atlas(t)

race map of britain

a few days ago I was hanging out with a friend, a South Asian immigrant who grew up mostly in England but has lived in the States for a decade. She made an offhand reference to how much she hated England ... something I had never heard from her before, although we've been friends for about seven years.

I pressed on the point and she--shocked that she's never ranted to me yet--explained that, although (especially since 9/11) there's a lot of anti-South Asian prejudice in the States, it's nowhere near the level of daily hatred and harrassment a South Asian in the UK faces. Last time she was home, it took only 18 hours for her to get her first racial slur hurled from a car.

In the course of her rant, she mentioned a map that had greeted her on the front page of The Independent during one trip home. This was a race map that didn't show percentages of racial groups in England, but rather the chance that random pedestrians on the street would bump into someone of a different ethnicity. (facepalm/) Naturally, this led to a much more dramatically "colored" map than a simple population percentage map would have been.

Of course, I went looking for the map and it wasn't up at The Independent's site, but urban cartography had it in the archives. Here 'tis, above. And here's the explanation of the "method" used to produce such a highly colorized map.

Experts devised a "diversity index" based on the probability that any two people chosen at random from a particular area would be from different ethnic groups, even if neither of them are white. A score of 0.5 means there is more than 50 per cent chance of this happening -- and the area is classed as highly ethnically diverse.

Think about this for a minute. They're not going by absolute numbers, which is to say, how many people, or what percentage of people are what ethnicity. They're going by probability: what is the chance that people on the street will bump into someone of a different ethnicity. Depending on how they choose to do this (and they don't identify the "experts" doing it) they could be seriously inflating the impression of diversity--or danger--in these areas.

Additionally, they're talking about people meeting on the street. Is there any controlling for ethnic factors like the women of one community not going out as often as the women of another community? Or for the fact that a lot of these communities are concentrated in ethnic enclaves, so you wouldn't actually meet them on the street unless you went into their enclaves?

What this is, is an incendiary map intended to stoke racial suspicion. It's about the daily experience and perception of otherness. Think about the wording: what are your chances of meeting an outsider on the street! They're everywhere! On your streets! Look at how much chance you have of meeting an outsider on the street all over England! England is stained! Publicly stained!

Basically, they're counting on their readership not understanding the math, and especially how math and perception work together in sociological issues such as these.

Just an example of how maps can obscure and obfuscate as much as they illuminate.

maya lin's systematic landscapes

all I can say, really, about Maya Lin's show Systematic Landscapes, is that the title is appropriate.

Lin takes a number of materials and objects, and systematically finds a way to impose landscape/topography on them, or to use them to depict topography and landscape. Some of these are beautiful and successful, some are strained. All are cold, minimalist, and uninviting.

Which is not to say that I disliked the show. It's up at San Francisco's de Young Museum right now and was the impetus to finally mounting an original exhibition of Asian American art from 1900-1970 that had been years in the making. The Asian American exhibition is rich, vibrant, diverse, and full of high-energy, extremely skilled landscape paintings of the very landscapes Lin is depicting in Systematic Landscapes: Yosemite, the San Francisco Bay. The coldness of Lin's work doesn't contrast with the warmth of the other work to the detriment of either; the Asian American historical work enriches and contextualizes Lin's work, and Lin's work gives the obvious tradition of Asian American landscape depiction continuity and contemporary currency.

But I think Lin's work would have suffered without the juxtaposition. Ultimately, this is an intellectual show that takes little pleasure in its aesthetics, and doesn't love its materials very much. This is especially apparent in her 3-D topographical "drawings." She imposes a grid on a topography, and then transposes  that grid to 3-D space using plastic tubing or wire. I have no doubt these topographies are very precise, but they don't look precise; they look messy and unloved. I would vastly prefer that she had fudged the scientific precision a bit to make the pieces look more precise, and to perhaps express her love of the hard definition more ... er, emotionally?

I did like the look of the wooden topographies [one set of vertically placed 2x4s (to the left) and one set of horizontally placed pressboard depicting mountains, and one set of horizontally placed planks representing landlocked sea basins] and of the topographically carved atlases (one of which is in the image at top.) But the atlases might have made more sense if the actual topography of the region shown on the atlas page had been carved, rather than something more random. And even the good work was all one-liner.

