Inhabitants of other worlds looking down on our earth for the first time may very likely deduce that this planet is dominated by a civilization of cars, and we humans are just puddles of mud hidden inside. We live in a world turned upside-down—a utopia for automobiles, where instead of being communities built for freedom & flourishing, our cities are glittering monuments to petroleum, patriarchy, and profit. But buried under the grotesque mélange of cul-de-sacs, commodities, and mind-numbing commutes that define our suburban dystopias, rest designs for liberation hiding in plain sight. Where social reproduction is not subordinated to the production of profit. Where food, shelter, healthcare, and education are all decommodified. And where the unconditional and universal provision of these human rights is the non-negotiable foundation for institutionalizing freedom and unleashing human potential. In this episode, Matt & Jesse embark on a dialectical synthesis of ideas, weaving together the liberatory notions of a Feminism for The 99%, The Right to The City, and Free Housing For All into a conception of The City of The Golden Square—by imagining every neighborhood as a university. This inventive world-building exercise illuminates a mixtape for the future, conjoining the joyful & egalitarian features of neighborhoods with the noble & emancipatory potentialities of universities. Paradoxically, despite histories of racist, colonial, and capitalist violence, along with ongoing plunder by the corporate neoliberal state, both neighborhoods and universities still carry seeds of emancipation and together offer a coherent set of social and spatial paradigms that prefigure the shape of a better tomorrow. Thinking about neighborhoods becoming indistinguishable from universities is a way to envision what might emerge in our cities if we can erode capitalism, abolish the cost of living, and build a just transition to a green future of radical egalitarianism—where real democracy might finally blossom. Universities should be as common as neighborhoods, and every neighborhood should shimmer with the wholeness that only universities can offer. Every Neighborhood a University is a vision rooted in Social Ecology, grounded in Anarchism, born of Communalism, aimed at Library Socialism, and based on a new social contract: The Golden Square. If the borders between neighborhood and university can dissolve, making them one and the same, humanity might open up a sociological singularity, unleashing the rainbow light of our caged fecundity into the post-scarcity future we all deserve. Join us in this conversation to explore how the architecture of a solarpunk utopia can arise from the ashes of the here and now.
Mentioned In This Episode:
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 042: Strike Feminism
Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser. Published in 2019 by Verso Books.
“Thesis 5: Gender oppression in capitalist societies is rooted in the subordination of social reproduction to production for profit. We want to turn things right side up.”
[Capitalism's] "key move was to separate the making of people from the making of profit, to assign the first job to women, and to subordinate it to the second. With this stroke, capitalism simultaneously reinvented women’s oppression and turned the whole world upside down.”
“The liberation of women and the preservation of our planet from ecological disaster go hand in hand—with each other and with the overcoming of capitalism.”
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 044: The Dawning of The Feminist City
Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World by Leslie Kern. Published in 2020 by Verso Books.
“As feminist geographer Jane Darke says [...]: “Our cities are patriarchy written in stone, brick, glass and concrete.””
“[...] physical places like cities matter when we want to think about social change.”
“[...] once we begin to see how the city is set up to sustain a particular way of organizing society—across gender, race, sexuality, and more—we can start to look for new possibilities.”
Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution by David Harvey. Published in 2012 by Verso Books.
“The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from that of what kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies and aesthetic values we desire. The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.” – David Harvey in New Left Review: “The Right to the City”
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 047: Free Housing For All
In Defense of Housing by David Madden and Peter Marcuse. Published in 2016 by Verso Books.
“[...] a real right to housing needs to take the form of an ongoing effort to democratize and decommodify housing [...]”
“[...] requires fundamental change in the political and economic structures of contemporary society.”
Fredric Jameson in New Left Review: “Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”
Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson. Published in 1992 by Duke University Press.
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 030: A Green New Deal to Build The Golden Square
A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos. Published in 2019 by Verso Books.
Five Freedoms:
Freedom from Fear
Freedom from Toil
Freedom from Domination
Freedom to Move
Freedom to Live
FDR’s Second Bill of Rights: A Wikipedia Exploration
Jill Priluck in Lapham’s Quarterly: “The Second Bill of Rights: How Franklin D. Roosevelt Envisioned Social and Economic Rights as Human Rights”
Andrea Flynn and Susan R. Holmberg in The Nation: “America Needs Economic Rights. Now Is the Time to Push for Them. Seventy-Five Years Ago, FDR Made a Radical Call for Justice. Democrats Have a Chance to Deliver Where He Fell Short.”
