Week 9: Road Trip for Cities?

Harvey interjects time into urban analysis which creates a beautifully organic ebb-and-flow between many polarized disputations. However, most are framed in progressive process terms (shrinking cities?). His arguments around natural vs built environments are better framed in the aforementioned temporal-spatial flux, uprooting any established confine (zoning, lot, building, park, edge-boundary-limit) as a temporary part of the narrative and equally diffusing if/then (when) logic from our decision framework; this ignores the built environment largely supplants the natural (sometimes with near-permanent consequence [nuclear power, fracking, mining, etc.])—just look where that wheat field use to be and where the Walmart parking lot begins!  When examined with process vs. thing, the parking lot will someday revert to a wheat field or forest…the urban fabric as a journey not destination. How do we integrate into comprehensive planning in dynamic environments?

Community: relational structures evolve naturally; obviously physical place doesn’t create community (both exist without the other), but it does facilitate it (density, public space, site positioning, transportation structures, 3^rd spaces). Isn’t all community exclusionary? Does social capital exist outside community?  Perhaps public is falling to private (both monolithic and inaccessible) but free speech is not tied to public physical space—INTERNET!