The Finale.

I wanted to make my last post somewhat of a combination of all things Urban or City related. So I went to a spot where I would find a good general picture that contained all the elements of a city. This venue, the look out located on the Lady Young Road, is another open space that captures our culture very well, but is located in an area that is deemed very dangerous. Even when I was taking the pictures, the person I went with was like "In, take three four pictures and then out. We definitely do not want to be lingering around here for too long." And there are conceptions like that, whether they may be wrong or not, that keep the population away and keep them from really enjoying our public spaces and enjoying the beauty of what is our island; our little own heaven on earth. 

This pictures makes me feel so serene. Just something about it. Looking down and see all the bright lights, the different structures and the different meanings and experiences that everyone would equate to these structures. I can pin point so many places from just looking at this picture. I feel like the city is mine (I hope this isn't too emotional :/) I feel like this place I call home is mine. It belong solely and wholly to me. 

The hills coming up at the side that house the many squatters that reside there. Everything just looks so beautiful and so right in this one picture. From this view, from here, no one can see the crime, the fear instilled in our hearts, in our minds. No one can see the hurt people feel or face on a daily basis that we really do not know about. No one can see the homeless, the drug dealers, the people that contribute to the decline in our sense of public. Our sense of togetherness. No one can see anything but just lights, pretty buildings, and a good looking city. It does look very good from this angle.

I wanted to draw reference to Mumford (1938) where he said that cities are a product of time. They are the moods in which men's lifetimes have cooled and congealed, giving lasting shape, by way of art, to moments that would otherwise vanish with the living and leave no means of renewal or wider participation behind them. in the city, time becomes invisible: buildings and monuments and pun lib ways, more open than the written record, more subject to the gaze of many men than the scattered artefacts of the countryside, leave an imprint upon the minds even of the ignorant or the indifferent. A pretty long quote, but it's just so applicable. Time goes on, time waits on no one. It's up to us whether we want to sit in a bubble and act like things are not moving, act like time is not leaving us. 

When I look at the city, I often wonder what things will look like in the future. The structures and infrastructures all must move with the changing times. Certain things will remain the same, but generally, with the changing time, must come changing, up to date structures and policies to keep up with the time. Will we remember what our past looks like? Will we remember what they structures used to look like before these new ones came into place? Mumford's words are like a poem, like art. They make me think and make me feel something I'm not very familiar with. 

He goes on to say by the diversity of its time-structures, the city in part escapes the tyranny of a single present, and the monotony of a future that consists repeating only a single beat heard in the past (Mumford, 1938). The more something changes, the more it stays the same. This quote will forever confuse me, but I know that somehow it means, the more things change and become very different, at some point, it will become a habit. It will become the norm, and after a while, what things used to be like in the past will only be but a distant memory.

The only thing constant in life is change. 

It's either we move on along with the times, or risk getting left behind. 

Lewis Mumford. The Culture of Cities. 1938.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNvmaq3e3Hk