the act.of route: world cities in motion

2008-05-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

60. ongoing

vagueterrain.net/journal13/yukiko-bowman/01

2008-01-10T20:50:00.000-08:00

59. some houston

one

beware falling through:
Lerup's 'holey plain', perceived at a certain scale, is the result of outward-expanding leapfrog development, a sense of distance reliant on the car, non-existent zoning, and stick-frame building.

two

in an afternoon, shot from the driver's seat, T to B:

refinery + storage tanks off 225 E

donuts + oil: this chain was visible elsewhere in the refinery area

birds + oil: ?

on the way to oil, bearing S towards the ship channel bridge

vinegar factory in the 5th ward, and the distant mirage of downtown rising up from flat

three

the roads here careen and are temples to speed, revealing beneath a forest of columns in diminutive proportion (coming from the Bay Area's herculean seismic-minded structures). the ubiquitous presence of slowly running, barely carving bayou water (this is the Buffalo) violates the otherwise straight-shot city, a squiggly reminder of weather's force which replenishes, decays, clouds, and bungles the attempt to tidy and erase.

2007-12-08T09:05:00.000-08:00

58. to japan and back again...

for a mostly family-oriented visit, but with a few notables:

1. Uguisudani, Tokyo (above)
this is one of Tokyo's 'Love Hotel' hotspots, one stop north of the Ueno hub on the Yamanote line. this thicket of neon signs circumscribes the western edge of the area, which is squeezed between the railway and the major avenue of Showa Dori 2 blocks away and running parallel to the west. rather than feeling like a seedy railside sex nexus, the two massive infrastructures of rail and road provide the neighborhood with an almost cozy, village-like atmosphere and scale. here, couples of all ages (young urban hipsters, burnt-out business-men with mistress, the occasional prostitute picking up dilapidated soul and vice-versa) stroll afternoon and evening, darting in and out of these hotels which, on average, boast only a dozen rooms or so. on a Sunday morning at 10am (typical check-out hour), there was a mass-exodus of over-nighters heading back towards the train station, hand-in-hand, smiling.

2. Arata Isozaki's Art Tower, Mito
built in 1990, this twisting triangulated tower is near my uncle's home in Mito and thus, has been part of my visual radar for several years. Mito, capital of Ibaraki-ken, and even Hitachi, my mother's hometown, are increasingly becoming part of the Tokyo conurbation (ex. both are included in urban railmaps of Tokyo). as this happens, their characters evolve, the streetscapes increasingly closed up and shut down as chainmalls spread their made-elsewhere efficiency.

having moved so frequently, my sister and i realized that Hitachi is the only place in the world that we continue to visit where we have childhood memories, which doesn't quite make it home but makes it...something, a place where we can register the change of a sandy beach now covered in concrete. still, it's a 10+ hour flight for both of us from our respective abodes, which once again highlights that intimacy and distance, memory and proximity, need not be connected.

i snapped the triptych of the tower from the car, stopped at a red-light and beginning to move.

http://www.arttowermito.or.jp/Tower/isozaki1.html

2007-11-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

57. view from the icon.

this was the half-way point of an 8-mile Sunday walk -- my first time visiting (vs. driving over) the city's most beloved icon which belongs, i realize, not only to the city but to this entire portion of the East Bay. i have grown so accustomed to seeing the bridge as the city's most imageable symbol, glimpsed on a clear day from wurster's 9th floor, i never fully realized how much the Bay Area is iconicized when the gaze is inverted. here, the ridges of Berkeley become the backdrop for SF's ivory + emerald hills, all miniaturized in relation to the breadth of the landscape and the seemingly infinite volume of deep-green sea. although the view is totalizing, the self is obliterated from this vantage point, distracted by competing stimuli. the water below becomes indescribably mis-scaled, appearing much closer and much more harmless in the absence of proximate human-sized objects. what has always been a flawless demarcation of the Bay's protected interior before the Pacific's frothy no-man's-land uncannily became a precipice, whose immediacy of affect rendered the urban toyland into a simulacra. from this vantage, the banal feels banal, and the extraordinary, seductive.

2007-10-30T13:06:00.001-07:00

56. traveling SF + beyond...

on Sunday we went to a design charette in the historic downtown of Pittsburg, CA. (the northeast terminus of the Pittsburg/Bay Point line). the BART ride takes a near-hour and reveals BART's ex-urban reach; en route, the smoothe golden hills of livestock agriculture and cookie-cutter developer housing take over to the south, while to the north the flat land and proximity to Suisun Bay historically made it a prime area for heavy industry + rail, which remain semi-salient local economies. we walked 2+ miles from the current BART terminus to the town-center, and along the way had access to the wide, flat right-of-way of the Union + Southern Pacific railroads. in this area the wall is king, and separates rail from house, house from power-line forest, everything beyond the wall of the rail-bed apparently endless until the horizon of smoke-stacks and windmill fields takes over, fading into briny haze near the water. it's an orderly, quiet, and melancholy landscape.

on the way home, i snapped the above blurry last minute photo of the Lafayette Mock War Memorial on a hillside adjacent to Hwy 24 and the Lafayette BART station: http://zombietime.com/lafayette_mock_war_memorial/. not knowing what it was i was struck by its dense, helter-skelter informality. its placement at a BART station along the highway makes it extremely visible, and the reaction to the memorial when it was first erected a year ago was immediate. it has since been controversial, as ownership over how to memorialize the war's victims is ambiguous.

2007-10-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

55.

like a good relationship, a blog is difficult to 'end' without feeling as if one is killing something that has been worthwhile, and to which one has grown inadvertently attached. i have decided to continue to use it as a forum for further speculation back here in the U.S., where collation of Branner material and thesis preparations begin to meld into an exciting panoply which considers the nature of urban documentation, the generic global city, and the existence of the minute particular, all tied together and navigated, of course, by the linescape. it's not readership i am hoping for so much as an actualization of a ghost-reflection of my own thoughts which might, in the process of creation, spit something back out at me (or convince someone else to).

last night during thesis discussion there was much talk of Architecture's debatable relevance to the contemporary human body, and it's role in articulating 'space' vs. 'place,' two terms which both de Certeau and Team 10 utilized. de Certeau conceived of 'place' as the geometric bookmark, as on a map, while 'space' is the nuanced, volumetric, ever-shifting actualization of a 'place' in use by multiple players, under variable conditions. (in parallel: grammar is to place as spoken language is to space). Team 10, however (and as i understand it), criticized the universalizing 'space' of Modernism's technophilia and called for a re-discovery of 'place' as particular locale. the use of the terms is not contradictory -- a place holder certainly signifies a particular locality, and Modernist space is not necessarily unoccupied or unpracticed (one could even argue that Modernism placed practice/occupation above particularity). one could also argue that Team 10 is re-asserting geography over humanity, a humanity which the Modernists used as a justification for their universalizing style (i.e. human needs became fulfilled by technological standardization). in both arguments, the concepts are inseparable, and the contemporary question might be what is the nature of practiced space WITHOUT its demarcation in place, and vice-versa?

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset's project in Marfa, TX was mentioned in our discussion as alluding to this debate: http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasArt/Prada-Marfa-Update.htm. what does a locked Prada store (never to be used) in the middle of the Texas desert (hardly to be seen) signify? is there architecture without humanity? and when does the intent of the creator give way to the work's own momentum? ostensibly the store was supposed to be left untouched -- to be scoured by the elements, marked by passers by. unfortunately, it seems that the maintenance has been conscientiously pursued.

a blog, or at least, this one, is not art or architecture, but i have similar questions about when its work is complete, and thereafter, what becomes of it. a concluded discussion turns into a memoir, which suggests...death? without further ado i shall add to the mess.

photo: aquatic park freighter on its way to Oakland.

2007-10-18T10:34:00.001-07:00

fifty-four. landing.

RdJ night (view from Sugarloaf) into Midwest morning and SF afternoon . . . for now words fail, but the trip continues.

2007-10-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

fifty-three. Brazilian Branner high-five.

we three met during the last days of São Paolo (here buoyantly pictured at Mendes de la Roche's Sculpture Museum in Pinheiros, a must-see: the building is an exercise in spacious circulatory disappearance into slope. a vertical difference between two streets flanking the corner-sited building is used to fullest advantage to create a meandering landscape of ramps, shallow staircases, narrow passages, and hidden doorways which knit the interior and exterior into a seamless ribbon of quiet transitions.)

we shared a bus-journey to Rio past swaths of stump-scarred land now dotted with termite hills and beef-bearing cows. (Brazil's meat-industry is something one hates to love, intertwined with 'grilled' as its culinary identity is). arrival had us gawking at the landscape and clutching white-knuckled in a ferocious taxi-ride up the cobblestone streets of Santa Teresa, which hovers above the Centro area. the area is reminiscent of the North Berkeley hills, and i found myself disoriented by the sensation of comfort i (and my lungs) felt with the neighborhood's salt-scented breezes, residential scale, dynamic building-topography interplay (ex. the stair-connectors shown above), subtle social spaces, and nostalgic tram line. it's easy to see why expats might disappear into this city of Samba, seashore, and sociability.

Ipanema beach, although swarming with Brazilian bikini-clad bodies and muscle-beach men, was surprisingly low-key, and i felt little of the self-conscious preening and screening that i had anticipated. on the contrary, people's comfort level with their physicalities of all shapes and sizes was welcoming. the narrow strip of sand here acts as microcosmic town, replete with retail (vendors every 15 seconds), real-estate (chair and umbrella rental), and recreation (cerveja and paddle ball).

2007-10-18T10:33:00.001-07:00

fifty-two. disconnected oddities, ameliorative generosities.

São Paolo ends with a bang and a whimper and a promise of revisit, my last few days there unfinished, frantic and fun ... for the first time on the Branner Ivan, Ballard and I converged, changing this urban jungle of solitary, wary evenings into wandering hop-scotch stop-here stop-there visits to churrascarias and chopperias to engage in much-needed catching up. these evening walks revealed stunning sights not possible during the day, such as views of receding rivers of car taillights swooping downhill beneath 60’ overpasses. it is dizzying, these connective stitches that cross the city everywhere (such as along Ave. May 23rd), revealing both a dysfunctionality (these low roads lie in valleys that end up flooding during summer deluges) and a subsequent generosity (the suggestion of reconnection is everywhere, in both built infrastructure such as numerous bridges and stairs, and in less-supported allusions, such as sidewalks which ‘continue’ across 8-lane roadways). this unpatterned melee of linescapes dates back to the city’s colonial birth when private land owners who lived in the elevated city-center connected their outlying holdings to the center via an unmanaged criss-cross of roads and bridges. São Paolo’s sensory similarity to Tokyo, which Ballard and I both felt, probably resides in both cities’ lack of well-established planning strategies and subsequent rapid urbanization, which has happened only the latter half of the 20th century.

from my last days here, there are a few routes i’d like to recollect:

10.6 ( to) the Lilac Line
a glance at SP’s metro map will reveal 3 primary lines: the north-south blue, the east-west red (the two meeting in the center at lively Pca de Se), and the east’ish-west’ish green, which lies to the south of Se and which services the elite business canyon along Paulista. (SP is described as having an itinerant ‘downtown’ in which the city’s money and power roves by the decade: the Centro was replaced by uphill Paulista, and now Faria Lima to the west is receiving much of the real-estate attention). there is also the lilac metro line, in the city’s southwest, a segment of 8 stops which connects to the CPTM suburban rail network. the fringe placement of this short, distant line aroused my curiosity, as i assumed it serviced a wealthy area and/or a politically important region in terms of population density and votes.

reaching the line requires a triple transfer, from metro red to its western terminus at Barra Funda, where lines A and B of the CPTM begin. Barra Funda is a major node linking the two systems (Metro and CPTM) and as such, it is also used for animated social-service videos (regarding good manners, saving water, etc., reminiscent of Singapore) and a small amount of advertising. while the city streets are largely devoid of billboards and posters due to April’s advertising ban, some advertising is still allowed in the transit stations, and even on the bodies of trains themselves (although rare).

line B of the CPTM was distinct from the metro on a sweltering Saturday afternoon; windows were open, faces moist with sweat, chatter was a bit louder, the hawkers more vociferous in their sale of cold coconut water and sorbet. leaving Barra Funda, the train passed through a relatively brief industrial sector followed by an even briefer patch of railside informality: shacks, urban agriculture, and two pigs (Mom and piglet) walking along a shady path. the N-S line C, from a transfer at Pres. Altino, is also part of the CPTM system and has its own character. its welcomed A/C and classical music was, most likely, an attempt to drown out the smell of the Pinheiros River, along which the line runs. at every station, the compartment filled with the heavy waft of effluent; once flowing southward, a nearby reservoir changed the Pinheiros’ direction, which also receives run-off from hillside favelas during summer rainstorms.

regardless of its dire condition, the Pinheiros remains a defining factor influencing the city’s western skyline; the high rises along its eastern banks spread N-S from Feria Lima’s financial district while on the western banks, the skyline rises and falls with isolated hills that once again exhibit São Paolo’s quick-changing socio-economic pockets – one hill hosts a favela, the next a handful of mansions, the next few hills a collection of dense white towers. the lilac line, radiating westward from the southern end of Line C, serves a densely populated residential area of favela-covered hills which rise above the small valley created by a now-culverted feeder stream. here the topographical corridor was close to the rail (approx 150m), and the train’s noise-pollution an obvious burden. the turnaround at Capao Redondo was quick and the ride home semi-rowdy with a few beer-drinkers celebrating some team’s football victory (a celebration later echoed back at Barra Funda with an impromptu parade of fans, flanked by station policemen). a blind beggar who boarded halfway through the Line B ride transformed the compartment into a silent and thoughtful community that gave more generously than i have seen elsewhere, and once he disembarked a more comfortable conversation level seemed to permeate the train. the day’s most remarkable sight, however, was back at the Santa Cecilia station where i had started the day. a boy of 8'ish was sit-riding a skateboard down the ramp that led to the station; he had a smile on his face whose ferocity suggested its rarity, and it was amazing to witness how a small piece of urban topography and 4 wheels could offer such a complete and temporary respite from the city’s demands.

10.8 Ave. São João + Elavado (see top photo)

the Elevado Costa E. Silva runs above a portion of Ave. São João, beginning in Santa Cecilia and curving northwest over to the edge of the hilly and pristine Perdizes neighborhood. although on my way to somewhere else i was compelled instead to follow this shadowy, linear, street art-gallery where overpass support pillars serve as canvases and sometimes as lean-to walls for the homeless. this same median over which the Elevado runs also serves as an efficient (good use of space, with the Elevado as roof) but inconvenient (no crosswalks) concrete swath for the buses which run on the inner lanes of São João, again a testament to São Paolo’s ‘go anywhere but no hand-holding’ approach to circulatory freedom. this stretch of São João + Elevado yields a high concentration of used bookstores which spill their tattered and colorful contents onto an otherwise semi-seedy sidewalk scene.

where São João + the Elevado cross over Av. Pacaembu, two striking views are afforded down either side of the overpass: to the south, the towers and verdant residential streets of Perdizes, and to the north, a banal strip of gas stations and apparent car dealerships which fades off into flat distance. adjacent to the overpass on this side was a sloped patch of dirt and a few trees where a few homeless men had established a true campsite, replete with fire-ring. despite the site’s high visibility from above and its adjacency to a busy road, the overpass wall and a set of stairs defined a discrete space, and the trees offered patchy protection. less than ½ mile away up into the hills of Perdizes a private school with ebullient teens next to an excellent 1950’s church of diagonal wall-blades, gentle side lighting, and sloped floor offered an entirely different world of privileged calm. the streets here (R photo above) looked uncannily like those in Jo’burg’s nicer neighborhoods (L photo above), where SFH are surrounded by 15’ high and 1’ thick walls, and chairs on corners belie the presence of neighborhood guards whose job it is to provide a psychological sense of well-being to the street. not far from here i descended into an odd topographical bowl/depression, where single storey bungalows remain mysteriously untouched and surrounded by a forest of slope-perched high-rises. in this area, one can witness some dramatic landscape gymnastics, where entire portions of hills are literally cut away to accommodate parking garages...this next to a nostalgic set of white-washed stairs and bright bungalows (see photo, below).

10.9 Rio Grande da Serra

Linha D provides a survey of the city’s southeast rail corridor, which evolves in a quintessential urban fade. the right of way begins narrowly out of the hub of Bras, with walls close, a railcar graveyard pressing in, and crowded, cavernous warehouses showing their roofs above the corridor barrier. this continues through the ex-industrial district of Mooca, and thereafter the density of warehouses begins to thin and the walls swell away from the tracks to allow vacant swaths of land, the occasional pocket of informal settlement, and the sporadic factory. in the distance heavy industry spews its smoke from barely visible spindly smokestacks, and a roadway 200 m. away breeds a suburban-feeling fabric of big’ish box retail separated by unused lots. the satellite town of Maua, 4 stops from the line’s terminus, marked a change of sorts – this lively hub boasts a massive bridge which attempts to knit together bandstand stairs, a tower of platforms and a bus-station with the town’s public plaza. excepting the bridge portion, the structure is unfortunately unfinished, leaving behind a dysfunctional red steel gesture. a large banner hanging from the bridge’s railing announced the temporary presence of Poupatempo Mobile, a roving tent-based version of the state government-sponsored social-service organization which i mentioned earlier. at Maua, most of the train’s chatty riders emptied out, leaving behind a void of silence and lonely faces in twilight. hereafter the stations disappeared into simple shadowy anonymity against a backdrop of the rural: expansive fields, with localized smatterings of houses, most notably those huddled on hills accessed by steep and narrow stairs. when the train wasn’t flanked by field it was flanked by small canyon, two steep rocky mounds pressing in close to the rail, turning windows into mirrors against a premature nightfall.

2007-10-05T20:54:00.000-07:00

fifty-one.
having found a room where i can breathe and think, the end of my itinerancy (Sao Paolo) within itinerancy (Branner) has alleviated some of my distraction-beyond-logical-explanation. distraction may also be a state of being in SP, specifically; every city has its moods & effects, and while i cannot pinpoint them to a fountain-source here, the city’s disquiet strikes me as palpable. this is my third attempt at a comfortable temporary abode, the first being internally fine but located on a pedestrian street that became an unsafe zoo after 8pm, the second up on the hill (Paulista) but of the once-luxury-turned-to-seed budget variety where men wore tux vest uniforms and doors had built-in lazy susans (for discreet room service) even as the pillows were covered in plastic liner, the bed adorned with a junky ‘zine circa 2005, and the battery-powered lamp oozing corrosion and dead beyond repair.

having avoided the institution of the hostel in cities where it is affordable to do so, i have been seduced by a corner room here in the downtown Hostel. it is not just the 2nd floor room i love, which allows me to see down two different streets, but this neighborhood, which no travel guide would ever describe as definable, being in transition as it is and located somewhere between Santa Cecilia, Republica, and Consolaçao. next door, a sterile Formula 1! hotel sits across from a semi-retired grand-duchess called the San Raphael, whose ground-floor bar spills onto the sidewalk and acts as catalyst for a mini nightlife-on-sidewalk district. in the other direction, away from Sao Joao’s traffic, the sidestreets are lined with auto-fetish stores (ex. motorcycle clothing, body appliques), stores that are shiny without being bourgeois. from my two windows, in the early hour of 6am i watched the streets exchange hands. a few joggers dodged the dazed-out all-nighters or homeless clearing out for the day, windowless white mini-vans easily navigated the nearly empty streets, delivering newspapers and bread to kiosks and snack stands, an SUV with tinted-windows dropped a handful of scantily clad dancers onto the sidewalk where they hobbled on sore feet to various homes or hotels. everything was cool and calm for a few brief minutes.

there is silence to be found in pockets, although usually accompanied by a harsher reality. today: unlikely tree growing robustly on the top floor of an abandoned brick building, approx. 15 stories tall. or two men standing on the roof of a gorgeous glazed Modernist tower near Pça Ramos; i envied them but then realized they were either homeless, in a graffiti gang, or developers, as on closer inspection, most, if not all, 20-odd storeys looked empty. all the guards and police-people also seem shrouded in silence (the guards especially); they are heaviest in areas of revitalization, to make wary people feel safe in otherwise still-hectic environments. they stand in some of the nicer galerias, or at the door to more comfortable hotels in seedier parts (our hostel has one), or in areas where there is a stark mingling of have and have-not (such as at Pça Ramos where street kids sleep beneath a tree 10 feet from the entrance of the ‘Shop Light’ mall, or likewise, at the Municipal Theater, whose grand steps attract those who don’t have places to sleep but still want a nice place to sit). the Cathedral at Se is a silent holy place populated with the devout while its steps are gently claimed by a crew of beggars. this city’s ability to embrace such jarring contrasts within 5 feet makes it in some ways the most honest and difficult of all i have visited so far. the mind is constantly trying to absorb conflicting environments and given very little time to do so.

but it is not cruel, or at least, there are signs that it is not (which can obversely make the small acts of cruelty seem so much larger). the SESC organization, something akin to localized business cooperatives, demands taxation from businesses and then uses the funds to provide art and recreation centers around the city (Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompei being the most famous). people who live in the precinct can use the facilities for free while outsiders can use it for a fee. the SESC Pompei offers a range of art classes, a library (where men play speed chess in silence), the gymnasium tower + pool, and a huge restaurant, bar, and performance venue. in similar social-mindedness, Poupatempos are city-sponsored ‘one-stop-shop’ type institutions offering a plethora of services such as ID card issuance, post office, medical exams, etc. i serendipitously found the first, designed in 2000 by Mendes de la Roche, at the Itaquera metro terminus (to the east). infrastructural in size and layout (like an indoor city with avenues), one can walk straight from the metro platform over a bridge and into the Poupatempo megastructure, making these services easily accessible from select public transit stations. this Poupatempo, which serves the city’s neglected eastern districts, in turn leads directly to a brand new mall, due to open in November. it looks incongruous and out of scale, as the surrounding residences are packed and tired at best, but according to the Poupatempo official (who finally gave me permission to take photos) the mall is an attempt to jump-start the area.

where the metro ends in this eastern quadrant, the CPTM picks up (Paulista Company Metropolitan Transit), a suburban rail system that supplements the 3-line metro. as the city center recedes, the train hawkers make a more frequent appearance, usually selling chocolate or gum. the length of the line’s extension is reminiscent of Tokyo, as is the hum of the train itself, growing louder as the riders diminish. as the train passes through empty farmland and the city seems finally exhausted, just as quickly the population again increases, until the line’s terminus. here a small town with busy main avenues seems to proclaim its self-sufficiency in the form of a single glass-clad office tower which boasts a heli-pad. it is now a full hour from the city. the return ride, on Line F, to the north, is sheer emptiness and sleeping on Thursday evening. the density is out there but in the darkness, it is unseen, as these neighborhoods do not receive the luxury of streetlights. the lighting within the train is yellow and poor, and everything seems a stage-set for a melancholy movie in which other bodies don’t mean company, and the man who boards sits too close even though the compartment is nearly empty. these suburban lines, at least to the east, express a loneliness which is embedded in detail. i never realized how much the color of in-train advertising can superficially cheer up the eyes, or at least temporarily entertain. the peri-urban platforms become dark, un-announced pauses of concrete, and the gap between the train and the platforms varies in both width and height (sometimes a step up, sometimes a step down, always a considerable gap across) as municipal concern with such details fades away.

below: metro at Pca de Se

2007-10-05T20:52:00.000-07:00

fifty.

the Anhangabau Park overpass, from Paulista looking north.

2007-10-03T18:33:00.000-07:00

forty-nine. ‘White Heaven.’

‘white heaven’ is the pet name given to Sao Paolo by a perceptive few. the sky rarely shines true blue, and the blanket of haze and slight moisture that hangs in the air most days turns an otherwise unromantic skyline of dirty off-white into a dream-like vagueness. this past Sunday, the heart of the historic Centro was turned into a movie set. roads, transmogrifications of once-rivers, were blocked, and the streets were piled with tumble-weeds of shredded + tangled office paper. i watched as a crew member threw scraps in front of an industrial-sized fan, this need for false weather a rare and odd sight.

in other parts of the city, such as Paulista Ave, which shoots straight down the city’s highest ridge, fur-barked trees drop violent yellow flowers. like tears, they litter the sidewalks whose cracks become collectors of color. these small tragedies that mar the downtown’s elevated, wealthy areas are manually swept away in a battle to fight off the jungle in which the city was built. today, on noisy Rebouças, a cheap blanket, of the type used to protect walls or furniture during a move or a renovation, lay abandoned after a night’s sleep, and the squashed remains of large avocados were scattered here and there. the tree above, whose limbs were heavy with fruit, provided both potential feast and potential ambush.

if there was ever a strange city, this would be it. when speaking of the difficulty in comprehending it, i was told to ‘let it go. the more you try the less you know.’ there is little that is cohesive for me to tell. i stumble upon surprises, like the avocados, while thick traffic murders all thought. often, the one that does exist is, ‘what is that?’ it takes a retreat to my room, or a conversation, to figure it out: rooftop catwalks between two towers = a shared heli-pad. numerous facades covered in some sort of hieroglyphic script = an ongoing graffiti battle played out between favela gangs who come to the city center to claim the nth facade: the one owned by the disowned. the goal is to scrawl as high as one can in a territorial vertical war. the city may be quietened of advertising, and storefronts left with the rain-print of sign removal, but the city is definitely not devoid of signs.

the roads read as rivers, the towers as trees, trees so thick they become a sea, which returns their concrete masses to water. water’s transformed dominance is in the Anhangabau River, which once cut a watery swath to the west of the city’s original escarpment. it is now covered in concrete and above it runs an urban highway (9 Julho) that emerges and disappears under giant swaths of second ground. between these crevices, and the sheer density of towers which hug the topography, i have never seen anything comparable to the city’s panorama, or the maze of walkways, overpasses, underpasses, floating parks and dungeon stairways that saturate areas such as Anhangabau. at the scale of the Cinque Terre, Italy, this climbing, criss-crossing, disappearing acrobatic is one thing; at the scale of a metropolis, quite another. the audacity of such built endeavors is perhaps a response to the brashness of the original landscape, which is nicely exhibited in 19th c. maps at the Patio de Colegio, where the city was founded. with such high highs and low lows, one is always aware of up and down, but rarely of where ground 0 might be. even the buses are topographic: embarkation is flat, but one must ascend via stairs to both the front and the rear of the vehicle. the flow is highly controlled, with an attendee + cash box + magnetic turnstile reader. in like manner, some metro station platforms have metal bars which control the movement of platform traffic, and again, the turnstiles are everywhere. even the trash bins are given consideration in relation to ground; they become elevated metal-mesh containers with legs, quickly filled and subsequently emptied by men who pull enormous 2-wheel carts behind them.

elsewhere, the precious and profane seem to co-exist in surreal fashion. one of the city’s most elite and orderly cemeteries, with its noble carved headstones, serves as a foreground to the proximate glass and concrete towers which rise behind . the two are separated by a row of trees and a wide swath of grass. such juxtapositions of scales and symbolisms are becoming less shocking, as is the surprising lack of sensual taboos. cars park in the showrooms of lamp-stores whose ceilings are shrouded with crystalline chandeliers. stairways lead to high-speed roads which are flanked by uninviting sidewalks of yellow-tunnel light and noxious fumes. abandoned 20 storey towers hulk in the heart of the Centro even as hopes for urban renewal keep historic monuments well cared-for. at night, the Centro doesn’t twinkle from above but rather seems to suck the light away from the stoplights, headlights and taillights which glow on the streets, whisking people away to more palatable residential districts. the night sidewalks, underpasses, and nooks and crannies created by level shifts, walls, and overhangs are given over to the city’s young and often shoeless homeless population.

despite these melancholy descriptions, the city is not morose. during the day the Centro is rife with rhythm and hawkers selling everything from meat-on-a-stick to dangly earrings (especially popular). a cafe on Saturday was packed with youth singing along to a live band. every stranger i have encountered so far has been absolutely kind, helpful, and unendingly patient (as per public transit behavior – no rush, no shove, no worry if this train’s full). fresh fruit and great coffee are consumed in great, affordable quantities. signs of attempted renewal are apparent; the new Metro line 4 will connect Luz, the center of the Centro’s down and out, with distant nodes beyond Pinheiros, where office towers and busy boulevards abound. (the flier campaign for this line depicts a perky hipster couple being joined by the line). despite the large number of abandoned buildings, construction is visible, as are attempts to use building and retail projects to vitalize certain areas (ex. Itaquera). contrary to my expectation, the sky is not saturated with helicopters (although they are audible during evening rush hour), and walled enclaves, where they do occur downtown, still retain a visual porosity in the form of the fence, rather than the thick concrete wall. the sidewalks are inhabited, and after being in Johannesburg, this feels like cause for celebration...not that using Jo’burg as a measuring stick is necessarily healthy. but Sao Paolo, at least in its downtown areas, has a more ubiquitous vitality than stories of crime and segregation would lead one to anticipate.

random oddity: the prevalence of dates in street names such April 7th, March 25th, July 9th, May 23rd – all undoubtedly dates of significance. most cities cite famous people, monuments, and landmarks, creating connection between the naming of a place and a physical thing. on Sao Paolo streets, ideas of place and time become conflated. for example, on April 7th there is a great galeria . . . these galerias are a remarkable aspect of the city. usually occupying the first 3 to 5 floors of block-width buildings, they are essentially open-ended malls situated around a central atrium. most are serviced by central escalators, and boast circumferential balconies on the upper floors, and occasionally level 1 is below grade. part retail, part food court, part public space, part corridor, they are infrastructure at its most versatile and express a generous idea about an ‘edificio’s’ relationship to the street and to the public.

the open-closed building is elsewhere evident; Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompei leaves its gymnasium façades punctured by enormous holes and entrances, USP’s architecture building is organized around a courtyard accessed through an open entry between the building’s pilotis, not to mention its library patio, created from a void in the plane of the glazing and pushed to the floorplate’s utmost edge. unforgettably though, in spite of its airy, flexible layout, the architecture school is simultaneously becoming cave/grotto: lime, which is leaking from the concrete ceiling, has created baby stalactites which hang down like icicles from the waffled ceiling. in one spot, i found a small bump on the floor. it was the beginning of a stalagmite.

2007-09-29T11:17:00.000-07:00

posting from within the tranquil ground-floor of the Copan, SP. here is where the building´s genius truly lies, the street´s topography coaxed into this small-town arcade of laundromats, coffee-shops, and video stores. the ground falls away in a graceful curve, like the building´s facade.

forty-eight. tidbits: M.C.´s generosity.
* the flag in the Zocolo. a monumentally-sized favorite meeting spot, especially in the mid-afternoon sun, when the billowy fabric above throws a wafting shadow on the stones + people below.

* a tiny amphitheatre + reading space within the .5 mile underground corridor between the Zocolo + the Pino Suarez metro stations. this entire subterranean route has a reading theme, and is lined with small, glaze-fronted bookstores and the occasional corridor cafe.

* 9.21, an attempt at color in a low-income housing project, Ixtapaluca. the accretion and the sameness look neurotic, but at least cheerfully so. this city-outskirt settlement brings with it an entire typology of suburban accoutrement: down the street is a Wal-mart / Suburbia complex + Burger King. however, mixed heterogeneously into the big-box virus remains the fabric of small-scale storefront retail, which remains dominant. an outdoor market a few miles down the road was, in effect, an outdoor Wal-Mart in scope and variety of affordable junk available: electrical plugs, colorful underwear, cheap tools, fried food, artificially-flavored sweets, health + beautycare, etc.

* between Ixtapaluca and the city, along high-speed rte. 190, the wall between the roadside towns and the highway is punctured every few miles to allow for a pasero stop + bright-yellow pedestrian overpass. as the road approaches the city, more formal housing blocks are separated from the highway via a wide tree-planted median, upon which i saw a few joggers.

* Sunday in Alameda Park. the place overflows with public enjoyment. couples laze on the patches of grass, hawkers sell food, jewelry, and music, the city’s Secretary of Culture sponsors staged events (ex. hyper-slick DJ’s from Germany). a handful got their serious groove-on while the rest gawk-bobbed in curiosity. the beats were hard and seductive for a lazy afternoon.

* always, the easily-accessible publication of events, which makes free gallery openings and $1 concerts a near-daily event. Claudia Nierman’s show was strange but sporadically smart, juxtaposing soft images of the body with the metallic or stone overlays of buildings, statues, stairs, doorframes, dilapidated corners of rooms: “it is hard to tell what is soft and what is hard, what is foreground and what is back. does the building or the body come first, and who is clothing whom? are buildings openings to the body, or the body openings to buildings? do we inhabit space, or does it inhabit our cavities?” i also went to Stephan Demming´s video exhibit, ‘The Edge of the City,’ re. his documentary by the same name. traveler, cartographer, video-wandered, director, and collage artist, he seeks to understand the urban boundary as being comprised of ‘spaces and daily activities’ rather than of lines, walls, and rules.

Mexico City’s graphic communication cannot be underestimated. its historical legacy of non-verbal public communication in the way of murals extends to the functional everyday (ex. transit), and makes it one of the more freely-navigable metropolises i have been in. moreover, the graffiti, while generally mediocre, is occasionally brilliant: a blank double-panel sidewalk-level billboard space of light blue paper over layers of older paper + rust had been carved into and read, via the removal of layers, the thick letters: PARANOIA PARADISE... on a main avenue, for all to celebrate.

