informal urban practices

Mexican Independence
Every year in all over México a huge celebration takes place to commemorate the Mexican Independence, families and friends gather in public spaces around cities, the biggest celebration takes place in México City, where the president shows up at 11 pm and pronounces the same words that Miguel hidalgo (starter of the independence movement) said when the independence war began.
Displacement
The Mexican celebration has suffered a huge displacement from its original spot in Mexico all over the world, some countries celebrate Mexican independence day the 5th of may which is wrong but it is so popular that it has been difficult to change it. This year in Melbourne we had a special celebration in federation square where more than 200 people gathered the 16th of September to shout along with the president in a direct projection from Mexico City. This event was really positive for me, to see how can I take over public spaces and give them a turn, to move an event from its original surrounding to another; this is where Catrina and Freeground Soccer born from.

Hi Guys,

I found this beatbox kitchen which is quite relevant to Informal Urban Practice. the best thing is it is now happening in melbourne. Check it out. cheers.

http://beatboxkitchen.com/

I was looking after the examples of Flash mob and I found three videos on the you tube. These three videos actually ask me the questions which may relate to the background of the human being, such as educational, cultural, and environmental. Therefore, I put the title of each three videos as Would you run?, Would you follow?, and Would you like it?.

First practice ‘Would you run?’ : This flash mob is produced by japanese TV show, and the fascinating about this is we can watch the actual individual reaction when the situation is given.

Second practice ‘Would you follow?’ : This seems like they are having performance in the middle of the specific place. The two men starts the performance and the others may have option, follow or leave the space.

Third practice ‘Would you like it?’ : This performance gives the moral question, for me, some may feel uncomfortable to watch it, because they are pregnant and that performance actually gives the powerful impact on the audience.

Tarp Surfing… It’ll turn a grown man into a grom, and a grom into a grown man. Believe that.

Pirate Radio is the practice of illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes. These stations transmit from plain site; on top of buildings or in private dwellings. There are conflicting founding dates of Pirate Radio due to its global nature. London first enjoyed its radio liberation in the 1950s/60s, Pirates would broadcast from anti-aircraft towers setup in the mouth of the Thames. Ever since its founding, pirate radio has remained in the grey area of the law. By winning the hearts of millions with a message of peace and freedom, politicians have seen it as a threat to their strong hold and battled to keep them quiet. Of course, this is impossible thanks to the nomadic nature of the broadcaster.

Watch video here: http://www.vimeo.com/13703079

The world of crime is something that happens in every city in every country in the world. A large percentage of this crime is run by underworld organizations such as drug traffickers and mafia families.

Within this video I have showcased three different examples of crime and underworld urban practices.

LINK

Picnics – A social activity where a meal is eaten outdoors, especially at a park.
The act is public but has intimate moments.
When I started looking for a ‘informal urban practice’ I came across the Highline Park. I felt this displayed the notions of a picnic in the sense that they have designed an area for the public to roam freely in a public space but to also find intimate private moments on their individual experiences.
The High Line was built in the 1930s, as part of a massive public-private infrastructure project called the West Side Improvement. It lifted freight traffic 30 feet in the air, removing dangerous trains from the streets of Manhattan’s largest industrial district. No trains have run on the High Line since 1980. Friends of the High Line, a community-based non-profit group, formed in 1999 when the historic structure was under threat of demolition. Friends of the High Line works in partnership with the City of New York to preserve and maintain the structure as an elevated public park.
The project gained the City’s support in 2002. The design team of landscape architects James Corner Field Operations, with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, created the High Line’s public landscape with guidance from a diverse community of High Line supporters. Construction on the park began in 2006.
The High Line, is a 1.5-mile long public park built on an abandoned elevated railroad stretching from the Meatpacking District to the Hudson Rail Yards in Manhattan. Inspired by the melancholic, unruly beauty of this postindustrial ruin, where nature has reclaimed a once vital piece of urban infrastructure, the new park interprets its inheritance. It translates the biodiversity that took root after it fell into ruin in a string of site-specific urban microclimates along the stretch of railway that include sunny, shady, wet, dry, windy, and sheltered spaces. Through a strategy of agri-tecture—part agriculture, part architecture—the High Line surface is digitized into discrete units of paving and planting which are assembled along the 1.5 miles into a variety of gradients from 100% paving to 100% soft, richly vegetated biotopes. The paving system consists of individual pre-cast concrete planks with open joints to encourage emergent growth like wild grass through cracks in the sidewalk. The long paving units have tapered ends that comb into planting beds creating a textured, “pathless” landscape where the public can meander in unscripted ways. The park accommodates the wild, the cultivated, the intimate, and the social. Access points are durational experiences designed to prolong the transition from the frenetic pace of city streets to the slow otherworldly landscape.

