An Array of Utopian Flowers
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The Literary Labyrinth of Stephen T. Vessels
Posted on November 27, 2022 | No Comments - Indigenous Voices from the Northeast: Past, Present and Future
Posted on November 26, 2022 | 1 Comment - Microplastics Are Everywhere: What’s The Risk?
Posted on November 22, 2022 | No Comments - Solving the Climate Crisis Through Global Soil Health with Didi Pershouse
Posted on November 20, 2022 | No Comments - Visionary Art of Lakota Sundance Chief Marvin Swallow
Posted on November 14, 2022 | 2 Comments
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WilderUtopia in 102 Languages
‘Medicine Walk’ Featured in SBLitJo
Santa Barbara Literary Journal released ‘Bellatrix: Volume 3’ in June 2019, which among adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, features an excerpt of Jack Eidt’s psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk. Buy the book!
urban poverty Archive
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Pruitt Igoe Myth: The Death of 20th Century US City
Posted on September 5, 2016 | 5 CommentsDestroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure among architects, politicians and policy makers. A 2012 documentary unveiled the many witting and unwitting villains, including urban poverty, public policy enforced racial segregation, and urban disinvestment in favor of the White Suburban Dream. -
How to Legalize Building and Living in Tiny Houses
Posted on August 23, 2016 | 3 CommentsTiny Houses, although lauded as a green way forward in a world covered in wasteful McMansions and debt enslaving rent payments, must overcome health, safety, and building standard regulations that still consider this form of housing either illegal or difficult to approve. Alyse Nelson charts a way through the red tape. -
On Labor and Inequality: Reign of the One Percenters
Posted on September 9, 2015 | No CommentsIn honor of Labor Day and the continuing inequality in the U.S. economic system, Christopher Ketcham's essay was published a Occupy Wall Street was taking off in 2011. The problem continues: money given out in Wall Street bonuses in 2014 was twice the amount all minimum-wage workers earned combined. -
Rio’s Favela Pacification: Militarized Gentrification With Benefits?
Posted on July 3, 2014 | No CommentsThe Brazilian government’s militarized efforts to clean up Rio de Janeiro’s notoriously dangerous favelas is giving hope to some people living there, while others question the violent tactics and the whether it will make a difference. We provide counterpoint to Joshua Hammer's 2014 investigation. -
Dogtown Redemption: Urban Poor Survive By Recycling
Posted on December 1, 2013 | No CommentsA documentary film, "Dogtown Redemption," delves inside the lives of West Oakland's poor and homeless recyclers. While California must deal with its urban poverty problem, and rogue recyclers steal from recycling funds, overall the state's Bottle Bill has significantly reduced waste. -
Detroit Future: Landscape Urbanism, Antidote to Industrial Blight
Posted on August 17, 2013 | 4 CommentsFor the last 40 years, Detroiters have fled the once-majestic downtown core for the bucolic image of sprawling suburbia. Now an urban revival in the name of "Detroit Future City," complete with forests, parks, farms and waterways, is planned to overcome the financial mismanagement and industrial blight that have plagued the city for far too long. -
Vittorio De Sica: The Alienated Unemployed in “Bicycle Thieves”
Posted on August 2, 2013 | No CommentsBicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette), also known as The Bicycle Thief, is director Vittorio De Sica's 1948 story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family. -
African Garden Cities: Urbanization Without Planning for People
Posted on May 7, 2013 | 2 CommentsMaster planned, self contained New Cities have appeared all over Africa. Emulating models from the global north, private-sector boosters advance them without considering factors such as environment, economy, context and even poverty. Nairobi-based urban practitioner Jane Lumumba argues they might only make social and economic problems worse. -
Bangladesh: A Flooding, Mega-Urbanizing, Climate Trap
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsIn Dhaka, climate change refugees are moving from the countryside and into squalid slums due to repeated monsoonal floods that have rendered traditional farmland unusable. A new documentary by Ami Vitale from the Knight Center for International Media wades through the floods, looking for solutions. -
Detropia: Detroit as Utopia or Dystopia?
Posted on September 18, 2012 | 3 CommentsCaroline Libresco: DETROPIA sculpts a dreamlike collage of a grand city teetering on the brink of dissolution. These soulful pragmatists and stalwart philosophers strive to make ends meet and make sense of it all, refusing to abandon hope or resistance. -
Chinese Mega-Cities Contrasted with Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities”
Posted on August 13, 2012 | 2 CommentsRapid industrialization in China has caused a massive migration to crowded, faceless and polluted urban mega-cities of 10 million residents or more. They should consider Italo Calvino's utopian "Invisible Cities" to rethink the role of imagination in urban planning. -
Tow-Truck Driver Philosophy – By Jerry Collamer
Posted on April 13, 2012 | No CommentsYesterday, I needed a tow. A long tow. Requiring me to ride-along to the mechanic in the cab of the tow truck. A very nice tow-truck.
