"The Urbanization of Happiness" Why? Radio episode guests with Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman

2:54PM Oct 9, 2022

Speakers:

Announcer

Jack Russell Weinstein

Fonna Forman

Teddy Cruz

Keywords:

city

space

public

communities

san diego

civic

question

fact

zoning

world

neighborhood

border

enable

teddy

idea

thinking

citizenship

understand

tijuana

rethink

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The original episode can be found here: https://wp.me/p8pYQY-nh

Hello, everybody, welcome to Why

Hello, everybody, welcome to Why philosophical discussions about everyday life. I'm your host Jack Russell Weinstein. Today we're talking with Teddy Cruz and find a form and about designing cities in the urbanization of happiness. I'm also proud to report that this episode marks the sixth anniversary of our first broadcast. So thank you as always for joining us.

I have to admit that when I think of cities, I almost always think of major tourist destinations. New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Paris, Rome, Vienna, I really think of those megalopolises around the world that are struggling with infrastructure and overpopulation like Sao Paulo, Kinshasa, Loggos, Mexico City, and the smaller cities struggling to hold on to their own like Tijuana, Ulaanbaatar, and Cimarron. I'm also fairly blind to the parts of the cities, I don't see the transitional neighborhoods and slums, the industrial zones with homes sandwiched between highways. This is odd because I grew up in a pretty bad neighborhood with a pretty scary crime rate. But even with that history, I don't know what it's like to live in the dry slum in Mumbai, or to build an apartment out of spare parts and attach it precariously on top of someone else's home. I'm one of the lucky ones, I can decide to make poverty invisible to me, I can turn my back. It doesn't help matter. The politicians turn their backs to they build where the money is and where the votes are not where work is actually needed. We see this even here in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where the city keeps putting new amenities in the south and suburbs, far away from downtown and in a place burdensome to those who need public transportation. If Grand Forks can attend to its poorest, if it walks away from so many of its neighborhoods, what hope is there for Prince or Detroit? But what if it's not that simple? What if it's not just that cities don't build where the poor people are, but rather, that by building where they do the cities make the people poor? What if urban design doesn't just contain violence, but creates it encourages it facilitates it. That's the approach taken by our two guests. Today. They look at urban planning through the lenses of art, philosophy and political science to see what cities can do to promote prosperity and happiness. Questioning the city is as old as philosophy itself. The Greeks are the city's jobs promoting virtue and happiness and the Romans struggled with citizenship in the face of urban sprawl and congestion. St. Augustine thought a city could be described by identifying only those with shared beliefs as common citizens, and many so many have used politics to justify containing those they wanted to punish or forget. The word ghetto comes from the Italian word ghetto, meaning foundry, the foundry areas where the Jews of Venice were corralled and isolated in the 16th century. Today's show will ask us to shift our thinking. When we imagine designing a city, we can't just think about economic expansion. We have to consider how to mix the cityscape with education, with beauty with places to live, to play, to talk, and with spaces to perform as citizens as neighbors and as Enquirer's. Cities are not just places that house lives but places that define their limits. Why are so many American city kids basketball players, because it's easy to hang up a basketball net? Why are so many city kids around the world soccer players because all you need to play is a street and a ball. No helmets, no pads, no skis, no gloves, one ball and a neglected space create an obsession for a dozen people. There's a joke in the first Crocodile Dundee movie, when Mick Dundee finds out how big New York City is. He responds. That's incredible. Imagine 7 million people all wanting to live together. Yeah, New York must be the friendliest place on earth. We laugh at him because of New York's reputation for rudeness a reputation I denied by the way, but also because he naively thinks that 7 million people want to live together that they choose to do so most live in cities because they have to consider that Mongolia has seen a mass migration from its rural areas to its capital city Ulaanbaatar because their economy changed. In 20 years the population doubled was 600,000 nomads, now living in tents heated by coal fired stoves, their history and nomadic practices abandoned.

So let us ask today what would have to happen to make Ulaanbaatar or any poverty stricken city, a place that makes people happy? What structures would convert a slum to a thriving community? And what can the city do to stop thinking of its poor as recipients of services, but as architects of their own communities, with voices as valuable as the wealthy? This is precisely what our guests are trying to do through gardens, parks, art and of course through philosophy. I think today, everything we think we know about cities is about to become obsolete. And now our guests, Teddy Cruz and Fanta Foreman are both faculty members at the University of California San Diego. Teddy is an architect and urbanist working out of the Department of visual arts. He's the director of the UCSD Center for Urban ecologies. Farhana is a political theorist in the Department of Political Science and co director of the UCSD center on global justice, together their special advisors to the city of San Diego on civic and urban initiatives, leading the city's new Civic Innovation Lab, Teddy Fonner. Thanks so much for joining us on why.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jack.

If you'd like to join the conversation, please email us at ask why umd.edu or post your thoughts@facebook.com slash why radio show you can tweet us at at y radio show. And we're having a little trouble with the chat room. So try us at why radio show.org But if not stick with Facebook. So I guess font Teddy, let me just start by asking a very basic question. Why are we talking about urban design on a philosophy radio show? What does this have to do with philosophy?

That's that's a great question, Jack. And actually, as you as you know, I'm I'm I'm a political theorist and became increasingly interested in urban questions over the last years. I think many of the fundamental questions in political theory, political philosophy, you know, what is justice? What is happiness? What is freedom? These things are manifested in in the world concretely in ways that I don't think philosophers always fully appreciate. And over time, I became increasingly interested in exploring the empirical basis of many of the claims that I was making. And so I was pulled slowly into practice. And the city is the most immediate context for studying human relations. It's where people live, work, play, breathe, die. And I became interested in in the city. And in the course of that shift, in my own work, I connected with people who were doing amazing work on the ground in the city and realize that these very practical people were political theorists in their own right, as richly theoretical, as many people who are speaking about these things, from a distance within the university,

is that a jarring experience to be a theoretician, and you're on the political science? And so there is a little more empirical stuff, but to be someone who's focused on texts and arguments to suddenly be face to face with facts and reality, and people's real experience and actual suffering? How does that change the way you think about the place of theory in the world?

Yes, I just think it brought theory very much to life for me. And I guess I always had a suspicion that it was there because of the kind of political theory I was trained to do. So I was trained as an intellectual historian, to study chunks of, you know, ideas in context over time. And I always understood that theory was a manifestation in history of struggling with real world problems. And so you know, you study a thinker, you know, like Hobbes, and he's embedded within the English Civil Wars, and his ideas were a manifestation of that problem and how to solve it. And that's really what the history of ideas is, is a chain of, you know, ideas responding to historical context. And I realized that the ideas that I was spinning, you know, in my work, were also a response to very concrete realities that frankly, I didn't understand very well. And as I started to immerse in the world more and more, I guess, I became, in a way more human in my theory, because suddenly there were faces and people and stories attached to the, to the narrative isation of what I was experiencing, to the theoretical sort of consequences of what I was experiencing.

