APL Meeting #2 - 26 December 2016
Amardeep (leading), Carly, Sam, Max, Francis, Lukas
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Should we try https://zoom.us/ ? Google Hangouts working best in Opera (lol)
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Some of “Mosaic of Subcultures” logic is iffy—he doesn’t cite much, are people in urban societies really “weak in character” ?
What’s the value in Pattern 9? How valuable is it to split “home life” from “work life” ?
Appreciated that the “utility” of urban elements is recognized as well as the “feeling” of many of the spatial elements.
Pluralities of downtowns already exist (cities like LA, Berlin, Tokyo). What happens to “nuclei” that become not desirable?
Spatially, a lot of political processes are tucked away. They are semi-accessible, many urban residents must push through alienation to find power in local political processes.
How much of the book needs revisions for remote work. How do we navigate social relationships that aren’t (physically) spatially embedded? How about Chinese danwei systems? (http://image.slidesharecdn.com/chinasworkersrising-150324112818-conversion-gate01/95/chinas-workers-risingmar242015-16-638.jpg?cb=1427214641)
“We need spatial politics & digital politics!”
Should we be looking at more maps as we read? Good to constantly imagine spaces we’ve been that fit the parameters the authors discuss.
Public ownership of transit? Private ownership of transit? How to make public-private work better? (existing system in NY might not have enough supervision or synthesis with the rest of system; too many subcontractors)
Can we have schools as a form for certain types of learning? And encourage non-schools for other things? Lots of interesting things going on at Charter Schools these days e.g. “Design Tech” in San Mateo
“Four Story Limit” — how can density be maintained? How can we do this and avoid sprawl? If the goal is to keep people close to the street, why not have multi-level streets? (ref Final Fantasy 7 city). Bring the streets up? http://www.brothers-brick.com/2013/06/27/cyberpocalypse-now/
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/21/upshot/Mapping-the-Shadows-of-New-York-City.html?_r=1
“KINETIC DEPRIVATION” does suck.
How might “Life cycles” manifest online? Encourage intermingling of people at different phases. Against the discretization of life stages tho… ref Forums where you get respect based on how many posts you have.
City Skyline game community is REALLY into road layout stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-ItTFUmXHI
“Men and Women” very dated. Latent sexism in the book…
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Idea: if we all read some of the referenced papers & report back on their value. Can we start building repositories of case studies to validate or work against some of the proposed patterns? i.e. “Web of Shopping”—what’s an example? (or an “APL Reader” for later…)
How the heck is this all supposed to be implemented? Could we see a map of their ideal city? How many of the patterns can successfully coexist? The book might be too atomic for us to get a full image.
Any connections between APL and Jane Jacobs ?
“Jacobs Spillover” — by going about your day in a mixed-use neighborhood, your interstitial time is spent face-to-face with neighbors and various things on-the-street that build a rich community. Isolated commutes can destroy this.
Is there a benefit to having commute time between work and life (opposite of software campuses)? Or is it problematic to have different areas of our life (work and leisure, friends and other friends and family) be completely separate (ultimately, we live one life)?