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Reclaiming the Right to the City: Guerrilla Micro-Gardening 

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Week 8: Reclaiming the Right to the City

For our project, we decided to reclaim our right to the city through guerilla micro-gardening. We used aluminum food cans, magazine cut outs, different paper designs, zip ties, and mod podge to create receptacles in which we would pot little plant flowers inside. We put up our creations on the side of the street in Little Saigon on El Cajon boulevard and 47th Street. As both Harvey and Lefebvre discuss our inherent right to the city, they elucidate how practices like tactical urbanism are small acts of political activism at work as conducive to public life. Harvey specifically discusses how urbanization has come to perpetuate surplus profits by the capitalists in which the “public spaces” we are constantly in contact with and meandering through puts us in a situation of feedback loops of consumption and profit-- essentially not so public after all.

Perhaps these structures of capitalism and the neoliberal city are so strong that Cera, while zip tying the aluminum gardening cans to the stacks of wood, stopped and said “oh yeah… we do have a right to the city.” It was the active practice itself unfolding in time that turned on the light bulb. Displaying our interventions out onto the public sparked a sense of ownership to the spaces around us. It’s so automatic to think of the spaces we navigate through are automatically someone else’s property. “I’m so used to walking around already thinking everything is off limits” Cera added, unless we purchase something which is the moment in which we then feel a sense of ownership-- reduced back to the feedback loop of capitalism and consumption. However, again with our intervention, these guerilla micro gardens were about the community and fostering a display of activism, and certainly not gardens disguised for a larger interest in financial investment. Because again as Lefebvre argues, the right to the city is not an individual right but a common right among the people in which our intervention fosters.

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Do informal practices and make-shift devices have politics

For our project, we strolled around Sherman Heights and came across a few informal practices on the streets. Our most notable experience was eating delicious enchiladas inside the “Cocina de Tita Estilo GTO”. Cocina de Tita Estilo Gto is a mexican make-shift “restaurant” that is located outside within the owner’s gated home. This outdoor kitchen has an informal restaurant feel with foldable popup tables, a whiteboard meny, colorful picado banners hanging high over the tables, paper plates and silverware, a dog running around the front yard, and the whole family sitting around on the side. This informal kitchen did however have some aspects that made it feel somewhat like a formal restaurant. The waitress, we assumed it was the daughter of the family, who greeted us and sat us down at our seats, took our order and brought it to the “kitchen” (was in actuality a pot of hot oil to the side of our seats and a table with all the ingredients laid out upon), so our order was made fresh and directly in front of us.

Just down the street becomes the main strip of Imperial Avenue, so the location for this outdoor food service was close enough that people can pass by to stop and eat. There were not many customers other than the three of us and a couple with their baby-- perhaps they flocked to City Heights for the area’s weekly events on a Sunday morning. This speaks to informal practices in the way that McFarlane and Vasudevan would say this is participating in an informal economy to provide services without the county legal rules constraining their agency. Being on their own private property to run the business of Cocina de Tita Estilo Gto, it works to their favor. However, as Fabricius notes in looking beyond informality, we need to understand that “to live informally is to live precariously” in which we don’t want to romanticize the difficulties of everyday life in which these people are put in a position to put up a makeshift restaurant in the first place in order to make money.

In Sherman Heights, these informal practices begin to become the norm. We also saw informal practice like store fronts made out of houses and families cleaning their cars in front of them, a small pop up library and pop up pantry on the side of the road in the middle of a residential neighborhood and although not shown specifically, the notion that you can use your dog, or dogs, as an alarm system. If any of these practices were seen elsewhere in San Diego, such as northern SD or coastal areas, they may be seen as suspicious for being out of the norm. However, in Sherman Heights, due to the way this specific town functions, these practices are everywhere and seem extremely normal because of how often it is happening and how often you see it-- it becomes embedded within the town’s infrastructure of normal practices.

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Week 7 Video

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Do sidewalks, cars or steps have politics?