ddy eddyMaybe Jack, maybe I can add to that in obviously, in this relationship between phone and AI in terms of our work in the Center for Urban ecologies in the center of global justice, and now really coming together to advise the city of San Diego on this new enterprise, this new space of creativity in ICT management. Obviously, we have the opportunity to really advance this debate, I hope in terms of this critical relationship between theory and practice, obviously, I come to the to the collaboration of practitioners and architects who, in fact, in my own work has been very much interested in trying to uplift theory as a matter of practice. Obviously, part of the problem in our time, particularly in terms of organization, we Being so obsessed with building, building, building and growing, and so on in terms of fundamental questions that should really inform, who are we building for? What is the city representing or for whom fundamental philosophical questions that will be left to the side, in many ways have gotten in trouble with my own field as an architect, because obviously, obviously, as an architect, I want to be building buildings. But many times have said that, also I'm interested in building a position in in that sense, I've been trying to suggest to my own colleagues, planners, architects, artists, etc, that they, at this moment when we are really witnessing and experiencing in an unprecedented moment of crisis across any imaginable register, whether environmental, economic and political, we must question the future of the city. And in my mind, that future will not be determined by buildings on their own, but will be determined by the fundamental reorganization of socio economic relations in I think, embedded in that question, there is a fundamental philosophical, you know, sort of context that we need to open up together across sectors,

there's, there's, there's so much in there that so many threads, I want to pull but but before I get to that, Teddy, I would imagine that there was an equally jarring shift in your experience to go from and you alluded to this going from someone who builds buildings, and who has an interest in a particular structure to thinking about how those structures fit together. In the larger landscape. What what happened? And how does your attitude change? When you go from an individual project to the macro level to thinking about areas and cities as a whole? And how the individual pieces fit together? Was that was that a fundamental shift in the way that you thought about your own discipline as well?

Yes, I think, as any of our practices, we tend to encounter moments of juncture where we become hugely dissatisfied with the methodologies with the constructs or kind of protocols of our particular silos and fields. And at some point, I think I definitely became dissatisfied with my own context or field of architecture, as I was witnessing in the most productive in a sense, or I shouldn't say maybe productive, or the most successful economic boom, in the last years, I was seeing how architecture was just really coming to the role of architecture was really to almost decorate with hyper aesthetics, if I can call it that. What eventually became very problematic conditions of sort of socio economic injustice, that no questions were being asked that architecture was just me a mere kind of wrapping of those Orban policies that were producing so much inequality. And so I thought to myself that I needed to really open up the question of how do we, in order to get to the architecture that I was dreaming of that somehow potentially could be a lot more inclusive, a lot more democratic. And obviously, those are concepts that we will have to open up to understand what we mean by those words, but to really engage in the origin socio socio economic justice, we would have to definitely intervene not only in terms of physical space, but intervene in the RE imagination of the public and the in the reimagining of urban policy. Without that without questioning the very politics and economics that has perpetuated in urbanization of consumption, and urbanization that had produced so much injustice in our time, without questions, questioning the very political and very economic frameworks that had endorsed that urban growth that by now has become more sustainable. For me as an architect, it was very difficult to think, you know, that could move forward in terms of spatial practice. So I've been very much interested in I've been learning a lot from fauna Forman, in this context, about opening not only historical lineages, or the moments in history, obviously, when the paradigms that shape urbanization were founded primarily on an idea of, of a civic imagination.

And this actually points to another, I think, probably jarring shift that I really became aware of reading your material and seeing your TED Talk and thinking about fondness work. And that is the shift from thinking about building an architecture as a private enterprise. Right, you're building the Arca tower, you're building a house for someone else, to thinking about architecture of public spaces. And so then this question for both of you, because this is both a theoretical and a practical question. How does rethinking about cities and how cities are constructed? How does that necessitate that we rethink what it means to have a public space and a private space? How does the notion of, of public space require that we rethink the whole mess? The whole? The whole? The whole structure?

Yes. I mean, I think that's, you know, why we like to think about urbanization, in terms of, of happiness, and why we use that concept. So obviously, we were thinking about the, the ancient ideal, the Aristotelian ideal, that, you know, realizing one's happiness is realizing one's nature as a zone political, and that we're fundamentally political creatures, and that our happiness is exercised in concert with others in public space. And, you know, freedom is understood as the ability, you know, to do so. And modernity has shifted these concepts. So fundamentally, to the point now, where, you know, the public, speaking of the public, particularly in our own society, now in the early 21st century, is almost akin to speaking of socialism, this is how it's rhetorically spun. So it's very difficult to even speak about public space, or to speak about public goods, without being sort of sidelined to some sort of socialist, you know, propagandist or something like this. So it's been, yeah.

And I want to, I don't want to drop you, because our listeners don't know find out that you're an Adam Smith scholar, this is you and I have had a relationship for a while because we work on some of the same areas. And when I hear when I read what you've written, I want to hear what Teddy is talking about the words not just words like injustice, that are very prominent Smith, but critiques of greed critiques of overconsumption now people, people identify Adam Smith, as someone who is a supporter of those ideas, although you and I know that it's not that simple. But how does a Adam Smith scholar go from this discussion of how to make the free market and how to make cap what will become called capitalism, properly structured to this notion of let's restructure cities, because they're built on overconsumption, and they're built on greed? How does that happen?

Yes, well, you know, first of all, Adam Smith's critique of overconsumption and greed is fundamental. And people, you know, for obvious reasons, neglect it, it's been neglected for, for for a century or more. But I think what's most interesting about Smith and sort of thinking about your question, is the way he actually spoke about public goods and public sentiment throughout his work, not only in his ethical writings, which you and I both written about Jack, but in book five of Wealth of Nations itself, the Bible of free market, you know, thinking, Smith talked about the necessity of public investment, and at the more complex a state becomes the larger state becomes, the more the state needs to invest in public goods. And this is a dimension of, you know, classical liberal thinking that has just completely dropped off the radar. In addition, of course, to the fact that, you know, Smith understood this, and I think, in a way, this is really what's driving me to sort of invest now in very concrete spatial projects. Smith understood that human beings behave a certain way, when they exist close in proximity to one another, things emerge in proximity that don't emerge from a distance. And, you know, in modern society with busy lives, and this, this, you know, this very, very private conception of happiness and freedom, we've become isolated and alienated from one another. So one of the fundamental urges in in sort of reinvesting public in public space is to bring people together again, to bring people in proximity to be able to cultivate a new Civic imagination in a time where the Civic is dying, where the public is no longer openly discussed. And so, you know, having such a deep investment in in these ideas, and being able to pursue concrete projects to bring them into the world has been amazingly exciting for me.

There's been a theme in what you're just saying, and I think Teddy discusses it too, which is that we can be next to someone and not living with them. We can be standing near someone and have no relationship with them at all. So to what extent how does and this will be The large discussion of the next half of the of the show but, but briefly, how does one, think about the city as cultivating relationships for people to contact one another, as opposed to just exist next to one another?