9.24 Nezahualcoyoti, garbagetown dusk.
a highly-gridded area squeezed on the edge of the FD boundary, just beyond the reach of the Pantitlan Metrostation, Neza is home to a handful of famous athletes and criminals whose past-times include Olympic bike-racing, boxing, and the collection of human ears. the streets are as straight as a razor, and on clear days, lead southward to a stunning view of snow-covered Popo. the main drag is graced with another center median, thickly grown and narrow, upon which a woman was picking some herbs, and at one point in the middle of which a basketball court was barely squeezed. the vitality of the downtown area petered out at a place called ‘garbagetown,’ where my acquaintance once played as a child, and now avoids like the plague, understandably – although there was no stench. still, the melancholy sight of isolated shacks amidst heaps of plastic flyaway scraps and the silhouettes in the distance – human figures, backhoes, and a torn Mexican flag, blowing in the wind – could not be soothed by the mountains and the hugeness of the sky on that elevated plain. desolate, deep purple. the ride home this last night in the City was long and silent.

2007-09-24T10:39:00.001-07:00

forty-seven. city edges.
9.19, Vitali + Cuautepec
heavy rain made the evening commute more brutal than usual. usually walkable distances were rendered intolerable (street and sidewalk flooding due to poor drainage is a serious issue). moreover, the frequency of trains can be erratic, so flow volume accumulated quickly and the 5 minute waits yielded already-full compartments. after waiting two rounds without successful embarkation, i ran home in the rain – by far the quickest way to cover a mile in such conditions, rail, taxi or bus included. for all the traffic, however, the paseros here are so easy to use, as most routes end or begin at Metro stations, so even if you’re not sure exactly where you’re going there are navigable benchmarks that allow you to plug back into the mapped Metro system. more importantly, the buses are well-signed, in contrast to Jo’burg, where mini-bus know-how was entirely by word of mouth and experience. however, some residents swear against them – their horrid road rules (or lack thereof), the corruption and perceived disorganization of the system (cronies leasing buses at impossible rates, licenses which are sold first and foremost for profit), the sheer shoddiness of some vehicles.

the day was incredible though, and was spent traveling to the city fringe by Metrobus, pasero, and then foot (Mexico city is the first city i’ve been in that supports the textbook zoom derive). it pertinently ended at a gallery opening of Massimo Vitali’s “A portfolio of landscapes with figures.” (http://www.massimovitali.com/) his large-format, washed out photos feature hordes of people vacation-playing against a backdrop of sea, snow, and industry. the human figures loom plasticine and super-saturated while the mountains, smokestacks, or granite-cliffs fade into abstract washes in the background. the density and clarity of his figures render his canvases into ‘Where’s Waldo’ exercises; invariably he captures a handful of figures either looking straight at, or deliberately hiding from, the camera. more innocently, he also captures couples in various states of (dis)affection, people frozen in physical play, or in self-conscious self-scrutiny (a women primping in a compact mirror, another women adjusting her bikini-clad breasts, etc.). the tone of his work is complex – at first the harsh, surreal color schemes read like frigid satire, but the subjects are too detailed to become symbolic; in spite of their sheer number each remains a subject clearly demarcated in space, suspended in water, sliding over snow, sunning on rock, pursuing health, beauty, and fun, but imperfectly so – bodies are squishy, faces are caught in distorted expression, azure waters support oil tankers in the distance. his panoramas are especially poignant, as he leaves the edge of each frame ambiguous and slightly overlapping, such that the movement of figures can be followed from one frame to the next. i can’t say whether the work is politically laden, but it does offer a succinct representation of the human compulsion to embrace nature, industry, and play in equal measure. the fact that this juxtaposition is rarely idyllic simply highlights the ultimate inevitability of human fallacy.

today’s earlier exploration out to Cuautepec was marked by topography, density, and an essential interplay of the official and informal that is distinctly Mexico City (or what I have observed of it). Indios Verdes is the northern terminus of both the Metrobus and line 3 of the Metro; from there it is a stop-start 45 minute ride further north into the Cuautepec district, which is pressed against a mountainous ecological conservation zone and is within the northernmost protrusion of the Federal District’s boundary. as the road gently slopes up to meet the hills, dense commercial activity and stoplights give way to smaller-scale shops, diminished traffic, and densely packed CMU housing that clings and climbs up the hill. however, the sense of a main road (or two) is maintained, from which near-vertical stairs or secondary roads off-shoot perpendicularly, maintaining a surprising loyalty to the grid which rules so much of the downtown layout (and which is a legacy of cosmically-driven Aztec city planning). from a distance it was unclear whether the neighborhoods were serviced by infrastructure, but powerlines, streetlights, paved roads, and sewage pipes that follow the road layout attest to the positive, as did an FD garbage truck and squeaky clean streets. visually, it is difficult to not feel enamored at the sight of this extremely topographical, high-density residential area where most grey single family homes reveal vivid splashes of color on doors or window frames (although some older, lower, larger houses were entirely painted, and not necessarily for the better).

the pasero climbed up into this well-ordered melee for a surprising distance, almost to the visible edge of allowable building zone. this is marked distinctly by a wall which snakes horizontally over the ridges of the hills, and resembles a less-glamorous Great Wall. (this settlement boundary is visible on other hillsides around the city fringe and is not limited to Cuautepec). the walls are built once the informal settlements begin to grow, and the infrastructural services are the result of community mobilization and petitioning of the government. curious as to what happens at this literal edge i climbed further until the wall revealed itself as a simple concrete boundary, no higher than my 5’2”, mostly grafittied, and usually topped with a second layer of chain-link. however, the wall had a gate, which was open, and which led into the conservation zone and along a path of extremely green, pristine grass, lush wildflowers, and copious eucalyptus trees. it was stunning, the contrast to the hill houses made more startling by the proximity of the highly built to the left-untouched, and the apparent respect for the wall’s function as boundary seemingly total. in other words, the hardness of the boundary and its efficaciousness allowed for the proximity and extreme contrast, and i was left wondering how/why the wall’s legitimacy is so-well maintained. perhaps the presence of infrastructural service (and its obvious absence of the other side) might partly account.

also noteworthy was the fact that in areas where the foothills were steepest and closest to the main street, social and commercial activity were more vibrant, perhaps due to a greater population flow down into flat open space, but also, i surmise, because of a spatial-visual effect that renders the main street + hill into something of an abstract, intuitive plaza or coliseum-like space. as i mentioned before, i have seen churches and public spaces here that are demarcated by descent, and wonder if public space in these hills isn’t created as a hollow collects water by gravity. relatedly, the steepest streets were the most colorful -- the most well-planted, the most occupied, the best-cared for.

Ecatepec, 9.17.
back-tracking here... Ecatepec municipality is beyond the boundary of the FD but is still within the Mexico City Metropolitan Zone, and is the conurbation’s largest municipality (after the FD). many of its residents commute into the city, thus justifying Metro line B’s extension far beyond the FD boundary in order to service the area (while most Metro lines stay within the FD). out here the line resembles the Pittsburgh-Bay Point BART -- aboveground, sandwiched between opposing lanes of Av. Hank Gonzalez -- the station serving not so much as an urban node as a pit-stop along a highway from which subsidiary transit carries passengers into the towns that have their own centers, far from the highway. immediately adjacent to the highway and the overpass-station there is a hectic tangle of paseros, a smattering of street-stalls, and another Wal-mart/Suburbia shopping center. everything feels transitory in this zone, ready to escape.

the VW-style mini-van pasero is more prevalent out here than the army-tanker style pasero that runs roughshod in Mexico City center. since the highway + metro split the area into two distinct halves, i headed west, towards the distant hills which were draped in what looked to be informal housing. true to the grid, a highly developed thoroughfare ran due west perpendicular to the highway, and i walked for a couple miles along this road, passing through several distinct zones – a predominately noisy and congested commercial area close to the highway, followed by a smaller-scale, predominately auto-repair area with perpendicular mews-like shared yards between rows of facing homes (see photo above; they were amazingly tranquil and well-planted spaces for such proximity to the main drag), then over a canal which was a distinct border into a slightly less well-kept area of similar use, across the busy Via Morelos and suddenly into an industrial zone of semi-trucks, warehouses, dusty roads and mostly men. food processing seemed to be the dominant industry; i saw a truckload of beans, and smelled sweet caramel as i continued towards the hills, trying to look as non-chalant as possible with my Chaco’d toes and double X chromosomes. i never got there, however, as the industrial zone dead-ended into the Autopista Pachuca, with no visible way across, so i hung a sharp south and headed instead for a renegade hill with a smaller neighborhood clinging to its slopes.

this settlement hovered directly above the small industrial area in what was a poster-child candidate for environmental injustice. fortunately, the factories weren’t spewing smoke but emitting sugar-smells, and the only immediate pollution was that of a low rumble of machine noise. the several hundred houses up here were serviced only by uneven dirt roads that could barely support auto-traffic but that were a healthy playground for 4-legged furries (dogs, cats, horses) and that provided the best views in the area. it is still strange to see this socio-economic inversion in relation to topography; i am accustomed to hills, as in the U.S., being areas of prime real-estate for the views they afford. here in Mexico, the plain is prime, the hills are inconvenient, and create an edge against which the undesired is pushed, along with the highways and the industry. in a city that developed long before the engine and was once surrounded by lake, this penchant for the flat and center makes sense, while i surmise that SF or LA’s initial spatial divisions are less divorceable from a carriage, tram, or car’s ability to navigate the distance and curves.

after a quiet hour exploring the hillside, i descended dusty-footed down an informal footpath that overlooked a grocery store and landed in the backyard of a gas station where i waited for my maniacal bus-ride home. along the (terrifying) way we followed a decommissioned railway track that ran down the middle of a grassy median dividing the 6 lane road. although my driver believed otherwise, the road wasn’t a highway but was lined with shops, neighborhoods, pedestrians, and the railbed-median was tree-lined, suggesting great potential for a linear park. in other areas the tracks had been sheared to make room for a built intervention, leaving behind a ruin of of thick, cleaved iron ties.

once back downtown and re-plugged into the Metro system, i witnessed a chaotic outbound rush hour scene in which arm-waving cops were stationed at flimsy portable barricades in order to ensure that no men lined up for the first two train compartments. a recent campaign to reserve these cars for women-only is the result of an alleged increase in harassment, and while many stations yield signs demarcating as much, these are rarely heeded. in a crowded city where 2 out of 6 seem to travel as a couple, the system has yet to prove its pragmatism or pragmatism, and as such, it is not yet defened by the city's public.

2007-09-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

forty-six. collection: recollections.
my days have been less cohesive of late due to some logistical nightmares, so here are a few small pockets from along the way...

Independence celebration at the Zocolo, p.m. 9.15.
the Zocolo celebration began with an appetizer on the 42nd floor of the Torre Latino, a 1950’s sky-scraper of still-graceful proportions and seismic stability (photos from the 1985 quake show surrounding low-stories in a heap of concrete and rebar rubble, while the tower remained unscathed...) i wanted to see what a crowd of 80,000 might look like from above, crammed into the streets that lead towards one of the world’s biggest public squares. seeing the city spread out in twilight was illuminating, the 9 to 5 business center strangely dark, and lights densifying towards the periphery and up into the hills and mountains that circle the city in organic pattern. the noise below was audible, as party horns were blown, and pedestrian hawkers shouted their wares into the crowds. the most popular were the aerosol cans of pseudo shave-cream, and ‘cream’-proof face masks that looked like riot guards. the shaving cream fights are one of the night’s most popular activity, perhaps acting as a stand-in for more vehement oppositional activity? it was easy to surmise from the 42nd floor that patriotism infuses infrastructure here, as every intersection glowed red, green, and white from the stoplights and headlights. it was also evident that, while the Zocolo draws the biggest crowd, more local celebrations were being held at smaller plazas, such as the Republica.

the entry to the square was armed with metal detectors and a line of riot-ready police, leaning solemnly in a row against a stone building. it was an alcohol-free event, although this does not explain the eager cops running out of 7-11 with a six-pack of beer in tow...still, this is probably a good decision given the sheer size of the crowd, the largest i have ever been in, and, uncannily, the calmest. after watching on megascreens the beautiful singer shake her red, white, & green booty on stage, the cameras focused on the small balcony of the Palacio Nacional, where Calderon was due to emerge at 11pm to deliver the annual grito (cry for Independence). this was preceded by twenty minutes of patriotic music delivered through speakers which hung, corpse-like, from cranes positioned throughout the square. lighted renditions of the flag and famous faces were aglow everywhere, hanging from the buildings, although as the evening wore on certain panels blacked out leaving behind patchwork visages. it was divinely windy enough for the massive centre-square Mexican flag to be catching some wind. (the only other flags i have seen that rival this one in size can be found along American autorows).

the president over-waited his enthusiastic welcome by trying to build too much anticipation. with the end of each song the crowd cheered and bleared, only to be greeted with another song (or, at one point, a dignitary coming onto the balcony and yelling, “uno!....dos!....tres!....” he then went back inside and the music continued). the one protest banner, earlier hanging from an upper balcony of a fancy rooftop restaurant, was removed; the banner had called from the ‘legitimate president’ (Obrador) to take office, following a too-close-to-call result scandal during the 2006 election (familiar?). by the time Calderon emerged, speck-sized, to give his 45 second hoorah, babies were crying, a few adults were yawning, and the event was anti-climactic. if nothing else, however, this ritual marked the beginning of a lengthy and dramatic firework display right over the crowd. a man not too far from us got pummeled in the face with a chunk of firework debris, and the rest of us did our best to simultaneously gape upwards while avoiding the ash-missiles which seemed attracted to the moist tissue of the eyes. it was a total blast (literally), and i felt a strange commiseration with the 4 year old girl who was bawling against her daddy’s shoulder while also pointing at the fireworks in amazement.

for all of the pomp, the evening’s most interesting events were subsidiary: the first was the experience of mass exodus once the fireworks ended. every crowd has its own behavior, and this one was akin to one big organism that, if it had a form, would be a large, squishy, slow, quiet being that was covered in confetti. it was similar to being on a ship -- rocked, rolled, and lulled by the sea, once in awhile being jolted but mostly being gently coerced into some forward motion that was neither flow nor a lurch but flurch. the second, more minor discovery was that of the best roast chicken-stand in the city, on the corner next to a 7-11 one block from Insurgentes Circle. at 2am, it was the evening’s biggest cause for celebration.

staccato Sunday, 9.16
the day was a musical score of highs and lows, each in quick succession. the 18th century Museo San Carlos building is situated around the corner from the Casa, and similarly to other uniquely sectioned entrances i have seen in Mexico, its foyer was approx 8’ below sidewalk level via stone stairs (recalling Tepotzlan’s churchyard, which is also entered through descent, and from more dusty memory, recalling Hong Kong shopping centers and hotels, which sometimes provide access to their sub-ground floors directly from the street). after leveling out for a pause the building’s roof disappears and opens into a slightly elliptical courtyard of horizontally diminutive but vertically expansive effect. the staircase which leads to the upper-storey exhibition space was also noteworthy, its underside supported by a quarter-arch, in turn supported by a column.

less than a half-dozen blocks away sleeps the recently (in)completed and thereafter closed hulk of Alberto Kalach’s Biblioteca Jose Vasconelos. prematurely opened in May 2006, allegedly in too-quick time for the election, the library has already closed its doors for repair due to leaks and water damage. when i visited, a pair of bored guards sat in the foyer while the echoes of music played somewhere from within the concrete and glass bowels. unable to gain access inside i craned my neck at the quarter-mile long louvered facade and lamented the shoddy detailing (glazing that meets concrete floor via bead of silicone, for ex.) and the already fatigued look of disuse and neglect. the library’s adjacent bookstore is a single-storey glass box whose entrance is (again) sunken into a small courtyard, but the stone of the courtyard floor has already broken from sub-ground swelling and two of the large glass panels are broken (perhaps in protest, for many feel that this ill-managed mega-project was politically driven and a poor use of funds). there were no sounds of construction, and i am hoping that this was simply due to Sunday, rather than to prolonged inertia, which will likely turn the monolith into an even bigger moneypit.

around the corner from the library i beheld my first Mexico City Wal-Mart, which i have since noticed is often co-sited with a pink-hued ‘Suburbia’ department store and a VIPS orange-hued restaurant chain. it was and wasn’t just like American Wal-Mart: the warehouse size was nearly as big, but the parking was urban – stacked indoor garage, cramped outdoor space; the interior was stuffed with cheap crap, but of a much more radical hue; there were baked goods for sale, but some through bake-sale style open tables and bare hands; the sidewalk outside sported the usual ambulantes for the non-VIPS patrons. despite these small tokens of indigenous adoption, however, the corporation’s presence here never fails to raise a problematic response from myself and other travelers; people at the Casa who would never step foot inside the mega-store now willingly do so in order to patronize the produce department, where dark-green leafy things are on sale (hard to get at the stalls and corner stores). moreover, it is not just the arguable homogenization that the corporation represents so much as it is its mission to provide low-cost cheap shit. (don’t get me wrong – there is plenty of low-cost cheap shit on the street and in the mom and pop shops, but something about the smaller scale makes it at least visually more palatable).

from Wal-Mart a Metrobus ride took me south to our old Condesa haunt to see a mapping exhibit, where a Sunday afternoon revealed swarms of the well-dressed meandering through Parque Mexico (once a race track) and sipping espresso on sidewalk cafes. Condesa is currently the happening gourmand’s neighborhood, and pretty food served on very large plates were in abundance at its multiple eateries. the exhibit already over, i opted for the long walk home through Insurgentes Circle up to Paseo de la Reforma. Insurgentes is worth mentioning for its amazing sectional quality in which a circular roundabout for bus and cars is elevated above a sunken plaza lined with retail shops, which are tucked beneath the road itself. in order to get into the plaza there are stairs which pass under the roadway. to the north, this tunnel-underpass shields a cluster of densely packed tarp-covered street stalls which produce a cacophony of music. these stalls give way to a more formalized tree-lined pedestrian mall (Genova Ave), which dead-ends into Paseo de la Reforma’s regal officialness, along with the freakish series of ‘art benches’ that line the avenue. these are, for the most part, unused, but some are humorous and bizarre (ex...the bench for two that looks like cemetery headstones), and a few make for cozy teenage make-out nooks. not surprisingly, most people choose to sit on the plain stone benches.

evening cowboys in the rain, 9.18
i saw something new this afternoon, which was a man on the metro doing somersaults over a pile of glass which he carried around in a pouch made from a tee-shirt. there was a momentary buzz of amazement inside the compartment, but after one or two rolls people went back to what they were doing.

i also thought of cowboys this afternoon, having taken the Metrobus north to its terminus at Indios Verdes, and again, praying for my life in the process. at Indios Verdes all spectrum of transit formality is present; in this part of town the Metro runs aboveground through the middle of Insurgentes, which here swells to become the Autopista Mexico Pachuca, rising into the hills. the Metrobus terminus lies to the west of the road, where on one side of a fence the clean red, white, and green Metrobuses line up, and on the other, a mass of private buses lie in semi-chaotic wait to embark on their routes due north and west. they range in size from the mini-van variety up to the behemoth tourbus-type. the back of the lot is relegated to vehicle maintenance and cleaning, where drivers with oily hands peer into hoods and under tail-pipes, sweep accumulated garbage from the bus onto the ground, and otherwise hang out until work calls. it felt not unlike a corral, and while the modern-day horse has always been the motorcycle, i wondered if these men weren’t of a similar cowboy genre, reckless and itinerant within the urban landscape, somewhat collectively organized but ultimately out to fight the city traffic, and each other, in solitude. more than half the buses i have been on boast a prominent religious icon front and center above the windshield, usually Jesus. i have yet to decide whether this is a soothing thing, or whether it means i am in the hands of a driver where only Hail-Mary’s will save me.

2007-09-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

forty-five.5: between logistics . . .
9.13, tonight the storm has come later than usual. after walking long and slowly from the westerly Polanco neighborhood ‘home’ to the Casa de los Amigos (a Quaker-run guesthouse once designed by Luis Barragan for Jose Clemente Orozco), i have recovered from a guilty global cup of coffee which deservedly produced some sort of instinctive revolt: once in awhile these well-heeled neighborhoods of boutique hotels and sidewalk cafes become too smoothly convenient to digest well. the sani-wrapped plastic fork, the over-sized small ‘tall’, the Journal and its takeovers and conglomerates, the subservient dog being abused by his extremely preppy owner – such minutiae can produce in a fatigued mind a surreal and unproductive time-space glitch. nonetheless, this encounter with bad coffee-culture does not epitomize all of the Polanco area, which otherwise boasts quiet avenues that avoid sterility by virtue of the lush greenery and the eclectic homes lining the streets. sometimes the case in transitional zones, as Polanco gives way to the ambiguous zone around the Circuito Interior highway, its charm succumbs to a little too much intentional flair. (ex. the avenue where i had my coffee probably boasts Mexico's highest concentration of bridal boutiques).

i discarded my half-finished acidic cup to the cheers of my stomach, which was still rumbling from the best moment of my day -- lunch: two stewed tacos pulled out of a trunk on a pristine street corner. Polanco’s gentile residential thoroughfares do not allow for the informal ambulantes that otherwise infuse the city. however, the demand for tasty street food still exists, so cars full of food simply drive into the neighborhood during lunch hours and park on the street. this practice seems accepted by everyone, including the guards and cops hovering around the very popular trunk where i enjoyed my tacos, along with the rest of the local white-collar crowd.

continuing centre-bound, i crossed the Circuito Interior on the lime-green pedestrian overpass, gazing down on the clog (northbound) and stream (southbound) of traffic. women selling knick-knacks take advantage of the stop-go traffic and walk between the highway lanes touting their goods. even at this slow and sporadic speed the pursuit was brave, but i imagine it’s a well-understood rhythm, not unlike that known by the stoplight street-performers and 10- second windshield washers. (the fire breathers have gotten under my skin more than most, as their soot-covered faces and rag-covered mouths belie a visible physical sacrifice). the Circuito serves as a hard and disruptive boundary between waning Polanco and the middle speed, middle class residential neighborhoods that dissipate out from the E-W Paseo de la Reforma and its CBD. long-angled 5pm light cast tree shadows against the sides of comfortably worn buildings, illuminating how well the vibrant color scheme of the city works in this phenomena of dark-skied, golden-hued summer afternoons. the sidewalk ambulantes prepped for the evening crowd in semi-silent concentration, and it was easy to notice how easily and readily people smile here, looking each other in the eye. this is the same social quality i’ve enjoyed while using the Metro; even during a peak-hour commute, crowds are flowing but unhurried, and people seem to move in a focused but slow-motion river of spacious bobbing. the rhythm is comforting, and the underground warmth soporific.

Mexico City’s got it – the thing i wasn’t sure existed – some workable balance of the formal and informal. there are just enough cracks in the official here, just enough need for common-sense opportunism, just enough colorful rebellion, to enliven the everyday with that element of spontaneous humanism. the social effect of the city's ubiquitous food ambulantes – that strangers in suits and teens in caps and workers in overalls all stand on a corner eagerly biting into delectable, affordable antijitos – cannot be underestimated. the act is leveling, and honest, and makes me wonder if the vitality of a city’s pulse doesn’t somehow reside in how openly her residents will imbibe together in public.

2007-09-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

forty-five. still moving ground...
...in reference to both Mexico City’s continued groundsink (the center sits upon what was once a lake), and to the city’s notorious traffic.

to be in the delightful expansive kinetic swath that is Mexico City and feel as if i’m finally getting a ‘breather’ highlights just how relative everything becomes within this nomadic endeavor . . . i arrived here from St. Pete’s via a long & saturated detour that included 3 Archi-candy packed days in highly-designed Berlin (holy Hauptbahnhof, screams its glass-covered motherlode of a transit node), straight to Philly (flying lushly over Dublin, Ireland) for cheese-steaks and fly-by family-time, on to Mexico-city duet style with my favorite travel companion whose departure has left me wondering which of us is traveling? we spent a week lulling in the Condesa neighborhood’s idyllic urban arbors, strolling squishy-shoed on mossy sidewalks, past a plethora of modern concrete and glass cubes (they rise like mushrooms in Mexico’s well-to-do areas), through the daily late-afternoon thunderstorms that turn every hue in this megalopolis into exaggerated electric contrasts against the sky’s green-grey, pausing beside every street food vendor, above the ruins of Tenochtitlan and below those of Teotihuacan, and climbing the highway hills south to tiny Tepotzlan where some anticipated non-urban R&R was hilariously sabotaged by the town’s annual pulque/firework/marching band festa (2am crash, 3am bang, 4am boom...). nonetheless, the excursion was a relaxing riot of sorts, and clinging our way up the vertical trail to the Tepoztec pyramid that is perched above the town reminded me of open spaces and working lungs.

back in this conurbation-turned-metropolis of 20+ million, i am reminded of a tangled necklace of idiosyncratic beads, where distinct neighborhoods connect by snarls of traffic and the efficient but overpacked (not by Tokyo standards) ribbon of metro below. it’s hard not to notice the vibrant playfulness of movement even during the rush-hour squeeze; a campaign to empower the illiterate has rendered the metro system color coded and highly pictorial, with every station having its own symbol of a local claim to fame, and every standardized ‘exit/entry/don’t smoke/transfer’ sign depicting a silhouetted man in white-collar garb explicating the words. while i have yet to witness uninhibited disregard for social decorum, the sobriety of the train compartment or the Metro Bus (which runs in a designated lane along the N-S Insurgentes Ave.) is usually punctuated by subtle displays of pda, the occasional CD-hawker or guitar player, or any number of cherubic, snacking children, sporting innovative hairdos. catching glimpses of other peoples’ smallest pleasures is a pleasure unto itself, and tonight after a frustrating day spent chasing pricey plane tickets and Brazilian visas in my barely conversant version of Spanish (actually a horrendous amalgamation of English-French-Italian), sign language, and drawing, i noticed how truly public-private the corridors of the Metro are. once i noticed them they were everywhere: the couples stealing a moment of anonymous privacy within the crowd of people, resting against a wall, crouched along the floor, kissing, talking, hugging, arguing quietly. some might nourish these stolen subterranean moments with an underground slice of Domino’s pizza or a fresh donut (both prepped in on-site ovens). i have yet to discern whether this phenomena-of-twos is due to numerous inter-office relationships which temporarily end with the evening commute, or to a taboo regarding at-home pre-marital dating, or to the oft-likely late-summer downpour that occurs sometimes between 5 and 7pm (at least, during hurricane season).

still, for the relative ease and pleasure of using the metro here there are major gaps; resident drivers cite that the system is over-crowded and maxed-out, often necessitating extended waits during peak hours while too-full Metro buses or train compartments open their doors to stares of unmoving rejection. a semi-formal system of mini-bus paseros, whose boxy bodies recall decommissioned army vehicles, have opportunistically filled in the gaps but are notoriously aggressive in their driving tactics. the government, in an effort to both raise money and increase regulation, sells licenses for both these paseros and the multiple taxi genres that cruise the city. most taxis now sport roof-top licenses, perhaps as a disturbing remnant or counter-tactic to what was once a significant taxi kidnapping problem. in some ways the way you choose to move across this city depends on your preferred version of madness: cram like a sardine in an underground tube of limited reach (this is sometimes regarded as the domain of the lower class), get an arm caught in the closing and soggy doors of a crowded Metro Bus (again a system of limited extents), or tolerate an hour of auto traffic to travel 5 miles in twilight frustration. having experienced all three, the latter is easily my last choice, but for some the privacy and (arguable) freedom of an car is worth it, and perhaps even provides a little time to decompress to some music between work and home.

occasional street performers, of the most literal kind, take advantage of the long waits at intersections in order to juggle or breathe fire for a few pesos. the other day i watched a man as i scurried across the avenue; he had painted his face into a melancholy rendition of a meant-to-be-laughing clown. he was old before his years and hunched, his pants unintentionally too large. he would juggle 4 or 5 rounds, stop, walk past rolled-up car windows for coins, stop, juggle a few more rounds, and proceed deeper into the pileup.

photos: from the air, behind the Zocolo, out of town, different neighborhoods, on the metro

2007-08-28T00:56:00.000-07:00

forty-four. St. Pete's brief.
the photos are temporal in sequence, L to R, T to B.

the first city i’ve been in this trip with such a dominant tourism industry, in certain areas St. Petersburg reads like an outdoor museum. with its ornate Milan-reminiscent buildings (replete with arched gateways), wide canals, densely-foliaged parks, word-class museums, literary and musical heritage, and complex, devastating political history (the city alone lost more citizens during its Hitler-led WWII blockade than the US and UK lost during the entire war, combined), it’s a playground of sights and stories and a stark contrast to Moscow’s unglamorous, over-sized, money-focused frenzy. however, not surprisingly, there seems to be an inverse correlation between a city’s desire to preserve itself and its rise as a metropolitan global powerhouse. St. Pete’s however, didn’t feel frozen in time, due in part to the staggering amount of restoration occurring; a solid 40% of all buildings are draped in the green panty-hose and dust of reconstruction. moreover, even barring the tourists, the social life of the city is vibrant and is most keenly felt at 1:30 a.m. strolling along the Neva River, where the city’s under-40 crowd gather to watch the Neva’s draw bridges rise for the night. these are the only hours during which the freighters and barges can pass from the Baltic Sea inland. everyone who must then scurries home northward to the Petrograd and Vyborg areas before the last bridge rises around 2:30, or else becomes stuck partying in the city until 5am – not a bad option in a 24-hour city. (a fixed-span bridge with high clearance was completed a couple of years ago, but lies upriver to the east). after an evening on the river with my local friend, Nikolay, whom i first met in Moscow, we grabbed an informal ‘taxi’ home. this entailed hailing a regular car, finding out if we were headed in the same direction, and negotiating a price. this efficient system (also used in Moscow) is supposedly safe, but when Nikolay’s female friends hail such cars, he takes down the license plate number.

earlier in the evening Nikolay was also describing a phenomenal series of urban games which started in St. Petersburg, and have now spread to Moscow. called ‘noshnoi dozor’ (not to be confused with the horror flick), they take place all night on sporadic Saturdays and entail using leftover and in-transition spaces -- underpasses, construction sites, etc. -- as sites in an urban scavenger hunt. in one version, called ‘deadline,’ teams of 6 or 7 players drive around the city with interactive online maps on their laptops. using these maps they must find, in sequence, a series of encodings in above-said urban spaces. once a code is found and entered into the map, the next site is revealed, and so-on. the codes aren’t actually puzzles, but rather, markers that indicate that a site has been ‘found’ by the participant. during a game weekend, Nikolay described a street scene: it’s the middle of the night, streets are empty, and at a quiet intersection you might see a huddle of 5 or 6 cars, the interiors glowing with the blue light of laptops screens: "such a strange scene is an indication that a game is on." i feel as if i missed out! the phenomena is still relatively underground, at least outside of St.P’s and Moscow. there are also versions in which participants travel by foot or roller blades, although the scale of Russia’s mother cities is most conducive to the car.

a few more snippets:

the plethora of tour buses. they squeeze through the streets and deposit their contents at the Hermitage where massive groups of spectators make a relaxed appreciation of the work therein something of an Olympian effort. still worth it, if only to deja vue masterpiece bronzeworks (circa 1600BC!) from the Shanghai Museum, which I saw in May, in Shanghai. Shanghai seems to have sent her best pieces here, undoubtedly aware of the global audience that the Hermitage gathers. perhaps more artworthy: outside the Hermitage i saw two public buses which had been converted into public toilets – a witty and portable use of the decommissioned vehicles. unfortunately, the interior configuration was so cramped that using them was gymnastical.

it’s dacha (summer house) season in Russia, which means in St. P’s on any given morning and afternoon babushkas set up tiny stands (overturned buckets, boxes, crates) on which they sell their family produce right off the sidewalk – blueberries, cranberries, lettuce, radish, and of course, the ubiquitous potato.

the metro: actually deeper than Moscow’s, due to a more delicate geomorphology. the ground is less stable here, being closer to the sea (not to mention the double-duty intent of bomb shelter). the system is newer than Moscow’s (1955), less glamorous and less extensive (distances between stations are greater, and make bus-use more of a necessity). but some stations do boast a unique platform configuration not seen in Moscow, in which metal doors keep the railbed completely isolated from waiting passengers. thus, the only part of the train you ever see are the opening doors and the yellow glow of train interior. the drama of a train’s approach, replete with oncoming headlights, rush of turbulent wind, and growing rumble, disappears and the system becomes even more silent than usual.

something about photographing in these two Russian cities: it is magical and surprising to catch the serendipitous, unintentional glances, sometimes accusing, sometimes pleased, always curious, always direct.