This week’s Tumblr post asked our group to derive. A point of contention that has been raised in our class this quarter has been whether city planners, like Haussmann and Moses functional structuralist approaches to shaping a city strip individual actors of their agency.

One the one hand, some argued, like Foucault, that networked city systems have mastered manipulating “the details” so precisely that a system’s classifications, discourses, and hierarchies embed themselves onto the body of the citizen-subject. From this perspective, networked systems - which establish specific modes of discipline - have considerable power over their subjects, and that power is embodied in their day to day speech, movements, and psychology.

On the other hand, however, others argue that actors who inhabit the city live in spaces that are can’t be read by the 1,000 eyes of the panopticon. In the words of Michael DeCerteau, one of this view’s main proponents, “[Ordinary practitioners of the city] walk – an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers, Wandersmanner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban “text” they write without being able to read it” (DeCertau, p.93).

According to this view, city dwellers forge their own maps when traversing the streets. Using a shortcut to get to their destination quicker, or to park in that lot where the attendant looks the other way. In sum, then, the issue is whether a city’s networked systems create a disciplined subject shaping their every move or do subjects with a networked city system express agency in their everyday practices.

Our view is that city actors are disciplined through the ordering of city networks and that these same actors use what DeCertau calls tactics, which briefly stated are responsive, in the moment workarounds, during the hustle of everyday life. Though we concede that the designs of movement in a networked city imprint embodied discipline on a population, we maintain that through our embodied practice of the derive this week that unlearning and relearning how to see and drift in the landscape, during the present moment of intention, helps to reveal hidden portals on a territory that out of unknowing and habit one doesn’t know how to see. Thereby, the openings allow an actor to tactically elude a system’s disciplinary hold.  

Turning to our case study in the city of Coronado, our group assembled in Vons parking lot behind Orange Avenue, which is the main drag in the heart of Coronado. Once on the west sidewalk of Orange Ave., in front of the liquor store next to Vons, we exchanged “where do we go” looks of expression, and Cera suggested “this way” (South down Orange), and after a couple of steps into our derive she registered the one-way sign that dangled on the edge of her immediate perception. She verbalized her realization of the sign instructing us from the median of Orange Ave; we took note of the amorphous presence over our shoulders and thus began our education of learning new ways to see.  

We thought about crossing to the east side of Orange Ave. but we did not find the graciousness we sought. Orange Ave. is stingy with her crosswalks at several cross streets, but for those who dare to dart across the naked avenue, the center island curbs are wheelchair accessible.

Although we came across a couple of cross streets, the sidewalk’s trajectory seemed to shepherd us forward with its generous bends. The turns onto the cross streets were angular and severe. Their manner sharp and stiff like a butler sizing up an unexpected guest at the front door.

We then came to a corner of a street that was at least four lanes wide. Intimidated by the expansive stretch of gray we took a hard-right turn, from the wide berth of the periphery and into one strand that revealed a glimpse into Coronado’s neighborhood core. In relation to Cadogan, although his experience of the city is adverse, we experienced slight insecurity and fear of the unprotected crosswalk, not because of our racial identity like Cadogan expressed, but for being so far away in the distance among fast-moving cars that we decided to change directions. Rambling into the neighborhood’s center, our movement excavated embodied memories from our past recent walks. We noticed deviance, in the way DeCertau describes it was not immediately obvious on the surface of Coronado’s streets.  

We would reply that this touches on the issue of shaping consumption and citizenship: ultimately, as we continued on straight ahead, the natural flow of the sidewalks looped us back around to the main street where most of the tourism activity takes place. This is important because the infrastructures that are in place in Coronado ultimately influence the freedom one has when walking in a city. The sidewalks and structures placed, like one-way street signs, undesignated crosswalks and little to no traffic signals, significantly impact the ability for consumers to liberate from the infrastructure that is set up for us.  

