Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2008

LandFILL — or, I can’t stand it (warning: foul language)

Dave Winer pointed to a SoCal news video that another blogger has on their site. Twelve minutes of pain. Must see, click through. In response, I commented the following:

Just watched the “meltdown” news video you linked to, above. Oh my god. The waste, the waste of it all. Lives, land, stuff, potential. LAND! LandFILL.

Astonishing. (Like, literally. I’m a-stonied, rigid with gob-smackedness.)

“Inland Empire,” my pointy little ass. Highways, gasoline (cheap, then; not now), more subdivisions, super-duper square footage, more oil, more cars, on and on. And what’s left on those streets? People who themselves are on the financial edge, living (if you can call it that) in “communities” (fuck me - what a bunch of crap!) where almost every other house on the street is abandoned/ handed back to the lenders.

And some of those people thought that the bad ol’ city with its “crowding” (actually, density) was the enemy. Wow, were they wrong.

PS: can’t even walk to the grocery store in the “Inland Empire.” How sustainable was that to begin with?

Originally posted as a comment by Yule Heibel on Scripting News using Disqus.

After I wrote that, I wrote some more, but decided against cluttering up Scripting’s comments board and instead took it to my own blog here.

Man, I haven’t cursed this much in text in ages…

PS: My anger and sadness comes in part from feeling that these people who abandon their homes like this have no one to draw on, link to, connect with. No community, no nothing. There’s no one to draw close to — and how could there be, in *wastelands* such as “Inland Empire”? *Waste*-land.

It’s infuriating to see that atomizing people in this way, dis-encouraging them from some sort of organic relationship to place/ community, and telling them instead that *suburban isolation* and all this other bullshit of Stuff-hood (which lands in the dumpster) is the American Dream — that this has been sold as some kind of *goal*.

What the hell kind of community can you have in an Inland Empire? The “community” of new age religions or evangelical-isms? Same old, same old: no fucking history! And by the same token, actual neighbourhoods/ communities have been left in a trashed & destroyed state (see NOLA), so that political willpower and ability to move toward change also gets dis-focused and confused. Wipe out the history, wipe out the memory. Abandon ship, leave your crap, fill the landfill.

It’s enough to make one think there’s method to this madness.

Ok, I’ll leave your comments board now, enough ranting. But that video really riled me up. Usually don’t swear this much.

Pernicious. Inland Pernicious.

So, yeah — it’s a rant.  But you just have to watch this news clip to get it.

Ok, back to your regular programming.  Move along, nothing to see here.

Links to read 10/02/2008 (p.m.)

• How to Create a Vibrant Waterfront | Project for Public Spaces (PPS)

  Portal page for two additional links, “10 Qualities of a Great Waterfront” and “The 9 most important steps in revitalizing a waterfront.” The main worry for the authors here (”A common challenge is how to revitalize places where the river, lake or sea has been cut off from the rest of town by wide roadways or hulking industrial facilities”) doesn’t apply to Victoria, whose waterfront is *not* cut off by road arterials or industrial areas. But in general terms, there are still some nuggets on the linked-to pages.

  tags: project_for_public_spaces, waterfront, urbanplanning, urban_design

• Connected Urban Development - Connected Urban Development - Cisco Systems

  This is the Cisco site that CEOs for Cities blog post pointed to (linked to below). It describes the Cisco-funded/ sponsored program, “Connected Urban Development” (CUD), now in several cities around the world.

  My question would be: how does a city (say, mine) get involved with this? From the webpage:
  QUOTE
  By using network connectivity for communication, collaboration, urban planning, and other activities, CUD will help change the way in which cities do the following:

  * Deliver services to residents
  * Manage the flow of traffic
  * Operate public transportation
  * Use and manage real estate resources
  UNQUOTE

  tags: cisco, urban_design, cross_use, connectedness, infrastructure, ceos_for_cities

• CEOs for Cities: Connected Urban Development

  Another article that underscores the need for (and uses of) “cross-use” (as defined by Jane Jacobs). The interesting difference/ twist here is that cross-use is created/ nourished through congestion-cutting strategies and transit infrastructure, as well as (get this!) broadband infrastructure (!).

  So, interesting point to ponder: that congestion is another barrier to cross-use. Something to think about.

  And: think about taking broadband/ digital infrastructure into account when thinking about cross-use vs single-use. How to map the virtual onto the real/ actual? Hmmm….

  Note: CEOs for Cities entry has further links.

  tags: ceos_for_cities, urban_development, cross_use, cities, jjacobs