2007-08-22T03:31:00.000-07:00

forty-three. rings, walks, blocks.
only after arriving in St. Petersburg am i able to reflect on Moscow a little better: if Paris, Los Angeles, and Singapore met over a double espresso, Moscow might be their love-child. perhaps it’s unfair to squeeze everything into a comparative framework, but as i think i’ve mentioned before i find cities to be more similar than they are different, in the grand scheme of things. after exploring Russia’s capital near the fringes of the metro and the ring roads, the grandness of scale and the intentionality of boulevards, however sterile, recall Haussmann and Lee’s heavy-handed plannings, while the unlikely juxtapositions of the irreverent and the sacred, the pedestrian and the vehicular, the somber and the absurd recall a blin-filled cantankerous so-Cal. however, once drawing these similarities the real revelations are uncovered in the departures: the earnest skill and sober audience of the Okhotny-Ryad metro station string quartet, the pensive novel-readers found in most pocket parks, the here-today gone-tomorrow chrome-covered blini stalls, the abrupt shifts from consternation to friendliness, the 8am sidewalk beer breakfast, the earnest caricature of propaganda, and always, the guaranteed eye-to-eye glance that never falters (see metro photos previous entry).

8.16 Gray & Orange lines
walked from Galina’s pigeon-filled morning kitchen (she feeds them on the ledge until the sill is a flurry of feathers and crumbs) along the park-lined second ring road, past the open-air art installation, to the Pushkinskaya station where the world’s longest, narrowest, sleekest urban McD’s offered the usual restroom respite. from here it’s a 45-minute ride to the southern terminus of the gray line, along which stations become successively sterile in an unembellished, florescent late-80’s manner. emerging at Bulvar Dimitriya station confronts one with (yet another) McD’s, this time an exact transplant of the U.S.A. suburban typology (single storey, red-rood, parking lot) and an endless avenue of housing blocks to the north and south. from here there is an anomalous (mostly) elevated light-rail, which runs further south into a land of Transit-Oriented-Development, reminiscent of Singapore (including pastel color scheme). there is even a similar swath of flat green around each station, although along this line the swath is better connected and more inhabited than that in Singapore: sun-bathers by a pond, meticulous flower gardens, and playrounds were usually not more than 100 meters from the line. back at Bulvar Dimitriya a hubristic disregard for scale had me walking across another enormous park (surrounded by more housing blocks) and along a high-speed road over a bridge above the outermost 5th ring road. speed beside, speed below (all 10 lanes of it) and yet, there were worn footpaths, usable sidewalks, and other fellow pedestrians. however, walking along the congested 5th ring road wasn’t possible so a bus ride over to the orange line terminus and a subsequent 45 minute ride north back through the city center to the VDNKH station landed me at the surreal All-Russia-Exhibition center – a decommissioned 1950’s Soviet-sized agglomeration of neo-classical pavilions and aeronautical relics celebrating Russia’s heyday of scientific and architectural prowess. this nostalgic complex is flanked on both-sides by amusement parks, providing a raucous of roller-coaster screams and laughs that echo through the trees. the discovery of the Expo was serendipitous, as i disembarked the metro in order to ride the monorail from this station back over to the grey line, due west. however, the monorail’s lugubrious route through this part of the city seems to be an exhibit in and of itself – a modern-day compliment to the Expo, and a means to view the mega-monuments therein and around (space needle, TV tower, hotel).

8.17 Filyovskaya line
an anomaly for the system in that it’s largely above-ground. the Krylatskoye station exit is placed, like Park Pobedy’s, within the wide grassy median of a broad avenue (although unlike Park Pobedy this avenue is lined by residential high-rises). here a man with a beer sat on a bench and talked to a pigeon, and here i lay in the grass for a bit beneath the gleam of the windows and pale paint of the housing blocks above. the grass is an unnatural green, having only a few short months every year to reawaken its chlorophyll cells before the brutal climate of the year’s remainder returns. here on either side of the median run two lane roads of relatively laid-back speeds, until the median dead-ends into the more aggressive Rubylyovskoye Shosse, which reads, from north to south side: 16 storey housing blocks with ground-floor retail, sidewalk, 2-lane bi-directional traffic + bus stop, small grass median, 3-lane high-speed roadway (uni-direction), central grass median + trees, 3-land high-speed roadway (other direction), small grass median, 2-lane bi-directional traffic + bus stop, sidewalk + trees, and 5 storey low-rise housing blocks which run perpendicular to the road. occasionally there is an underpass or a glass-covered overpass for pedestrians to cross this wide river of motorways/grassways/busways/sidewalkways. near the Kuntsevskaya station, to which i walked, the central motorway splits and the southern half dips down, leaving the pleasantly-inhabitable median rising above and overlooking a stream of descending cars. a worn dirt footpath through the grass along this ‘cliff’ edge was evidence of opportunistic pedestrian traffic, and mimics the topography and use of the median which runs along the riverway closer to the city center.

8.19 circular Sunday
a day devoted to sight-seeing inadvertently turned into one of the more revealing routes in which the city’s avenues work like magnets (and safety zones), towers (once again) serve as deceptively ‘close’ landmarks in a city of flat, and yet again, the presence of the walkway along the most unlikely roadways allow pedestrianism while paradoxically, the sheer scale of distance does not.

the Victory Monument at Park Pobedy is over-the-top in both height and iconography. a 150m needle into the sky, it is covered with a cartoonish bas-relief representation of WWII, and further flanked by a semi-circular colonnade of football-field proportions. from here an attempt to navigate to Sparrow Hills found us passing the world’s smallest roller-coaster and other odd metal paraphenelia (including a haunting memorial to gulag victims, upon which little boys skateboarded, oblivious) before meandering through a quiet soviet-era housing complex where a handful of skinheads took an avid interest in following us for awhile. a quick-stepped attempt to get to safer ground landed us on the busy 4th ring road, where we followed the narrow sidewalk over the massive railbed emanating from Kievskaya station to the east. here the relics of industry (smoke stacks, warehouses) flanked the tracks, only a stone’s throw from Kutuzovsky Blvd’s Prada, Dior, and Gucci stores. following the ring road eventually brought us to a verdant section of the snaking Moskva river. here the river is flanked by the enormous tree-covered Sparrow hill, crowned by Moscow State University’s Stalinist wedding-cake skyscraper (one of seven throughout the city). here too roller bladers, walkers and joggers are free of the flow of cars, which are left parked at the gate. one can catch the riverboat up or downriver, or take the metro back into town. Sparrow Hill not providing the city panorama that was the day’s goal, i ventured solo back to Kutuzovsky in search of the 27th floor Red Bar, which i found after much wandering, only to realize i was exactly where i had started the day, near the entrance to Victory Monument. the tower that houses the Red Bar is hideous but forgivable, given its location along the river and across from the World Trade Center complex, currently under construction and visible from anywhere in the city, with its anomalous all-glass facade and arcing silhouette. this collection of buildings promises to try to be the new epicenter of Muscovite economic activity, and the new metro station which will serve it is named Moskva City, as if in contention with the Kremlin’s ideological hold on the city’s identity.

2007-08-14T02:21:00.000-07:00

forty-two. fish need bicycles.

unphotogenic and describable only in sporadic outbursts of unelegance, Europe’s largest city intimidates my meagre capabilities. the lens too small to capture the scales, the pronunciation too foreign to penetrate, the sporadic extroversion of people so unpredictable i rarely know if i will sink or swim when i leave the ‘house’ (currently a colorful, dusty boarding room on the 5th floor of a crumbling late 19th century block). this place is intoxicating, the well-organized infrastructural legacy of aristocracy-turned-communist dictatorship-turned-city-of-unbridled-speculation, all within a hundred years, still actively churns its evolution. in a surreal juxtaposition, this most strictly and easily navigable of cities (imagine: 5 concentric ring roads, one circular metro line, and 10 cross-sectional metro lines that radiate like a clock) is overlaid with the kinetic detritus of a still-adolescent capitalism: glittery pinks and purples abound, in shoes, skimpy shirts, hair trinkets, and even a few buildings; shiny black mercedes/BMW’s/HUMMRS congest city streets like a funeral brigade, threatening to squash the pre-’91 volvo spin-offs (Zhigulis); 40’s and cigarette packs are obtainable everywhere for just over a buck (and free to consume anywhere) while peaches (and other non-canned, non-jarred perishables) can cost up to $11 a pop (as in, one single fruit). and everywhere, the noise and dust of construction, usually done by hand, and fortunately, much of it renovation of 19th C. buildings.

Joe Moran in Reading the Everyday writes about the unnoticeables as perhaps the most telling aspects of people’s interaction with place. he mentions the concept of the queue. stereotypical tales of Soviet-Russia fill the mind with images of thickly-clothed men and women waiting hours in line while the bureaucratic machine turns it slow cog. none-too-accurate: the line is an institution here, was from the very first step on soil (immigration) and has continued as such (Red Square McD’s bathroom line 45 minutes, innumerable 10R port-o-potties which dot the city, portable beer and Russian tonic stands, Metro tickets, etc.). however, treatments of the line are just as telling: need not be straight, need not be single file, and indeed, need not be heeded. (the wordless cut is a common practice that everyone dolefully accepts without complaint).

the odd relationship between car and walkway here epitomizes the still-happening interaction of all that is big, shiny, and pricey with all that is slow, quiet, and heady. on Novy Arbat, on the western side of the city and within the bounds of the third ring road (rings one, two, and three define the rough center, while distant ring four defines the city limit), above-said luxury SUV’s drive on the storefront sidewalks with entitlement to park apparently where they please. the sidewalks on this main radial artery are sizable (approx 40’) but not surprisingly 3 tons of metal takes precedence over 60 kg of muscle and bone and pedestrians become outcast upon their own territory. this same sidewalk is also used in one segment, across its entire width, as a skatepark, rendering the lowly walker smooshed against either the windshields of cars, or the windshields of storefronts. given the lacklustre retail environment of this cheaply built strip-mall above which loom repetitive blocks of ex-soviet housing (strung in decorative christmas light wire), it’s impossible not to be awed by the tenacity of the shopper. in another instance, off the high-speed riverside parkway, the front doors of an apartment building exited onto a tree-lined terrace for sitting, which led to a narrow sidewalk, flanked again by a tree-lined driveway space. all this was directly adjacent to the roadway, such that parking at the apartment demanded a direct turn-off at 50mph into a driveway. for all of this sectional abruptness, however, the garden terrace and sidewalk were surprisingly serene.

given the high speed of the major roads here (some being 8 lanes wide like the 3rd ring road), the inflating size of the cars, and the sheer size of the city’s area and many of its major buildings, it’s a wonder that the car doesn’t reign more supreme, however. Moscow is a park-garden city extraordinaire, where people walk, read, eat, drink beer, strut, kiss, socialize wherever there is a tree and a patch of green. many of these parks are linear, squished between or adjacent to major arteries. highly hoppable iron fences delineate the integrity of their territory. unfortunately, what would have been an urban miracle of non-stop green space along the median of the second ring road is abruptly and temporarily halted here and there by Metro hubs which have sprouted into cinema-supermarket-liquor store-McDonald’s nodes (again, add blinking lights and occasional bad music). in such places society’s spectrum can be witnessed, where the valet-parked cars of the well-to-do line up outside overpriced restaurants and bars while the working class sit on the nearby grass, enjoying a 40 between 3 small plastic cups.

thus, the sacred is sporadic but one could easily argue that Moscow’s Metro is a linear underground site of something reverant. begun in 1935 and largely constructed under Stalin, it is a dense and efficient (as in, train every 2 minutes, max) network of vaulted, lamp-lit, sculpted space, each station with a ‘theme’ that runs consistently from the above-ground entrance hallway (NOT simply signed stairwells) and into the deep bowels of the earth. some stations are draped in the heavy-handed propaganda of pre-1991; this often occurs at the metro stations that service the major national railway stations, of which there are a half-dozen. somehow advertising remains minimal, a testament to the Metro’s historical communist legacy, and is limited to the compartments. entrance halls will also usually have a few booths and stalls for food, lottery, and/or theatre tickets (called ARTMETRO stalls). at 9 million riders a workday, this mechanical and human river of moving parts is shockingly sombre and quiet, the site of occasional exhibitions of true gentility (a guide to walk you where you need to go, a gift of clay sculpture from the hands of an old man) and also its breach (an ass-grab, a licentious wink). for such a deep system, you rarely feel as if you are underground in the same sense as other subway systems; this is partly due to the wide and high vaults of the ceilings, the atmospheric lighting, brightness of material (often stone), and the typical typology of a wide columnaded central hallway from which the two platforms extend. this sense of open centrality avoids the rat-denizen maze sensation, and although transfer stations do demand an underground walk between two lines, even the hallways that connect the lines are given spatial attention, rarely squeezing in from the open platform spaces.

for all of this heavy built infrastructure, there is a system of how things work here that has no spatial quality. corruption need not be grand for it to be powerful, and everywhere its presence in the everyday can be witnessed if you look. policemen who look no younger than 18 loiter in threes and fours in most Metro stations and on major street intersections, occasionally checking the ‘documents’ of anyone they please. if things aren’t in order, bribes, rather than fines or compliance, are commonplace – it is more lucrative to pocket the money than to make an official report, and less expensive to pay a bribe. everyone knows this, so the rule-of-law becomes flexible. one can hardly blame this system either; in current day Moscow the gap between salaries and prices is astonishing, and without this operative black-market of payments, people would probably starve or be evicted. on the long-distance trains it is typical for passengers to forego buying a ticket, simply paying the ticket conductor under the table and directly once on the train. the passenger saves 30%, the conductor makes cash, and the trains continue to be ‘officially’ underused despite their crowdedness. moreover, as my acquaintance said, ‘everyone does it so they can’t do anything about it.’ (this doesn’t work on the Metro’s automated gate system, although one student told me they usually get 3 to 4 people through on one swipe). this loss in revenue for state-managed undertakings might partially explain inflation and makes one wonder whether financial feasibility is maintained by the over-paying law-abiders (which will last for how long?)

this type of informal-formal doesn’t hold so much clout in the area of retail, where lightweight structures and stalls populate the streets and the train station hubs but are established enough to have price-boards. there are even national chains of stalls selling blini (crepes), hotdogs, or stuffed potatoes. other kiosks sell ‘produkti’ (fruits, veggies, meat products), others devoted more to ‘sin’ items (beer and cigs galore). after this sidewalk retail space come the tiny deli and knick knack shops, sometimes lined up along the sodium-lit street underpasses, sometimes isolated in a short row of 3 to 4 near a Metro station entrance... on up to the exorbitant supermarkets on well-established boulevards (a la Dean and Deluca). this gradation of formality is present elsewhere; at the Vernisazh weekend market (Kafka meets Walt Disney), old ladies near the entrance sell handfuls of (what looks like their own) jewelry directly from their lap. moving further into the market space yields foodcarts, which flank stalls of unimaginable blinwear: belts, bags, jeans, earrings, bras. next is the ‘official’ market, accessible through iron gate, where tourists drink beer while holding their recent purchases, stuffed in garbage bags (Matroishka dolls, chess sets, amber jewelry, propaganda print material, vintage military gear, bear-fur rugs, etc). above all of this panoply hover, in the foreground, pastel reproductions of tzarist Russia onion-dome buildings (in miniature, of course), and beyond that, brutal residential towers across the street. the market is both scathingly real and candy-coated; immigrants from all over Eastern Europe are understandably desparate to make a few rubles and the sheer ugliness of the site and surrounds is a reminder that Moscow’s wealthy Merc-riding sex kittens are the cream of the crop. at the same time, Russia’s history and heritage, which is real and ever-active, is put on display as charming novelty, to which we are unabashedly susceptible (ex. i almost bought a 1920’s leather military shoulder bag; it was so beautiful with the sweat and age of time, and god knows what its original owner endured). a similar phenomena happens in Beijing, in the lanes of the crumbling hutongs around the Forbidden City. but Vernisazh is isolated from the rest of the city. no everyday meat or bread shops flank the kitsch stores; this market is a concentrated exhibition of how absurdity and tragedy meet with desire to create irony.

2007-08-08T03:56:00.000-07:00

forty-one. Milan, II (+ Moscow hors d’oeuvre)
as usual, concluding the last city from the next. Red Square is distant in the window frame of my dinghy but friendly accommodation; one gets the sense that we’re illegal, or protected, in this get-up of non-signage, door codes, and dark hallways. in my frenetic journey from the airport to the city centre I sensed an amazing and mystifying city of Cyrillic tongue, gargantuan warehouses, minute huts, and facadeless housing blocks (I had a Singapore relapse at one point in the train-ride). the Metro more beautiful, and more deep, than any subterranean rail system i have ever seen: lonely violin performers eek out a living through sad songs that reverberate off these buried marble hallways. it’s like being within a Russian tome. middle-aged women with metallic blonde locks and hardened eyes monitor turnstiles, gates, check tickets amidst swarms of humid, noiseless, pushing commuters . . . the energy here, or the brief shot that i have absorbed, is adolescent punk and intoxicating.

i rewind to Milan: an easy city to wander, yet not full of idiosyncratic minutae that make recounting every route worthwhile; themes appear easily enough.

Milan is a trade-fair city, and though everything is resting right now, come September the hotels will be chock-full. Fuksas’ infrastructurally-sized glass roof at Rho Fiera is currently closed, but gaping from the gate is enough to see its massive (mostly) elegance. for all of its length it is inverse-thin. more interestingly, however, is its placement at the current-city periphery, the terminus of Metro Line one. adjacent is a major highway construction site. the old convention center (Fiera Milanocity), in the process of being decommissioned, was once no doubt the ‘periphery,’ a testament to Milan’s growth and her intentional planning: outer areas are classified into ‘zones,’ each with its own Integrated Plan boasting architecture-to-be. this Fiera Milanocity will be turned into a high-rise ‘green’ luxury residential showcase featuring Hadid and Liebeskind. currently, the city is vying for the 2015 Universal Exposition, true to its decades’- old engagement in global fairs (ex: Gio Ponti’s 1933 100m. tall Torre Branca, next to the Triennale, built in 2 months for the ‘Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts + Modern Architecture Exhibition”). like Jo’burg’s FIFA, Shanghai’s 2010 Expo, and Beijing’s Olympics, these events are tickets to development and a blessing for some, a disaster for others (shack-dwellers are particularly vulnerable to displacements in the name of world-city beautification, as in the case of Jo’burg).

the linear park: noticeable at the Public Gardens, near which I stayed, and the Parco Sempione, near Stazione Nord. in both cases a major vehicular thoroughfare has separated the parks near their edges, resulting in a narrow band of green of cleaved green. these linear ‘parks’ become transitional zones between roadway, tramway, and backstreet (at the Public Garden) or between roadway and railway, serving as a buffer from the walled rail-bed (Stazione Nord). my guess is that the parks came first, the roads small routes within them, that have grown over time. in general, the ‘transition’ is prevalent at all scales in Milan: the doorways lead to deep open foyers which open onto verdant courtyards, or, at churches such as S. Ambrosia or S. Lorenzo Maggiore, the ruins of a gateway are left standing to claim the territory of the church square (at S. Lorenzo the detached Roman columns are a popular nighttime hangout for beer-swilling teens). the old canals at the southern edge of the city center (in particular the Navigli Pavese) are decommissioned for all practical purposes but continue to organize housing and retail around them, serving again as open space with frequent bridge crossings. the southern half of the Pavese remains no-nonsense, but upon crossing the locks north of V. Tibaldi (where the bridge provides shelter for a small homeless population), the canal suddenly becomes a tourist domain: the water deepens enough for restaurant-boats, shade-trees proliferate as do cafes and bars.

the public transit in Milan is well-run but mostly unremarkable, and a 1 euro ticket is good for 75 minutes of riding on bus, tram, or metro. (not quite Hong Kong’s Octopus card, but more integrated than Moscow’s stand-in-line system). strangely, for a city of design and incidental beauties, the metro was a displeasure i found myself avoiding in favor of the trams, with their creaky automatic step-down stair, polished wood and brass, accurate time-tables (often electronically posted through minimal sidewalk signs) and ‘see-and-be-seen’ population. the linescapes of the tram are beautiful, often running through grass and tree-lined. compare the metro, steamy, unadorned and oddly inconvenient: you must always go to the center in order to go back out, and in a city of such manageable scale, to walk the hypotenuse is often a more appealing option. the metro’s pluses are its readability above ground, in the way of sidewalk ventilation grates, and its graffiti, which is a thick phenomena all over Milan (currently provoking a ubiquitous anti-graffiti poster campaign). in some stations the graffiti is commissioned and embraced, generating well-crafted murals. the city-wide graffiti doesn’t stand in isolation, however, and seems to be part of a culture of verbal-visual communication; unending blocks of poster-advertising render walls and fences into colorful accretions of events and happenings. signage, in general, is embraced, and navigating the city by car or foot without map is surprisingly easy; each piazza, of which there are many, is used as an opportunity for orientation.

2007-08-04T14:48:00.001-07:00

forty-point-five. CH, mobile marketing, Zumthor, and the landscape of hay.
tiny, tidy Switzerland packed a three day punch, sandwiched between incoming and outgoing Milan. Zumthor’s baths, 3 hours from Milan, were too good to pass up. i found myself the unlikely overnight marketing agent for Sixti rental car company which, if you’re willing to drive a car-sized moving ad, will let you go on 5 Euro a day. forgive me, principles – a case-study called. conspicuously, the ad plastered to the vehicle was pretty much the only advertising i saw during those 72 hours.

the baths are in the canton of Graubunden, Italianate to the south, Germanic to the north, and god only knows the transition probably happens at an elevation of 11,000 feet in a tiny village dotted with hay-drying barns. these structures, which adorn the mountains of Vals and surrounding towns like a smattering of rough pearls, are seemingly nestled into the grassy vertical topography without rhyme or reason. the quilted pattern of green however, and a quick peek inside will reveal that they are spaced in accordance with the hay-accumulation needs of the owner. unmortared walls of sombre gray stone provide breathable supports whose main purpose is to wield a stone roof which keeps the rain off the grass drying beneath. the mounds of verdant storage are rumored to make an unforgettable napping spot, as well, which would be a remarkable treat for anyone who is foot traveling in the mountains. the trails are everywhere, and in contrast to ‘backpacking’ in the U.S. the mountain foot-trails truly function like miniature roads, with copious signage, generous proportions, inter-connectivity and proximity to the built. a healthy daypack seems to suffice most walkers, who hop from town to town just in time for a cooked meal and a soft bed. the boundary between wilderness and civilization is thus rendered paper thin, irrelevant. it is difficult to have hard feelings about the commitment to rules and ‘doing things right’; when you’re living in such a landscape the complete awareness of one’s physical footprint was nothing short of inspiring (ex: roadside sound-barriers turned solar panels...). moreover, the potential idyllicization is rendered sophisticated by the ever-presence of everything in 3 languages, and the subtle attention paid to memorable design details (china tea cups with mega espresso machine? the dichotomy funny and warding off the precious...)

driving to Vals was perhaps more remarkable than the baths themselves, save for the serendipitous run-in with Ravee of all people...the world of architecture is small indeed. the mountain roads in Switzerland are an exercise in sublime engineering, with numerous & generous pull-outs, curve radii that never stimulate a sweat, and these breathtaking half-open ‘tunnels’ that protect the road from rockslides. covered in grass, the mountain simply sweeps down onto these structures, which are dayl-lit and supported by rhythmic pillars to their outer edge. at one point i saw two men walking on top of one, and envied them. at other times the smart car veered on happy detours off the main road to follow a sign which led over a bridge over a pristine river to end at a gravel path which led to a church of such humble and silent material weight.

this experience of getting to the baths informs their architecture more than the building itself, if that makes any sense. the play of mass, void, and moisture is borrowed directly from the landscape, and the most remarkable part of the building is not any bath but the saunas, which read like a womb, and whose primary materials are steam and soft light. as if in a dream people wander about, unclad, breathing the heavy heat, mere shadows in a dense, stone-lined cave of steam. i’ll remember the experience for years to come.

2007-08-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

forty. Milano, I.
it’s dusk and from the balcony of my blessed ‘budget’ hotel in Milan, i can see to the northwest the blinking lights of Gio Ponti’s elegant Pirelli tower. it's one of the few buildings in the city that breaks the architectural status quo (ten storeys, heavy-wooden door which opens into idyllic courtyard, relatively flat street facades) which blankets the city in understated harmony. airplane trails criss-cross the sky, with Malpensa airport to the west, Linate to the east, and budget-minded Bergamo to the northeast. this sky-bound spider’s web simply mimics in a transverse fashion what happens below on the ground radially, where three different rail systems weave their ways through the cityscape, both below and above ground, interlaced with the linear divets of an ancient (and still vital) tram system. (these tramrails unfortunately don’t work so well with the bicycles, whose wheels become ensnared in the grooves). there is a heavy hum of dinnertime voices at this hour, as most apartments turn inwards toward a courtyard space, voices reverberating off the walls of close neighbors.

nonetheless, Italy’s financial and fashion capital is currently unhurried; to be here in early August when the city is beginning to empty out in search of sun and surf was an oversight on my part, but such is the timing of travel and between Jo’burg and Moscow, perhaps Italy’s tasty couture provides welcome old-world eye and mouth candy. moreover, as stores close and the white-collar classes escape the waning days of summer, what is left is interesting in its own right: fashion-conscious holiday shoppers, basilica-ogglers, and of course, the working and immigrant classes who will profit from being the ones to cater to the tourist’s Milan when everyone else has drawn their shutters. surprisingly, for every glass-and-gilded shopping avenue in the city there is a street market somewhere, usually further from the city centre (marked by the city’s ornate Duomo), where wardrobes and perishables are on sale from Southeast Asian, African, Sri Lankan, et. al, vendors. within this less-formal consumer space there are gradients; those who cannot afford a stall loiter on the sidewalk, or street corner, their goods in hand or spread out on the concrete. the standard of living here is extremely high, but the public parks serve as subtle shelter for the evening’s homeless who sit inconspicuously at dusk on the benches, waiting for the haven of nightfall and the locking of the gates from without. i surmise that at such time, fountains become a place to wash, and wonder if the civility of the city-by-day gives way to any unspoken micro-territorial possessiveness.

Milan may get a bad name for being all work and no play, but this doesn’t negate the fact that over much of the city’s terrain you usually have, within arm's reach: cafe, bar, eatery, gelateria, public transit stop – arguably, like any good Italian city. here the tree, the median, and the sidewalk table-for-two reign supreme, the median becoming, through the shade of copious foliage, a space for parking, a space for sitting, or a space for public transit. the ‘squares’ as it were, save for the most traditional of them near the city center, are often simply a swelling of these medians into an elongated ellipse. add playground or cafe and voila: another piazza, sans cobblestone and church but a respite nonetheless.

2007-08-02T01:10:00.001-07:00

thirty-nine. Branner midyear report.

....although quite past midyear.

2007-07-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

thirty-eight. concluding Global Studio, leaving Jo'burg.

sigh....the surrealism of leaving Johannesburg, South Africa, for one of the world’s smoothest cities -- Milan, Italy. it is fitting that (approximately) between the two lie Dubai – a city of erasure and replacements. forget that it’s a desert, forget that the air is thick with sand. build build build -- fortified castles isolated on barren tracks of land, swirling geometric ‘islands’ reminiscent of sea life and palm trees which seem to float upon the water like baroque overgrown rafts. all this i saw from the air and the magazines; i wish i’d had the chance to stay, although navigating the 5am airport/mall, more crowded than the streets of downtown Jo’burg, was plenty of stimulation & a testament to Dubai as consumer’s paradise, a testament to Jo’burg as a city that seems to fight density.

Global Studio ended with a drawn-out bang that could have continued for much longer, and in many ways i wish that it had. the feeling of the unfinished remains; in two weeks, analyzing a difficult site and then doing something reasonable or meaningful with that analysis was an exercise in occasional frustration. the group to which i belonged was the ‘JoVi’ group, a name meant to brand southeast Jo’burg's (aka Marshalltown) impoverished warehouse-turned-residential district into “Johannesburg Village.” the comparison with Chelsea, New York is inappropriate. the (largely) migrant population of residents who occupy the half-decrepit warehouses are sure to become imminently and severely displaced, another ‘eyesore’ challenge for the Johannesburg Development Agency’s matter-of-fact attempts to clean up the inner-city. the buildings are all in various states of inhabitation and disrepair; some are holding up relatively well, either with the help of the Better Building’s Project subsidy, or with the vision of (sometimes) well-meaning owners and landlords. i say ‘sometimes’ only because the adaptive re-use as seen in Marshalltown is sometimes a financial last-straw; the area is still under severe red-lining and private owners have been unable to sell for years. rather than let the properties sit vacantly, the owners are satisfying a growing need for inner-city housing that is transient, convenient, and unfortunately, severely over-priced considering the level of (non)-maintenance that some of these buildings exhibit.

in many ways, the health of any one building's population can be measured by its children – whether they hide in corners in the dark, whether they have shoes, whether they smile and are well-clothed, whether they come up to hug you or whether they stare in silent fear, whether they are allowed to go onto the street outside their building, not only for safety reasons but also for reasons concerning the tenants’ ‘legitimacy’ (is the building being squatted? hijacked?). walking only a couple blocks through the neighborhood can render one hopeful and then hopeless and back again in a matter of minutes. the first visit or two provoked such an urgent desire to provide for basic provisions – shoes, clothes, light – that we spent several days talking not about design solutions but about survival assistance. this was problematic in the sense that everyone had their own population they wanted to help, and the solutions in the end seemed short-lived.

after more analysis it became evident that part of the challenge of our neighborhood was simply one of ‘placefulness’ within the greater metropolitan area. Marshalltown is, for all practical purposes, invisible, and has been implicitly dubbed a ‘sinkhole’ that needs gentrification according to the official maps doled out by the Johannesburg Development Agency. we decided to take this map as our starting point – pull it apart, critique it – and redraw a new map of Marshalltown that hopefully reveals its layers, complexities, and its potentials. this re-mapping was accompanied by the beginnings of a new development framework that understands gentrification not as a sweeping out of existing ‘sinkholes,’ but as an investment in these existing communities as containing the own seeds of the area’s improvement (see maps and text; the two are meant to be front to back, and fold in both directions to offer both old and new maps and analysis). while there is still part of me that aches to just go back and do the hands-on dirty work of installing functioning skylights in dark dusty buildings where people live separated by cheap wooden partitions, my group (led by amazing mentors Elena and Laura) is hoping to develop the framework to the point where it can be adopted as a viable development strategy that would supplant the current paradigm of ‘investment to increase real-estate values’ (read: evictions and further problems of slum-creation and homelessness).

on a personal level, saying goodbye to a community of kind, empowered individuals from around the globe has provoked nothing short of culture shock. i am looking for the hints of transition-driven messiness which i have grown to so relish in the cities i have visited, and instead have been confronted with gelato and Prada. i think this means i must look harder (or perhaps visit the Russian embassy again, where no manner of hand-gesturing would allow me past the high-security gate to apply for a needed visa). rendered mute by an inability to sum up the totality of my Jo’burg experience in a clean, cohesive way, i offer just a few snapshots of unforgettable moments...after all, perhaps snapshots are a fitting way to describe a city of disconnected pockets connected mostly by highway.

a solo Sunday walk through one of the city’s worst ‘no-go’ zones, from Berea through Hillbrow to Joubert Park and the Johannesburg Art Museum: i did this before Global Studio even started, after which i would have never gotten away with it (either out of fear or reprimand). i was subsequently and significantly scolded by locals for this foolhardy adventure, which i even more foolhardedly defended as a valuable one (although admittedly i don’t think i would do it again). however, following this cross section of the city was revealing if only to try and understand the palpable ‘edge’ that makes some places feel okay, and others not:

retail – when it spills onto the streets, and storefronts are open, and people are engaged in legitimate economic transaction be they formal or informal. i followed this hum of commercial activity and steered away from dead-end pocket parks.

women – their presence breaks the threatening monotony of large groups of loitering men; moreover, they are usually the ones engaged in abovesaid commercial activity (most memorable: live chicken with head sticking out of blue plastic bag in hand).

the smell of human waste – while in Mumbai this signaled nothing but the city going about its business, in Jo’burg, which has the infrastructural capability to support people’s bodily needs, it signals a place forgotten, ignored, and uncared for.

alleys – Jo’burg is the paradigmatic Modernist city; beautiful mid-rise towers of astounding simplicity and unique detailing line up like soldiers, creating razor-straight alleys between them. sometimes these are full of a mountain of trash, other times they are opportunities for an endless perspective.

this walk encompassed the crux of so much of the psychological challenge of Jo’burg: you are damned if you do (crazy, naive, risky, stupid) and damned if you don’t (guarded, paranoid, living in fear). it is an emotionally exhausting challenge to constantly question yourself where the line between the two is, and not simply be swept up by the fear factor which, if the city is ever to heal itself, will have to be challenged. (*it's worth noting how this area is rendered on the official Jo'burg map above; Hillbrow, the city's densest area, has no street articulation...)

the fortified police HQ along Louis Botha Ave:
imagine looking at a 25’ high barb-covered wall as you walk along a tree-lined city sidewalk only to realize it’s the city’s main police station. no doors, no gates, no protection – you are more vulnerable 10’ from that police station than you are in a crowded street in a ‘no-go’ zone.

the Metropolitan towers:
high-density high-rise residential complex in the Berea area. at night the windows glow in an organic pattern, a stunning reminder that for all its complexity Jo’burg is still simply an enormous collection of people from a thousand different places just trying to get by, have a life, cook dinner, sleep, eat and make a buck

the Apartheid museum:
powerful, enormous, reserve a full day if possible. such recent, startling, heartbreaking history that terrifies as much as it heals. minicab rides to and from almost got me lost and missing my flight to Italy, with lunch in a fancy gas station in between (compare: Jo’burg gas stations, which are also supermarkets and cafes, with Milan’s gas stations, which are minimal pull-offs and simply for gas...the city that lives by its cars vs. the city that lives by its sidewalks).

the muti market and environs in Durban:
a twisting, maze-like convoluted space of stalls and blanket-spaces and stairs and stores. it began with heavy infrastructure: highway overpasses and a train station. then infill: light metal shed roofs that connect them all providing covered space for the ‘formal informal’ market below, which thrives enough to spill out onto adjacent uncovered bridges and sidewalk spaces.

midnight mall in Durban:
the city’s middle class pleasure turned inwards, by the sea, in the flourescent light of night. children run around unguarded while parents of all ethnicities gamble their coins away in the casino. prior to this late-night destination we had scoped out a ‘local’ hangout; heavy bass and a parking lot full of mini-bus taxis and bouncing bodies had us turning around in a matter of minutes for more ‘tame’ environments. (still, it looked like an energetic and fun scene).

solo sunset runs in the rugby field, Wits University: where studio participants were housed. we were locked in and the city locked out by the campus turnstile gates that activated only with our magnetic cards. the day-city is done by 5pm, and going anywhere after dark means calling a cab, so these twilight runs on the field were a necessary stand in for bodily freedom, the absence of which was felt by all after a few stir-crazy days. the highway sped right by the field; as you run you can even smell the exhaust. this sounds disgusting but in some way it was a reminder that we were in a city on those occasional all-studio work days when it was easy to forget that we were.

i don’t want to conclude this Jo’burg blog with any tidiness or finality; i’d like to return and the city will be different next year, and the year after, with a major spike come the 2010 FIFA games. there isn’t a more exciting place to do challenging work, especially at the scale of urban design and policy consideration.