I think I rather appreciated the show as a palate-cleanser after the rich meal of the Asian American history show, than as a free-standing set. If nothing else, it's an object lesson in the difference between simple (her best work) and simplistic.

global storm tracker on gustav

this is the global storm tracker just a minute or two ago, tracking Tropical Storm Hanna and Hurricane Gustav. You can see Gustav headed straight for New Orleans. Damn.

It seems they might be evacuating seriously this time. Maybe they learned their lesson. Maybe Bush needs to do something right so as not to completely kibosh McCain's chances. Or maybe it's all those high-powered Republicans who are in NOLA right now. Think that might be it?

I have a terrible feeling of sickness, dread, and disgust.

white flight reversed

the Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about "The End of White Flight" (i.e. the white gentrification of American cities).

Decades of white flight transformed America's cities. That era is drawing to a close.

In Washington, a historically black church is trying to attract white members to survive. Atlanta's next mayoral race is expected to feature the first competitive white candidate since the 1980s. San Francisco has lost so many African-Americans that Mayor Gavin Newsom created an "African-American Out-Migration Task Force and Advisory Committee" to help retain black residents.

"The city is experiencing growth, yet we're losing African-American families disproportionately," Mr. Newsom says. When that happens, "we lose part of our soul."

For much of the 20th century, the proportion of whites shrank in most U.S. cities. In recent years the decline has slowed considerably -- and in some significant cases has reversed. Between 2000 and 2006, eight of the 50 largest cities, including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, saw the proportion of whites increase, according to Census figures. The previous decade, only three cities saw increases.

The article goes on to discuss many aspects of this reversal, including some truly disgusting behavior on the part of white parents in Brooklyn, who objected to their school selling ice cream as a fundraiser and tried to get the school district to open a new school in the same area so they could have their way with it.

Elsewhere in Brooklyn, in a majority African-American section of the borough, Councilwoman Letitia James says a handful of predominantly white parents last year asked her if some of their local tax money could be steered to schools in a nearby neighborhood. The parents wanted their kids in schools with a more diverse racial mix, Ms. James says, rather than the majority-black schools in her district.

The parents felt "tax dollars should follow the children, and not the school," Ms. James says. She denied their request.

Segregation, anyone?

The sad thing is that this gentrification could be a good thing for everyone involved if it weren't conducted as a classic Jacobsian destruction of diversity, coupled with clear racial geographical discrimination.

So WWJJD? Dumb question. The better question is, what should we do, we who live in these cities directly affected? It's a hard question for me to answer, because I now live in Oakland. When I lived in San Francisco, the destruction of its diversity affected me directly. But now that I live in the semi-suburban, and heavily black, heavily diverse, extension, the destruction of diversity in San Francisco benefits Oakland to a certain extent.

That is to say, working and middle-class blacks driven out of SF by the cost of living may end up in Oakland, where it's cheaper to live, dropping their job skills and, if they're business owners, employment opportunities here. Upper middle class blacks potentially driven out of SF by the destruction of the black community there could bring job skills, employment opps, and cash and investment capital to Oakland.

I don't know if this is in fact what has happened here. Oakland's downtown has been seeing a enormous condo-building boom and gentrification of its street-level businesses in the past couple of years. The condos will not sell; none of them opened before the housing market busted. But maybe they'll be converted to rentals, who knows? I guess if I end up staying in Oakland long-term, I'll find out.

ghosts of the river

Performance photos jacked from ShadowLight's flickr stream.

on the border tip, if you think about stories white Americans would tell of the U.S.-Mexican border, you might think of anecdotes about illegal border crossers being caught, or the signs warning cars of families on the highway near Tijuana. Tall tales from Minutemen about a good or a bad day catching wetbacks. Thoughtful snippets of shoppers who kept mum when they saw someone stuffed into the trunk of a car, that sort of thing. Stories about people trying to get in from outside, told from the point of view of inside, stories that take into consideration only the land to the immediate "front" and "back" of the border, and not the volumes of land beyond it on either side.

