Unlimited "What defines a European city" urban theory debate thread

[LMNO]

we all work on what we wish to work on
(those genuinely under coercion not included)

i happen to think that creating the res publica of a people, the establishment (or re-establishment, or restoration) of a country in the sense of a nation state is an outmoded enterprise with little merit

in order to find more timely and glorious work, it is expedient to review the situation that we find ourselves in first from a larger (global), then from a narrower (personal) perspective

none of what i will say is new

global perspective:

one earth, seven billion people

roughly one tenth of that number do not eat their fill every day of the week

at the same time, ten percent of the population dispose over eighty-five percent of all earthly wealth

within that number, the richest one percent control forty percent of the wealth

man does not live by bread alone

over half the population of the earth live in cities, though mostly not cities in the european sense

and well over half the population strive to realise, in their personal lives, the ideals of the welfare consumer society

lots of food, lots of channels, lots of clutter

estimating the size of the autonomous, adult population who hold their lives and their hands and thus purposefully form them is harder

after a small, highly subjective and far from representative opinion survey and a great deal of pondering i have concluded that such people occur in higher proportion in the third world (brutal existential uncertainty is a strong selection pressure at both the individual and the social levels)

the transitional margin between the autonomous and the slave/slaver group is quite wide and gradual along a number of distinct dimensions

globally, the proportion of autonomous, self-governing  adults is somewhere between 0.1 percent and 10 percent

as an incorrigible optimist, i would wager around 1 percent

one in a hundred people

*

personal perspective:

i posit that only sovereign, adult people, who know their own lives and hold them in their hands in order to shape them are capable of authentic political action

i posit that in the present situation authentic political action is impossible without first letting go of all sorts of national or racial phantasmagories, imaginings, emotional tangles

i posit that today, authentic political action may be aimed at the following two targets (possibly among others, i am not making an exhaustive claim here):

firstly, moving fellow humans in the transitional stages between being robots and being people (or half-asleep, or what have you) towards sufficient levels of sovereignity

such actions include raising children, clarity of thinking and speech and the exemplary practice of authentic ways of being

secondly, the strengthening, supporting, mobilisation, vitalisation of the networks, the systems of interrelationships of autonomous people

this includes tribal enterprise, active community building and maintenance, trust-based barter trade and the promotion of communication and cooperation between small sovereign communities

thank you for your attention

Um.  That's fairly incoherent, at best, and far too idealistic to be in any way practical.

and when i translated it, even though i saw it wasn't particularly connected to anything, i decided to leave it in, because i think this factette is somehow strangely relevant to the present-day human predicament

Yeah.  Anyway, welcome to the pledge.

[Dildo Argentino]

Where?  You were saying that cities like that didn't really count as cities, at least in the "European" sense.

Well, no, I wasn't. The context for that comment about cities is quoted in this thread, I also just linked it for LMNO. You are just being mean.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Ah, crap.  He's a libertariantard.

Yep.  Pledge, as of now.

[Dildo Argentino]

Yeah.  Anyway, welcome to the pledge.

Could you explain that, please? I don't understand it at all.

[Dildo Argentino]

Ah, crap.  He's a libertariantard.

What on earth makes you think that? I find some arguments for libertarianism quite convincing, and I don't think that for a libertarian setup to work, everybody or most people would have to become significantly and unrealistically nicer than they all are. What I see as the problem with it is that in order for such a system to get off the ground, large number of people would have to believe that it could get off the ground, and that seems unlikely to happen any time soon.

Also, I note you completely failed to respond to the paper about conditions in Somalia.

[Faust]

I have never been in a two european cities that felt the same. Thread title annoys me and causes a knee jerk reaction.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I can't remember: what's the point he was trying to make?

I don't remember either. I asked him earlier but I had classes this morning and don't know if he's replied. It might have something to do with homeopathy.

[Cain]

His point is that you are mired in Cartesian dualism.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I can't remember: what's the point he was trying to make?

