tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70318562975854207282024-03-23T01:02:00.152+01:00LIFE IN URBAN SPACEWARNING :
YOU ´RE ENTERING AN ILLEGITIMATE THINKING ZONE ABOUT PERCEPTION, CITY SHAPES AND POLITICSAlpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-25581475188726658562024-03-22T18:55:00.007+01:002024-03-23T01:01:28.809+01:00"Et toi tu sens le caca" : la réponse d'Emmanuel Macron à Vladimir Poutine<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB8EXrNfrrFSOFMHdKyT_H_rSpksi-KLUi3_OLPJi3mpnshrsCiJ25Li87FeoO0YyLem-O5BB45-hYnEEzxxrGyLEH5V0U5WIr0bg8mxePlv9M4NYAOxTUAJThQyphAFOm-QQNUGW4UO8stSh4y0Eqp_a5YG9-4mlHzpWYJ4z52NmVTs8LyqU7OIAPgW9u/s842/Capture%20d%E2%80%99e%CC%81cran%202024-03-22%20a%CC%80%2013.53.56.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="842" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB8EXrNfrrFSOFMHdKyT_H_rSpksi-KLUi3_OLPJi3mpnshrsCiJ25Li87FeoO0YyLem-O5BB45-hYnEEzxxrGyLEH5V0U5WIr0bg8mxePlv9M4NYAOxTUAJThQyphAFOm-QQNUGW4UO8stSh4y0Eqp_a5YG9-4mlHzpWYJ4z52NmVTs8LyqU7OIAPgW9u/s320/Capture%20d%E2%80%99e%CC%81cran%202024-03-22%20a%CC%80%2013.53.56.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span itemprop="caption" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(95, 112, 129); color: #5f7081; font-family: FranklinGothicFS, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start;">Elyséen - Comité de pilotage mars 2024</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(95, 112, 129); color: #5f7081; font-family: FranklinGothicFS, sans-serif; text-align: start;"> </span><span itemprop="copyrightHolder" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(95, 112, 129); color: #5f7081; font-family: FranklinGothicFS, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start;">© AFP</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(95, 112, 129); color: #5f7081; font-family: FranklinGothicFS, sans-serif; text-align: start;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(95, 112, 129); color: #5f7081; font-family: FranklinGothicFS, sans-serif; text-align: start;">- Casimir Bertrand</span></span></div><br /> La diplomatie internationale vient de passer un nouveau stade d'excellence. <p></p><p>Alors que la guerre déclenchée en Ukraine a déjà causé la mort ou la mutilation de plusieurs centaines de milliers d'hommes - bien que le chiffre exact soit classé "Secret Defense" pour cacher à la fois l'horreur et le scandale qui lui serait associé - le dirigeant de la Russie, individu ayant la responsabilité du sort de cent quarante six millions de personnes, disposant de l'arme atomique, provoque publiquement le dirigeant de la France en le traitant de "trouillard" et en comparant son gouvernement à des "gallinacés".</p><p>Faisant à nouveau preuve de la profondeur de son analyse stratégique et psychologique depuis le début du conflit, le cabinet du Président d'Emmanuel Macron, rompu aux dernières techniques de marketing digital, a publié aujourd'hui sa réponse sur les réseaux sociaux : "Et toi tu sens le caca" espérant créer ainsi un électrochoc au sein du camp adverse. </p><p>La publication d'une chanson "A moi tu m'as traité ? A moi tu m'as traité ?" spécifiquement composée pour l'occasion a été annoncée pour les prochains jours.</p><p>Par Alpha Papa - Envoyé spécial "Grandeur de la France : d'un anachronisme à l'autre"</p><br /><div><br /></div>Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-52100300320758357032012-12-04T22:00:00.000+01:002016-11-01T14:42:16.071+01:00LOS ANGELES : don't throw the baby with the bathwater<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
You can't figth urban sprawl. It keeps coming.<br />
<br />
Whereas in most european cities urban sprawl is a relative recent problem, as we're witnessing, powerless, our cities merging into eachother like one big urban ocean, <b>distance and gigantism are constitutive of Los Angeles from its very begining. </b><br />
<br />
Los Angeles is born big, people started to go from distant places in the moutains to others close to the sea very early. Distance, ambition, no limit, are part of the spirit.<br />
<br />
European cities reach gigantism in reverse mode. They kept extending from their little historical center through the centuries, and now cities that were used to be units on their own merge into eachother. Hello neighbours, my old ennemies.<br />
<br />
The superiority of LA will then appear very soon in its capacity to hide the best bar in the middle of the least expected areas. Behind warehouses, at the crossing of some freeway exits, or regular pavillons.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here in Europe, we still don't know how to make those new urban zones entertaining. We know its bad to separate functions, we know that what's good about historic centers is the fact that they combine a lot of different activities, still we can't help to reproduce the same mistakes. <br />
<br />
LA spirit, please save us from ourselves.<br />
<br />
In Stockholm, they got it right : they start to have great clubs with hundred of people under freeways bridges, at <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "new york" , "times" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://www.tradgarden.com/" target="_blank">Trädgården</a>/</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "new york" , "times" , serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "new york" , "times" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://www.underbron.com/" target="_blank">Under bron</a></span><br />
<br />
Soon this blog will provide the proof that LA contains the best exemple of city life, where nature, banana trees, freeways, fancy modern houses, modest wood houses, hispanic families, successful directors, struggling ones, successful actors, struggling ones, bars, cafes, cheap supermarkets, second hand stores, great hispanic food restaurants, great chinese restaurants, offices, and scooter garages who are also bars, live in harmony.<br />
<br />
I name, hereby, Echo Park.<br />
<br />
<i>AP</i><br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-61091267606498986862012-09-16T18:05:00.005+02:002012-10-30T11:18:04.978+01:00A POETIC GIFT TO URBAN PLANNERS FROM STAMEN DESIGN<br />
This design agency in San Francisco called <a href="http://maps.stamen.com/#watercolor/12/37.7706/-122.3782" target="_blank">STAMEN DESIGN</a> created a <a href="http://maps.stamen.com/m2i/#watercolor/1500:1000/10/43.3082/5.5021" target="_blank">awesome free tool on line</a> to automaticaly generate water colors maps from Googlemaps....It is amazing, and so kind of them.<br />
<br />
Cities have shapes, they have a body, that grew over time, over centuries, like an living organism : the roads are their bones, their squeletons.<br />
<br />
This tool makes you realize this in such a obvious and charming way : its like water color paintings from the sky, satellite water paitings of landscapes.<br />
<br />
Thanks to STAMEN DESIGN. This is Heaven. Check this out. <i>(the orange and red are the roads, the scales are not the same on each paiting but doesn't matter for now)</i><br />
<br />
<br />
LONDON<br />
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</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWDACaYgZrx4pX7R9roJOXj0FborOrmB22WD-SD3cd7PEnsw3kWCoYZIIXI_RVgmm7J4RApvd1TmFx6Hm_l3au1wFB5rdwCzM9SNr-w1N3CfFQ5HJ6FxV7JhFDc93GQC1I6ufK-Ldjws_c/s1600/LONDON_Stamen_design.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="460" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWDACaYgZrx4pX7R9roJOXj0FborOrmB22WD-SD3cd7PEnsw3kWCoYZIIXI_RVgmm7J4RApvd1TmFx6Hm_l3au1wFB5rdwCzM9SNr-w1N3CfFQ5HJ6FxV7JhFDc93GQC1I6ufK-Ldjws_c/s640/LONDON_Stamen_design.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
PARIS<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir4SuuOtV45YgkP8dpP1AO0SqlZsNP1g8voMiid-9O0anfAy0czZSpGa8cyndL9sTqR_frTQPHYejOtZLzQNoidUYhBJFH_lMzUYY6RpN6mhkd6-zpRYFjLvWNbC0lo_psaatbClNJX36C/s1600/Paris3_watercolors_stamen_design.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir4SuuOtV45YgkP8dpP1AO0SqlZsNP1g8voMiid-9O0anfAy0czZSpGa8cyndL9sTqR_frTQPHYejOtZLzQNoidUYhBJFH_lMzUYY6RpN6mhkd6-zpRYFjLvWNbC0lo_psaatbClNJX36C/s640/Paris3_watercolors_stamen_design.JPEG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
STOCKHOLM<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1uHd2QQybZcYt0tYjpNLb43iiabXwnwAVF5A6JHHjAN7t63va46K60ULNXKYPjMPUl5kE3NH1-UNQg-HuuXidJTEJe8T7w0KaIYOmCvARYCQiOJtkYmw_OxErAK4UnHG-ltuftrYO7fse/s1600/Stockholm2_Stamen_design_watercolors.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1uHd2QQybZcYt0tYjpNLb43iiabXwnwAVF5A6JHHjAN7t63va46K60ULNXKYPjMPUl5kE3NH1-UNQg-HuuXidJTEJe8T7w0KaIYOmCvARYCQiOJtkYmw_OxErAK4UnHG-ltuftrYO7fse/s640/Stockholm2_Stamen_design_watercolors.JPEG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
NEW YORK<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyDz6KdH7Jnyx5gJXVYv40OMM2qr0f8r8xIKdbpdq-tmmQUO0kBJM4h7eJMskXs2H5cxKK2GjXtD-43MYYfqmZZhpmg_TIx7izMrQA8_b78dMax2uzX4mUBsk8S0ptjSrhBWPVc_px_2SQ/s1600/New_York_Stamen_design.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyDz6KdH7Jnyx5gJXVYv40OMM2qr0f8r8xIKdbpdq-tmmQUO0kBJM4h7eJMskXs2H5cxKK2GjXtD-43MYYfqmZZhpmg_TIx7izMrQA8_b78dMax2uzX4mUBsk8S0ptjSrhBWPVc_px_2SQ/s640/New_York_Stamen_design.JPEG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />
SAN FRANCISCO<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDaQYOMngQF9OAWp2AxCjYrp3s_Vqsajh3dBKGyfXJOa0qu1Zdgv0LGVJJyVZDlIj4ryO8j5co5myHS6EuekQ0nFhwT88267CNymEvIcmeBR-0obqDncWvK5CetZg1R7hwv_-hd573CaZK/s1600/SanFrancisco2_Stamen_design.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDaQYOMngQF9OAWp2AxCjYrp3s_Vqsajh3dBKGyfXJOa0qu1Zdgv0LGVJJyVZDlIj4ryO8j5co5myHS6EuekQ0nFhwT88267CNymEvIcmeBR-0obqDncWvK5CetZg1R7hwv_-hd573CaZK/s640/SanFrancisco2_Stamen_design.JPEG" width="640" /></a></div>