But if you think about the stories Mexicans and Mexican Americans would tell, it's no longer a bilateral in/out kind of a narrative, with the penetration of the border being the climax. Because the reasons for leaving Mexico--and the reasons for entering the U.S.--are legion, and the paths that lead to the border are many, even if the paths that lead away from the border are few. The border stories, then, are not all about whether one gets through it or not, or even whether or not one survives the experience.

I had the enormous privilege a few weeks ago of attending a workshop production (i.e. a presentation of a part of a performance that isn't finished yet) of a new piece by the Balinese-style shadow puppetry company ShadowLight Productions.

Ghosts of the River is a collection of stories about the U.S.-Mexico border by Chicano playwright Octavio Solis, whose last play, June in a Box, I had some problems with but really enjoyed. The company only performed two of the stories, each unrelated except that they both took place on and in the Rio Bravo/Grande.

The other important detail about this project is that it is art-directed by Favianna Rodriguez, the community organizer, artist-entrepreneur powerhouse, who is just the kind of impeccably-credentialed community activist type whose art usually suffers for it. Favianna, on the other hand--who knows really how she does it--is also a fantastic artist ... fantastic in both senses of the word.

Put the three elements together into a dream-team and you could easily have mush. In this case, though, "dream team" is apt. As I said, the workshop only performed two stories, but both were terrific and the puppetry was wonderful.

The first story was about a Mexican woman murdered by her abusive husband, who haunts the river waiting for him to try to cross so she can drown him. The second (more moving because more realistic) story dramatizes the competitive friendship that develops between an American border guard, and a child "coyote" who makes money helping Mexicans cross illegally.

I loved Rodriguez's designs for the piece. Her characteristic organic/cubist faces and figures worked perfectly with the Balinese-style puppets, and details of her landscapes are perhaps more wonderful executed in light and shadow than in ink on paper. The photos here don't do the piece justice.

The team working together on this piece numbered about twenty, and the set-up was complex. I loved the whole thing. They'll be working on a full-length piece for Brava Theater in 2009 and I can't wait to see it. Definitely recommend keeping an eye out for it. I'll review it when it comes out.

more "squaw" renamings

we already knew this! It's in the title of the Monmonier book! Neverthelessons, here's a quote:

Moves to eliminate the term "squaw" from names of geographical sites are accelerating because of protests that the term is offensive.

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names has renamed 16 valleys, creeks and other sites so far this year. Pending proposals mean 2008 should see more changes than any year in a decade, the board says.

...

Valerie Fast Horse, a council member with the Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho, Montana and Washington, says the usual translation of "squaw" is a profane term for female genitalia. It's so offensive in her tribe, she says, that members refer to it as "the 'S' word."

"They should translate the names into English and see how fast they get changed," she says.

That's what I'm sayin'. Of course, there's always some clown who doesn't get it:

"It irritated me," says Cody McDonald, a Judith Basin County commissioner. "When these things were named a hundred years ago, they didn't mean to offend anybody. … And it's a waste of time. Everybody's still going to call it 'Squaw Coulee.' "

Which is to say, he and his buddies are still gonna call it "Squaw Coulee," even after no one knows what "Squaw Coulee" is, just like that old lady in Berlin who gets into taxicabs and orders the drivers to take her to Adolf-Hitler-Platz.

And yeah, I'm sure the good ol' boys who named the peak "Squaw Tit" didn't mean to offend anybody, either.

Via Racialicious.

 

ice detention deaths

via Zuky, an interactive map showing 83 immigrant detainees whose deaths in detention might be due to neglect or abuse. Click here to engage with the interactive map and read the names.

jane jacobs on discrimination

the effective breaking down of residential discrimination outside a slum, and the less dramatic self-diversification within an unslumming slum, proceed concurrently. If America has now, in the case of Negroes, reached an effective halt in this process and in general entered a stage of arrested development -- a thought I find both highly improbable and quite intolerable -- then it may be that Negro slums cannot effectively unslum in the fashion demonstrated by slums formed by other ethnic populations and population mixtures. In this case, the damage to our cities might be the least of our worries; unslumming is a by-product of other kinds of vigor and other forms of economic and social change.

