Postmodern planning

Postmodernism’s predicaments were to bloom beyond the imagination of their most daring thinkers.

Today, the worlds of architecture and urbanism are ruled by the logic of everything goes and they move forward according to the whims of creative practitioners in search of the yet undiscovered original flavour or form.             And there’s basically nothing wrong with this.

Via Miguel Santos on FaceBook

One may say that randomness is as good a leitmotif as any other to plan our urban future. After all, both historically and biologically that has been the main factor through which most cities have grown. As more than one story will tell you in the next issue of Beyond, Feng Shui is still highly regarded as a design tool…

As such, the Re-Imagining Chinatown experiment by urbanist(-cum-artist?) James Rojas is as good as any other to come up with city form – or it is even better since it bears the extra advantages of being a “participatory” process     and of giving everybody its share of the action.

Image via Common People (just because), via Fifth Floor Gallery.

If the exhibition was well-promoted and had good mass-appeal, and if plan would get addressed beyond the mere wish to cause a deemed critical reflection, nobody would be able to complain after the fact since (1) they got their bit in and enjoyed it, and (2) if they didn’t, they did have the chance to participate in the design.

It is democracy as usual – and democracy as it increasingly affects judgements of taste in the architectural field.