You know, it's interesting because immediately what comes to mind is really the rethinking of the political language that we've been using to define, you know, certain regulatory frameworks. Let's call it for a moment land use. I mean, at the end of the day, the type of urban policies that define the construction of the city, particularly the American city, in particular sectors, I'm not talking about New York City maybe and other urban centers that are by them, their nature, there are a lot more cosmopolitan, more contested, more diverse and reach with socio economic relations in a way in contestation and conflicts. But let's say Southern California, which is a place obviously, where we live in. I think that land use and zoning has been understood wrongly, for example, I can imagine a possible definition that might go like this zoning is a punitive tool that prevents socialization that prevents the type of proximity adjacency even just a position that you're suggesting, by your question. It which is sad, because originally zoning, I think was conceptualized by completely an opposite type of idea that zoning is a generative tool that can organize activity itself, and in so doing social and economic relations. So it's a more conceptual dimension of zoning, that can anticipate social encounter, the zoning that has perpetuated the atomization of the city today in an archipelago of enclaves masterplan gated communities, industrial parks, malls, all these islands that themselves have uses, but separate to each other, is a very backward idea of zoning. And I think that it, I think more and more is what we see, is constructing the city. So part of our agenda, I think, at this very moment, not only in terms of my work with phone and the city of San Diego this moment, but I think in rethinking the future of the city, we will have to begin by a completely challenging those regulatory frameworks. And also, maybe hopefully, philosophically even I think this is a pertinent issue to mention here. We think of a new political language to talk about the city, for example, density, what is density to the public, many of the listeners in this program, or whether planners or even the general public density is understood as simply an amount of people per area, in much of our research in informal settlements and marginalized neighborhoods in San Diego, and in Southern California, where immigrants have really began to show us how informal economies and informal densities can rethink then the neighborhood densities is really conceived very differently. As a kind of everyday practice. They have city density is conceived as an amount of social exchanges per area. And thus, I think, for me, and fundamental equation that I think is provocative, we've we've we've seen density as an equation that only measures numerically in amount of houses or people per area. Instead of understanding the types of social exchanges, the activist practices, the way people collaborate, and come together to reimagine even local modes of governance.

When we come back after the break, I want to follow up on this this line that you use the zoning as a punitive tool, and I want to talk about your work in Tijuana, and you're working in pecota. And to get a sense of what all this means, in practice. Until then you're listening to find a form and a teddy Cruz and I'm Jack Russell Weinstein on why philosophical discussions about everyday life and we'll be back right after this.

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you're back with Jack Russell Weinstein and Find a form and and Teddy Cruz on why philosophical discussions about everyday life, we're talking about the urbanization of happiness, and trying to see the connection between the way cities are constructed and the way human beings interact. And before the break, Teddy was talking about this notion of density. And the density may not just mean the amount of people that are involved, but also their interactions and their participation in it. And it reminds me of what I now think of a very funny experience, but was also a very sort of shocking and scary experience for me. I'm in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and I, you know, my daughter was born and we had been in there for, you know, in Grand Forks for a while. And then I don't remember how old she was. But she was still in a stroller, we went to Minneapolis to twin cities to visit some friends. And we went to a bakery. And this was a fairly nice, very bourgeois bakery. And there was a line for the counter, which, you know, I had encountered my entire life as I had forced through bakeries or gone through subways or spent, you know, New Year's Eve at Times Square. And the act of bringing my daughter in her stroller to this crowded room, I flipped out, I didn't know how to deal with it, I was I was panicked, I couldn't figure out where to put her, I couldn't find a place to stand where I felt safe, where, where I felt she felt safe. And the entire experience felt so chaotic to me. And so a narcotic to me that I really felt like being in this very organized, very structured, perfectly safe environment, was incredibly threatening to my child, because I was a new parent. And because I hadn't been in this context. And I think what this shows is that so much of our experience of other people has to do with our mindset. And so much of our experience of other people has to do with what's going on what our expectations are, what we want, and, and what our fears and what whatever is on the front. What's what we're thinking about. And no one else knows that no one else would have known why or how I was freaking out. And so I guess fun. And today, I want to I want to focus just for a little bit on that notion of how flexible the public spaces have to be, in order to be used by a wide range of people do they have to be neutral? To they have to be blank slates so that anyone can use it in any form? Or if they are neutral, and are they and they are blank slates. Are they threatening I have what popped into my mind right now is is being in Tiananmen Square MPJ, in which is this big square, and which is largely flat and innocuous. And there's something completely overwhelming about the openness I felt completely exposed.

Yes, maybe you can take that and then fauna will follow with a comment. But what this brings to mind is something that a dear friend of mine, a very important Orban theories, Michael Sorkin, once said, in defining democracy, in the context of the urban, he brought a word that I had never heard in my life in my dictionary, it was propinquity. Democracy is about propinquity. And he followed by saying, you know, only in the United States, we feel we believe that democracy and freedom is the almighty right to be left alone in space. And is that what concrete and propinquity is the opposite? propinquity is the capacity to coexist with others in space. So I think that there is a kind of calibration of this relationship, obviously, of the need for space and private, sort of environment. But a up we have to open up the questions, or the question What, what, as a society, what compromises we need to take to really enable that level of coexistence, particularly the moment when I think the growth of cities have become hugely unsustainable. And the second part of my reflection has to do with this issue of neutrality. I think one of the main critiques that I've had to my field of architecture and planning and urbanism is that the idea of public space continues to be hugely neutral and abstract. It's almost as if we just have to design a beautiful space. And all of a sudden, people will appear magically, I think there is a lot more to public space and just beautification in we need to get to the very specificity of rights to enable access, accessibility and inclusion. One analogy or sort of example that I always give in the context of this is, you know, that moment in the civil rights movement, you know, that became a kind of emblematic image in the American public when Rosa Parks sat in that seat where she did not belong. For the institutions. That bus was public, but obviously was not accessible to all. And I think that that has served me in my mind to really open the provocation, we need to move from the neutrality of our ideas of the public, to the specificity again, of rights, for space, and for some kind of agreement, as a society that there are aspects of compromise. And that really enables enables a more sustainable strategies of interdependence and coexistence.

That's a tremendously powerful example. And I don't want that to go away without us calling attention to it, that the example of Rosa Parks on the bus is an example of the kind of thing that we're talking about here is a person who is allegedly in a public space allegedly in a neutral space, but there are very strict punitive zoning rules, right. I mean, this is bus zoning, but it's still zoning, she is only allowed in the back of the bus. And of course, what it meant to be in the back of the bus was not just you had to walk through the bus, but you had to walk in, you have to pay your money, then if you were African American, you'd walk out, you'd have to go through the back door, and much of the time the driver would leave before you got on the bus. And so this was entirely punitive, and entirely zoning based. And so it's an incredibly powerful, I think, example and a very familiar example, for the Americans who are listening, have the kinds of things and the kinds of structures and the kinds of urban expectations that that you and find want to challenge but also that you have to acknowledge that they exist before you can challenge.

Well, well, this is it. So if you look at the time in place, when Rosa Parks was sitting on the bus, the punitive zoning was consistent with social norms, and what people expected in the way people were living. So seeing Rosa Parks out of place was jarring to the people who are around her. Just as you know, coming into contact with people that you're not familiar with in public space may be equally jarring, or, you know, exposing yourself to a kind of density that you're not familiar with is equally, equally jarring. And I think your your question gets to something very fundamental about social norms, and how difficult it is to change perceptions about what's valuable, and what's not what's beautiful, and what's not what's acceptable and not. And so, you know, sort of patching over these things with simple institutional solutions, right, and we're confronting this now simple institutional solutions without finding ways to get at the deeper assumptions that hold zoning policy that hold, you know, city practices in place, won't get you very far. So one thing that we're trying to do, for example, in our project with the city here, is not just simply to create public space, and here is San Diego just for the one here. So yes, yes, here's, here's San Diego Tijuana. So we're working on both sides of the border. But I'm talking right now about our work in San Diego, to identify vacant lots in underserved neighborhoods throughout the city. And, you know, work with community based organizations to repurpose those vacant lots into vibrant public spaces. So it's not just kind of a neutral space where, you know, we'll paint benches and beautify the space, but we'll actually work with community based groups to create programming, you know, programming within those public spaces to reach particular ends. So it's not just sort of a neutral space, and then it's just sort of a freefall, whatever happens with it, which in many cases, when that happens, those spaces fall into neglect very quickly. But it's an investment by the neighborhood, and in our case, in collaboration with the city, the municipality, and local universities and so forth to fill those public spaces with programming. So that they can serve a purpose. And for us, we're calling this a kind of revived civic imagination, where communities are able to exercise their capacity and agency and building building those spaces in you know, consistent with with with their desires for their own neighborhoods,

and probed by programming you mean things like farmers markets, and and I suppose musicians or things like that would what what kind of thing happens that stops the space from being either neutral or neglected?