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MARSEILLE<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfabVhBnycgtPbrRUtjCTwAfGWQs7ZVW47O0nHRPRbpe3rXxit4ajBFzVJjsdqonoiAKGEjpxmQb7_X9yTjkifkV3LPdlkIopR-kkdCxQW6JKkmUfPSwhpqkmA2j1jSRwy8eC0ANwejaCL/s1600/Marseille2_watercolors_Stamen_Design.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfabVhBnycgtPbrRUtjCTwAfGWQs7ZVW47O0nHRPRbpe3rXxit4ajBFzVJjsdqonoiAKGEjpxmQb7_X9yTjkifkV3LPdlkIopR-kkdCxQW6JKkmUfPSwhpqkmA2j1jSRwy8eC0ANwejaCL/s640/Marseille2_watercolors_Stamen_Design.JPEG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
ISTANBUL<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnmYho33XNgdMDMBVFFRqU-Co6Db1HfyitCdF9Jj4RRzPZbSzsDLGQymWuTFyKOyUfgGZx6CR55a7LIgXzZVn2onF-CjvB3wHI32QQ8I7nhZrPTlsix0zIYB0bJxn7-mJ2Eji4EW1t0Bcq/s1600/Istanbul_Stamen_design.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnmYho33XNgdMDMBVFFRqU-Co6Db1HfyitCdF9Jj4RRzPZbSzsDLGQymWuTFyKOyUfgGZx6CR55a7LIgXzZVn2onF-CjvB3wHI32QQ8I7nhZrPTlsix0zIYB0bJxn7-mJ2Eji4EW1t0Bcq/s640/Istanbul_Stamen_design.JPEG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>AP</i>Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-57641052853162620942012-08-02T22:47:00.003+02:002012-11-05T20:32:29.885+01:00Why is LA so awesome ? Part I : the Industry<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i>Los
Angeles does not only have a very specific industry that gives a
lot of jobs to every social classes, it also manages,
through this very special industry, the film industry, to keep alive
the orignal spirit that gave birth to the city itself, this
outrageous ambition and endless fantasy that once was the californian
dream. </i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i><br />(Apart,
to Mike Davis : did you just forget to mention that ?)</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Note
: The reading of this post should follow the reading of the prior
post </span></span><a href="http://lifeinurbanspace.blogspot.fr/2012/06/why-is-la-so-awesome-introduction.html"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i>"Why
is LA so awesome ? An introduction"</i></span></span></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: small;">1.
Some spice in your economic life</span></span></h3>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Every
city has what they call a "residential economy"
which<span style="background: #ffffff;"> is basicaly the economy
that exists just by having people standing there : people need
education, medical care, public services, and shops where to buy all
kind of products (food, clothes, computers, phones). Those
sectors are usually huge, and proportionnal to the population, but
they don't tell anything about the economic dynamism of a city. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Then,
huge metropolitan areas have advanced business services and
hi-tech departements in different kind of fields (energy, TIC,
biomed, etc). </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Some
cities, lucky ones, have one industry bigger than all the
other that makes them very special and gives them an identity. But
this tends to disappear, like shipyard industry for exemple (in
Belfast in England or in St-Nazaire in France). </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Los
Angeles has all those metropolitan attributes : it has
lots of firms, research departments from UCLA, Berkeley, the
influence of the Silicon Valley near by, plus a
military industry, and Long Beach, a massive harbor
connected to the whole world. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">And
it has this extra-thing more important than all the others, an
industry that no other city has, not in nature and not in dimension :
the film industry. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br />Its
not an hobby, or a cultural side dish. Its an </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><u>industry*</u></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">,
which means its structural impact on the city and the
employment situation is massive. <a href="http://www.laalmanac.com/employment/em21.htm#Motion%20pictures">Check
out the numbers</a>** : Motion pictures is the 4th leading employment
sector, before the "Wholesale trade (durable and non-durable
goods)", "Engineering and management service" and way
ahead of "Legal services"' for exemple. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br />Coming
home from LA with the strong feeling that everybody there was working
with movies, I was ready to get defeated by reality after confronting
my personnal experience with an objective analysis of the city
economy, as I thought my perception could be distorded by the
fact that I myself could act as a filter, only meeting people working
in this field.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br />But
check this out and feel the breeze :</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h1 align="LEFT" class="western" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<a href="http://cd13.com/district-profile"><span style="color: #0382db;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Economy
- District 13 (Echo Park's district) updated 2011</span></span></span></a></h1>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">The
ten largest employers in the district are (in order):</span></span></span></div>
<ol>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.26cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Paramount
Pictures Corporation (approximately 5,000 employees)</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.26cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Kaiser
Permanente Hospital (5,000)</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.26cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Children’s
Hospital of Los Angeles (3,600)</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.26cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Sunset
Gower Studios (2,500)</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.26cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Los
Angeles City College (2,271)</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.26cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">St.
Vincent’s Medical Center (1,800)</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.26cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Hollywood
Presbyterian Medical Center (1,550)</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.26cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">City
of Angels Medical Center (900)</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.26cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Nielsen
Entertainment (700)</span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 0.26cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Deluxe
Laboratories, Inc. (600)</span></span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Nowhere
else in the world you find those kind of statistics in a big city,
there's never one single specific industry that comes on top of all
the others like that. Except mining industry a century ago. And
that's precisely my point.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Of
course one could say this is a well known fact : LA is
the city of Hollywood, the city of movie making and famous
studios since 1912 and the innumerable chase scenes from Mack
Sennet's Keystones comedies, Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp and the
ambitious productions of D.W Griffith, "the iconic Hollywood
director, dressed in quasi-military style (jodhpurs and riding boots,
epaulets on his shirt), directing large-scale films in the
studio or outdoors like a general in campaign"**.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br />In 1916 D.W
Griffith movie's <i>Intolerance </i>hired 60 000
actors, extras, technicians and workers.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiSmOw1gaFbrEKsVa9-NiAMcols1hxxblXI-Wnagf8J2LWgHrhWNc-glz56d8X2UPaZfWxRKaQJO-EgmpPnX_S9Xcde-xOvNJZc6UXdO7xTgSie2AqbRYHhz581XnY8KK67ZZK1PNq1BUC/s1600/Annex+-+Griffith,+D.+W.+(Intolerance)_02.jpg"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="326" name="images1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiSmOw1gaFbrEKsVa9-NiAMcols1hxxblXI-Wnagf8J2LWgHrhWNc-glz56d8X2UPaZfWxRKaQJO-EgmpPnX_S9Xcde-xOvNJZc6UXdO7xTgSie2AqbRYHhz581XnY8KK67ZZK1PNq1BUC/s400/Annex+-+Griffith,+D.+W.+(Intolerance)_02.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br /><br />Its
not like that anymore because extras are made digitaly but still, who
knows an industry that was so influencial in 1916 and that is still
today ? I don't.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Making
movies is a extremely rewarding industry when it comes to create
jobs : it needs people in a lot of different fields. Directors,
scriptwriters, producers, all kind of fine arts people, lightguys,
cameramen, soundguys, make up artists, stylists, architects </span></span><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">but
also truck drivers, craftmen, carpenters, dog trainers, animal
keepers, warehouse owners (to keep all the furnitures you might
need), </span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">engineers,
<span style="font-weight: normal;">insurances people, bricklayers, spot-locaters, explosive
experts</span></span></span></span></strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> and
