ZATO – Secret Soviet Cities

The Harriman Institute in New York was recently exhibiting the exhibition: ZATO – Secret Soviet Cities during the Cold War on the dynamics between politics, urbanism, and cartographic manipulation. Unfortunately we couldn’t go there, but secret cities based on the communist ideology of ‘the Party’, for sure drew our attention.

These closed cities or so called ZATO sites (Closed Administrative-Territorial Formation / Zakrytoe administrativno-territorial’noe obrazovanie) were areas for secret military or scientific research and production in the Soviet Empire. Weapons were produced there and medical experiments took place on nearly 250,000 animals to understand how radiation damages tissues and causes diseases.

Built in the remote areas of the Soviet Empire, they followed a unique architectural program – inspired by ideal cities, based on perfect geometric plans, articulated by progressive modernist architectural language, reflecting the ideology of the Party. However, these “realized utopias” were camouflaged and blurred into the environment. The cities were not to be found on official maps and those who worked there had special passes to live and leave, and were themselves hidden from public view. Most of the scientists and engineers who worked in the ZATOs were not allowed to reveal their place or purpose of employment.

Today there are still 43 ZATO on the territory of the Russian Federation. Their future is uncertain: some may survive; others may disappear as urban formations within the context of Russian suburbs.

Exhibition by Malkit Shoshan

Who thinks about the Israeli Palestinian conflict does not directly pictures a zoo and two white donkeys dyed with stripes to look like zebras. Our PHD candidate Malkit Shoshan did, resulting in the exhibition ZOO, or the letter Z, just after Zionism which is currently exposed in the NAiM / Bureau Europa. Her award-winning book ‘The Atlas of Conflict’ about the processes and mechanisms behind the shaping of Israel-Palestine during the past 100 years forms the base of this new project.

The exhibition starts with page 437 of the book and unfolds in a fascinating exploration of ideas, snapshots and associations that can be devised after seeing a white donkey, tied with a rope and covered with beige tape. A white donkey transformed into a zebra, to meet the desire for normality in Gaza. In this case, the possession of a zoo as space for urban recreation.

‘ZOO, or the letter Z, just after Zionism’, is part of a research project to the relation between war and architecture that contains an archive, two books and an installation which is a mix between a house, a cage a UN-shelter and a zoo.

The exhibition runs until May 20^th in NAiM / Bureau Europa in Maastricht. To get the whole experience we recommend you to go in the weekend. There will be real donkeys.

Avoid Ghetto App

There is no such thing as bad publicity, right? Well Microsoft will probably disagree. Their recently registered patent for a new GPS feature was nicknamed the ‘avoid ghetto app’.

This new software for smartphones and other portable GPS devices is intentionally meant to help travelers avoiding bad weather, tough terrain and unsafe neighborhoods. It uses a combination of information from maps, weather reports, crime statistics and demographics to determine the most effective route to their final destination. Sounds harmless and even useful, but Steve Ballmer (Here in Nova Collegetour) and friends are now being accused of potential racism and reinforcing stereotypical views of certain ethnicities and socio-economic classes.

Might be true, but even more alarming is its possible influence on cities. Dividing them into save and unsafe areas will chop the city in two, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by further isolation of already weak areas and marking whole communities as ghetto or no-go zones. The social and economic impact can be huge and many fear that a Ghetto mark will lead to abandonment, disinvestment and degradation of areas. Microsoft refused to comment.

And now for something completely different: Urbicide. Violence not only against city dwellers, but against urbanity itself. Read this: an article on US army activity in Sadr City, a district of Baghdad masterplanned by Greek visionary urbanist Constantinos Doxiadis. Obviously, destroying urban tissue and erecting huge concrete barriers have become important military tools since the cityscape has become the ultimate battlefield in the 21st century.

Please note, by the way, how the Wikipedia-article also lists New Orleans (next to Sarajevo and Zimbabwe) as a victim of urbicide: in this case the violence against urbanity has been fabricated “not by military action but by policy and ideology,” according to Andrew Herscher. The passive-aggressive approach, or something like that.

Little design, lots of politics: Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi has recently declared his state is going to boldly go where no one has gone before: into the future. All 180,000 Samoans will, very soon, be skipping an entire day, effectively traveling through time. Probably, there will be no December 31st 2011 in Samoa. Ever. Twenty-four hours. Gone.

Strangely disappointing though, the underlying reasons are quite mundane (synchronizing with Australia and New Zealand will improve trade) and, admittedly, Samoa did celebrate the 4th of July twice a few decades ago so the country does have a day to spare anyway.  Back to the future it is, indeed.

This, by the way, is not the first time the PM-with-the-unpronounceable-name (who also is Samoa’s second-best archer) has proposed bold moves to improve Samoa’s trade position: in 2009, he moved traffic from the right side of the road to the left, a decision which spawned a new political party against the change, and the countries’ largest public protests ever. A brave move, indeed – one no country had made for the past 40 years.

More radical geography: nuclear testing obsessed Richard L. Miller this time. Pretty self-explanatory, the above map is called “areas crossed by two or more radioactive clouds during the era of nuclear testing in the American Southwest, 1951-62.” Found here. Want to know more? Read this. Or this. Or contact Richard himself to order any of his books: his e-mail address (and a short bibliography) can be found here.

Whoa. Everything you always wanted to know about the Israel-Palestine situation but were afraid to ask: the Atlas of the Conflict. Co-written by  Malkit Shoshan (PhD student of the chair of Design as Poltics), Willem Velthoven (of Mediamatic) and Nat Muller, the book painstakingly maps what seems to be the conflict of conflicts  - it is being represented in over 500 drawings. Mediamatic throws a launchparty december 21st in Amsterdam – speeches by some cool people are included.

Click here (PDF!) for a 15 page sample of the atlas.

Very rarely does a career in geography gets your name on official US government blacklists, but when you’re called William Bunge things like that just happen. Bunge, who also got himself fired from at least two American universities, did ask for it though: besides being a communist he also tried to fight racial inequality in North-American inner cities by using geographical means – lethal in the wrong hands as these tools are. Setting up the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute, he started mapping such things as occurrences of rats biting babies and accidents involving black kids being hit by cars driven by white commuters (‘if you can predict an event, why call it an accident?’). Since his work painfully exposes racial and political problems rather left untouched by some, he managed to become a persona non grata in certain circles swiftly.

Apart from a biography which can be found on the very cool website IndieMaps.com (and from which all the information in this post has been blatantly, ehm, borrowed) very little can be found about the cartographer-cum-revolutionary online – and the few books he managed to get published so far are rare and expensive. If anybody knows where to find more on Bunge’s work, please let us know!

Omdat visualisaties geweldig zijn hier een grafisch-geografische representatie van het politieke klimaat in Nederland. Afgezet tegen de landelijke uitkomsten (en gebaseerd op het systeem van de  stemwijzer) is per gemeente bekeken hoe zeer het lokale kiesgedrag afwijkt van het landelijk gemiddelde – meer uitleg over het gehanteerde systeem is wellicht handig. Eerste conclusies? Inwoners van de grote steden zijn te vinden aan de links-progressieve kant van het spectrum, Etten-Leur is voor verkiezingsuitslagen wat Haarlem is voor dialecten , en Urk had misschien wel een eiland moeten blijven.

In a quite literal attempt to marry the fields of design and politics, OMA (commissioned  by the European Climate Foundation) has redrawn the map of Europe based upon the availability of sustainable energy sources – and claims the continent can save as much as 80 per cent of its energy by doing so. Exciting – but perhaps not just a little unfeasible, as well.