fear and private property
The act of walking through a city begets fear in any law-abiding citizen. It’s impossible to not be afraid. As a society, we have created laws and regulations to punish ourselves for driving too fast, for walking on someone else’s property, for jaywalking, for sitting on a street curb, for sleeping in a park (1). When we are in the city, we are controlled, and private property with law enforcement is the mechanism for that control. We fear the consequences of breaking the law, which denies us the right to fully inhabit and change our city, as called for by David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre (2)(3).
Private property and law enforcement have created a social attitude that denies the urban commons. As David Harvey says, “The right to the city…. [is] in the hands of a small political and economic elite who are in the position to shape the city more and more after their own particular heart’s desires” (4). Private property and its validating authority is a top-down, hierarchical structure of laws and limitations. By guaranteeing one to own property privately (often to the elite), everyone else is denied participation in that space. Even worse, we are punished for transgressions against the private ownership of that space, such as sitting down on a front stoop.
Private property and its authority is a central, deep seeded, controlling body that privileges the few while oppressing the many. Bottom-up urbanism offers a reprieve, even a moment to breath, within this power structure through the enacting of many, small, ephemeral and focused transgressions. When one act occurs, it catalyzes the next and the next, until a large sequence of slow moving but methodical transgressions assemble together. To build a metaphor off of Delueze and Gilardi rhizome theory, if private property is analogous to a large taproot, then bottom-up urbanism is a network of interconnected rhizomes (5). One does not kill a large taproot in one swoop, but rather with many small incursions that collectively choke out the taproot.
taking place
Following Hurricane Katrina and the economic depression in 2008, New Orleans saw a loss of over 140,000 people and as of 2011, has over 47,000 abandoned homes (6). The destruction caused by the storm and the emptiness rendered by the following economic collapse created an opportunity for the remaining inhabitants of the city to reimagine New Orleans based on their collective desires. The following examples are moments in New Orleans where city inhabitants came together and acted against the structure of private property and law enforcement in favor of an urban commons. Acting with a rhizomatic model, many transgressions were made which sought to shape the city based on their desires. To achieve a bottom-up urban commons, every action against private property and law enforcement must leave a residue that is a catalyst for the next action. Like a rhizome, one root never acts alone, but rather in a complex relationship of many roots, and you can remove one section of the rhizome, but it will grow again somewhere else.
plan B – common sharing
A community project named Plan B is a collective of volunteers who seek to make New Orleans a city that “promotes the use of bicycles and other human powered transportation” (7). This organization opens their doors to community members, and makes bike tools, salvaged bike parts as well as volunteer bike mechanics available to the public for free. The goals of this collective is to educate the public about bicycle riding and maintenance, create a grassroots community to inspire other DIY efforts, and create an open critique against the automotive culture in New Orleans
For years, this organization operated “under-the-radar” in a dilapidated warehouse space in the city. They were able to change the space based upon the vision they had for the community they were creating with this collective (a city within the city). Plan B did not have official status with the city, nor official permission to operate within the space. Rather, they saw an abandoned artifact of New Orleans culture, and shaped the space physically to allow the public into their new world to create a new urban commons.
music box – common ground
At the farthest extent of the upper ninth ward, there was a project known as Musical Architecture; The Music Box by artists Delaney Martin, Taylor Le Sheppard and Swoon. The artists were inspired by, “the falling down 18th century creole cottage and New Orleans under-celebrated class of tinkerers, inventors and avant-garde musicians” (8). The project sought to create the urban commons with the refuse of abandonment in the city. They did this by creating musical instruments with the fragments of the fallen structure, and then embedding them within the cottage.
The result of the project was a public landscape of built architectural follies and inhabitable instruments. The space was open to the public, and the instruments were available to be played. Here, they are critiquing private property and authority by denying it; anyone can come, anyone can play, and the city is a malleable medium for interpretation and change to create that common ground.
marigny opera house – common performance
In the Marigny Rectangle, there is project where an 1853 church, after being abandoned for almost twenty years, was claimed as a new, “non-denominational, neighborhood church of the arts,” (9). This “new church,” known as the Marigny Opera House, is a bottom-up action by Scott King and Dave Hulbert to take over an abandoned icon of the neighborhood, and convert it into an opera house. This created a public space for the community to come and share in the production of music and theatre (as well as arts education and community involvement). The project operated illegally in a dilapidated space, and without the permission of the city of New Orleans. Their intent was to use the forgotten space as a commons for the public to share. This project resonated widely through the DIY community in New Orleans, and was a catalyst for other actions of taking place such as Fringe Festival, DesCours and smaller appropriations of garages and alleys for engaging the public with art.
