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The Open City

In my view, what an open city means is that peo­ple are exposed to one anoth­er. That’s my idea of the open city, that it’s a place where phys­i­cal pres­ence with the oth­er, and com­fort with the phys­i­cal pres­ence of the oth­er, does the work of allow­ing peo­ple to live togeth­er even if they are not engaged in the process of negat­ing their differences.

Architectures of Quarantine & Containment

One very inter­est­ing addi­tion to the pub­lic space is how we are con­di­tion­ing and defin­ing the pub­lic space with regards to even­tu­al attacks. And it’s chang­ing the land­scape rad­i­cal­ly. And the very first knee-jerk reac­tion was con­crete blocks in front of many insti­tu­tions. Now they’re try­ing to design these con­crete blocks so they seem some­thing which is part of the land­scape but the pres­ence and the robust­ness is still so vio­lent that it’s hard to hide the intention.

The City as an Individual Organism

In the begin­ning, I thought that the goal would’ve been to focus on col­lec­tive hap­pi­ness. But what I found was you can actu­al­ly give some­one every­thing that you would think that they need to be hap­py and they’ll find ways to be unhap­py.

Religion and World Politics part 14
The Hindu State

Is there actu­al­ly any such thing as a Hindu state? Mr. Modi, the Prime Minister of India is the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the BJP, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which stands for Hindu val­ues. Hindu val­ues as foun­da­tion val­ues for the Indian state. And yet it’s very dif­fi­cult to talk about such foun­da­tion val­ues for an Indian state as if it had exist­ed since time immemorial.

The Stupefying Smart City

What I’m wor­ried about is that with the tech­no­log­i­cal tools that we have today, as in the past, our first use of them is the least inven­tive that we can make. And the issue is how urban­ists can actu­al­ly use these new tools well rather than use them in a way which is harmful.

The Conversation #47 — Oliver Porter

To me…we all draw our sat­is­fac­tion from what we our­selves have been able to do with our lives. And if some­body, some gov­ern­ment or some­one else is just giv­ing to me, I’m not going to be a hap­py person.

Feral Urbanism

There seems to be a rush to exceed time, to pro­duce urban envi­ron­ment and social­i­ty for which we have no lan­guage, some­thing that goes beyond spec­u­la­tion, some­thing cut loose from hav­ing to make sense now. The city cut loose from what it had embod­ied or promised.

Global Capital and Urban Land

For me a city…is a com­plex but incom­plete sys­tem. And in that mix­i­ty of com­plex­i­ty and incom­plete­ness lies the capac­i­ty of cities to have very long lives. Much longer lives than very pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions, which often are very closed systems.

Urbanising Technology

Cities have become sites, places, for mas­sive deploy­ments of increas­ing­ly com­plex and all-encompassing tech­ni­cal sys­tems, some of them good, some of them dubious. 

The Future of Smart Cities

For me, the notion of urban­iz­ing tech­nol­o­gy real­ly is part of a larg­er sort of effort that I’ve been work­ing on for a very long time. … [T]echnologies that enable inter­ac­tive domains deliv­er, give, their tech­ni­cal capac­i­ties through ecolo­gies that are more than just the tech­ni­cal capac­i­ty itself.

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