When an area has unslummed, it is easy to forget how bad it once was and how helpless both the area and its population were thought to be. ... As in the case of other slums, overcoming of discrimination outside the slum, and unslumming within the slum, must proceed concurrently. Neither can wait for the accomplishment of the other. Every relaxation of discrimination outside can help unslumming within. Progress in unslumming within helps outside. The two go together.

The inherent resources necessary for unslumming -- advancement and self-diversification in a population -- demonstrably exist among colored people, including the colored people who are in slums or who have passed through slums, as strikingly as these resources exist among white people. In a way the proved and obvious possession of these resources is more striking among the colored, because they emerge in spite of disproportionate obstacles against their emergence. Indeed, because of the very facts that colored populations advance, self-diversify, and have too much spirit to like ghettos, our inner cities have already lost far more of the Negro middle class than they can afford to lose.

I think inner cities will go on losing too much of the Negro middle class almost as fast as it forms until, in actual fact, the choice of remaining there no longer means, for a colored person, an implied acceptance of ghetto citizenship and status. In short, unslumming is at the very least directly -- as well as indirectly -- inhibited by discrimination.

        --- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)

Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fundraiser

I know this isn't mappy, but this is one of the reasons I've been a little too preoccupied to post lately.

Come shake off the winter blues and get inspired this Sunday with a terrific reading event supporting a great cause! I'm co-organizing this with Charlie Anders and it's gonna be a great time. Check it out.

The Carl Brandon Society presents an

Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fundraiser

with readings by

Nalo Hopkinson
Jewelle Gomez
Susie Bright
Marta Acosta
Jennifer de Guzman
and
Guillermo Gomez-Peña

A fundraiser reading to benefit the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship.
Fabulous fabulists honor one of our great writers and raise funds for the next generation.

Sunday, March 4, 5 - 7 pm

The Starry Plough
3101 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA.
510-841-2082
http://www.starryploughpub.com/

$5-20 sliding scale.

The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship will enable writers of color to attend one of the Clarion writing workshops, where Octavia got her start. It is meant to cement Octavia's legacy by providing the same experience/opportunity that Octavia had to future generations of new writers of color. In addition to her stint as a student at the original Clarion Writers Workshop in Pennsylvania in 1970, Octavia taught several times for Clarion West in Seattle, Washington, and Clarion in East Lansing, Michigan, giving generously of her time to a cause she believed in.

urban exploration, privacy, and privilege

Photo and caption from "Infiltration" site, from a hospital invasion.

through a link on placekraft about neogeography, I came to this urban exploration website.

Urban exploration is the increasingly popular practice of trespassing on limited access urban spaces and exploring them for the exploration's own sake. The practice often involves documenting the foray and displaying the documentation in some public manner, akin to a trophy display. This can be further subdivided into a variety of explorations of abandoned or public sites, as well as trespassing on "active" sites, or buildings still in use, which is known as "infiltration."

The abovementioned site is called "Infiltration," thereby declaring it a site for trespasses on buildings in use. The site's "ethics" rubrik contains this essay called No Disclaimer, in which the author explains why you should "do this at home" and feel free to trespass ... as long as you aren't actively harming anything.

(Note: my emphases):

I don't think there is anything wrong with urban exploration, at least not the type described here and on 95 percent of the other sites on the Internet, and I can't pretend I do. Genuine urban explorers never vandalize, steal or damage anything — we don't even litter. We're in it for the thrill of discovery and a few nice pictures, and probably have more respect for and appreciation of our cities' hidden spaces than most of the people who think we're naughty.

... While it's true that some aspects of the hobby happen to be illegal, it's important not to confuse the words "illegal" and "immoral". Laws against trespassing are like laws against being out after curfew: people get into trouble not for actually doing anything harmful, but simply because the powers that be are worried that they might.