Returning back on Orange Ave. we noted that there are flags on almost every end of the medians that stretch across Orange Blvd. They are spotted atop many buildings and there are flag poles we eyed in a nearby park with a large grassy area. While walking to our cars, as we circled back to the Vons parking lot, we were startled by a voice, “To your left ladies,” it was an older gentleman, in his mid-seventies, wearing a flat cap and riding a beach cruiser with robin blue rims and a white seat. We smiled; an active, laid back lifestyle glistened in the sun and on the surface of the Coronado streets today.    

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Do Cities Have Politics?

In recent discussions of the visible unsheltered population that occupy the streets of East Village (EV), a controversial issue has been convincing the public that homelessness is a citywide issue and it’s necessary that other neighborhoods – apart from downtown - offer shelter and resources to those without homes.

On the one hand, some argue that several social service resources are concentrated downtown. From this perspective, the accessible proximity of resource options makes sense because many homeless people have limited mobility choices. On the other hand, however, EV residents and business owners “don’t want the homeless population concentrated in their neighborhood.” According to this view, EV has been the site for homeless services long enough and the cluster of agencies in the neighborhood need to be spread out across the San Diego region.

In sum, then, the issue is whether EV will continue to be the spot where additional social service agencies break ground or will other neighborhoods in the San Diego region commit to helping out.

Our view is that urban-planning organizes and directs the social organization of a city. Therefore, in EV, the concentration of social services and the accompanying homeless population they serve are the result of specific technologies of urban design. How did San Diego city planners create segregated spaces in the downtown center of the city without the materiality of a gate? And how do the imaginary segregated sections inform the homeless politics of EV?       

For this assignment, we took to the downtown neighborhood of EV and mapped the social service networks for the homeless and very low-income individuals that populate the territory. As our map illustrates, using land use designations, zoning technology, and boulevards, city planners have sectioned EV into four districts: Northwest, Northeast, Ballpark, and Southeast.  

When reshaping Paris in the mid-nineteenth century, Haussmann’s “regularisation” of the streets sought to characterize the city as a machine that directed the circulation of mobility in the city and between cities, too. Underneath Haussmann’s Paris, an integrated sewer system directed the circulation of water which created the freedom of urban dwellers to occupy the boulevards in their comings and goings of the day. On the one hand, the circulatory circuit encouraged uniform and orderly movement of the flow of people and goods on the street and water and sewage below. On the other hand, zoning, land use designations, and one-way street plans engineered by city planners govern and restrict other flows of movement.

Turning to our case study, when walking up F Street from 4th Ave., through the Gaslamp District, and into the Northwest District of EV if felt as if we stepped into the crosswalk, onto the curb, and were transported through a “social wall” where upon crossing the imaginary threshold we entered a completely different place. What was a lively restaurant and bar scene where people on the sidewalks were dancing, flirting, and taking selfies to a blasting deep bass beat transformed into a territory where the rumble of a homeless woman’s suitcase wheels was the prelude to a nearby congregation of homeless people commiserating in low tones.

We had entered the Northwest District of EV, and had come upon what San Diego city planners call the Northwest Neighborhood Center zone. In the Neighborhood Center zone designation, there is a Salvation Army, adult rehab center, Peach Tree Inn SRO, Rachel’s women’s drop-in center, and many other similar social services-- all of which cater to the homeless and/or low-income residents. On the other side such as Horton Plaza and the Gaslamp exists the structures of another type of modern social life: restaurants, bars, shopping, and clubbing all of which shape the efficiency for consumptive behavior contained within that space. A few homeless people are spotted in the Gaslamp District, but not concentrated as they are in the EV Northwest Neighborhood zone. This stark contrast of sensory segregated space illustrates how modern city planners, using Haussmann’s technologies of “regulatision” from 19th century Paris, manage to structure the designated uses and flows of mobility for specific urban dwellers to specific urban sites.

