Future Here Now: we can't keep off the grass.
This brief video from Joris LeChene will open your eyes - and drive home how deeply the assumptions we've absorbed drive how we have shaped our built environment.
Most of us think of Keep Off The Grass -type signs as a matter of course, necessary for ...some reason. But I'm haunted by what Joris says:
Useless spaces are a sign of wealth and power.
Utban planners like myself are used to talking about the benefits of Green Space or Open Space, as though the mere existence of these pockets of grass inherently make life better for everyone, just by their untouched existence.
But what if that's not true? What if open space is not, to use our accustomed terms, the "highest and best use?"
Our old assumptions about unused space - that implication of wealth and leisure - may have been tolerable, or even aspirational, in the past. But I don't think that they will, now and into the future.
In eras leading up to the one that we are moving into, following the rules has been an essential job - part of how the everyday person gets payment, support, protection. You do what you're supposed to do - follow the procedure, get to your desk on time, stay off the grass - because a large part of your value to the world around you revolves around you fitting into an established system,
But in a future that we think will be defined by human creativity, and where equity looks like it will be demanded as it never has before, what's the justification for unused spaces - pocket parks, front yards, greenbelts?
And are these spaces best used useless, or useful?
Joris is one of the most insightful commentators I’ve encountered when it comes to colonialism, racism, bias and how it plays out in architecture and urban design.