Open Source Technology & Technique Sharing  :  Sidewalk Astronomy

The universe is a vast space where no aspect of it proves more striking to behold than its size. We are just an unimaginable tiny part of the universe and yet very little of us know much about it. Sidewalk astronomy refers to the activity of setting up a telescope in urban streets and public spaces as an entertainment or for public education. It serves to educate the public and allow us to have a glimpse beyond our normal perspective.

Very often we humans place ourselves in the centre of everything. We are intelligent and therefore have too much pride in us that we seldom value what God offered us. Looking beyond earth into the vast universe we realise how tiny we are and how scarce the materials and resources found on earth are. Sidewalk astronomy reminds the public that what we have are truly valuable, we should protect them.

Typical example is The Sidewalk Astronomers, a California non-profit corporation with members throughout the world. http://www.sidewalkastronomers.us/id1.html

And of course John Dobson, the pioneer of sidewalk astronomy and the inventor of Dobsonian telescope.

video: http://vimeo.com/13723138

Reclaiming the streets is a social movement focusing on converting or returning public spaces into more people focused areas decreasing the amount of public spaces primarily allotted to car uses, and challenging ownership of public space.
The movement focuses on creating spaces for public usage such as, walking, cycling, relaxing, socializing, gardening space and a general increase in active street lifee, neighborhood services and travel options.

Benefits of such changes may include:

• Decreased automobile traffic with fewer automobile accidents and less pollution.
• Reduced summer temperatures due to less asphalt and more green spaces.
• Increased pedestrian traffic which also increases social and commercial opportunities.
• Increased gardening space for urban residents.
• Better support for co-housing and infirm residents, e.g. suburban eco-villages built around former streets.

Reclaiming the streets can also pertain to other activities occurring in public thoroughfares, such as street vending, footpath dining, reclamation of space for public seating, lighting, artistic projects, protests or festivals. These activities are accepted more often by the public, due to their temporary status or useful functionality.
“Reclaim the streets” is a striking phrase. It implies that some activities are now wrongfully excluded from the streets, and it implies that someone imposed and maintains the exclusion.

“Ultimately it is in the streets that power must be dissolved: for the streets where daily life is endured, suffered and eroded, and where power is confronted and fought, must be turned into the domain where daily life is enjoyed, created and nourished.”  http://rts.gn.apc.org/archive.html

Michelle McDonell S3016468

Reclaiming the streets video here

Online sex; the removal of private intimacy and the push of sex in the public domain, does this Show liberation of a generation or the degeneration of “traditional values? Public Sex Environments; (PSEs) are not new, They have existed for many years and been tolerated to varying degrees. Yet, always problematic, bringing together two key incompatible parts of societies’ attitude to morality and the law.

Hello Eliot Spitzer!

In march 2008 the new york Governer paid for services rendered by “Kristen” aka Ashley Dupre, was found out, investigated secretly by the IRA and subsequently resigned.

Pop star George Michael was again busted indulging in public sex acts in 2006 in a London park, not 8 years before he was charged with flashing a police officer in a public bathroom in beverly hills.

Author Edmond White openly classifies public sex environments as ‘sexual revolution’ and consistently refers back to the gay movement of the 60’ 70’s and 80’s when referencing the New York Stonewall uprising, although slightly out of context is relevant in terms of law and morality.

see link below: