Urbanism (Not Urbanism)--Continued

ORNAMENTAL CABBAGE URBANISM
Extract all trees on public lands. Replace each one with an attractive ornamental cabbage.

FEEDBACK URBANISM
Each new development necessitates sympathetic re-development of adjacent blocks in two of the cardinal directions (chosen by two rolls of a four-sided die). Upon re-development of the adjacent blocks, their adjacents (again chosen via four-sided die) are set upon in the same fashion. If this mandates re-development of the original development, so be it--this re-development will respond to the subtle amalgam of intentions now present in its neighbor and make corresponding adaptations.

JETTY URBANISM
Should widespread coastal flooding come to pass, refit accordingly: connect all buildings on east-west streets with mounds of recovered masonry, embedding the original structures. Savvy walkers will clamber across miles of rough stone, marveling at the extensive moss gardens and vibrant tidepools that have accumulated on the flanks.

SIGNED URBANISM
Spraycan youth should be hired to limn the first ten feet or so of buildings with the names, CVs, and portraits of the responsible developers, architects, board members, councilmen, planners, etc--rendered, of course, in characteristically byzantine and colorful styles. (Landscape architects contract with toughs to carve their initials in the trees.)

PINBALL URBANISM
A complex program for dense agglomerations comprising extensive ramping, actively energizing storefronts and kiosks, moveable access-gates, vibrant situational lighting, quiet side-lanes, nodes for repose, active aural stimuli, timed event-windows, and a comprehensive scoring of citizen activities.

PENNANT URBANISM
Coded semaphore flags attached every spare outdoor surface cheerfully explain in exhaustive detail the history of the surrounding space. As new history is made, the flags are removed and re-organized. Pennant-strings stretching across each intersection attempt to synthesize the various histories through a panoply of critical lenses.

...

The death notebooks were laid in state between sheaves of accounts in the studio’s corner—and they were blessed by long tongues of light that slipped between the slats of the window-blind, to change their general hue. From night to day, from night to day, the death notebooks lay in state, at once mouldering, and accruing the gifts of a shut room; sources engendered by time’s advance settled in the paper’s weave. A continual torque was applied to the words. Each passing day registered in the death notebooks, the accumulating years were added; years that, having acted outside, crept into the room through its cracks and took shapes between the lines, talking in turn as they multiplied, their slated successors close behind. Discovered, distributed, carried now to a grove and now to a bench and now on a galloping train, they speak when read of the crying of their author, taking in their design her teary smears—the coughing out of half-capsuled words caught in their very breaking. The reader of the death notebooks at once knows dying, and his cells, her cells, fall out of jamb. Each cell indicates—the author’s evidence—seconded by each intervening year—“We will not press on,” they indicate. The reader may stop to consider, forced to consider assent.