occupation is a new platform where
>> things happen. What remains to be thought is the conceptual frame of an
>> occupation. Occupation could be a common device if it interprets and
>> proposes interesting common structures.
>>
>> Aristide Antonas
>> University of Thessaly, Greece
>>
>> Sent from antonas iPhone
>>
>> On Mar 5, 2012, at 13:12, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> That's the spirit, Ethel! To pose questions is often more creative than
>> tell answers :)
>> He or she who answers have a tendence to interpret facts and believe
>> there are answers. I think creative questions are far more complex than
>> give answers,
>> I think this is -empyre's and other forum's role in the polyphonic
>> society as Mikhjail Bachtin described, the place where all voices were
>> heard and where there was many parallell discourses.
>> Ana
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Ethel Baraona Pohl <
>> ethel.baraona at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I just found this article:
>>> http://criticalenvironmentalism.org/2012/01/19/occupy/
>>>
>>> And I really liked the idea they express when pointing *"This thing,
>>> this occupation is an idea as much as it is an act. It is an idea that
>>> no one place or group can own. It is an inhabit-able idea, an enact-able
>>> idea. It is a platform. A recipe."* —Kamen asked how can we map that
>>> out? So for me, relating the article with previous comments, emerges the
>>> question if it is possible to "map ideas" and how we can use the generated
>>> knowledge to create new resilient urban environments.
>>>
>>> Ana has shared with us also some historical and interesting examples
>>> about resilience (and also resistance), and is interesting to think what
>>> can we learn from those situations and which responses can be translated
>>> and improved for the current moment. Have we learned something or are we in
>>> a cyclical and permanent state of urban experimentation?
>>> As you have seen, I always have more questions than answers... so let's
>>> think about it!
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Ethel
>>> ---
>>> Ethel Baraona Pohl | dpr-barcelona <http://www.dpr-barcelona.com/>
>>> twitter @ethel_baraona <https://twitter.com/ethel_baraona>4646 |
>>> about.me <http://about.me/ethel_baraona>
>>>
>>> ethel.baraona at gmail.com
>>> (+34) 626 048 684
>>>
>>> *Before you print think about the environment*
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 3:49 AM, Kamen Nedev <kamennedev at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi, Antonas,
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Antonas Office <antonasoffice at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > The appearance of an already deconstructed field, a non hegemonic, not
>>>> > hierarchically structured multiplicity of fragments, described by
>>>> Negri, can
>>>> > propose different strategies of resistance. I believe that resilience
>>>> fits
>>>> > to a theoretical background where resistance is no longer possible.
>>>> It is
>>>> > not applicable if no power is obvious. Resistance is an old word that
>>>> > corresponds to naive powers: new powers can hide and cannot be
>>>> resisted. But
>>>> > it seems that from a strategic point of view we need to reinvent
>>>> resistance,
>>>> > to unveil anew the hidden hegemonic powers that lay under this
>>>> appearance of
>>>> > the multitude.
>>>>
>>>> Good point(s). This brings to mind some of the first publications by
>>>> the Critical Art Ensemble ("Electronic Civil Disobedience", etc.).
>>>> While everyone in that field was working under the fascination with a
>>>> certain techno-utopian idea of being "nomadic" (only slightly premised
>>>> on some serious misreadings of Deleuze and Guattari), C.A.E. were
>>>> arguing that what had become global, nomadic and yet ubiquitius, was
>>>> power itself. "Resistance" had no choice but to follow suit.
>>>>
>>>> Have power structures become resilient, then?
>>>>
>>>> But I like your suggestion that, in this non-hegemonic multiplicity,
>>>> hegemonic power structures are most likely interiorised. So acts of
>>>> resistance need to also go in that direction.
>>>>
>>>> But, how can we map that out (without getting stuck in Foucault, I
>>>> mean...)
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>>
>>>> Kamen
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> http://www.waitingforcargo.net
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> http://www.twitter.com/caravia15859
> http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia
> http://www.scoop.it/t/gender-issues/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/literary-exiles/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0
> http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/
>
> mobil/cell +4670-3213370
>
>
> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with
> your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always
> long to return.
> — Leonardo da Vinci
>
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