2007-07-08T23:44:00.000-07:00

thirty-seven. Jo’burg, driven.
the People Building Better Cities conference now over, and Global Studio well-under way...evenings find me wordless after hours of seeing, absorbing, discussing. it has been intense: the layers of boundary negotiation are ever-present at multiple scales. each individual is constantly pressed against (and asked to test) the walled-in fears that fill this city. simultaneously, as sub-groups working in local communities, there is the humbling risk-taking demanded by a situation of socio-spatial unknowns. the sense of responsibility is overwhelming, and occasionally comes into conflict with one’s own comfort thresholds – as it should be. as an entire studio of 75, there is the added complexity of moving through this city and country en masse (as was the case for last weekend’s field trips), and relatively well-cloistered as such – by mega tour-buses, safety concerns, staying in a highly-secured gated campus environment, and a general immunity to the genuine vulnerabilities of being powerless in a city of contested power.

there is much to say but for now i simply want to share Jo’burg, as seen thus far, fittingly, from the window of a van/bus, usually framed by guard rail.

2007-06-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

thirty-six. Johannesburg & the geographies of separation
approach flight, 6.17 to 6.19
a two-day flight of exhausting proportions and mysterious topographies: a double red-eye, the first over the Atlantic, reveals dark nothingness below. the next night, 6 hours over the African continent revealed the same, this time over land. in the morning’s zoomed-out view of the earth: razor-straight roads look like scratches in the dirt, sun-dried oases are lacy with cracks. a winding river in a parched plain yields a delicate linear cloud which curves above its watery course -- i have never seen a river-ribbon-cloud before. even the high-atmosphere cloud-field is different – small, infinite, barely-puffy whisps that yield little sign of moisture or irregularity as far as the eye can see. approaching Jo’burg: the irregular pods of housing tracts of varying sizes, prominent against stretches of surrounding land, every single one fortified by walls which squeeze neighborhoods into claustrophobic protection. a few walls stretch far beyond the neighborhood, anticipating its growth, making room for the future mores that come into the fold.

initial read 6.20-6.22
i’m typing this from one of the few (allegedly) inhabitable after-sunset places this city offers the newcomer single white female such as myself: mounded under covers in bed, a water bottle threatening to scald my knees. the physical adjustments demanded by this city (or one population’s story of this city) operate at every scale, from that of the intimate body and its comportment to that of the greater metropolitan landscape and its cloistered enclaves, connected by miles of highway. since arriving here, at the recommendation of the kind but protective owner of my pension, i have shed myself of jewelry, done away with my shoulder bag, rediscovered the disposable camera, and found the insole of my shoe to be a comfortable place to store cash. these precautions aren’t ubiquitously practiced by the population by any means -- don’t read my example as representative -- but given my desire to explore the areas where i have been told to not go, the precautions become liberating and allow me the freedom to explore without the anxiety of planning every bus/cab ride to every ‘safe’ destination.

my three solo days here before the PBBC/GSSA have been invaluable, as so much of the city is enacted through attitude and word of mouth. in other words, fear and the expression of it in the form of warnings re. the city’s ‘no-go’ zones (which include, among other things, the metro system and the Jo’burg-Pretoria rail corridor) are such powerful definers of how this city is inhabited, separated, and moved through. without actually venturing to test one’s own comfort levels within the built environment of the city, it would be easy to remain inside its myth of ubiquitous danger – which is not to suggest that the crime is a concoction; the statistics are supportive but the impressions are skewed, making the well-to-do white population appear particularly targeted when in truth, the African poor actually experience the highest percentage of victimization. the white population is simply the most vocal and preemptive about its fears.

moving from the realm of the body outwards, the next space of sought-safety in Jo’burg is the car. this is a road city, surrounded on all sides by highways which extend northwards into the Northern Suburbs. after sunset, even walking four blocks is ‘just not done,’ and for the (un?)fortunate of us who don’t have private vehicles, anomalous cabbies lie in winter-cold wait outside of the restaurant/bar strips. (cabbies are officially call-for-hire only). needless to say, the relationship between car ownership, capital, and the creation of suburban enclaves is inseparable, and pre-apartheid was institutionally supported through housing subsidies for returning soldiers and white-collar workers who were once located in the downtown area. now, as the largely E-W metro system has been left to become ghetto’ized, serving the working-class southern urban districts, and the public bus system rendered hopelessly inefficient (hour-long waits are not abnormal), the necessity of the vast informal system of minibus taxis remains the most viable and heavily used means of transportation for the non-auto’d class. when the CBD lost much of its manufacturing and mining mainstay in the 70’s, white-collar services and IT enterprises took their sprawling offices, and their money, northwards into territory serviced only by highway and car. thus, the greater metropolitan area’s growth and spatial segregation happens largely on a north-south access, and the fusion of Pretoria and Jo’burg is being infrastructurally anticipated by the Gautrain high-speed rail, which will link the two cities in under an hour, and for a significant fare. (this tactic will likely exclude the working class, which are the population who have most need of rail travel at this point. the motivations for this rail are thus mystifying many).

even with an increasing radius of comfort here, penetrating the minibus system is slow-going, hindered by a lack of signs, maps, and centralization. the government has recognized the minibus’ efficacy in providing a necessary service, and as such there are increasing attempts to if not formalize, then certainly legitimize them. (this effort is also motivated by a desire to reduce competition-driven minibus-route related crimes). official roof-covered stands and expansive lots are visible in the CBD and at suburban nodes such as the Sandton City mega-mall, where the need for working-class service employees is substantial. relying heavily upon the knowledge of locals can be tricky as well, for although most people seem to be very familiar with a small selection of routes, no doubt centered upon their own work-home locations, figuring out more anomalous routes (such as from the CBD to Melville’s B & B enclave) takes trial-and-error. on top of this, i made the mistake yesterday of sitting in the front, in the cashier’s seat, which rendered me helplessly, embarrasingly responsible for figuring out everyone’s change as the money was passed forward. unfortunately, riding the minibuses and going to the more lively parts of the CBD remains the domain of the interested traveler, resulting in the sickeningly comic situation of the temporary boundary-breakers being the consumers of the spectacle of segregation. (or, perhaps less insidiously, simply the ones on a very tight budget?)

exploring the relatively concentrated CBD on foot, i have tried to observe how its atmosphere evolves, partly in an attempt to further understand the legitimacy of the warnings to not venture into certain areas (such as those near Park Station and the adjacent Joubert Park). this is also where the main minibus station is located, surrounded by throngs of hawkers selling used clothes piled on the street, second-hand necessities, and cheap vegetables. radiating from this intense nexus, the streets calm and empty southward and westward, with a smattering of office towers to the south, near the open rectangular space of Ghandi Square. this is also the public bus terminal, and the difference between Ghandi Square’s regular geometries and well-heeded use-zones (including spotless public loos), and the Park Station hub’s crowded, opportunistic, intensity embodies the difference between the public bus and minibus transit systems.

not too far from Ghandi Square is the purported Central Improvement District, which boasts the Carlton Centre at its center. this is the continent’s tallest building, and offers a 50th floor view of the colorful, arterially choked, architecturally-tired-but-potentially-beautiful city below. it connects to a round, glass-covered subterranean mall, and is across the street from the Smal St. Mall. this latter linear shopping arcade runs the length of 5 N-S city blocks, and moving towards Park Station along its length reveals a spatial change that partly accounts for the emergence of the atmospheric edge I mentioned: ceilings drop, daylighting diminishes, width compresses, and maintenance falls away into grit.

to provide a glimpse of contrast...in the muted light of late afternoon or early morning, running through Melville’s arbored streets has been a refreshing release from the city’s tension. unencumbered by all but my smelly running clothes, it is easy to feel that Jo’burg’s sense of unease arises largely not from race but from economics. the fewer indicators of ownership I carry the more freedom I feel to venture. however, maybe i am naive? this morning on my run i passed a fellow-runner wearing a Freddy Kreuger’esque set of inch-long knuckle-spikes. am i crazy to not sport the same, or is he, for feeling he needs them?

without transit maps and without car, my sense of the city’s scale is constantly morphing, as reflected in the frustratingly slow stop-start-erase drawing i have been making of Jo’burg. this process of understanding through drawing and writing its layout & systems of connectivity reveals what everyone intuits immediately – Jo’burg is highly fractured, challenging to decipher, and offers a hundred different identities depending on from which micro-pocket of the city you experience it.

reference: Jo Beall, Owen Crankshaw, Susan Parnell. Uniting a Divided City: Governance and Social Exclusion in Johannesburg. Earthscan Publications Ltd., London 2002.

2007-06-22T07:20:00.000-07:00

thirty-five. blogging the burbs.
6.9-6.17
anticipating reverse culture shock in San Francisco (roofscape above) i found none; i had to wait until arrival in the Northern Virginia outskirts of DC to feel the unease of the unurban . . . which is not the rural, but the suburban. the two times i attempted to write about this land of disconnected ‘stims,’ i found myself imagining a conversation between Lars Lerup and Michel de Certeau – a conversation about how spatial and verbal structures might relate, or, more specifically for this project, how the structure of a place's written description might describe something of its built composition.

in trying to describe NoVa i was confronted with lists, disconnected impressions, strong, but not tied by narrative, unrelatable by proposition, footstep, or rail-line. the mid-Atlantic highway is an exercise in erasure, a manifestation of the linear void – an attempt to nullify the SUV-encapsulated tedium between strip malls, housing developments, and office parks. all roadside forests blend into one impression of summer-soaked luxuriant green, occasionally broken by the sporadic imposition of genetically cloned condos and McMansions organized around a maze of cul-de-sacs. there are, surprisingly, many roadside biketrails which extend unceremoniously alongside the high-speed roads from which they are meant to divert bicyclists. veering suddenly into a thicket of trees, the trails often emerge into the asphalted fringe of a residential development. (these were the sweaty linear playgrounds where i tried to remember the act of jogging).

empty space, green space, built-from-nothing highway car-space (space-car),

space-in-the-way-space or a hidrance to the errands, this quiet, unmoving space of

airplane-airspace above the safeway-space,

so tidily replicated with cheap-drywall

space for waiting-non-dating space,

don’t-be-outdoors & don’t-walk space or i'd

lose-myself, just-lost-my-place space,

this unending air-hum of audible-nothingness space.

i realize this disjointed vagueness is partly a product of being more automobile bound than i have been all spring, but nonetheless the contrast between the verbal documentation of the urban trail and the auto-bound suburban hop-scotch is of interest, and begs the question of what might be the grammatical structure to describe a place where spatial structure seems to dissipate, unsupported by the ands-ons-unders-betweens? here i recorded only the ‘thes’; the narrative fell apart, the story lost cohesion.

strangely though, for all of its potential antiseptism, NoVa is definitely still a place with an evocative feeling -- oh so different from the crowding pulsing shopping swirls of the cities i've seen -- but still palpable, describable, and for some of us, saturated with an odd nostalgia for things we don't quite miss, but once knew too well.

2007-05-31T10:41:00.000-07:00

thirty-four. pause.
5.24
the view of south SF from the plane is window-hazed, dust-littered, and abstract, but still gorgeously saturated with the hues of these red-algae salt ponds (for the science of it, see http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plsept98.htm).

the view: a prelude to a precious few days' worth of time spent feeling cool wind on post-tropical skin, vertical sidewalks beneath worn shoes, more green salads and strong black coffee than i'll ever want, and anticipations of imminent johannesburg, south africa, where i look forward to participating in Global Studio 2007 (http://wwwfaculty.arch.usyd.edu.au/web/future/globalstudio_jo/).

2007-05-20T05:54:00.000-07:00

thirty-three: Xi'an & Shanghai
5.16-5.23
nb: this blog will have to serve as a memory of two cities I passed through between Lhasa and San Francisco. (I say pass through because my state of mind was such -- the commute ‘home’ from Tibet was exactly that – an impatient scurrying to get to cleaner air and a place to decompress. when my mind/body hit saturation, no amount of my willpower could make room for more traffic…)

Xi’an was described in the 1995 LP as one of China’s cleanest, greenest cities, once again proving that expectation sets the stage for disappointment or pleasant surprise. something about this quite-beautiful city has allowed its air to wallow within its thick stone walls and settle like a film blocking the nostrils’ attempts to respire. my fatigue here was biological, and worsened by a lingering cold from kick-in-the-ass altitude changes up in Tibet.

nonetheless, Xi’an is vibrant and it’s Ming city walls, recently completed to allow circumnavigation, envelope the city center with atmosphere. its wide tree-lined avenues (again chessboard format – likely the precursor to Beijing, as Xi’an was the imperial capital long before Beijing ever was) were buzzing at 10pm with people out walking – couples hand in hand, late-night diners, mothers with babies out for a play (dirty pajamas scrubbing the sidewalk surface). Xi’an’s food culture is vibrant as well, influenced by a thriving Muslim quarter, and patronized by late-night throngs of university students and domestic tourists; a strolling, progressive street-stall dinner included, in sequence (and over 1.5 hours), fresh watermelon, pepper-fried squid-on-a-stick, herb-filled cabbage humbao, steamed rice-flour cakes, fennel and egg pancakes, and a can of warm tsing tao.

Xi’an is perhaps most famous not for the urban center itself but for its surrounding historical monuments, not the least of which is the tomb of the terra-cotta warriors. (you don’t need to read this blog to get a description of one of China’s most famous tourist attractions). for someone who tires of ‘sights’ this was one that didn’t fail to astound, and was worth the pomp and circumstance of long lines & clicking cameras. China’s first emperor (Qin Shi Huang, circa 250 BC, and the same emperor that began the building of the Great Wall) had a fantastical fervor for his own egomaniacal safety in the afterlife and buried some 6000 life-size warriors near his tomb. three pits of varying sizes, in varying states of excavation, are open to the public, the largest of which is housed in a football-field sized hangar. the first several rows of warriors have been restored to near-mint condition, their body-parts reassembled, their stances upright and aligned. near the rear of the hangar is where time and gravity are revealed; limbs and heads and torsos lie piled on top of each other at various helter-skelter angles, growing from the ground, disappearing into walls, bodies becoming earth becoming bodies. the 2000 year-old subterranean claustrophobia is palpable, one man’s suffocating fear of death physically captured and unintentionally revealed (the tombs were meant to be a secret forever: no written record of their existence has been found).

…this is perhaps a good segue to Shanghai, where the highlight of a brief 4 days was the Shanghai Museum. (I sound like a tourbook but) the ancient bronze collection is unmissable; it’s hard not to be blown away by imagining the development of bronze-casting techniques from the 15th century BC, painstakingly developed over generations, through a multitude of hands, that produced pieces that still retain in the sterile glow of a glass museum box a singular Presence. not surprisingly, war and worship seemed to be the biggest inspirations in the way of weapons and statues of Buddha, reminding me humbly that progress is a farce.

Shanghai…I’d heard of its romance and looked for it hard, finding instead very expensive restaurants on the Bund full of beautiful Caucasians for whom begging mothers with children on their hips wait at night, hands outstretched. I found the city’s poetry at 4:30 am, after a night of insomnia, sitting on the waterfront. at this hour the Bund is finally reclaimed by the city (and not overrun by the 9pm spectacle of coca-cola stalls): an old man flying a kite ran-skipped his way down the promenade, trying to stay in front of his kite as he reeled it in, a few joggers & all-night partiers headed home, the Pudong business district across the water finally dark, save for the growing light of dawn, the streetlights along the Bund flickering off in quick succession around 4:45am.

at night, I found the city’s made-up oddness walking through the Yu Yuan district, towards the water, the streets lightless and dark in the name of energy-saving, while down near the water towers and advertisements glowed with fluorescent gaudiness. people still sit on sidewalks eating in the urban night, even as their low-rise apartments are being choked by the surrounding towers and the roar of construction. this same phenomena was confirmed when I ascended SOM’s Jin Mao tower, by far Shanghai’s best built highrise; far below, the waterfront glows, as do the Nanjing and Huaihai shopping thoroughfares, but much of the city beyond lies in darkness – another reminder that perhaps only the most visible parts of urban China are racing ahead at a pace much faster than the rest of the country, and often at its expense.

for being mainland China’s counterpoint to global Hong Kong, finding internet in Shanghai is a scavenger hunt that takes the seeker up unadvertised stair corridors into smoke-filled rooms of silent games and the 24-hour stares of pale faces behind half-shuttered windows. these hidden hangouts are nothing short of bizarre, rarely signed in non-Chinese, if signed at all, and seem to be a by-product of a crackdown on internet use, especially by foreigners, who, if we manage to find these places at all, are subjected to a rigorous passport screening replete with multiple scans of multiple pages of our little blue/red/black/brown, etc. books. however, like HK, the city-airport rail link, in the guise of the Maglev, is hard to beat: 9 minutes of supersonic speeding through the city’s blurry panorama that tilts forwards and away as the compartment leans on its rails. it reaches a phenomenal 400km/hr but only for the middle minute, before the train must start slowing down after attaining its peak speed.

this airport departure experience, along with the time spent amongst the bronze museum pieces, were the moments in Shanghai that made my heart race. I dare not blame the city, and I was loathe to even blog this one, recognizing my state-of-mind which needed a reset none-too-soon. however, to presume that my readings of other cities, when I am bright-eyed & fresh, are somehow more ‘objective’ is no less risky – so I honestly admit: here I was, perhaps a little too tired to see much at all. my apologies to Xi’an, and even more to Shanghai, whose extended metro lines into suburban reaches surely have much to reveal.

2007-05-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

thirty-two. Beijing outreach: Lhasa

5.10-5.16

the largest rail station along the Lhasa Express train route, besides Beijing West (second to none in the world, with its massive facade and multi-leveled entry-flows which all come to a screeching bottleneck upon entering through the building's ONE door...), is the newly built station serving Lhasa, Tibet. straight out of Tianan'men sqaure, its massive proportions and high ceilings are an unwelcome respite after hundreds of miles of empty arctic tundra, the wind-torn tents of nomadic yak-herders, and the dilapidated structures of isolated gas stations and outposts.

what to say about the train...it is nation building at its most distilled, a linear moving extension of Beijing that stretches to this town in which i now type, which has a schizophrenic existence caught between the winding back streets and colorful 3 and 4 storey brick buildings of the old Tibetan quarters, and the glossy-but-shoddily built Chinese section where streets spread like a chessboard, and repetitive one and two storey buildings align like the guards that march past the Potala Palace now and again to make their presence flagrantly known. across from the awe-inspiring 13 storied Potala, which is built into the (otherwise-flat) town's largest rocky outcrop, the Chinese government has graciously bestowed their own horizontal monument: People's Park, modeled on Tianan'men's flat banality, and crowned with a flag-bearing concrete monument that praises the liberation of Tibet.

however, i get ahead of myself. this arrival in Lhasa could hardly come as a shock. the Lhasa Express, only 6 months in operation, and purportedly China's darling of luxury rail travel, has already seen, and passed, her best days. tired carpets sport stains, ubiquitous non-smoking signs are casually disregarded, slippery water-logged loos become a site of (ignored) passenger protest (especially by the elderly tour group crowd), windows are so streaked with dirt that photo ops take on a hazy visual surrealism -- perhaps appropriately matching the psychological surrealism of the experience. it's a beautiful, mind-boggling journey through some of the country's most remote territories; it's also a horrifying journey past some of the China's most polluted, forgotten wasteland-cum-towns, within a highly politicized moving vehicle in which cabins are distinctly divided by ethnicity, and kitschy Chinese souvenirs and blaring loudspeaker announcements claim cultural authority over a region that is being very heavy-handedly Beijing-ized. (e.g. Chinese who move to Lhasa are given incentives in the way of tax breaks and higher-than-average wages, and, none-too-hesitantly, the town's main thoroughfare is called Beijing Ave.)

everyday Lhasa, however, is not quite as 'reinterpreted' as the train ride, or the Potala/Tianan'men juxtaposition might suggest. the main public space of the city is still in the Tibetan quarters, in the Barkhor, which surrounds the incense-infused Johkang Temple. here dozens upon dozens of pilgrims and monks come daily to prostrate themselves repeatedly before its weathered walls. the kora (pilgrim's circuit) has become intertwined with a linear market which runs the circumference of the temple, selling all manner of Tibetwares, and perhaps is a prime example of how tourism and cultural identity exaggerate each other in a spectacle of exchange. the main street offers a less glamorous glimpse of the speculative, frontier-aura of current-day Lhasa: rubble-filled construction sites, yak butter stores, butchers, candy stores, trekking supply stores (toilet paper, cooking oil, cookstoves, cheap rope, etc.), tourist hotels, clothiers, restaurants, tea stores, travel agents, and pharmacies alternate in rapid succession.

and anywhere, everywhere, the prayer flags.

photos of snow-covered peaks tented by these windblown colorful strands are not isolated representations, but are merely a small piece of this Tibetan Buddhist practice, the details of which I can't theorize. all I can describe is what I saw in the way of the prosaic compulsion to catch the wind; any site with any height is a potential repository for these whispy offerings of worship. most houses sport them on their roofs, they can be seen in the distance running across the ravines of near-vertical slopes, along the handrails of bridges which cross the Lhasa River, and, most poignantly, between the tops of power lines and cell phone towers. infrastructure becomes impromptu temple, and the flags' ubiquitousness is sometimes so thick as to create a type of room, or roof, fluttering in the wind, in the hopes that the scripts written thereupon will be captured and heard.

2007-05-04T18:28:00.000-07:00

thirty-one. Beijing S/XL
5.5 thru 5.10

somehow the written word never prepares one for the reality of the dusty winds from the parched plains which both weigh down and renew the city at once. journalism that emphasizes the communist regime's hegemony, or capitalism's increasing unraveling of that, don't illuminate the on-the-ground atmosphere of familiar interest, casual optimism, and lack of intensity that is striking after Mumbai/HK/Bangkok/Tokyo's scrambles for space and money. it is surprisingly easy to be here, albeit a constant surprise.

the gargantuan scale of the Official city was established long ago with the Forbidden City's yawning open spaces and massive buildings. in kind, 20th century DPRC buildings are both liberating and oppressive -- the exact intent, perhaps. built at the scale of mountains, monotonous brown-gray columnaded facades adorning platonic massings dwarf, intimidate, & awe the human body. the world's largest 'public' square (Tiananmen), across from the world's largest parliament building, is heavily controlled and, although often crowded, is rarely truly inhabited. Tiananmen and its surrounds is a three dimensional facade for notions of a 'public,' and a symbol of official China's austerity & ability to reconfigure, indeed even erase, history. the streets surrounding the square are mind-bogglingly wide, for easy tank navigation should the need arise again.

the above is not to suggest that a vital social existence is stifled; notions of the communal are expressed vibrantly, loudly, and are manifest in the smallest gestures built and behavioral. on a given afternoon, the city's parks fill with middle-aged groups of singers who congregate around accordian players or conductors. sheet music is printed and left in a pile for whomever would like to join in the aural celebration of spring in Beijing. public exercise areas with candy-colored analog workout machines can be found in small pockets of urban space -- lining a sidewalk, at the entrance to a housing project, along a strip of green. at night hutong sidewalks fill with food stalls and tables, and wall-like stacks of beer crates are testament to the city's lively enjoyment of food and drink. additionally, i have never seen so many public toilets in my life -- often one every two blocks, in response to the hutongs' lack of a sewer system. (if only the Mumbai government could become so responsive).

these are necessary reminders of life in the small that help to balance out an otherwise surreal landscape of a city undergoing reconstructive surgery. the world is coming to Beijing now (in the form of the Olympics), has been for a couple decades (in the form of global capital), and this has generated a city full of facades, old and new, literal and figurative. no housing typology escapes this generalization; entire hutong neighborhoods lie in various states of abandonment/demolition/renovation, surrounded by vinyl billboards depicting promises of sparkling new developments to come. (one particularly difficult-to-digest sign depicts a "chinaman" in traditional garb whose arms are weighed down with shopping bags). oddly, the sound of construction is rarely heard behind these flimsy visions. in areas where there is an attempt to preserve old-world hutong, brightly painted Ming-era facades provide entrance to air conditioned interiors full of tourist wares.

high rise residential buildings abound as one moves further from the city center (which remains largely low-rise in homage to the Forbidden City and governmental monuments). currently about 30% of these buildings are half-covered in glass, damp concrete frames protruding from beneath a fragile exterior. this ubiquitous state of growth and decay has generated an unsettling cityscape, and it is hard to say if there is more standing than there is lying in rubble and wait. the city maps optimistically depict the future that will happen, and are currently prematurely updated.

this frantic charrette in preparation for the Olympics has its pluses and minuses. some hutongs purportedly need a significant infrastructural upgrade. however, it's too easy to wonder what is being overlooked in the mad rush to present a pretty face to the world. excluding the Bird's Nest and Water Cube, both near completion, Olympic Park, north of the Forbidden City, is currently an empty field of rubble, a few stalwart sqauatters persisting in half-standing shacks. the expanse is covered in a gauzy green screen in preparation for massive grass plantings and the arenas whose foundations have yet to be poured. wandering through this off-limits zone the other day, having passed through several guarded gates by taking advantage of the immunity that foreigners unofficially enjoy, i was finally accosted by a boy-guard no older than 12 who yelled at me for being in an off-limits zone.

Beijing's tourist city is significant but also hard to get out of. it announces itself as soon as you leave the arrival hall at the airport, where the familiar green letters of a starbucks awaits. (there is also a starbucks in the Forbidden City, in addition to many other eatery stalls nestled into the modular pavilions). this insularity of the tourist track is partly a product of the language barrier, which remains significant, but it's easy to wonder if if this barrier might be partly intentional. everyday infrastructure remains largely unpenetrated by travelers, who more easily resort to tour buses or taxis.

relatedly, due to its spread and scale, Beijing is not a foot-friendly city. however, its total lack of topography, wide roads, and bicycle-designated lanes make it one of the world's most bikeable cities (save for the air quality which can be cough-inducing). the city's automotive transit flows, but doesn't scramble, and when it does become slow, it rarely piles in stasis. the highly gridded streets are wide and easily navigable, and are surrounded by 4 (and increasing) concentric high speed ring roads. if bus or metro bound, walking distances can still be significant; bus stops (staffed during rush hour by flag-waving queue managers) are sometimes a near kilometer apart. there are only 3 completed metro lines (of a proposed 5), and cabs, although cheap, are an indulgence for everyday commuting. the metro system is one of the more lo-tech i have yet used, with paper tickets, and tear-by-hand ill-regulated gates. the atmosphere is casual and somewhat dingy; conversations, both real-space and cellular, are loud, and food is not a taboo.

i hurry to post this as i am Lhasa bound tonight, excited to experience the world's most highly engineered, and politically controversial, rail route (which begins from...you guessed it, the world's largest train station). signing out...

2007-05-04T01:59:00.000-07:00

thir.t!
5.4 Tokyo's goodbye on a humid friday morning:
two tarmac employees wave enthusiastically to our departing plane, their distant figures only inches high. how incongruous! a (nearly empty) flying machine begins to feel like an anthropomorphised pet with a name, and something about the gesture (finished with a tidy bow) was both unsettling and charming.

i write from Beijing; the smells and sensations of a new metropolis already begin to soften the impressions of Tokyo which, after all, remain largely sensual rather than intellectual. the first few days in any new city never cease to amaze me, the way that fleeting nuances of atmosphere initially read like projections on a movie screen. a few scattered words from my brief hours here: dusty red laughter dark narrow rubble wind monument watching order night lights silent square.

in acknowledgment of my inability to tidy up Tokyo, and my restless aversion to sitting the day away on this machine while Beijing's mega-streets and little lanes wait, i annotate Tokyo a bit chaotically:

crowded privacy, saving space, & boundary
doing makeup on the train seems like an oddly intimate gesture but is acceptable and common, while the rare soul who dares speak on their cell sticks out like a sore, blaring thumb. behaviors have slightly changed in the space of 7 or 8 years; i remember looking over the shoulders of salarymen as they read pornographic manga, or staring at the voluminous cleavage of an ad for a sexy magazine. now the ads have cleaned up (more of the usual: wedding halls, travel tours, junior colleges), and the compartments feel noticeably desexualized compared to before.

in relation to landscape elevation the rails are rarely on par; usually they either run in a crevice, like a river, banks stabilized with grass-planted retaining walls, or they stream above the city ground, sometimes at a building's awkward mid-height. in such cases the right of way often becomes a hovering maelstrom of glowing billboards. for all the ubiquitousness of rail, the boundary between these zones of machinic movement and the rest of the city usually remains legible.

however, this does not mean that the spaces generated beside and below the lines is wastespace. Shinagawa station exhibits one of the more remarkable conglomerations of line, station, road, and store that i found in Tokyo. a major node with at least a half-dozen convergences, the rails occupy several levels in section, and the right of way is lined with gleaming new business towers that feel as if they're hovering on the edge of water (the rail's real estate as it swells at the station is astoundingly wide, 150 m perhaps). in the most well-established example of underpass opportunism i have yet seen, a length of eateries is built beneath the overpass. it's an efficient use of space, and the shops are no ad-hoc job either, boasting their own mid-level wooden boardwalk which connects their storefronts and creates a walkway below sidewalk level but above 'true' ground.

other spatial efficiences: double decker train cars, the entire massive network of the underground city (some eateries quite appealing: 'champagne and hamburgers' under chandeliers, anyone?), bicycle homes in Ueno park, life rolled and packed onto the back, muji japan's 'window house', which is not quite pre-fab -- you provide the land, choose the plan, they build the compact white structure on-site for you.