Cities: Skylines - Campus - The Videogame
John Frazer in Forbes: “The Reshaping of City Cores That Were Designed for Cars”
Elliott West in The Gilder Lehrman: “American Indians and the Transcontinental Railroad”
Ph.D. Dissertation by Robert J. Voss (University of Nebraska at Lincoln): Railroads and Coal: Resource Extraction in Indian Territory, 1866-1907.
Futurama at the 1939 New York World's Fair: A Wikipedia History
King Rose Archives on YouTube: Futurama at 1939 NY World's Fair
Adam Curtis’ 4-Part Documentary: The Century of the Self. Released in 2002 by BBC.
The Century of the Self: A Wikipedia Overview
Lydia McNutt in HuffPost: “To Millennial Home Buyers: Keep Driving Until You Can Afford It”
Maggie Koerth in FiveThirtyEight: “Why Carbon Capture Hasn’t Saved Us Yet From Climate Change Yet”
Jason Daley in Sierra Club Magazine: “Trees Alone Can’t Save Us From Climate Change: Reforestation Can Help Sequester Carbon, but It’s Complicated”
Matt’s claim, “If every Chinese citizen had a car, you’d have stripped all of the metals out of the earth . . . ” was informed by a 2007 article by Jeff Goodell in the Rolling Stone: “James Lovelock, the Prophet.”
Alana Semuels in The Atlantic: “Good School, Rich School; Bad School, Poor School: The Inequality at the Heart of America’s Education System”
Cory Turner in NPR: “America's Schools Are 'Profoundly Unequal,' Says U.S. Civil Rights Commission”
Freddie DeBoer in Jacobin: “Inequality University: Ivy League Universities Fuel Social Inequality at the Same Time Public Colleges Are Cut to the Bone. They Deserve to Be Dismantled.”
C.J. Polychroniou in the Global Policy Journal: “Chomsky and Pollin: To Heal From COVID-19, We Must Imagine a Different World”
Nathan J. Robinson in Current Affairs: “Meet the Democratic Socialist Holding Barack Obama’s Old State Senate Seat”
Calla Walsh in Teen Vogue: “The Democratic Socialists of America Can Mobilize Gen Z'ers Like Me”
“Think Globally, Act Locally”: A Wikipedia Definition
“Think Globally, Act Locally” — As explored by Roar Bjonnes in Shareable: “9 Ways to Create a Local Regenerative Economy”
Asheesh Kapur Siddique in Teen Vogue: “Campus Cancel Culture Freakouts Obscure the Power of University Boards”
David Folkenflik for NPR: “UNC Journalism School Tried To Give Nikole Hannah-Jones Tenure. A Top Donor Objected”
Timothy Bella and Susan Svrluga in The Washington Post: “Cornel West Says in Resignation Letter Over Tenure Dispute That Harvard Is in ‘Decline and Decay’”
Jeremy Hobson and Allison Hagan for WBUR: “Coronavirus May Mark The End For Many Small Liberal Arts Colleges”
Arvind Dilawar in The Nation: “Universities Are Slashing Faculties and Blaming Covid: Citing the Pandemic, Administrators Are Pushing Cuts—Despite Receiving Millions in Federal Relief Funds.”
A Third University Is Possible by la paperson. Published in 2017 by University of Minnesota Press.
Debt Assets: A Working Definition
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. Published in 2014 by Melville House Publishing.
Eric Westervelt in NPR: “'I'm A Student-Debt Slave.' How'd We Get Here?”
Ellen Brown in HuffPost: “Student Debt Slavery: Bankrolling Financiers on the Backs of the Young”
Brendan Wolfe in the University of Virginia Magazine: “Unearthing Slavery at the University of Virginia”
Moriah Balingit in The Washington Post: “Enslaved People Built the University of Virginia. Now There Is a Monument Honoring Them”
University of Virginia: “Memorial to Enslaved Laborers”
Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone’s Expose in High Country News: “Land-Grab Universities: Expropriated Indigenous Land is the Foundation of the Land-Grant University System”
The Land Grab Universities: A High Country News investigation and website made by Robert Lee, Tristan Ahtone, Margaret Pearce, Kalen Goodluck, Geoff McGhee, Cody Leff, Katherine Lanpher and Taryn Salinas.
