Another City for Another Life:

I’m starting work on a course, possibly a collaborative one, that would have three components. 1. Psychogeography, as a way of moving through the city, gathering a knowledge of its ambiences, but concentrating on its special moments. 2. Unitary Urbanism, or the practice of imagining another city for another life, based on the ambiences detected in creating a psychogeography, and 3. Speculative Design, which experiments in a playful and open way with models or projects or components for realizing Unitary Urbanism. What follows is an effort to gather materials and ideas for such a course. I would appreciate suggestions.

The opening section below introduces Psychogeography and Unitary Urbanism together, as they emerged out of the early experiments of the Situationist International in 1950s Paris. In brief: the idea is that through wandering in the city, outside of the organized time of work and leisure, one can glimpse ambiences that might suggest a whole other kind of city for a better way of life.

Guy Debord, ‘Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography’

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/urbgeog.htm

Guy Debord ‘Theory of the Dérive’

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/2.derive.htm

Ivan Chtcheglov, ‘Formula for a New Urbanism’

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/Chtcheglov.htm

Letterist International, ‘Proposals for Rationally Improving the City o Paris’

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/paris.htm

Guy Debord, ‘Situationist Theses on Traffic’

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/3.traffic.htm

Constant, ‘Another City for Another Life’

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/3.constant.htm

McKenzie Wark, ‘New Babylon’

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1879-new-babylon

Kevin Pyle & McKenzie Wark ‘Totality for Kids’

http://vectors.usc.edu/issues/7/totality/

 

The next section is about different ways of practicing psychogeography in New York City.

McKenzie Wark, ‘Zuccotti Park: A Psychogeography’

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/735-mckenzie-wark-zuccotti-park-a-psychogeography

Dave Mandl, ‘The Ends of Brooklyn’

https://placesjournal.org/article/the-end-of-brooklyn/

Joseph Heathcott, ‘Borderlands’

http://urbanomnibus.net/2015/01/borderlands-traveling-the-brooklyn-queens-divide/

Mattern, Shannon, ‘Infrastructural Tourism’

https://placesjournal.org/article/infrastructural-tourism/

 

Exercises. These are ideas for ways of combining Psychogeography that has a particular focus with thinking about Unitary Urbanism. The principle of Unitary Urbanism is “another city for another life.” Here are suggestions for various different ways one could start experiencing the city and thinking through different alternative cities one might design. I don’t have readings for all of these yet.

The alternate ability city.

What is the city like if one has to be on wheels, or cannot walk very far or fast? Could one imagine a city for everyone based on the principle of low power or self-powered wheeled motion?

John Hockenberry, Moving Violations, Hachette, 1996

Tomás Sánchez Criado on ‘funcional diversity’ https://tscriado.org/publications/

Astra Taylor, Examined Live (movie), 2008 Sunaura Tayor & Judith Butler section,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/disabled-new-york_us_55a5084ee4b0a47ac15d5334

The amusement city.

What if the city’s leisure zones were not time off from work, but the whole basis of a life of play?

Zoe Beloff Coney Island http://www.zoebeloff.com/pages/books.html

Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, Monacelli, 1997

Simon Sadler, Archigram, MIT Press, 2005

The animal city.

Maybe the idea city would not be for humans. What would a city for squirrels look like? Or birds?

Jason Munshi-South, http://nycevolution.org

Architecture for Animals: http://www.expandedenvironment.org/category/publications/

Meredith Drum ‘Oyster City’ http://meredithdrum.com/work/oyster-city

Natalie Jeremijenko http://nataliejeremijenko.com

The city of women.

What if one could reverse, or erase, male dominated space?

Laura Elkin, Flaneuse: Women Walk the City, FSG 2017

Rebecca SolnitWanderlust: A History of Walking,  Verso, 2002. (chapter on women)

Janet Wolff  ‘The Invisible Flâneuse. Women and the Literature of Modernity’ Theory, Culture & Society November 1985 2:37-46

Elizabeth Wilson, ‘The Invisible Flaneur’ https://newleftreview.org/I/191/elizabeth-wilson-the-invisible-flaneur

The cognitive city.

We are not all of the same mind. Maybe the city would be different if one was depressed, manic, autistic, and so forth. Chtcheglov proposed different zones for different emtional states, but what about cognitive states?

Andrea Captick, in Tina Richardson (ed) Walking Inside Out, Rowen & Littlefield, 2015

Steve Graby, ‘Wandering Minds’  https://www.academia.edu/8586966/Wandering_Minds_autism_psychogeography_public_space_and_the_ICD_2011_

The driverless city.

Apparently Tesla are testing driverless cars here already. Would there be another city one could create that was driverless?

Building Blog, ‘Trap Streets’ http://www.bldgblog.com/tag/trap-streets/

The drowned city.

Truth is, the waters are rising. Rather than think this as an apocalypse, what might an aquatic NYC be like?

Eve S Mosher ‘High Waterline’ http://www.evemosher.com/2007/highwaterline/

MOMA ‘Rising Currents’ http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/category/rising-currents

Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312, Orbit 2013

The dumpsterdive city.

Is there a way to think the psychogeography of dumpster diving or gleaning as a fragment of another life?

Jeff Ferrell, Empire of Scrounge, NYU Press, 2005

Agnes Varda, The Gleaners and I, (movie), 2000

The edible city.

What might the city be like if it grew its own food?

Fallen Fruit: http://fallenfruit.org

Nicola Twiley, ‘The Coldscape’ http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/47/twilley.php

The hip hop city

This might be a drift through used record stores as much as the streets, but what if we took the utopian promise of very early hip hop, and built a city out of it?

Jim Fricke, Yes Yes Y’all: The Oral History of Hip Hop’s First Decade, Da Capo, 2002

Charlie Ahearn, Wild Style (movie), 1092

The infrastructure city.

If one thought backwards from the experience of infrastructure, how might that be structured differently to enable other kinds of city?

Mattern, Shannon, ‘Infrastructural Tourism’ https://placesjournal.org/article/infrastructural-tourism/

Nicola Twiley, ‘The Coldscape’ http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/47/twilley.php

Steve Duncan http://www.brooklyneagle.com/articles/2016/8/5/talk-steve-duncan-brooklyn’s-urban-explorer-daredevil-and-sewer-man

The invisible city.

Maybe you don’t feel at home. Maybe the best city is the one that avoids detection, that knows how to hide, If you had to hide this city, how would you do it?

Hito Steyerl, How Not to Be Seen, https://player.vimeo.com/video/125475136

The micro city.

There are cities within cities. That have their own languages, customs, idioms. You might want to start with a psychogeography of something very small, a block or two, even.

Ada Calhoun, St Marks Is Dead, Norton, 2015

HT Tsiang, The Hanging on Union Square, Kaya, 2013

The minor city.

Sometimes it seems as if NYC is only ever optimized for rich white men. What about any or every-body else?

Garnette Cadogan, ‘Walkiing While Black’ http://lithub.com/walking-while-black/

Brandon Harris, ‘Recovering Weeksville’ http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/recovering-weeksville

HT Tsiang, And China Has Hands, Kaya, 2013

The negated city.

Hollywood movies love to destroy New York. In what scenarios could its destruction, in part or whole, be beneficial?

Unclear Holocaust: https://vimeo.com/42724320

Mark Davis, Dead Cities

The queer City.

Is there another city for another life that would be a queer life? One not premised on heterosexual monogamy? And the built form it imposes?

Alvin Baltrop: http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/3370/under-the-piers-alvin-baltrops-gay-new-york

Samuel Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

Jose Munoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, NYU Press, 2009

The sensory city.

We only see but we hear, feel and smell the city. What might a city for other senses be?

‘Matter of Sense’ https://www.academia.edu/20211152/Matters_of_sense_pre-occupation_in_Madrids_popular_assemblies_movement

Derek Jarman, Blue, (movie), 1993 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVaC3XKSi5M

The thief’s city.

A remarkable amount of time and effort goes into keeping people’s stuff secure. What does the city look like from the point of view of its liberation?

Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar’s Guide to the City, FSG, 2016

The waste city.

Where does all the trash go? Could the city be something other than a huge emitter of waste?

