Field Notes
Expropriate Everything
By Jacob BlumenfeldThe force behind these trends is the growing centrality of urban real estate to capital’s global growth strategy. Through this process, the price of land becomes a central economic determinate and a dominant political issue.
We Can Defend Ourselves
By Jacob BlumenfeldNina Scholz is a journalist who works for Deutschlandradio, taz, Freitag, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Analyse & Kritik, and more, with a focus on the digital economy, labor struggles, and leftist movements. Her book Nerds, Geeks and Pirates: Digital Natives in Culture and Politics, was published in 2014 by Bertz und Fischer Verlag. She is active in the Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen campaign. Jacob Blumenfeld interviewed her in Berlin.
Invasive Architecture
By Maurice MaultzCamouflage is precisely not invisibility. Light doesn’t pass through camouflage, and neither does camouflage project an image of its surroundings onto itself. Camouflage is very simply this: the confusion of figure for ground.
Accentuate the Positive: YIMBY in the Service of Development
By Rico CleffiOne thing that has never been in short supply is ideas for solving the housing crisis. Comptroller Scott Stringer proposed a Land Bank of vacant city-owned properties. Scholars and activists have churned out countless books and reports on social housing.
The Moral Economy in the Black Rural South
By Curtis PriceOnce you drive out of Huntsville, within 15 minutes you run into deeply rural areas. Open fields, some cultivated, some wild; mobile homes and modest bungalows mix with a growing number of new suburban houses; fortunately, not enough—yet—to change the social character of the area. The lanes downsize to two and you see African-American men trudging along in the hot sun.
