Urbaneism
February 28, 1982— I locate myself in a cobbler’s window on Wall St. and Eye.
American urban studies and planning education are heavily empirical. When and where theory does appear, it tends to be highly Americacentric in ways that highlight current public issues as they are understood from within the perspective of traditional cognitive conundrums. This blurs the distinction between “the city” and “urban culture.” There are thoughts on Los Angeles and Disneyland; there are hopes for urban neighborhoods and the fate of democracy at large; there are concerns about past industrial cities in need and reports on the failure of urban policy in general.
Such tendencies favor the cognitive over the felt. They are organized around issues of economic production and political governance and do not problematize overlapping issues of cultural presentation except as critique. Partly as a result of these intellectual habits, class is rarely an issue and it’s hard to notice the extent to which the custom of buying ourselves out of our longing is taken for granted. The language of the loyal Marxist opposition is too often contained by being accepted merely as the house critique. Similarly, desire finds its most ordinary expression within the territory of the still somewhat titillating but often cordoned-off realm of erotic potential, real and imagined.
Helen Liggett, Urban Encounters (x-xi).
