Heartworks Community Forum Article

The Courier published an article about our recent "community forum" event on Thursday. A very positive write up; I especially like how they did not quote me (a facilitator) but used quotes from the actual attendees. They raised some interesting observations about the city. The attendee exit surveys from the event also contained a lot of interesting opinions and observations; I am going through them now and putting together an at-a-glance display sheet about the crowd that attended the forum. Check the Flickr reel to the right for more pictures from the event. Also, add "Heart of Biddeford" on facebook for more info

"They agreed downtown has an urban feel, but feel Biddeford still has the community feeling of a small town. Brian Schrader said he is impressed with the 'amazing talents' of people in the city. While Buczacz said he appreciates the reusable architecture downtown."

Update: changed blog title

I just changed the title of the blog from the exceedingly PoMo ______Cities, to Positive Space, a title that incorporates the so-called spatial turn in urban sociology put forward principally by Lefebvre and nowadays Ed Soja. I subscribe to the view that sees space as just as important as other political economic dimensions if not more so. That the latest economic crisis was intimately tied to real estate is testament to this.
so.. Positive Space.. in the spirit of creating/fostering/fighting for more socially just, environmentally friendly, and democratically controlled spaces, and criticizing 'negative spaces'; those which are unjust, toxic, discriminatory, impersonal, authoritarian. The dialectic should turn into some bigger picture, combining positive and negative space the way a successful design, painting, or sculpture does.
-NK

Democratizing Information Access+Literacy: What happens when everyone's an architect?

This is a recent post on BigThink about trying to make programming languages part of people's everyday vocabulary: http://ht.ly/29p2f


Something to consider when it comes to the democratization of information access and information manipulation is: If everyone knew how to program would it be easier or harder to maintain the standards (html, CSS, OS software and computer hardware itself), or would all standards just melt away? I think the question of whether you want a democratization of programming/techno knowledge is what will separate the technocrats who believe only an esoteric barrier between the masses and the technocratic elite can protect the stability we need to have communciation and cross-compatibility; from those who hope for a more egalitarian system that does not obscure knowledge on purpose.

One thing that might happen with routinized computer knowledge is that our collective ability to create and maintain standards would become tied to our politico-socio-psycho-economic ability to cooperate with each other. 


Whereas now I think the esoteric nature information architecture/design/planning is allowing us to exceed our actual social potential for cooperation, with the democratization of knowledge we might see a temporary setback and some struggles until we somehow learn to let everyone hold their own reigns and still come together to create something greater such as the internet and collective info archives that require standard setting practices.


I would choose to take this harder path because the potential fruits are much greater; it all comes down to do you believe a truly free and open, decentralized society can function? would you bet on it? would you risk WWIII for the sake of it? We have yet to see major warfare based solely on information.. a sign that we haven't really grappled with what information means to us yet.

(MP3) Justice, Equity, and Rights In The City: panel discussion from the Just Metropolis Conference, UC Berkeley 2010

I still need to write a reportback about the Just Metropolis Conference at Berkeley that I attended from the 16th-20th. In the mean time, here is a recording of an all-star panel (Teresa Caldeira, Peter Marcuse, Edward Soja, Martha Matsuoka, and James Holston); "Justice, Equity, and Rights in The City: A Conversation About Contemporary Urban Idea(l)s." It was a hell of a debate, and an amazing conference. Thanks to all of the presenters and organizers, especially Alex Schafran from UC Berkeley.

Download now or listen on posterous

Justice,_Equity,_and_Rights_In_The_City.mp3 (26603 KB)

In the discussion, I found the comment from an audience member at the end regarding justice & pain fascinating. All too often we treat pain as something to be suppressed/repressed, when it is not pain that is the enemy but suffering; an idea that is central to Buddhist philosophy. Of course we want to rid ourselves of suffering and unnecessary pain, but there is a certain amount of pain that is a function of our existence and the fact that we have to work; to exploit ourselves, others, and the environment, in order to survive. If we look on that basic pain in disgust, or try and make it disappear (the entire project of modernity was/is in some sense concerned with this), we just end up creating more suffering, whether for ourselves, or for those on whom the pain of the privileged is dumped. So the notion of justice is inextricably tied to pain, the pain that we all inherit at birth and learn to share in complex ways through our social/technological constructions. A Just city would certainly eliminate a great deal of unnecessary pain that we have now (corporal punishment, etc), but it would also equitably share the pain we need to live, the pain that is our inheritance, the pain that turns to pleasure when we appreciate what it does for us. That's a Buddhist teaching, that pain can turn to pleasure to the extent that we do not turn away from it but observe it closely and make it our companion. I hope that this point was not lost on the panel.

-Nick Kaufmann

Building a Community Skills Lab @ Heart of Biddeford

This corner will soon become...

This!>

The goal is to provide a space where local business owners and residents can learn about urban planning / community development / business development, thereby enabling them to better understand the language of planners and administrators and be able to have productive and empowered dialogues with them about the community. Planners and outsiders can in turn learn more about the community here. There will be a computer workstation in addition to a small library of books, so that people can come in and listen to open source lectures or watch DVD materials, as well as promote their projects with online social media.

The Social Capital wall will be a low-tech, local Facebook; a directory of people and organizations, their skills, and how to contact them. Everything will be updated according to the wall, so there can be an online directory and a yearly guidebook distributed to local businesses when we accumulate enough profiles. In order to encourage people to post profiles, we can make it a condition of being able to borrow a book from the library. That way we make sure to get the books back :)

http://www.heartofbiddeford.org