#urban society

[cnu-newurbanism]

The Block, The Street, and The Building Charter Principle 27

[vergeltvng]

THE BOYS 4x07 | The Insider

[strawberryxzx]

In "Taxi Driver," Travis Bickle, a Vietnam veteran, symbolizes alienation and loneliness in a decaying city. His spiral of violence reflects his frustration and a distorted view of justice. The film criticizes the corruption and inequality of urban life, while exploring the protagonist's descent into madness. In the end, it proposes a deep reflection on society and the human psyche.

[hellsgate-roadhouse]

[skadario]

decay in front of the sea

[nicolasfolch]

ruinas estacionadas, Cartagena, Chile.

[archiveofaffinities]

Times Square, New York, New York, 1923, Photo Credit: The New York Historical Society

[tygerland]

Jacob A. Riss Bandit's Roost, 59½ Mulberry Street, New York City. 1888.

[jonkwasnyczka]

Subway, Gdańsk, Poland

[mobblespsycho100]

roles for all the characters in my Urban Fantasy Dunmeshi AU (Curses & Coffins) so far... (so some peeps aren't mentioned but they still exist i prommy i did not forget abt izutsumi my beloved catgirl izutsumi)

Laios: part time vampire hunter, he usually volunteers at the local library. Working for Thistle for the vague promise of getting turned into a werewolf with magic somehow

Toshiro: exorcist (slash yokai hunter) of the Nakamoto Clan. Afflicted with a mysterious non-hereditary blood curse that makes him a demon / monster magnet

Kabru: pro vampire hunter who's been trained in all the ways of vampire hunting ever since he was a kid. Recently turned vampire which is giving him 100 complexes

Chilchuck: Grave Digger Union Representative

Senshi: Bartender or chef at a local fantasy resto place...

Falin: spirit medium / exorcist ! also does necromancy and healing sometimes

Marcille: Necromancer extraordinaire and a magic scholar

Rin: demigod who's just so cool and has storm related powers. hunts monsters sometimes

Namari: runs a blacksmithing place. also a werewolf (still a dwarf just . werewolf also)

Thistle: mad mage who runs a store with magic knicknacks and such. currently looking for a way to mass produce immortality elixirs for his younger brother Delgal and his family (he has a big family). Employing Laios to hunt vampires because he needs their fangs for stuff (mad science experiments)

The Canaries: Renowned vampire hunters but they also track down other monsters. mostly just there idk anythign

[dailyanarchistposts]

I

“Today we are still preoccupied with creating gardens.Why? To not suffer from hunger. Because having rice, beans, fava beans, maize, peanut — then one can survive.” — Renato, of the Canela community[1]

“The development of what we know as agriculture was not an overnight phenomenon, but rather a several thousand year-long project. In some places in the world, the earliest stages of cultivation were never surpassed, and remain sustainable today. In many more places, the pressures of the global economy have corrupted these practices just in this last century. But in most of the world today, we are witnessing the full-blown colonization of native foodways, and a nearly complete dependence on western industrial practices. To trace this “biodevestation” directly back to cultivation itself, is to ignore the history of conquest and land displacement that pushed the food systems of subsistence cultures to the brink, where they now teeter on the edge of extinction.” — Witch Hazel, Against agriculture & in defense of cultivation

Situated in dense forests and savanna of the Brazilian state of Maranhão lives the indigenous Canela people. In the past they lived from hunting, gathering and gardening but starting from 200 years ago as they were pushed from their traditional territory as settler farmers occupied the land bit by bit. The lush forests are being replaced by industrial eucalyptus and soy plantations, and cattle ranches. They now inhabit an area 5 to 10 percent of their original territory. Traditionally the Canela travelled from place to place as the seasons changed but now adopt a more sedentary lifestyle living in bigger permanent villages. Although the Canela still depend on hunting and foraging they don’t have access to a big enough land base to cover all their needs so they increasingly depend on gardening to meet their needs.

