right to city p 1-16
right to city.. but only p 1-16
from The Right to the City (1968) by Henri Lefebvre – via kindle version from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/henri-lefebvre-right-to-the-city]
not sure when first read.. but just reread (during 2023 reconnection w thomas on vectoring words and words embedding [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQddtTdmG_8&t=604s] and michael levin ness [https://twitter.com/drmichaellevin]) p 1-16 of right to the city.. huge to decision making is unmooring us law ness.. and people trying to protect (safety addiction) via planning/ordering et al.. and aziz let go law and carhart-harris entropy law.. et al
Notes: The ‘right to the city’ is an idea and a slogan that was first proposed by Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book Le Droit à la ville and that has been reclaimed more recently by social movements, thinkers and several progressive local authorities alike as a call to action to reclaim the city as a to-created space — a place for life detached from the growing effects that commodification and capitalism have had over social interaction..t and the rise of spatial inequalities in worldwide cities throughout the last two centuries. While Lefebvre never identified with libertarian Marxism, his conceptual framework of Right to the City is of use to a libertarian Marxist reading.
in the city.. as the day.. sans any form of m\a\p
notes/quotes from 79 pgs:
3
Preface
This work wants to break up systems, not to substitute another system, but to open up through thought and action towards possibilities.. t by showing the horizon and the road. Against a form of reflection which tends towards formalism, a thought which tends towards an opening **leads the struggle.
*to me.. don’t have to show the horizon and the road.. rather.. need to listen
**doesn’t have to be a struggle.. to me.. that’s a red flag we’re doing it/life wrong
This little book does not only propose to critically analyse thoughts and activities related to urbanism. *It’s aim is to allow its problems to enter into consciousness and political policies.
*to me.. cancerous distraction.. not to mention a time/energy suck.. if we get to the center/deeper of the problem.. focus/centering on ‘problem’ ness becomes irrelevant.. as we dance with curiosity over decision making
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature so we can org around legit needs
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
From the theoretical and practical situation of problems (from the problematic) concerning the city, *reality and possibilities of urban life, let us begin by taking what used to the called a ‘cavalier attitude’.
*need to let go a ton for those to be legit realities and possibilities
4
Industrialization and Urbanization
To present and give an account of the ‘urban problematic’, the point of departure must be the process of industrialization. Beyond any doubt this process has been the dynamic of transformations in society for the *last century and a half. If one distinguishes between the inductor and the induced, one can say that the process of industrialization is inductive and that one can count among the induced, problems related to growth and planning, questions concerning the city and the development of the urban reality, without omitting the growing importance of leisure activities and questions related in ‘culture’. Industrialization characterizes modern society. This does not inevitably carry with it terms of ‘industrial society’, if we want to define it. Although urbanization and the problematic of the urban figure among the induced effects and not among the causes or inductive reason, **the preoccupation these words signify accentuate themselves in such a way that one can define as an urban society the social reality which arises around us. This definition retains a feature which becomes capital.. t
*need to go back too far to get to legit free ness.. to me.. to date.. nothing is a model of that.. so will probably skim over much of this history ness.. (rather than pick it apart – ha)
**our preoccupation with words.. inductions.. analyzings.. et al.. cancerous distraction ..makes that reality.. not reality of legit free people.. but of whales in sea world.. so much we need to let go of.. language as control/enclosure.. w/a need for an idiosyncratic jargon dance
This city is itself ‘oeuvre’, a feature which contrasts with the irreversible tendency towards money and commerce, towards exchange and products. Indeed the oeuvre is use value and the the product is exchange value. The eminent use of the city, that is, of its streets and squares, edifices and monuments, is la fête (a celebration which consumes unproductively, without other advantage but pleasure and prestige and enormous riches in money and objects).
5
The city preserves the organic character of community which comes from the village and which translates itself into a corporate organization (or guild).
not organic
When exploitation replaces oppression, *creative capacity disappears. The very notion of ‘creation’ is blurred or degenerates by miniaturizing itself into ‘making’ and ‘creativity’ (the ‘do-it-yourself,’ etc.). Which brings forth arguments to back up a thesis: **city and urban reality are related to use value. Exchange value and the generalization of commodities by industrialization tend to destroy it by subordinating the city and urban reality which are refuges of use value, the origins of a virtual predominance and revalorization of use.. In the urban system we are attempting to analyse, action is exercized over specific conflicts: between use value and exchange value
*gone forever ago.. need gershenfeld something else law et al
**destroyed by subordination/refuge ness.. forever ago.. via any form of m\a\p (includes naval gazing at ie: words.. inductions.. analyzings.. value ness.. et al)
7
This almost shapeless gigantic agglomeration enables the holders of decision-making centres to carry out the worst political ventures.
to me.. decision making itself is a worst case venture.. need to try curiosity over decision making
9
But today exchange value is so dominant over use and use value that it more or less suppresses it. There is nothing original in this notion. The creation which corresponds to our times, to their tendencies and (threatening) horizons is it not the centre of decision-making? This centre, gathering together training and information, capacities of organization and institutional decision-making, appears as a project in the making of a new centrality, chat of power... t The *greatest attention must be paid to this concept, the practice which it denotes and justifies.