Tokyo's restless movement is exhausting. a few minutes navigating Shibuya crossing (where you can watch yourself crossing the street on a realtime movietron) left me spinning and searching for coffee jelly in a non-smoking cafe. starbucks takes on a successful role here; as badly upholstered and poorly roasted as ever, it at least allows the solo'ist an affordable piece of real-estate. devoid enough of catering to a particular set, it attracts the gucci princesses and the pierced punkers alike. very highly patronized. another sanctuary is Macdonalds at midnight & beyond. most are 24 hour operations and provide resting ground for a few of the city's homeless, dubbed 'McRefugees.' the paper the other day cited Hong Kong's parallel and growing phenomena of the same.

the day i went to dine with my host-sisters there was another train suicide on the Tobu-Tojo line which backed up the morning commute1.5 hours. a major inconvenience (sic) and a major public gesture of 'screw the system' -- a 'quiet life of desperation' ended with a massive messy bang a la Anna Karenina. not uncommon. i couldn't stop thinking about was how scarred the driver must be.

navigation & open space
Tokyo has a few urban parks that defy penetration by rail and road, the most obvious of which is the imperial ground, the city-center sanctuary around which the Yamanote sen runs. there is also Ueno to the northeast, and Yoyogi-Meiji to the southwest. meandering from one station to the next by foot doesn't work as well here as in other cities; it's hard to receive adequate road directions that aren't given in relation to a station (especially if two stations' geographical adjacency is contradicted by a circuitous rail route in which you must use two different rail systems to travel a short distance). attempting to walk 2 km from Yoyogi to Yoyogi Hachiman (to find Maki's church) left me pleasantly lost in Meiji shrine's forested network of paths. the shrine itself is of sublime proportions, largely open-aired, and utilizing the most massive trees from Taiwan's virgin forests to create a true sense of timeless granduer. on a drizzling tuesday it was the best way to be lost. tired and damp i eventually relinquished control to the Odakyu line (a private, department-store related line; like others it radiates from its retail home and serves a residential area), backtracking the Yamanote in order to transfer and re-radiate.

a few words about Chiba-ken

...Tokyo's neighbor and dubbed the city's 'bread basket':
although development is encroaching the reflection of wet-rice cultivation remains a dominant landscape in the area around Sakura-shi. now is the time when the green blades of rice are barely beginning to poke through the still brown pools. these bodies of water are home to possibly the world's largest population of frogs which, at night, sing a nostalgic and deafening chorus. watching the Keisei line speed across a thin swath of land sandwiched by these rice paddies was nothing short of beautiful, the train's nighttime reflection on water a bright white ribbon of windows and tiny faces, heading home.

the developments out here: one was reminiscent of Singapore or HK, a series of non-descript blocks connected by a two-car monorail loop that radiates from the main Keisei line station. the other neighborhood is reminiscent of a u.s. suburb, with single family homes, two-car driveways, (albeit tightly packed and highly landscaped) and streetlights. purportedly at christmas there is a christmas light war that attracts onlookers from miles around, so much so that they've had to block the main residential street to prevent it from becoming a thoroughfare.

random
at the Roppongi Hills design store, i skimmed through the most recent a + u issue that focuses on 'recent projects' (70% of which are in Dubai). sleek, digital, grey-white object-towers that purportedly express the city's blank-slated, globally-focused, constructed-from-nothing nature felt already dated and left me wondering whether the physical manifestation of the 'space of flows' is really a sleek vector-like Hadid building. the flows that are creating Dubai seem to have less to do with physicality and more to do with banks and bytes. i walked away pondering how telecommuting and global-hop-scotching is affecting notions of the local, and whether the movers and shakers moving money and ideas will continue to inhabit said sleek and swoopy buildings or if it all might become so seamless as to someday defy any current notions of 'inhabitation' and building...

2007-04-29T00:35:00.000-07:00

twenty-nine. one before thirty.
which means i`m averaging 10 entries a month.

i`m in Tokyo and have temporarily given up the derive; i am too familiar with this city to be easily led by it except in the more microcosmic sense (oooh...what`s that facade/cake shop/teabowl/painting/etc). i have spent my time hunting down AND fortuitously stumbling upon buildings (YPT`s landscaped flows, Omote-sando`s boutique specimens, Ginza`s breathtaking glass convention hall a la Vinoly) and exhibits (Terunobu Fujimori + ROJO`s 2006 Biennale reinstall, my host-sister`s dreamy watercolor abstraction exhibit), and catching up with long-lost friends and family who feed me as if there is no tomorrow, and think that my sojourns in budget lodging warrant a dousing of spare `change.`

at this moment i`m near Waseda University, where i once studied a near decade ago. i have found a disorienting `new york style` cafe that offers free internet, where the americano is strong, the exchange student next to me is wearing some deoderant i haven`t smelled since college, and the environment is miraculously smoke free. for such a hyper-connected city, public internet is hard to find (and why shouldn`t it be? everyone has it on their hand held device) and i have missed writing, if only as a way to process and recall this very tangled expanse of a city.

the train network here is the most extensive in the world, and instead of following the lines, which create a thick meshwork of high-speed squiggles (rarely separated by more than a .75km distance), i have simply been trying to observe the way that trains are inhabited, and the way that they organize the non-railed city and its spaces. the most noticeable effect of the system`s ubiquitousness is that the city is not understood as a system of streets, but as a system of rail lines. three or four systems operate within the metropolitan area, which means that for any one destination there may be two or three access routes, depending on one`s priority (speed? transfers? cost?) it is a multi-noded system, the circumferential JR Yamanote line providing the basis for connecting the dozen or so major nodes which most other lines branch from or intersect at some point. directions are always given in relation to a station, rather than a road or bus stop, and i have yet to see a comprehensive, single-sheet street map of the city (although comprehensive rail maps are ubiquitous). each station boasts a detailed locality map that extends so far as the adjacent station`s environs. what this creates is a leapfrog understanding of the city: oft-subterranean, high speed interludes of reading or napping (for the average commuter) that connect well-articulated, pedestrian-navigated, station-defined localities.

the trains and stations themselves: yin-yang is so over-used in discussing the global city but here it is too flagrant to discount. the deathly silence and efficient, subconscious-radar-driven weavings of the morning commute vs. the sake-pungent clamor of the 12:30am friday night rushhour (this innebriated rushhour just as crowded)...behavioral guards come down and rules are no longer followed so strictly; pull-ups are performed by silly men in suits, vomit is knowingly avoided, and people who can barely stand are held up by the pressures of the surrounding crowd. in general, for a city of such size, the quietude at any other time of the day is shocking, save for the occasional blaring megaphone of a right-wing political party van. that, and the rumble of trains which are never far away, whether below in the network of underground shopping complexes-cum-pedestrian connectors, or above, in the JR system`s elevated landscape, which sometimes weaves, oddly, around and between graveyards (these being the rare pieces of land that remain untouched, resulting in a bizarre adjacency of sacred and profane).

for all of its efficient systemization, however, Tokyo, or the nodes i have occupied, still maintains an organic fabric that feels designed more by necessity than by those who know better. i find this refreshing after Singapore`s tidy blocks and squares and perfect greens. it`s partly a matter age, partly of population and size; Tokyo is so saturated that control can extend only so far and so deep. i wonder too if reverance for the object, as evidenced by the love of Gucci bags and architectural `object` doesn`t allow for a non-judgmental mish-mash of build-as-build can? but this may be surmising too far.

2007-04-25T22:29:00.000-07:00

twenty-eight.

4.25 walk: last night in Hitachi

there is a soft drizzle as i head to the shore. i'm looking for remnants of childhood play: the red blue & orange playground (that was never mine?) the calm harbor where my sister waded too deep? the concrete fishing pier where i stood by my grandfather in silence? the bathhouse-beachhouse with fried noodles & multi-hued water toys?

tonight it is melancholy & solitary. summer is far away & the play of children is nowhere to be heard. fishing nets lay like tangled string, buoys pulled from the depths encrusted with the tenacious lifeforms that measure water's time. the shore is defined by manmade wavebreakers & the occasional household piece of mega-garbage (motorcycle, anyone?)

the sea is like no other. i walk 1/4 mile out to the lighthouse which stands as sentinal at the mouth of the port. to one side: the calm harbor, to the other: an ocean of such frothy gray intensity that i feel a palpable disquiet. walking along the solid breakwall is like walking on thread -- at any moment my body aware of the sea's potential to grab me over the pile of jack-shaped & stacked breakers. starfish lay like soggy paintings upon moist concrete-- a testament to the paltry efficaciousness of the breakwall & wavebreakers. i run, slipperishly, in the dusk, to snap my lonely picture of the small red tower against an endlessly empty & unchanging horizon.

2007-04-21T23:43:00.000-07:00

twenty-seven. pause: my machine and me
in an episode of true synchronicity, just when i arrived in my mom`s hometown of Hitachi, Japan for a few days of parental pampering and R/R, my machine began to play the click of death: HD fried and with it some Singapore info (thankfully that`s all). i drowned my brief sorrows with a spread of sushi, perfect miso soup, and pristine strawberries, followed by a long soak in a very hot bath. the next month through Tokyo and China will test my inventiveness for recording both visually and verbally, the lack of keyboard/Photoshop/Illustrator/Word whenever and wherever i want a privilege that will have to wait until my stateside return. so, please bear with (for those who are bearing).

Hitachi is the birthplace of Hitachi Electronics and a mid-size non-descript industrial seaside city of approx 300K. little has changed here since my childhood, when time spent here meant visits to a rowdy ocean that tumbled me underwater, the occasional fishing excursion with my grandfather, and endless neighborhood wanderings from playground to playground. when the rest of the world seems barely recognizable after a year or two, Hitachi`s lack of glamour and subdued economic base have prevented it from becoming either a tourist hub, or a bustling larger metropolis. between the unremarkable 3-storey tile-covered boxy buildings, the diminutive traditional wooden homes remain, the gravity of their weighty roof tiles pressing down into the earth through the grains of wood worn soft and dark with age. every little plot of land is occupied by either the vibrant colors of an erratically planted garden in dirt and moss, or the careful rows of vegetable cultivation. the constant sea-breeze and the cool temperatures have been a blessing for my city-tired lungs.

i have been finding delight in watching random snippets of strangers` lives here: an old man with a cane has picked edible yellow flowers by the root, and he carries them carefully in his hand, homeward bound. a group of 4 elders plays croquet in the morning on the uneven ground and patchy grass of an empty parking lot. a coffee shop that my mom frequented as a teenager is still open, it`s baroque bastardization of Viennese romantic kitsch now saturated with the character that only age and familiarity can ever bring. my mom`s small house, left from her father, is still redolent with the relics and scents of my grandparents.

it is a strange contrast to suddenly be thrown into this world of non-traveler, non-tourist, non-student, non-researcher. i see nothing here with fresh eyes, everything registered against a faint memory or sensation, or even, a personal feeling about this place and the role it has played in my life. i do not live here, and it has been years since i`ve been, but to be here will never be a simple movement through. of all the places i`ve spent time in my life, for school, or travel, or work, this is the only one to which i have returned with any degree of longevity. i have young cousins here, who regard me as the mytsical relative from America with wavy hair and big eyes; i look from them, to their mother (my first cousin), to their grandfather (my uncle) and my mom and beyond, sometimes finding threads that reverberate across time and distance and other times, finding only an empty silence and strangeness still laden with emotion, like the stone graves of my grandparents.

it is good and needed though, this breath of fresh air, these few days of quiet -- before Tokyo`s compressed spaces and quick speeds, and before the yawning, changing landscape of China (Beijing, Shanghai) and Tibet (via rail).

2007-04-17T22:43:00.000-07:00

twenty-six. big brother, blankness, grit.
Singapore Discovery Center 4.15: “we work hard for an easy life”
the issue of the city-state’s uniqueness is the focus of the Singapore Discovery Centre, located in the middle of nowhere past the western terminus of the E-W line. to give a sense of its siting: down the road is an air force training center, across the street a naval base, and directly adjacent, the concrete beginnings of a new military museum. I was here because I was saw an advertisement for the center’s security-threat simulation; quite an odd thing to offer as entertainment. after a week of watching anti-terrorist video & poster displays in the subway system (Edison a la MRT: “many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”), I realize that the campaign here against potential outside threats is more ubiquitous than any other I have encountered. on one level, the vigilance can hardly be blamed; it is a small island with one of the world’s most lucrative ports, a concentrated downtown of glass towers, and everywhere else high density mid-rise housing as far as the eye can see.

the center is set up in a circular fashion with a central atrium surrounded by an open mezzanine. the central exhibit, the finale of the promenade through the space, boasts a dark cloaked room inside of which a vibrating metal floor and an extremely violent video showing a simulated MRT bombing plays every 15 minutes or so. although the rest of the discovery center is presented as eye-candy for a child, neon blinking lights, video games, and dumbed-down propagandistic kitsch extolling the sources of Singapore’s character, this room warns against allowing children under 7 to watch the simulation. nonetheless there were at least 3 young children in the room with their parents.

the video depicts a bright happy normal day on the MRT, and zooms in on a little girl and her mother, chatting happily. suddenly there is an ear-splitting explosion, the screen covered with fire and bleeding bodies and ambulances and chaos. the grand finale of the video shows the happy little girl from earlier turning over her dead mother’s body and wailing. “would you let this happen?,” asks the screen as it blacks out. I left feeling nauseated; the video is an effective tool to generate terror against terror, and the campaign so extensive in the rest of the city that never a misplaced bag will you see. at the same time, I can’t help thinking of fear’s use as a tool for paranoid unification vis a vis an unseen ‘other,’ and for unilateral support of a regime that protects the good life that most Singaporeans enjoy.

Punggol 4.16
the rails also play a major role in nation-building, both literal and figurative. in addition to the MRT system being a primary site for the cultivation of anti-terror consciousness and serving as underground bomb shelters (where the system is sub-terranean), it is also the primary determinant of housing development patterns.

traveling to Punggol, the terminus of the N-E line, one encounters the outer fringes of the island’s housing development efforts and it is stark and raw. departing from the new, expressionistic MRT station, vibrant 16 storey-towers huddle in clusters along the elevated, almost door-to-door light rail (LRT) that runs in a perfect loop around what was not-too-long ago open swaths of greenery. the LRT loop takes 10 minutes, and is a tour of the tabula rasa: forest, field, rail, construction = town. some stations remain empty and unused, as the towers which they will serve are as yet unbuilt. this is a textbook example of ‘transit oriented development,’ and as such, highlights its limitations. life exists solely by branching (not very far) off the LRT. the ground-level is covered with empty sidewalks, playgrounds, and plantings that feel incongruous beneath the hulking masses of vertical homes. the community is not fully populated yet, so its evolution over the next 5 to 10 years will be revealing.

one Punggol development-in-the-works is called ‘Treetops’ and is currently heavily advertised on the MRT as Singapore’s first eco-settlement. images of gardens, open space, and a breezy façade entice bidders to love & protect nature. the views will surely be as promised, as Punggol is a greenfield site. the irony of creating an eco-development on a swath of open land with a view of the adjacent jungle goes without saying.

Punggol is visually remarkable, with its sea of housing against a backdrop of nothing. it is a perfect testament to Singapore’s ongoing active creation of itself in a upward & outward spiral. so many things here have a just-add-water systematic way of working; the formulas exist , the chemistry sound, on paper, but the reactions have yet to take place. the live-work-play paradigm is so seamlessly employed that ambiguous spaces of opportunism are hard to find, and in fact are more evident in older developments where infrastructures for living are LESS seamless – where a station relates clumsily to the parking garage, allowing an overpass lined with stalls on one side and a covered wet-market on the other (whereas at Punggol the modern station spills directly into a shopping mall).

Geylang Rd. 4.17
my last night here: finally, a messy sidewalk difficult to navigate, bodies bumping into me, strange stares from beer-imbibing sidewalk diners, etc. Geylang Rd. sticks out like a sore thumb in relation to the rest of the island. it is a panoply of two-storey neon shophouses, restaurants that spill into and overcome the walkways like joyful parasites, stores that usurp the sidewalk for their overflow stalls, laughter, drinking, selling of black-market cigarettes, and the buying & selling of female companionship. the neighborhood, north of Kampong Glam, is claimed to be home to Singapore’s ‘largest red-light district.’ this means a handful of side-streets that are bathed in dark, full of parked cars, and lined with women who look as if they might be the girl-next-door, your high-school playmate, or your aunt. men mill about as the prostitutes try and ‘befriend’ them with smiles and familiar conversation. a social services center lines one side of the street. the aura is unurgent, almost lazy. walking past an open second storey window where a trannie proudly changed for all to see, I felt a prickle to be encountering the closest thing to unexpected I have seen in awhile.

still, as is typical, Geylang’s fluorescent flamboyance begins as abruptly as it ends. the neighborhood is contained within 4 or 5 blocks, sectionally, and approx. 15 along its length. at its fringes are the occasional church, temple, cheap hotel, grocery store, and then suddenly, a well-guarded housing development bathed in silence and television glows. adjacent to the housing, the MRT E-W line runs quietly & above the usual linear swath of velvety grass. the silhouettes of evening commuters stroll across the field, backlit by the light from the blocks above.

late night: I don’t feel like falling asleep on the city yet, which I may miss in its own way. in the gaudy art-nouveau Parkview bar, which is slathered in bronze gild, I sat next to a German student studying political science in Singapore. my read of the population’s apoliticization was not mere cynicism. I learned, according to Rene, that voting is not anonymous, that all major media sources are government-owned (aired in rail stations, busstops, and on buses themselves), that opposition leaders can be sued for slander, and that supporting the PAP brings with it perks in the way of daily-life improvements. i.e. if a residential area yields a high-percentage of ‘unfortunate’ votes, improvements to housing (upgrades, renovations) will be very slow to happen, as more supportive communities are ‘rewarded’ in a timely manner. the conversation ended with Rene’s statement and speculation: this is by no means a liberal democracy, but is a liberal democracy what people here want? Singapore’s 40 year rise from rags to riches is oft-cited by residents as the result of the government’s (in particular Lee Kuan Yew) ability to single-handedly implement its vision, and has left the citizenry with an apparent faith in the government’s efficacy.

still, there are freedoms here that surpass those found in more liberal societies; freedom of religion is fiercely guarded (perhaps because religious persecution can be such a surefire way to generate a feisty opposition; see below*), and, although having nothing to do with law or policy, I have seen more young & old multi-ethnic couples here than anywhere else I have ever been. but according to Rene, well-educated intellectuals are often loathe to stay here; the country is suffering from exodus and is making efforts to attract more talent that is willing to call this place home. Singapore is often accused of being boring, and in response, tries to create art & ‘culture’ through dictation, rather than allowing culture to arise from the confluence of freely expressed difference, allowed to manifest itself more deeply than a freshly applied coat of paint.

(*most recently this respect for religious freedom allowed a man living with his 10 wives and 64 children to live unfettered until it was revealed he was raping his children).

2007-04-17T22:37:00.000-07:00

twenty-five. Singapore re-explored.
the city streets on Sunday are quiet, perhaps a testament to the influence of Christianity, which has a following from 15% to 20% of the population. this popularity of this conviction is also evident in the newspaper obits, and even in the odd billboard, such as the one I saw yesterday on Orchard Rd.: “every last unit sold, thanks be to God!”

today, as has been norm, the first half of the day is sunny, bright and hot, the cheap sarongs sold to tourists on Bussorah St. blowing bright colors in the wind. somewhere between 12 and 5, a thick blanket of grey will cover the sky and release a thunderous downpour, occasionally accompanied by a rainbow. the effects of these daily deluges during the rainy season are evident everywhere on the island; it is so lush and thick with vegetation that everything – roads, housing blocks, cars – becomes a bright contrast against the green. there is a large engineering project down near the marina to create yet another reservoir (in addition to the two or three sizable ones in the middle of the island, which account for the vast swaths of undeveloped land between the MRT New towns). this reservoir will act as a sea-level rain-water catchement.

the past couple of days have allowed me to better appreciate Singapore’s working order. what the island-city does best is not what it tries too hard to do, in the way of quickly constructed HDB projects, or in the way of gentrified historic districts. riding the circular N-S line (4.13) entailed a glimpse of the worst, the weird, and the best of this city’s planning. the MRT stop at Admiralty lured me off the railline with its striking…ugliness. rows upon endless rows of mass housing reached as far as the eye could see, and an oddly configured station overpass leads straight into parking garages…brutally convenient, brutally unbeautiful. Admiralty’s station to door sequence epitomizes functionality; between the station and the parking garage there are a takeout food stalls for the homeward commuter. it is the one of the most distant stops on the MRT lines, and its marginal consideration is evident. not a New town in and of itself, it serve as a satellite neighborhood for Woodlands New town, one stop away. in general, along the line, the abrupt change from undeveloped green space to housing blocks that sprout from nothing is striking (a result of protected reservoir tracts), as is the sudden scale & use change from industry to housing (ex. Kranji), or from single-family housing to high-rise housing. much of the railline provides the basis for an uninhabited green belt, which swells at each station into a football-sized field.

near the end of the N-S loop the line crosses the N-E line which has the harbor as its terminus. I transferred and disembarked and found myself standing on a water-feature covered deck, which surrounded a a hideous undulating mall, overlooking one of the more bizarre sights I have ever seen. directly offshore and ½ km to the south is the human-made resort island of Sentosa, linked to the mainland by a purple hued mini-monorail service and a gondola line. an enormous cruise ship was also docked here, rendering the entire shoreline miniature by comparison. directly to the east, literally 100 m away, Singapore’s port begins, acting as a phenomenally beautiful backdrop to this touristy chaos, and beyond which the towers of the CBD provide an even more distant surreal, backdrop. this startling proximity of playful kitschy pleasure, global money (Singapore’s port is one of most lucrative in the world) finds its appropriate hybridity in the gentrified warehouse restaurants that serve as a brief stitch between these two zones.

the port is linear, and runs the length of the coast between Sentosa and the downtown area, the bright yellow and green cranes perfectly aligned in another eternal perspective, the stacked cargo containers a colorful plaid matrix. I opted to walk along the harbor over heading out to Sentosa’s constructed toyland, and was surprised and happy to find that the major thoroughfare (Keppel Rd) which runs underneath the East Coast Parkway and adjacent to the port actually boasts a SIDEWALK….which doesn’t end! this high-speed, industrial, under-highway place was actually considered an inhabitable space for pedestrians. granted, the noise and pollution don’t allow it to be a promenade, exactly, but there are occasional crosswalks, busstops, and a lushly planted median. the Parkway overhead, like other highways here, is a stunning structure, not only in its unmarred concrete smoothness, but in its Y-shaped armatures which hold up the waffled roadbed. also startling was the relative lack of a barricade along the port access road; a 10’ high chain link fence with a double-layer barb at the top was the extent, highlighting the relative lawfulness and safety of this place.

I walked this stretch of road for a near-hour, until crossing north into the beginnings of the CBD, where I grabbed a sidewalk meal, and then strolled home, passing the very well-conceived Hong Lim Complex, on N. Bridge Rd. a series of 4 to 6 high-rise residential towers are set back from the road, and encompassed by a 4 or 5 storey intermediate commercial & parking zone. this retail opens up in the middle of the complex to form a long ‘courtyard,’ perpendicular to the road & providing an entry into the tower complex. this courtyard-thoroughfare acts a social gathering space, and serves as a visual axis that connects to a pedestrian mall on the other side of the street.

after this long circuit and unforgettable walk, I found myself thinking that the true blessings Singapore’s planning might be its creation of connectivity at multiple scales.

4.14 to Johor Bahru, Malaysia
one Saturday pastime of Singaporeans is to hop over to Johor Bahru, Malaysia for cheap groceries, cheap cigarettes, and cheap gas (although the latter has become so common that gas tanks going into Malaysia must be at least ¾ full now). perhaps these bargain seekers also get their monthly dose of frantic gum-chewing in before heading back over the border; I was tempted to gobble down a pack in desperation but opted against the sugar high. I should note that I was warned by every Singapore resident I’d talked to not to go, as it was too “ dangerous.” after doing some internet research I felt safe enough to venture and I must say, ‘unsafe’ is a relative term.

as often seems to happen at borders, there is a aggregation of stereotypical characteristics of place, as citizens on both sides of the line usurp the benefits not available in their own countries and business, when allowed, is only too eager to fill the desire. the Singapore border control station is grey, brisk, airport efficient, and devoid of any services or retail, such as money-changers, or otherwise, save for restrooms and a multitude of bus queues (everyone must de-board, file through, and re-board, twice, once in Singapore, once in Malaysia). across 1km long Causeway (built in 1923 and funneling buses, cars, motorcycles, train, and freshwater between the two countries) the Malaysian border station is lively and humid, fans working hard to supplement the near non-existent a/c. immediately upon exit taxi hawkers await: “where you going?” an enormous shopping mall is only a few feet further, truly one of the most crowded malls I have ever been in, the food court providing a 5th floor view of dilapidated shophouse rooftops, Milla Jovovitch’s feline face on a billboard, a colorful Hindu temple, a few alleys stuffed with tables and foodstalls, and a disorganized assortment of mid and high-rise buildings dotting the near and far landscape. (the photo a more extended view from the 33rd floor of a nearby adjacent tower, where a kind man let me into his office after I’d wandered the windowless hallways trying to open every locked door).

back down on the ground…money changers galore, and many single men looking as if they’re not quite sure what to do with themselves. what I felt was not so strong as to be unease, but rather, a gratitude that I would be sleeping back in Singapore that night. a city whose sole raison d’etre is to provide the offerings of a less formal economy for a neighboring city that is, by comparison, filthy rich, not surprisingly has an air of edgy anonymity about it. Johor’s current challenge is to become more then just a cesspool of cheap goods and services for Singaporeans and a jumping off point for the rest of Malaysia (intra-national bus stations are everywhere). there is talk of developing its port, and increasing its tourist appeal. it by no means feels like a destitute city; just rough-around-the-edges compared to its sister across the water.

2007-04-12T22:27:00.000-07:00

twenty-four. Eureka!
4.12 p.m.
there are singing creatures here that live in the drains after rainfall; they make a sound like falsetto cows or wind instruments. walking to dinner in lively Little India, where the smell of incense and spice overwhelms the neutral smell of the city’s clean air, I heard this mysterious sound from far away. crouched, listening in the dark, I asked passers-by what it was, but no one knew. returning home, I heard the same sound coming from an open gully, and there was the culprit: a fist sized frog that inflates its diaphanous chest like a balloon and lets go with a ‘warrrrupppp.’ he was so funny and small, and able to emit such reverberating calls! also, across the street was a black kitten teasing a roach in the street, doing a spastic cat-dance. suddenly, the neighborhood was full of quirks.

an afternoon run between thunderstorms took me up and over a long, inclined highway overpass, cars trucks & taxis racing by me, all of us 60’ above the outlet to the bay. after descending I turned around and ran back under the overpass, the most beautiful yet, an empty field of red dirt contrasting against the graceful, bright concrete pillars…and an antennae car racecourse, carved into the ground, where three men were testing their mini-motors up and over a ramp-jump that catapulted the toys 3 feet into the air! back at the water’s edge and still underneath the highway two fishermen were hanging out, enjoying the emptiness of place. later, crossing a sinewy pedestrian bridge I had to pause while some students filmed a video of a runner. on the return route, I passed the Golden Mile complex, whose canted, open façade of repetitive units has turned into an informal quilt of various additions and adjustments to each balcony.

almost back home, I passed an alley on the outskirts of Kampong Glam. here the shophouses have not (yet) been renovated; some roofs are caving in, or look charred. everything is enclosed by thick walls, except for one opening from which came the screams of a man in pain…there was jostling, crashing, and a man emerged from this courtyard wreckage carrying some bloody-looking rags. in a panic I ran past, then was lost in a daze as to what to do: call the cops? go back and intervene? how come everyone on the main street looks so non-chalant? creeping back to the site, trying to hide behind cars and posts lest I be recognized and abducted, I witness a group of young men and women exit the courtyard carrying video equipment. ‘oh…are you making a movie?’ ‘yes, a Chinese gangster drama.’ I start laughing hysterically; I had been truly terrified in Singapore, my mind racing: “so THIS is how violent crime happens here… people pretend like it’s not happening, and no one calls the police.” I feel as if this last incident encapsulates something about this city.

so, finally, my heart races and all in one afternoon: with adrenaline on a vertiginous highway run, with glee watching middle aged men doing car flips under that same highway, with terror and then amusement past a bloody movie-shoot, and finally, before much needed sleep, with curiosity and appreciation at the little creatures that live under the wet roads.

these are precious moments in Singapore…

2007-04-12T21:20:00.000-07:00

twenty-three. more musings.
on the surface of things what has been the least physically ‘challenging’ of my cities is also the most exhausting -- I can’t put my finger on it. the hostel environment and its late-night noises (can’t afford anything but a dorm bed here)? the readily-available cell-phone / skype /internet connectivity that leaves me neither here-nor-there? the heavy humidity which, although sticky, is nothing compared to Bangkok’s sweltering heat? or the total comfort of it all? when I sit down to draw & record my routes I feel uptight and tense, afraid to make mistakes or interpret too much off the map. I feel as if travel fatigue, or something about the city, is rubbing off on me.

I admit to being uneasy in this most orderly of urban organisms: sitting on the patio, in the boutique neighborhood of Kampong Glam (once the Arab quarter), everything around is so pristine and calm I can feel my own restlessness. the juvenile urge to spit, to chew gum, rises– it’s been so long since I’ve been this aware of being physically controlled (although this does happen to us everyday in the most mundane of ways, crosswalks and the like). the number of incentives that influence daily behavior here is astounding; riding the bus can get a free soya milk; an MRT (metro) ticket includes a $1 refundable deposit when the ticket is later returned (litter reduction); napkins do not exist, except at Starbucks (which are copious)…not all behaviors are so small, either. owning and using a private auto burdens one not only with a hefty auto tax but with Electronic Road Pricing in the downtown area, every weekday. this makes auto ownership the privilege of the relatively well-to-do (who exist in no small numbers), and rusty, aged cars are nowhere to be seen.

I am also schizophrenic here: I go from feeling as if this place is frightening, to feeling as if it’s amazing, in the same breath. it is both. how can one complain when there is so much here to celebrate? the fact that every single sign is written in no less than 4 languages (in order: English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil), the fact that 80% of the population owns state-provided real estate, the fact that environmental standards are high enough for reclaimed sewage water to be usable for computer chip manufacturing…the diversity, the standard of living, the foresight are on most liberal-minded city’s wish-lists, and are cause for wonder and respect.

in the newspaper two days ago there was an article entitled “Spruce up Little India but keep its charm.” the desire to ‘spruce up’ means different things to different Little India residents – for some it simply means more trashcans and cleaner sidewalks, for others it means renovating and transforming the heritage buildings into pedestrian malls. I have seen this strategy employed elsewhere and it involves 1. renovating historic shop-houses 2. filling them with high-end retail 3. covering the street with a climate-controlled glass canopy. an historic pedestrian shopping arcade is born (Bugis Junction, once a seedy transvestite hang-out, and Far East Square, on the edge of Chinatown, are two such examples). by no means are such places unpleasant or even poorly designed; they simply lack contestation. the story of place becomes solidified in font and preserved on a poster, and then turned into high-end consumption, which can support the cost of real-estate, heritage renovation & maintenance. with this as a working model, however, what keeps a city’s public places from becoming gentrified museum displays in which ‘history’ is constantly ‘spruced up’ before it is ever allowed to simply happen?

at the Urban Redevelopment Authority the other day, I was astonished by three models: one, a 25’x 12’ 1:5000 model of the entire island, with every existing and future building in place; two, a 1:1000 model of the downtown area; and three, a 1:400 model of the CBD and immediate surrounds. also at the URA was every city plan from 1958 onwards, transparently displayed for perusal and research in weighty binders. URA sponsored publications include a volume entitled Singapore 1:1, in reference to what has been heralded as Singapore’s full-scale correlation with its planned model. the introduction read something to the effect of “walking through the streets the buildings are perfect implementations of the urban plan…” nothing is unaccounted for. every 10 years an island-wide comprehensive ‘Concept Plan’ is re-formulated. new housing projects are planned in coordination with transit nodes and advertised for early bid in the halls of the MRT, offering a “total living environment” for live, work, & play.

in a country that has, and continues, to generate its evolving coastline from massive infill projects (approx. 60km² to date and growing), the ability to structure other environmental elements (such as infrastructure and housing) seems to follow naturally. in fact, the Housing Development Board is one of 3 agencies responsible for land reclamation. I’ve walked & ridden around the city looking for pockets of…contention? rebellion? signals that not everyone has exactly what they need in the way of the “five C’s” (career, credit, car, cash, condo)…I have seen young skateboarders in an underground walkway with a ‘no skateboarding’ sign, and a handful of men who sleep on the floor of the arcade here on the Bussorah Street pedestrian mall, where the two-storey scale, the lack of road, and the tranquility make it an likely nighttime refuge for the city’s few homeless. the renegade political dissidence, about which I have read in Ian Buruma’s Bad Elements, remains invisible.

4.11 Tampines & Pulau Ubin thrill: I found myself in a 20’ long bumboat bound for the heavily forested island of Pulau Ubin, a stone’s throw from Malaysia in the Straits of Johor. this is the northwest edge of Singapore, and it is eerie and beautiful. the water in the Straits is a deep emerald green, in part reflecting the color of the constantly overcast sky. from Changi Village, which is really just a small confluence of services for the Changi military base and scattered beaches, there are two ferry services: one for this island, and one for Malaysia. the boats to Pulau Ubin leave “when there are 12 passengers,” but nonetheless the operator gave in and went with the four of us: myself, a German couple, and a jovial, sailor-mouthed Pulau Ubin resident who was hauling over a box of goods and a fake fiberglass rock, such as you’d find in a putt-putt golf course.

the crossing takes 10 minutes. leaving behind Changi Village a monstrous oil rig off the coast of Singapore reveals itself to the east (Singapore holds a huge segment of the world's rig manufacturing market), beyond that the endless rows of block housing in Punggol, and across the strait, the dense and silent green of Pulau Ubin, Pulau Tekong, and the Malaysian shoreline. both Pulau Ubin and Pulau Tekong are planned for massive future reclamation projects (approx. 35% increase) to house Singapore’s population, which according to a recent Wall St. Journal article, the government wants to increase (http://users2.wsj.com/lmda/do/checkLogin?mg=evo-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsetup2.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB117608056066163678.html%3Fmod%3Dtodays_asia_page_one). off the coast of Pulau Ubin are small fishing boats and dilapidated offshore stilt houses. moving like noiseless beasts through the straits of Johor are, in addition to these small cross-strait bumboats, gargantuan cargo ships. the one slightly ahead and to the east is “Panama” bound, as stated on its massive hull. our bumboat and this cargo ship are headed for the same point in the middle of the strait, and I realize with amusement, and then with alarm, that our driver is not about to slow down to give right of way to this ship, 50 times our size. in retrospect, I think he was trying to beat the ship, but 50 ft. from the hull and already fully in its 4’ wake, he fortunately decided to put on the brakes. the shiphands, whose faces were close enough to be memorable, watched in amusement while the couple and I held our breaths with incredulity. global almost meets local (albeit performed for tourists) in an unforgettable encounter.

but, to back up…Tampines, the UN-award-winning Newtown in eastern Singapore, commercial & retail node, residential enclave of 280,000, and business-park, is also a transit node. spilling off the MRT lands one first, directly into a food court and outdoor shopping arcade, which in turn spill directly into the bus-station which services not only the immediate town of Tampines (via Citylink buses) but also more distant parts of the island. thus I chose the Changi Village bus, lively and full of conversation, which winds through Tampines, with her rainbow-colored housing projects, each purportedly boasting a distinct architectural ‘character’ in the way of decorative surface appliqué and the occasional massing diversion from the horizontal block typology. Tampines, like other New towns, has the means to be self-sustaining, replete with her own schools, shopping centers, hospitals, businesses. the green space that winds through the town find its collecting pool right at the MRT station itself, resulting in an expanse of empty verdant flatness right in the town center, a stone’s throw from the shopping and business blocks. this happens often along the E-W MRT New towns; riding the mostly-elevated railline past endless seas of block houses and the occasional perfectly uniform swarm of single family homes, I watched people truck across these wide fields of land to get from the residential developments to the stations. are these fields reserved for future station-side development, or do they express an idea about ‘green space’ in its most vacant, semantically literal, form?

joggers and golden retrievers are in abundance on the sidewalks of Tampines, and I find myself thinking again about the dogs I have encountered along my travels. this seems self-evident but the health of a pet population says a lot about human standards of living, and whether it has the resources to invest in life beyond daily survival. notwithstanding the unsuccessful attempts to give these public housing projects a character deeper than paint, I found myself thinking that at least this manifestation of planned Singapore might work better than LC’s Chandigarh. despite the architectural superiority of Fry, Drew, and Jeanneret’s residential projects in Chandigarh, Singapore is a walkable, tight-knit city, nestled beneath the most gorgeous urban trees imaginable, and with plans to create an island-wide green-belt connector.

of course Honk Kong comes to mind as well; the New town model of high-density residences coordinate with transit line layout, and the ubiquitous marriage of retail and station, is echoed in both cities. but the two have a vastly different relationship to topography, and thus, strategy for dealing with density. Singapore was razed, her hills becoming, like in San Fran, the land of her new coast. Hong Kong retains its elevations, its developable land so paltry in comparison to her population. Singapore’s building footprints are large and her towers mostly horizontal. both cities, however, colonize the underground, Singapore even more actively in the sense of not just employing the basement, but of building entire shopping complexes beneath parks and roads, the only evidence of the mall’s existence a lightwell, or entry / exit stairwell lobby. unlike Hong Kong, Singapore doesn’t boast a mid-level city; the elevated pedestrian zone that leaves road and sidewalk untouched does not exist here. in Singapore, too, the seam between mall and station is readable, sometimes even requiring full exit from the station before re-entry into the adjacent mall (more akin to Bangkok). the urban ground thus becomes populated with footprints and not just motor-traffic.

2007-04-08T05:42:00.000-07:00

twenty-two. lv. Bangkok, arr. Singapore
4.7
oddly, my two most geographically adjacent cities are also two of the more disynchronous. my last night in Bangkok, wined and dined by a kind friend, we looked down on the dizzying city from the 64th floor of the hideous State Tower building and wondered how the scattered panoply had come to be. Nu told me about the Thai phrase, “mai bpen rai,” roughly translated as ‘it’s all good,’ or ‘it doesn’t matter.’ I thought of the phrase driving to the airport the next day, following the columns of the unfinished Skytrain airport express line (meant to have been finished a couple years ago). I thought of the phrase in the departure terminal, a vastly different space from the ominous cavern of the arrival hallway where I was 3 weeks ago. the architectural effort put into saying goodbye to its travelers far surpasses the airport’s welcome, suggesting once again that perhaps what is important here is the memory making – the dramatic farewell after the days spent in paradise. does this have something to do too, with the lack of coordination between node and linescape? the airport, relatively new, is the node sluggishly pushing the completion of the airport Skytrain. the Skytrain is the line sluggishly driving the transformation of Skytrain stations into glistening malls. it doesn’t necessarily matter if it’s done ‘correctly’ or congruently. just that it’s somehow, slowly, getting done.

Singapore…what a contrast. glass was invented for the likes of this city, which has mastered the art of environmental control so much that it seems to have tamed the mosquitoes which should be swarming in this humid warmth, but aren’t…glass, which keeps in the a/c air, allows the view of gorgeous greenery and immaculate skyline, and perhaps most importantly, allows transparency of behavior in such a way as to prevent the aberrant. I have been here less than 24 hours but the impressions are strong: flying in, the water such a serene deep blue, dotted with so many shipping vessels that looked like miniature toy boats; the buildings of such clean, calm pastels everything looked freshly painted (from the frequent rain? lack of weathering sun?); the Oceanside golf-course, as velvety as archi-fuzz grass; the CBD tightly huddled and distinct; in fact, all districts tightly huddled and distinct, as Stamford Raffles, the city’s founder, planned back in the early 19th century. (he even delineated the ethnic enclaves, such as Little India, Chinatown, and the Arab quarter, which are now tweezed and groomed for a perfectly comfortable museum experience; likewise all the hawker food markets, now roofed, signed, numbered, houred).

our budget Tiger aircraft was relegated to arrival in the ‘budget terminal: enjoy the difference’ (I wondered what difference that might be?),the terminal swathed in the same candy-colored tropical pastels that the aerial landscape revealed. the plane emptied quickly & efficiently, the immigration line moved at a snail’s pace, my officer actually paying grave attention to my document. I had to ride a free shuttle to the famous main terminals, where I had to register, with passport, for my global SIM card; the bus ride to the city revealed a seductive, pristine coastal park which begs for runners; the street beneath the bus wheels was busy with bright white arrows, signs, directions; the roadside no less saturated with information on how to get where/ how long the travel time is; the roadside is also saturated with public service announcements, my particular favorite being the woman’s face plastered at most bus stands. her mouth is falling off in a leprosied gaping wound: “quitting smoking is hard. not quitting is harder.” inside the bus itself are enticements to be a considerate bus-rider: “why is a soccer field warm after a game? move to the back of the bus for the answer!” nothing is overlooked, or so it seems, but am I just reading into it all? is the fully glazed pool hall full of teenagers playing pool under bright lights just an ideal pool-playing environment, or is it meant to prevent the hazy, smoke-laden ‘loose’ behavior I myself so easily associate with pool, and game halls?

I haven’t recognized an ounce of irony here. I went to the edgy-looking red dot design museum today for the Sunday ‘Market of Artists and Designers’ to find Ah-Ha and Belinda Carlisle belting their happy-go-lucky 80’s tunes while young & hopeful crafts-sellers sat at their tables, awkwardly adjacent to the gleaming industrial design exhibits. upon first impression, it seems as if everything potentially ‘informal’ or impromptu has been legitimized, and thus, organized, and tamed. my first day’s stroll through the length of the city’s eastern sectors encountered no resistance, no discomforts. I thought of Mumbai, the challenging exhaustion of simply stepping out of the door -- and pondered what it means for a city to have resistance -- social, political, economic, spatial & aesthetic. do the latter 2 have any relation to the former? does physical comfort and spatial order, such as is unparalleled here, breed social complacence with the status quo? an acceptance of authority and the efficiency it provides?

I am trying hard to relinquish Rem’s sardonic and dense description of this city from SMLXL (Singapore Songlines). walking around town, and reading snippets from the free visitors guide handed out at the airport make this somewhat challenging (ex: the Singapore Discovery Centre boasts a “security pavilion: A series of interactive games and exhibits that tell how Singapore maintains her security with a state of total readiness.”) however, there is still the on-the-ground reality of a multitude of cheap, good food stalls, readily available and open until all hours, patronized by locals and tourists alike; the on-the-ground reality of a vibrant, multi-ethnic Sunday pick-up soccer game in a lush stretch of public lawn; the on-the-ground reality of the guesthouse keepers who, late last night, dealing patiently with my disgruntled self who refused to pay for a dirty room, simply smiled kindly, apologized, and asked if I’d like to see another? it is, undoubtedly, an incredibly wealthy city with a high standard of living for both inhabitants and tourists; it is rare to see a dreadlocked soul-searcher even in the backpacker’s enclaves. rooms, beer, massages…all are too pricey to support Thailand or India’s “come here cuz it’s cheap” crowd, although providing ample attraction for some of the most well-dressed traveling families of rosy-cheeked children, well-endowed polo-shirted parents, and high-heeled teenagers I have ever seen. Singapore is, after all, the home of Raffles luxury hotel, parent inventor of the Singapore Sling (a bargain $25), and only an easy ½ mile away from the tidiest backpacker enclaves I’ve ever been in. 10 days here promise to be eye-opening…

2007-04-07T22:07:00.000-07:00

twenty-one. Sukhumvit & Nana-land
4.3 to 4.6 loops & rides

my last afternoon in Bangkok is cloudy and “cool,” (as in beads, rather than streams, of perspiration), somehow quiet. the city is already dreaming of imminent Songkran (lunar new year full of heat-quenching water festivities and trips back home). I’ve ridden the Skytrain, the Metro, the boats and ferries, and walked the eternal distances between them; still there is little to summarize in this city that remains unfinished. Sukhumvit’s proximity to the rail lines makes it a nexus for the over 40 traveling crowd who prefer the convenience of here over the atmospheric sector of the old city. air conditioned rooms are a blessing in more ways than one, as the number of reverberating construction sites abound along the Skytrain’s path, one block away. these sites are all in different stages of completion and are often congruent with the Skytrain stations. some are only the gutted remains of a soon-to-be-destroyed building, others the graffiti’d shell of a never-got-finished project, staring back at eye-level with the well-dressed who wait for the Skytrain. still others are raw open pits of debris and broken columns, or towers of wet concrete draped in blue & green construction ‘pantyhose.’

Sukhumvit (and around) is not about beauty or preservation, but about easy access to and creation of a traveler’s fantasies, be they tiny bodies for the middle-aged ‘sexpats’ (an LP term I appreciate), expressionless towers of global hotels, any number of malls located along the Skytrain route, any number of cheap tailor shops (which Thai residents seem to avoid like the plague) or travel agents or cowboy bars or bizarre bastardizations of the truck-stop diner. further east down Sukhumvit the Skytrain ends abruptly at On Nut, but a row of pillars running down the middle of the road promise further expansion. the future is built here: a future wife for a lonely man, a future mall to outdo the Paragon, a future trip to the islands to begin one’s ‘real’ trip to Thailand. this gives the area an existentially vertiginous feeling that is most conducive to ‘losing oneself,’ if that is what you’re here to do.

the performance is not hard to escape though; my two long loop walks, beginning and ending back on Sukhumvit Rd., have taken me through vastly different sectors of this city. walking is the only way to see the city from eye-level while in motion. the Skytrain: above. the boats: slightly below. the Metro: very below. buses: above and barely moving. taxi: in the thick of it but also, sometimes stagnant … so much so that rather than take a cab through the city during lunch rushhour the other day (from Thewet southeast to Sukhumvit) I was advised to circumnavigate the city center via ferry and Skytrain. Bangkok proper is not particularly large, if measured in distance. if measured in transit time on the road, however, it becomes a megalopolis.

to Khlong Toei market 4.3
a wonderful loop walk, driven by errand-running but as usual becoming a detour that reveals so much more. down Sukhumvit east to Ratchada Phisek (which parallels the metro line underground). this major road runs south through a mid & high-rise area and along a large, pond & jogger-filled park, past the National Convention Center, where the MTR station emerges to exhale a slew of riders. here at the station, on this otherwise empty stretch of ‘official’ feeling sidewalk, foodstalls and motorcycle taxis wait for hungry, tired MTR passengers and convention center employees. at most every station this phenomena exists with varying degrees of vivacity, depending on both the traffic in/out flow of the station, and the residential scale of the surrounding neighborhood. orange vest-clad motorcycle taxi drivers lie around seeking shade like tired dogs until a train arrives and with it a new cargo of short-distance patrons. at more outlying stations, makeshift pickup truck-cabs which can carry a half-dozen supplement the motorcycle taxis. still, in terms of their ability to weave through traffic, and bounce up sidewalks if need be (everywhere are handbuilt wood and stone ‘ramps’ along these gargantuan curbs), the motorcycles are efficient, fast, and dangerously fun.

at the RP intersection with the east-west Rama IV Rd., the non-touristy Khlong Toei market squeezes and spreads in a zig-zagged line of dust-covered umbrellas beneath an elaborate pedestrian overpass. purchase: mango peeler knives. then walk west down Rama IV to a N-S segment of the national railline. at 4 in the afternoon, the only shade is the billboards which run adjacent, repetitive, pink, rhythmic. to the south is the exhaust-cloaked Chalerm Mahanahkon expressway, to the north is the Daong Phitak access road, and in the middle are the tracks covered in dusty scrub-brush, pink flowers, and now, my tired Teva-clad feet. such an uncomfortable but glorious inadvertent linear park of smog, advertising, late afternoon shadows, and crunchy footsteps. the tracks lead back Sukhumvit Rd + the Skytrain overpass. I am filthy and drenched but satisfied.

transportation meeting + On Nut 4.4
a brief chat with two city transportation officials has provided some insight into Bangkok’s lack of cohesive transit. similarly to Chandigarh, this city’s status as the national capitol has been more curse than blessing when it comes to planning. the Skytrain is administered by the city government, the Metro system by the federal government, the buses and roads by the feds, the waterways by a joint committee… moreover, cost and speed are often the primary dictates for route-planning, accounting for the Skytrain and Metro’s coincidence with pre-existing major thoroughfares (no need for private land acquisitions). ‘Superblocks’ are defined by large-scale arteries, but what happens within is still largely amuk; oftentimes sois are still considered to be private linescapes, disallowing their extension or reconfiguration within the superblock itself. thus you have Bangkok’s one-way dead-end alleys that lead nowhere and that serve more as linear front porches than connectors. interestingly, too, many of Bangkok’s canals did not actually precede roads, but resulted from road construction, which created trenches to one (or both) sides as earth was most-cheaply acquired from the ground immediately adjacent.

the afternoon was filled with a short but valuable trip to On Nut BTS terminus and beyond. this neighborhood is beyond the reaches of the Sukhumvit – Asok – Phrom Phong expat community and the On Nut BTS station is a lively public space where the parking lot of the On Nut covered market has been converted into an outdoor café at the mouth of the station. all it takes is 6 foodstalls and as many little tables and chairs as can fit to turn this otherwise transitory non-place into a pleasantly usable space in the evening rushour.

Bangkok port, expat territory 4.5
the Blue Elephant restaurant and cooking school stands like a bastion of three storied colonial architecture beneath a gleaming glass tower that might have had its glory days in the late 80’s. the restaurant specializes in “royal” thai cusine, which means the recipes of the royal family when it first began to entertain foreign dignitaries and thus, created a panoply of cooked dishes to accommodate the foreign palate (as traditional Thai cuisine was largely raw). 4-hours of educational cooking (and eating) later, I find myself wondering if this city isn’t like the food: full of singularly strong, un-cooperative ingredients that should all compete, but that combine to form a complex, tantalizing, whole.

the port…heard it was down and out and it seemed like an important place to see in terms of the confluence of local and global Bangkok. the port is south of the Khlong Toei market (see 4.3), along a section of the Chao Phraya that was dredged for this purpose. leaving Khlong Toei and heading east, the city assumes the anonymous air of the urban ‘remainder.’ heavy traffic dictates wide roads, which only pass through this no man’s land of mangy dogs and forgotten mom n’ pop shops, interspersed with the occasional port-related government building. the rail also runs E-W through this area, underneath the shadow of an overpass, which, like in so many cities, demarcates the true beginning of the port area. the port itself is inaccessible to non-official traffic, but the adjacent neighborhood is a mixture planned block housing for employees, a 7-11 with surrounding lively foodstalls + bus station, and an old, cramped, alley-filled neighborhood of single storey wooden homes. this might be deemed the Bangkok version of a slum, cut off from the rest of the city, and by no means up-and-coming. and yet, the alleys are lively and thus, by my standards, safe.

it is remarkable how quickly this all gives way to the well-heeled addresses of expat land; 3 blocks back under the railway and the sois begin to feed back into Sukhumvit territory, despite the distance remaining from this ritzy commercial & residential artery. soi 26 runs north and quickly transitions from clean-scrubbed strip mall land into white-light strewn sidewalks of trees, luxury business hotels, quiet residential apartments towers, and reserved Japanese restaurants. in the dark, with the recession of the city’s confusing skyline, and the allure of luminous tree branches, this feels like someone’s version of home away from home; the less commercial segments of Tokyo’s Omote-Sando came to mind (no doubt suggested by all the Japanese writing). once back on Sukhumvit it’s a quick BTS trip west back to Nana-land…

2007-04-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

twenty. environs.
hot long day today (4.2) navigating north only to find that the extended boat service has been nixed (possibly to give the tourist-fed long tail boats a monopoly on the route to Ko Kret island). in Nonthaburi, the terminus of the Chao Phraya ferry, waiting for and getting on the right replacement bus to Pak Kret (aka "Park Red") was an hour-long endeavor followed by an hour north in traffic followed by a quiet massage down the road from an overpass followed by an hour and a half return in traffic again ... sweaty bus seat + eternal traffic = antsy yuki. so i got off and walked the last bit through leafy Dusit in the by-now dusk. it was good to see the northern boundary of the city; the river ferry’s northern segment reveals a dense quilt of stilt-borne riverside residences, some barely standing, some beautifully renovated and gentrified. a few industrial complexes intersperse throughout, as do a multitude of quiet canals with an occasional adjacent glittering temple. saw two monks drifting up a canal in a small boat, their saffron robes never failing to startle in their saturated richness.

yesterday (4.1) was also a day spent exploring the outskirts, although Thonburi, which is just across the river, is hardly a stone’s throw from Bangkok proper. the former capitol before Bangkok, Thonburi’s wide avenues and quiet side streets suggest an organizational logic that evades its sister across the river. the silence of a Sunday afternoon allowed a sense of spaciousness to infiltrate my long walk north from the Wat Arun to the Saphan Phra Pin Klao pier. most stores were closed, but food stalls never are, making it a day of snacking to fuel tired legs. I’m getting used to the dramatic occurrences at every cloverleaf/overpass intersection; dead end elevated road sections, restful parks, basketball courts, even a rock band’s practice of American 1970’s tunes.

... forgive the postcard photo, it was too clichéd to pass up.

2007-04-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

nineteen. 99 and rising.
I’ve taken to blogging in the a/c’d rooms of the national library, around the corner from my quiet Thewet neighborhood guesthouse. the entire city has been melting, and it’s official: a big golf match was postponed yesterday after the participants started suffering heat symptoms. these incessant temperatures, which threaten to denature the proteins in my brain thereby nullifying this entire Branner endeavor, gives the city a strange rhythm of unsleep. at midnight when I lie down under the fan, the street is still noisy with late-night street-stall diners. at 4am, when it’s finally cool enough for breathing to slow, the first trucks, motorcycles, and tuks tuks are already noisily hauling their goods to the market down the street. by 5:30 there is another lull until 7 or 8am, when the traveling coffee crowd begins to stir and with it, the tuk tuks and cab drivers that lay in wait to whisk us away to the temples and shopping malls.

Bangkok is inundated with enough tourists to support an unrivalled diversity of travel scenes. in contrast to the singularity of Mumbai’s Colaba, or HK’s lower Kowloon, Bangkok boasts a multitude of tourist enclaves, each with a slightly distinct character. I already described Khao San, which caters to the under 25, bikini-clad crowd. now I’m in small, quiet Thewet, where European couples with babies and the over-30 solo crowd mingle next to the lively local vegetable-market. in two days I will move east to modern Sukhumvit, where an even older crowd patronizes more expensive bars (both regular and girlie-packed) which are haphazardly tucked between isolated malls and mid-rise hotels. surely more on this when I move there…

3.28 to Pratunam / Siam
I thought an air-conditioned cinema would give respite to my heat-and-pollution wary body but in typical Bangkok fashion, getting to trendy, shoppy Siam was more than half the battle and adventure. my hesitation to take cabs, both out of interest in public transit and also out of an aversion to sitting in endless traffic jams, is slowly revealing Bangkok’s connectivity – often unintentional, but still there. for example, from Thewet and Banglampu, which are in the northwest quadrant of the city and thus river (and not rail) bound, one can take a river ferry south to the ferry terminus, where the Skytrain terminus is also located. you CAN cross this city using non-automotorized public transit; the problem is that few have the time and patience to do so, for it demands such roundabout routes. and the bus system is extensive enough to render such detours unnecessary --

UNLESS, of course, your feet can carry you faster than the speed of a bus stuck in traffic, which was the case en route to Siam. the Red Cross Fair has rendered the Si Ayuthaya artery blocked off (and parallel arteries clogged); 20 minutes of bus-stop waiting left me antsy in the sweltering afternoon heat so I walk down the now familiar, canal-following Krung Kaseng to the Bobae Market area. here the east-west Saen Saep (quickly becoming my favorite linescape in the city) finds its confluence with the radial Phadang Krung Kasem canal, and here i get ‘lost’ for 30 fortuitous minutes trying to find the nearest canal taxi dock. this unintentional navigation leads me through maze-like alleys of cramped Chinese storefronts, across the national rail tracks where an empty train lies in wait, through a quiet temple neighborhood of chanting monks and tall trees, finally reaching access to the canal, along which I had to further walk for awhile … past traditional single-storey wooden homes, lushly shielded from the sun and splash by plantings which cling to the metal safety barricades (which also serve as jungle gyms for the children). the sight of the Rama VI overpass, cutting through and a mere 15 feet above this quiet neighborhood, is startling to say the least, but has been turned into an open-space asset underneath which people play soccer or do aerobics and where mothers bring their children to the playground. here along the canal, tight groups of men have betting pools on the ground, over which I have to gingerly step amidst welcome laughter and jovial curiosity.

the canal taxi ride is crowded with afternoon commuters. the ride provides an amazing glimpse of the city’s cross section, barely discernable above our heads through the slit above the protective plastic tarp. the change from low-rise, tightly packed traditional wooden buildings to mid-rise blocks with shiny glass towers in the near distance is dramatic and sudden, such that when I disembark at Pratunam I feel as if I’ve landed on another planet. here, the speed of development and the influence of consumption with all of its requisite BIG-ME-SHINY-LOOK-SEES has generated a disorienting helter-skelter matrix of disassociated malls (one of which is paradoxically named ‘ZEN,’) movietrons, and market stalls, fully influenced by but only marginally oriented around the nearby Skytrain overpass. after walking in / through / out of 4 such malls I end up at the motherlode of Bangkok’s newest darling: the Paragon. circular in circulation, the 5 storied mall has a a gym and yoga studio on its 4th floor, a Mazarati-Lamborghini-Porsche showroom on its 5th, and my long-sought-after cinema (adjacent to bowling alley) on the 6th. I get lost trying to figure out where to enter, where to exit, where to buy tickets, etc. etc. as if boarding an airplane, I get to choose my leather-upholstered reclining seat upon purchasing my ticket, and wait for the flick in swanky lounge chairs. the Paragon is an aural cacophony, every floor seems to have its own music which clashes and reverberates up the atrium to collect in the unwitting eardrum … after a full 30 minutes of commercials + previews + standing for the national anthem + video of the King on the big screen, the unfortunate ‘Fountain’ finally begins…

3.30 to Sukhumvit
a day-long example of one of the above-described detours, where a 30 minute Chao Phraya river ride lands me at a southern dock (Marine Depot) followed by a 20 minute walk along Th. Charoen Krung (Bangkok’s first paved road). this sector of Chinatown is full of mom & pop machine and metal shops that give way to Hualamphong Station (the National Rail terminal) where the Metro’s terminus is also located. as I said, things DO eventually line up – although I feel I must half-force them to. and, in contrast to Hong Kong, where indoor infrastructure renders going outside/touching the ground unnecessary, here station interchanges are merely geographic, positioning the rider close enough to exit one system and reenter another.

the Metro: cool, white, & silent, with glass barricades and small plastic token tickets. compartments are configured like Shenzhen’s metro; I’m sure these new systems all look to each other for inspiration. (I recall Mumbai’s train signs: undeniably like the London Tube’s red and blue circles). being underground, the Metro is not as much of a billboard as the Skytrain, where every train has its own corporate sponsor (Nokia being a big one) which covers the windows in shade and paint, blocking out the glare of the city below.

soon after emerging at Sukhumvit station (another interchange where the above-ground exit almost lines up with the Skytrain stairs), I indulge in a heinous act of…global fast-food patronization! the snazzy window walls and the Ronald McDonald poised inThai greeting (hands together, head bowed ) promise an a/c view of the Skytrain which races by & above, only a few feet away, and a rare ‘Coke light’ (hard to find in a country that doesn’t value phenylketoneureics as much as our diet-driven culture does). I’ve noticed, both in HK and here, that the McD’s serves as an unlikely refuge for all the expats and tourists who look as if they would never be caught dead in a McD’s back home (ex. the well-physiqued businessman, or the ultra-stylish). but we’re all red-faced & somehow thankful for a dose of predictable standardization and a cool, affordable place to sit. god, I sound like a walking advertisement for this vector of cheap beef and high sodium, which has usurped a prime piece of urban Bangkok real estate.

after perusing the area for a place to spend my last few days in this city, I again decide against the stand-still cab & bus and head north two blocks to…the Saen Saep! it is now dark and the moon is almost full above the glow of white blocks. the last stop puts me within a 25 minute walk home, along the wide boulevard of Ratcha Domoen Nok, which leads straight into the Royal Plaza at its north end. every nighttime brings with it a heightened breeze, and beneath the line of trees I can once again let the slow stroll and the wind clear away the day’s sweat and exhaustion.

[nb: part of the visual disorganization I find in Bangkok might be driven in the small-scale by the extremely low-wires, slung everywhere old and new, and the endless changes in ground level. I learned the other day at the Thompson house that traditional Thai belief posits that demons can only travel along a continuous ground plane; thus old homes’ doorways have 8” high floor jambs. this belief may likely have something to do with Bangkok’s propensity to flood.]

pause in Ayuthaya.
3.31
90 km north of Bangkok this World-Heritage site is a collection of silent ruins situated in a large expanse of dry grass and large, shade-giving trees. walking between the ancient temples is doable (but warm). the 15th century walls and stupas were built of plaster-covered brick which are now beginning to do as they please by undulating and tilting every which way. rows of broken sculptures of headless and split-bodied Buddhas in various poses of meditation give the temples a timeless quality, and the lack of cars is a welcome respite from Bangkok.

the train ride up here at 6am was revealing; the national rail tracks parallel the highways out of Bangkok for a significant distance. I saw another long stretch of an unfinished elevated expressway, running alongside the train, concrete frames-sans-roadtop continuing north-south as far as the eye can see. the rocking of the car, the warmth, and this repetitive, strangely peaceful sight lulled me to much-needed sleep.

2007-03-29T00:54:00.000-07:00

eighteen. digesting Bangkok.
arr. 3.15, Ko Tao 3.20-3.26, solo Bangkok 3.27…
think food, think pink, think flowing waters of teeming browns and grays. think a city full of yellow polo shirts, bearing ‘I love the King’ stenciled over bunny rabbits. think 7-11s and sidewalks-turned-noodle stalls at night. think larger-than-life elevated expressways, underneath which buffets charge $1.50 for a pile of spicy lunch. think ‘endings,’ where the skytrain aborts abruptly, like the once watery sois (lanes) which serviced now-paved canals. perhaps water once had a logic here; its concrete counterparts leave me confused.

my Bangkok blog is long overdue, in part thanks to a fortuitous overlap with Ivan and a long-awaited visit from JC (whose much-needed planning eyes were no less dazed by the map of this visually cacophonous city), plus a trip down to Ko Tao (diving-mecca island extraordinaire: band camp - tuba + scuba). now I’m back and solitary again, left to my devices to seek a/c air and a logic to the way this city moves. Mumbai and Hong Kong, although vastly different, both had a legibility to them which here continues to evade me.

getting around … the Chao Praya river continues to be a viable means of transit for the western n-s length of the city, as does the pungent frothy water of the east-west Saen Saep canal which connects Pratunam and beyond (e) to Banglampu (w). auto traffic is horrendous; extremely cheap, ultra frigid taxis ($2 for most areas within the city) provide a respite from the oven-air but sometimes serve more as a way to pass the time in goose-bumped comfort than an efficient means of getting from here-to-there. buses present the same road-bound challenge, tuk tuks slightly better for their helter-skelter ability to violate the center line and weave in and out of traffic. nonetheless, water and rail transit are often the better options.

unfortunately, a significant section of the central city is left untouched by these north-south linescapes, the historical western city and its multitudes of wats (temples) served well by the river, and the glitzy shine of Bangkok’s eastern mall-filled spread inextricably linked to the skytrain and metro lines. the national rail lines begin and end in Bangkok and could provide the infrastructural basis for serving this nether zone but as yet, these lines only provide a verdant swath alongside which older residential neighborhoods remain. a transit map of the city thus reads as a west-east timeline in section, a fossilized record of urban growth: river, national rail, skytrain, metro. a perusal of the royal transportation planning department’s website boasts a dozen maps for future metro extension, but given that existing systems seem barely completed (as per the eerie, abandoned pillars of the unfinished southeastern expressway) these proposals seem at best a distant dream.

whether because of this transportation melee or perhaps responsible for it, experiencing a sense of Bangkok’s ‘zones,’ complete with character and discernable transitions, demands more reliance on maps and labels than in the past 2 cities I have visited. I described it to JC as a city being comprised of a multiplicity of smaller-scaled sections, repeated over and over, rather than a city with a cohesive spatial narrative. a typical section might be road, sidewalk-cum-thicket of sidewalk eateries (especially at night once shop-fronts close), storefronts below 3-4 storey residential blocks, and beyond this a network of neighborhood homes. at any point, however, without seeming reason, this texture might be disrupted by a horrendous high-rise, placed without apparent rhyme or reason. a drink at one of Bangkok’s skybars (in the state tower or the banyan tree hotel) is a must, if only to look out on the city below and realize that the disorientation on the ground level is no misperception. towers rise willy-nilly throughout the city, which lacks a cohesive corporate core. as frustrating though as this indigestible panorama is to navigate, perhaps it provides a sort of liberation from this city being easily comprehended and thus seamlessly consumed and objectified by the likes of me.

3.28 Thewet – Phayathai (BTS skytrain) – Saen Saep (Canal)
the transit spines do become an organizing force, for better or worse, yet even this effect is short-lived and can abruptly ends without warning. a long delightful morning walk from Thewet through Dusit’s planned parkland left me cooled and happy from the government-sponsored sprinkler system. Si Ayuthaya’s long perspective view leads westward down a tree-lined sidewalk and eastward to a lone tower in the Sukhumvit area. the ‘red cross’ fair at Dusit’s royal plaza has resulted in a horde of temporary retail stores sequestering the sidewalk and the edge of the busy street for real-estate, leaving pedestrians squeezed between ‘storefronts’ and speeding cars. (I had seen this ‘borrowing’ on a previous walk with JC, in which a row of old wooden houses had simply put up a metal barricade along the street to claim their own residential ‘alley,’ replete with plantings 2ft. away from the major thoroughfare).

further east…crossing and then following the national railroad tracks just past Dusit was revealing; here the east-west line joins the north-south, creating a triangular neighborhood that feels lost in time. a jungle of green grows up around railside shacks, which give way to better-built one-room bungalows which all lead to an odd circular reservoir-cum-neighborhood plaza in the middle of this triangle. although this area is bounded by three railroad tracks plus two major roads to the east (the ground-level Rama VI and the elevated Phayathai Expressway), within it is quiet and car-free, recalling Mumbai’s Kotachiwadi hamlet. the area just outside the plaza & beneath the overpass serves as the local restaurant sector, with 3 or 4 foodstalls set up on the sidewalk in the shade of the concrete mammoth.

following the east-west rail for a kilometer or so reveals more humble, trackside residential neighborhoods. in a surprising gesture of civic consideration, however, the railway boasts a slightly elevated concrete walkway along either side, complete with benches and the occasional garbage bin. this zone not only provides a place to walk but also creates a small buffer zone between the tracks and the houses and restaurants that line it. at one such restaurant I had lunch, stepping off the walkway and into a shady, crowded tent where the shirt-tie-skirt lunch-hour crew from 2 blocks away chooses the local vibe and cheaper prices over their more sterile company cafeterias. this rail-line neighborhood ends a few hundred meters further to the east, when it hits the skytrain overpass + station + requisite shopping area. looking back along this longitudinal swath from the vantage point of the Phayathai skytrain station I am struck by the long, anomalous line of vegetation I have just left, the low-rise traditional homes hidden below, the sporadic white towers to either side rising incongruously.

skytrain to National Stadium stop … where I survive the brunt of afternoon heat inside the massive MBK shopping center. disoriented, suddenly I am (almost) back in Shenzhen’s Luoho Commercial City, or upon the market streets of Mumbai. the MBK is a vertical interior escalator’ed mini-city of cheap clothing stalls, cell-phone goods, accessories, rip-off brand-names. the hawking is less aggressive here, tourist-shoppers more scantily clad and more willing to sport Mohawks and tattoos, reminding me once again that Bangkok is THE budget travel enclave of Southeast Asia and perhaps of the world [* see below]. this followed by a stroll to a different world in the Jim Thompson house, 2 blocks away and alongside the Saen Saep. Thompson, a trained mid-century American architect, created an oasis of traditional rural Thai architecture which he tastefully filled with Thai and Chinese antiques (mostly porcelains, Buddhist sculpture, and wooden furniture pieces). the brainchild behind Jim Thompson silk products, he was responsible for creating the world market for these gorgeous fabrics. at the age of 61 he mysteriously disappeared while traveling in Malaysia, and remains something of a quirky cult-figure for artsy residents and expats. not surprisingly, the brightly-lit retail shop is the most noticeable part of the current complex, inside which I overheard an older woman say to her husband regarding the scarves, “this is just like the stuff you can buy in India!” perhaps not quite, but close enough to make one once again feel part of a global traveling entourage whose tastes local retailers astutely discern and cater to.

the canal ride back to the Banglampu area was turbulent, fast and fearsome, if only for the inadvertent splashing of the unwilling passengers (self included). the canal is only 35’ish feet wide, the chop ferociously slamming back and forth between the retaining walls. the boat is narrow, with a lip upon which fearless fare collectors walk up and down, their vulnerable bodies cloaked from head to toe in heavy shirts and pants and hats. what a job – these folks were young and fit and seemed like university students trying to make a few extra baht. the work – or rather, the smells and the prospect of being tossed into this opaque-stew-called-water, made waiting tables feel like pure idle.