This right in that's the essential aspect here, I think because, in a sense, in the past, whether it has to do with artistic practices, for example, that look at public space. Even in the architecture field, the issue of ambiguity has been a very big, big thing. In other words, let's not be To force fold, or to top down that say, in determining how the space is used as Listen, leave it open, right, as I was saying earlier, so that maybe people will organize and occupy the space in their own ways. But as much as I believe in ambiguity, I think that that has also been really damaging for the idea of a more inclusive, and more sustainable, open, open or public space. So I've been thinking of a kind of specific ambiguity, let's say for a moment where we actually enable definitely open endedness for the spaces to really transform through time, obviously, that are flexible to accommodate a variety of uses. But also at times, I think we need to really also be thinking of how to design not only physical space, but the protocols, the types of management processes, the the kinds of programs, as I was saying, which has to do with that economic times, the idea that a space can become, in the morning, a city classroom, but in the afternoon, or in the weekends, it becomes a farmers market for a community and the kind of agility of space to transform from one thing to another. I think it's a very interesting thing. And in not only the programming in the abstract, I think what Fiona was referring to is that that program is CO curated or produced between, in this case universities and community community activists, with government support, I think that a major part of our project at the city right now is trying to suggest that these spaces need to be supported across sectors in produce new relationships between cultural institutions, universities, community activism. By that I mean community based practices, nonprofit organizations, artists, collectives, etc. In government, but I should say, Jack one, one more thing here is that we have been hugely inspired by other places in the world, where this has already happened in in a very beautiful way. And one example that you mentioned earlier, in terms of the cities is the city of Bogota, Colombia, in primarily the city of Medellin, Colombia, a city that in the late 80s, early 90s, was really the most dangerous city in the world, by the mid 2000s, had become the most exemplary model of urban transformation.

And if you'll if you'll allow me to interrupt the statistics that you provide that under this one mayor, Antonis Marcus, because water usage was down by 40%, the homicides were down by 70%. And traffic fatalities were down by 50%. I mean, those three statistics that that's the cross section, right? There's infrastructure, the water, there's interpersonal stuff, the homicide, and then there's just coordination, which is, which is the traffic fatalities. And so, as you talk about this, would you give us specific examples of how maybe in Bogota, or maybe in Tijuana, how specific architectural decisions will have this kind of profound effect? That was when when I first read your work talking about this, I was completely overwhelmed by the success?

Well, yes, architecture, but fundamentally, Teddy can talk to that in a moment that, you know, when people look at Bogota, when people look at meta Yin, what they see are these amazing infrastructural investments, particularly in marginalized zones, but I'll talk about Bogota, first. And actually, it's funny Teddy and I met because at the time we met, he was working in Medicaid, and I was working with partners in Bogota, and it was actually the connection. But what's so distinctive about about Bogota, and why it's on everybody's radar, is because antenna smokers in, you know, intervened into deep social problems and socio economic injustice in the city of Bogota, by reaching below the institutional level, and accessing the social norms that were holding many of these harmful sort of practices within the city in place, like not paying taxes, like using too much water, like homicide, like traffic fatalities, and so forth. So to address these problems, instead of, you know, creating new laws or building buildings, what he did is he figured out how to access what he refers to as citizenship culture, and to change these problems from the normative, you know, from their normative base. And he, you know, he engaged in all sorts of really innovative kind of intervention. I'll give you one example. It's just so inspiring to us. So the municipal police force was corrupt, and instead of trying to change the institution from within and tennis moku fired to the entire municipal police force and replaced them, particularly the downtown Bogota traffic police with a troop of 500 mimes in white face that would stand on the corner and very publicly shamed feet, people for transgressions like jaywalking, and so forth. Or if a if a bus would move too far into the intersection, the mimes would come out with a sign in correcto into the intersection and point at the bus. And it became a new way of regulating social behavior. And, you know, it was it was very visible, it used artists that used a very kind of aesthetic sensibility to attack social problems.

And it didn't it people didn't get angry, there wasn't violence, no one shot anybody I mean, I can imagine and in the Bronx, right, that this would, that there would be a more hostile reaction to that.

Now, it is interesting, because obviously, these stories tend to be hugely idiosyncratic. And when told, you know, to certain audiences, it may seem hugely silly, right, that these would prompt such a transformation in the political and the social and economic conditions of a city. But that's what really happened. I mean, what Antanas mockus did, and I should say, to add to phone us example, what and tennis Marcus's is exemplary, because he in fact, is a philosopher, he was the Chancellor of the National University in heat became the mayor of the city. So well, you know, in the context of this program is definitely very pertinent to say that, that a philosopher, in the capacity to read understand complex relations is comes into the political, realizing that in order to transform the city, you have to first transform social behavior and really gain civic trust. So he's legendary, because he definitely elevated the idea of citizenship culture, and the transformation of social norms, the kind of morale in the city, by again, very idiosyncratic strategies, that that are many to mention here. But that incrementally in their very concrete aesthetics, this about this, it really prompted the society, the people in Bogota to really rally for their own city. And that opened the way for the next mayor Enrique Pena Lhasa to with that civic trust in with In fact, the the initiative of people to pay more taxes to really invest in the city, in his public goods, to produce one of the most successful transportation systems in the world, which is called Trans milennium. Jack and I may show quickly that in the median case, just to give you a more concrete example about how that is physical as in other ways, what may have been incredibly fantastic, as an example, is not only that the city decided to invest in marginalized zones of the city in the slums of misogyny in order to confront inequality. In so doing, they imagine public space. So he says public space is not to be a kind of neutral place of beautification, but it's going to be a place that educates. So they invented what is called now the library parks, every public space in medicine, particularly in marginalized communities, is really injected with education, with pedagogy. So they said programming

we were talking

about. Exactly right. And let me and let me direct the question to where you're going. Because I think this is really, Renee on Facebook has asked a question about Stewart stewardship and how we can get people to appreciate she says, the ecosystem and the local environment. And I wonder you're talking about this not specifically the natural environment, but but the, the urban environment. And you also mentioned in your TED Talk Teddi micro communities and this notion of micro communities. So I wonder, as, as we're starting to wind down, because we only have a few minutes left? How does the micro community and what does it mean to be a member of a micro community? How does a micro community become a steward of a place like a library park so that what happens is, the place remains there and people can use it as opposed to someone coming coming along stealing the books, spray painting things? And how does that show how people can care about the city and participate in the political processes? On the large scale? That's a huge question. I know we don't have that much time but

