al principio...

This is a blog, like all blogs, which is mainly about the person who writes it. Most specifically it is a way for me to keep track of my developing interest in what I can only uncomfortably title urbanismo, and more vaguely though satisfyingly call placemaking.

Since I've obviously already felt that introductions are due, the blog title is a spin off of a short lived archive of the numerous tricks-of-the-trade I learned to best live as cheap and fulfilling as possible in a suburban college town in Southern California, a project I called Claremont Libre. I solemnly swear to pass that whole thing off to someone back in Claremont, someone much less short sighted and more complacent with unappreciation than myself, as soon as possible. Or turn it into a zine, print 100 copies off in the Pitzer College computer lab, and distribute them for free. Anyway, that project was what spurred my initial interests in alternative urban practices. Actually the Green Bike Program at Pitzer College is what REALLY spurred those interests, but that's a whole other story.

Before I get off the whole title thing, libre is a throw back to an incredible Italian man named Egidio, whom I shared a bunk with while living in a hostel in San Francisco, who deserves love and praise at what I think is egidiolibre@yahoo.com (tell him I said hello). Finally libre is also a tip of the hat to what I think is an appropriately direct call to Spanish Anarchism, and, well, to anarchism in general.

So to the actual theme of this new project, Urbanismo Libre. The idea of urban planning, place making, livable communities, community organizing, urban geography, and by all the other names it goes by has always interested me, but most recently, with my firm belief in my anarchist teachings, has become strangely befuddling; how can one really plan urban spaces? Is no one else disturbed by the massive construction projects defining urban planning, in China, most recently in Paris, and even in Long Island? Did international communism not come crumbling down solely from the weight of enormous, drab apartment complexes and the utter lack of culture passed over in the minds of those projects' creators? Did medieval centers, the oft cited arbiters of contemporary planning models, ever have city plans or planning departments?

Yes my interest is most firmly, smack dab in the middle of the intersection between planning and culture. As an anarchist, I write here to advocate for a whole new approach to planning, one that is unplanned, like a life, free and spontaneous and confused and beautiful, tired and hungry and happy and horny, human, human above all, and what is more human than the culture of humanity. It is an idea I will be developing as this project develops, one I think can be a niche of some sort, but holy shit! I am no original! I have encountered and already spoke with Olympia Tveter of Pomona, California on the topic of Anarchist Planning! I must read her/his every word...wow that was truly unexpected.

Stay tuned for further developments. Oh! Well I might as well catch everyone up to the most recent. Having graduated from college about a month ago, I'm free at last to do what I want. And what did I do? Camped in 5 National Parks in 6 days, and landed in the Twin Cities, the nations second most biked metropolitan area. I worked an interesting event today concerning community outreach around the proposed Jefferson Bike/Walk Street, with Community Design Group, "a people centered, asset based approach to urban planning, policy and design." Wednesday I meet with Twin Cities Streets for People, an organization recommended to me almost immediately upon arrival. Found an awesome space known as the Sibley Bike Depot, hope to participate in Experimental College of the Twin Cities classes and mooch of of Macalester College, in more ways than one, but most relevant to everything here, their Geography Department.