---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Franz Nahrada <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 12:19 AM Subject: [P2P-URBANISM] Chomsky on architecture To: [email protected] a very noteworthy essay was published recently: http://architecturemps.com/full-text-3/ see also http://chomsky.info/articles/20131001.htm *Emeritus Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, Avram Noam Chomsky is amongst the world’s most cited living scholars. Lauded as the ‘father’ of modern linguistics and instigator of the ‘cognitive revolution’ he was voted the “world’s top public intellectual” in 2005. He is, however, best known, and at his most controversial, in the fields of political criticism and activism. Perhaps the most prolific author alive today he has engaged with issues ranging from the Vietnam War, US policy in South and Central America, what he calls the ‘US-Palestinian-Israeli problem’, the Spanish Civil War and the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, to name but a few.The scope of his thinking is nothing short of immense.* *Despite this range of subjects, however, one area that Chomsky has not discussed is the built environment. Here, for the first time he is asked to consider the contemporary infrastructure of the United States in the context of his writings, criticism, and thought. In doing so, he discusses the military infrastructure crossing large swathes of the southern United States in the form of the US-Mexican border. He also discusses urban sprawl as a product of what he calls “social engineering” — a project conceived and orchestrated by a sophisticated web of affiliations across the government and the private sector. Caught up in this, he also pinpoints the subprime crisis and the current economic recession as the result of a matrix of forces within which architecture inevitably played a role. In short, he offers his particular perspective on what lies behind some of America’s most conspicuous architectural and infrastructural projects.* ------------------------ some quotes: "The origins of suburbia reveal an attempt to take over a fairly efficient mass-transportation system in parts of California — the electric railways in Los Angeles and the like — and destroy them so as to shift energy use to fossil fuels and increase consumer demand for rubber, automobiles and trucks and so on. It was a literal conspiracy. It went to court. The courts fined the corporations $5000, or something like that, probably equivalent to the cost of their victory dinner...." "It is simply not true that suburbia is a product of the market, or market forces, or people’s ‘uninfluenced’ desires. It is the result of a deliberate social engineering program — led from the center. It is totally political in that sense. ... It didn’t emerge spontaneously — a magical product of the market. It was engineered for a specific range of interests." ----------------- maybe a good move towards understanding that the left was too busy atacking unequal distribution of wealth to understand the whole form that our material environment took is essentially and basically flawed. FN -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to "P2P-Urbanism" group.

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