as various as it can be : actors, and extras. A whole world of
people***. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">When
they go to the mountains just to record a small 5 seconds scene, its
serious, they go there with five trucks full of equipment :</span></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzlJVyWJ_X9S9aN5TiLaOjRDiFF0rSjhNNTSdE2aNL5YEZl2ByfuHiapvJBcoN9Wib3Y-34xKXs4f8n3hht67qG6Heoh90wSt3nOGA9RIGGSQf5quqhTTIcXuBWAJRCMN_FzvDy90JfO7D/s1600/P1020785.jpg"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="240" name="images2" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzlJVyWJ_X9S9aN5TiLaOjRDiFF0rSjhNNTSdE2aNL5YEZl2ByfuHiapvJBcoN9Wib3Y-34xKXs4f8n3hht67qG6Heoh90wSt3nOGA9RIGGSQf5quqhTTIcXuBWAJRCMN_FzvDy90JfO7D/s320/P1020785.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR9wK6Nqdn99H7QlLCoihpSQqcxl0uMV1f6vNcdRvfribP0Hx5e12s9PMC6sghHBI2EEMBqMpNrytVKqLC6wIYfy3vrkIfkO39oTQb2SW3IUcK8S1GdRcJAPnZuMgkGXctxkZuyKViaQjW/s1600/P1020786.jpg"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="240" name="images3" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR9wK6Nqdn99H7QlLCoihpSQqcxl0uMV1f6vNcdRvfribP0Hx5e12s9PMC6sghHBI2EEMBqMpNrytVKqLC6wIYfy3vrkIfkO39oTQb2SW3IUcK8S1GdRcJAPnZuMgkGXctxkZuyKViaQjW/s320/P1020786.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigM_UfI_UCUPc16CJ0mCIjSAfoFyTuZidba3pfwF1C7BUAkJfuh3F-qzCCLTijsWOsxB9uKH6Ry9UNYXjUJkiy_O6Y3nhJyw-BxWmFYkF3aOaLpJizvqU_T1axJI9BlWWn0QjOmtb0vCQj/s1600/P1020794.jpg"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="240" name="images4" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigM_UfI_UCUPc16CJ0mCIjSAfoFyTuZidba3pfwF1C7BUAkJfuh3F-qzCCLTijsWOsxB9uKH6Ry9UNYXjUJkiy_O6Y3nhJyw-BxWmFYkF3aOaLpJizvqU_T1axJI9BlWWn0QjOmtb0vCQj/s320/P1020794.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbwPLSmxZx_uwfTYRcHqe51TQ_KI7cm7QaZl2PaBhr7wQ8jylI16pk-rAlSYzOWg1RpaF8dHWU0W-TEIbFqV8jLmE-Vxxg4ZP5l5DlQy7Ll2PcbMcSJCSPzaCvMvBVj1iJpUqowOrFHUTZ/s1600/P1020800.jpg"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="240" name="images5" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbwPLSmxZx_uwfTYRcHqe51TQ_KI7cm7QaZl2PaBhr7wQ8jylI16pk-rAlSYzOWg1RpaF8dHWU0W-TEIbFqV8jLmE-Vxxg4ZP5l5DlQy7Ll2PcbMcSJCSPzaCvMvBVj1iJpUqowOrFHUTZ/s320/P1020800.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Even
the police works with movies, policemen days are booked to
protect the set : </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlk1EJnOmFzeaNCSKfD4PjqGK0-0O7QlJKnWXjNXYYR_yUxrZFPaqq3Aa8zbkea9G2i1NClO1U44OERbaI9Qp1pPSA7UNskizKPgPfqHkBTWrGVOHsWNkMWD_vC19BZVNc8OsDhr5B-r0G/s1600/P1020823.jpg"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="240" name="images6" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlk1EJnOmFzeaNCSKfD4PjqGK0-0O7QlJKnWXjNXYYR_yUxrZFPaqq3Aa8zbkea9G2i1NClO1U44OERbaI9Qp1pPSA7UNskizKPgPfqHkBTWrGVOHsWNkMWD_vC19BZVNc8OsDhr5B-r0G/s320/P1020823.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">Movies,
TV series of course, and also commercials. It doesn't matter
they don't do master pieces or profound meaningful creations
all the time. What matters is that they play around, building
fake, fantasized versions of the world as a day job. This is their
serious business. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Such
an embodied relationship between the history, the identity and the
economy of a town is a great model and a priceless chance for a city
that every mayor should dream of at night, waking up in sweat
thinking "I have an idea". </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 class="western">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: small;">2.
And here comes the beautiful part</span></span></h3>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span><span style="color: #333333;">Imagination.
Endless ambition and gigantic projects. That's the spirit that
created Los Angeles (and California) in the first place, even before
the film industry started to settle down, lifted by an energy
grounded in "biblical resonnances of making the desert
bloom"*****. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br />Enjoy
those short choosen extracts from chapter 7 of </span><span style="color: #333333;"><i>CALIFORNIA,
A HISTORY</i></span><span style="color: #333333;"> by Kevin Starr called
"Great expectations : Creating the Infrastructures of a
Mega-State" : </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><i>"For
California to become inhabitable and productive in its entirety would
require a statewide water system of heroic magnitude. (...) Why not
build a gravity canal, tap the Colorado River, let its waters flow
westward, and turn the Salton Sink into a reservoir for the use of
southeastern California ? It took ten years and three trips to Europe
for Rockwood and Chaffey to organize and capitalize the California
Development Company, but a mere five months to dig the canal once
construction had started. Late in the morning of May 14, 1901, George
Chaffey ordered the last headgate to be lifted, and water from the
Colorado flowed into the Salton Sink, now renamed the Imperial Valley
: imperial as in empire, for millions of acres of arable land would
soon be reclaimed from the desert. (...)</i></span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i>To
serve as advertising manager of the company, Chaffey appointed
publicist L.M Holt. (...) Holt</i></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i>promoted
the Imperial Valley as the Egyptian delta of the United States, with
the Colorado River serving as its Nile. Skillfully, Holt advanced a
biblical scenario. Going down to the Imperial Valley, Americans were
reenacting the going down in to Egypt of Joseph and his brethren,
called by the Lord to a life of missionary improvment, in this case
the irrigation and cultivation of millions acres of desert. (...) In
time, Southern California would develop into a landscape of irrigated
fields, vineyards, orchards, and orange groves ; townships planted in
trees; comfortable homes awash in vines and flowers. (...)</i></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i>In
each city, a talented city engineer - William Mulholland of Los
Angeles and Michael O'Shaughnessy of San Francisco - pushed a major
water project to a successful conlusion by tapping, in each case, a
river - the Owens for Los Angeles, the Tuolumne for San Francisco -
and bringing its water to the city through a system of dams,
reservoirs, and aqueducts that took years to construct.(...)</i></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i>It
took more than six years to construct the Los Angeles Aqueduct -235
miles of canals, conduits, tunnels, flumes, pendocks, tailraces and
siphons - from its intake point twelve miles above the town of
Independance on the Owens River in Inyo County on the eastern side of
the Sierra Nevada, to its last spillaway in the San Fernando Valley,
where the water at long last arrived ont he morning of Wednesday,
November 5, 1913, welcomed by a crowd of thirty to forty thousand,
many of whom had brought along tin cups to take their first
drink.(...) </i></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">"The
San Fernando Valley". I just love this. "San Fernando"
? What ? Spanish ? Yes. Los Angeles. that's spanish too. The story
never ends.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Of
course, this tremendous energy and ambition was abusive in many ways
:</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">"<i>In
each instance, the water system involded almost equally momumental
damage to the environment : (...) in the case of Los Angeles, the
desiccation and devastation of the once-fertile Owens Valley when the
Owens River was siphoned off to Los Angeles. Each project, morever,
was plagued by claims of deception, double-dealing, and conflict of
interest that became the subject of many histories, novels, and films
- to include the Oscar-winning Chinatown (1974) - in the decades to
come".</i> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Still.
There's something good in this. Something exciting. Like when you say
: </span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">"Tomorow,
we're shooting". Let's do it, huge, insane, and why not ? </span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Which
means that architecture, urban planning, movie directing and politics
have something in common : </span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Having
a vision.</span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i>AP</i></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">** Those
numbers are from 1993 and if you're interested you can check the ones
from 2011 at the end of this post, but since they're not as well put
in order, it was less convenient to use them at the
begining of the article, as Im concerned to not bore everyone
too fast. Crisis has been there, but proportions are still the same.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />**
I think those 1993 statistics are even a bit underestimated cos they
put "advertizing" in "Business services" </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">because
the money cycle they come from is not the same</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">,
but a lot of advertisements are about making videos. So I think they
should be counted as what I would call the movie industry together
with the "motion pictures"together anyway,</span></span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> as
an urban activity that has a similar impact on the city</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">.
