Craig Brozefsky on Wed, 14 Jun 2000 19:05:33 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> * open-source architecture * |
brian carroll <human@architexturez.com> writes: > i think the institution of the university (or government) is the > only way to combat the real-estate industry on a large enough scale > to affect change. How do you suppose the university or government will be able to affect change on the real-estate industry? What you describe as open-architecture does indeed engender open dialog and the public development of architectural ideas, but I'm failing to see how this would change any meaningful aspect of how land is divied up thru the real-estate industry, or what epxectations people have as to the purpose of land and building on it. These are the same type of questions I've asked myself about Free Software, so I don't intend these as "stumpers" or a setup. Rather, I hope that it would give me a better understanding of how you see open-architecture affecting the situation on the ground, in the process of developing and building. What affect would open-architecture have on the gentrification process whereby an "undeveloped" portion of a city is rapidly bought up and it's previous contents replaced with buildings that offer higher return on investment? I lived in Chicago for several years and have watched this happen in multiple neighborhoods. I consider this an important problem with the architectural process because it has dire effects on the previous residents of the gentrifying zone. The problem seems to be rooted in a demand that buildings make money at a rate that warrants their investment. This is why gentrification often replaces low rent apartments, locally owned stores, urban warehouses and manufacturing plants, with condos, fancy storefront and loft offices/condos. The new generation of buildings are architecturally inferior[1] (any walk thru Wicker Park will show you that) but they provide the maximum return on investment with the minimal materials cost. Perhaps I'm naive in my assumption that this type of development is the dominant form of urban development. My experience within major cities like Chicago, San Franscisco and Oakland does lead me to believe that gentrification is responsible for a sizeable portion, possibly a majority, of buildings erected in the last decade. [1] My criteria is visual appearance, ability to perform the job they ostensibly were designed for, and properly adapted to their context. The condos in Wicker Park for instance have horrible mistakes, like too narrow staircases in concrete which are doomed to crumble within a few harsh Chicago winters, sunken patios with no drainage which basically become debris and snow collectors, misplaced "vestigial" walls that block sunlight into windows. -- Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com> Lisp Web Dev List http://www.red-bean.com/lispweb --- The only good lisper is a coding lisper. --- _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold