Solarpunk Urbanism

This is quite a long text, but you don’t need to read the chapters in order and each chapter is on a different urban experiment. It looks at “radical municipalism” or a communities taking back power of their city and rebuilding it into what they want to make of it. The rebel cities are:

1. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2. Rojava, Northern Syria
3. Chiapas, Mexico
4. Warsaw, Poland
5. Bologna, Italy
6. Jackson, Mississippi
7. Athens, Greece
8. New York City, New York & Warsaw, Poland
9. Reykjavík, Iceland
10. Rosario, Argentina
11. Newham, UK
12. Valparaiso, Chile
13. Porto Alegre, Brazil; Greensboro, North Carolina
14. Montevideo, Uruguay
15. Communes, Venezuela
16. Cape Town, South Africa
17. Goma, DR Congo
18. Jemna, Tunisia
19. Gdansk, Poland
20. Dakur, Senegal
21. Mumbai, India
22. Phan Ri Cua & Binh Thuan, Vietnam
23. Seikatsu, Japan
24. Catalonia, Spain
25. Barcelona, Spain
26. Denmark and Scotland

Source: https://twitter.com/justfara/status/1716635421302497725

So, I spoke to people getting food at a food bank and here are some things I learned from those in need:

1. Everyone donates Kraft Mac and Cheese in the box. They can rarely use it because it needs milk and butter which is hard to get from regular food banks.
2. Boxed milk is a treasure, as kids need it for cereal which they also get a lot of.
3. Everyone donates pasta sauce and spaghetti noodles.
4. They cannot eat all the awesome canned veggies and soup unless you put a can opener in too or buy pop tops.
5. Oil is a luxury but needed for Rice a-Roni which they also get a lot of.
6. Spices or salt and pepper would be a real Christmas gift.
7. Tea bags and coffee make them feel like you care.
8. Sugar and flour are treats.
9. They fawn over fresh produce donated by farmers and grocery stores.
10. Seeds are cool in Spring and Summer because growing can be easy for some.
11. They rarely get fresh meat.
12. Tuna and crackers make a good lunch.
13. Hamburger Helper goes nowhere without ground beef.
14. They get lots of peanut butter and jelly but usually not sandwich bread.
15. Butter or margarine is nice too.
16. Eggs are a real commodity.
17. Cake mix and frosting makes it possible to make a child’s birthday cake.
18. Dishwashing detergent is very expensive and is always appreciated.
19. Feminine hygiene products are a luxury and women will cry over that.
20. Everyone loves Stove Top Stuffing.

In all the years I have donated food at the Holidays, I bought what I thought they wanted, but have never asked. I am glad I did. If you are helping a Family this Christmas, maybe this can help you tailor it more. It does for me!

I've recently started getting into parkour and I love its inherently political bent. It reminds of me of Graeber's quote that "Direct action is, ultimately, the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free," which is exactly how traceurs behave.

This is the lads just showing up to a dilapidated public space and transforming it into a playground. They didn't get permission, they just made the place better.

(5) To deviate from our defined spaces on the street is to become a “jaywalker.” “Jaywalking” was an invention by automobile capitalists to shift blame on accidents from cars and drivers to pedestrians. After all, the jaywalker shouldn’t have been on the road if they didn’t want to be run over!

(6) The creation of “jaywalking” then becomes part-and-parcel of the enclosure of the street reserved for automobile use.

(7) That is to say: to create a jaywalker, one must create jaywalking. Ursula Le Guin says it best: “‘To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.’”—from The Dispossessed. (Le Guin, 1974).

(8) Thus, the enclosure of the streets needs no physical barriers (though these may still be used). The enclosure is ideological—its manifestation is the invention of jaywalking. This criminalization of jaywalkers is in turn enshrined through ordinances and enforced by the police.

(9) Yet the police are not actually necessary to enforce this enclosure. Michel Foucault’s reading of the panopticon reminds us that we do not have to be watched at all times to ensure that we police our own behavior. The very regime of enclosure, its ordinances, and its police has accustomed us to obey its delimitations, even if we are not actively policed. That, and of course, the very threat of death by automobile.

(10) Yet the invention of jaywalking itself is part of a larger logic of organizing our cities according to the logic of automobiles—an automobile urbanism (if it may be called that).

A tale of two Americas.

The untold story of mega-mansion maintenance crews. It turns out your typical US$20 million Los Angeles mega mansion costs around US$42,000 each month in upkeep costs: https://youtu.be/k-ImID3kpAg?si=fYZEEr8lLKaSInKi

Bel Air mansion on the market for US$250 million: https://youtu.be/o1d-hjuuXmI?si=1sDgXZpir8ptDgCV

Meanwhile...

Eviction notices piling up in Los Angeles: https://youtu.be/EYwpat1RDks?si=W7cJG2ipxggC9cqh

Hollywood residents outraged over growing homeless encampment: https://youtu.be/leeTGryOOfQ?si=T1rgfTsDS6NFlmJZ

@urbanism #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #RealEstate #politics #capitalism #economics

There's also a follow up: How a Car-Free Manhattan would work

Archive.org link

https://dezwijger.nl/programma/designing-circular-cities

I'm very new to Solarpunk, but Hundertwasser seems to gel very nicely with what I've seen of the ethos.

He has designed, and actually implemented many buildings which tightly integrate nature into the urban environment.

His political views leave a LOT to be desired but his work is extremely inspiring.

https://hundertwasser.com/en/ecology/arch75_das_huegelwiesenland_1094

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/6168675

RRFBs. HAWK signals. Do any of these devices actually do what they're supposed to do, and how do traffic engineers decide when and where to install them?

• https://piped.video/watch?v=3HCDFczGh84
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HCDFczGh84

As a European, much of this was mind-boggling to me. While I believe all of this is real, I still found myself wondering throughout the video: Is this actually the norm in the US, or are these some cherry-picked bad examples? It felt for me like a whole other level of systemic hostility.