"America's G.P.A.: D+. Estimated investment needed by 2020: $3.6 trillion."

No one’s surprised by that quote, right? We hear this at least once every four years, when the American Society of Civil Engineers releases its report card. The news is always bad, because guess what? We still didn’t do anything to rebuild, replace, or make redundant all those rickety bridges and crumbling dams. 
I regularly drive under an interstate overpass near my house (that’s Route 80 in Tully, for you local folk). It’s best not to look to closely at it, the rusted steel and crumbling concrete. When the traffic light stops me under those tons of decay, I look up and think, “how did we get here?”

Well, you know how we got here. To oversimplify (because this is a blog post, not the book), we, as a country, used to invest massive amounts in public infrastructure, and now we, as a country, do this no longer. This means not only do we not build new or replace or even maintain old, but it means that we have a large number of structures that are all reaching the end of their lifespan at once. It’s a bit like if you buy all your socks at once, they all wear out at once. If you bought one pair of socks every few months, you’d always have socks in various states of repair: some new, some wearing out, some in between. Because we’ve coasted for a long time on the infrastructure investments of the past, we now have a lot of it wearing out at once, and as all those bridges and dams and roads have aged, we’ve changed into a country that doesn’t really do huge public projects any more. This lack of investment dovetails with other urban problems, creating terrible multiplier effects like Flint's water supply crisis.


The city where I work, Syracuse, New York, had on average more than one water main break EVERY DAY in 2015.  But Syracuse is nowhere near unique in its infrastructural woes. Our failing infrastructure is one fruit borne of our politics over the last few decades, the inescapable sum of gridlock and budget cuts and starving the beast. I have my politics and you have yours, but we share the broken water main (although those of us with the wherewithal to live in the suburbs or exurbs don’t have nearly the share of broken water mains as those in the city, but that’s another post). 

I propose we acknowledge our nation’s epidemic of failing infrastructure as a typical, if not universal, condition of urban design projects. Expect the pipes to break or be clogged, the combined sewers to overflow, the pavement to crack, the streets to flood. This makes the actual condition of failing urban systems part of the landscape, not as we think they should be or wish they were. They aren’t swept under the rug of inhibitions, but instead can be viewed objectively and incorporated into the catalog of opportunities and constraints that designers make at the beginning of a project. Like every other site condition, those failing systems can provide constraints…

…and opportunities.

Wait - really? Could failing systems in urban infrastructure create design opportunities? Could those opportunities include ways not only to fix or mitigate the failure, but also advance toward cities as more sustainable, healthy, and just places?

Consider this: failing infrastructure, public systems, and neglect of all forms is already a major shaper of our cities. The whole idea of urban wilds is based on neglect, the shaping force of lack of intention, what happens while we’re looking the other way. Disinvestment is neglect. Fraying social fabric is neglect. Less directly, all the myriad compromises required by years of tighter and tighter budgets, of doing more with less, are neglect of a sort, because something (or someone) always loses that compromise.  Choices must be made, and the expendable things become neglected. We choose sidewalks over mowing, roads over sidewalks, highways over side streets, and everything over public transportation. 

Neglect shapes the city through lack of intention.  We don’t mean for it to happen, but it does, and when we’re consistent in what aspects or places we overlook, neglect becomes their primary shaper. 

How does neglect present itself in our cities, how is it shaping our cities, and most especially, how does it or could it make those cities better places for people?

Let’s find out.



WHAT DO I DO FOR CLASS? 

• Read this post and click on all the links within it. 
• Read the articles; review (that means look through, but don’t read every word) the websites.
• Think about what you agree with, what you disagree with, and what doesn’t make sense to you. 
• Come to class prepared to talk to your classmates about it.

When Banksy opens a theme park, I expect my inbox to fill up. And indeed, two versions of coverage of “Dismaland” have come my way (so far; thanks, Ely and Tim!): The NY Times' "Banksy's 'Dismaland' in England: It's a Strange World, After All," and Bored Panda's "Banksy's Dismaland: Take a First Look Inside Nightmare Version of Disneyland." This is some crazy stuff. 

To begin with, let me say that I am completely in love with the ruined Cinderella’s castle. I would love to visit this place. The pure subversive grandeur must be overwhelming. And the wit is very appealing, though dark, of course. And what could be a more appealing target for satire than those “other” theme parks, the ones with the mouse? Banksy’s signature rat sure ain’t Mickey.

But: in a way it tames Banksy’s work and that of other guerrilla street artists to corral it into a designated space like this, even one with the self-conscious wit and irony of a dystopian theme park. Part of the power of street art is its unexpectedness, the combination of raw edge and delight that comes from the discovery of artwork in the ragged fringes of our environment. The setting is very much part of the art, whether that’s on a very small site scale, like A Common Name's Urban Geodes sculptures in cracks and gaps (see earlier post), or in terms of larger context, like Banksy’s "I remember when all this was trees" mural at the old Packard Plant in Detroit. The controversy surrounding the removal of that work to a local gallery to protect (preserve? control? neutralize?) it illustrates just how valuable the context is. 

I also wonder about the impact of the lack of contrast between individual pieces and the whole of Dismaland. Much of street art’s marvelous subversiveness comes from its placement where we think no art should be, and that contrast and transgressive nature sets off the artwork. Because it breaks the rules, we notice it. We see it more clearly because of the contrast, like positive and negative space. Is this sense numbed after the fifth or tenth or fiftieth installation you pass at Dismaland? Tigers in the wild hold your attention (that's involuntary attention/fascination, people!), to say the least. Tigers at the zoo can be just part of the background. When everything is subversive, perhaps nothing is.

Final notes: Dismaland is a limited-time exhibition, so if you want to see it in person, hurry. Promotional material underscores the presence of a gift shop - the mentions are ironic, yes, but I'm sure the sales are real. I'll be best friends forever with anyone who sends me a Dismaland tee shirt.

From Tim

‘Flower House’, An Abandoned Detroit-Area Home Filled Top to Bottom With Fresh Flowers


Full story with lots of photos