Citiesforpygmies

TNT next to Venezuela. They’re so close but it never felt that way. 

The US.Mexico Border otherwise known as “The Wall” symbolizes a failure in US foreign policy, a failure in diplomatic policy. The Wall was never able to stop migration into the US.  The major industry along the wall is security otherwise known as the “Border Industrial Complex”. “We should preserve sections of it to remind ourselves of a period in the early 21st century when the US lost its moral compass.”  

Stories of failing schools are all too common--schools that look and feel like prisons, with teachers who fear losing their jobs if they don't stay focused o...

It is not impossible to get an education in the US if you're an undocumented immigrant, but it's really hard. This article is all about the different opinions within a college admissions and financial aid departments about whether or not to accept and grant aid to undocumented students. One of the statements that stood out to me was that if you've grown up in the United States most of your life and have gone through the US schooling system then why would the university not want to reflect the body of the population? Also, it's important to remember that undocumented immigrants aren't getting much out of this. It doesn't mean most undocumented persons are getting aid when citizens are not. Tax payers are not paying for immigrants. Private grants and scholarships are allowing for students in specific situations to still participate in receiving an education. This is tantamount to having a private grant to build a water fountain on a college campus, just slightly more responsible and socially aware.

Discussion about the growth pattern of Long Island City New York, really great way to see how (traditionally) stakeholders discuss the future.

WNYC is telling the story of public housing in New York City through the lens of one family that has lived there for four decades. The Alstons arrived in the Queensbridge Houses in 1954, and many members continue to live there. This is part one of a four-part series. 

It seems like every politician has a plan for putting people back to work. But we and the Planet Money team couldn’t help but wonder…how do you create a job? Can politicians truly create many jobs? Is it possible the whole thing is just well-intentioned hot air?

Borrowing, Mortgages, Debt.

So excited and scared for next semester!!!

A moving story about the importance of being able to read the land and understand history but also nature. An inner city environmental studies syllabus is revised to help children see the urban environment as a human environment and part of the larger environment contingent upon the same natural forces. Also demonstrates their local wisdom and shows how education can stimulate innovation when executed correctly!

Law graduate, Tarisai Mchuchu-Ratshidi speaks at a TedXUCT event on how she stumbled into becoming involved with youth at a local juvenile detention center. By discussing how her family's strictness had made her afraid to rebel as a teenager, she also elaborates on the social situations of a tightly knit community fabric which helped reinforce her drive to go to University of Capetown and pursue law. Contrasting her community experience to the experience of the incarcerated youth, she points out the lack of community involvement with the center which eliminates the correctional aspect of this corrections center. She cites the adage, "It takes a village to raise a child." and encourages the audience to get to know the community that they live in. Her talk is imbued with ways in which her community promotes closeness from simple acts of borrowing salt from neighbours. As planners it is important to remember how cultures shape performance and that the built environment must be sensitive to facilitating these interactions, if not representing these cultures in their form, aesthetic and function.  

Jeffrey Juarez of MIT Urban Planning speaks briefly about his background, educational experience and inspirations for studying Urban Planning at MIT. He mentions growing up in Los Angeles (a heavily segregated city) and wanting to help his parents formalize their informal business and maximize on their entrepreneurial skills. I absolutely love this!!!

Teddy Cruz 

To decrypt the meaning of citiesforpygmies the first hint is to look at the caption, "My journey as a marginal man turned city planner." A variant on the theme of defensive architecture, the name implies that spaces, specifically urban spaces, are designed to enhance the experience of the majority, i.e. the elite and persons who have most political influence over design decisions. As city planning stretches towards inclusion it has requested the collaboration of diverse perspectives, reaching into the slums and retrieving citizens whose identities have been historically marginalized. Pygmy to me is interpreted as a little man, or what DuBois would call the marginal man whose alienation is engendered by spatial dissociation- particularly migration. Ideas about how to apply tenets of human ecology to the city will be hopefully shared and re-shared. Also, the process of looking back and gathering information on past community driven efforts to shape equitable city life will hopefully inspire viewers to rethink or reinforce ideas respectively where applicable. As I learn I will share and hopefully you will share what you learn. The notion that marginalized communities can be recontextualized and through design express their sense of place antithetical to that which capitalist power structures have erected; citiesforpygmies strives to graph the conservative nature of planning as a function of the revolutionary frameworks of unrealized theories of sustainable urbanism and the realized infrastructure social science has produced on identity formation. All on the same plane ;)

me and my boo