seeing like a state

Seeing like a state quick recap

• state began measuring nature and describing it in terms that were useful to state
  • only what was economically or strategically important to state
  • i.e amount of lumbar of trees
    • did not account for everything that makes up the ecosystem around the tree
• lots of examples like this if forestry
  • then begin optimizing land use for these simplified descriptions
    • feeble - downsides like monoculture

Then as they did for nature and forestry, they did for taxes

• to get taxes need to know your population

• and who owns what land

• began trying to describe population like they did forestry

  • similar issues, simplified descriptions cannot reflect complex reality
  • examples of towns where people all shared strips of different terrain, so homes locally acknowledged as spread out and mixed with others
  • no way state can account for that

• by coming up with descriptions,“map”

  • this began to influence the reality
  • equilibrium
  • leaders begin designing cities/roads/architecture to be measureablen- straight lines etc
  • small local alleys and organic road shapes are like an inside local language

• just as local culture may speak native language for privacy from outsiders

  • local roads and street typography keep privacy from state

• expands to language

  • similar to changing city planning, enforcing language in legal docs
  • as need to interact with state more and more in daily life, citizens need to adopt language
  • as with other cases, first to align with state end up getting benefits and power and opportunities

• then onto more detailed and dscriminable descriptions of citizen names

  • birth records last names etc
    • last names were a way to track land use
    • even gave names to account for land
      • alphabetical example

High Modernism

High modernism becomes major movement/theme of states enacting order within a society. Characterized by rigid, geometric designs dictated by scientific knowledge to impose orderly processes and management of a city or people.

Attempts to discard and replace the rich and emergent histories and culture of what preceded it. Similar to the difficulty in enacting land titles as grids when the local customs had often divided and shared land based on relationships and local knowledge of terrains, high modernism fails to take into account the way a culture actually operates.

A theme of high modernism in regards to city planning is that houses are “machines for living” and separation of concerns/functions (zoning). Transition from highly dense and interconnected buildings/uses (apartments above a store) to higghly sparse city with long distances to travel to work/food/governemnt buildings.

Change from happenstance meetings of peers in communal settings (city center) to needing to make a plan of where to meet.

Fundamentally ignores the needs and rich history of a people and attempts to overlay a rigid, orderly structure that was designed from above. The design seems ideal from a king or hierarchical planners perspective, or even great orderly and under control from outside perspective, but attempts to achieve. an ideal that is incompatible and at friction with reality and the daily life of people

Jacobs was a major critic of high modernism, and here critiques come from the perspective of a person living within the city. She focuses on the perspective of a woman whom the city had not considered daily life, in favor of the typical routine of leaving to work. She describes the city and the way in which “short blocks” promote a vibrant culture and new ideas and creativity by having unplanned meetings, and shared cultural values and community.

An interesting note/argument was the idea of safety via visibility. Explained in contrast to the sparse and wide planning of high modernist design, where you may need to travel large distances to see another person or a building of actual interest.

In neighborhoods with short blocks, and vibrant public spaces (which belong to the community/everyone for whatever purposes arise), the crowds and consistent presence of everyone keeps eyes on everything. Example of a man trying to take a child, and before she could do anything from her window looking down, multiple people along the street stopped to intervene. No need for a police officer to use authority over people when the local community keeps tabs and looks out for each other. Also provides example of shop owners or butchers or some other common type of business holding keys for it’s upstairs tenants or neighbors. The resident is able to trust the shop keeper to give their key to a late visitor or someone who may be staying while they are gone. This would be infeasible to do with a central authority like a government, where the bureaucracy alone would impede such a natural need of a group of people.

A city is like an organism, that emerges from multitudes of organic and seemingly-complicated and non-optimal processes and structures. To try to impose order, or optimize the organism for central planning effectively kills it.

While high modernism, like many state goals and policies, aims to improve the lives of the people (although this goal may be primary, secondary, or simply a byproduct). It’s rigidness and belief that the decisions at the top, backed by science, are infallible and true, leads to a decayed or oppressive or generally unsustainable outcome.

Lenin and Revolution

Fascinating section on Lenin’s writings and the revolutions from perspective of his high modernism tendencies. A lot to unpack here, but a main theme which is contrasted with the critiques of Rosa Luxemburg, is in a similar way to the shortcomings of high modernism central city planning, he attempted to foster a revolution in a similar manner.

Rather than accounting for an utilizing the rich history of the proletariat and any possible autonomous creativity and organizing the workers may have provided, he viewed the masses as a mere utility or tool like machinery in a factory. The vanguard party imposed a strict, largely one-way, channel of propaganda, education and planning meant to prevent the proletariat’s own characteristics to influence and adapt the revolution. All while the working class was the very subject of the revolution, which meant to bring about socialism to empower the working class.

Luxemburg argues that a revolution (like Jacobs argues a city) is like an organism that needs to adapt in change leading to unplanned and unknowable paths. Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power despite their blundered attempt at executing the revolution through the vanguard’s centrally planned, authoritarian, and mechanistic attempt. Instead the revolution played out in unpredictable ways, with the working class uprisings as outside factions which were not foreseen or controllable by the party.

While Lenin’s attempt can be seen as trying to dam up a river to then mechanically release it and unleash a directed and powerful force at a strategically perfect time, Luxemburg saw a revolution as a river diffusing through out a land in unpredictable flows and slowly bringing the revolution as a tide that could not be directed from a single hierarchical point of control. Ultimately, Lenin was able to seize an empty throne by riding this wave, even though his planned attempt ultimately failed.

Another interesting point is that the writing of history after a revolution can be seen as the ultimate example of state simplification (just as scientific forestry attempts to simplify a diverse ecosystem to account for it’s limited production-based goals). Those who obtain power write the account of how they came to power as if it was always to be so, and to reflect the desired reality.