If only you knew...

Done!  Beer and french fries time!

At least I have 5 hours.

Thanks!  I haven’t read that article, I’ll check it out over the holidays.

ryanpanos:

Have you read Architecture of Fear, very intresting collection of articles pretaining to cultural fear. One article in particular sparked when i read your abstract:

“Housing for the homeless, by the homeless, and for the homeless” by Micheal dear and Jurgen von Mahs. You should check it out if you have not already. Very intriguing abstract.

archresearch:

It has been quite some time since I’ve posted anything, tomorrow is my deadline (!).  Here’s the abstract of the report I’m submitting.  The full version will go up shortly.

With cities in developing countries unable to cope with increased density from urban migration, many urban migrants are taking it upon themselves to build shelter and create livelihoods in informal settlements. While the city presents many economic opportunities, these informal settlements, built without government support and without legal tenure, and at the fringes of the urban landscape, force the urban migrant into a precarious existence.  Allowing the urban migrant and his family to become vulnerable to disease, crumbling and deteriorating physical infrastructure, and for many, a long battle to find permanence and legitimacy in the city.

Dharavi, an informal settlement in Mumbai, India, is threatened by erasure because it fails to be recognized as a legitimate and equal part of the city.  By creating connections to the interdependent weave of networks and systems that is Mumbai, Dharavi can become recognized and permanent, keeping its autonomous internal identity, but shedding its exterior projection as an informal part of the formal city.

Through the investigation of the current state of urbanization and the conditions that create informal settlements, examination of historical schemes for redevelopment and analysis of techniques for understanding the complex systems of urbanity, a framework for challenging the illegitimacy of informal settlements will be provoked.  This will enable an intervention that deals with connections between the informal settlement and the city, but also reaffirm forgotten connections to the urban ecology that firmly places Dharavi in the history of Mumbai.

Congratulations Doug. :)  It will be neat to see what you’ve done.

doug:

My first publicly available photo book, Cartography I-III, is on its way to the printers. Total size is around 860MB. The next couple nights will be spent figuring out what I want to do for art prints as well, and when it’s all ready I’ll post more about them here.

It looks like whether I wanted it to be or not, the book is going to end up expensively priced. The high price is the downside of going hardcover, choosing better paper than default, and having something in the range of 70 pages of full-color photography.

Photograph prints will be available for every image in the book, and will have not only very reasonably priced options but truly expensive ones as well. Everyone, if they wish, should be able to at least get something for $5 is my thinking. Or you could buy the book, take an X-Acto knife to the spine and you’ve technically got every print at a heck of a bargain.

All items, no matter what their prices (and my lack of profit on any of them), will be pretty strictly limited in edition. This will motivate me to move forward and produce new work.

Very much agree.

plastichandgun:

Living in the city is an endless barrage of highs and lows.