Politics

We noticed that we lost many followers on our main site, just after posting Jim Hightower's column on parks and politicians. We considered changing the quote to a less incendiary one from the article, one that didn't specifically call out  “right-wing” politicians for stealing parks from the public. Ultimately we left it just as it was in the original post.

It is not our intent to make this a political blog, but it is impossible to ignore politics when discussing public space. The use, the funding, even the access to public space are all political issues, and can be highly charged ones at that. As a site that is focused on scale—the scale of architecture, urbanism and human activities—we don’t see how to avoid it. Our views on climate change should be clear to longtime followers of our main site, as well as our views regarding the devastation of the natural environment in general.


We don't have to call each other names for our views, but we do have to be honest about who is threatening important aspects of public space, and who is privatizing shared resources. That distinction currently belongs to the right, and conservatives that are honest will explain why they believe their legislation or actions are the right things to do, and will not shy away from a genuine discussion.

Unfortunately, too many writers on non-political platforms will shy from this, concerned that airing a disagreement amounts to choosing sides or appearing biased. We must choose sides on issues that matter to us, and no one is better situated to do so than people that are engaged with and knowledgeable about those issues.

The political beliefs of elected officials are extremely important to our built world, not only to the world beyond. Any architect who has simply looked at zoning regulations at the start of a job is intimately aware of this. To avoid talking about political views is to ignore most of the debate on the shape of our important places; those that care about urbanism, environmentalism, architecture and design must lobby those in power on issues relating to our expertise and experience.

This lobbying must not be restricted to one political party, or to right or left, as all sorts of leaders need input. It is clear to us, however, that notions of communal ownership of public space are most definitely less supported by those on the right and more lobbying may be in order in that direction. That is not to suggest that the left has more solutions, but that successful urbanism is simply in most cases more relevant to their concerns, and that they are in general deliberately more familiar with the needs of city dwellers.

Centralized planning and organic growth both have their advocates on right and left for different reasons, and both require us all to pay careful attention to their proposals and especially to their policies.

We will continue to post what we think is relevant to public space, to urbanism, and to scale, but want your input as well. What do you all think?