The geography we make must be a peoples’ geography, not based on pious universalisms, ideals and good intents, but a more mundane enterprise that reflects earthly interests, and claims, that confronts ideologies and prejudice as they really are, that faithfully mirrors the complex weave of competition, struggle, and cooperation within the shifting social and physical landscapes of the twentieth [and twenty-first] century.
In short, so much ordinary action gives no advance notice of what it will become. Yet, it still makes critical differences to our experiences of space and place (Thrift, 2004).
(Source: pps.org)
Zomg GIS <3
Only in the first few minutes, but the rest is still worth watching.
(Source: youtu.be)
Michel Foucault, “Panopticism,” Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, p. 202
(Originally from A New Look at the Left Wing, Reblogged from subway secrets lite)
We are, I believe, at an inflection point in the history of capitalism. The compound rates of growth that have prevailed over the past two centuries are increasingly difficult to sustain. Is continuous compound growth (at a minimum rate of 3 per cent a year) in perpetuity possible in a world that is already fully integrated into the capitalist dynamic? The environmental and social consequences are bad enough but the potentially deadly geo-economic and geopolitical competition over markets, resources, land and uses of the atmosphere is even scarier.
Zero growth is a necessity and zero growth is incompatible with capitalism. The necessity is, therefore, that we must all become anti-capitalists. Alternative ways to survive and prosper must be found. That is the imperative of our times. This is what we should commit to on this May Day.
The only adequate conceptual framework for understanding the city is one which encompasses and builds upon both the sociological and the geographical imaginations. We must relate social behaviour to the way in which the city assumes a certain geography, a certain spatial form. We must recognise that once a particular spatial form is created it tends to institutionalise, and in some respects, to determine the future of social process.
At the risk of becoming a David Harvey blog, here are some more quotes.
I doubt very much whether we will ever truly understand institutions which lead a creative artist to mould space to convey a message. But, I think we can go a long way to understanding the impact which that message has upon the people who receive it […] it is this reaction we must learn to gauge […] the city contains all manner of signals and symbols […] we must seek to understand the message which people receive from their constructed environment. (p32)
… and others may have far more complex (and perhaps even inconsistent) ways of schematising spatial relationships But much of the information which is built up on a spatial schema must be the result of individual experience. The nature of that experience may be crucial to determining the symbolism […] Social space is not only variable from individual to individual and from group to group; it is also variable over time. (p36)