but it gets to the core, I think of our desire here because we are have been pressing the notion that in today's shifting cultural demographics of any city in the world, obviously we need to pay attention to the very specificity again of social In cultural and economic relations in neighborhoods, much has been written recently about the dysfunctionality, obviously, our federal government, and not only that, but the inability of nation states at times to deal with these issues. And most some of the most progressive agendas in urban transformation are happening in cities live, but mayors, in our case, it gets even more fine grained. I think it's about the neighborhood scale, and trying to understand, again, the specificity of modes of governance of activism of the kinds of practices embedded in every day social, economic, and cultural relations in neighborhoods, from which not only we need to learn more, but we need to enable the political agency in their voices to rethink governance at the scale of the local in so doing I think is not only about density is about rethinking zoning to accommodate the use increases in particularities of those communities. But it's also about rethinking environmental sustainability, that so far has been hijacked by this sort of green paradigm that only in my mind, camouflage his buildings with photovoltaic panels, but does not really talk about inclusion in socio economic sustainability. So because I teach in the visual arts department, I've always thought that art in this case, can be definitely a tool that enables access to complexity. And I think that that's the reason at the basis of all these efforts, when we talk about micro communities, is not only the idea that socio economic justice depends on the redistribution of resources to local levels, but also of other redistribution of knowledge is that education is really the framework at the end of the day, to again, reimagine place today.

So in the 90 seconds that we have left, and I have to ask this because we had Socrates Cafe this week talking in anticipation of this show, what can Grand Forks, North Dakota, learn about cities from Bogota, from Tijuana, from San Diego? How does we translate this from the larger city to the much smaller community?

You know, one of the things that San Diego now is investing in and something that we're learning from you municipalities around the world who have invested in creative ways, in placemaking, in cities has been that the the city itself becomes a summoner becomes a kind of Think Tank, as it were, where people from across sectors with different knowledge is converged to talk collaboratively about the city's problems in the cities aspirations. So one thing that Teddy and I both, you know, get a lot of inspiration from is the way the municipalities courageously in Bogota and meta Yin convened voices from universities, from community based organizations from civic philanthropy, you know, and brought these sectors together to, you know, to think through the city's problems. And I think that that is a useful lesson, no matter what scale we're talking about,

and I think, to me, maybe more provocative for a moment is that we need to also include those communities, that times we might not want them at our table, you know, in the discussion, and I think that learning from immigrant communities today for us has been essential, because there is something about how they organize how they rethink about sustainability and space, that is a lot more functional, a lot more, a lot more integrative. And so new forms of collaborative government, I think are essential

at the neighborhood scale, as well as the municipal scale.

I want to go back to this question of poverty. And I want to tie it into something we talked about earlier, which is this notion of public spaces. How do public spaces in poor areas differ from public spaces in wealthier areas? Are they structurally the same? Or is there something fundamentally different about the way your public in in a slum, as opposed to in let's say, the Upper West Side of New York City?

Yes, I think that on the one hand, is the idea that the public space in some of those, again, most marginalized and impoverished environments, they probably spent space tends to be a lot more informal in that sense. I mean, I think that it already by its very nature, it really is incredibly flexible. The enabling transformation through times, pretty much what I was mentioning earlier that at some point, it serves one function that may be at another time it really transforms into something else, and occupies at times maybe spaces of transit. addition, is not as demarcated in as specified within boundaries. Obviously, I'm talking about informality. I mean, I'm thinking of the public space in slums, that is not really catalogued as as public spaces on official. Obviously, there are examples of very interesting public spaces in slums, let's say in the case of the Yean, that are designed now, from the top down a bit, a scale, but inclusive of the borough map, as equally flexible spaces. That's what really makes it makes those spaces incredibly vital. one more aspect, I think that is important here is that it's not only about leisure, that those spaces provide also economic incentives. So you find a lot of informal economies, food vendors, commercial activity at very small scales that are that the thread thread themselves into, what is more of a kind of civic leisure base type of relaxation, if I can call it that, that comes to mind as one maybe the kind of difference I think, between the informal public or where we would find in a more defined, you know, public space in other other wealthier neighborhoods.

And finally, I argue with the background, you said gardens as well.

Well, you San Diego has actually lagged behind many other cities who have you know, transformed vacant spaces into an amazing community gardens, the whole urban farming movement is underway in many places, it really just hasn't taken root here. Yet, although there's a there's there's now kind of a grassroots swell of interest in the in the subject that we've been interested in how public space not only outdoor space, but also indoor space, vacant warehouses and some publicly owned some privately owned can become incubators for economic activity at the small scale, so that neighborhoods can become, you know, involved in small scale production. You know, as in most cities, our poorest neighborhoods in San Diego are food deserts, can't find a grocery store, you have to drive 567 miles outside of the neighborhood to get fresh vegetables. So we're working with community based organizations right now to identify spaces that can be used for for gardening, as well as for sort of incubation hubs, food, you know, food incubation with, with industrial kitchens, and, and small scale canning and bottling facilities where neighborhoods can scale up economically,

you know, I'm overwhelmed by how similar the things that we experienced in Grand Forks are with the things that you're describing just a couple of years ago, there was a community group that started two community gardens, one on the outskirts of town, but one in an empty lot right downtown. And there was tremendous resistance, based on some local some folks who live near who said, they didn't want strangers walking around near their backyards. And this is I don't want to say no one's a stranger in North Dakota. But but this is certainly a much more controlled a much more surveilled area. And yet, the solutions seem very similar. We need a community garden and we need a community garden in an accessible location. And then there are going to be people who are resistant because they feel like the outsiders are invading their space.

Correct. I think that that defines really the terms and unfortunately, the polarization that has existed, obviously, between the private and the public. Here in Southern California, we go through the same I mean, when we talk about density, and the origins of density today, people really become afraid of that, you know, they think that density will compromise quality of life that it will it kind of nimbyism begins to take place. I think that is this something that continues to occur. And that's the reason I think it's important to somehow intervene almost in the same way that antennas markers lead in kind of, how do we transform those mythologies, because density obviously, is not just about bolc in and chaos is about the careful calibration of space that to enable other functions to enable integration. I mean, I always use this sort of image. I mean, when people go traveling in historic cities, obviously like, you know, Paris or Rome, I would, I would dare to say that even the person that is more most scared of identity or this type of of social interaction in the city would fall in love with the idea that one can walk on the street and enter a small business and buy a loaf of bread. And then three blocks later, there is a public space to sit on the bench, and then you can then take the subway to go to another part of the city. So this integration of transportation, public space, housing, and economy doesn't need to be so polarized. And so I think that there is a lot to say about how we shift the imagination, let's say of the public, when it comes to the idea of public space, obviously be in a place of what people over overcrowding this I think that's that's, that's what might be the case.

And following up on this and find out this might be a question for you. How does this shift the priority of the public in the private and I don't, I don't mean simply, the public versus the private in exclusive spaces. But I mean, the American movement and some interesting set the worldwide movement towards privatization, where in the American imagination, private is, in some sense, inherently better than public and this, this relates to Outsourcing Things in the government and charter schools, but also that a private space is better kept than a public space. To a certain extent, what I think I see, I hear the two of you saying is that public is a lot more important than let's say Americans are willing to admit, are you asking that we shift the relative priority to reconsider the value of the public?