The point I was trying to make was that the news that now over half the humans on Earth live in cities may be misleading to someone used to cities in the European sense (where the completely disenfranchised, poor and hopeless part of the population is a small minority), because the larger part of that massive urban population consists of exactly those people: the completely disenfranchised, poor and hopeless slum-dwellers of cities of the world.

It was actually a tangential part of a rather long description of what I believe in, which you can read in its original context here:

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,31295.msg1134683.html#msg1134683

While your actual point is still unclear, you seem to be equating the urban poor with the rural poor, which is extremely inaccurate, to say the least.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

His point is that you are mired in Cartesian dualism.

Ohhhhh

It all becomes clear!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

we all work on what we wish to work on
(those genuinely under coercion not included)

i happen to think that creating the res publica of a people, the establishment (or re-establishment, or restoration) of a country in the sense of a nation state is an outmoded enterprise with little merit

in order to find more timely and glorious work, it is expedient to review the situation that we find ourselves in first from a larger (global), then from a narrower (personal) perspective

none of what i will say is new

global perspective:

one earth, seven billion people

roughly one tenth of that number do not eat their fill every day of the week

at the same time, ten percent of the population dispose over eighty-five percent of all earthly wealth

within that number, the richest one percent control forty percent of the wealth

man does not live by bread alone

over half the population of the earth live in cities, though mostly not cities in the european sense

and well over half the population strive to realise, in their personal lives, the ideals of the welfare consumer society

lots of food, lots of channels, lots of clutter

estimating the size of the autonomous, adult population who hold their lives and their hands and thus purposefully form them is harder

after a small, highly subjective and far from representative opinion survey and a great deal of pondering i have concluded that such people occur in higher proportion in the third world (brutal existential uncertainty is a strong selection pressure at both the individual and the social levels)

the transitional margin between the autonomous and the slave/slaver group is quite wide and gradual along a number of distinct dimensions

globally, the proportion of autonomous, self-governing  adults is somewhere between 0.1 percent and 10 percent

as an incorrigible optimist, i would wager around 1 percent

one in a hundred people

*

personal perspective:

i posit that only sovereign, adult people, who know their own lives and hold them in their hands in order to shape them are capable of authentic political action

i posit that in the present situation authentic political action is impossible without first letting go of all sorts of national or racial phantasmagories, imaginings, emotional tangles

i posit that today, authentic political action may be aimed at the following two targets (possibly among others, i am not making an exhaustive claim here):

firstly, moving fellow humans in the transitional stages between being robots and being people (or half-asleep, or what have you) towards sufficient levels of sovereignity

such actions include raising children, clarity of thinking and speech and the exemplary practice of authentic ways of being

secondly, the strengthening, supporting, mobilisation, vitalisation of the networks, the systems of interrelationships of autonomous people

this includes tribal enterprise, active community building and maintenance, trust-based barter trade and the promotion of communication and cooperation between small sovereign communities

thank you for your attention

Um.  That's fairly incoherent, at best, and far too idealistic to be in any way practical.

and when i translated it, even though i saw it wasn't particularly connected to anything, i decided to leave it in, because i think this factette is somehow strangely relevant to the present-day human predicament

Yeah.  Anyway, welcome to the pledge.

I think we're learning a lot about why translated documents so often make very little sense.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

It seems to me that regardless of whatever the word city has in whatever european language the basic criteria seems to be human settlement with large population and population density. What makes these other cities not cities by the basic understood meaning of the word? Does hungary have  particularly narrow definition? If so does boston meet the criteria? If not is it not a really real city even though the usa says it is? Why are you trying to impose your own definition of city on developing nations and not other nations that have slightly different meanings for city than you?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

[Nephew Twiddleton]

What about brookline massachusetts which blocked being annexed by boston? It is heavily urbanized but has a town government. It is bordered on three sides by the city of boston and one by the city of newton. Do brookliners not count in this tally even though they most definitely make up a metropolitan area. Hell for statistical purposes the usa gives population centers in new england its own category. I believe the acronym is necta. New england city town association or something.

[Cain]

Taking my made up subject title too seriously, ITT