VISUAL PROPAGANDA / VISUAL POLLUTION



The island of Manhattan still balances between its "culture of congestion" (vs. culture of dissemination, dispersal) and concerns over privacy and tourism. A figure is needed on a scale very different from Bloomberg's grid imagination, to effect a radical reorganization of the urban system/landscape. Such experiments for now are reserved for the metropoli of the unexpected (formerly "3rd world", whatever that meant) future:

* São Paulo's mayor's war on "visual pollution" (advertisements, logos and displays) became an unprecedented reclamation of public space;

* Curitiba's master plan (dating back from the late 1960s), managed to integrate a transportation system in a city with a rate of population explosion that would effectively paralyze most modern administrations;

* Lagos, longtime fetish of Rem Koolhaas, offers a working version of megalopolis outside of accepted scenarios of modernization and/or development.

New York on the other hand, inherited and perpetuates the "quality of life" campaign that roughly translates into the suburbanization of America's most spectacular city (ban on smoking leads up to regulating photography and video). Maybe instead of exporting the culture of suburban paranoia (along with its ex-mayor's consulting practice), this city should consider importing foreign experience. Not likely, even if the metropolitan hubris leads to a spectacular tragedy.

And speaking of hubris, here is a libertarian critique of suburbanization mythology and the Vice mythology of travel.