Forr now we'll just have to cope with an incertitude of 11 000 jobs,
which doesn't really matter as it doesn't change the main point :
motion picture is the 4th biggest employer in LA, before foodstores
and legal services. You can check out <a href="http://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/">the
statistics from 2011</a> (one by one, no list)</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />*** </span></span></span><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">California
: a history, </span></span></span></span></em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Kevin
Starr, A Modern Library Chronicles Books, 2005, New-York, p276</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">****
Which means that in the <a href="http://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/">2011
LA county employment data</a> that mentions "Motion
pictures and sound recording" you should add some % from "Truck
transportation" and "Transport and warehousing" as
well as some of the "Independent artist, writers and
performers", and so on, to get a real picture of the whole
impact this activity has on the city.</span></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">***** </span></span></span><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">California
: a history, </span></span></span></span></em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Kevin
Starr, A Modern Library Chronicles Books, 2005, New-York, p167</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-13038995801017388952012-07-25T23:04:00.000+02:002012-08-17T16:59:08.538+02:00TIPS TO USE IN A CONVERSATION ABOUT "ILLEGAL" DOWNLOADING<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><i>Sometimes it can happen to discuss with people the legitimacy of downloading movies from the internet. </i></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>This is not an article about what to think about illegal downloading. Its a retranscription of several conversations </i><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic;">about illegal downloading m</span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic;">ixed into one. </span><i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">Any resemblance to</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 16px;"> real persons, living or dead, is </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">purely coincidental. </span></i></span><br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A : One striking thing about this illegal thing compare to others illegal things, its the easyness and the facility with which you can do it. Respectable and powerful professional firms provide you all the means you need to do this illegal action, offering internet deals with which you can download unlimited amount of megabytes....<span style="background-color: white;">That's why music industry people tried to get some money back from the internet providers, cos their responsability in this new way to consume music and movies is very obvious. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
B : yeah, but people sell you cars that can go very fast, and there's a speed limit. You can go over it with your car if you want, but you don't cos its forbidden. And if you do, you get a fee.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A : True.<span style="background-color: white;"> Going at 230 km is forbidden but its forbidden because its also dangerous. </span><span style="background-color: white;">When should a state legiferate and interfere with individual's daily life and private activities ? When something its dangerous for them or others, its written on the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights. </span><span style="background-color: white;">Downloading never killed anybody, so </span><span style="background-color: white;">this exemple is not relevant.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">B : but... what ? ppf grrmm </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
A : Im just saying there are better exemples to use as <span style="background-color: white;">t</span><span style="background-color: white;">here are actually lots of things that are forbidden by society without being life threats.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Its forbidden to build a house without a permit, to break a contract, or to rob a bank for exemple.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
B : Then, like for those things, downloading should be forbidden on the base that it is prejudiciable to society and its economy. <br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A : Except its not. First, internet connexion deals generate billions. <span style="background-color: white;">Second, its not bad in any way on a social level, on a contrary, its excellent on a social and cultural level. </span><span style="background-color: white;">Anywhere in the world, even in the smallest village where nothing happens, you can download all kinds of movies, rare ones, easy ones, all the seasons of any TV series, that you could never buy, either cos they don't even think about selling it in your village or because it would cost 65 euros the DVD package. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">Downloading is close to a model of dynamic universal educative system, and the industry of internet infrastructures that goes with it just </span><span style="background-color: white;">switches where all the money goes to. Its hard to take for some people precisely the ones from which the money switches....</span><br />
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<span style="text-align: justify;">C : Personnaly I think that in the case where peer-to-peer downloading would be forbidden on the base that it is prejudiciable to society and its economy, then the legal weight should be put on the companies that allows you to download, not their clients. </span><br />
<br />
We can not find a company that offers you a rob-a-bank kit, <span style="background-color: white;">the codes to the safe and a helicopter to get away.... they wouldn't be allowed. So why 100 Mb deals are allowed to be sold ? </span></div>
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<br />
What is this organized set up ? <br />
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B : Again, <span style="background-color: white;">its not because something is displayed in front of you and easy to take that you have to steal it. For exemple, if you're at a friend's place and there's a painting on the wall, you're not gonna take it right ? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">A : ????</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">C : ?? what does this has to do with aynthing ? which friend ? which painting ? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">A : ok, let's go with your exemple. This exemple, as weird as it can sound, is actualy useful to introduce an other essential distinction : free downloading can not be compared to stealing BECAUSE you can not steal a thing that doesn't disappear.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white;">If you steal the painting at your friend's place it doesnt come back infinitely after you took it. Its gone. There's only one. But a dematerialized file, you can take it and it comes back just as it was, for ever after. So, since its still there, nobody stole anything. Nothing changed.</span><br />
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The people trying to disqualify downloading have to think about that to : the consequences that dematerialization bring to the world, the concept of unlimited copies. You don't have to stock, you don't have to reprint or rebuild Cd or DVD, its there for ever, it regenerates, as a source of itself.</div>
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B : You're so full of shit its amazing.<br />
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C : yeah but this is a complex problem, and I think there's one very important thing we should keep in mind in order to choose what to do : this phenomenon that allows people to share their files around the world can not be a bad thing, its great. It won't kill culture, on the contrary, it will make it huge. So we need to keep it and adapt to it, not try to erase it.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">A : Exactly. And artists will be safe, they will still exist, they will just change the names of their bosses, from Universal to internet providers. </span><span style="background-color: white;">Internet providers will have producers and artistic departments. </span><span style="background-color: white;">This is gonna happen soon. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">Its just a lobbying war right now. The people who are dismissing free downloading on the internet (ie labels and editors) are mad to see the money going in an other direction than theirs. They're not concerned about culture and artists, they're just concerned about their own asses. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"> B : May be. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">C : Let's get the bill. </span><br />
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<i>AP</i><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
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<br />Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-77997761938011023782012-07-18T20:44:00.003+02:002016-11-01T14:47:26.065+01:00LES FRANCAIS, QUI SONT-ILS VRAIMENT ?<br />
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En hommage au titre d'une anthologique, bien que méconnue, émission radio d'Armel Hemme sur Radio Nova intitulée "Les Français, qui sont-ils vraiment?", ce post vous permet aujourd'hui de sonder les profondeurs de l'esprit citoyen, en publiant quelques unes des nombreuses lettres reçues par le centre de la redevance audiovisuelle du Trésor Public de Toulouse en l'an 1997.</div>
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Merci d'avance</div>
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<i>AP</i></div>
Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-32487234118184047062012-07-01T21:26:00.001+02:002012-07-01T21:58:35.157+02:00Patrimonialization as a symptom of society lack of trust in the future<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yesterday an old industrial mining landscape in north of France (Pas-de-calais) became a UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE. It joined the rest of the 953 others sites sharing an exceptionnal and universal cultural value, like the Versailles palace or the Statue of liberty.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/" target="_blank">check the list</a></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This choice is very interesting as it is very symptomatic of our time and our worrying infatuation for patrimonialization (953 sites ?).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It also shows the drift in the patrimonial object's nature. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They're not spectacular natural or architectural pieces anymore, they can be ugly and depressing flat landscapes because we </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">now </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">try</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">to put value into somethingelse, <b>something new we're scared of loosing and therefore choose to cherish in our past</b> :<b> </b></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the structuring power of industry, the strong feeling of identity it manages to give to a whole region, the number of jobs and the social community it creates, the ingenieering perfomances it achieves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is in a way hard to understand the UNESCO decision, as it<span style="background-color: white;"> had already saved for posterity the english mining landscapes in Cornwall and in the west of Devon, also the one in </span>Blaenavon, etc. Does humanity need to remember all the mining sites of every country ? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Of course this industrial french site has a lot of historical value, old machines, underground galleries, deep mine shafts, specific landscapes, and strong social community. <span style="background-color: white;">But it feels a bit extreme to bring it to the world level, and not just keep it on a local scale. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Morever, this mining area in north of France is the national reference for the most terrible environnement and working conditions since Emile Zola wrote</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Germinal </i><span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> in 1885, telling the story of Etienne Lantier, young man travelling to the northen mines to find a job </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;">(12 hours work in the dark, bad food, bad housing, bad weather, mean bosses)</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;">. Mining industry doesn't feel like a successful exemple of an industry, but more something you want to avoid to reproduce. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Where does this urge for patrimonialization come from ? (it started in the 70's)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Françoise Choay (acclaimed historian of urban forms), wrote in 1996* that <b>never before in the history public authorities had been concerned with keeping traces of the past.</b> On the contrary, civilizations and kingdoms have always destroyed and rebuilt <span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">through the ages</span><span style="background-color: white;">, feeling confident in the superiority of what they had to propose. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">We don't.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">This is a new thing about us since the 70's, w</span><span style="background-color: white;">itnessing all the damages we've done so fast and still not convinced we can stop ourselves from doing more, we protect what we can, we save it from ourselves, because we're scared otherwise we will continue to mess everything up.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In other words, t<span style="background-color: white;">his disproportionate interest in heritage feels like a symptom, among others, of a deeper pathological condition : a profound lack of confidence in the present and the future, a lack of projects and visions, which makes us turn into world heritage even the french northen mining site....</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Check it out : </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_1ki3gCLi3F8Kb64g4ZRldVSuvWDheqnbEzG2ePq_refmRvxmn3p7AG6yvF-Qa5nxbUgNvpXRFs1N3wE6MbM7qZcBiD_wXUx18xyL55vTCglqio7RfKOexytiFiO_UGpDPqfYcsPVJDdk/s1600/Oignies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_1ki3gCLi3F8Kb64g4ZRldVSuvWDheqnbEzG2ePq_refmRvxmn3p7AG6yvF-Qa5nxbUgNvpXRFs1N3wE6MbM7qZcBiD_wXUx18xyL55vTCglqio7RfKOexytiFiO_UGpDPqfYcsPVJDdk/s400/Oignies.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Ville de Oignies - Pas-de-Calais, France</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My first reaction was "wow, is that world heritage level ? Is the situation that bad ?"
