Biomapping Delft Suburb

080225_biomapping de hoven aldi and asian market

the task was to find a motivation of an urban area in delft and map it. scale-jumping was encouraged, as was technologies of the gps and 'lie detector' (that shows intensity of place).

movement and the emptiness of space is what we set out to explore in a suburban area of Delft, where there is a great social mix of people (ranging from poor people, the elderly, students, foreign students, immigrants, middle class).

our group decided to recorded the sensual experience of the place, with respect to intensity of place, in a low-tech way. 3 of this group documented the visual intensity and movement of 3 specific points in this area: de hoven entrance and tram stop; asian market and pedestrian thoroughfare; aldi entrance and car park.

Intensity was documented by the quantitative number of people entering the space, on foot, bicycle, car, bus and tram. The intensity of this was graphed like a heartbeat in these 3 specific areas.
It was agreed that this excercise would be useful to someone working for some number-crunching developer, but this is besides the point. The route taken suggests that people are the blood of the urban environment, and the heart the place where they are drawn to / powered from.

David Harvey: Right to the City

david harvey - capitolism and urbanisation

In changing the world, we change ourselves.

capitolism: pruduct/surplus; competition; growth - urbanisation is key

social/economical/ideological repression to solve problems of employment (eg USA post WW2)
- Suburbanization: lifestyle, spatial, political, capitol

financial probs - capitolism and suburbanization: 1973 property market crisis - NY bankrupt
building boom - stabilize global capitolism
lending: global financial institutions 30% Chinese Central Bank - risk

1st and 2nd waves of investment don't pay off, debt grows - who loses? gap between higher and lower class grows
eg Mumbai: Bandra's impact on $2bn site of Dharavi slums

what kind of world do we want to create? is there control? markets are uncontrolled number machine. urbanisation: uncontrollable aspect - growth and capitolism
social inequality. 2008 mortgage property financial crisis: poor land value decreases, rich land increases

COLLECTIVE RIGHT TO THE CITY

"revolution must be urban" (Lefebvre)

capitolism: rhizomatic and horizontal; economy - local

get to heart of capitol surplus usage to deal with urbanization. unite anti-gentrifation movements - urban revolution

past-present-future:
feudalism - capitolism - next technology of capitolism?
= biotechnology and genetics...?

Urban Complexity 1

080221_Urban Complexity 1

thrownness - born into a context, then you make your meaning.
mind is part of world: patterns - habits
memory = patterns over time

cosmology: does the world have a brain? (its memory = culture, tradition, evolution)
mind, spirit, universe, god
world structure / our structure
technology: map - discover world; language - "we live in language, it is invisible to us" (Heidegger)
= tool of action in world
= frame for looking at world

horizons of attention: table-room-house-neighbourhood-city places-national-worldwide
"global is no bigger than what you have around you" (Bruno Letour)

we act on a local scale, through a technological frame, with a technological tool
what we project on the world is what we understand global to be
dharavi: no boundaries to understand it, multiple scales, connections, relations, horizons

Culture and Imperialism

globalisation: change in spatial, temporal perceptions of social existence
- range of scales; Political, Economic, Cultural (media blurs the in-between)
always existed, but highlighted with technologies; printing, colonization, internet

Heterotopia

Heterotopia

what i disagreed with / disliked:
- the 'Peter Pan illusion' - "i never work a day in my life!" - get real... an existentialist criticism would be that you are creating an illusion to neglect the responsibilities of life. i agree that you must enjoy what you do and live happily, never enslaved to monetary things too much.
- the emphasis on 'defending' heterotopia
- the ambiguity and inability to get one's point across in a concise way

heterotopia = mythic and real contestation of how we live
='other place'; nowhere; good place
= perfect mirror of society (utopia is fictional, therefore imperfect)
= spaces that mirror (and contradict) other spaces (the reconstruction of a village in the slum; irish bar in amsterdam - more homely; the theatre and other theatrical representations of other spaces)
= extraordinary spaces and transcendance - interrupt everyday life, power to mirror the ordinary (eg sacred space like the Gesu above - heavens and us; birthdays in the house)
= space where other rules apply
= an experience - do you work/play? (no economic rationale: artists and footballers)

for me heterotopia = the blurring, undefinable, transcendant space that is phyisical and mental.
the slum itself is not a heterotopia, but there are heterotopias within it.

deep-mapping the watch: chronotopology

Chronotopology

Today we 'dipped' into this notion of mapping. The task was to use an urban device that defines and promotes a social practice. Reconstruction, Analysis, Product.

Urbanity: chaos, complexity, movement, changing perspective.
Tools: car, pair of feet, walls, building.
Aspect: time
Urban Device: the watch

Everyone in an urban context is always moving from A to B, always concerned with time.
9-5 living.
Mankind invented time to gauge nature. In doing so have we become slaves of time.
does City Rhythm = Body/Nature Rhythm ???

Above shows the contrast of two different livelihoods. One is the 9-5 day of the average worker from Rotterdam; the other the average day of the fisherman from Fiji.
Fiji time vs. Western time.
Conclusion: the less 'civilized' and 'globalised' society is more dependant on the Sun (and the seasons) for it's daily structure; the 'western' society is more dependant on the consistent order of it's context (eg bank opening hours).
This urban device shows how man's creations can enslave him.

maps cartograms ; 1 specific aspect ; 1 symbolic value

080218_Mapping_Chronotopology

Today i found out how 'taken for granted' geographical world maps are. They have a very political meaning. I have noticed myself looking at world maps and identifying where the equator is and the proportion of north to south on the map. The map above displays the geographical placement and size pf nations of the globe in a 2-D format. It also depicts the proportion of power in the world. The equator is not in the middle of the map, and the northern powers are emphasized.
Trying to exhibit 1 specific aspect that has a symbolic value is very important in maps. The world map in the link above shows where Walmart gets its products from.