Well, you know, I think shifting focus is the key. I mean, obviously, you scratch anybody who cares about public space, living in 21st century American life, and they still value the private, okay? We all value freedom understood in modern terms. We're all individualists, most of us are individualist. And so it's not about it's not about, you know, shifting from one to the other. But it's finding ways that the public and private can exist together in cooperation. I mean, one of the things that's been really exciting for us here in San Diego is opportunities for public private partnerships. So that, you know, these these spaces are actually collaborations between public and private investment. One really interesting phenomenon here in San Diego is that conservatism, and people who would be inclined to, you know, uphold a very individualist conception of freedom. It's, it takes a different shape here. So we didn't talk much today about the San Diego Tijuana border, which is this, you know, this international border in the middle of a, of a metropolitan ecology. And, surprisingly, many of the most conservative voices on the San Diego side, see the border, which is sort of a symbol of, you know, of citizenship and, and a kind of conservative taken immigration, as a, as a very important symbol, these conservative groups see the border is a problem, because it prevents the free flow of goods and services and the movement of people. And so they'd like to see the border erased, suddenly, you have this opportunity where the private sector who believes in free trade is sitting at the same table with the human rights community who understands what a blight and what a difficulty, the border is, in the quality of people's lives cross border publics that move across that border, and of course, weigh every day. So there's this amazing, you know, potential for convergence between, you know, communities who are invested in in public goods and the private sector, which sees this particular institution problematic. Do you

can I add something to that Jack? In the context of the public and private, obviously, unfortunately, we've been polarizing those constructs in in the context of how that forms, not only the political institutions, but also the attitudes of society, and the implications of those attitudes in the physical environment that obviously ends up in the organization today. I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this recently, because it's not to say that we in this country, the United States, we were always defined by an individualist and private paradigm. I mean, unfortunately, in the last decades, much of the political and economic frameworks have been in fact framed by such individualism private paradigm, who's facing physical implication is really in the shape of the oil hungry suburban growth that has now become a sustainable a much of the provocation in our end, I think is about how do we begin to open up a more a kind of healthier public life that is supported by inclusive and sustainable infrastructure. But this is something that we already that happened already in the United States at some point in history, at least recently, and thinking of the years after the Great Depression, after all, it is that economic downturn in the late 20s, that is so similar to ours now. But what happened after afterwards was an unprecedented synergy, I think, across institutions, Fi, civic philanthropy, government communities, coming together, I think, led by the New Deal, late led by policies that really promoted public spending and infrastructure was in an era during I mean, obviously, there were problems during that period from, let's say, the early 30s, to the late 70s. But nevertheless, all that period in American history was defined by a public imagination, in a sense, it was a period of unprecedented investment in infrastructure, public parks, public housing, public health, in fact, the public was not a forbidden word in our political language. But somehow today, after the current crisis, economic crisis, we have not witnessed that synergy across institutions that can in fact, agree that a reinvestment in the public could in fact, be a device to reimagine the economy today in sustainability. So the history, their history is I need to be resurrected in this country when there was a lot more progressive agendas. I think that we're not polarized in economic Orban growth from economic growth, etc.

I want to follow up on that. But I in the spirit of self promotion I have I have to say that, that what's so interesting about this conversation is that how you've really shown that the cities are the intersection of so many things that we have been concerned about on this show a few months ago, we had David Osborne, one of the co authors of reinventing government, who was really important in in government privatization and charter schools. And then a few months later, we had Peter Levine who talked about civic renewal and America, in April, we're going to have um, Sylia Ben Habib, talking about a world without borders. And so all of the things that you're talking about are things that our listeners have been thinking about for a really long time, and get very excited about and so to see it all, as come together in such a relevant and powerful and important way. Yeah, it's really, I mean, it's, it makes me feel really good about as the host, but it also helps me see the connections again, between Grand Forks and these larger communities. I want to, I want to hear more about about the Tijuana and San Diego. situation. And I wonder if when you talked about that, much of what you both talk about is the city as as as as constructing citizens, and that citizenship is a creative act and the citizens perform citizenship. And I wonder if you would talk a little bit about the shift from city as place to city as process that allows us to make a little more sense as to what's going on in the shifts between in attitudes in thinking about Tijuana and San Diego as one municipality rather than two and one community rather than two, because it shares in a political process.

That's that that's great. I mean, just very complicated question of the first point that the city really is a microcosm of so much that is on sort of people's minds today. And the city is just almost for us. So you know, it's really interesting, I, I run a center at UCSD focused on global justice. So most of our projects. And most of the teams that we facilitate on our campus are working on projects in the proper global south and in Africa and South Asia and so forth. And increasingly, we began to invest in our own region, because we realize that the San Diego Tijuana region and the city that we live in this mega city that crosses the border that we live in, contains all of the problems inherent in globalization right here. All the problems of deprivation and poverty and flows and so on. It's all it's all happening right here. So we really love the idea that we could train students in working on global issues right here in our own city 20 minutes south of our campus where the where the border exists. Now this question about the mega region. One of the things that we've been very excited about in our own municipality here in San Diego isn't in creasing, willingness to engage with the municipality of Tijuana and cross border municipal planning. And that's something that hasn't happened very much in the last in the last decades. And to that end, we are, we mentioned antenna smokeless before. After he left office, he set up an NGO in Bogota called corpo, visionaries, NGOs. And essentially what they do is they advise municipalities, on, you know, very intelligent interventions to improve citizenship culture. And they've developed a very sophisticated survey called the citizenship culture survey, a very sophisticated piece of social science, they come to a city and they, you know, enumerate the survey and they assess citizenship culture, you know, what's the citizenship mean, in that city? What are levels of public trust between publics and government? Why is there trust? Why is there not? What kind of solidarity is there among citizens within the city and so forth. It's amazing. And they've done these surveys in cities across Latin America, increasingly in Europe, we're bringing them to San Diego Tijuana, with a Ford funded grant to assess citizenship culture in both cities, and the extent to which there is a cross border public that unites this region that unites these cities in ways that are fully appreciated. So it's going to become a mirror through which this cross border public can look at itself and see itself. And that the ideal is that this this survey, this cross border survey, will provide a basis for the municipalities of San Diego and Tijuana to enter into a memorandum of understanding and a list of interventions that they're willing to undertake together. This must be Oh, it's fantastic. We have we have letters from the mayors of both cities eager, you know, to participate in this process. I can't imagine

what it's like to be a philosopher in particular political theorist in your case, but also an architect's in in today's case, and to suddenly be in this, I don't want to say real world laboratory because I think that's insulting this, this real significant change, and you're getting grant money, which, you know, almost a million dollars, which in philosophy money is about $750 billion. Right. And, um, and just to be able to do this, and, and in the process of this, I want to call attention to something that we that has been alluded to throughout our discussion, but has never been made explicit, which is the deep and really important respect that this project has, for the minds of the poor, the creative intelligence of the people who aren't necessarily on the grid. I mean, this is this has its roots in Smith, of course, who was very respectful of the worker and the innovation and the specialization and the ideas that came from the your average worker, but but so many of these ideas that come across my desk that you read about in the newspaper, are people descending from on high to make decisions for the city, and for the people who can't make decisions for themselves. But implicit in this entire discussion, is a deep respect and appreciation for the intelligence, the imagination and the innovation that comes on the ground level from the poor communities that have no voice or whose voice are organized, then that's the thing, right? That's how it happens. You say they have no voice, or I say they have no voice. And that suggests they have no voice instead of saying whose voices are neither attended to nor heard.

