kazys.tumblr

Visions of Dubai

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:12:52 -0500

Bldgblog has a good post up today entitled “Cities Gone Wild,” comparing two dystopian contemporary cities, Dubai and Rio.

Is this the future of cities in the developed world?

The Jobs Won't Come Back

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:10:10 -0500

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains

The basic assumption that jobs will eventually return when the economy recovers is probably wrong. Some jobs will come back, of course. But the reality that no one wants to talk about is a structural change in the economy that’s been going on for years but which the Great Recession has dramatically accelerated.

Under the pressure of this awful recession, many companies have found ways to cut their payrolls for good. They’ve discovered that new software and computer technologies have made workers in Asia and Latin America just about as productive as Americans, and that the Internet allows far more work to be efficiently outsourced abroad.

For a solution, he proposes initatives

that span many years: early childhood education for every young child, excellent K-12, fully-funded public higher education, more generous aid for kids from middle-class and poor families to attend college, good health care, more basic R&D that’s done here in the U.S., better and more efficient public transit like light rail, a power grid that’s up to the task, and so on.

I’m absolutely for this. My only criticism of Reich—and its one that I would make of myself—is that he doesn’t outline a system for how this sort of investment leads to new jobs. Industry is gone so how do we replace it?

Unfortunately Obama is much more interested in immediate gratification, promoting investment banks than infrastructure or even education. We have a mandate for the war but not for education? What’s going on?

In the next Congressional elections, he will be burned badly for this, along with his efforts to support the war in Afghanistan, but I don’t see him changing. Unless the Republicans field a nut case, Obama’s cronies manage to cook the books into a recovery or something miraculous happens like they find bin Laden, he will wind up a supreme disappointment, a failed single-term President whose sole accomplishment was to be not quite as awful as Bush.

See the The Economic Reality Nobody Wants to Talk About.

Inside the Banks

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:54:40 -0500

Read the following article if you think that I’m being unduly pessimistic in the face of the “recovery” of the banking system. It turns out that the recovery may be as much of a fraud as the bubble was. See Worse than Enron.

Meet the Green Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:27:00 -0500

We don’t need your stinking environmental impact report, we’re green! says the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

See here, courtesy of drowninginculture.

Against Larry Summers

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:00:00 -0500

It’s been over a year since Obama was elected and while its an immense relief to be rid of the awful regime that laid waste to this country for eight years, the disappointment about the current administration is starting to set in. I’ve been cautious from day one since I remember just how stupid the Clinton administration really was and observed that during the election Obama never offered compelling policies to match his oratory.

Soon, my suspicions were confirmed as Obama began to hire deeply questionable figures to key positions in the administration. Of these, I suspect that chief economic adviser Larry Summers will go down in history as leading a failed economic policy that prolongs a stock market bubble that prevents the economy from having a strong enough correction early on, thus leading to a much worse recession later.

It’s hard to concoct a character as flawed as Summers for this position. I’ve already talked about Summers’s comic misspeak “We are all Friedmanites now,” but ran into an article the other day at Seeking Alpha that described how, as President of Harvard University, he ignored warnings about risky financial investments and, to his complete discredit, marched it even further down that path, ultimately resulting in a staggering $1.8 billion loss for the university.

Maybe he’s going to outdo himself this time?

Build an Indexhibit Site, Free

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 09:41:00 -0500

Since many of the students in my network culture class are building Web sites using indexhibit, I thought I’d figure out how to create such a site and post some rudimentary instructions on how to do it. Here’s what I came up with.

It took me 20 minutes to set up a site (kazys.99k.org) in indexhibit as follows.

Download indexhibit
Read the readme

Sign up for free web hosting at zymic.com

Create a free site

Unpack indexhibit archive. Upload contents of that folder using ftp program (like fetch on the mac) to the root directory of the site.

Change permissions for ‘files’, ‘gimgs’ and ‘ndxz-studio/config’ to 777 (could be done before file upload, but also can be done upon file upload)

Create a mysql database and user (you don’t have to put anything in the database, just create one, together with a user)

Run install.php (see readme) and input the name of the database, mysql user, and password you created.

You’re done or if you want, purchase a custom domain name at namecheap.com or godaddy.com or just use one of the extensions provided (for example 99k.org).

Now I’ve done indexhibit installs before and I know what I’m doing with this sort of thing but none of this is terribly difficult and, best of all, it’s free.

If anybody creates sites based on these instructions, I’d love to hear about it. Of course, I can’t offer any support, but if anyone wants to fine tune the install instructions, comment away.

On the Stylistic Tropics

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:33:55 -0500

Over in Prospect magazine, Brian Eno confirms something I’ve been saying for a few years. The coolhunt is dead. Instead, we live in a stylistic tropics, a world of interchangeable language games dedicated to fashion. It’s worth reading this in the light of Alan Liu’s the Laws of Cool: first, social capital based on class and taste hierarchy was replaced by the pursuit of cool, then the cool as property of an informational élite is replaced by the stylistic tropics. Unless you’re studying earlier eras, its time to retire all those books by Bourdieu or sell them on Amazon. I know I have.

Lecture @ Columbia Planning 11/24

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:19:22 -0500

I am lecturing tomorrow on Complexity and Contradiction in Infrastructure in the Lectures in Planning Series of the Program in Urban Planning at Columbia University, starting at 1pm, 114 Avery Hall.

Slow Infrastructure

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:19:52 -0500

In a bizarre misinterpretation of Michael Pollan’s advocacy of slow food, the Obama administration has decided to pursue slow infrastructure.