These two contrasted areas are organized on straight lines, relating to LeCorbusier’s notion that such would allow for more organization and efficiency in the city. Otherwise, without the structure of straight lines, the city would become chaotic and breed anarchy and disorder as the bourgeoisie may be forced to witness the blatant social inequality while searching for the perfect pair of shoes. Keeping to the idea of straight lines, these kinds of spaces organized within them, such as social services for the homeless and those of low income, or consumer private spaces for middle- and high-income people, are designed such that it regulates and keeps in check the differences they clearly hold between each other.

Our walk lead us to investigate all the other Neighborhood Center zones and Large Floorplate Areas (which are also designated for social services and homeless industrial tents). They too were filled with unsheltered and low-income residents that seemed to remain segregated in the zones city planners intended for the “diverse” populations (SD plan language) of downtown San Diego.

Our case study helps shed a light on why social services remain in special zoned areas in the quadrants of EV and perhaps explains why other regions of the city can abdicate hosting a social service agency, due to the lack of zoning designations in their neighborhood, and the overabundance zones throughout East Village.    

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Do buildings have politics?

With the theme this week regarding the politics of buildings, we observed and analyzed the design of the surrounding built environment and office space of a non-profit organization, Somali Bantu Association of America (SBAOA). For context, SBAOA is an organization that provides Somali Bantu refugees access to professional and educational resources that help with the transition into life in the U.S.

The SBAOA office space lies above a small marketplace, in an old looking building characterized by smudged dirt spread across the building’s surface. This reflects Kaika’s social construction of the western bourgeois home that is predicated upon exclusion of undesired elements of the social and natural environments. While a bourgeois home or building is characterized by cleanliness, organization, minimalism, and wide open spaces, it’s a stark contrast with the overall building we observed: characterized with “mom and pop shop” style spaces that are small and confined; the “Home and Fashions for Less” store just a few feet away spotting unfinished sewing projects laying around (though admirable of its significance on the visibility of the sewing process); the Dur Dur market lowly-lit, silent without music, with smaller availability of food items though rich and plentiful with brand names that are found in East Africa, rightfully familiar to the Somali/Bantu community; all characterizations of these spaces would easily be reduced down to “Other” in comparison to more high income, coastal, and/or northern neighborhoods of San Diego.

However, taken to the scale of the “small” SBAOA office itself, it’s a rather vibrant space that acts on behalf of positive agency, aiding the upward social mobility of the Somali-Bantu refugees through the design of the room that holds educational computer labs, make-shift tables for more collaborative meetings, and much more. SBAOA acts as a safe space to not only keep out “rain, cold and pollution“ (272) as Kaika would say, but also to keep “fear, anxiety, social upheaval and inequality outside” (272) as the community comes together in this very room to hold meetings, services, and activist activities that help these refugees in their transition here in San Diego. Perhaps the designers of the building were quick to mass produce these rooms in a way that standardizes and loses the connecting process that comes with architecture (LeCorbusier), but the community has made it a space that is completely, colorfully, and uniquely their own. While the building may shape the community’s behaviors as consumer-subjects through the market or the fashion store, it also shapes them as citizen-subjects through spaces like SBAOA and the mosque just next door, as the community simultaneously works to shape and uphold these institutions around them (Gieryn).

Just below the SBAOA office is a spacious room designated for the Somali-Bantu refugee women to partake in sewing. It’s an extension of SBAOA as one of the programs offered. In relation to Spiegel, there are gender and labor relations at work. In this room, you’ll find the women sewing, where the men would congregate and hang out just outside closer to where the market and the mosque is. Thus the entire proximal space of the building acts as a site of gendered activities. Even in the SBAOA office itself, the men and women tend to segregate themselves during meetings with the men on one side of the room, and the women on the other side, as culturally influenced.

Finally, the sewing machines are a way for these women to enjoy leisure activity. The design of the room allows these women to simply get in the zone (Schull) and just relax while the everyday lulls and tasks of life disappear (Spiegel). It is a plain and wide room that is lined with sewing machines, almost-bare walls, nothing so distracting and overly stimulating that would keep their attention away. The simple layout allows the women to simply decide when to start and finish without becoming too drawn in as Schull compared with the casino goers.   