For the Canela gardening is not just to meet their subsistence needs but also a means of resistance against being assimilated into the structures, networks, dependency and the institutional inequality of the Brazilian state, religious institutions, and multinational corporations who are constantly trying to infringe and occupy the Canela’s home.

Other threats to the Canelas way of life are from the environmental effects from the industrialized agriculture of soy and eucalyptus production that causes water depletion which exacerbates drought and soil erosion. The overuse of fertilizers and agrochemicals annihilates plant biodiversity and pollutes the local rivers and waterways with high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus which in turn causes algal blooms which can produce toxins that are harmful to animals and cause dead zones from the reduction of oxygen in the water starving fish and plants. So any flora or fauna living near a eucalyptus or soy plantation is at risk.

The Canela’s subsistence gardening approach is totally different from monocrop agriculture. They work with nature using a conscious ecological and more biodiverse method.Typically in agriculture only a small variety of cash crops are grown in large fields covering acres upon acres of land where in the Amazon large sections of jungle are destroyed. For the Canela gardners instead of being dependent on a small variety of cash crops they cultivate over 300 varieties of plants to meet their subsistence needs. Instead of using destructive hellish machines like bulldozers, ploughs, and combine harvesters they use a slash and burn method to clear small patches just enough for them to use and their tools consist of a digging stick and woven baskets. They only use the same garden for two years and then not use the same area for at least eight years to allow the forest to regrow and return fertility to the soil.

The Canela’s vast knowledge of plants helps them determine which ones make good companions that will help each other grow, which ones are natural repellents to predatory insects that will attack the plants, and which plants to grow which will attract beneficial insects such as pollinizers. And likewise their vast knowledge of soil helps them to consciously plant to suit the 10 different soil groups in their area which will help prevent soil erosion, nutrients depletion, and combat against other harmful effects that are typical of agriculture. Their focus is for caring for the well-being of local biodiversity and the nonhuman inhabitants.

The Canel don’t see themselves as farmers but parents looking after their plant kin viewing their saved seeds and cuttings as their babies and their growing crops as their infants, genuinely loving them in the same way as if they were their human children caring for the plants as the plants care for them. They view the environment as consisting of human and nonhuman “selves”, and gardening as caretaking for themselves and their plant and human families.

[vergeltvng]

THE BOYS 4x07 | The Insider

[faceless-crowd]

Experimental logo for a story I want to make, tell me what you think

[skadario]

the door with light

[matt-barber58]

sitting room

(better large!)

[exhaled-spirals]

« The Revolution swept away the prerogatives of the Crown associated with English land tenure in America. In America, ownership meant freedom from the meddling of nobles, the right to freely dispose of land by sale at a profit. . . American land law was predicated on the paramount principle that land was first and foremost a commodity for capital gain.

. . . Other Old World values toppled before this new system—for example, the idea of land as a physical container for community values. Nearly eradicated in the rush for profit was the concept of stewardship, of land as public trust. . . [T]he genius of American land law [...] "lay in its identification of land as a civil liberty instead of a social resource."

. . . A system was needed to divide [land] up for sale. The answer was the national grid. . . It was fair and square and easy to understand. The federal survey platted land into square units measuring six miles on each side. . . Over five million [family] farms were platted on public land between 1800 and 1900. Expeditious as it was—indeed, it is hard to imagine a more rational method—the national grid had some serious drawbacks. . . In terms of rural life, the grid institutionalized the trend toward scattered farms, rather than agricultural villages, giving physical expression to the powerful myth that only the individual mattered in America.

The new towns of the Midwest were more often than not laid out on grids that echoed the larger grid of the surrounding countryside, with some unfortunate results. The grid was primarily concerned with the squares of private property that lay within the gradients, not with the gradients themselves, or how the two related to one another. This dictated a way of thinking about the community in which private property was everything and the public realm—namely, the streets that connected all the separate pieces of private property—counted for nothing. This spawned towns composed of blocks unmodified by devices of civic art, checker-board towns without visible centers, open spaces, odd little corners, or places set aside for the public's enjoyment. »

— James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The rise and decline of America's man-made landscape