The city is our future, let's not abandon it to the financiers!

What if, instead of condemning the city to become a gigantic financial product, we gave the inhabitants the possibility of rebuilding it to make it more habitable, more open, and above all more collective? An article by Matthieu Poitevin, architect and President of Va jouer dehors!

"Qatar has about 3 million inhabitants, women have no rights, the last vegetable to grow there was in a forgotten supermarket garbage can. Thousands of people have died to build ostentatious, ridiculous and useless stadiums with air-conditioned lawns, which cost billions of dollars. And yet! The United States is boycotting the Olympic Games in Beijing, and before that the ones in Moscow for political and diplomatic reasons, but not the unbearable soccer world in Qatar. It is quite simple: this country, well known for its temperate climate and its exemplary democracy, does not know any international political contestation.

We are constantly being of the need to act on an individual level: but what danger does each of us represent? individual level: but what danger does each one of us represent in the face of but what danger does each one of us represent in front of the negligence and the hypocrisy of some of our governments? How long do they think that entertaining the crowds will be enough to hide their destructive cynicism?

Never, perhaps, has such such contempt for the planet and humanity, devoid of the slightest ideal, has ever existed. 

Since most of our are unable to invent a future for us, it is up to us to dedicate ourselves to it. to dedicate ourselves to it. Modestly at the beginning, step by step, trying to apply the practice of the avalanche which shows that each flake has its importance and for that to do this, push the pebbles from the very top of the summit, just like that, just like that, with the hope that they will take everything in their path. their path. And that the avalanche of a common future comes to transform our habits and habits and rethink our cities.

It is through our actions that our leaders will have to become aware of the situation. Let's make sure that that these pebbles become rocks before being pushed down the slope so that at the end they create furrows that pave the way for future laws that force laws that force us to build the city differently. It is necessary to succeed in changing the balance of power and make them consider that they will benefit more if they carry out their if they carry out their actions by and for those who live in the city rather than those who who live in it.

The city is our future. future, it is obvious: we must make it and remake it with determination again and again, to make it more habitable, more open, more collective! collective!

It is the city that makes things possible; it is the the city that must invite and invent. For the moment, it clogs, it avoids, and it divides. 

The overriding question question that should be asked of any politician is not to implement ridiculous is not to implement ridiculous strategies to be re-elected but to take time, learn from those who know and to take the time, learn from those who know and think about how to fix the world around us. to think about how to fix the world around us.

"This political world is bankrupt, bankrupt of thought bankruptcy of thought, cultural bankruptcy and bankruptcy of courage".

How to allow this planet this planet to be habitable? How to recreate the link? How can we make something common?

Otherwise, every politician political leader should know that there is no example in history where a where a political system that opposes, oppresses and divides does not eventually explode. 

This political world is bankrupt, in bankruptcy of thought, in cultural bankruptcy and in bankruptcy of courage. We call them political leaders of fact; Yes, they are responsible for this Berezina. For too long, they have allowed or even encouraged the sale of the city to the highest bidders to the highest bidders, and to do what with it? 

Almost nothing, or worse. 

Whole sections of cities have been squared off by the butchers of the cities who are called "urban "who have decided to raze to the ground to build pieces of city without pieces of city without soul, anonymous, identical everywhere, denying the identity identity and singularity of the cities, in order to standardize them. The city has been transformed into a gigantic financial product studded with objects from who knows what disembodied disembodied planet instead of being a source of telluric constructions from its soil.

Let us follow the metaphor of the telluric city. The one that is made in a fabric and not in a weave. The one that telescopes, that intertwines, that touches each other and that favors encounters, the chance, the one where the bric and the broc are combined with the with the ornaments of different eras: a city more organic than organized, in short.

From the city in pieces, we have to move back to the parcelled out city.
Take into account the other as much as oneself.
To recreate a sense of commonality and real public spaces.
With a little luck and imagination, I am certain that the street will be able to re-enchant us.

by Matthieu Poitevin, September 12, 2022

Published on Usbek & Rica:

https://usbeketrica.com/fr/article/la-ville-est-notre-avenir-ne-l-abandonnons-pas-aux-financiers