[* in retrospect: the MBK’s spectacle is nothing compared to the two-lane street of Khao San road, which I had been variously warned about by fellow travelers. JC and I stayed there our first few days in Bangkok, and realized with a disturbed laugh that it was meta³: the hippy-tourist scene here is so pronounced that it has become an attraction for locals, who sometimes become temporary girlfriends, and in aloof observance, JC and i, tourists ourselves, watched all this. I’m sure there were other travelers watching us in our noticeably over-25 conservative garb. Khao San is such an extreme nexus of ‘independent’ travel it has turned it into a packaged parody, where now it is difficult to actually arrange anything independently. combo transit + lodging packages for the independent traveler are so ubiquitous that many of us seem to have ceased to arrange anything for ourselves, even though in reality this is still quite easy to do as a visit to rail station ticket booth will reveal. in parallel, searching out your own store or restaurant can occasionally be challenge, as some drivers and pedestrians are too happy to recommend a better route or a better establishment. this renders the line between subtle hawking and friendly advice so freakishly thin that it challenges one’s own limits of skepticism to the core. ]

2007-03-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

seventeen. the fragmented whole & the walk vs. the ride

Hong Kong draws to a close with gray days that threaten rain. my last afternoon and evening out on the town were somehow a quintessential cross-section of Hong Kong as I have experienced it: flying back from Shenzhen on the KCR rail and watching the city emerge, suddenly and sporadically as the dictates of topography allow; climbing the grungy stairs to the 3rd floor of the Mansion back in Tsim Sha Tsui for a nostalgic meal of Indian food (how good it was to eat with my hands!); walking through a shiny shopping mall in the by-now HK trademark juxtaposition of circulation and consumption in order access the water’s edge ‘Avenue of Stars’ for the 8 p.m. nightly spectacle. here, for 15 minutes every evening, the tourism board sponsors an ‘ooh-aah’ fest of song and light starring all the major buildings across the water in the financial district. god knows what the electricity bill for this is -- green lasers, Hollywood spotlights, neon facades pulsing and blinking in rhythm to the musak – it’s the first tourist thing to do in Hong Kong, and I could not resist making it my last. walking from here to the Starr ferry pier to return to HKI (where I’ve been house-sitting for a good friend) I passed a panoply of plasticized cotton-candy and photo stalls; it smelled like a carnival. my last ferry ride was poignant and quiet. it has been one of favorite things about Hong Kong: for $.25 and 7 minutes the stunning, mobile view of this city on the harbor and commuting are tourism are all compressed into one functional, breathtaking, and affordable experience. then a bumpy loud tram ride back to the Pok Fu Lam area to sleep in an immaculately designed and furnished apartment (complete with professional Lavazza espresso maker) where from the bed I can look out the window and see 2 twenty-storey towers rising above me.

Mumbai & Hong Kong reflected…looking back over my hand-drawn territorial tracks of Mumbai and Hong Kong, I am surprised by what I see: every footstep/rail segment/busride in Mumbai was a veritable whirlwind of disaster and delight, from the minutae of avoiding the human waste on certain sidewalks to the trepidatious wanderings into unplanned alleys nestled between barely standing shacks to the windswept liberation of climbing to meet the orange flag of a temple on a hill. nothing was a blur because everything was hard won, and thus my sense is that I got beneath the grit of that city more than I did Hong Kong. however, my drawing of Hong Kong is thick with lines -- the train tracks, bus roads, tram lines, & footsteps in some areas so tangled as to be barely decipherable. compared to Mumbai’s scattered and sparse longitudes, one would think that my experience of Hong Kong had been more dense than that of Mumbai.

considering this disparity of cognitive construct and visual evidence, I realize that much of it has to do with the amount of walking, and the amount of getting ‘lost’ I allowed myself in the two cities. in Mumbai if I was not on train I was usually on foot, buses being inefficient in traffic, difficult to decipher, and not as networked and ubiquitous. moreover, being on a train in Mumbai still allows a vivid interface with and sensual experience of the passing city due to the aboveground nature of the system, the permeable compartments, and the violation of the trains’ right-of-way. in contrast, it is effortless in Hong Kong to emerge from the MTR and immediately find a city bus or mini bus or tram going in a direction you feel inclined to go. major stations have a transit interchange area, usually beneath, adjacent to, or a stone’s throw from the rail station, and which serves as the terminus for many routes. the average station has a collection of bus-stops immediately outside its exits, which are usually along a major artery and thus coincide seamlessly with road-based modes. it is strangely difficult to walk too far in Hong Kong; development is nodal, and sometimes broken by topography or long stretches of pedestrian-unfriendly territory. in Mumbai, everything is pedestrian unfriendly in a sense, so everything is paradoxically walkable. here the difference between that which is walkable and that which is fenced or cordoned off or so roundabout or broken by terrain is stark, creating a more stringent dichotomy between the walked & wandered city and the ridden & routed city.

undoubtedly too, the modal configurations account for some of the ‘constrained extensiveness’ vs. the ‘thick narrowness’ of how I’ve known Hong Kong and Mumbai. everything in HK is sealed (save for ferries and trams), and the trains, when above ground, are often well-walled-off or elevated above the city fabric, creating a second, third, fourth layer of experiential distance between viewer/sensor & city. this separation between linescape and adjacent urban mesh also has its advantages though; above-ground noise pollution is minimized, and railway/highway right of ways can find unlikely uses such as parks or promenades.

for me, Hong Kong has been a seamless yet erratic choose-my-own-adventure of navigability which has made me very aware of the particularity of the idiosyncratic slices i've drawn through the city. in contrast, i always felt that Mumbai was navigating me; I was much more at the mercy of the city, and thus, felt more led by an inevitable urgency to simply navigate space.

2007-03-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

sixteen. t/here city.
journeys 3.8 to 3.13

satellite Hong Kong : Shenzhen (3.13) and Shek-O (3.11)
these two excursions could not be more different…
Shenzhen…i'll begin with most recent memory first (or does one day even count as a memory? when traveling, the notion of the ‘recent past’ becomes a flimsy thing as new stimulations are constantly edging out the barely-passed)… the sign at the rail station a few footsteps into mainland China says it all: right arrow “TO HONG KONG,” left arrow “TO SHOPPING.” the Lo Wu KCR East Rail terminus is 50 meters inside Hong Kong; throngs of people are funneled and sorted across the border (HK resident, mainland resident, foreigner, business pass), many wheeling sizable parcels in both directions. the lights are dimmer on the mainland, the a/c less arctic, and the smell of cigarette smoke a tangible reminder that Hong Kong’s recent (Jan ‘07) smoking ban has been complete, swift, and pervasive. no pictures allowed at the border (although here’s a snapshot anyway: a lonely hillside graveyard in Hong Kong and the backside of the Luohu Commercial City on the mainland, each on opposite banks of a dinghy canal). “no u-turns” either. in this odd linguistic oversight somehow the twilight-zone nature of Shenzhen at the border is nonetheless captured. in the Luohu Commercial City, women grab your arm, sometimes tenaciously, and suddenly I’m back in India. now it’s “missi, manicure manicure” rather than “madame, pashmina shawl?” and the bravado of the grab would never happen from the men in Mumbai.

from here an it is an easy Metro ride to the SEG Electronics Center, another windowless twilight zone where 3 hours of price-comparing leaves me with a bargain 160G HDD & an MP3 player at a fraction of HK’s cost. I walked the 2 miles back to the border along Shennan Zhonglu, which I’ve unofficially dubbed the electro Champs-Elysees of Shenzhen. the avenue is so wide, the sidewalks hardly less so, the perspectives so infinite you feel like you’re in Renaissance Italy cum the Forbidden City cum the Future Nowhere city. Haussman would be proud. the land is flat, yielding pastel-hued, fully glazed office towers that stand here and there in random non-relation to each other, their operable windows leaving cute (no other word to describe it) checkerboard indications of occupation on the 34th floor. biycyles share the sidewalks, as do enormous trees; stairs all have roller ramps for pushing bikes or carts up and down (often resulting in odd rise/run stair ratio). despite the odd lack of character of the city as a whole, there are some real pockets of design splendor: a narrow verdant park between two low-lying overpasses, a sidewalk park created by a series of simple raised curves, a stepped depression leading down into the basement level of a shopping mall that generates a relaxing, multi-leveled circulatory public space.

on another note entirely, Shek-O is a small village on the southern tip of the southeastern finger of Hong Kong Island. a bus which only runs on Sundays and holidays leaves from the IFC transit interchange in Central and takes 40 minutes to go east towards Shau Kwei Wan and then south up and over central HKI’s undeveloped mountainous terrain before careening down towards the coast. the busride itself is worthwhile; on the second floor of a double decker, zooming along the eastern expressway which hovers over the water between North Point and Causeway Bay is nothing short of a breathtaking blurring of land, road, sky, & water. climbing over the island as the towers recede below and give way to a thicket of dense green is a vertiginous reminder of this island’s inherent inspiration for architectural acrobatics.

once in Shek-O…while a genuine tenor of local life remains, similar to Galle, Sri Lanka, the pristine and pastoral real-estate is appreciated by several whose out-of-scale mansions hug the hillside on the eastern edge of town, adjacent to the unlikely velveteen sprawl of a golf-course. a strange dichotomy exists here, between the village proper, which retains its 3 foot wide alleys and low-slung roofs, the luxury cars of day-trippers, and the cabs waiting to ferry expats and their visitors back to downtown HK. the allure is genuine and understandable: the dark-blue waves are pristine, the beach bleached and combed, the boulders and cliffs a subdued shade of orange, and the smattering of modernist homes weathered enough to feel appropriate.

performed Hong Kong, unorchestrated Hong Kong
Disneyland line, Tin Shui Wai, Kam Sheung (3.8)
water walk along north HKI (3.9)
Shek Kip Mei & Sha Tin (3.12)
from the top floor of One Peking Rd. in Kowloon, Phillipe Stark’s aqua bar plays loud music amidst faint whisps of (dry-ice) smoke and serves a mean martini. the stylishly manicured can watch the distant lights of a tidy, well-ordered city. if one were to draw a web connecting the ‘stars’ of HK attractions, this tower-top bar would be a small node, as would the nearby ‘Avenue of the Stars’ (see above blog). HK’s Disneyland on distant Lantau island, near the airport, would be another; it has to be, its only raison d’etre being itself. it is situated in what feels to be the middle of nowhere, accessible by its very own MTR rail line which boasts Disney railcars replete with Mickey Mouse windows, velvet seats, and bronze statues of Disney characters housed in glass cases. and then there are the unseens that make official Hong Kong so well-groomed: the way on Sundays and at night, when everyone is shopping or resting, palm trees are planted in busy medians, escalators are fixed, sidewalks mended by tired men in hard hats.

typically, however, the planned and the informal, although rarely hybridized, are not so starkly separated. what I anticipated to be an overly-planned and sterile new town out at Tin Shui Wai on the KCR West Rail revealed a surprising amount of ground-level activity taking place between the cruciform vertical developments. the playgrounds, badminton courts, chess tables and nooks and crannies of the Grandeur Terrace’s courtyards were in lively use on a Thursday afternoon, and the light rail system (i.e. tram) that loops around to the various tower communities allows a human scaled and human speed mode of convenient public transit linking the otherwise isolated blocks to each other and to the KCR rail station (and thus to the rest of Kowloon and HKI). at Kam Sheung station, a different form altogether was evident; Kam Sheung has retained a 3-storey (max) single-family home cum village typology due to government property grants to male heads of households. the station, which stands apart from the neighborhood, has an expanse of ground-level parking where a large group of Tai Chi practitioners enjoyed the borrowed light of the station. at Sha Tin, one of HK’s first new town developments back in the 1950’s, an audacious pedestrian UNDERPASS snakes below a highway OVERPASS and above a ground-level thoroughfare in what looks like a Maya-generated swoop. also here I saw an unusual typology: indoor market stalls housed on the ground floor of a residential tower. at Shek Kip Mei, a half-dozen scales, uses, and eras are evident in one 360 degree panorama taken from an overpass (see photo). even in heavily shopped Mong Kok, in the morning temporary newspaper stalls utilize the sidewalk space in front of stores which have yet to open, using the metal storefront gates as their backdrop.

walking along the northern waterfront of HKI reveals another zone of ambiguity, where men squeeze around fences to sit quietly and fish over in the Sheung Wan area, and one is finally allowed to be close to the water of the harbor which is the gem of this city (excepting ferry rides). for such a stunning stretch of site, the water’s edge is surprisingly under-usurped for tourism and shopping -- although this is changing as I write: new plans for the central infill + development are underway. this condition might in part be due to the continuing functionality of marine transport in the form of cross-harbor and long-distance ferries, which keep the immediate water’s edge near terminals more of a thoroughfare for connecting transit modes. high speed roads are pushed out towards the water’s edge as well, sometimes even surpassing the edge in an elevated addition (such as the eastern expressway). beneath this stretch of road traditional & colorful Chinese junks are moored next to their gleaming white yacht counterparts, and the fence is utilized as a wall for shacks which organize small-scale boat tours. out here a giddy couple had enough privacy to drink and smoke in peace. the planning and infrastructure museum, in the City Hall, is along a little visited stretch of waterfront near Wan Chai; it is simultaneously so well-done and informative, yet disturbing. video game screens allow vistors to play ‘redeveloper’ in an urban Hong Kong neighborhood, replacing condemned buildings with your choice of ‘open space, commercial, residential, or transit’ development at the touch of a button. further along, SOM’s convention center juts out into the Harbor and has such a convoluted, roundabout approach that its monumental ‘I am here’ becomes a comic quest of ‘I see you but how the hell do I get there?’

still, the overriding sense that the government has a heavy hand in the development of spaces for everyday life is not unfounded. the MTR and KCR corporations are given government land to develop in the immediate vicinity of rail stations, resulting in the station cum shopping mall cum tower project phenomenon so evident at Po Lam and the IFC. none of this is a secret; the IFC yields an enormous MTR logo on one of its facades, and an MTR sponsored advertising screen sports Madonna prancing about promoting her new fashion line at the very-recently opened H & M store nearby. signs posted in the Metro advertise MTR’s new co-campaign with the HK medical association to keep the population healthy; a purported 8000 footsteps a day keep the doctor away, and $2 fare saver machines are placed at various locations around the city (listed with their respective number of footsteps from a train station) to promote longer-distance pedestrian movement. surely the effect is positive, but given the desire to avert roadway traffic congestion and maximize rail use, the campaign’s sincerity seems questionable.

not that government cannot be well-intentioned; I have yet to fully figure out the generosity with which the informal Sunday Filipina picnic convention that takes place all over the streets, sidewalks, and walkways of Central and Causeway Bay is treated by the powers-that-be. this past Sunday I got a better glimpse of the extent of this phenomena; some roads actually close for the event, and numerous security guards are posted here and there to keep certain thoroughfares picnicker-free. in one such area, outside the IFC, where tables are set-up for ‘legitimate’ purchasers of IFC food, a guard came and told me to remove my bag from the back of my chair so as to avoid theft. (I still don’t get the sense that bag snatching is a huge problem here; perhaps this pre-emption is why, although I tend to think that warnings and public service campaigns are more revelatory of what IS rather than what COULD BE…)

2007-03-09T05:03:00.000-08:00

random hello...just got a letter from my parents who have joined the information age in order to read my blog. so this entry is for them : hi bo & yako. thank you for keeping up with me, for getting onto the computer to read about me, for dealing with my logistical loose ends, and for giving me our family's travel bug! here in hong kong i think of you both living down in repulse bay, when mom was just my age, getting tailored dresses made in vibrant colors of raw silk. while our family doesn't have many conventional traditions, i find myself wanting to follow in your footsteps of living a dynamic, nomadic life in diverse places around the globe. maybe i too will end up in hong kong for awhile, if i am only so lucky...love to you both, hello to anyone else reading, and thank you for taking the time with my words.

p.s. this photo is retrogressive, one of my last days in Mumbai in a park near the 'World Trade Center' tower, which is near the waterfront. the white thing in the background is a huge piece of styrofoam that these boys were playing with like an airplane as it caught the occasional gust of wind. eventually it got stuck in a tree...

2007-03-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

fifteen. interchange city.
multiple mini-derives 3.4 -3.7
I cannot keep up with Hong Kong, its movements so quick and seamlessly provided by the most fluid and unlikely of interchanges: this is the city of elevation, where one can move from transit interchange to apartment front door without ever crossing a stopwalk, without ever touching the street. I thought my mini-derive the other day might be an anomaly but more explorations have proven me wrong.

In Hong Kong I have also found friends, first through an old college connection (Jason) who is now teaching architecture at HKU, and by proxy, a GSD studio here doing a joint studio with HKU. Having a pseudo social life has been a blessing and a curse, providing insights into everyday expat life after 8pm, and also tearing me away from my hole-in-the-wall room which, although lacking many amenities, still boasts a free & seamless internet connection (albeit for those rare guests who happen to be traveling with a wireless laptop…). The Mansion has recently been overflowing, due to a jewelry convention that has brought numerous traders from Africa and the Philippines.

The transit here is so layered, yet not necessarily hierarchical, such a vast difference from Mumbai in which the rail line provides such a vital and primary spine, not replicated by any other mode. The MTR (metro) largely services the Kowloon side, its operation on Hong Kong Island limited to the northern coastal stretch where urban development is pinched by the mountains to the south and the water to the north. Its configuration of 5 lines (+ airport express) run in two elegant loops in opposite directions, with plenty of interchange stations yet without much of BART’s wasteful overlap. The stations themselves are, in contrast to Mumbai (again), an exercise in physical and social regulation: rails and turnstiles prescribe flow direction, glass walls with automatic doors completely separate the void of the track from the platform and provide an odd fish-bowl effect for the glowing advertisements against the track tunnel. Beyond the spatial, numerous public health messages abound urging citizens to lead good lives: anti-domestic violence videos, LED screens that tell people to sleep well and eat right, signs in the immaculate train compartments that urge ‘having a heart’ by giving up your seat to those more needy.

Most stations boast, at a minimum, some combination of a Maxim’s cake shop, health-tea stores (to fight ‘urban fatigue’), 7-11’s, internet terminals, and DHL stores, while other stations meld seamlessly with large shopping malls, which in turn, flow directly into high-rise residential tower blocks connected by walkways. (Such is the case with Po Lam, the terminus of the purple line, and a flagrant example of station-oriented development). Buses, of which there are three types (large city buses, green & red mini-buses, the latter of which are haleable like a cab and run on less-predetermined routes than the green buses), are efficient and sometimes redundant with MTR routes. They careen like mad-banshees along narrow streets. The fleet of red, shiny cabs are affordable for short distances (first 2 km) and less so thereafter, reflecting downtown HKI & southern Kowloon’s compact nature. The historical double-decker trams, which run primarily east-west along northern HKI, are not as susceptible to traffic but are generally slow due to their numerous stops. Still, their double-decker height and their operable windows (compared to the city bus’ hermetically sealed a/c capsules) make them more viscerally pleasurable to ride, and make them entertaining design objects; they are rentable for a private “party on a tram!,” (see hktramways.com), as are boats in Victoria Harbor. According to Jason, owning a car here is for the well-funded, as vehicles, registration, and parking are twice as expensive as in other countries (ex.US); the presence of private vehicles is notably lacking.

Getting around is a breeze for some, a nightmare for others. Those who live in the Mid-Levels just south and 250’ up from the financial district have the luxury of riding the escalator DOWN in the morning, until 10:15, when the escalator switches direction and begins to climb again for the rest of the day and evening. Meanwhile, the largely Filipina population of housekeepers climb part of the way and then hang out on the adjacent stairs until the switch, when they can continue the steep remainder of their journey to the Mid-Levels where they work. I witnessed the switch the other day; it is enacted manually as two men block off each section of escalator and signal the direction change. This city is also a nightmare for the physically challenged. There are so many steps, sometimes only one or two steep, rounding a sidewalk corner, for example, or three or four leading to a public restroom (of which there are many, thank god), that the sight of a wheelchair-bound person in public is an anomaly. The one woman I have seen was on the MTR -- an elderly lady being wheeled by her granddaughter, who lovingly had her hands on her grandmother’s shoulders during the duration of their rail ride. Something about the gesture was so honest and vulnerable I had to turn away.

The transit interchanges are un-divorceable from Hong Kong’s negotiation of the global and the local, as in the case of the IFC mall/Hong Kong MTR station, and the Kowloon MTR station, both of which are nodes of a dispersed airport system: in both stations travelers using the Airport Express train can utilize ‘early check-in’ (complete with baggage check) at any one of a dozen airline counters that flank the station. At Hong Kong Station, Pelli’s sparkly IFC mall (‘International Finance Center’) looms directly above this mini-airport cum train station cum bus terminal, with glass walls allowing direct visual connection between the shopping corridor and the departure lobby. On Sunday afternoons, just outside of and running the length of the IFC elevated walkway to the south, hordes of Filipina female picnickers snack and talk the day away in groups, sometimes building their own temporary structures out of cardboard boxes or movable barricades covered in sheets and blankets. This phenomenon is not limited to the walkways, but extends to the ground-level pavilions beneath elevated buildings such as Foster’s HCSB building. At midnight on my way home, the remains of the day – trash, cardboard, etc. -- were being dutifully cleaned by public employees.

In contrast to the IFC’s pristine white anonymity, varying levels of ‘Chineseness’ are articulated as one moves further and further away from this central area. The Shun Tak center, a few hundred meters’ (elevated) walk to the west and along the waterfront, is another gargantuan mall but one whose escalators are covered with the reds, golds, and blacks of elaborate Chinese decoration. Here a hallway full of bright chrysanthemums provided a photographic backdrop for an earnest, old couple whose daughter was taking their picture, another heart-squeezing moment in an otherwise efficient system of movement, consumption, and banking in this part of the city. Likewise, the walkway that leads out of the Shun Tak is lined with a faux black-iron wrought handrail, red columns, and connects over to the more ‘traditional’ Sheung Wan area that is overflowing with traditional Chinese dry-good stores (shark fins, coiled snake-skins, abalone, squids, herbs – an olfactory experience that is hard to describe). It is misleading though to think that ‘traditional’ means informal mom n’ pop as far as this industry is concerned; large cargo trucks pull up in front of these brightly lit stores and unload boxes upon boxes of dry goods, no doubt shipped from distant and fertile parts of the mainland and involving unimaginable sums of money.

This is also de Certeau’s city, not just of towers but of elevated & distant urban views provided by the topography. THE tourist thing to do is to take the tram up to Victoria peak, which hovers above downtown HKI, and from there enjoy the glittering city stacked silently below, like an urban forest. The silence is eerily noticeable, especially coming from India, where the din of horns and voices is incessant and inescapable. At the peak is a shiny two-mall complex and a smattering of luxury homes which face out over the panorama of buildings, harbor, and distant Kowloon towers. Multiple restaurants (the cheapest of which is Burger King), clothing stores, and other tourist-traps (such as Madame Trusseau’s wax museum), integrate the view of the city below with the elevated spectacle of this peak-top amusement park. Still, a healthy handful of beautiful trails lead up and down the peak in all directions, through tranquil green forest whose lushness & proximity to downtown surpass Portland, OR. Even the double-decker buses and trams provide a novel and intimately elevated experience of the roads here, removed one-storey from the hubbub of street life and traffic. The second storey is always full before the first, and perhaps is Hong Kong’s sensual (but distant) parallel to hanging out of the train in Mumbai. In a city so well-configured, it is these expressions of playful pleasures that become most captivating.

2007-03-03T17:11:00.000-08:00

fourteen. Hong Kong.
2.26 evening arrival + some...
vertical city. cascading city. glittery city. topo city. tower city. indoor city. shopping city. spider-web city. multi-modal city. constructed-nature city. platform city. jungle gym city. border city. seamless city. tumbling city. sectional city. stitched city.

post-India culture shock upon arrival at the airport: it was the most seamless airport experience imaginable. every couple hundred feet yields an accurate ‘you are here’ map. soon after leaving immigration the tourist office awaits tucked in a corner on the way to the exit, a hundred glossy pamphlets, 4 or 5 of which alone are dedicated to getting from the airport to the city. backlit displays of the various transport options and their interchange locations within the airport are placed anywhere you must make a decision as to whether to turn left, right, or go straight, and transit information desks sell you your first, of what will be many, Hong Kong purchases: the indispensable Octopus Card. the Card is Hong Kong’s end all-be all to efficient inter-modal public transit, which, 'they' recognize, will also include the quick-stop purchases at 7-11, McDonalds, Starbucks, and elsewhere. the wallet-sized, on-loan Card changes the speed of the city, turning it from stop-go series of queues, ticket machines and ticket counters into a seamless flow of beeping electronic turnstiles. it can even be linked to a credit card, although there is a $1000 max stored value ($128 USD). out of regional train, metro, bus, tram, ferry, and taxi, the only mode for which the card cannot be used is taxi.

the Card epitomizes the blurring of boundaries between shopping and going somewhere, a relationship more formally evident in the downtown financial district where elevated “All Weather Shopping Links” create an above-terranian web of walkways that run between, and then straight through, spotless exorbitant malls. I followed this link the other day, from near the Star Ferry Terminal, and my feet didn’t touch the street/sidewalk level for a full 20 minutes – sans stopping/window shopping.

getting back to arrival in this city…i took an air-conditioned, double-decker, LED-displaying, bilingual bus from the airport to the Chungking Mansion in Kowloon (the southern tip of the New Territories peninsula), where I am staying in a 5x7 ft. room. my sole window opens into a lightwell which provides a constant 6am level of daylight, and just outside and echoing through the shaft I sometimes hear a woman laughing exuberantly, the occasional coo'ing pigeon, and late-night cell-phone conversations in a language I do not recognize. if I’m here around lunchtime I am also privy to a massive waft of pungent wok-fried, garlicky food.

built in the 1960’s and by now a calico shade of dilapidated grey-green, the Mansion is a global village and an institution unto itself, providing the inspiration for Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express (which in turn provided the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s career). the ground floor opens onto the neon lights of busy Nathan Rd. and inside is a maze of cell-phone stores, Indian food stalls, money-changers, internet outlets, cheap clothiers, mini-marts & more. above the first two floors, the apparent monolith is divided into 5 separate towers accessed by their respective elevator cores, and filled with guesthouses up to the 16th floor. fancier guesthouses will occupy a full floor or two, while the average guesthouse is small enough to consist of one or two 50 ft corridors. some are empty and cater to the occasional lone backpacker, while others serve as ‘home’ for the multi-nationalitied population that lives here. Lonely Planet gives the whole Mansion a fairly reserved ‘go at your own risk’ kind of review but I’ve found it to be evocative, relatively safe, and one of the cheaper purchases in the entire city (literally: some HK coffee shops charge 60% of my daily room rate for a cappuccino). in the morning, if I feel 'home'sick for Mumbai’s noisy scents I elevator downstairs and grab a chai and samosa for a quarter, sometimes finishing breakfast before I’m back in my room -- the elevator works as well as Wurster’s…

Hong Kong, in general, is compact and multi-faceted, only 15% developable and of that 15%, 250% developed. it is life above ground: Kowloon’s suburban towers rise like zipped-up needles into the often-hazy sky, and commuters meander up-the-hill on Hong Kong island from the flats of the waterside financial district into the vertiginous Mid-Levels via the World’s Longest Escalator (800m). Topographically, Hong Kong makes San Francisco feel like Kansas, and architecture studio like an exercise in conservatism. the city is a sectional puzzle of multi-leveled walkways, used corners, open ground-level facades, staircase-sidewalks, escalator-streets, 30 degree-slope parks, barely discernable ground-level reveals, inhabitable terraces, hovering roads, violated solids and saturated voids. today I saw an elevated highway gouge through a car-park with adjacent library (in same building); yesterday I found the Haiphong market building whose western wall had disappeared and grown into the space under an overpass where fruits, vegetables, decapitated cow-heads, and hungry noodle-slurpers gathered. depending on the width and vehicle traffic between towering buildings street life develops accordingly; at Knutsford Terrace 25 feet allows outdoor patio drinking, on Li Yuen East & West, 20 feet allows cramped clothing stalls and single lane pedestrian traffic, along the Escalator route this means the escalator overpass, two lanes of stairs (one for through traffic, one for adjacent shop-front pools and eddies), etc…many parts of the city strike me as being interior, such is the ratio between building width and street height, coupled with the tangled mass of signs that protrude perpendicularly over the sidewalk and street, between 15 to 35 feet up, and the open storefronts which spill light and sometimes music onto the sidewalk. in multi-leveled institutions such as malls, hotels, or even McD’s, stairs serve as both direct entry and sectional transition from street into building.

in certain areas of the financial district on Hong Kong Island the global corporate population brought in by the banking industry is so palpable and has such ramifications in the service sector it is dislocating. the yoga studios, glossy gyms, organic cafes, and suit n’ tie bars patronized by waifer thin wanna-be-models recreate a Hong Kong life away from Home for those here who can afford the inflated prices of these once-adopted / now-indigenous institutions. many bars & restaurants in Central and elsewhere cater solely to the expat & tourist population; I’ve watched Cantonese couples take intimidated glances at verbose, English-written menus & turn away muttering, perplexed. this division between from here-not from here is a cursory observation & assumption, I realize, but the collective effects of the expat enclaves are powerful enough to warrant initial comment and further examination.

2007-02-28T01:02:00.000-08:00

thirteen: pause in Mirissa
1.21-1.25

tonight I am living my anti-proposal: non world-cities in non-motion. I'm staring out at my dimly lit room through the faint green haze of a mosquito net in Mirissa, Sri-Lanka, after an exhausting, steamy 4 hour train ride south from Colombo where I arrived at 6am this morning. Colombo, being a layover point between Mumbai and Hong Kong (my next city), and also home to Geoffrey Bawa, whose Mirissa house was my 200a case study, seemed like a good place to recharge, make sense of my time in India, and do some Bawa building scavenging.

the southwest coast of Sri Lanka is a paradise that was pummeled by the tsunami in 2004, now getting a second wave of hardship in the form of severely reduced tourism due to recent fears about political instability from the LTTE (who executed a bus bomb last year in one of the most thriving tourist towns along the coast). it is somewhat difficult to imagine either of these devastations; travel here has been shockingly seamless, from arrival at a sparkling airport with granite floors, to a train ride that carried us through a tunnel of dense green foliage to the east, and open blue sea to the west, small houses huddled beside the track where inhabitants stood and watched as we careened through their otherwise tranquil backyards. the quiet after India is startling, even in Colombo: there are far fewer horns, and while tourist-touting is still rampant it is easy to smile and say 'no thank you' and receive a half-laugh in return. exhausted from a middle of the night flight I have spent the day listening to the sound of ... nothing. a 4 foot lizard walked past my door in the afternoon sun, and right now I can hear night insects and see stars. unfamiliar, almost unsettling. it is one thing to be alone in a city where your solitude disappears amidst chaos, quite another to be alone in paradise along a wide stretch of white beach and turquoise waves, French couples here and there elegantly smoking and drinking beer, bohemian arms wrapped around cherubic babies.