iron rail – common language
Iron Rail describes themselves as “an anarchist bookstore, lending library, record shop, local media outlet, and resource for radical organizing" (10). Iron Rail began as a small bookstore in an unsanctioned warehouse space in New Orleans where they made available thousands of books to the public for free. The project’s goal was to offer space and resources to the public in order to expand the conversation of anarchic though and action in the city. Their appropriated spaces included a non-profit reading room, lending library and a large community space. As stated on their website, “the space is coordinated and maintained by volunteers working in a collective and non-hierarchical environment” (11). The importance of this project is in its ability to create a commons of information and connectivity without having to be sanctioned or filtered by any authority.
descours – common space
DesCours was a exhibition of avant-garde sculptural and architectural interventions sprinkled across a dozen empty and hidden spaces in New Orleans that would only exist for a few days. This project is an example where spontaneous artist interventions on private property allowed city inhabitants access to private space without recourse, thusly extending the public commons. DesCours, an event set up by Melissa Urcan with the American Institute for Architects in New Orleans, used art and the city to dissolve the binary of private and public spaces within the urban (12). Spaces, ranging from French Quarter Cottages to abandoned commercial structures in the downtown, were, for a few days, transformed into a commons where people were able to enter for the sake of the art. This exhibition happened for 5 years, each year finding new spaces in the city that were either left hidden or previously exclusive to the public, and turned them into free spaces where one could interact with the art.
before i die i want to… - common action
In the Marigny Triangle, artist Candy Chang created her Before I die…. wall. The project took an abandoned house and, responding to the building being covered in plywood to prevent squatting, painted the entire exterior in chalk paint, and wrote, “Before I die I want to….. “ (12). The site was then left with several containers of chalk, and everyone was invited to participate in the artwork by writing their personal wishes upon the wall. In the first instance of this work, Chang did not seek approval from the owner or the city, but rather was interested in creating an urban transgression that extended the commons to any city inhabitant willing to act and change the image of the city. The wall is less about an unofficial act of graffiti, but rather a critique about the proliferation of private property. It invites the city to disregard private property for a moment in order to engage with reshaping the city.
space to breath
It’s impossible to claim that any one of these projects “fixes” the problems of fear in the city from private property and authority. However, if a rhizome can strangle a taproot, many interventions at a small and fleeting scale can overturn a system of fear through the continuous interjection of transgression and critique. Bottom-up urbanism and DIY tactics can create the “space to breath;” a space of the commons where people both inhabit the city and can change the city after their own desires. These examples not only take place in appropriating private property for the public, but they take place in time, for a moment long enough to inspire the next transgression. All of these projects have been shut down, removed or reimagined due to the authority of private property and bureaucracy. Also, all of these projects have occupied physical space, which is an inherent contradiction to exist within private property in order to critique private property. However, these two points strengthen the argument where our city is controlled by fear as manifest by private property and authority, and it takes many acts of transgression, each catalyzing the next, to overwhelm such a central structure. Change that happens immediately doesn’t last, but change that is slow enough to become cultural is powerful enough to be accepted and endured.
Citations
1 Providence Street Rights, (http://www.rihomeless.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/Public/Street%20Rights%20Cards%20legal%20size.pdf)
2 David Harvey, Right to the City, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, December 2003
3 Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities: Right to the City, 1969
4 David Harvey, Right to the City, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, December 2003 [pg3]
5 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972
6 The Data Center, Population Loss and Vacant Housing in New Orleans Neighborhoods, Feb 5, 2011
http://www.datacenterresearch.org/reports_analysis/population-loss-and-vacant-housing/
7 Plan B, The New Orleans Community Bike Project http://www.bikeproject.org
8 New Orleans Airlift, Musical Architecture http://www.neworleansairlift.org
9 Marigny Opera House, Church of the Arts http://www.marignyoperahouse.org
10 The Iron Rail, Book Collective http://www.ironrail.org
11 NOLA.com, Architecture Meets Art in the "Descours" nighttime optical adventure
http://www.nola.comhomegarden/index.ssf/2011/12/architecture_meets_art_in_desc.html
12, Candy Chang: Before I Die.... http://candychang.com/before-i-die-in-nola/