Stressed out About my Future [arent we all?!]

I’ll really try to not make this a history lesson, and I’m sorry if it becomes one, it may not be interesting to all, but I found it REALLY amazing.

I decided I had to write a blog, I literally just got out of my "Cities in a Global Imaginary" class and am slightly depressed.  We were discussing our readings for this week, which discussed the travel over time from modernism to post-modernism. Last class I felt like I knew which one was the better one, now I’m stumped.

Modernism- designing for the good of all and thinking about the bigger picture rather then personal or individual satisfaction. Some thing that came out of modernism is public housing. A modernist architect and city planner named Robert Moses, who built the BQE, thought it would be best to make an expressway going through NYC to help get people from work back to their homes on Long Island (“b/c that’s were everyone must live”). That was totally shot down of course. Modernism was the old idea that cities were for work and only work. In the modernist idea a city is made of a living area, a working area, a shopping area, and a eating area, these places are separate and do not mix. Some critiques of the modernist movement- it created single use spaces, didn’t allow for diversity, it was boring, and that different modernists ideas around what was best for the whole, weren’t actually really best for the whole.

Post Modernism (or PoMo)- designing for individual pleasure, rather then thinking about how things will work together in the end. Also it started the design of multi-use spaces, like most cities today (you can find people living above a clothing store, next to a supermarket and down the street form where they work) and was said to allow for diversity. 

Earlier this week I was just sure that PoMo was the better way to go, until today.

We discussed some of its critiques of PoMo today; it’s too much for the individual, different groups of people become lost its design. Also it totally changed our consumption habits, because things were now being created for pleasure. Places like the “Baltimore Harbor” or “South Street Seaport” were solely designed to make shopping a recreation. Entertainment districts were the new things in cities; they brought in a shit load of money! And they changed how we consume. 

This led to an even scarier thing! It changed they way we perceive class. Class went from being “working class”, a thing that people got from their jobs to only about money, how you spend it and what you own. This shows the new post modern idea that the things we buy actually say something about us, rather then the modern idea that we buy things because we need them, that our sweater is actually keeping us warm rather then giving us a “class” because its either a no-name brand or a Ralph Lauren.

What’s even sadder about this is that since the new city is based around consumption, there are entire groups of people that become invisible, people without money. Advertisements are not trying to get them to buy things, they are not being marketed too, and it enforces this new idea of class.

That’s when I broke down. I literally was brought to tears in class, and after writing this I plan to call my mom and cry. HOW CAN I CARE SO MUCH ABOUT FASHION AND CARE ABOUT MAKING CITIES A BETTER PLACE?! They are two hugely contradicting things! I spent so much of my life wanting to become a fashion designer, and caring about what I wear (even if it was bought for $3 in a thrift store) and now for the past couple of years I started caring about people, cities and equality, for God’s sake I was thinking of double majoring in Urban Studies and Fashion design….This just cant be!

Hello My Name Is: Utterly Lost In The World!