SS. The current work in progress on Liminopia has sites of development which are gradually creating further developments radiating out from the initial buildings into larger sites of urban activity. Gaps are filling in and the landscape is being covered, however some areas are already creating zones at which the adjacent areas are difficult to build on. One of the major areas at which this condition exists is the industrial zone with a factory and its associated toxic environment. Although one of the early developments the adjacent land remains unused and it might be suggested that our usual discomfort at being near such developments in the real urban world is being replicated in our imagined world of Liminopia. In what is a our own controlled world of Liminopia why do we still replicate these sites of alienation and how might we respond to mediate this area and how might this process in Liminopia be tranferred to ideas responding positively to the redevelopment and re-engagement of such zones in our own real city of London?
HK. If that's the case its only a matter of time before creatives populate the area, make it fashionable, and then it gets redeveloped.
ReplyDeleteKA. A very good point, since Liminopia is a constructed environment, grown purely out of imagination and not for any real, lived purpose. Yet as you say, the boundaries are clearly there and we seem hesitant to cross them, even in a fantasy world. It becomes an interesting comment on how strongly those taboos, boundaries and barriers are ingrained in each of us. There is something very disconcerting about placing a housing development next to a toxic waste dump, even in an imaginary setting, and I personally struggle to cross that boundary without feeling as though it's a malicious act.
ReplyDeleteSS. Which makes me wonder how we can re-humanise our attitudes and the attitudes of planners to mediate against these same conditions in our real cities. Do we subvert the existing structure of these 'damaged' neigbourhoods to renew them or just level them and start from scratch?
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