The Right to The City – By David Harvey

(A review by L.A. Dilloway)

What kind of people do we want to be? Promoting a better life politically, with empty promises of acting on them. Our cities have turned to urban decay as we neglect community in favor of indoor isolation. Urban infrastructure is struggling at the hands of corporate favoritism and endless wars.

The City is a collective community beyond the individual experience: it must change as we change. It must provide what the modern world requires. For the sake of progress, it must include essential resources as a mass habitat. Urbanization reconfigured as a humanitarian task, to be carried out constantly. Enough of the inedible green lawns and plastic surplus pumped and promoted for the sake of quarterly profits. Thankfully, a new generation of desperately broke, increasingly sick, and fed up folx have rejected these traditional ideals od control and taken to homesteading, recycling, sharing, DIY everything, urban farming and even allo-parenting! Community building has become a necessary means for survival.

The problem with these global “building booms” is that the resources are not allocated towards marginalized groups. The unhoused populations surge while the wealthy developers seize and capitalize all the available property. The luxury developments come with exorbitant price tags and often sit empty and wasted. Thus, worsening our growing “planet of slums.” We have the solution in front of us, with no means to access it, and no one willing to give up profit for planet. Our fate is up to a few dozen billionaires – whose very existence is profoundly immoral.

Individuals have little say in the evolution of cities. It’s the collaboration of the masses that move mountains, kill box stores and rekindle locally made demand. Proud of my millennial generation for rejecting and redirecting industries by simply refusing to participate. Whether by choice or not – we can shift the focus.

Immense concentration of wealth, privilege, and consumerism has divided our cities beyond recognition. The slums expand as the global wealth falls into a void of the greedy few. This trickle-down expectation is the least sustainable attribute of our economy. I’m frankly surprised it hasn’t inspired a righteous uprising yet… any day now, right?

Can revolutions really influence social structure? If we’ve learned anything from history – it’s that change has to be demanded! Imagine the investment in our cities if there was no more war. If all the power of military effort was instead redirected into education, health, green energy and social reform? The rebuilding of Paris by Napoleon was a necessary if not bloody affair to welcome a new social structure and reimagine the city for the needs of this century. I for one am ready for the trickle Uprising. All Empires fall – as they must.

Alternative to Functionalist Universalism By Monique Eleb

I’ve always admired the design of Moroccan courtyard houses, and how much they mean to their community. I don’t blame the architects for not wanting to deviate from traditional designs, even if it meant the sacrifice of mass housing in favor of stagnant status quo. Of course, the inevitable growth of tourism and populations meant the country must grow, and with it – the size of their buildings.

Hentsch and Struder’s attempts at housing units were functional, yet sculptural in their appeal to Moroccan aesthetics. Providing apartments with a miniature courtyard is the least they could do to lend outdoor spaces to the renter’s experience. It is more of a luxury than most renters’ get here in the US. I myself do not get the right to an outdoor space based on my income status, which greatly affects the mental health as well. I appreciate the designated courtyard, even in lower income areas, to guarantee than everyone has a chance to be safely outside, in their own corner of the world.

The Moroccan Habitat is indeed iconic, adapted rarely across the globe. I had no idea how particular the sectioning off of specific rooms for specific people had influenced the design. Despite the inspiring location of Morocco, where Europe meets Africa – Of course racism had to come into play, to isolate and differentiate rooms to keep people othered. Women isolated while on their menstrual cycles? And they talk about caged birds from balconies… Wow.

I find myself drawn to interior courtyards and the beckoning privacy to a miniature oasis. I often design floor plans around the central garden, encased in all sides in the private home. I see it in Mexican buildings and other tropical areas, where often the luxury is reserved for privilege. In one of my favorite examples from the show, Amsterdam, young artists share an interior courtyard with their landlord. Ideally, unshared – but that’s not the world we live in. I hope to see more adaptations through modern housing, and even mass housing to utilize such a luxury for all. A balcony without green space simply isn’t enough to satisfy our need for nature – ground and all. For the “needs of light, space, hygiene, rest, education and work” – a building is for modern humanity, and should provide all the essentials for our greatest selves.

Home Planning and Gender in Mandatory Palestine By Sigal Davidi (Tel Aviv University)

“If Only Women Built the Houses.” Now here’s an article I’ve been waiting for! Lotte Cohn is my new hero – a true pioneer of her time. Architecture is still wildly unbalanced as far as gender goes, and to be the third woman to graduate in her course is beyond comprehension.  Who would have thought that a woman who runs the health of her household could have a say in the flow of building design at large?

“When I design a kitchen, I usually base my design on all the movements required in kitchen work… Such details are important in a factory, where people walk the same path hundreds of times, but not within the walls of a private apartment.”

To have eased the burdens of housework for her fellow females, while also breaking barriers in a male-dominated industry. It’s mind boggling that there were domestic science schools to teach girls how to be future wives, as if they could amount to anything else. As if cooking and cleaning skills wouldn’t be beneficial to anyone with a functioning brain! Which is odd to think how the chef industry has always been a sausage fest. Even more shocking that Palestine was once a favorable environment for female architects.

I believe that only a new order of the Matriarchy can cure the vast design discrepancies of the Patriarchy. I’ve always chuckled at the absurdity in design choices of vintage houses, to know almost instantly they were designed by men – the ones who traditionally couldn’t tell you how the oven or dishwasher or washing machine worked – and yet were the only ones tasked with the importance of its daily layout.

It starts with functional and rational home design, but is that not the cornerstone of well-being? Imagine the world designed by natural caretakers, instead of them being isolated once a month out of shame and misunderstanding. Imagine a world where everyone was taken care of before there was any discussion of budgeting for war.

Take Aways

After last week’s reading: Modernism and the Post-Colonial, I can understand the endless devastation created by colonization, and the hesitation of the colonized nation to trust outsiders. It’s incredible that architecture holds the power to build communities as much as it can also tear them apart. Is there any way to undo the damage, or move forward as a united people, rather than sections of othered and marginalized? Perhaps its naïve, but I have to believe there’s a better solution here.

Courtyards are a common design in mass housing, including my own building. Ideally, it’s a great excuse to gather, but not necessarily for the isolated youths of the digital age. When it’s not filled with dry leaves and dog poop, the courtyard is bustling with neighbors trying their best to avoid each other.

No one asked to share the only piece of nature we are allotted with +50 strangers. If we learned anything from mass housing, it’s that community cannot be forced. In the low stakes game of living in low-income housing, our circumstances breed desperation, greed, distrust, and disloyalty in my humble experiences. There’s a quiet rage against the world, of course, but we’re too busy to act on our collective misfortune. It turns inward, or towards each other, rather than to fixing the lack of resources that plopped us here. I know I’d be happier with my own courtyard, walled off from the creepy strangers thatpeek into ground floor windows and never pick up after their pets. Despite the message of our “Right to the City,” I prefer my community at an arm’s length.

Lotte Cohn’s resume of designing buildings specifically for women and children reminded me of the South Korean Sanhujori – postpartum recovery centers for women to recover after they have given birth. Shuttled from the hospital, new mothers can retreat to these comfortable communities to heal from the bodily transformation of creating life. With 24/7 infant care and mothers medical care, bedside meal preparation and family visiting hours – this exceptional caregiving platform allows the mother to rest, heal and return to herself, staying weeks to months at a time. Some programs come with at-home transitional care to help the new family adapt. Most centers are exclusive, luxury experiences that few can afford, while other common and shorter stays are government funded, especially after difficult births.
This is my idea of serving an underserved community, considering the forced birth methodology sweeping the nation. I can only hope the trend catches on globally, and becomes supported by feminist forward governments. Imagine a world where women were allowed the decency and respect to recover from the body-shattering experience of childbirth. Unlike the current and pitiful expectation to immediately return to caring for everyone else. Not to mention, the few weeks they get to spend with their newborn before they are expected back in the office. (Cough, US, cough…)