Gowanus Dregder’s Club http://www.vice.com/read/dredging-the-world-of-NYC-waterways/page/0

Maintenance Art http://www.queensmuseum.org/2016/04/mierle-laderman-ukeles-maintenance-art

 

Readings: Unitary Urbanism

Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Project of Autonomy, Princeton Architectural, 2008

Craig Buckley (ed) Utopie: Texts & Projects, Semiotext(e), 2011

Larry Busbea, Topologies: Urban Utopia in France, MIT Press, 2012

Peter Lang & William Menking, Superstudio: A Life Without Objects, Skira 2003

Jose Munoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, NYU Press, 2009

Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312, Orbit 2013

Simon Sadler, The Situationist City, MIT Press, 1998

Simon Sadler, Archigram, MIT Press, 2005

McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street, Verso, 2015

Wigley, Mark, The Hyper-architecture of Desire, 001, 1998

 

Readings Psychogeography (General)

Michele Bernstein, The Night, Book Works, 2013

Matthew Coolidge et al, Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of America with the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Metropolis Books, 2006

Merlin Coverley, Psychogeography, Oldcastle, 2010

Laura Elkin, Flaneuse: Women Walk the City, FSG 2017

Owen Hatherley, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, Verso, 2011

Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar’s Guide to the City, FSG, 2016

Laura Oldfield Ford, Savage Messiah, Verso, 2011

Simon Pope, London Walking: A Handbook for Survival, Batsford, 2000

Tina Richardson (ed) Walking Inside Out, Rowen & Littlefield, 2015

Sukhdev Sandhu, Night Haunts: A Journey Through the London Night, Verso, 2010

Phil Smith, Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways, Triarchy, 2014

Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking,  Verso, 2002

McKenzie Wark, Virtual Geography, Indiana UP, 1995

 

Readings: Psychogeography (New York)

Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air, Penguin, 1998

Marshall Berman, On the Town, Verso, 2009

Ingrid Burrington, Networks of New York, Melville House, 2016

Teju Cole, Open City: A Novel, Random House, 2012

Mike Davis, Dead Cities, New Press, 2002

Samuel Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, NYU Press, 2001

Jim Fricke, Yes Yes Y’all: The Oral History of Hip Hop’s First Decade, Da Capo, 2002

William Helmreich, The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City, Princeton University Press, 2013

David Kishik, The Manhattan Project: A Theory of a City, Stanford, 2015

Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, Monacelli, 1997

Federico Garcia Lorca, Poet in New York, Grove, 2007

Stephen Miller, Walking New York: Reflections of American Writers, Fordham 2016

Luc Sante, Low Lifes: Lures and Snares of Old New York, FSG, 2003

Phillip Lopate, Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan, Anchor, 2005

Allan Sekula, Fish Story, Richter Verlag, 2003

Rebecca Solnit, Non-Stop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, University of California Press, 2016

Michael Sorkin, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, Reaktion, 2009

Alexander Trocchi, Cain’s Book, Grove, 1993

McKenzie Wark, Telesthesia, Polity, 2012

 

Readings ( misc websites)

Artists:

Alvin Baltrop: http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/3370/under-the-piers-alvin-baltrops-gay-new-york

Zoe Beloff Coney Island http://www.zoebeloff.com/pages/books.html

Jill Magid ‘Evidence Locker’ http://jillmagid.paas.webslice.eu/projects/evidence-locker-2

Natalie Jeremijenko http://nataliejeremijenko.com

Meredith Drum ‘Oyster City’ http://meredithdrum.com/work/oyster-city

Gordon Matta-Clark ‘Fake estates’ https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/5210

Unclear Holocaust: https://vimeo.com/42724320

Hito Steyerl, How Not to be Seen https://player.vimeo.com/video/125475136

Pratt Show: http://www.ediblegeography.com/you-are-here/

Architects:

Nicola Twiley, ‘The Coldscape’ http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/47/twilley.php

Lebbeus Woods http://www.bldgblog.com/2012/10/lebbeus-woods-1940-2012/

Sensory Maps http://sensorymaps.com

Visualizing Cities http://cityvis.io

Science:

Jason Munshi-South, http://nycevolution.org

Psychogeographers:

Steve Duncan http://www.brooklyneagle.com/articles/2016/8/5/talk-steve-duncan-brooklyn’s-urban-explorer-daredevil-and-sewer-man

Moses Gates http://walk.allcitynewyork.com

Gowanus Dregder’s Club http://www.vice.com/read/dredging-the-world-of-NYC-waterways/page/0

Other:

Paul Goodman, ‘Banning Cars’ http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/goodman-cars.htm

Brandon Harris, ‘Recovering Weeksville’ http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/recovering-weeksville

1882 Woodbine: http://woodbine.nyc