Urban landscapes inside our minds and outside.

This post will need editing, in the next couple days.....

So many revolutionaries without revolution.....

I want revolution without revolutionaries.....

There is no right way or right answer to all problems. There are no blanket solutions. In most instances a problem can have an incredible range of solutions, ranging from adequate to perfect. In some cases there is only one solution. The desire for quick fixes and easy answers has robbed us of our ability to actually see things.  To look at a thing and see it for what it is. We are told the things we should experience and how we should experience them. Taking what we were raised with and assuming it is good.

Most neighborhoods are the things we drive through to get to where we are going.  Most people are simply the ones that give us what we want or take our money in exchange for things.  A person could go into a coffee shop every day and not know the name of the one who serves them their coffee.    They can drive by a restaurant or shop twice a day everyday for years and not notice it until they walk down that street (if they ever do). But they know intimately what happened on a TV show or the names of every player on a sports team. 

Our world is being experienced steps away from our lives, removed from the reality we live in. Most people know more about TV characters or celebrities than the people they see or work with everyday. If we don't care about the person that  works beside us why do we care about what a stranger is doing? 

It's not a matter of taking the time to get to know every human we meet.  But taking the time to engage our lives. What possible joy or benefit can be gained from our distractions?  What is gained from watching a sit-com other than distraction?

We all know the answer but that is the key issue.  We don't ask the question.  Why do we want to be distracted so badly?  Why do we need the distraction so badly?  is it because our cities by design make our lives even harder. Or the way we live in our environment, the things we accept that make us need to distract. Is it our sense of disconnection.  

The commute takes so much energy and time we need to recharge or unwind through distraction simply so we can have the strength to do it all again the next day. It has become so hard to interact with our friends or people that share our interests. Because our environment is so completely inconvenient?  Because our world makes us unhappy?

Yes the people that designed and built suburbs or condo towers in out of the way or up and coming areas made a lot of money.  They sell people the image of a life, the image of a community.  Live here and be happy.  That is impossible because they have no ability to create a community. The image is not the thing.  Humans interacting creates a community.  The ability to meet, walk and travel with ease.  Places to do things without a car makes a community.  Meeting places create communities. The ability to do things and engage is essential.

In many ways it's a matter of heuristics.  (A heuristic method is particularly used to rapidly come to a solution that is reasonably close to the best possible answer, or 'optimal solution'. Heuristics are "rules of thumb", educated guesses, intuitive judgments or simply common sense.)  Common sense is such a hard concept to use.  Common sense is based on such fundamental thinking we are most often no longer even aware of it.  It is second nature to most people. 

Our thought processes are most often beyond out ability to comprehend. As humans we have an issue with being cognizant of how we think or why we think the way we do. So therein lies the problem.

How we interact with the world we live in is directly related to patterns we inherited or "common sense" that may be anything but common sense.

No one ever taught us how to live in our environment. Or how to interact with our environment. And in all honesty why would they? Who would be qualified?  We simply live in our world, do as we saw and repeat the program.  It's not about some concept of elevated intelligence through altering our perceptions or pseudo new age enlightenment, it's about thinking about how we think. Which in itself is an awkward statement. 

Years ago when baby formula was being "perfected" doctors convinced woman that baby formula was better than breast milk.  As though they possessed the understanding and ability to out do nature. They convinced women to override instinct with reason, a great concept when you aren't working flawed reasoning.  Hubris.   Developers now tell us the way we should live. Suburbs and apartments that aren't actually suited to positive human living. In our world we accept less convenience or are sold "more convenience" and inferior quality of life. Purely to make money for people who don't and wouldn't live in those neighbourhoods or those buildings.

We have been trained to ignore our instincts.  To ignore our better judgement.  To actually believe that someone other than us could possibly know what is better for us than we do ourselves.

Marketing and industries tells us we are wrong.  We are flawed, we need things.  We say maybe they are right..... The moment we ignore our own instincts we are lost. 

In North America  our cities and have moved beyond the human scale.  When looking at a city (mostly newer cities) they don't seem inherently suited for human beings.  The scale is all wrong.

For the vast portion of people living in cities, the main interface with their city is a car.   Cities are built around and designed for the convenience of cars. Not people.  Try getting a cup of coffee or a jug of milk in most suburbs without a car.  Often a bicycle would make getting those things difficult in a suburb.  Most of us are aware of this and have somehow accepted it.  The trade off seems to be a poor one.  

How can a human live in a city or a world where the main source of interaction or interface with the city is through a window.  The proxy of a car.  A great deal of time is spent in a car. Especially in North America.  No kidding look a the distances involved.

When we look at a newer city (from above is helpful) or more accurately the newest parts of a city we see the amount of area dedicated to cars is astounding.  The amount of space so cars can travel from one place to the next is huge.  Conventional cars need an amount of space far beyond what humans need.  

Walking districts or pedestrian only areas are virtually non-existent in most North American cities and are completely non-existent in the suburbs of every city everywhere. Outside of a car on the sidewalk cafe or patio we experience the world of cars.  The sounds, the smell of exhaust. Inhuman things.  Huge arteries are needed, vast portions

 of our urban environment is dedicated to the automobile. 

Neighborhoods had a sense of community and the  community faded.  People still live there but they can't interact the same way.  There is no butcher who knows your favorite cut of meat or holds that last chicken for you on a Friday night.  No green grocer who brings in that odd Mexican squash that you read about. No more neighbourhood gas station with a mechanic who does a small repair for some beer.

Suburbs have not improved our lives and our communities they have disconnected them.  Cars are an amazing concept but do they really do what we want or need them to?  How can it be changed?  Common sense would say things could be better.

Things are this way but going with them simply on the basis that they exist is nothing.  That attitude is how we got here in the first place.  We inherited an attitude and a world that was made by humans to be inappropriate for humans to properly interact with or live in. 

Our cities don't make sense.  The way we live in them doesn't maximise our pleasure or improve our ability to enjoy our lives in they way we are told.  

Opening our eyes and iPhone photos.

Hearing of a blind cat, vision of a deaf man......

We actually pay people to find these things in front of our eyes and tell us they are good.  We have lost the ability to explore our own world without a guidebook.  A magazine to tell you how to live in your own town.

There is a secret current flowing through all of our worlds.  Our lives are continually influenced by things we miss.  That graffiti we pass everyday.  That restaurant nestled between shops, we walk by everyday and "not see".  When we see the thing, once we are aware of it, it's difficult to imagine how we never noticed in the first place.  

That is the key.  Once our perception is expanded we lose contact with that earlier state. Similar to those anatomical charts on clear plastic.  When one is removed we see more, have a better grasp of the whole.  Layer upon layer. There is a heart and a skeleton to urban environments. Like houseman would say "the immortal part".   But this only works if we peel back that outer layer and look under.  This understanding extends to people, books, work, everything.  The truth is under the surface. All design, all style, all music starts invisible.

All growth comes from the inside out.  The scale goes down to the "invisible" the cellular.  This invisible growth is what moves all things.  But it really isn't invisible in a human sense, it isn't self conscious.  That's the key, things that are self conscious need others to be aware of them.   When a thing simply is and is accepting it becomes invisible to the masses who are trained from childhood to be aware of the world that is aware of them. Or more accurately the world that pays attention to you. 

There is no good or bad implied in that statement.  But there is a sense of shallow vs. deep or more like on the surface vs. under the surface. A shallow being who has been used to a certain type of attention cannot accurately perceive a different type of attention. We respond more often to people who are aware of our weaknesses not our strengths.  We accept our strengths but loath our weaknesses.  The weak takes precedent over the strong due to focus. We hate the idea of people seeing our weaknesses and the moment we try to hid them we draw attention to them.  This is very basic. Anyone looking can see all we are trying to hide. 

No we cannot simply destroy the weak side but we can focus on the strong.  One represents forward the other represents backward.

There are different methods of perceiving the world.  From the inside out or the outside in.  

A criminal regretting he was caught or a criminal regretting he did the crime.  

One may rage and rail against the world or his lot in life but he cannot change it he can only alter himself. The most difficult thing is to accept this.  

This is how the urban environment grows.  All growth starts with the ones who are doing for the sake of doing.  They engage the city.  They love the city or hate it.   They write on it's walls, they communicate through code and mysterious pathways the others don't even see. They live under the layer. They are the true urban masters.  They are the ones whose cast offs create our style and our views. 

Eating in places that don't exist and shopping in stores that are hidden.  Dancing and living behind the scenes.  Alive. L'art de vivre.  

The idea of street style. Street art.  It was there for years but someone had to package it and attach a label for us to want to consume it.  It existed and was in front of us but we never saw it. But once someone told us it was good, then "it was good". 

The concept of being aware of a trend means you have missed the trend.  The ones who set trends aren't aware of it.  To be cool is to not be aware of being cool.  Just being makes one cool, living is all we need to do. 

My goal is to explore these things to peel back the layers of the world around me and open my eyes to the things in front of me I never see.