*again.. decision making is unmooring us law.. a cancerous distraction
10
[on how ruling class prevented urban democracy from being born.. in 3 acts.. act 1: planning ness.. lines stress w guns et al]
11
[on act 2: from inhabit (be in space) to habitat (owner occupied housing).. ordering/org’d by ruling class.. peasants flee to outskirts]
12
A de-urbanized, yet dependent periphery is established around the city. Effectively, these new suburban dwellers are still urban even though they are unaware of it and believe themselves to be close to nature, to the sun and to greenery..t One could call it a de-urbanizing and de-urbanized urbanization to emphasize the paradox.
need global detox leap
Its excesses will slow this extension down. The movement it engenders will carry along the bourgeoisie and the well-off who will establish residential suburbs. City centres empty themselves for offices. The whole then begins to struggle with the inextricable. But it is not finished.
act 3: housing crisis
13
Even the cafe (the bistro) has encountered the resentment of the builders of those large housing estates, their taste for asceticism, the reduction of ‘to inhabit’ to habitat..t
Urban order thus decomposes into two stages: individual and owner-occupied houses and housing estates. *But there is no society without order, signified, perceptible, legible on the ground..t Suburban disorder harbours an order: a glaring opposition of individually owner-occupied detached houses and housing estates. This opposition tends to constitute a system of significations still urban even into de-urbanization. Each sector defines itself (by and in the consciousness of the inhabitants) in relation to the other, against the ocher. The inhabitants themselves have little consciousness of the internal order of their sector, but the people from the housing estates see and perceive themselves as not being villa dwellers. This is reciprocal. At the heart of this opposition the people of the housing estates entrench themselves into the logic of the habitat and the people of owner-occupied houses entrench themselves into the make-believe of habitat. For some it is the rational organization (in appearance) of space. For others it is the presence of the dream, of nature, health, apart from the bad and unhealthy city. But the logic of the habitat is only perceived in relation to make-believe, and make-believe in relation to logic. People represent themselves to themselves by what they are lacking or believe to be lacking. In this relationship, the imaginary has more power. It overdetermines logic: the fact of inhabiting is perceived by reference to the owner-occupation of detached dwellings. **These dwellers regret the absence of a spatial logic while the people of the housing estates regret not knowing the joys of living in a detached house. Hence the surprising results of surveys. More than 80 per cent of French people aspire to be owner-occupiers of a house, while a strong majority also declare themselves to be ‘satisfied’ with social housing estates. The outcome is not important here. What should be noted is that consciousness of the city and of urban reality is dulled for one or the other, so as to disappear. The practical and theoretical (ideological) destruction of the city cannot but leave an enormous emptiness, not including administrative and other problems increasingly difficult to resolve. This emptiness is less important for a critical analysis than the source of conflict expressed by the end of the city and by the extension of a mutilated and deteriorated, but real, urban society. The suburbs are urban, within a dissociated morphology, the empire of separation and scission between the elements of what had been created as unity and simultaneity.
*oi.. aziz let go law.. carhart-harris entropy law.. et al
**oikos (the economy our souls crave).. ‘i should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.’ – gaston bachelard, the poetics of space
14
Third period. One finds or reinvents urban reality, but not without suffering from its destruction in practice or in thinking. One attempts to restitute centrality. Would this suggest that class strategy has disappeared? This is not certain. It has changed. To the old centralities, to the decomposition of centres, it substitutes the centre of decision-making..t
oi again on dm ness.. need to let go of finite set of choices ness
today we have means for infinitesimal structures approaching the limit of structureless\ness and/or vice versa .. aka: ginorm/small ness
15
The notion of system overlays that of strategy. To critical analysis the system reveals itself as strategy, is unveiled as decision, that is, as decided finality..t It has been shown above how a class strategy has oriented the analysis and division of urban reality, its destruction and restitution; and projections on the society where such strategic decisions have been taken.
need to let go enough for ie: unjustifiable strategy ness et al
However, from the point of view of a technicist rationalism, the results on the ground of the processes examined above represent only chaos. In the ‘reality’, which they critically observe — suburbs, urban fabric and surviving cores — these rationalists do not recognize the conditions of their own existence. What is before them is only contradiction and disorder. Only, in fact, dialectical reason can master (by reflective thought, by practice) multiple and paradoxically contradictory processes.