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The Politics of Everyday Technologies

“I’m walking the gauntlet today.”

“Oh, yeah?,” a smirk forms on my face, “Have fun!”

Walking “the gauntlet” was a euphemism my friend Christine - who had a persistent wet cough  - used for when she needed to head to Imperial Ave. to re-up on a carton of cigarettes.

“The gauntlet” is located on Imperial Ave and spans from the 12th Ave. trolley stop to where Father Joe’s Village ends at17th on the southeast border of the downtown neighborhood of East Village.        

This week our group headed to “the gauntlet” to observe two identical sculptures that are part of an East Village 275-unit apartment development, which occupies over half of the 1400 block of Imperial Ave. and serves low to very low-income persons, named Studio 15.

On “the gauntlet,” small assembled groups of people hung out, telling jokes and seeing what others had for sale. A boom box blasts Kendrick Lamar near the Padres’ tailgate parking lot. A man and two women, each carrying black duffle bags on their shoulders, mill around the abandoned Ace Parking lot calling, “Cigarettes,” in covert, clipped tones. A man sitting on the seat of a dual function walker holds court while on-lookers laugh and hang onto his next word. A blue hand-washing station teeters on the curb. On the sidewalk in front of the abandon indoor sky-diving building, there are filthy pillows and clothing strewn about. A comforter completely covers a sleeping body. “We the people find these truths to be self-evident” is scrawled on the side of the abandoned building. Further up the sidewalk, next to the curb, behind a green electric box, a circle of men and women take turns holding a baby.    

A tall black gate encloses the outdoor smoking patio of Studio 15. There are benches where residents sit and smoke while watching through the bars the action of the sidewalk or the cars and buses that pass by on the avenue. In the interior courtyard, before residents enter the smoking patio, there is a tall sculpture that resembles three cigarette butts sticking out of a slightly crumpled silver soup can. There is a similar sculpture on the sidewalk in front of Studio 15 (pictured above).

These are the conditions to which Molotch relates Lash-up, suggesting that objects exist in relation to other surrounding objects and social processes. The cigarette sculpture in front of Studio 15 is indeed “one interdependent fragment of a larger whole.” The bazaar-like atmosphere coupled with the informal economy that operates on Imperial Ave. directly speaks to why a sculpture of extinguished cigarette butts is on prominent display. The work that happens on the avenue is, at best, non-traditional, and there is also a homeless shelter located next door to Studio 15. At times the free-form of the “underground activities” feel intimidating to people passing by. There are countless cigarette butts on Imperial Ave. and heavy foot traffic throughout the day. Perhaps the sculpture located in the front of Studio 15 serves a double purpose. The first as a physical loitering deterrent and second as an artifact that projects a moral “smoking is bad” message to the urban poor that congregates near the area.  

Thaler and Sustein’s writing encourage choice architects (any person who indirectly influences other people’s behavior) to aid others to choose “healthier and better” behaviors through deliberate design. Individuals can simply “opt out” if they would prefer, but technologies or structures are present in order to make those take an extra second and think about the actions they are partaking in. These technologies attempt to “nudge” people in these environments to partake in a certain action or outcome.

Each of the three various sized cigarette butts has a different colored tip: one red, one blue, and the other yellow. The primary colors articulate the technique of an elementary lesson. The explicit architecture of the cigarette butt sculptures and their subsequent locations, inside and outside of the development directly speak to the generally low-income population that inhabits the studio apartments and the sidewalks of Imperial Ave. Thaler and Sustien’s libertarian paternalism is on display in the cigarette butt artifact because of the primary colored, moral message inherent in the design of the object. The desired behavior is Don’t smoke, but if you do put your cigarettes out in a receptacle. The objects and environment of “the gauntlet” in turn shape the actions that many participate in there, just like Thaler and Sustein argue.

We asked a woman passing by what she thought the sculpture looked like, “I don’t know, candles?” she responded.

“Don’t you think it looks like cigarette butts in a can?” we prodded.

“Oh yeah! They sure do! Hey, take a look at these portfolios I have here. You want to buy one?”

“No thanks,” we smiled and continued walking down the street

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Politics of Different Bodies

This week we learned some concepts that cover the core of politics and the body. To apply the concepts, we observed the defining or regulating of bodies by attending an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting where we identified the different ways in which the participants behave similarly to the concepts we learned for the week.

As we learned through Foucault, we are constantly surveilled and regulated through subtle, invisible systems that become normalized. Thus our bodies are an object of power that is susceptible to the ability to change according to the surrounding environments, for better or worse. In relation to the AA meeting that we attended, we can see this bodily discipline in a positive light. For example, AA is designed to achieve sobriety in which these participants can be “disciplined” to change their drinking habits and overcome alcohol dependence through a series of meetings, the twelve-step program, and collaborations with sponsors in their social structure to influence their sobriety. As for surveillance, many of the participants shared their relationship with God in overcoming their challenges, thus God’s close presence served as a way to self-surveil their behavioral changes as much as the help of their sponsors and fellow AA participants to look out for each other and act as tools for positive self-surveillance.

With Butler comes the importance of repetition and citationality with gender, in that gender is a performance we repeat every day in quoting or citing a previous ideal body or identity in our acts. In relation to the AA meeting we attended, different people celebrated the number of years they were sober, some a few months and others as much as 30 years. We can perceive that those who identify sober is performative in repetition and citationality in that they behave in certain ways associated with maintaining sobriety.  For example, attending weekly meetings, everyday practices in their habits without alcohol, daily prayer and gratitude, and an annual celebration with a cake and token to mark each year to which this is the structure they are influenced by.  

With Sennett, we learned that there are different ways to achieve manhood. For example, the gym in Ancient Greece was a site of public display to show what it means to be a man. The same can be applied in what we saw in the AA meeting. Each and every place a meeting is held can act as a site/display of sobriety and being on the path to overcoming alcohol dependence which shapes their identity and agency.

Finally, with Wandell, we can apply the idea of socially dependent definitions to define what it means to be “Alcoholic” and “Sober” based on the norms given. It’s supposed that we can understand “Alcoholic” to mean as someone who is dependent on alcohol though there are different levels of severity. The same can go for “Sober” in which you’re not under the influence of alcohol, which also comes with different levels. Either way, we negotiate the meanings of the words in which they depend on certain norms in society to constitute their definitions.

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The Representation of Politics

Historically, politics is commonly known and understood as a respected and trusted system of checks and balances. Today, due to current events and the political discord on views, there is now a general concern and confusion as to what it represents and where the political system is going. Politics, and what it represented, has taken a much more negative route. This is something that many people have agreed upon.

We interviewed seven people, and asked them the general questions, “What comes to mind when you think of politics?” and, “What does politics represent?” Not one of the people that we interviewed brought up any physical, specific items like cities, sidewalks or locations. They all see politics as more of a system rather than something that is tangible like we will be learning about in the next couple of weeks. Those that we have interviewed have instead found politics to be closely related to the very present current events of our world today and have a genuine fear of where the politics of the United States are going.

This shows the generally shared idea of politics being about a political system in and of itself rather than the built systems and infrastructures that shape how we participate or not in political activities. In such a case, it reveals where our society currently stands in locating where political power lies: political leaders, the people, the media, and so on. Based on the interviewees, we can also infer that they find politics in institutions like Congress, mediated through the media and different news sources.

Drawing from lecture and the readings, perhaps we can say that based on the interview answers, there is this implicit idea of “the political” residing in power among (the) people who are bearers of political agency to make changes for a better society. However, the current contentions that take the face of politics might make us question our roles as citizens.

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“What comes to mind when you think about politics?”