... I find it sad that most people go through life oblivious to the countless — free — wonders around them. ... Urban explorers strive to actually earn their experiences, by making discoveries that allow them to get in on the secret workings of cities and structures, and to appreciate fantastic, obscure spaces that might otherwise go completely neglected.

When you step away from the TV and think about it, humans are naturally curious creatures. We can't help but want to see the world around us; we're designed to explore and to play, and these instincts haven't disappeared just because most of us now live in large cities.

First, my caveat: I am a person whose gender, race, physical appearance, and a number of other unusual characteristics and circumstances, when they become apparent, nearly always confound, confuse and bewilder "normal" people. As a result, when people see me and/or encounter those aspects of me which are confounding to them, they lose their manners and freely invade my personal space: both the physical space that is culturally mine, and the psychological privacy that in our culture is mine to patrol.

What I'm saying is: I acknowledge that I'm hypersensitive to invasions of privacy.

That said, I do think that issues of privacy are not merely issues of property, labor, and who owns society on a left wing/right wing level. These are also issues that speak directly to racial, class-based, gender-based, and first world/third world privilege flow. This disclaimerlessness, this non-disclaim, is actually a claim. It's a claim on a privilege that most people simply don't have.

What I'm saying is: invasion of privacy is a white, middle+ class, male, first world privilege.

(Yeah, I'm throwing out all the hot button words. If you can't stand the heat, getcher head out of the oven.)

This disclaimer basically states that private space should be made public to those who "earn" it. "Earning" the freedom of the space, however, is not a process of applying to the owners of the space for access or contributing to the purposes of the space by working in or on it. It is, rather, a process of stealth invasion in which "nothing" is harmed, no visible trace of the invasion is left, and the invader doesn't get caught. Basically, access to the space is "earned" by simply deciding that one wants access to the space and then taking it.

Why is this a problem? Well, apply this principle to private real estate: say ... your apartment. If some urban explorer saw something interesting about your apartment building and had to break into your apartment to see it, would it be a problem then?

Take it even farther and apply it to someone's person ... make it a man's person. If there was something about your body or appearance that fascinated an urban explorer, something about your shirt or the way you did your hair that would "allow them to get in on the secret workings of cities and structures, and to appreciate fantastic, obscure spaces that might otherwise go completely neglected," then would it be okay for them to touch your hair or put a hand inside your shirt without your permission to explore that space?

How about if they could do it without getting caught?

Yes, yes, I know, we're not talking about individual residences or people here. We're talking about corporativized spaces. And I'm not the sort of person who mourns when a corporation's legal rights appear to be abrogated. But neither am I the one to assume that simply because we're talking about a corporate body---a business or for-profit concern---it is automatically evil and has lost all moral rights. Many or even most of the urban spaces so invaded are owned by companies or corporative concerns, and are used commercially and/or industrially. This does not mean that the privacy invaded is nonexistent or morally suspect.

And I am not knee-jerk about authority the way this "Infiltrator" is. Automatically assuming that authority exists to be flouted is juvenile, and not in a good way. There are culture jammers (like the Billboard Liberation Front) and pranksters (like the Biotic Baking Brigade) and secret space uncoverers (like Trevor Paglen, about whom more later), who do silly, or dangerous, or illegal things, who flout authority specifically to aid a democratic society in limiting the abuses and extent of that authority.

That's not what's happening here. In this "urban exploration" world, the politics serves the pranks of the individual (and that just barely), not the reverse. This is about an extended, urban tantrum against authority, a long thumb of the nose at Daddy, for saying "no."

This particular invader ("infiltrator" as he puts it) trespasses on both abandoned and "live" sites, including hotels, hospitals, and office spaces. I have no problem with abandoned sites; if you wanna risk a fall---or more likely, tetanus---I'll be happy to watch you Darwin Award yourself out of the gene pool. But live sites, especially offices, hospitals, and hotels, are off limits for a reason.

