Comments on: The City as Platform

By: Mark Cidade

Mark Cidade — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:10:18 +0000

My preferred interpretation is that the city is a springboard off of which we can jump right off this dirt ball of a planet. If we’re going to colonize the moon, we need mass vertical transit via a space elevator or something built within a well-sized fully functional and healthy city.

By: Ari

Ari — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:19:29 +0000

It is sad that, in a lot of American cities, the manifesto seems to be “you should move to the suburbs.”

By: Jarrett at HumanTransit.org

Jarrett at HumanTransit.org — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:48:09 +0000

I should add that when I refer to the “city as stage and backstage” I’m pointing out that some behaviors are exhibited (stage) and some are merely witnessed without the performer’s awareness (backstage, or “peeping through the curtain”). Both matter to the form and evolution of culture, and both require the city.

By: Jarrett at HumanTransit.org

Jarrett at HumanTransit.org — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:45:48 +0000

Excellent. When a rural person starts talking to me about the “perversions” they’ve seen in the city, I respond that cities simply are where such behaviors are visible. There are probably as many “perversions” in rural life, but they are less likely to be witnessed and recorded, and thus have no cultural consequence.

And of course, “perversions” in the above paragraph can be read as meaning any sort of cultural or behavioral innovation, not just sexual ones.

So to me “the city as stage and backstage” is really inherent in how the city’s other dimensions function. It is the place where innovative behaviors (in sex, in dance, in protests, in politics) are witnessed and thus have the potential to form and transform the culture.