Question: Jonathan Raban opens Soft City with a description of losing himself in the city after a bit too much retsina in a kebab shop in the 1970's, and Walter Benjamin talks about the "intoxicated interpenetration of street and residence suchas comes about in theParis of the nineteenth century..." Is the city always hyperstimulating and intoxicating, or does contemporary development remove this quality and replace it with something more cold, calculating and clinical?

I think the sense of intoxication varies from city to city and really just depends on where you are. I have lived in urban places all over the U.S. and every city has a distinct feel and sometimes there are places and times that much more intoxicating. I think its hard not to feel a city in a way that invigorates your senses and sometimes produces an emotive response. I feel that, in America anyway, that the suburbs tend to be that dead sort of clinical feel with the strip malls and empty thoughtless space that pops up in a rush of development. There is a lack of identity and creative thought that goes into those spaces.

I think the age of the city has a lot to do with that feeling of intoxication. Personally if the city has a deep history I find it a lot more stimulating and almost overwhelming sometimes to take in. London is a great example of that feeling. I had visited older cities in less developed countries but because there is such a strong stratification of wealth and culture in a city like New York or London that i think it is mcuh more intoxicating. I also know that I am easily intoxicated. I love that I absorb and feel so much while visiting places and cities. My memories are full of the memory of smell and sight and emotion.

I think contemporary development only adds to the layers of a city. That development will age and although it may seem clinical and uninviting or uninteresting at first it will blend into the fabric and years from now we'll appreciate what it represents and for the time when it was built.

End of the year last ditch attempt

I was, honestly, totally committed to this blog for most of the year. Somehow it has slipped away from me and so this is my attempt to contribute some thoughts to some of the last questions that are going to be posed for the theory portion of the class. Last weeks class the question proposed was to think about a piece of literature-

"Do you have a favourite author who writes about city life? A particular wonderful description of time and place? A poem that really seems to capture an urban moment or movement? Please put an excerpt on the blog and tell us why it appeals to you."

The first piece of literature I thought of was a book called 'High Tide in Tucson' a book of essays written by Barbara Kingsolver. She is one of my favorite authors because she is a trained ecologist and biologist and writes beautiful, beautiful books of fiction and non-fiction. Her most famous book is the Poisonwood Bible about a Christian missionary family in the Congolese jungle. The essays book has a short writing on her garden that she was trying to grow at her hosue in Arizona. It is a funny tale about the feral pigs that would sneak in at night and destroy most of her vegetable patch and flowers. There is a really great line in it, and if I could find the book I would post the exact phrase, but to paraphrase she talks about how we have to finally at some point just give in and think about how we can co-exist with what some gardeners would call pests. The pigs and her end up striking a deal and she is able to grow to accept their presence in the garden and to realize we have to stop fighting so hard against nature.

This really makes me think of the urban setting though. So much of the urban environment is synthetic, man made and can be completely unnatural in part effort to keep out the pests and the natural enviroment. Air conditioning, windows that don't open, pavement, etc. I just think of how nice of an approach to urban development would be to just accept that maybe we can co-exist. I know this sound very granola but its still a nice way to think.

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