I mean Jesus, what kind of asshole sneaks around a building where sick and hurt people go to be healed, for the sake of flouting authority? Access to hospitals is restricted because: 1) they can't have extra people underfoot when rushing around trying to save lives; 2) there are communicable diseases floating around, asshole; 3) people are trying to sleep; 4) sick and hurt people don't want strangers around with no business there looking at them and their things and their families and they have a right to their privacy; 5) there's tons of expensive, fragile equipment lying around that even the most "respectful" invader could accidentally damage; 6) there are tons of coveted drugs lying around that they have to protect from less innocuous invaders; 7) there are people in the hospital (often) who have been deliberately injured by someone else and have to be protected from further injury; 8) there are tons of sensitive medical records around that a whole variety of assholes might try to access and take advantage of and patients have a right to privacy; 9) etc.

Basically, there are a lot of reasons hospitals have to defend themselves, as a corporate body, from invasions by strangers who have no real business there. Invasions by urban explorers simply endanger hospital security and property, and increase the traffic that must be monitored, thereby increasing the danger of more harmful invasions.

Similar thing with hotels and offices. They are places where people, respectively, sleep and work. To make a crude point about it, they are places where women sleep and work, and where they expect to be safe doing so. (This is not to deny that men expect to be safe in hotels and offices as well.) These spaces must be patrolled and kept secure so that the people who use them can be (and not just feel) secure. Again, "innocuous" but pointless invasions endanger security and increase the traffic that must be monitored.

In addition, there's a severe racial and class advantage being taken here. In "Infiltrator's" description of how to sneak into hotel pools, he (I assume for obvious reasons that he's a he) speaks directly about how to handle hotel employees:

Hotel employees are a lot like bears: though they'll certainly attack you if you act scared or run from them, under normal circumstances they would really prefer to avoid a confrontation altogether. They know all too well that any sort of conflict with a hotel guest could result in serious punishment, so they're as scared of you as you are of them. ... Don't let hotel employees get away with weakly implying suspicion — force them to directly accuse you, and thereby risk their jobs, if they really want a confrontation.

Once inside a recreation area, if any attendants seem to be gazing your way, head straight up to them and ask where you should get changed, where you can find the towels, or some similarly direct question. This conveys confidence, and also obviates the need for the attendant to ask if they can help you or to inquire whether or not you are a guest of the hotel.

To protect his juvenile invasion, this "infiltrator" basically threatens hotel employees with job-threatening confrontations if they should challenge his right to be there. What he doesn't say is that:

1. his carefree invasion doesn't just risk legal repercussions to himself, but also serious economic repercussions to the hotel employees. If he gets caught the hotel may or may not press charges, but the employee who failed to stop him from coming in risks not just being fired, but getting no recommendation for further employment, or possibly being blackballed. Needless to say, the hotel employees who are "like bears," are mostly working class and often, or mostly, people of color and/or immigrants. The better educated and usually more white employees displayed at the front desks and concierge desks are generally avoided by invaders. Naturally, the employees whose jobs he is risking weren't asked beforehand for their consent to being put at risk.
2. he is taking advantage not merely of the employee's disinclination to confront what might be a customer, but also of the class and often racial differences between himself and the employee. Presumably by "social engineering" the "infiltrator" means that he can at least pass for, if he isn't already, a white middle or upper-middle class hotel guest. Just by making a fuss, someone who looks the part can get the benefit of the doubt while the lower class, lower race hotel employee, wearing the uniform of a server, automatically takes the blame.

It's ironic that this invader uses the language of egalitarianism to take advantage of his class and probably racial status. His fun is had at the expense of those of lower socioeconomic status; and his fun is enabled by his ability to appear to be of a higher socioeconomic status. Can you find a more succinct definition of privilege?

In addition to this is a set of assumptions that shout privilege, if not truth or thoughtfulness.

The fact that he thinks that he "probably [has] more respect for and appreciation of our cities' hidden spaces than most of the people who think we're naughty" assumes that the people who think he's naughty don't explore urban areas in less invasive ways, and don't think about cities' hidden spaces. In fact we do; in fact, this is almost the definition of an urban dweller: someone who seeks out and lives in spaces hidden by a city's surfaces. This is why urban cultures are so layered and fraught with subcultures. Just because there are hidden subcultures one doesn't have to break the law to access doesn't mean that these are less worth exploring.

