#reading atm

happy new year everybody! to start off my year im going to really dive into the left hand of darkness and then do my dear friend a favor and finally start a little life. elizabeth zimmermann will also be by my side as i embark on my journey towards my january aran: the handsome chris sweater! :^) this will be a busy month!

         “... is the greatest punishment we can bring to ourselves.”                         —Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding, Act II, Scene 1.

the book is very good though, very exciting and i like how nesbø redid the characters. I found it last week in our trip to the aquarium at a bookstore at the trainstation, where it was listed as no.1 on their bestselling list. So in a weak attempt to slip into actual contemporary literature that is being published right now this year, i just. I just bought it like that. Then i read the first 150 pages on the train rides for about 5 hours, which isn‘t fast by any standards but for me it is! Except that i read 250 pages yesterday in like 3 hours so heres to rapid improvement i guess!

‘This third wave of gentrification claims to reduce sprawl by bringing people back into the center city.  However, the reality of the situation is that third-wave gentrification produces cities that are colonized by white people through "mixed-use zoning," a development trend in which the colonizers target neighborhoods that have been previously occupied by economically disadvantaged people of color.’                                                                             ‘The targeting of these races and places is due to the fact that these areas have urban qualities (e.g. historical architecture) that are desirable to middle- and upper-class consumers and developers; however, these areas lack high aesthetic quality and therefore are in need of "revitalization and healing (Smith 1996)." It is, in a sense, a type of social engineering, a racist project that carries out global urban apartheid under the name of colorblind neoliberal development. This implicit character allows for the persistence of property-led economic development in the name of the free-market and equal opportunity.  Considered critically, this wave represents the attempted geographical extermination of particular target groups, including immigrants and marginalized minority urban dwellers that are considered disposable and not tied to the community.’                                                                                               ‘Those who are returning to the central city are also drawn by the cultural character of these areas, citing the rich heritage of the area and the history that encompasses it. However, the incoming residents do not desire for the populations from whom the cultural character of these neighborhoods originates to remain, as the persons that have constructed this "character" are typically low income, minority groups. The new residents desire true cultural character, but not an area with an ethnic past that is plagued by the "problems" associated with minority groups.  Areas with high concentrations of ethnic groups are experiencing what amounts to ethnic cleansing, in which minorities are being forced out of their areas and replaced with a new whiter, and less ethnic, population. The result is an area with a rich cultural past that is now comprised of a majority of high income whites’