States don't exist. But Cities DO!

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NonEntity Wrote:

Marc Stevens Wrote:I'm sure you'll remember the name of it, I've recommended it quite often for obvious reasons. Remember me mentioning:
[img=100x100]marcstevens.net/vol_city[/img]

Thanks for the reminder. I need to try and read that one.

GoogleBooks.de has it here presently for online reading (400+ pages).

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NonEntity Wrote:As I said, Jane Jacobs book is a real eye-opener (well, some Eyes anyway! :tongue2: ) in this regard and I once again recommend it as an examination into how social interaction of a voluntary nature creates workable living environments.

I can't say as to her book, but the article I linked and have now (tried to) read, proved too confusing. She kept speaking of the likes of these notions of where she'd lived/visited, like "Canada", "France", "Ireland", "The Netherlands", "Japan", etc... all these places nations notions that don't exist!?! How confusing.
How the heck was I supposed to keep up with where she wasn't (because they don't exist)... :bootyshake:

[image=380,380]http://www.nsnn.com/new_york_map.jpg[/image]
(the map is not the territory...nor the city, nor the state)

It's ok (aka "organic") if individuals build structures "close enough" together, that makes a "natural" cityies exist (you see); but some individuals spread out far enough (thus says NonAuthoriTie --and apparently Ms Jacobs?), and do their voluntary transactions over telephone lines (or by UPS, or by driving farther), their structures (houses/neighborhoods/communities) are too far apart (thus says the NonWizardOfOz; see statute 0.U.8.1.2) and thus "they" don't exist/that state doesn't exist. You know, like those states that don't exist on either side of the Mississippi just because some individuals put up (less) structures and live there (and go to farmer's markets, flea markets, yard sales, shopping centers, ebay.com, etc?).

marc stevens Wrote:

[strolls off humming The Beatles' City Fool On A Hill...] :wacky:

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I wonder.... is this owner "in" the city... or not so much?



:eekeek:

[Kel]

I have to agree with Marc. You seem to be hung up on a word. He already told you he agrees with you factually, he just differs on the opinion/label. He chooses not to use the label 'City', due to its negative connotation. City is YOUR opinion. What'cha gonna do? Force 'em to accept YOUR "reality"? I mean really, you want to blatantly ignore facts and and base your entire case on opinions?...Dude, you're startin' to sound like Them!

[NonEntity]

Here's an interesting article which correlates with my initial post here regarding cities. This one is about architects.

Quote:Laboratory results show conclusively that architects literally see the world differently from non-architects. Not only do architects notice and look for different aspects of the environment than other people; their brains seem to synthesize an understanding of the world that has notable differences from natural reality. Instead of a contextual world of harmonious geometric relationships and connectedness, architects tend to see a world of objects set apart from their contexts, with distinctive, attention-getting qualities.

Kinda like how politicians see citizens.

Quote:The phenomenon of “architectural myopia” may also explain the repeated mistakes that architects make in fashioning built environments for others, which turn out to be woefully unsuccessful in what may seem obvious ways to laypeople. Lastly, “architectural myopia” explains the often-disastrous attempts that architects have made to fashion urban schemes for entire neighborhoods and cities. Architects do not see how certain designs disconnect and isolate people and create hostile environments that cannot be shared.

(emphasis mine)

NJoy.

- NonE

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Pirsig Wrote:
He'd been having trouble with students who had nothing to say. At first he thought it was laziness but later it became apparent that it wasn't. They just couldn't think of anything to say.

One of them, a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred word essay about the United States. He was used to the sinking feeling that comes from statements like this, and suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.

When the paper came due she didn't have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn't think of anything to say.
It just stumped him. Now he couldn't think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: "Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman." It was a stroke of insight.

She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn't think of anything to say, and couldn't understand why, if she couldn't think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.

He was furious. "You're not looking!" he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn't looking and yet somehow didn't understand this.
He told her angrily, "Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick."
Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide.

She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana. "I sat in the hamburger stand across the street," she said, "and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn't stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don't understand it."

Neither did he, but on long walks through the streets of town he thought about it and concluded she was evidently stopped with the same kind of blockage that had paralyzed him on his first day of teaching. She was blocked because she was trying to repeat, in her writing, things she had already heard, just as on the first day he had tried to repeat things he had already decided to say. She couldn't think of anything to write about Bozeman because she couldn't recall anything she had heard worth repeating. She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before. The narrowing down to one brick destroyed the blockage because it was so obvious she had to do some original and direct seeing.

-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance
Original Seeing - Less Wrong