URBAN CENTERS = "CORPORATE HUBS"

"several factors make widespread revolt less likely today. Our cities are no longer dense, overcrowded industrial centers where unionized laborers and disgruntled strikers might take a public stand. Concentrated inner-city poverty has declined, too, so don’t expect 1960s-style ghetto unrest."

Our urban centers are instead corporate hubs and the victims of this recession include hundreds of thousands of white-collar workers. For obvious reasons, these folks tend not to have the particular sense of grievance — that a select few are receiving preferential treatment, that they’re on the losing end of a rigged game — that usually sets off a conflagration."

-FROM
Feeling Too Down to Rise Up
(Op-Ed -new york times)
By SUDHIR VENKATESH
March 29, 2009

(photo courtesy of isolina)

but of course the writer is an established new yorker (columbia u, new york times, etc. . .), he seems quite nostalgic for the kind of urbanity places like new york city used to provide. he nails it when he demeans today's urban centers to "corporate hubs."

(interesting to note, that this was published just days before the "Financial Fools day" G-20 protests in London, which seemed to contractict this. . .)

another related note: I've been watching new york chef and food critic anthony bordain's "no reservations" on dvd. . . the most recent episode went to las vegas, where bordain just freaks out over a commercialized replica of his home city inside some casino: new york city converted into a "T.G.I. McFriday's," he complains. . . (and as he walks through "venice" he calls it: "gondolas in swimming pools inside a mall". . .) . . .in the end, he states sadly to the camera:

it may seem as though las vegas reproduces new york city, but actually its more like. . . new york city is becoming las vegas. . .

(and the removed las vegas is in a sign graveyard for tourists)



alas, from two new yorker's points of views, A+ American cities are not the edgy cultural-political wonderlands of yore. . . so it makes you wonder, then is there really no one gathering physically for dissent, and also for counterculture experience, as this author worries out loud? are there really not enough numbers for resistance to the monoculture?

i really doubt it.

perhaps as the "public" gets more pervasive online, and urban centers only hubs of glassed-in safety. . .the subcultures must become more secret, and more remote. perhaps it's not the urban centers which will provide the space for these gatherings. . but the wildernesses (in all senses of the word. . .) interesting.

-kt