Hello. Today: two articles on urban planning, a film about environmental racism, a novel with a strong sense of spatial identity, and a classic of urban anthropology. There's an unofficial theme, too: places.
Lately I've drawn comfort and energy from the city, my home. I live somewhere that feels well-planned, well-lit, beautiful to look at and enjoyable to walk around and cycle and swim in. Vienna is known for its high quality of life; it is a model city for gender mainstreaming (which essentially means making sure that all genders are accounted for equally in policy, legislation and resource allocation). But no place is neutral, and I often wonder who my city is for, who it represents and who it excludes, and what its infrastructure, its urban planning and its public history and memory projects can't make up for. 

Article(s): The Floating Utopia of Sales Force Park by Anna Wiener, published by The New Yorker in December 2019; Parks and Houses for the People by Johan Pries, Erik Jönsson, Don Mitchell, published by Places Journal in May 2020
These two articles make a great pairing: one is about a privately owned park floating over a transit centre in San Francisco; the other is about radically communal spaces created by the Swedish Social Democrats in the early 20th century. One reminded me of a city I used to live in, with its CCTV-afflicted, over-designed semi-public squares patrolled by private security. Public spaces! They ought to be public!

Film: There's Something in the Water (2019), directed by Ellen Page and Ian Daniel
Speaking of public goods: here's a film that explores access to clean water in Canada. Inspired by the work of social scientist Ingrid Waldron, this documentary shows the disproportionate effect of environmental damage on Black Canadian and First Nations communities in Nova Scotia, or more simply put: environmental racism. Narrated by Ellen Page, three affected communities talk about their experience of pollution, lack of basic infrastructure, and outright refusal to honour the rights of First Nations communities in particular. This film is streaming on Netflix.

Book: Ponti by Sharlene Teo (2018)
I love a novel that really digs into where it is set. Ponti is not primarily about place, but its wild urbanity is what has stuck with me since I read it a couple of years ago. Really, Ponti is about three women and three timelines: the intense friendship between teens Szu and Circe and Szu's relationship with her mother Amisa, a former actress. But Singapore and its sweaty, sticky heat, its haze of pollution and its urban spaces is another character, and Sharlene Teo deftly explores the changes in the city's life – gentrification, urbanisation – as well as the transformations of her protagonists' lives. 10/10 would read again.

Learning: While Statues Sleep by Thomas Laqueur, published by The LRB in June 2020
In this review of Susan Neiman's book Learning from the Germans: Confronting Race and the Memory of Evil, historian Thomas Laqueur asks if German reparations to survivors of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes can serve as a model, or precedent, for American reparations for slavery. Laqueur's fairly detailed account of German reparations, their limitations and constraints, suggests that the answer is no. I think I'd find it easier to "learn from the Germans" if the German state were more seriously engaged with its genocidal colonial past in Namibia.
Note: I knew Thomas Laqueur from his work on the cultural history of sex, sexuality, masturbation and the body, which... I recommend.

Other: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William Whyte
More than ten years ago, my friend Q sent me this classic video study of how people behave in a public plaza in New York: where they sit, how they move, what the plaza needs to improve. It's fun, interesting, old, and I think of it whenever I'm in a square. Enjoy!

I'll leave you with a classic quote from Alain Badiou: On est ici, on est d'ici. Jeder, der hier ist, ist von hier. Everyone who's here is from here. Until next time!