Sambinha Architecture, Biophysics, and Cheap Energy
To my friends and family who are unfamiliar with my town, I’ve often described it by asking them to picture the US in the pre-interstate highway era. It’d take about twice as long to drive to Seattle as it does to reach two of the largest three wilderness areas in the contiguous United States. And they are practically adjacent. But for the University nearby to keep things shaken up, it’s a fairly sleepy place. Moose have been known to wander through town often enough to delight or shock newcomers. My wife even ran into a wolf while watching owls in our favorite stand of white pine. Like I said, it’s a bit out of the way. Even so, issues of energy consumption are consistently at my doorstep.
I live a scenic distance from an inland seaport; the seaport that has over the past months been used to import enormous modules of tarsands extraction equipment. The loads are trucked overnight in order to close the long winding stretches of two-lane highway to make way for these “megaloads”
The Lochsa River somewhere near the Idaho-Montana border. Click through for image credit.
The region through which they transport this machinery is among the wildest in the US. There are very few places left where grizzlies, wolves and other predators can live, anthropophobic such as they are. That they are able live here in the Rockies is a testament to the still-healthy ecosystems—around here they are some places that are as close to unsullied as it gets: places that are the least effected by the destructive habits of capitalism. That is until you get to the extraction sites north of Edmonton, Alberta. It brings to mind historic feats of planning and industry, and then tosses them aside like broken toys. Read More…
On Migrations and Displacements
Intro Post by Lubaina Rangwala
[The above image is part of a photo essay titled “We Who Built Your Games”, featured in the October 9th, 2010, issue of the Tehelka. Photographs taken by Samar Jodha and the text written by Rishi Majumder. Article found here: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main47.asp?filename=hub091010We_Who.asp#]
Sanjay Kumar (age 18), is a migrant worker from Mirzapur, a small town located in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. He along with several others worked on the construction site of the Shivaji Stadium in New Delhi as they dressed the city for its spectacular mega-event—the Commonwealth Games of 2010 (held between October 3rd through 14th).
For the image, the author writes, “Twilight Zone: Sanjay Kumar, 18, Mirzapur, UP. This is his first out-station job. The small farm back home is not doing well. Little water, lesser electricity to run the tube well. He now mixes cement at the Shivaji Stadium site.”
[Photograph is part of a photo essay by Ankit Sharma, titled “Toiling for the Commonwealth”, which captures the living and working conditions of construction workers building infrastructure for the Games. Images found through this link]
Worker colonies constructed using corrugated, tin roofing material, bamboo posts and blue tarp sheets to protect from rain. For several months workers lived in sub-standard informal dwelling spaces to build spectacular urban infrastructure for the city meeting international building codes. Like Sanjay (above) they came from various neighboring towns and villages to steal part of the ‘development impetus’ spurred by the mega event.
[Photograph taken by Ravi Agarwal as part of a photo essay titled “Down and Out” tracing the forms of informal labor that supports almost 80-90% of India’s population. He writes, “The expanding city, displacing periurban agriculture and a source of employment. Surat, Gujarat, 1997”. Images found here: http://www.iisg.nl/exhibitions/downandout/]
Peri-urban agriculture is another source of subsistence living that supports several agricultural households living on the outskirts of urban centers. Here men, woman and children work on their small plots of land, sometimes barely surviving and sometimes doing relatively well. Whatever be the case, the expanding city looming on the horizon poses itself as dormant threat, waiting to displace people, land and forms of employment. In some cases, Read More…
Adriana Navarro Sertich
Lubaina Rangwala
Jennifer Renteria
Kirsten Larson
Proyectos Arqui5
Tucker Landesman
Namrata Kapoor
Paula Restrepo-Cadavid
Andrew Carman
Jose Antonio Ramirez
Fernando Luiz Lara
Bethany Opalach