How to impose order in this chaotic confusion? It is in this way that organizational rationalism poses its problem. This is not a normal disorder. How can it be established as norm and normality? This is unconceivable. This disorder is unhealthy. *The physician of modern society see himself as the physician of a sick social space. Finality? The cure? It is coherence..t The rationalist will establish or re-establish coherence into a chaotic reality which he observes and which offers itself up to his action. This rationalist may not realize that coherence is a form, therefore a means rather than an end, and that he will systematize the logic of the habitat underlying the disorder and apparent incoherence, that he will take as point of departure towards the coherence of the real, his coherent approaches. There is in fact no single or unitary approach in planning thought, but several tendencies identifiable according to this operational rationalism. Among these tendencies, some assert themselves against, others for rationalism by leading it to extreme formulations. **What interferes with the general tendencies of those involved with planning is understanding only what they can translate in terms of graphic operations: seeing, feeling at the end of a pencil, drawing..t
*coherence as ‘quality of being logical and consistent’ as cancerous distraction.. keeping us from us.. myth of normal et al.. hari rat park law et al
**breaking the alphabet et al
One can therefore identify the following:
(1) The planning of men of good will (architects and writers)..t Their thinking and projects imply a certain philosophy. Generally they associate themselves to an old classical and liberal humanism. This not without a good dose of nostalgia. One wishes to build to the ‘human scale’, for ‘people’. These humanists present themselves at one and the same time as doctors of society and creators of new social relations. . t Their ideology, or rather, their idealism often come from agrarian models, adopted without reflection: the village, the community, the neighbourhood, the townsman- citizen who will be endowed with civic buildings, etc. They want to build buildings and cities to the ‘human scale’, ‘to its measure’, without conceiving that in the modern world ‘man’ has changed scale and the measure of yesteryear (village and city) has been transformed beyond measure. At best, this tradition leads to a formalism (the adoption of models which had neither content or meaning), or to an aestheticism, that is, the adoption for their beauty of ancient models which are then thrown as fodder to feed the appetites of consumers.
steiner care to oppression law.. graeber violence in care law.. et al
david and nika on museum of care
(2) The planning of these administrators linked to the public (State) sector. *It sees itself as scientific. It relies sometimes on a science, sometimes on studies which call themselves synthetic (pluri or multidisciplinary)..t This scientism, which accompanies the deliberate forms of operational rationalism, tends to neglect the so-called ‘human factor’. It divides itself into tendencies. Sometimes through a particular science, **a technique takes over and becomes the point of departure; it is generally a technique of communication and circulation..t One extrapolates from a science, from a fragmentary analysis of the reality considered. One optimizes information and communication into a model..t This technocratic and systematized planning, with its myths and its ideology (namely, the primacy of technique), would not hesitate to ***raze to the ground what is left of the city to leave way for cars, ascendant and descendant networks of communication and information. The models elaborated can only be put into practice by eradicating from social existence the very ruins of what was the city.
*science scientifically et al
**there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
***holy kadoly.. cars/traffic is to killing spaces as communication/info/dm tech is to killing human connection (the dance)
16
Sometimes, on the contrary, information and analytical knowledge coming from different sciences are oriented towards a synthetic finality. For all that, one should not conceive an urban life having at its disposal information provided by the sciences of society. These two aspects are confounded in the conception of centres of decision-making, a global vision, planning already unitary in its own way, linked to a philosophy, to a conception of society, a political strategy, that is, a global and total system..t
again.. communication/info/dm tech is to killing human connection (the dance)
(3) The planning of developers. They conceive and realize without hiding it, for the market, with profit in mind. *What is new and recent is that they are no longer selling housing or buildings, but planning. With or without ideology, planning becomes an exchange value. The project of developers presents itself as opportunity and place of privilege: the place of happiness in a daily life miraculously and marvellously transformed. The make-believe world of habitat is inscribed in the logic of habitat and their unity provides a social practice which does not need a system. Hence these advertisements, which are already famous and which deserve posterity because publicity itself becomes ideology. Parly II (a new development) ‘gives birth to a new an of living’, a ‘new lifestyle’. Daily life resembles a fairy tale. ‘Leave your coat in the cloakroom and feeling lighter, do your shopping after having left the children in the nurseries of the shopping mall, meet your friends, have a drink together at the drugstore …’ Here is the fulfilled make-believe of the joy of living. **Consumer society is expressed by orders: the order of these elements on the ground, the order to be happy. Here is the context, the setting, the means of your happiness. If you do not know how to grasp the happiness offered so as to make it your own — don’t insist!
*if only.. not new.. still cancerous distraction if any form of m\a\p
**again.. carhart-harris entropy law et al and spiritual violence as structural violence
A global strategy, that is, what is already an unitary system and total planning, is outlined through these various tendencies. Some will put into practice and will concertize a directed consumer society. They will build not only commercial centres, but also centres of privileged consumption: the renewed city. They will *by making ‘legible’ an ideology of happiness through consumption, joy by planning adapted to its new mission. This planning programmes a daily life generating satisfactions — (especially for receptive and participating women). A programmed and computerized consumption will become the rule and norm for the whole society. Others will erect decision-making centres, concentrating the means of power: information, training, organization, operation. And still: repression (constraints, including violence) and persuasion (ideology and advertising).. t **Around these centres will be apportioned on the ground, in a dispersed order, according to the norms of foreseen constraints, the peripheries, de-urbanized urbanization. All the conditions come together thus for a perfect domination, for a refined exploitation of people as producers, consumers of products, consumers of space.
*same song perpetuating spiritual violence as structural violence of sea world
**finite set of choices ness
The convergence of these projects therefore entails the greatest dangers, for it raises politically the problem of urban society. It is possible that new contradictions will arise from these projects, impeding convergence. If a unitary strategy was to be successfully constituted, it might prove irretrievable.
huge..
maybe have thomas and/or museum of care read p 1-16
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
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be you. 