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Its not about how it looks obviously. <span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Somehow I think we miss those hard working times where workers were happy to be part of a team, because something important was there, solidarity, team work, action, going down in the mine shaft, manipulating machines. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So this new entry in the UNESCO best shots is both worrying as it means that our civilisation is very insecure about its own capacities, otherwise we wouldn't care about praising this (bad) exemple, but at the same time this new patrimonial choice is good. <span style="background-color: white;">It shows that the world institutions decided to value the capacity of industry to socialy organize cities. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As the research worker Alain Bourdin wrote almost 20 years ago**..."<b>we select in the past the symbols we need to build a speech on what we want to promote in the present". </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We obviously want to promote the good sides of industry (not environnemental damage and exploitation of workers).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I agree. Industry is the key. We can not just sell and insure things. We need to build something big, do something big, that takes place, and need machines.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<i>AP</i></div>
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<div style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: justify;">* ”De la démolition”, Françoise Choay, extrait de Métamorphoses parisiennes, ouvrage collectif, Liège, 1996.</span>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">** </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: xx-small;">Article : "Sur quoi fonder les politiques du patrimoine urbain? - Professionnels et citoyens face aux témoins du passé", Alain Bourdin, Les Annales de la recherche urbaine, n°72, septembre 1996, p6-13.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-30776185746004334672012-06-26T22:19:00.001+02:002012-07-01T22:04:35.289+02:00Why is LA so awesome ? An introduction<span style="line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mike Davis's essays did a lot of damages to our collective consciousness about Los Angeles over the last decade, </span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.18181800842285px;">unfairly </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">turning</span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.18181800842285px;"> it into the most famous exemple of urban Hell</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.18181800842285px;"> and </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">disqualifying it as a potential source of inspiration for future urban planning.</span></div>
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In France, his writings are the most well known references on the subject, and its very rare to hear alternative voices or references <span style="background-color: white;">about Los Angeles, </span><span style="background-color: white;">like </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reyner_Banham" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Reyner Banham</a><span style="background-color: white;"> for exemple, an architecture critic, who praised the qualities of LA in a great book : </span><i style="background-color: white;">Los Angeles, the architecture of four ecologies (1971) </i><span style="background-color: white;">and several videos : </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlZ0NbC-YDo" style="background-color: white;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlZ0NbC-YDo</a></div>
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Mike Davis earned a bit of authority as an academic, but those popular essays don't respect any scientific criteria, they are simply his opinions, his restrictive opinions about Los Angeles.</div>
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It is not relevant to have choosen LA to denounce<span style="font-family: inherit;"> what's bad about every occidental city (the dependance to automobile, the urban sprawl, the pollution, the out-of-law suburbs, the gap between rich and poor quarters) because gigantism is not the issue : problems are the same, even worst, in much smaller cities. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is also very unfair and unprofessional of Mike Davis to remain silent about </span><span style="background-color: white;">what is completely unique and special about Los Angeles, and never mentionned all the qualities that others cities don't have and</span><span style="background-color: white;"> desperately try to create : </span><br />
- an embodied relationship between a very active industry and an urban life that actually makes the city works as an economic and urban system <span style="background-color: white;">(see future post<i> Why is LA so awesome ? Part I - The industry</i>)</span><br />
- successful exemples of interactions between houses, Nature and infrastructures generating an unmatched life quality in any cities of comparable size <span style="background-color: white;">(see future post</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><i style="background-color: white;">Why is LA so awesome ? Part II - Echo Park</i><span style="background-color: white;">)</span><br />
- An incredibly rich and diverse architecture (hispanic history, cheap californian pavillons to the best exemples of modern architecture mouvment (Richard Neutra, etc)) <span style="background-color: white;">(see future post</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><i style="background-color: white;">Why is LA so awesome ? Part III- Houses</i><span style="background-color: white;">)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">In order to show that the nature of the defects described by Mike Davis are in no way specific to LA, here is a comparaison of a few caracteristics with the city of Marseille, which is not in the US but in the south of France (metropolitain area of around 2 millions people, same sunny climate, similar geographical position between moutains and sea).</span></div>
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<i>AP</i>Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-59761572739870071782012-05-26T09:00:00.000+02:002012-05-28T21:37:31.295+02:00RECURRENT RIGHT WING NONSENSE<br />
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No later than this morning on the french national radio channel, a right wing essay writer was
denunciating the abusive influence of islamic culture in some parts of our cities, that supposedly threatens our "french culture". </div>
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The funny thing with right wing people
is that they always use the same argument to compete with oppressive signs of arabic culture such as women's veil : they bring out the best of french history from two hundred years ago. Its
always about Racine, Voltaire, Rousseau, the French Revolution, the ideals,
the great philosophers. </div>
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They don't talk about the great culture of botox and fake breast, which would be the relevant exemples to compare arabic women condition to, not Voltaire or Diderot.</div>
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As it is completely legitimate to criticize oppressive tendancies in islamic culture, it should be done in a fair and relevant way, by opposing and comparing them to something comparable : external visible
signs that would illustrate french culture and women condition as it is today, not historic references of something that doesn't exist anymore. Or if one could say that what our present time is somehow a product of Voltaire and Rousseau writings, there is a lot more factors that should be taken in consideration to define what "french culture" has become.</div>
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French culture of today is nothing to be proud of, as it is an unexciting mix of materialistic concerns and TV fame, people main cultural references being the most embarassing tv shows and hosts, and as for
women (since their oppression by the veil seem to gather all the attention) we're so ahead of our time its amazing : G-strings now available for 8 years old, the apology of being young and sexy, and probably more exemples of women destroyed and ridiculed by esthetic surgery than we have women in veil.</div>
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Don't see no Racine or Diderot anywhere.
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<b>It is absurd to focus on one oppressing sign </b><b>(the veil) </b><b>to dismiss arabic culture and compare it, </b><b>not to our own deviances and oppressive signs of domination, but </b><b>to the best exemples of our cultural history.</b></div>
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Right wing thinkers seem to be in denial of their own illusion about what french culture really is. </div>
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Their incoherence doesn't just stop here : they can simultaneoulsy mention their atttachment to the XVIIIe century philosophers in order to disqualify islam and mention their attachement to our catholic tradition (as Sarkozy did), which doesnt make much sense as Voltaire and Diderot were precisely the ones who drove us free from the catholic system by doubting about God existence and the legitimacy of kings rights to rule....</div>
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In the end, my personal position is that the veil tradition doesnt threaten me or french women more than the underlying pressure for "being sexy". On the contrary it broadens the scale of choices. We can happily go from one extreme manifestion of male domination to an other.<br />
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Lucky us.<br />
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<i>AP</i></div>
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<br /></div>Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-18321494404176238922012-05-08T22:29:00.001+02:002012-05-10T07:57:21.588+02:00STUFFED TO DEATH<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Previous posts <a href="http://lifeinurbanspace.blogspot.fr/2012/04/recent-history-of-city-planning.html" target="_blank">(A LIFE LESSON - 13 of april 2012</a> and <a href="http://lifeinurbanspace.blogspot.fr/2012/04/2-years-ago-i-was-at-library-of-aix-en.html" target="_blank">21/04/2012</a>) mentioned and briefly introduced the intrinsic relation linking economy to urban forms. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">As zoning seems to have been the inconscious urban consequence of an economic rationality based on division of labor and efficiency, </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">it could be instructive to study different contemporary urban projects to</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"> see what they have in common, and see if any underlying and hidden economic tendancy (hidden as "not being part of the project official purposes") could sweat out of those similarities.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">In others words to what are we adapting the city nowadays ? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Exemples from France are pretty interesting as all the biggest urban projects of the last decade, in Paris but also in Lyon, Le Havre and Marseille, built to replace large empty spaces left by old industries, occupy the last rare spots available inside the city. This privileged location gives them even more importance as an illustration of how city life is conceived for the years to come.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Les Docks Vauban - Le Havre - opened in 2009</u></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Old docks have been transformed into a "shopping, leisure, culture" center. 60 000 m2 shops and restaurants, one Gaumont cinema, one supermarket, one exposition center. </span><br />
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<u>La ZAC de Bercy - Paris 1995, opened in 2001</u></div>
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The whole project contains a parc (very successful lanscaping job), housing (also successful), but the core activity is, as the project quotes "a shopping village, animated all year by the recreative and cultural programmation of the Altarea company". Waw, sounds like fun. It also has a Gaumont cinema. The project presents itself as "an art de vivre dedicated to culture, gastronomy, nature and adventure". Gastronomy ? chain restaurants like "Hippopotamus", "La Compagnie des crêpes". The adventure ? Yes. Indeed. There's a travel agency where you can buy trips to everywhere in the world. So exciting.</div>
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<u>Lyon-Confluence, Lyon - 2007</u></div>
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Massive project (70 hectares), with a care for some mixity, with housing and offices. Core project : a shopping-leisure center, "le pôle des loisirs". Designed by a great architect Jean-Paul Viguier, but still a just a mall.</div>
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<u>Les terrasses du port, part of the Euroméditerranée program - Marseille - 2014</u></div>
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"une offre inédite", "a completely unique and original offer" with lots of shops and restaurants completely unique and original, managed and promoted by the giant Hammerson, real estate compagny who spread the same kind of mall all around the world.</div>
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From those 4 exemples, something can be said about the way city life is pictured for the future :</div>
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we only eat and shop. This is our main activity, organised for us by people with good intentions. </div>
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Its not like we needed more places like this, we already have them, we already can buy perfume and smartphones in large quantities. The stressing thing is our complete incapacity to create something else than a mall when we decide to build a brand new part for the city.</div>
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Of course one could argue that eating, drinking and buying is what you do in a city but you don't want to do it when it is orchestrated on purpose from the begining like that, like you're some labs rat with identified needs and predictable behaviour. </div>
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Those places are not built for the citizens and their leisure time. Its a money machine pretending to be the new place for fun. Its actualy funny to see it as a factory, and the customers as workers, producing wealth.</div>
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<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">Despite the improvements in environnemental standards, the efforts made in architecture, the "respect of the historical context" (they kept the old rails, the old walls, etc) and some functionnal mixity by adding housing here and there, those urban projects are still problematic : they support a bad economic model and a bad idea of what a city should be. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPn40OuG8zgjSugWOu9DXhGxNR00YhTfmF5dPP1ZFn-050kL0xei9p0VT9mv8AqX3nfbIUmmyF0QNL7ICNcW58yKzRCU6n1pT1e7-Yjr7v5fu8UoQ4a4GJCPVY5RtRHn1W3CIVV9Z0owmM/s1600/Gardens02.jpeg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPn40OuG8zgjSugWOu9DXhGxNR00YhTfmF5dPP1ZFn-050kL0xei9p0VT9mv8AqX3nfbIUmmyF0QNL7ICNcW58yKzRCU6n1pT1e7-Yjr7v5fu8UoQ4a4GJCPVY5RtRHn1W3CIVV9Z0owmM/s320/Gardens02.jpeg.jpg" width="320" /></a>The funny thing is that by following this completely sterile path for our national economy and our own industry, we look like the third-world when it comes to malls. Look what they do in Singapore as a "leisure center", that's what I call a "leisure center".</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdVptz4Ue_nlrPBu10OsIOE_p0cDbL8HOXkqTupG1qmzvhExQ8SNr7i3pJBR43XepDKAYbgIWX4uPXhNfT2YfTr3eATK-QL3lM4OkbW7b6qwg9AsFWoMkh53zcsBbe4hVJUTWWYh_Uahxq/s1600/Gardens01.jpeg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdVptz4Ue_nlrPBu10OsIOE_p0cDbL8HOXkqTupG1qmzvhExQ8SNr7i3pJBR43XepDKAYbgIWX4uPXhNfT2YfTr3eATK-QL3lM4OkbW7b6qwg9AsFWoMkh53zcsBbe4hVJUTWWYh_Uahxq/s320/Gardens01.jpeg.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Garden´s Bay, Marina Bay, Singapore, Malaysia, 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marina bay, Singapore, Malaysia</td></tr>
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We can not compete right now on the leisure center side obvisouly, since unlike Malaysia we don't feel the insane happiness of being suddenly very rich and modern and the urge of showing it in the most outragious way, so we might as well try to follow a different way.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMFq7MoYMO4AotBl3ghJQaHAUmQDYMjEaMU83Ds_ffvwHM64sBTtYmdyLBKy9atyJsCgYnkLqLKtOWPN8C05eCMnNyjqmEA0sf7fdUFFZ_h96cEmhpMRo4tSOqQ9QrIDhuVufgXacVS0da/s1600/c3daccc0c1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMFq7MoYMO4AotBl3ghJQaHAUmQDYMjEaMU83Ds_ffvwHM64sBTtYmdyLBKy9atyJsCgYnkLqLKtOWPN8C05eCMnNyjqmEA0sf7fdUFFZ_h96cEmhpMRo4tSOqQ9QrIDhuVufgXacVS0da/s1600/c3daccc0c1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMFq7MoYMO4AotBl3ghJQaHAUmQDYMjEaMU83Ds_ffvwHM64sBTtYmdyLBKy9atyJsCgYnkLqLKtOWPN8C05eCMnNyjqmEA0sf7fdUFFZ_h96cEmhpMRo4tSOqQ9QrIDhuVufgXacVS0da/s1600/c3daccc0c1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a>Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-60953743974025519232012-04-25T21:17:00.001+02:002012-05-08T10:43:51.455+02:00GLOSSAIRE IDEALISTE DE L'URBANISME<br />
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<span style="font-size: -webkit-xxx-large; text-align: -webkit-center;">1ère section</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Monotype Corsiva', cursive; font-size: 26pt;">Dans laquelle quatre mots seront étudiés</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>BONHEUR </b>: Notion méprisée à l´échelle sociale, à peine plus crédible qu´un horoscope. Niaiserie incompatible avec la gravité des véritables enjeux que seuls certains hommes très raisonnables et bien nourris savent déterminer. A n´utiliser sous aucun prétexte à l´échelle collective.</span></div>
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« Il y a chez Aristote une doctrine cohérente du bonheur conçu comme l´activité rationnelle vertueuse. Le bonheur est donc le but de l´éthique, science pratique qui n´a pas pour seule fin de connaître le bien, mais aussi de « rendre bon ». Le fait même que l´éthique soit, dans le domaine pratique, subordonnée à la politique, entraîne de grandes conséquences pour le bonheur lui-même. C´est en obéissant à de bonnes lois que l´on devient vertueux, de sorte que ce sont le législateur et les gouvernants qui sont les garants de la vertu dans le corps social. Aristote va beaucoup plus loin, en a ffirrmant, notamment dans Les Politiques, que la vie en cité est la condition même du bonheur, et le bonheur est le moteur ultime, et inconscient, qui pousse les hommes à former des cités. » <i>Dictionnaire Aristote</i>, Pierre Pellegrin, Ellipses, Paris, 2007, p40.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>CITE : </b>Modèle d´habitations existant à des centaines d´exemplaires identiques portant chacun des noms de fleurs ou de desserts pâtissiers : «Les mimosas», «Les pins», «Les millefeuilles». La rumeur recommande d´éviter de s´y perdre en voiture et même en camion pompier. Observée avec effroi par les hommes actuels comme le produit et l´expression matérielle des valeurs de la société productiviste. Avant, habitée par les Dieux.</span></div>
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« La cité est, selon Aristote, la forme suprême des sociétés humaines naturelles. Il y a, en e ffet, chez les hommes une tendance à la réalisation complète de leur humanité en parvenant à un état d'épanouissement, qu´Aristote, après bien d´autres, appelle le bonheur (eudaimonia) ou le « bien-vivre » (eu zèn). Le stade de la cité est atteint lorsque les membres de la communauté en question mènent une vie autarcique, un concept particulièrement important dans la philosophie pratique aristotélicienne. Aristote, lui aussi, connaît le sens économique du mot « autarcie », le seul que nous employons, et il parle alors d´autarcie «pour les choses indispensables ou nécessaires » (Politiques VII, 4, 1326b4), mais «l´autarcie complète » dépasse largement la sphère économique. Une communauté est autarcique, auto-suffi sante, quand elle constitue une entité économiquement, politiquement, et humainement autonome. Elle est composée d´un nombre restreint mais su ffisant de citoyens, de manière à ce qu´ils se connaissent à peu près tous – un réquisit repris par Rousseau – elle se donne ses propres lois, elle forme les citoyens selon les valeurs esthétiques compatibles avec sa constitution. Aristote répète plusieurs fois que cette autarcie est condition de la vie heureuse.» <i>Dictionnaire Aristote,</i> Pierre Pellegrin, Ellipses, Paris, 2007, p32.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>LIEU </b>: Seuls les arbres, les montagnes et les bâtiments n´en changent </span><span style="font-size: large;">jamais. Quelques bâtiments exceptionnels sont quelquefois transportés d´un pays à un autre </span><span style="font-size: large;">sans altération ontologique. Par exemple, la maison d´été du Roi de Suède, démontée et transportée </span><span style="font-size: large;">à Paris pour l´exposition universelle de 1900, à la </span><span style="font-size: large;">facade en écailles de bois caractéristique des églises protestantes scandinaves, aujourd´hui </span><span style="font-size: large;">remontée et ancrée dans un quartier nord ouest de Stockholm, Bergshamra. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stockholm, 2008</td></tr>
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« Le lieu d´Aristote, n´est pas une étendue neutre et homogène. Il est lieu de tel corps, et plus précisément, « la limite du corps enveloppant à l´endroit où il touche le corps enveloppé» (Physique IV, 4, 212a5). Aristote le compare aux parois d´un vase contenant l´objet dont il est le lieu. Il faudrait d´ailleurs dire « des lieux » car telle chose qui est dans cette maison est aussi dans Athènes. Mais chaque chose a son « lieu propre » qui est celui qui l´enveloppe comme telle et n´enveloppe qu´elle. L´espace aristotélicien n´est donc en rien l´étendue cartésienne. La théorie du lieu est en accord avec un trait fondamental de la philosophie d´Aristote. La réalité est, pour Aristote, un ensemble d´unités ontologiquement autonomes dont l´autonomie est première par rapport aux relations qu´elles ont entre elles. Le fait que chaque chose, et plus précisément chaque substance, ait son lieu, participe de son autonomie. » <i>Dictionnaire Aristote</i>, Pierre Pellegrin, Ellipses, Paris, 2007, p130.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>PLACE : </b>Témoin anonyme de la vie publique, n´étant pas plus </span><span style="font-size: large;">affecté par l´insignifiance que la gravité des actions qui s´y déroulent. Espace vide </span><span style="font-size: large;">dont la forme est déterminée par celle des bâtiments qui l´entourent, son centre de </span><span style="font-size: large;">gravité est souvent matérialisé par une construction verticale, tel un obélisque, plus </span><span style="font-size: large;">rarement par un trou dans le sol.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Pourcentage de rationalité : 75%</span></div>
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<br />Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-20739174722454591472012-04-21T20:32:00.003+02:002016-11-30T16:39:56.362+01:00HOW WILL THE AGE OF DEMATERIALIZATION INCARNATE ITSELF IN URBAN FORM ?<div style="text-align: justify;">
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2 years ago I was at the library of Aix-en-Provence university, which reminded me a lot of the Florence university library I've been to once by accident, probably because of all the pine trees outside. The cypress and the whole atmosphere didn't feel as nice as in Florence of course, as you didn't feel like you were in a palace dedicated to the joy of thinking and the charm of philosophy, built for Gods living in a problem-free paradise. Still, may be the Aix-en-Provence library will gain some charm in a few centuries, seen as the testimony of times where everyone could get higher education, even though the state had to decrease the quality of public buildings, in order to match democratic purposes. But this far-in-the-future situation will never occur, as the Aix library will definitively not last for several centuries.</div>
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All right Gentle Viewers, after this brief interlude about libraries, let's go back to the main point. So I was at the library reading about how the transformations of society, through the transformation of means of production and the subsequent re-organisation of power, always induced a very important transformation of cities shapes. 2 exemples easy to understand : </div>
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- the 1st revolution during the Renaissance, the passage from the medieval city to the classical city, had for material consequences, among others, the fact that ramparts were destroyed</div>
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- the industrial revolution, from the XIXth to the XXth : science and technical knowledge transformed city shapes by building infrastructures, sewer systems, and all kind of material networks.</div>
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But for the 3rd step of Modernity, the one we're living now , caracterized with expressions like "the increase of individualization", "a more and more complex process of social differenciation ", "a society of risk", and of course the importance of dematerialization, the book didn't give any material consequences in city structures. May be cos they didn't happen yet. Trying to anticipate what this new incarnation could be, this sudden vision came to my mind and made me laugh for at least 30 seconds : </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNqvhaRTirhkaGDp7YBhrMOGx335KZTrI6sg2Eh9vk9DP-xRs_Wjs2gPsuY79_vT-3vLxEC7ds7cE-3D3rs0ZYXBrdF0GuIvN9JGjpu7AlEcBiFD8GknH7ClP0z3U39t9b2v9D0FZjJt3/s1600/3rd_industrial_revolution_incarnation_Lifeinurbanspace_AP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNqvhaRTirhkaGDp7YBhrMOGx335KZTrI6sg2Eh9vk9DP-xRs_Wjs2gPsuY79_vT-3vLxEC7ds7cE-3D3rs0ZYXBrdF0GuIvN9JGjpu7AlEcBiFD8GknH7ClP0z3U39t9b2v9D0FZjJt3/s640/3rd_industrial_revolution_incarnation_Lifeinurbanspace_AP.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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This, of course, can not be the right answer, as homeless people existed for ever through history and can't be specific to the age of dematerialization.</div>
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Try to anticipate what this will be (apart from sensitive screen at the train station and bus stop...), you'll see its pretty hard. Im still searching.</div>
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<br />Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-18403621751366302152012-04-13T22:33:00.079+02:002012-04-20T15:13:27.715+02:00A LIFE LESSON<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br />
The history of recent city planning reveals that the management of urban space we today hold responsable for the destruction of social interactions in european urban areas - reduction and separation of human activities in four different functions (work, housing, transport, entertainment) - originated from the best theoretical intentions, summarized in a document presented during the International Congress of Modern Architecture in 1933 : the <i>Charte d'Athènes.</i><br />
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Sincere in their quest to give the best of their knowledge to modern life and man, architects had strong and convincing arguments to justify, for exemple, the disappearance of streets between buildings, as were only meant to remain huge empty spaces separating high buildings, letting the light coming in (fair enough).<br />
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Check out this interesting sequence where the architect André Wogenscky is explaining this general idea with confidence and enthusiasm, between 00: 05 : 30 and 00 : 06 : 36 of the following video (if you understand french you can watch it all of course, but if you don't understand french just look at the diagram drawn during this short sequence) :<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #0093ba; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase;"><a href="http://www.ina.fr/art-et-culture/architecture/video/I05077177/andre-wogenscky-et-le-projet-de-le-corbusier-pour-paris.fr.html" target="_blank">Architect ANDRÉ WOGENSCKY presenting le corbusier's project for paris (1960)</a></span><br />
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I find the sparkle of excitement and faith you can feel in his tone very sinking when you know how much this great plan failed.<br />
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Today's mortifying lack of city life in the suburbs can not be blamed on a lack of thought concerning this matter. There was a plan. And the thing is you can't really blame the architects who theorized this plan either, as they were truly convinced it was a good idea.<br />
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Of course the situation wouldn't be as bad if we wouldn't have had to reconstruct very fast after the second world war and apply this concept everywhere we could. Now its all over the place.<br />
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Nowadays people strongly suspect that the rationality governing architects's minds at the time was molded by the rationality of the mass-production model ruling the industrial world, based on division of labor and efficiency. Which basicaly means that its not just the architects who were "wrong", its the entire society model and beliefs that are responsable, which leaves us petrified with horror, witnessing the uglyness of what our civilization managed to produce the last decades.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">In spite of the recognition and the awareness of this process by historians, the risk of seeing again economic values managing unconsciously our choices in urban forms is not negligible. Today the economic environment has evolved compare to the Fordist paradigm, so the mechanisms framing our ways to conceive society must have transformed too.<br />
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Still we haven't formulated clearly the nature of this new mutation, as we might even be unable to do so, trapped in our time.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">It seems nevertheless necessary to deconstruct the official speech carried by contemporary urban projects to try to spot in which new insidious ways our choices in terms of urban developpement are being corrupted. <br />
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Which will be done in a future post, along with some hypothesis to qualify the syndromes.<br />
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Also there will be a big QUIZZ to imagine in what kind of city shapes could be incarnated the new industrial revolution that is ours (dematerialization and speculation).<br />
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Below a reward for reading this long post :<br />
Here's the plan for Paris drawn around 1925 by le Corbusier (the guy who lead The <i>Charte d'Athènes</i> at the CIAM in 1933). NB : This plan didn't happen. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNa1NTozpUnjyH0OhbSrFikPc2uSyN58iPswzBN7zVd3lfddunypyBjRKpPqSGObR_4G-u5mSEoPts7SNSv3H565snGV9NTznvZWQMthwHFx-sQ65M3zV7BPtYqi3wfR-1Q9j82wJVsTvW/s1600/plan-voisin-corbusier_comments.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNa1NTozpUnjyH0OhbSrFikPc2uSyN58iPswzBN7zVd3lfddunypyBjRKpPqSGObR_4G-u5mSEoPts7SNSv3H565snGV9NTznvZWQMthwHFx-sQ65M3zV7BPtYqi3wfR-1Q9j82wJVsTvW/s640/plan-voisin-corbusier_comments.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Plan-Voisin pour le centre de Paris - Le Corbusier, 1925<br />
Copyright Fondation Le Corbusier</td></tr>
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<i>AP</i><br />
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</div>Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-3575427701986935562012-03-03T17:30:00.009+01:002016-12-14T20:52:08.680+01:00THE TRAGIC STORY OF FRENCH AGRICULTURE<i><br />
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<i>Or how to betray yourself to become a nature and space abuser</i><br />
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There's a french intellectual called Jean Viard, doctor in sociology and head of a publishing company, who goes around in different conferences between Paris and Marseille talking about social processes and economic issues in a very inspired and see-through way, giving a whole historic perspective to present reality. One of his analysis, about french farmers, is particularly enjoyable.</div>
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Poor french farmers that got so fooled and robbed of their most precious gift by the mirage of modernity.</div>
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During the last decades, they bought thousands of massive tractors, spread tons of chemical products on everything alive : that was modern (at the time). </div>
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Nowadays modernity is caring about the complexity of ground's life and what makes it alive inside, by associating the best from both scientific and traditionnal knowledge to respect the environnement and find sustainable solutions that avoid to destroy things while producing others. </div>
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At the highest level of the world institutions - as proved by the latest report of Pr. Olivier de Shutter, special rapporteur of the right to food at the United Nations (<a href="http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20110308_a-hrc-16-49_agroecology_en.pdf" target="_blank">read the report submitted at the 16th session of the Human Rights Council in december 2010</a>) - the productivity of intensive agriculture that justified until now the massive spread of pesticides, is contested and over-ruled by the positive results gotten by agroecological farming. And this is all very serious.</div>
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United Nations reporters are not old ladies or moviestars promoting bio-food (not that old ladies and moviestars aren't credible but they can be suspected to not have in mind the heavy burden of feeding millions of humans), United Nations reporters are concerned with the future of humanity and therefore concerned with productivity : </div>
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<u>On agroecology :</u> </div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Agroecology is both a science and a set of practices. It was created by the convergence of two scientific disciplines: agronomy and ecology. As a science, agroecology is the “application of ecological science to the study, design and management of sustainable agroecosystems.”"</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> </i>(Part III - Contribution of agroecology to the right to food </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> page 6-<i> "</i>Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">food", Olivier De Schutter - </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Human Rights Council </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sixteenth session, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">United Nations - december 2010)</span> </div>
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<u>On productivity of agroecology :</u></div>
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"<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">They found that such interventions increased productivity on 12.6 millions farms, with an average crop increase of 79 per cent, while improving the supply of critical environmental services. Disaggregated data from this research showed that average food production per household rose by 1.7 tonnes per year (up by 73 per cent) for 4.42 million small farmers growing cereals and roots on 3.6 million hectares, and that increase in food production was 17 tonnes per year (up 150 per cent) for 146,000 farmers on 542,000 hectares cultivating roots (potato, sweet potato, cassava)" </span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> </i>(Part III - </span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">Section A, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Availability: agroecology raises productivity at field level, page 8</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">-<i> "</i>Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">food", Olivier De Schutter - </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Human Rights Council </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sixteenth session, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">United Nations - december 2010)</span><br />
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<u>Exemple of smart new ways to achieve high production levels</u> : <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Sometimes, seemingly minor innovations can provide high returns. In Kenya, </span></i><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">researchers and farmers developed the “push-pull” strategy to control parasitic weeds and </span></i><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">insects that damage the crops. The strategy consists in “pushing” away pests from corn by </span></i><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">inter-planting corn with insect-repellent crops like Desmodium, while “pulling” them </span></i><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">towards small plots of Napier grass, a plant that excretes a sticky gum which both attracts and traps pests. The system not only controls pests but has other benefits as well, because </span></i><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Desmodium can be used as fodder for livestock. The push-pull strategy doubles maize </span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>yields and milk production while, at the same time, improves the soil." </i>(Part III - Section A, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Availability: agroecology raises productivity at field level, page 7 -<i> "</i>Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">food<i>"</i>, Olivier De Schutter - </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Human Rights Council </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Sixteenth session, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">United Nations - december 2010)</span></div>
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Those innovative methods, mix between "back to basics" and new insights from eco-systems science, also have the positive consequence of creating a whole social network and community around themselves and their environnement, much more than a industrial farm do. Nevertheless they will be even more difficult to apply in France than in Kenya, because of french farmers transformation into industrials over the last decades, making it hard to convince them to take it all back.</div>
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On the way to what they think was modern, they lost what mattered, the precious knowledge that had been linking them to the earth and the sky so far. Even more than during the 19th century that had already massively changed the scale of production levels, the 2nd half of the XXth century with its massive use of chemicals and increased power of engines drove farmers away from any understanding of the subtile equilibrium required by the earth on the long run.</div>
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Nowadays they are the most grant-maintained sector and still they're struggling, ruining the environnement and using more than 53% of the french territory.</div>
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And the situation is gonna get even harder for them as the pain will get psychological. Industrial farmers start to see coming a new kind of farmers, smart-asses from the city, newly educated high-profile agronomists experts in ecosystems who develop ecological farms and short cycles of production/sell. Telling them they are the ennemies of nature and that their methods destroy the earth, waste the water, and produce a useless amount of food, directly wasted by not being sold or used to feed animals that we kill and waste too.</div>
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The funny thing about Jean Viard is that he completes his speech by saying that in a way agriculteurs - without blaming them, cos everyone got fooled by the idea of modernity, architects in first line - fail over and over again in their quest to be desirable. Even at the time they got equipped with big tractors they've never been "sexy" and women from the 60's still prefered to go out with workers from the city, and now, they're even less desirable as they're still poor and still not modern, getting double-crossed in their own field by young guys reminding them the precious knowledge they once had and spoiled, betrayers of their only friend, Nature, fooled by the idea of progress and now blinded by their pride.</div>
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So its just about taking those big guys on our laps and tell them "its ok, agriculture is not about being strong, big and chemically violent, its about being subtile and respectul. Let's learn about the small worms in the ground that increase your productivity by 40% and allow you to recycle 100% of everything you use, you can give them names if you want".</div>
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<i>AP</i></div>
Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031856297585420728.post-25845567727420084372012-01-13T11:45:00.000+01:002012-02-05T19:38:24.831+01:00BARCELONA - A FRACTAL EXPERIENCE<div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
There's one part of Barcelona where the streets pattern is shaped by the repetition of the same geometrical units : straight lines are indefinitely followed by orthogonal "squares". This is "The Eixample", the extension of the city conceived and built by Ildefons Cerdà during the second half of the 19th century.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiizpkEy7AJ7XRY9FxoClhIUNFpzhm1Ip11KJ8r5l5Rn3amwqffJYSyXI7ThnTz73-3FnIYTlRgA9NZ5oQTFnfyWVDMc23eNUtcWQio2iek2b64WyRgFAgyBiKoEVrsTk9mgulWkRA4Q2I4/s1600/Eixample_pattern2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiizpkEy7AJ7XRY9FxoClhIUNFpzhm1Ip11KJ8r5l5Rn3amwqffJYSyXI7ThnTz73-3FnIYTlRgA9NZ5oQTFnfyWVDMc23eNUtcWQio2iek2b64WyRgFAgyBiKoEVrsTk9mgulWkRA4Q2I4/s400/Eixample_pattern2.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq8tCJIqmUUIgWhxj_U0FLBigm3VV9kxWxy-QVXBJSCLv-j76PHo64cMt4LV3zLCD5qRtYYKQhxuh0PzHStxzLJqBjJqWwWQddRFrdHXH5tP9lx7RubOmIAZC5ibVxo7S97ZL8fxlXCKyT/s1600/mosaic_street_pattern_2_full.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq8tCJIqmUUIgWhxj_U0FLBigm3VV9kxWxy-QVXBJSCLv-j76PHo64cMt4LV3zLCD5qRtYYKQhxuh0PzHStxzLJqBjJqWwWQddRFrdHXH5tP9lx7RubOmIAZC5ibVxo7S97ZL8fxlXCKyT/s320/mosaic_street_pattern_2_full.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Space pattern in the Eixample</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(extension of the city thought and built by Cerdà from 1860)</span><br />
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</tbody></table>The Eixample surrounds the historical cores of Barcelona (El Raval, El Gotic) on the west and south-west side, and mainly spreads between the "Avinguda Diagonal" and the "Gran via". The striking regularity of The Eixample is very distinctive on the satellite picture because it lies within two different kinds of mess : the medieval mess of narrow streets (on the east side by the harbor), and the modern mess everywherelse where no specific organisation of space can be seen or identified (even if there are much more straight and wider streets than in the medieval mess). check below<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju9Xqmz9A-mcNYr7tTUk3tbqwBPlZoltIW0AmdZSsqFOhesmJdjBbe3XctBmeNqriXgt4O4TROIqP9x8D9Le3KYQLWaNO-N17SAJsNwC_2QrSrf2x-O8E5cCGn9E1xhVbEZso0g5g1lgm7/s1600/Eixample_satellite_view.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju9Xqmz9A-mcNYr7tTUk3tbqwBPlZoltIW0AmdZSsqFOhesmJdjBbe3XctBmeNqriXgt4O4TROIqP9x8D9Le3KYQLWaNO-N17SAJsNwC_2QrSrf2x-O8E5cCGn9E1xhVbEZso0g5g1lgm7/s400/Eixample_satellite_view.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Distinctive regular pattern of the Eixample inside the urban network<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">Its even more obvious like this</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR_4P4qq1Ziuc_s3PyOzrVwT_3txjSNrOaeMredNnmbR8rwzlbM3Wv2U7jPAlN7njWmTSR9VXaPuFUOcF4UpgSAI1vRTGRtgeJGVK32vLIjn2sFhTL-M_yKXY7aenbrT-DRzhkqKWTdqbn/s1600/barcelona_morphology_just_lines.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR_4P4qq1Ziuc_s3PyOzrVwT_3txjSNrOaeMredNnmbR8rwzlbM3Wv2U7jPAlN7njWmTSR9VXaPuFUOcF4UpgSAI1vRTGRtgeJGVK32vLIjn2sFhTL-M_yKXY7aenbrT-DRzhkqKWTdqbn/s400/barcelona_morphology_just_lines.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Schematic representation of the Eixample pattern in the city</div><div style="text-align: center;">NB : the white space is not empty but filled with urbanisation that is not represented...</div></td></tr>
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<div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">You might completely miss this detail unless you look attentively to a satellite view of the city and notice the striking regularity in the middle of the map, but it is possible to first get aware of this specific structure from the ground, by experiencing two different kinds of feeling while walking around :</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">First you'll find asking yourself a bit too often "this looks familiar, didn't I pass here earlier ?" while being sure you've been walking in one direction only, so there's no chance you could have gone "around". This is confusing for the mind until you actually admit that it is possible to be in a city that repeats itself on purpose for kilometers. It is completely normal to feel you're in the same place because in a way you are, and the only thing that changes is the nature of the stores and bars on street level. You are literally "translating", the space is homogenic.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Also, as a walker you might find a bit annoying each time you reach one of those orthogonal places to always have to break your straight line progression to make a detour and use the cross-walks as below : </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBscVU2U9Pinb6p11NVFndZo9vWjxdRPgutJvLHhQm-0W2ytwbJBz_ISwfYBxUccvmds5KexG86d_poDAzlzrerFS_ZKHrlSzhEyxNdf32XD9RKQPOl4w6PTmnNmaUqoZWpwnDSE_HydZ/s1600/Orthogonal_intersection_walker_path.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBscVU2U9Pinb6p11NVFndZo9vWjxdRPgutJvLHhQm-0W2ytwbJBz_ISwfYBxUccvmds5KexG86d_poDAzlzrerFS_ZKHrlSzhEyxNdf32XD9RKQPOl4w6PTmnNmaUqoZWpwnDSE_HydZ/s400/Orthogonal_intersection_walker_path.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walker path in the orthogonal places of the Eixample<br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cerdà in Barcelona, Haussmann in Paris, they both re-ordered our lives in a very ambitious way, transforming massive parts of cities at the same time, opening wide avenues, connecting different reference points and monuments in the city, making it more coherent and "hygienic", while around the same time Auguste Comte and the positivists were theorizing the "positive age" that humanity was supposed to enter by then. It was then still possible to think about urban planning as a possible science, a discipline you could control in a deterministic way, like other things like machines and capitalist production. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The massiveness of the changes made at once over a short period of time, the will for structure and organisation used in city planning were going hand in hand with the trust and faith in the power of rational thinking and the idea of progress, temporaly proved by the successes of science and the spread of industrial empires.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Realizing this gets you a bit dizzy, and this fall into the depths of consciouness reach climax when you sit at this bar and the mosaic on the wall looks exactly like the street patterns outside </div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifpOg3yF4_UyreN6gKdDqowsyjihg-1hLdEiQ-D9QYDtdMQrBD3F-e_O1dXG2J80mo03LpA9LHlqfVaQromtKTkkOfYaGfVa6C25io8HfqRA1L4ljlUsNG2n7Ax3k5wid5XFgHFCqSr4Gz/s1600/17339-mosaic-pattern-tile-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifpOg3yF4_UyreN6gKdDqowsyjihg-1hLdEiQ-D9QYDtdMQrBD3F-e_O1dXG2J80mo03LpA9LHlqfVaQromtKTkkOfYaGfVa6C25io8HfqRA1L4ljlUsNG2n7Ax3k5wid5XFgHFCqSr4Gz/s1600/17339-mosaic-pattern-tile-1.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1bMvGsdmsRAmNcglN2POR_D6tOx_h-4UAXbc4zfPLd64PNdg1BQ-9oIx8AhxJHRyHvEXn8O_9PvRlz39NznWH-pDEIyr-QpNUAZwSt6VxW_Iri8KE-ZAxIBM9ea7ugVcc2BBSN81-8QjD/s1600/2011-12-29_19-01-08_227.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1bMvGsdmsRAmNcglN2POR_D6tOx_h-4UAXbc4zfPLd64PNdg1BQ-9oIx8AhxJHRyHvEXn8O_9PvRlz39NznWH-pDEIyr-QpNUAZwSt6VxW_Iri8KE-ZAxIBM9ea7ugVcc2BBSN81-8QjD/s320/2011-12-29_19-01-08_227.jpg" width="239" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
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Which actually turns this part of Barcelona into a fractal object, defined as follow by Wikipedia :<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <b>"<span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19px;">a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole, a property of self-similarity"</span></span></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19px;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 19px;"><i>AP</i></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 19px;"><b><br />
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</b></span></span></div></div></div></div>Alpha Papahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11669336939261309340noreply@blogger.com0