Monday Night 07.25.05 — Discussion/Book Talk — Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans – by In the Field (Brett Bloom & Ava Bromberg)
Comments Off on Monday Night 07.25.05 — Discussion/Book Talk — Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans – by In the Field (Brett Bloom & Ava Bromberg)Monday Night 07.25.05 — Discussion/Book Talk — Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans – by In the Field (Brett Bloom & Ava Bromberg)
Contents:
1. About this Monday Night
2. Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans
3. About In the Field
4. Additional information – Unhoused
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1. About this Monday Night
What: Presentation / Discussion / In the Field (Brett Bloom and Ava
Bromberg)
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor (directions below)
When: Monday Night 07.25.05 @ 7:30 Pm
Who: Open To All
Brett and Ava will give a presentation about their double-book “Belltown
Paradise / Making Their Own Plans” with a discussion to follow.
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2. Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans
This double-book details inspiring examples of artists, environmental
visionaries, and concerned citizens who have had a direct impact in shaping
their urban environments. The groups were invited to write their own
accounts of their histories, failures, and triumphs while working to
redesign neighborhoods in creative and exciting ways.
Belltown Paradise—is a concentrated study of urban renovation activities
around the corner of Elliot and Vine Streets in the Belltown
neighborhood of Seattle. The first three chapters present the work of
community activists who successfully preserved open land in one of Seattle’s
most densely packed neighborhoods to create the Belltown P Patch, a
community garden, and transform three adjacent early 20th century workers’
cottages for writer’s residencies and a community center all making up the
Cottage Park. One chapter highlights Growing Vine Street, an initiative to
slowly convert Vine Street, which runs along one side of the garden, into a
“green” street that cleans
rainwater runoff from adjacent high-rise condo buildings while providing
pedestrian-friendly space for urban dwellers. The fourth chapter is the
first comprehensive chronicle of artist Buster Simpson’s 30 years of public
work in Belltown. Buster’s work and dedication have had an important impact
on the aesthetics and conceptualization of
environmental planning in the Belltown neighborhood.
Making Their Own Plans—shares the histories and tactics of four
independent groups from four distinct urban centers: Portland, Oregon;
Chicago, Illinois; Hamburg, Germany; and Barcelona, Spain. City Repair
(Portland) began a number of neighborhood initiatives aimed at promoting a
sense of community; their primary initiative creates public squares in and
around the middle of the traffic intersections, resulting in what they call
“intersection repair.” The Resource Center (Chicago) had been working since
the late 60s to find creative solutions to environmental and social problems
in the city, primarily through reuse and recycling initiatives. A recent
plan, detailed in their chapter, works to convert 6000 acres of vacant city
land into farms that simultaneously clean the air, produce local organic
produce, employ homeless persons, and beautify the city. Park Fiction
(Hamburg), starting in 1995, organized exhibitions, design workshops,
protests, and spectacles in their successful fight to preserve an open
waterfront space and create a community-designed park on the Elbe River. The
inhabitants of Can Masdeu (Barcelona) squatted then rehabilitated an old
hospital and the
surrounding grounds into space for living, gardening, neighborhood events,
workshops and classes. Their chapter details their struggles with local
authorities and the challenges of radical communal living.
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3. About In the Field
In the Field (Brett Bloom and Ava Bromberg) explores complex social
constellations around urban land use issues. We share ideas and take action
inhabiting, transforming, and opening up spaces to new
possibilities for creatively generated public space and autonomously
produced neighborhood planning. Activities include public projects and
written Field Guides, examples are available on the web site:
www.inthefield.info
Brett and Ava are keyholders and co-founders, with 6 others, of the
experimental cultural center Mess Hall (Chicago): www.messhall.org Brett is
a co-founder of the group Temporary Services:
www.temporaryservices.org
Both are contributing editors to the Journal for Northeast Issues, which
operates from Hamburg, Germany. Our 3rd issue will be out in a couple of
weeks.
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4. Additional information – Unhoused
Unhoused
Dates: 8/19/05 – 9/16/05
Location: Mess Hall, 6932 N. Glenwood Ave., Chicago, IL, 60626
The first phase of research for our new book on creative ways of addressing
the needs of unhoused populations will take the form of an exhibition,
discussions, presentations and film screenings. We are interested in
examples of very specific local responses to housing crises that illustrate
the broad spectrum of innovative practices being initiated all over the
world.
Housing crises are a global problem. There are large numbers of persons in
major cities who are unhoused. They live in homeless shelters and halfway
houses, in favelas, refugee camps, and in their cars. Multiple families live
under a single roof of unaffordable and unsafe apartments, in some cases
working different shifts and sharing a single “hot bed.” Many people find
themselves pushed from one locale to another. Factors influencing unhousing
include: war, gentrification, rampant real estate speculation, historical
disenfranchisement, unemployment and
underemployment, mental illness, and addiction. Market-based societies
repeatedly fail to address these concerns in a just and equitable manner.
These dominant forces are indifferent and ineffective,
maintaining ideological barriers to taking care of everyone’s right to
adequate housing.
Unhousing describes both the process by which people are displaced and the
kinds of situations and structures they generate in response to this
displacement. Unhousing is manifested in very local and culturally specific
ways. The tidy shacks that populate Osaka’s (Japan) largest park look
different from the sprawling favelas of Sao Paolo, or the vast squatted
areas that increase the population of Mexico City at alarming rates. The
encampments in Los Angeles are tolerated in an inverse relationship to the
tiny cardboard shacks in Chicago, which are
obliterated almost as quickly as they are found. While each local situation
is different, the underlying causes are increasingly
interrelated as corporate globalization extends its reach, impacting housing
markets around the world in direct and indirect ways. Unhousing is not
specific to cities. Rural areas have their own sets of unique concerns as
small farms disappear due to monopolistic consolidation by giant
agri-businesses. This has created situations where jobs and young persons
take flight decimating rural communities. Migrant workers moving from one
job to another are poorly housed or go without housing
altogether.
There are interesting groups and organizations confronting the local
expressions of this global phenomenon. We are gathering information about
projects and initiatives that are creative, inspiring and bringing
visibility and innovative approaches to successfully address unhousing
issues, pumping new energy into the struggles of the most marginalized among
us.
***We would appreciate any material and information the members of the 16
Beaver list could provide us on these subjects. Thanks.***