Scalar approach to urban political ecology

From the consumer standpoint we often don't see what goes into the objects we purchase from agricultural products to housing materiality or even to the creation of asphalt on our streets that constitute the urban fabric. At what scale is it appropriate to introduce the consumer? A pic of an orange in your orange juice to verify it is grown in the US?

Linear distance of purchasing products in an urban store

What about a product nutrition label? Ecolect's response to consumer linear distancing.

In the urban political ecology perspective, we are experiencing a linear distance where the end-user is distanced from the production or complex systemic networks to create the world we live in today. I learned in Annie Leonard's lecture at Cornell in her Story of Stuff video on over-production and over-comsumption patterns of developed nations, that it is common to create waste in life-cycles of production patterns. It relates to linear distancing in that urban dwellers are separated from the life-cycle and since we don't know what it takes to produce a smartphone for example, so we keep demanding more products that require more production that contributes to more waste.

Story of Stuff

Although media has caught on to scientist's and economist's warning of climate change affects, we are even more unaware of the uneven distribution of our resources, talents and time. It's not that we will run out of water which has happened in multiple states and countries where they import water, it's who has access to water? Areas of the world are water rich, but rural areas do not have access to their own water, denied of the basic right of our human species to survive.

The bottleneck of consumption and production can be related to the 99% argument that the 1% is using the 99% of resources.

Do we really need to drink celebrity water while people use buckets to get water?

Am I buying the water or the image?

Resources:
Keil, Roger. (2003). Urban Political Ecology 1. Urban Geography. 24 (8), pp. 723- 738.

Urban theory manifests as urban form

What I took most from this week’s exploration on urban space and culture is how urban theories can manifest itself in physical form and spatial formation. For example, the idea of the creative class from Richard Florida manifests physically as a space-making tool, which cities have advocated and implemented spatially as art districts that cater to the creative class. It seems to me that a fixation occurs on the spatial result and the ideal of an economic engine driver or if you will, a growth pole-like strategy.

Creative community in Berlin- leaves a mark on the urban form and creates community. 

Does it encompass and welcome everyone or only artists?

My question then is: does the artist class create economic development or rather does the artist class follow development? I believe it is difficult to say and is context specific. In regard to an artist development I visited and stayed in with a friend who is a writer and her husband a fashion designer, in Providence, Rhode Island (most artists per capita in the US), I witnessed a positive change in their family in that they were able to relocate themselves into a community that was plugged with other artists. Through their collaboration with on-site artists that live in the development they were able to provide artistic programmatic events for their community and non-artist as well as live in the studio they produce work. In this regard the creative class creates a community, but it is difficult to say that the artists actually integrate themselves into the existing urban fabric that was previously there.

Reference:

Florida, Richard and Gates, Gary. (2001). Technology and Tolerance: The importance of diversity to high-technology growth (Survey Series of the Brookings Institution). Washington, DC: Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. http://www.urban.org/publications/1000492.html
Picture:
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/creative%20community

Global Citizenship and Right to the Urban Landscape

Main theme from this week's investigation on Political Agglomerations:

Global Citizenship: Doreen Massey refers to global citizenship from her article "Global Sense of Place" defining time-space compression as a "compression of movement and communication across space geographically" and its social experiences associated (2). From this I can see how people feel included in this speed-up of a global village but also feel visibly different. Cities are privileged sites for its infrastructure, opportunity and connections, but also with privilege comes the politics of difference where as a designer I should ask: Who am I designing this space for?

Politics of difference: As most people are privileged to enjoy the elevated landscape, a homeless person has taken refuge under the Highline, but is excluded to enjoy such a beautiful park with other people.

In the case of the ever popular elevated urban landscapes of New York's Highline or Singapore's Henderson Wave Park, there is a familiarity among the two in materiality and exclusive nature of taking you 15 feet above buildings and the street with fashionable people mainly in business, tourists or residents, who are there to people watch and get away from the "undesireables"you may encounter if you dare walk on the street instead.

Right to the Urban Landscape: Vancouver's bold initiative of gives all residents access to a park within a 5 minute walking distance.

Part of citizenship is access to rights. Although some designed spaces can heighten identity politics among users of the space, US cities across the nation are including daring goals in their climate change action plans of giving citizens the right to access the landscape. In the case of Vancouver's bold plan of being the Greenest City in the World by 2020, the plan hopes to give residents access to parks within a 5 minute walk which outcompetes New York City's 10 minute walk to a park goal.

My critique of citizenship in the urban landscape and giving rights to the public landscape is that although cities are addressing accessibility to green spaces in action plans, they fail to address the quality of the spaces that are accessible (so just because I am near a park doesn't mean it is safe for children or families). As a concluding remark, the city has become a system of economic and social re-production and landscapes are part of this discussion in the way parks and green infrastructure are narrating the story of the landscape, hopefully in the future with more attention to the locale or genius loci of the place and the design for all types of people.

Access to Vancouver's Greenest City in the World by 2020 Action Plan: http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/Greenest-city-action-plan.pdf

Massey, Doreen. (1991). A Global Sense of Place. Marxism Today.