GLOBAL POLIS

The AIA New York Chapter had a panel session titled Global Polis, with closing remarks by Ron Schiffman.  The session raised some of the concerns about human activity that Harmattan Theater is very interested in.  Place still matters in the age of virtual space.  How do people occupy space in their daily lives.  The panel took the metaphor of 311 as an overarching set of networks linking communities A, B, and C over a broad cross section of concerns that intersect between individuals and the locality.  What emerged in the discussion is the realisation that biopower is still the most powerful antidote to apathy.  People still matter and space still evokes tactile responses that are physical and communal, in an age of dispersal and fragmentation.  The question is what are some of the linkages drawing disparate heterogenous constituencies to dialogue about issues that they would otherwise not connect on any grounds about.  The level of the neighborhood is one level.  The level of the integrated block with the eyes on the street continues to mean distinct things in ways that other ideas of community have long moved away from. In the junctures between habitation and dailiness lie the sparks of dramatic action.  What moves people to act, to care about cities?  This remains an unpredictable arrangement that alters from city to city.