Urbanist, eh?

You know, the one thing I had looked forward to was the socially validated title that would have been the reward for the time/effort/money invested in the Masters in Urban Studies. I could have, without any hesitation, called myself an ‘urbanist.’ I would have been the beneficiary of a title; like some wretched newspaper mogul, I could, in effect, buy a title.

But, in the final analysis, I probably fare better than Lord Black of Crossharbour. For one thing, not having a Masters costs way less than a flaky title once reserved for some toadying lick-spittle. My sanity, my money, and my opportunities seem at least as broad without the official title as with. Although I don’t own a tux, unlike Lord Black who owns several I’m sure, and at least one will be in a lovely vertically-oriented black and white striped pattern, I still get invited to fancy places like the Vancouver Club. And, I have not had to sit and watch a roomful of mature adults labour for marks, with a prof who reads other people’s articles as lecture notes. And he read them without any attribution.

Opportunities seem to have multiplied in the last few days. New York is on the agenda for February, and there is an urban education san pareil for those so inclined. Walking from the Empire State Building, to Washington Heights, or Soho to Marcus Garvey Park, exposes any interested observer to an unbelievable range of human experience. The black Bentley silently idling at the curb, the driver’s elegantly gloved hands poised above the door handle, one walks to see sidewalk vendors selling ices, their muscled arms scraping each new sale into a paper cone. The same planet, same city, different worlds.
Remember to look up.

And hope that the lights stay on. In the richest economy in the world, in one of the most populous cities in the country, the rate of power outages is a testament to the greed of unrestrained capitalism. Consolidated Edison is not the least bit worried about delivering electrical power, as a corporation they are solely interested in generating profit, and their shareholders like it that way. Or they like it that way until they are personally affected by the failures caused by shoddy, cost-cutting, maintenance of the power grid.

Ride the subway, talk to people, watch the cops, the drug dealers, the endless (or so it seems to an unarmed Canadian) number of people with guns. Cops, drug dealers, Customs agents, the zillion guys riding around in big, black, SUV’s, all the while protecting somebody really important. I suppose. Private security, public insecurity, all armed and dangerous. Talk to Albert, between pulls on a heavy-handled wine bottle.

All this is ‘being’ an urbanist. In the city that inspired Jane Jacobs I can trace a different path; a path, perhaps, informed by her work. But my own path need not quote Jacobs. I have no need of the re-assurance, or valorization, that referencing her work is supposed to confer on my work. For my work, my life, is not as an academician. My own internal urbanism, much removed I must add from being ‘urbane,’ is founded on a realization of my class consciousness, my intellect, my wide-ranging and eclectic interests.

This non-urbane urbanism draws on hundreds of books on various aspects of ‘the city,’ and all that goes within. It is an urbanism that draws, through good luck, on the opportunity to work with Karen Jamieson on a dance piece. It allows me to work, hopefully, with a wonderful playwright on a theatre piece.

I am free to examine the construction of bridges; they ’show, don’t tell,’ a lot about a city’s history, economics, connectedness with the world, a moment literally frozen in steel. Architecture interests me, and again, I’m free to focus on those very specific aspects that interest, beguile, annoy, frustrate, or alarm. Courthouses, CPTED , the often banal results of City requirements for ‘public amenity’ space in new or re-development all draw my critical attentions. And I can allow those attentions to go wherever I please.

The freedom of working outside the structures imposed by credentialism is already liberating,  and freeing in ways not explicitly anticipated. The freedom, and responsibility, of following my own muse seems somewhat akin to the glamourized ideals of ‘adulthood.’ I have the freedom to act as I please, constrained only by my desire to critically engage other individuals in/with the topics I choose.

Ultimately success is, in some way, marked by my ability to encourage others to to engage with the material I produce. People do not have to agree with what I say, or write, but they have to find the argument engaging enough to be worth the time required to read and reflect on what I have put out. Success is engagement.

If I am correct and people’s willingness to read what I write is a measure of success, then the reader confers the appellation ‘urbanist’ in ways beyond the Academy’s purview. And my ego is just involved enough to enjoy twisting the Academy’s collective nose.

Urbanist, eh?