Mirissa is an odd sort of town by the sea – in many ways congruent with other coastal paradises I have seen or been to (this admittedly not too many). ponytails, boardshorts, broad surf-shouldered locals, generous happy hours, palm trees and always the sound of water. walking the stretch of beach tonight though the differences are noticeable. guesthouses/hotels all have their own small restaurants which invariably spill out onto the sand, tables added and taken away as need be. the beach becomes the quiet 'main street,' where subtle billboard communication takes place. the restaurant having the bbq will light its fire early for all to see. fireworks signal a late-night party. as a traveler looking for lodging or a place to eat you would walk not on the street, where the entrances are, but on the sea side, where the life of the establishments takes place. most places play a variety of rhythmic world music when the sun goes down, while in the back where the food is cooked local radio blasts traditional Sinhalese tunes. citronella candles glow in pockets of varying density down the length of the beach, making an establishment's popularity readily advertised. for the tourist, life happens right there on the sand, and it is an appreciable miracle that the beach manages to remain so pristine.

it is surreal to spend a few days in this corner of the earth between two metropoli, but perhaps somehow a fitting reminder of the compression of place and the preservation of difference that make our feet continue to move.

***
2:30 am at the Colombo airport, in The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf shop, of all places, my first Americano in awhile, everything priced and paid for in dollars as soon as we cross the security threshold. Nicole Kidman's feline face is staring at me across the escalator, next to an ad for the in-house airport ayurvedic spa. the shopkeepers are all struggling to stay awake at this ungodly hour as the world of airborne transit continues, oblivious, a temporal & spatial glitch of consumerism. still, a couple of massive mosquitoes are finding the airspace around my computer appealing. I took the 4 hour mini-bus from Mirissa tonight, and completed the last 1km journey to the airport on foot (public buses are not allowed to approach for security reasons). i was walking in total darkness with my bags, cars zooming by on the high security road lined with armed guards.

Mirissa got into my skin in the form of a sunburn, long, salty swims and a serendipitous ending to my short stay here. having come to Sri Lanka to seek out Bawa's Mirissa house, I was told it was inaccessible, even though it was 1.5 miles down the road from where I was staying. 'wait, wait' was the word; the owner's friends were there for the weekend with strict orders not to be disturbed ... pictures of the model we built in 200a weren't convincing, nor were descriptions of the gorgeous doors that I knew so well but had never seen, so I waited until finally, 2 hours before my bus tonight ... it's a project of minimal gesture that is so pared down, refined, and powerful. a cliff, a roof, and rooms that descend into the earth. rooms: ground, roof: plane of sky and sea, columns: trees. like so much of the architecture I have seen here, it expresses the bare essential of what is needed for living comfortably in this climate. vernacular houses here are inadvertently beautiful, drawing wind into themselves under the broad eaves of shade-providing roofs and generous patios. doors and windows, with protective screens for shading, materialize and dematerialize as the sun's movement across the sky dictates.

it's easy to see why foreigners are buying. in the Dutch colonial fort city of Galle, about 1 hr (by bumpy bus) north of Mirissa, thick-walled, 18th century, hybrid Dutch-Sri Lankan bungalows are immaculately preserved, often by their European owners. in an odd second wave of colonialization, the town is fast becoming a bubble for well-dressed travelers who patronize the stylish boutiques and galleries. prices inside the old walled city are inflated compared to the new part of town , and I wonder (fear?) if this trend, should it continue, will push out the remaining local inhabitants and shopowners. although Galle is not corporate, the presence of a more subtle global capital is detectable; I overheard a couple of conversations between Europeans and Sri Lankans discussing business and land deals in semi-hushed voices. even walking through a small village nestled in semi-jungle near Mirissa, I was asked if I was interested in buying land. I surmise that this coastal area, and in particular, Galle, where the historic real-estate is, will see much change over the next 5 years.

2007-02-25T12:31:00.000-08:00

twelve. last days in Mumbai.
the spectacular mundane: thoughts on the derive
Mumbai draws to a close, and at just the time when my traveler’s mind is crossing the threshold from experimentation to addiction; part of me wishes I could be here long enough for re-hab. this process of normalization is at odds with the conventional idea of travel, in which the consumption of fascination draws us forever forward to novelty and the exotic. most tourists pass through this city in 2 days; in the way of 'sights' there are few compared to the rest of this astonishing country. and yet, for 3 weeks I've marveled at the mundane, which was spectacular, and now am observing a slow reversal in which the spectacular returns to the mundane. perhaps it is at this point, if one were to push through this phase and come out on the other side, such that the mundane and spectacular are compressed into one single rhythmic entity called Life, one might cease to be a Traveler and begin to be a Dweller... although this implies that travel is not living and dwelling is not travel.

dwelling as travel... this is precisely what I am seeking to understand about the cities I visit, even as I occupy the polar opposite paradigm, or perhaps this is not the case at all -- my city for the next 9 months just operates at a different scale, and is dispersed throughout the world, my occupation to observe it far and wide.

the incident that sparked these ruminations happened on one of my last derives, when I, now comfortable enough with the lack of enforced boundaries between the body and Mumbai's speeding trains, paid no attention to the approaching sound of the express train. a nearby man was saying something to me – again I ignored him, having become adept at the art of ignoring unknown men, when suddenly he came up to me, grabbed my arm, and yanked me away as the train blasted past, creating a turbulence that potentially would have knocked me over, and perhaps tragically in the wrong direction. I had entered the zone of true naivete; no longer new enough to be constantly on guard, yet not wise enough to know the more subtle rules and regulations that govern the minutae of daily life. I was also beginning to understand the logic of how interior compartment vectors operate, as people position themselves strategically and in groups to facilitate the mad commuter rush off the train at the appropriate stations.

1.16-1.17
Sion (CL)-Mahim (WL)- Bandra Seawall-
Mira Rd.(WL) - Bandra rail station
as the derives expand in number and reach, my proclivity to comprehend them as isolated routes within this city wanes, and they become components of a broader (although still unbelievable paltry) understanding of the city ... even as that understanding has come about precisely because of the route-findings and executions themselves. as the city becomes more comprehensible, the route finding becomes more intentional, allowing me to appreciate the Situationists' efforts to understand their well-known home city of Paris through new eyes. as the route finding becomes more intentional, and the lens of observation more attuned, the literary narrative that parallels the spatial sequence of a route gives way to a more thematic way of thinking about the city. parallels between areas are drawn, certain dynamics occur again and again.

my last 2-day derive resonated with and encompassed all others, beginning on the Central Line and ending on the Western, following not the roads that run between the two rail lines but the creeks and rivers which flow west to the Arabian sea, and which are not divorceable from the density of life which sprouts up alongside them. the derive's general section can be described as: rail-road-water-rail-road-sea, which looking at a map of Mumbai is quickly grasped in this linear city squeezed by water, and once longitudinally joined by infill and bridge.

the weight of water: floor, wall, sewage, sea
Sion station: sunk 15 feet below the road which leads towards Mahim and Dharavi, one of Asia's largest slums–although the community is so large and well-established it is no longer called 'ZP' on the maps but is a thriving neighborhood of chaotically mutli-storied shops and huts. water runs through it - in two parallel pipes of approx 10ft diameter, the water itself inaccessible, the forms of the pipes acting sometimes as floor and sometimes as wall for the roughly built shacks which press up against it. other times these pipes become the pedestrian pathways through the settlement, the void around them filled with dirt, trash, and debris, creating a pungent second ground. Dharavi sits squarely between the Central and Western line, just south of Bandra's CBD, with its gleaming white towers and vibrant corporate billboards in the not-too-distant distance. walking over the Mahim bridge, which hovers over Dharavi, the Western Line and the water pipes, the air is difficult to breathe as it is so thick with the smoke of burning garbage. the stream-cum- sewage swamp which flanks Dharavi still nourishes frail, bright-green trees and the occasional snow-white egret, although the water swirls in an opaque grey sulfurous sludge, which closely downstream becomes the river where men bathe, and further on the sea where the wealthy Bandra-ites who live in waterfront high-rise towers stroll upon the exposed rocks at the ocean's edge. (this rock-field is also the place where I later inadvertently slipped into the brown sea as a gathering of 10 curious men watched my strange photo shoot; it was somehow an appropriate baptism).

the mode as multi-functioning public & private space
more than anything I will remember Mumbai for its necessities, which are answered in the most urgent and creative of ways, and which generate a raw vitality. the train, although overcrowded beyond tolerability during the rushhour, epitomizes the city's fragile exuberance. despite cramped quarters and the cutthroat dive to board, it is a social space, a public space, an economic space, where room is always made and conversation is easy. seat configurations support this, facing each other across the width of the train. watching an oncoming train, faces rush by in a momentary glimpse and they are smiling, hands reaching out as if to touch, shouts and hollers to the milli-second neighbor across the way. even when the trains are empty the doors are full and faces are forward, into the wind, perhaps into the hopes of a better future. the door's edge is a space of psychological and physical respite in an overcrowded city. standing at the borivali station overpass I saw two trains in stasis, and mens' arms were stretched like threads between the two compartments, some bodies resting against the shell of opposite train, others simply gesticulating, communicating. in sum, the trains in Mumbai are not only for transport but serve crucial visceral functions: release, connection, competition, conversation, bravado. on a packed train a few brave men will sometimes even ride on top.

train stations serve as nodes for settlement, as in the case of Mira Rd., a bedroom tower community north of the city proper that is distinctive for its uniform residential tower-typology which caters to the rising lower-middle class. at the Mira Rd. station, and at surrounding stations surrounding, multiple billboards boast: AIR CONDITIONED LOBBY/HIGH END AMENITIES/ EXCLUSIVE BUNGALOWS/ FIRE FIGHTING EQUIPMENT/ 24 HR. WATER SUPPLY/ BIGGER FLATS/ NON-STOP POWER SUPPLY/ CLUBHOUSE/ SWIMMING POOL (see http://www.rnabuilders.com/ for more). at Mira Road a large stone wall separates the tracks from the neighborhood, and an empty swath of dessicated grass called the jogging track lies unused in the center of a group of these towers. still, the streets are shaded by height, and for many the promise of a reliable roof, reliable power, reliable water, and fire-fighting equipment is no doubt alluring (as fires in informal settlements can be devastating).

the buses: in Mumbai, quiet and private, people facing forward, the conductor establishing a hierarchy which perhaps infringes on the sense of the communal so easily found in the train. not viable for long distances, as traffic is so horrendous 15 km can take nearly 2 hours to traverse. the buses the most private of the modes I have experienced here, save for the obvious cab or tuk-tuk (rickshaw). as I moved further from this metropolis, and even up in Delhi, my presence became more of an anomaly, and thus, added an aura of the jovial, curious,and conversational as people tried to help me get where I was going. (and many wondered why a foreigner, who could take a cab, would ever take the bus).

the sidewalk: to walk, to sell, to build, to live. where they are flanked by walls or fences sometimes they become the floors of homes or stalls. it is heartbreaking to see where these sidewalk dwellings have been torn down, the faint scar of quick brick sidewalls still remaining as a backdrop for the hasty reemergence of even more temporary tarp and stick dwellings. near slums sidewalks becomes parking and dumping grounds for waste both human and otherwise, and streets becomes the space of the pedestrian passing through.

Mumbai is, without a doubt, the most pulsating, organic, depressing, laden and renewed place I have ever been... in a word, unbelievable. and difficult to leave.

2007-02-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

eleven. Chandigarhhhhhh…
2.12-2.15
… like the exhale of the first breath of truly clean air I’ve savored in awhile…except…my last morning in Old Delhi as I wandered the market-maze, I stopped at a perfume shop and was doused in rose oil. 3 days later in my 60 degree room in Chandigarh, this odd garden-scent on my well-traveled shirt remains. it’s been raining non-stop, turning dreams of cycling the whole city into bittersweet busrides, damp bicycle rickshaw rides, & wet muddy walks.

first noticeable difference: it is impossible to get lost in this town, which is set up like an orderly fractal of squares in which footpaths lead to small roads lead to larger roads lead to big roads lead to huge roads lead to roundabouts (or vice versa, depending on whether you’re an inhabitant or visitor). the only non-rectilinear lines are to be found in 1) said roundabouts 2) Corbusier’s plastic architectural monuments and 3) the subtly illicit & informal addendums citizens have made to the backs/fronts/aboves/betweens of the concrete housing and shopping areas. square signs of ‘rules’ abound, and yet, if this sounds like a checkerboard hell, everyone whom I’ve spoken with loves living here. I can see why, and it is not because of that which we learn about in school, the Capitol complex itself feeling largely devoid of vital resonance (although the High Court IS beautiful, and the Temple of Shadows an evocative ruin...)

walking or cycling the sector streets and meeting people is the way to understand what makes Chandigarh work, and more than any other place I have been, strangers here (including the numerous requisite guard-guides at LC’s monuments) are eager to talk and quick to help. here, many assume that I am an architect, and not a wealthy shopping tourist, which is refreshing and a testament to Chanigarh’s relative lack of a foreign tourist scene. this is coupled with the town’s morphology; unlike Delhi or Mumbai in which a lot is squeezed into a little, here it is an effort to create spatial niches, and where they happen they tend to be minute and impromptu, like the arcade outside my hotel where the local (i.e. sector-wide) rickshaw bicycle drivers bed down for the chilly nights under thin blankets. this city is too spatially dispersed for all of one anything to collect in one place, and every sector or two has its own local & small scale economy, some more thriving than others.

where city-wide aggregation does occur it is heavily planned, which gets back to Chandigarh’s fractal organization. every sector has its own above-mentioned shop area, which becomes vaguely aligned with adjacent sectors’ shopping districts, which all more or less channel into the citywide motherlode shopping center which runs, well, right down the center of the center sector (17). small sector schools foretell the numerous state government sponsored institutions of higher education, which are largely over near sector 12. rickshaw drivers pool around bus stops, as they know that for many who ride the bus, home might still a hefty stroll away. the city is at once pedestrian friendly and a walking hell: great for leisure walking and untenable for foot transport. car ownership is the highest per capita in India (about 600,000 for a population of 1.5 million), and discussion of reinvigorating public transport is at best, vague. the bus system is well organized and easy to understand, but frequencies and operating hours leave something to be desired. so the rickshaw wallahs, even more than the cabs, fill the gaps, and get a hefty workout in the process, occasionally being used to transport not just people but enormous loads of cargo, or families of 4 or 5.

as a success story I think Chandigarh is more palpable as a self-sustained suburban typology. the automobile is indispensable, and the city “centre” is primarily for retail, leisure, and government, lacking the (socio&)economic diversity of a more pulsating urban organism. however, if regarded as a town for the automobile and single family home or duplex, it works well; the sector-specific shopping areas become neighborly gathering places, with a healthy degree of informality, and walking on the residential streets is a pleasure, as they are wide, quiet, and green. compared to the U.S. suburb, housing, while not high density, is certainly more efficient and communicative with immediate context of yard, street, and neighbor, with directly adjacent units still maintaining a legible autonomy.

it is a testament to something that here, for the first time in awhile, I have indulged in long nighttime walks without trepidation, even though many streets are more empty and dark than in other cities I have been. I haven’t traveled enough of India to know whether this is a regional difference or whether it is specific to Chandigarh.

****
a day or two later… I’m sitting on the domestic flight from Chandigarh back to Mumbai. it is sunset to the west, and from my window there is a thin ribbon of intense orange lining the horizon before it quickly fades into yellow-green and indigo. although it is a clear night the lights of Mumbai below are muted through haze. I am so excited to be returning to this effervescent, chaotic place…

but a few more words on Chandigarh, which I experienced by bicycle yesterday, followed by a chat this morning with one of the head architects in the city’s planning department. the future of this city is fraught with political complication, as there is Chandigarh the shared capitol of 2 neighboring states (Punjab/Haryana), and then there is Chandigarh the city itself, which is administered by its own governing body independent of said neighboring states – understandably generating disagreements re. land use & encroachment of growth into Punjab and Haryana. LC dictated a 10 mi. wide radius of allowable growth around the city but with a population increase of 40% per decade coupled with the relative low-density of peripheral development, it’s easy to imagine Chandigarh spilling inadvertendly into the surrounding empty land, ‘absorbing’ urban villages as it does so, and as it has already done as in the case of Attawa or Bural. these villages are allowed to remain as is, organic pockets of serpentine alleys and shops, a mind-boggling contrast to the gridded streets within which they are bound. since the 90’s Chandigarh has been in Phase 3 of its development, and yet the city still lacks an updated comprehensive master plan – potentially disastrous for its growth rate. its success is its curse; IT and biotech industries are booming, attracted by the relative success and quality of life of the original city center and its academic institutions; yet these booms are precisely what is putting strain on the city that attracted them in the first place.

regardless, from my bikeride through more recently-built sectors (the 40’s and 50’s) the periphery is swelling somewhat sadly, with a heartbreaking combination of renegade slums (the only land affordable to low-end service workers such as rickshaw wallahs) and cold concrete apartment blocks that resemble housing projects. the zoning codes regarding green space and road layout is still respected on paper but is oddly bastardized, such that the common green areas in these outlying sectors are currently empty fields of wet mud and dead grass; perhaps with time the trees, jungle jims, benches and plants will come?...there seem to be attempts to stretch the infrastructure as fast as possible; even one of the most informal slum areas had water pumps where people could fill buckets, and bus routes have multiplied to reach outlying areas. supposedly slum inhabitants will be rehabilitated to leased dwellings, free of charge but sans ownership, a different strategy from earlier own-for-fee policies which allegedly resulted in re-sale of said meager properties at phenomenal profits and a subsequent return to squatting.

re-reading this entry I find it rather dry. perhaps more than what I say about a place, the way that I write about it might perhaps communicate more?...

Chandigarh snapshots…
…little kids in the rain ride the ‘bus,’ which is really a bicycle-pulled wagon that fits 8 or 10 munchkins, who get dropped off at their quiet homes in the residential sectors
…the secret life of bicylists: suddenly I am one which means navigating ferocious roundabouts (which take the place of traffic lights) and becoming a target for ‘conversation’ from one friendly (and thankfully, unusual) fellow bicyclist: “hello….america? sex? sex?”

…cold climes call for amazing sweets and lots of liquor? “bakery/sweets” and “wine/liquor” shops in abundance.

2007-02-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

ten. Delhi.
2.8-2.11
from the overnight sleeper to Delhi, I will recall: the sigh of a hundred people sleeping as we move through the dark, and the occasional scent of wood fire as we pass by settlements where the unseen air seeps in through the holes in the compartment. the compartment is full of inadvertent openings: holes for toilets, a hole for garbage, holes for sinks from which water drains, holes where compartments latch onto each other, holes through window grates. the proximity of the tracks over which we fly is palpable. when the trains stop, the platform becomes a carnival of food vendors frantically fulfilling the onslaught of hungry passenger hands: vada, omelletes, salads held in leaves, chapatti, chai, curd...the rhythm of platform vending must be bizarre, an economic livelihood contained within a swollen pause of an otherwise ceaseless system.

Delhi in two short days: gray, cool, unseasonably wet, rain blanketing the city in a muddy sludge comprised of dirt, betelnut spit, urine, garbage-mush (paper, tangled plastic bags), cow dung. through observing feet new boundaries are drawn, as the pedal difference between tourist and Delhi’ite disappears in the face of rain. strategies include: the impermeable boot, the ginger-footed ‘nice’ shoe (usually with pant legs rolled or tucked into sock), the hell-with-it muddy sandle (my choice), and the occasional truly-hell-with-it barefoot. raingear means: plastic bag on head, umbrella, jacket, woolen shawl, nothing at all. the transport provides only half-relief; on buses water seeps in through the holes where window latches once were, rivulets running up and down the sills as the bus lurched and stopped, lurched and stopped, while a man wrapped in a wet shawl shouted madly out the window the bus’ destination. windows fogged, seats wet, sky gray with dusk, but still the laughter of relief when people got on board. here, as in Ahmedabad, my presence turns the busride into a communal conversation: “where is she trying to go? where is she from? her stop is coming up…” I find that there are aspects of these cities I can only discern by making myself vulnerable through public transit. in Delhi the autorickshaw drivers go neck and neck with the buses and cabs, the confident movements of their straining legs the only thing keeping my corporeal self from intersecting with a metal machine... the winter rain is disastrous for these men, who must pause their work while huddled beneath overhangs.

Delhi felt like a man’s city, perhaps in part because I was there over the weekend, but when buying a train ticket I was one woman in a sea of 150, and on the buses only 1 of 2 or 3 females. there are a fair number of public urinals lining the sidewalk, a simple wall with partitions, open to the street, and the effort to clean the city (“say no to plastic [sic] bags”) evident in signs and trashcans. the new Metro system physically encapsulates what the rest of the city begs through its signboards. in the Metro Foucault lives; metal detectors and guards, fines for littering, electronic turnstiles, escalators, guardrails – mechanisms of bodily discipline which seem like the ‘norm’ in any large urban transit system but which in Delhi are still relatively new and thus, flagrant (although metal detectors can be found everywhere in the city, many of them are ignored or unused). I witnessed a family’s first escalator ride, which had them staring, hesitant, causing a jam at the entry until they literally jumped, unsteadily, onto an emerging step and began to laugh…the Metro stations also rearrange adjacent streetscapes as the new paving, sometimes with orderly park or greenery, spills into old space, the boundaries of which must be renegotiated. in general street use in New Delhi is more spatially articulated than in Mumbai, through the use of minute elevational change. differentiation is sometimes only 2 or 3 inches, between parking lot and shopping arcade, sometimes a hefty 8 or 12, to demarcate traffic medians and sidewalks. still, the informal is allowed expression: numerous fences in the rain become walls for plastic tarp-tents inside which fires burn and chai is made.

compared to Mumbai, Delhi also looks more visually ‘global,’ and in certain areas, enacts itself for the tourism industry even more. McD’s are multiple (one oddly sited across from the undulating mounds of a dump cum minor slum settlement), as are emporiums for the source - conscious consumer. the tourist ghetto is particularly symbiotic with the ‘local,’ internet cafe’s on every corner interspersed with cheap clothing stores boasting ‘fixed prices’ and hippiewear for the rajashthan or varanasi returnee. the entire street of Main Bazaar is really one outdoor mall for travelers, and it makes you realize that it all probably began with one recommended hotel in one book. the Main Bazaar’s relationship to the not-Delhi is most strikingly evident in its relationship to the city-at-large: the main entrance of the New Delhi train station virtually spills right into the mouth of Main Bazaar. most are just passing through here, for a night’s sleep, a bite to eat, and a skype session.

Delhi snapshots…
… at the Lotus Temple, a hundred schoolgirls barefoot on white stone, filing wordlessly in and out by the hand gestures of their teacher. their small feet made gentle squeaking sounds against the stone. dressed in plaid skirts, most had thick long black braids in red ribbons, but one or two girls sported rebellious pixie cuts. at every hour there is a prayer that fills the arced dome of the petal roof with song
… at the Jama Masjid, the minaret stairs wind 1.5 ft. wide and 80 feet high to reveal a view of an endless sea of multi-colored Old Delhi houses. in the distance, the towers of Connaught Place look like a flat painting, stripped of the sounds of its tidy & modern bustle
… in Old Delhi’s street-maze, I found a *glitter* manufacturer in a quiet courtyard of a lovely old building tucked in an alley. I’m now toting around 7 packets of rainbow blin, given as presents for being nosy

2007-02-09T08:01:00.000-08:00

nine. Architecture & the ‘promenade’ a la Ahmedabad
2.5-2.8
buying train tickets here is an ordeal for my tourist self: ‘enquiries’ usually receive the mysterious head-bobble, butting at the ticket window is the norm, and here in Gujarat everything is written in…Gujarati, the numbers of which I am crash-course learning. at first it was is easy to feel as if I had no right to impose my own sense of order, but I have found that if I make like a local man and push back, the crowd recedes. simultaneously, a disturbing taste of being non-local: today when I was waitlisted on the train to Delhi I was told to appeal to the regional station manager to file for ‘VIP quota status,’ which I did, now wondering where my mysterious hand-written request is being sent such that a seat on an already over-booked train should appear in my name. the ‘unofficial’ official is always at work, and as a foreign solo woman I get the brunt of both the worst hassling, and the most precious coddling.

I am here in one of Corbusier’s enclaves, where walking down the street yesterday I happened to look across the way and see: ‘Ahmedabad Textile Mill Owner’s Association,’ the modern building I have been most holding my breath to see in India. from behind thick shrubbery and a non-descript, humbly-guarded gate the brise-soleil and ramp were immediately recognizable. what can one say about a sublime building, except that it is more than you hope for and leaves you agape, and that precipice-stairs somehow pull you through space like a ribbon. the god IS in the details (although that was someone else): a reveal between a half-hung stair and a wall, a perfectly square veneered opening in a wall which is wrapped inside its outer counterpoint, creating a cradled entrance. it’s truly a dynamic space -- the boundaries of the body take nothing for granted because a wall and an entrance and a stair are always questioned and held in careful tension with their surroundings…the brise-soleil as sometimes catwalk, sometimes passage; the bathrooms as two hands cupped around each other; the mezzanine as breezeway and vantage point – spaces multi-task without losing the integrity of their functions (although sorry FF and MP, the blinds were drawn…). and the intimate humor of seeing old branner’ites handwritten comments in the visitors book…

Ahmedabad: loud, proud, friendly, dusty-aired but clean-streeted, (nb: in order to clean street debris small garbage fires are alight here and there…) somehow ‘cozier’ and more maddening. the difference in the way people drive is discernible. cars come even closer, the flow even more incessant, the many roundabouts dizzying. when pedestrians cross it is by force, holding out a hand that sometimes comes in gentle contact with a metal hood. here I must often piggyback-cross with a local, trusting someone’s intuitive traffic judgment with my bodily safety. so far, so good. the climate change is noticeable too : as I head further north the non-paved ground is sand, not dirt, and dust dances, instead of hanging heavily in the air. water has always been sacred here, and Gujarat is known for its stepwells, which descend for several stories deep below ground level. the Adelaj stepwell, which I visited today, is a negative 5-tiered vertical hallway of stairs, columns, landings and ledges which all end, so dramatically and without a sound, at a deep vat of cool water. I walked up and down, up and down, clinging to the side, above the lip, several hours, going from glaring sun to shadowy cool again and again, joining the monkeys that call this place home.

the city’s relationship with design goes deeper than Corb or Kahn. centuries-old gated neighborhoods (pols), in an effort to control climate and preserve water, find echo in the ATMA or the Sarabhai house. courtyards, heat stack ventilation, overhangs, maze-like paths that bounce wind, underground domestic wells, buried sewage trenches, a sensitivity to incline/decline and water flow…these old neighborhoods are treated with great care and remind me of the non-infrastructural effects of communal infrastructures. there is also a sense of evolution here; Doshi’s hulking auditorium, now in dusty gloom, is the backdrop for a lively market which encroaches upon its entrance. the city is trying to market itself as a nexus for ‘medical tourism.’ the autorickshaws have gone CNG, as have a handful of public buses. and the oddest non-sequiter – many places sport a generic digital wall clock that glares red numbers, like a bomb. it’s unsettling, and shows up in the most unlikely of places, such as the old stone mosques. it gives the impression that the whole city is counting time. . . .

***
because I am now without powersource in a pepto-hued delhi hotel room, I write directly from my sketchbook chicken scratch about the architectural candy of my last two days in Ahmedabad:

the Sarabhai in trees: peacocks and memories – a child now a quiet man for whom the monolithic slide dips into blue-green water. simplicity gives way to the serpentine, the rear servants’ maze cloistered behind the channel-gallery for living/showing.

Sangath (Doshi’s office), CEPT (Center for Environment Planning Technology, aka architecture school) + NID (National Institute of Design): these design niches are the most globalizing forums I have yet encountered…although NID an elegant combination of contemporaneity with an acknowledgment of rich vernacular legacy.

the IIM in sun: Kahn wanted a monastery, Patel inspired by the salk? a regal enclave of selective light and afternoon chai patio breaks for worldly students. infinite perspectives recall a higher purpose, as does non-idiosyncratic regularity. Kahn cajoles with light, LC ignites with form; LC breaks the expanse, Kahn opens it up, sometimes through the smallest slit in a wall. a simple gesture: cushions in the round of both the Kahn and patel campuses. I think LC might have suggested ‘seat’ more heavy-handedly. Kahn’s hand, at least cursorily, seems more monumental, but oddly, with a lighter touch.

Shodhan in the dark: fatigued search for the punctured cube – modular windows aglow, mass of 4-storey ‘bungalow’ eerie and exaggeratedly vertical – a private, shrouded compositional masterpiece of gray voids against a black sky. though ‘imperfectly’ approached and less than studied, somehow I feel as if I saw this one fittingly….

Ahmedabad has been an architectural luxury but I am, for now, temporarily satiated with Buildings, which sometimes stand like museum pieces when i cannot inhabit them without guides, closing hours, or photography restrictions…

2007-02-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

eight. pause.

1.30 -2.4 Mumbai-Jalgaon-Ajanta-Lonar-Ellora-Ahmedabad

the rock & sway of long-distance trains through north-central India has lately quietened my mind. that, and the growing sense of safety I have found away from the hawking streets of colaba. the long-distance trains are a universe unto themselves, and my first-day-Lonely Planet-toting self (“lock your bags to the seat and never accept food from strangers..”) has been pleasantly proven wrong by the world of families and friendly strangers with whom I’ve shared cramped quarters in the sleeper class cars. amazingly designed, fitting 8, sometimes 10 people comfortably into a 2.5 x 1.5 m. space, the sleeper beds stack and fold on top of each other, becoming chairs or cot as need be. and at $4 for 500 km, a more democratic long-distance travel mode would be hard to find. in the drawn out rhythm of a train moving through a countryside of dark reds and blacks, pale yellow-greens, and always the expanse of unyielding blue, families wait to arrive, husbands’ and wives’ legs intertwine, children snuggle into bellies made round by the constant eating that everyone seems to indulge in – it is always snacktime, especially en route. many many sweet grapes later (even India has her own wine country, through which I traveled) I am now in Ahmedabad for a few days.

but not without the staccato sites of absolute immovable stone between Mumbai and here, connected by the smoothness of the train and the horrendously jarring local buses. (a la yellow school bus, minus 60% of the green padding...). I spent a few much needed days of quiet in the ellora-ajanta area, where my mind had a hard time conceiving of the feat before me: 800 years and fifteen generations of craftsmen carving gaping sanctuaries out of a near-vertical swath of solid rock, the first completed around 200 BC. debris at the mouths of the hand-chiseled caves protected the tempera paintings within, which even now reveal the faces of large-breasted sensual princesses, disheveled beggars, weeping mothers, and the Buddha’s human manifestation. soft cups in the stone floor reveal the small scale: bowls where colored mineral pigment was mixed to make the paint. unfinished caves (about half of the 30 total) remain as they were left, the pockmarks of metal which never completed a corner, elaborated column, or delicate statue. these unfinished rooms were oddly the most poignant, revealing the effortful process that humans endure in the name of worship and remembrance. ellora is even more spectacular (though lacking the quiet reverence of ajanta’s monastic residencies) : a mutli-storied temple carved from a monolithic rock, such that floor, interior wall, exterior sculpted facade, colonnade, roof, doorframe – are one. concrete without the pour. it seemed as if the sky had simply been revealed to this structure hiding inside of a very big stone, and reminded me of michelangelo’s attitude towards his sculptures in marble.

so between the mass movements all these quiet monuments, and even within the movement so much calm. there was a coffin aboard my first train, and cartful upon cartful of cargo. the long distance trains are not precious, they are for moving everything. once off the main spines of the national trains there is local bus territory, hot, dusty and long. they pretty much fill in where the trains leave off, and where the buses leave off there are the communal taxi-jeeps, squeezing 10, 12 people into a space made comfortably for 6. it is in the taxi’s best interest to have as many passengers as possible, limited only by the teetering of the off-balanced vehicle as it rambles down the road. rural traffic is even more of an elegant mystery than urban traffic: where Mumbai has some semblance of structure (stoplights, unheeded crosswalks) out here it is 100% situational. a 2 lane road is usually 3 or 4, in multiple directions. as the mind marvels at the surprising lack of disastrous collision, i realize that people drive awake, gliding within a few inches of each other, at 40 mph, constantly. I admit to not looking forward down the road too often.

the meteorite crater at lonar, ‘near’ the caves (9 hours by bus round trip), well worth the excursion to be truly in the middle of nowhere. in these areas children seek autographs and I feel ridiculously like sally struthers (?) in those aid to Africa commercials, skinny children congregating around blonde. climbing a water tower in moonlight I had the unsettling chance to see concrete, rural-India style, up close and personal : a foot-wide ledge, 70 feet high, mighty cracks and crevices. vertiginous and windy but the ground below so dark and still, as the power at lonar is out every night between 6:30 and 8:30 -- an enforced time of candles and hushed voices. the crater, below which scientists believe the meteor itself is still lodged within the earth, is surrounded by a trail which connects humble and decaying temples, some full of the fruit-rich smell of guano and the chatter of a hundred + bats (revelation: they get quiet when the flash goes off). a few scattered cultivated fields around the meteorite’s lake basin yield radishes and bananas, which end up in market stalls in town, where crows eat anything they can get their pointy beaks into, including roadkill dogs.

the long trip away from this central country to ahmedabad began with a head-sized papaya overripe and sweet, cupped with both hands, eating like porridge from the bowl of its skin, shrouded in a generic black plastic bag. the metal bus seat, so discernible beneath the gauze of cushion, bruises but the fruit is good and soon a dark orange moon rises, as local bus turns to long distance bus turns to train speeding north.