Authoritarianism doesn’t begin only with bad leaders, dangerous ideologies, or manipulated information.

It also grows in emptiness: in closed youth centres, underfunded libraries, commercialised public squares, and feeds that replace conversation with performance.

https://associationredefine.substack.com/p/where-do-we-gather-the-geography?r=6l8ed8

#CivicIntelligence #Democracy #PublicSpace #Belonging #DigitalDemocracy #AIAndSociety #SocialInfrastructure #DemocraticResilience

Brought Rehearsing A #City For All, edited by Silvia Bottiroli, back from a visit to the Venice Biennale last week – as you do.

https://shop.b-r-u-n-o.it/products/fuori-rehearsing-a-city-for-all

Particularly taken by Bottiroli’s idea of #public space ‘not as a site but rather as a subject with #agency and therefore a collaborator for any intervention’ we might wish to imagine’ (p.10).

Interesting, too, because it rather contrasts my refusal in the chapter on ‘How to Redesign a City’ in Masked Media, ‘to present the city itself, in all its complexity and #pluriversality as an intelligent #inhuman actor’. The reason being that the kinds of cities my collaborators and I are trying to imagine not already exist. Rather, the challenge is to invent the conditions and contexts out of which they might emerge.

http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/

#VeniceBiennale #MaskedMedia #PublicSpace #Theory #UrbanTheory #Cities #Design