Yes. Can I add to that or respond to that? I think that this is where well, again, so much density of issues are coming up with your your questions, which is fantastic. But I'm thinking first about the methodologies by which we can amplify elevate the potentiality of that bottom up energy. And this is another aspect between like, in terms of our collaboration between again Fonasa political theories and myself, as an architect, where we, obviously are trained and we are educated and our experiences belong to very different realms, let's say of research. And as we speak at a university where at times there is a polarization between scientific methods and econometrics. And on the other let's say we're the department where I teach, which is really a visual arts department and the humanities based agenda where I began to realize that we need to not denigrate other ways of really amplifying and recognizing this impact. You know, there was a scenaries I've been interested in in understanding the intelligence, the creative intelligence of these communities by simply not only witnessing those processes, you know, again, I love the fact that you focus on this idea of Sidious process because in fact, it is those processes that are, that are embedded in contestation in conflict, in bottom up dynamics that enable, let's say, some of his lumps of Tijuana to build themselves with risk by recycling the waste of San Diego, as well as immigrants in the US retrofitting, altering adapting spaces into more sustainable environments, much of that activity mature, much of that process is absent from our scientific methods. In fact, sometimes it's even seen with suspicion as a kind of myopic times a type of almost not, not mesh, it processes that cannot be measurable. So I think that on one hand is that how, what are the tools today, let's say as philosophers as architects, that will have to be adapted to really understand those processes in more fundamental ways. And from which we can also enable new types of problem solving new types of of strategies of interdependence. But finally, I just wanted to focus on the fact that having the specificity of this locality again, I wouldn't mind calling it a laboratory, where any imaginable topic and is inscribed in this territory from the politics of immigration of cheap labor density and the sprawl strategies of surveillance and controlling the city today, everything is embedded here in a very short area. I think by researching the specificity of that locality in the parking let's say, beginning the conversation by truly understanding the conflicts that are embedded in that territory almost as if retro actively were trying to find out what produced those conflicts you know what produce those types of coalition's obviously, we're in the border territory. So the border itself becomes an artifact that collides with natural systems with the socio economic flows that are so evident in common sensical, but yet denied. So this collision between top down forces organization and bottom up socio economic and environmental systems is really at the core of what we're trying to do. In fact, the two environments that we have committed in our practice between phone and AI and also in our work at the city, are two environments that are adjacent to the checkpoint. The border here is the most trafficked border in the world. On the south in Tijuana is a 85,000 Slum, which is called Ellis and we call that the last informal settlement from Latin America into the US colliding literally against the wall in into the US San Ysidro, which is the first immigrant neighborhood into the US. So both of those environments, those two is very specific communities, led by very specific nonprofit organizations inside of them who have become our partners, become the laboratory to rethink again, much of the many of the issues that we're talking about today.

I, I have two questions left and then and then I'll let you go. I'm going to warn you about the second question. And then I'm going to ask the first question. But I do want to say even before I say that, if you can follow the grammar of the sentence is that I hope that the two of you will come back in a few years. So we can hear about the success of this project, because it's fascinating. And I think our listeners, and I know I want I want to find out what happens. But the thing to think about the question that I'm going to ask to end the discussion is a philosopher's question. And the question that I'm going to ask is, is there anything that you learned universally about cities? Are there any universal cities, universal rules or ideas that will apply? But while you're thinking about that, I want to ask a question. And in a certain sense, it's unfair, because there isn't anything that I've seen, or that I've read about that you sent me that addresses this question, but but I don't know who else to ask. And I think it's connected. I've had my mind on the Super Bowl, and on Sochi, and all of the articles that I've read, and all the stuff that's talking about, in particular sex trafficking, and all the difficulties in, in protecting young people from being exploited. One of the ways that I see this is that you have this massive public space, although technically, I suppose it's private. There's massive public space in this massive gathering space, like the Super Bowl like Sochi, where the market for exploitation becomes so intense and so large, and it's so hard to spot that it becomes a festival of injustice, for lack of a better phrase. And so I guess the way that I want to ask the question to both view is, to what extent to the large scale public spaces? To what extent? Are they spaces for injustice? And how can the public areas be made safe for those of us who are the most susceptible to victimization? And again, I think of sex trafficking, because it's gotten a lot of attention, but also because it's such a difficult and horrendous problem, can this approach to cities attack injustice and rectify injustice at this level? Or is this the wrong kind of question to ask?

Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about how the projects that we're doing are really fundamentally about creating capacity. In smaller scale settings, an agency against this belief that injustice is somehow kind of the way of the world so that when a child is brought up in to a neighborhood where there's sewage running through it, or where there's violence on every corner, there's a tendency to naturalize that into the way of the world. That's just the world that I live in. And somehow that transforms then into, this is what I deserve. And what happens is, I think communities and this is relevant to your question, I think communities lose a sense that the injustice is that they are embedded in are created by people, that they're manmade. And that the solutions to need to be created by people and man made. And so one thing we're trying to do is cultivate agency, in communities where that kind of

sort of, I don't want to call it apathy, it's more like a kind of, like a, almost like a disillusionment, has, has set in kind of

disengagement from political process, and, and create a new sense of political agency. So right here along the along the border. And this is a massive problem that affects the community and in very particular way. Children who grow up along the border have higher rates of lung disease and emphysema, and you come into these communities, and you bring the scientists and they say, You know what, your children have higher rates of emphysema? Well, duh, of course they do. Because cars idle at the border, there's a lot of pollution in the air children breed this and and get sick. So these communities know that it's not news to them. But the question is how they translate that knowledge. And this is this is what gets to your question, how you translate the knowledge that this is happening into avenues for action and resistance. And, and and challenging the institutions that enable those things, or actually cause those things to happen. So all of these public spaces that you're talking about, where justices take place, take place in a particular context, they all take place in a particular place where people are being, you know, where people are getting caught up. So it's a question of how to create agency so that the kids who are caught up in trafficking understand the the injustice and the families whose children are being caught up into trafficking, understand the injustice, that situates it, I'm thinking

that what do you bring up is an issue can Can I follow that? Sure. Of course, it is a issue of scale, obviously, you're talking about very large public spaces versus maybe, again, more localized, more embedded, let's say spaces and communities. And without polarizing that, I think that we are in need. In fact, today, I will say to embrace again, the scale of the Civic I mean civic spaces that are incredibly healthy equally, even if they are large. Obviously, the reason some of them are large, how would I call it the large for our forums that really are about sports and maybe other types of activities primarily, the problem with them is that they have become monocultural in a sense, you know, they tend to be oriented to to reason they are oriented to the spectacular into the kind of commercial activity that is equally benefiting this particular one is scale and one one culture in a sense. So that might be the problem is not necessarily the scale. I'm thinking that, you know, the Socolow in Mexico City is one of those classes. That is gigantic. But yet is pixelated is shared by a variety of constituencies of commerce of civic activity from the top down. And also, it's a fantastic leaving room for the city to protest and so on. And thinking of the kind of debate that has existed throughout time across across planners about House man's, you know, boulevards in Paris, where he demolished many amazing neighborhoods in order to build this huge prominence is seemingly by in fact, enabling systems of control that can prevent an insurgency. In fact, there are theories about how the boulevard itself was calculated was measured, so that it would prevent a group for to create a barricade, etc. But what is interesting is, well, those woolovers were designed as systems of control undeniably, but also assistance of beautification, those large scale spaces also served for huge moments of protest in the 1968 student movement, or, let's say Tahira square, where he was the scale of that large civic environment that might not have been designed precisely for protests. But because of its scale, it enable this community, the society to congregate. So I think we can we shouldn't polarize the large and the small. In fact, part of the agenda that you bring up, I think, is how do we negotiate the relationship of the two? How do we think of a city that is both planned, but at the same enables the unplanned in self assured ways? And we anticipate ways of transfer transforming spaces? Well, well, well, we think of that, we also need to, again, going back to the issue of rethinking public space today, we can think of space only as a physical thing. But I think we need to design also the types of social protection systems, the kinds of economic framework that can enable that space to, to benefit the community. So one provocation that I've always I've been making recently, so as a designer of public space, I want to design the physical, but also I want to design the types of protocols, the type of management issues that are CO produced by communities, you know, in governments, and why not to say universities. So I think it's important to speak again, of the relevant role, let's say the social agreements that protocols and modes of governance, are injected into the obstruction of public space.

