Little Old Ladies (by Phila) Which is certainly true. But I'm also irritated by the implication that these feeble, silly women (and feminized men like yours truly) have had their chance to address the issue of animal cruelty, and it's now time for a new breed of hypermasculine go-getters like Pacelle to kick ass and take names. Like so many other problems, this one becomes truly serious only when men -- real men, with cleats! -- get involved. In fact, many of the difficulties involved in protecting animals boil down to gender politics of a particularly witless and ugly kind (as witless and ugly men like Jonah Goldberg and Daniel Clark are more than happy to demonstrate). Which is why I get distressed (in a disgustingly feminine way) when activists like Pacelle -- or the far more offensive folks at PETA -- fail to grasp the ideological connection between their portrayal of women, and the popular view that indifference to the suffering of farm animals is "normal" and "rational." Of course, I'd argue that this logic cuts both ways, which is why I hope that any readers who are in a position to help California's Proposition 2 pass will do so. Comments (5) | Trackback (0) McMansions seem like the obvious answer. They increase in size as land values skyrocket. And their interiors seem oddly divorced from how people actually live; they recall traditional ideas of wealth and gentility that were based on an entirely different sense of time and space and leisure, with the result that even when they're inhabited they have the feel of something that's outlived its purpose. They seem more like a crude stereotype of a rich person's house than an actual dwelling. Or a marker and a warning, like the hotels on a Monopoly board. I was also brooding about how shopping centers seem to grow quainter and more village-like as communities become more fragmented, and houses more imposing and unwelcoming. Which reminded me that I'd addressed this question several years ago, in a long post on architectural imitation: Apropos of which, the American architect Lebbeus Woods notes that Americans increasingly view homes as "instruments for getting a return on their money," and wonders whether a new and improved American Dream could be built around the idea of non-ownership: The concept of non-ownership would be good a place to start. Or, at least, with the idea that money is not at the heart of it. Meanwhile, over at BLDGBLOG, Nicola Twilley discusses "micro-territoriality as both a cause and a symptom of social exclusion." She's responding to a cognitive mapping project that asked young people to draw their neighborhoods as they perceive them; what makes this project especially interesting was that the participants' maps included "enemy" areas: In other words, bored and economically deprived teenagers are transforming 1960s council estates and Victorian terraces into a real-world, multiplayer World of Warcraft. Twilley goes on to point out that "current policies in urban regeneration are dominated by strategies to increase 'place attachment' as a means 'to reinforce social networks and maintain the quality of an area through pride.'" This, of course, can serve to encourage micro-territoriality, which seems to persist -- or perhaps even intensify -- when a place has virtually no worthwhile qualities: Like Woods, Twilley wonders whether these problems can be solved by architects and urban planners: "Can the design of the city itself generate – or mitigate against – territoriality?" Obviously, urban design doesn't "generate" territoriality; it is territoriality, period. In psychological terms, it seems to me that the question of micro-territoriality hinges on the transgression of micro-borders, which in turn hinges on security and control, and ultimately on identity (which has a lot to do with the sense of one's own position within society). If urban design is going to reduce this tension, and encourage a relative sense of non-ownership, it seems to me that it has to de-emphasize borders (e.g., by changing the uses of transitional spaces where, as Twilley notes, most territorial violence is concentrated); the installation of a community garden in an abandoned lot would be one possible way of turning a border area into something of value to people on both sides of a divide. Facilities dedicated to community clean-up -- or better yet, mediation -- would be other possibilities. Needless to say, ideas like these are totally alien to current political -- and therefore architectural -- trends, which stress the need for hypervigilance, perimeter security, and preparedness, and which usually boil down to security rituals whose basic steps can be recognized in international airports as well as "across the spectrum of low-income housing stock." In this sense, the maps Twilley reproduces don't seem medieval at all; their assumptions are very much of our time. But ultimately, the assumption that we can change society by changing architecture relies a bit too much on the assumption that architecture got us where we are today; theory's fascination with power tends to make power seem fascinating, and its plans for opposing that power are too often based on familiar, imperious assumptions about the ability to impose a particular worldview on citizens by rearranging their neighborhoods. Instead of cheap imitations of a conservative past, with fake Victorian lamps, and streets named after whatever natural features were bulldozed to make way for them, we could (continue to) end up with cheap imitations of a utopian future, which pay lip service to radical ideas of community while leaving residents' day-to-day life basically unchanged. The point is, the struggle to improve neighborhoods is largely a political one, and the work involved is not particularly glamorous, or intellectually stimulating, or aesthetically thrilling. As the radical architect Teddy Cruz acknowledges: |