New Cities/New Soviets

February 02, 2003

Builders' Union

In an era of problems, I want to build. I want to build crude bridges between city blocks, rough-hewn log-and rope jobs, or even zip-lines. I want to build rooftop steppes, one dirt-filled container at a time. I want to build wild vegetable gardens. I want to build a food-cart and wheel it around the city in search of people to feed. I want to tear down apartment walls and build common rooms, workshops, and dancehalls. We've gotta stop letting landlords set the agenda! They do not care if the city lives or dies! Either we say how it goes, or it falls to them by default.


I want to pay a lower rent.

And not only becuase landlords make unfair profits, but because it is necessary for the kind of city-life I want. I do not want to have to work so strenously at a job that I have no time to enjoy my friends and the places we like. New York is grim if everyone outside is either: a) going to work, b) coming home from work, or c) desparately trying to forget work. If a city is not enjoyed, it falls into disrepair, as certainly as if the builders had gone on strike.

It is not simply a cost-of-living issue.

We must begin to direct how our money is spent. We inhabit the city, it has no life without us, and yet the vast majority of our building-money is controlled by landlords. They invest the money that we forward them to design according to their interests. And this is what they want: work a lot in our offices, shop a lot in our stores, drink a lot in our nightclubs, go home alone to Y(our) high-rent apartment. Is this the best that city life can offer? They want only highly liquid transactions. Cash, man, fast cash. "Lets git inta the neighborhood, make a quick stack, and torch the place fer insurance-money on the way out."

It's not only a quality-of-life issue.

(more to come...)

Posted by Sam on 11:58 PM | Comments (1)