No, this doesn’t mean funding more freeways in Los Angeles, I’m kidding about the Pollan reference, it does mean stalling on infrastructure yet again because it isn’t politically expedient and doesn’t benefit his main supporters in the world of finance: investment banks and health insurance companies.

See here.

Note to doe-eyed newspaper reporters who want OMA-designed windmills to view from their villas in Catalina Island. It just isn’t going to happen! Not under this regime, at least.

Bill Moyers At His Best

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:09:52 -0500

This is Bill Moyers at his best. It must have slipped past the guards at PBS, but its really fantastic, a spot on indictment of Congress. Can I have a third party now to counter the party on the far Right and the party on the extreme Right? Please?

YouTube - Bill Moyers on Max Baucus and Senate health insurance reform bill

First Works at the AA

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:04:37 -0500

Unfortunately I won’t have a chance to see this show, but I had the chance to contribute a brief piece on Archizoom’s “Structure for Leisure in Prato–Permanent Luna Park in a Shopping Centre” to the catalogue for First Works: Emerging Architectural Experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s, now on display the AA.

The show explores the first projects that architects of that era (Archigram, Archizoom, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Peter Eisenman, Norman Foster + Richard Rogers, Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Steven Holl, Toyo Ito, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Rafael Moneo, Morphosis, Renzo Piano, Cedric Price, Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza, Bernard Tschumi, Robert Venturi and Paul Virilio + Claude Parent) did in setting out on their careers.

The Stationary State

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:12:00 -0500

A friend I’ve known for over two decades, Gopal Balakrishnan, has an incisive Marxist critique of the contemporary economy in “Speculations on the Stationary State” at the latest New Left Review. I’m delighted that the article appears to be free for all to read at the moment. Read it here.

Daniel Miller on the Post City

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:16:54 -0500

Over at Metamute, I ran into Daniel Miller’s article “On the Post City.” Metamute is a favorite site and I was delighted to see mention of my work on One Wilshire in the last paragraph. Piece by piece, a critique of network culture and what is rapidly becoming its latest ideological tool, networked urbanism, is emerging.

Infrastructure of Urban Ecologies

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:33:32 -0400

William Morrish and I are speaking at 6:30 today at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. See Columbia’s Web site for details. Morrish is the Dean of Constructed Environments at Parsons. The lecture will be up on Columbia’s iTunes podcast soon afterwards.

Infrastructural City @ IUAV Monday

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:48:48 -0400

I’m in Venice, Italy where I’m honored to be giving the keynote lecture at one of the most important and historical venues in my field, the IUAV, the school at which the great historian Manfredo Tafuri taught (among many other luminaries). The Web site for the conference “Pipes and Sponges: Reconceptualizing Mobility Infrastructures” can be found here. Among the other speakers is Ed Soja, a key influence on the Infrastructural City. I’m greatly honored and looking forward to seeing everyone there.

D-Crit: Network Culture: A Changing Context for Design

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:35:25 -0400

I am giving an overview of my Network Culture book project at the D-Crit program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City at 6 tonight.

See their site for more.

Event Information

When: 13 Oct 2009, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Where: Design Criticism MFA Department, 136 West 21st Street, New York, 2nd floor
Price: Free and open to the public

Places at the Design Observer

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:30:16 -0400

Great news. The illustrious architecture and urban studies journal Places is undergoing some major changes. First, it is now edited by Nancy Levinson, one of the most distinguished editors in our field. Second, it is now hosted at Design Observer, which needs little introduction to my readership. I expect big things and am eager to dive into the first issue, which just went online here.

I have two connections with the first issue that I wanted to share with you.

The first is an excellent essay by one of my favorite former students, Ian Baldwin from the University of Pennsylvania, on the Tube Map of London. Read more here. I was amused to run into Ian’s article via my favorite fashion blog, Selectism, which had a piece on it today.

The second is a great review of the Infrastructural City by Chris Reed of Stoss, found here. Chris really “got” the book and what we were trying to do with it. I’m very much looking forward to meeting Chris at the GSD next Monday.

Purchasing Infrastructural City

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:49:33 -0400

So many people are buying books via Amazon these days, that I need to point out that the hardcover of the Infrastructural City is sold out and not destined to be reprinted. Amazon may say they are temporarily out of stock, but it’ll be a long and probably eternal wait for that edition. Instead, get the slightly smaller, 1/4 cheaper, and even more elegant paperback version (still full color) from Amazon or from your local bookseller, who is having such tough times these days.

Two Books I am Reading

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:03:00 -0400

I’m off to Limerick for a week of lectures, but hope to have a spare minute or two for some posts along the way (and to finish my piece on Owen Hatherley’s review of Altermodern in the New Left Review). In the meantime, I thought I’d mention two books that were just released:

Alan Kirby, Digimodernism

Jean Baudrillard, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?

The Infrastructural City is Back

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:35:06 -0400

I’m delighted to announce that the Infrastructural City is now back in stock at Amazon. This time, it’s only available in paperback, but at $21.56, it’s more affordable and frankly, I think it looks better or at least as good as the hardcover. Click here to purchase. Please don’t wait for the hardcover to get back in stock. That print run sold out in May.

I had a great time tonight speaking with David Fletcher in an event moderated by Ila Berman in San Francisco and sponsored by the SFMOMA A+D Forum together with the Studio for Urban Projects. Thanks to everyone who made this possible, to all the old friends who turned out, and to all my new friend who asked such great questions. I’m looking forward to the continuing lecture tour this fall across this continent and at least one other.