Urbanism (Not Urbanism)--Concluded

ST. LUCIA URBANISM
All public light fixtures are replaced with agglomerations of candle-holders. Citizens pay a yearlong "wax tax", compelled to continually donate candles to neighborhood distribution centers in order to keep the streets lit. Local children (ages 6-14) are gainfully employed in maintaining the candles; girls march in processions of ten, carefully lighting them, while boys stand by in formation, water-pails at the ready.

TULIPOMANIACAL URBANISM
Portable shelters are issued by the government, offered to anyone who might want them. There are forty-something distinct lines available, each containing between seven and ten cosmetic variations on a basic model (something like jockey silks). Outside of this readily available array, there are any number of special editions, offered either for a limited time through rehabilitated warehouse/storefronts--or as rewards for secretly witnessed meritorious acts--or as rewards for any chosen random action (28th person through door X on 28th Street on the 28th of March.) The scarcity and variability of these items propels a furor: citizens constantly exchange shelters, barter for one another's shelters, pull around their own shelters (now to display them, now to obscure them). Permanent dwellings are largely abandoned; seen from above, colorful shells constantly shuffle themselves in the streets and open spaces.

COCKTAIL-DRUM URBANISM
Mixed-use planning is taken to its logical conclusion; separate rooms within buildings are apportioned in order to create microcosmic neighborhoods inter mures. To reach a hotel room, the enterprising sleeper must first get through a laundry, a teahouse, and a tax-preparation service.

BILLINGSGATE URBANISM
All public statuary is removed and replaced with identically-scaled foam copies. Citizens can visit their scorn upon the simulacra: easily gouging in graffiti, sawing off heads, or removing riders from their horses. Moreover, they may post notes of mockery upon the foam--attacking their their neighbors, their elected officials, and their fellow man in terms of foul contempt.

TOBACCO URBANISM
The timetable of the built environment is altered so that buildings may be conjured in a matter of days out of a fixed vocabulary of prefabricated parts, and then disassembled slowly and methodically over a standard course of time. Whereas the constructors worked in haste and obscurity, the destroyers will work in daylight under the terms of a scrupulous choreography. Crowds will gather outside to cheer these ritual demolitions. In addition to being thrilled and edified, the public will also be given a visible index of the passage of time.

CYPRESS URBANISM
Lines of settlement rake across the country in fixed channels. Immense brooding shells begin at the coast, progressively half-sheltering slightly smaller iterations of the same forms, terminating at the opposite border in a scattering of rounded sukkahs. Humans are dispersed throughout this array based on the results of an extensive written questionaire concerning their space preferences.

NARCOLEPTIC URRBANISM
Ready access to sleeping facilities is taken to be the greatest possible good; whereby entryways, benches, and window-ledges are optimized for the comfort of the weary passerby, with leather cushions and coils of bedsheet rolled up like garden hoses. As a last resort for the exhausted, pavements and grates are rubberized, with reams of newspaper set out in neat bales.