So if I can combine your answers to my concern about the trafficking issue, the first thing is that the people who both participate in trafficking and who are the victims of trafficking, that they think of this as normal, and it becomes naturalized in fondness language, and that the first step or one of the steps is to get people to understand that the world isn't necessarily unjust or inherently unjust, that it can be adjusted. And that the way to do this is to is not to think about the size, not to think about the scope. But to think about the plurality of voices and not mono cultural, Sochi and Super Bowl are mono cultural, because everyone's there for the same purpose. But if we can take a public space, even a large scale public space, and have it multi purpose, multi voices, then we go to the third part, and combine the new attitude that it doesn't have to be this way with the dialogue of all of these other people. And we get people who are participating in the process of the city, and can who assert their voices to protect, to assert and to create a new way of life. And so with that said, let me ask that final question that I promised to ask, which is, is there anything universal that can be said about cities capital C? Or, and have you learned anything that you can just give as a primer to anyone who wants to think about their own city or changing their own city? Or is it really a case by case basis, idiosyncratic in the way that you were talking about the mimes and you can't make the grand philosophical claim that a good city is x a good city is why.

You know, I comes back, I think, to the fundamental philosophical question of how shall I live? And that when citizens are given a sense or when citizens take the space to actually begin to answer that question for themselves and to act on it collectively, amazing things can happen. I've I've loved in the last year as Jim Teles work on civic freedom. And of course, he traces it back to the res publica and so on. But the I Dia that citizenship transforms from a, you know, an identity associated with rights and duties or by an agreement on some comprehensive set of goods or some fundamental principle of justice when it transforms from these sort of static conceptions of citizenship into one that's an exercise concept much more active and embedded in praxis. Amazing things can happen. But I think one thing that's happened, particularly in American cities is there's been a kind of disillusionment with public office at the level of the city. I know in our city, particularly poor neighborhoods feel completely disengaged from what goes on in City Hall, because City Hall has been run by, you know, industrial interests. And in San Diego. That means, it means the tourism industry, and it means the developers, and every city has its own sort of creative class, its own dominant class. But it's reigniting a sense of the possible. And when that happens, and when citizens are caught by it, amazing things can happen. So if there's any universal, and I think what you see around the world right now, these little pockets of amazing energy, young people and old people working together, to think about what they want, how shall we live, and to find channels to activate it? So

I think that, you know, thinking of political philosopher Chantal move who provoked us, at least in my own field in architecture, and the visual arts, to reimagine public space, again, less a space of beautification, and more as a battleground, where we could visualize, you know, the role of political and economic power, that we can, in fact, enable a new awareness of the mechanisms, the institutional mechanisms that have to do today's crisis in a way, I mean, I'm thinking, again, of learning a lot from CDs in the world where the project, the first project of intervention, again, has been, what phone already articulated an investment in civic culture, right in new models of participation in Orban pedagogy. But that implies a new form of a way of a universal of particularizing. The Universal This is what also Chantal moves suggested, obviously, is maybe a common sense, but the how do we enter into another scale of resolution that really gets to the specific conditions that really define the relationship between top down institutions and bottom up agency. So the most important lessons that I've learned, I think, in cities today, are those places primarily, again, Latin America, where there are models of negotiation between top down thinking and borrow map inclusion and borrow my agency, beautiful examples, such as the participatory budgets, for example, that emerged in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in the late 70s, early 80s, where the municipal budgets were open to communities, so that communities could have a say, in the distribution, etc. or In May the unit again, as we were talking about where, in fact, many of the projects, the urban projects that were built, emerged out of collaborative models, what somebody mentioned, they're called the kind of transversal curatorial project across institutions. But yes, I think fundamentally, the point of departure and the successes stories, I think in the world, is that they've become models that are on one hand, yes, top down, because we need the kind of role of government guiding somehow the conversation, but hugely inclusive, you know, how to negotiate leadership with inclusion, so that the voices of communities are part of the decision making in more intelligent ways. But also, it is that conversation that say, that is a specialized. So we love this notion of this personalization of citizenship, in that public space can really begin to be articulated as a kind of, you know, physical or concrete dimension that say, of those theories. Well, I

have to stop you here because if we keep talking, it's going to be another seven hours because I could do this for two weeks. And I really do hope that the two of you come back, give us a report on how things are happening in the border and with your partnership with with pagoda, because this has been just tremendously fascinating and I have learned so much so thank you both. So much for being on why?

Thanks, Jack. Take care.

Thank you again.

You're listening to Jack Russell Weinstein. I've been talking with Teddy Cruz and found a foreman on why philosophical discussions about everyday life we'll be back with a short wrap up right after this.

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You're back with Jack Russell Weinstein on why philosophical discussions about everyday life we've been talking about the city and the urbanization of happiness. And I think the main shift that we have to engage in here is to think about the city as a process, not a place. And that means the city is a place where people live where people interact, where people have relationships, but also it's a place where city dwellers have voices where they participate in governance where they use their intellect, and they use their imagination to change the things based on their own communities needs and community need not be city wide. community might be a micro community, a neighborhood, a small area where people know each other where people know their needs, we have to trust the local and I mean, the extremely local because the people who live there, they know to a large respect what they need. Now sometimes they're dysfunctional, just like the government, and sometimes they're self destructive, just like the government. And the thing that we talked about today on the show is the ways in which the infrastructure, the ways in which the architecture, the public and the private space, the buildings, the beauties, the interactions, the way that the infrastructure helps define what it means to be healthy, helps define what it means to be happy and healthy to define what it means to have a relationship. My thinking about cities shifted radically while preparing for the show, and while talking and learning during the show, because it made me realize that the city was so vibrant and so controlled at the same time. And that control sometimes are good, but sometimes those controls are punitive because they hide us. And they limit our ways of thinking how can cities create an imaginative, happy public? This I think, is the central question of the 21st century. You're listening to Jack Russel Weinstein on why philosophical discussions about everyday life. As always, it's an honor to speak with you.

Why is funded by the Institute for philosophy and public life? Prairie Public Broadcasting in the University of North Dakota is College of Arts and Sciences and Division of Research and Economic Development. Skip wood is our studio engineer. The music is written and performed by Mark Weinstein and can be found on his album Louis Sol. For more of his music, visit jazz flute weinstein.com or myspace.com/mark Weinstein philosophy is everywhere you make it and we hope we've inspired you with our discussion today. Remember, as we say at the institute, there is no ivory tower.