His assumption that he and his compadres are more appreciative and that "most people go through life oblivious to the countless — free — wonders around them," is insulting and thoughtless and, frankly, a white, educated, middle+ class thing. How does he know that nobody but he and his friends is enjoying the wonders of city life around them? How does he know that the housepainter on 15th St. isn't pausing, two stories off the ground, on Tuesday, transfixed by the way the construction site on Guerrero is making a strange double echo out of a Fifty Cent record blasted briefly out of a car?

How does he know that the corner storekeeper doesn't see sparkles of glass embedded in the sidewalk outside his store at dusk, and think for a moment about how when the housing project was torn down, the concrete and glass of it was ground up into a pile of sand which was then carted off to be turned back into cement to be used for the new development; and then wonders if some of that debris made it into his sidewalk?

How does he know that the kids playing ball after school around traffic don't enjoy the way the ball "pocks" differently against different surfaces; or that a cleaning lady, on her way from one house to the next, doesn't see a hummingbird and stop for five minutes, watching it, wondering where it's finding sweet enough nectar to keep it fed; or that the neighborhood dogwalker watches the dogs rooting around in the imported soil at the base of a tree and thinks about how far down, and how many underground levels lie between her and the real ground?

How does he know what people are or are not thinking, enjoying, appreciating, noticing, exploring? It is the distinguishing characteristic of his (and my) socioeconomic class that we are those who keep record of these speculations, enjoyments, and explorations ... not that we are the only ones who have them.

Asshole.

And while I agree that "it's important not to confuse the words 'illegal' and 'immoral'," more often than not, laws are enacted not to apply a moral principle, but to protect persons and property from very specific harms. Laws against trespassing are not at all "like laws against being out after curfew," especially if you consider that the author of this thoughtless piece of drivel was probably only thinking about North American urban curfews directed against teens and not, say, the curfews imposed by military regimes under martial law, or the curfews imposed to counteract a rioting population. Those curfews are literally repressive measures taken to repress the kinds of violent and surreptitious (if just) actions that rebels and insurgents tend to take under cover of darkness.

And his assertion that "people get into trouble not for actually doing anything harmful, but simply because the powers that be are worried that they might" assumes that invading someone's private space isn't, in itself, harmful. I rather think it is. It is less so when you are talking about a business space as opposed to a residential space; a more public private space as opposed to an absolutely private space. Nevertheless, any restricted access space offers its inhabitants a certain amount and type of privacy which is violated when that space is invaded. It doesn't matter what the invader does.

Ask anyone whose house has been broken into what they mind more: the sense of being violated or the objects that were stolen. They will all say the sense of violation. They were violated and they weren't even present at the time. Only someone who is privileged with large amounts of inviolable space can possibly miss this connection.

People who live cheek-by-jowl with others understand the delicate nature of privacy. People who have little personal space, or whose presence in a country is always contested, or whose bodies and labor aren't necessarily considered theirs to do with as they please, understand how small and liminal personal space and privacy can be. The more invasive the privileged are, the smaller their plots of real estate become, and the more important it becomes to protect these from invasion and violation.

These private spaces are a far cry from the public commercial and industrial spaces being invaded here. But one essential thing does connect them and that is the thoughtless privilege with which urban explorers assume they have the right to invade at will. That "humans are naturally curious creatures" is true, but were we really "designed to explore and to play"? Isn't it really that the more wealth and education and free time your class affords you, the longer you can remain in the playfulness of infancy? Isn't it really simply that you have too much leisure time on your hands and you choose to spend that time sticking it to the man in a selfish manner, rather than, you know, resting up from work or spending quality time with the family you aren't ready to have yet?

If these overgrown children want to play silly buggers, I'm not going to waste any effort trying to stop them. But let's be clear: the whole enterprise is a disgusting display of decadence, yes, decadence, as in decay, as in decay of respect for others, decay of critical faculties, decay of the understanding of worthwhile endeavor. Exploring your city? Great. Understanding its underlying structures? Doubleplusgreat. Invading spaces other people are using just for the hell of it? You're an asshole.