Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the jewels of medieval English poetry. It was written c1400 by an unknown poet and then was left hidden in private collections until the C19th when it emerged. It tells the story of a giant green knight who disrupts Christmas at Camelot, daring Gawain to cut off his head with an axe if he can do the same to Gawain the following year. Much to the surprise of Arthur's court, who were kicking the green head around, the decapitated body reaches for his head and rides off, leaving Gawain to face his promise and his apparently inevitable death the following Christmas.
27 August 2019
Failed Architecture: The Deceptive Platform Utopianism of Google’s Sidewalk Labs
Sidewalk’s plans for Toronto are emblematic of the ways Big Tech companies are taking over responsibilities traditionally provided by governments, and further encroaching into physical urban space. This approach applies the logic of platform capitalism — a model wherein a handful of companies have consolidated economic power by owning and controlling the majority of digital infrastructures — to urban planning, reflected in both the design and funding of Sidewalk’s plans for the Toronto waterfront in general, and its “proving ground” of Quayside in particular. Indeed, Sidewalk Labs have continually stated that they look at urban landscapes as they would a consumer digital product such as a phone. Rit Aggarwala, Head of Urban Systems at Sidewalk has said if “you think of the city as a platform, and design in the ability for people to change it as quickly as you and I can customize our iPhones, you make it authentic because it doesn’t just reflect a central plan.” [...]
This approach to urban design is underpinned by digital and physical infrastructures which are, of course, proprietary to Sidewalk Labs. In their proposal, an entirely separate subterranean city is created where automated robots “transport mail and garbage via underground tunnels,” while surface-level infrastructure to support driverless cars is merged with embedded sensors to continually monitor not just transportation patterns, but public activity as well. Data collected through these processes is intended to be used in a digital replica of Quayside — a real time representation of the area used by planners to quickly simulate urban changes “without bothering residents.” Sidewalk’s digital infrastructure is further claimed to provide “ubiquitous connectivity for all,” encouraging “creation and collaboration” to vaguely “address local challenges.” To do this, Sidewalk’s data can be trawled by other companies to “make their own products and services for Quayside” including social and community amenities intending to “improve” city services. Through this API-like model, platform capitalism is further morphing into an increasingly spatial form, referencing the language of programming with mundane (and inaccurate) analogies of ‘software’ and ‘hardware’. The standardization of both the infrastructure and modular construction for Quayside is seen by Sidewalk Toronto as a process that, once built, can be scaled up and applied to cities across the globe — not unlike a universal operating system. [...]
And while community participation is now routinely used by developers at the start of projects to whitewash top-down urban development processes, through Sidewalk’s clever approach to public relations, capitalist urban development appears to explicitly absorb the spatial critique of itself, incorporating user-input, flexibility, temporality and participation. This becomes particularly clear in the development of ‘307’, Sidewalk Labs “experimental” space in Toronto which opens its doors to the public once a week so that they can “contribute to the co-creation of Sidewalk Toronto.” Here, a “Plan Your Neighborhood” prototype has been developed via generative design methods — simulation algorithms developed to quickly test design options based on a series of parameters — with which the public can make design choices and see how they perform.
Rare Earth: The Witchhunt that Founded Liechtenstein
We happened to be driving past Liechtenstein on our way to filming and came across this story. I couldn't find it online in English, so I decided to make the pit stop.
SideNote: Why US Produced Eggs Are Banned Across Europe (& vice versa)
Because of the difference in USDA regulations and EU regulations on how eggs should be processed before the sale, the eggs produced in the UK become so different from US ones that, it would be illegal to sell British eggs in the US and vice verse. For the same reasons, eggs are refrigerated in the US and not refrigerated in the UK and rest of Europe - Why do some countries refrigerate their eggs and others don't?
The Calvert Journal: Inside Warsaw's fixation on the Palace of Culture and Science
The Palace’s origin story is part of the problem. It was framed as a direct gift from Stalin (although he died two years before construction was completed in 1955), designed by the Soviet architect Lev Rudnev, and largely built with Soviet machinery and labourers. It clearly resembles the “Seven Sisters” skyscrapers in Moscow — the largest of which, Moscow State University, was also a Rudnev design. Despite the incorporation of Polish national elements into the structure — the result of an architectural tour of the country that Rudnev undertook with Warsaw chief architect Józef Sigalin — the Palace is an indelible reminder of a post-war settlement that some Poles consider shameful. In Murawski’s words, “people were more negatively disposed towards it in the communist era because it was a direct expression not only of communism, but more so of Russian domination.” [...]
To simply equate the towering Palace with the oppressions of state socialism, however, is far too reductive. It was in no way universally disliked under communism, for one. This Stalinist edifice was the place where regular Poles were most likely to encounter Western culture: The Rolling Stones, Leonard Cohen, and Miles Davis played there; the bookshop of the Polish Academy of Sciences was the best place to buy foreign journals. As Murawski puts it, the Palace “always had this weird, double function.” His research suggests that, counter to popular opinion, it is precisely those Warsaw residents who have strong recollections of communism who are more likely to appreciate the Palace than “young people who have the bizarre, jaded idea that communism was all about Stalinist jackboots.” [...]
This is what Murawski hails as the “still-socialist” nature of the Palace, arguably its defining characteristic. He points out that the idea of “post-socialist” Eastern Europe ignores the fact that “a lot of powerful residues of the socialist period which completely transformed those countries continue to exist. The Palace is a socialist ghost or zombie which continues to haunt the reality of the capitalist city. Warsaw is a wild capitalist place: everything’s being privatised, there are huge billboards everywhere, children are being turfed out of their kindergartens so that aristocrats can move back into their stately homes. The Palace is an island exuding a kind of still-socialist publicness over the debris of the discombobulated city.” [...]
The Palace’s future as a beacon of public-mindedness in a hostile urban and political environment is far from guaranteed, though it has proven remarkably resilient thus far. Whatever the results of this autumn’s parliamentary elections — where left parties are predicted to gain up to 15 per cent of the vote — it will continue to serve as a lightning rod for Poles’ conflicting emotions about communism and capitalism alike. A more nuanced understanding of the nation’s past is sorely needed; the Palace proves that it is also more honest.
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