I want to pick on a strand of your comments on hybridity:
"Not fixating on a closed hybridity, and instead focusing on the
provision of conditions and flexible, mutating structures that ensured
the evolution of new species of urbanism and urban life would be a
start, but would not be the all that we could strive for."
And bring up the issue that our urban cultures face special situations
that require rapid evolution= whether when faced with natural disasters
( tsunami, katrina, haiti..) or climate change ( sea level rise in the
case of marseille
where I live)
Can the concept of hybrid city as interface be one part of the way that
we bring in shorter time constants into cultural evolution to adapt to
the changing environment ? BY becoming more aware of the changes
going on can we anticipate/extrapolate better so that we can bring about
non catastrophic adaptation ?
One example of work that falls into this category is that of eric paulos
with the projects such as Urban Atmospheres: "Proactive archeology
of our urban landscapes and emerging technology"
http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/
but also the living environments lab:
http://www.living-environments.net/
Exploring the new digital divide between humans and our natural
environment. which
is a good example of the proliferating citizens science movement
re katrina victoria vesna's
The Katrina Project: NO-LA is a database-driven, activist website that
explores the psychological and social effects of the storm and its
aftermath through interviews with, and works by, filmmakers, artists,
dancers, musicians, architects and cooks in New Orleans and Los
Angeles.
http://artsci.ucla.edu/artsci/katrina/index.html
Cities have obviously always evolved when faced with a changing
context= but the rapidity of many of these changes today maybe
offer particular challenges= certainly our city political structures
and urban planning methodologies are just not able to work on
the right time scales= so catastrophic adaptation becomes the norm
(detroit ?)
can the new locative technologies and other ways of being more
closely coupled to the changing environment become politically
empowering ? or is this just more techno-optimism?
as you point out in your remarks= hybridity is one way that evolutionary
processes can introduce rapid mutation ( although often hybrids are sterile)
Roger
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