Morrill Land-Grant Acts: A Wikipedia History
Land-Grant Universities: A Wikipedia Account
Kalen Goodluck, Tristan Ahtone and Robert Lee in High Country News: The Land-Grant Universities Still Profiting Off Indigenous Homelands: There Are at Least 16 Land-Grant Universities Making Money from the Expropriated Indigenous Lands They Retained from the Morrill Act.
“Abolition is about presence, not absence. It's about building life-affirming institutions.” - Ruth Wilson Gilmore
University Trends: Contemporary Campus Design by Jonathan Coulson, Paul Roberts, Isabelle Taylor. Published in 2017 by Routledge.
Western Washington University: “WWU Named to List of Most Beautiful Coastal Campuses”
Richard K. De Atley in The Press-Enterprise: “UC Riverside Called ‘Economic Powerhouse’ with Big Local Impact”
Barbara Ferman, Miriam Greenberg, Thao Le, and Steve McKay in The Assembly: A Journal for Public Scholarship on Education: “The Right to the City and to the University: Forging Solidarity Beyond the Town/Gown Divide”
Jeff Speck’s TED talk: “The Walkable City”
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck. Published in 2013 by North Point Press.
Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places by Jeff Speck. Published in 2018 by Island Press.
“Vancouverism”: A Wikipedia Exploration
Vancouverism by Larry Beasley. Published in 2019 by UBC Press
City Beautiful on YouTube: “Is Vancouver the best city in North America?”
David Z. Morris in Fortune: “Today’s Cars Are Parked 95% of the Time”
Alex Baca, Patrick McAnaney and Jenny Schuetz for The Brookings Institution: “‘Gentle’ Density Can Save Our Neighborhoods”
Capitalism & Climate: “Murray Bookchin: Ecological Problems Are Social Problems”
Samuel Alexander in The Conversation: “Life in a ‘Degrowth’ Economy, and Why You Might Actually Enjoy It”
David Marques in Current Affairs: “Can the Suburbs Be Saved?”
Sprawl Repair Manual by Galina Tachieva. Published in 2010 by Island Press.
The Suburban Obsession with Children’s Safety; As Explored in Daniel Denvir’s The Dig Podcast: “The Class Politics of Suburban Racism with Matt Lassiter”
Kim Stanley Robinson in The Guardian: “Empty Half the Earth of Its Humans. It's the Only Way to Save the Planet: There Are Now Twice as Many People as 50 Years Ago. But, as EO Wilson Has Argued, They Can All Survive – in Cities”
Alan Simson in The Conversation: “The Urban Forest of the Future: How to Turn Our Cities into Treetopias”
Helen Brown in The Conversation: “Trees Are a City’s Air Conditioners, So Why Are We Pulling Them Out?”
Simon Worrall in National Geographic: “Eating a Burger or Driving a Car: Which Harms Planet More?”
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design): A Wikipedia Exploration
RTS: “What Is Leed Certification?”
Sarah Shemkus in Energy News Network: “Norway’s Net-Positive Buildings Show How Massachusetts Could Raise the Bar”
YurView on YouTube: "Grow 10X More In the Same Space with 90% Less Water | More Nutritious & Less Waste with Aeroponics"
Freethink on YouTube: “Vertical Farms Could Take Over The World”
Malavika Vyawahare in The Guardian: “World's Largest Vertical Farm Grows Without Soil, Sunlight or Water in Newark”
Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert, Collaborators and Co-Founders of Participatory Economics (Parecon), on Balanced Job Complexes on ZNet: “ParEcon Questions & Answers: Balanced Job Complexes”
Michael Albert’s Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Published in 2004 by Verso Books.
Matt’s Facebook Post at Seeing the Destruction of the UCR Family Housing Commune
Richard K. De Atley in The Press-Enterprise: “UC RIVERSIDE: Family Student Housing Idyllic, but Not Ideal”
Samuel Stein in Jacobin: “The Zone Defense: What We Need Isn’t Exclusionary Zoning, Inclusionary Zoning, Upzoning, Downzoning, a Zoning Freeze, or No Zoning at All. We Need an Anticapitalist Planning Movement.”
Mariah Stewart in Insight Into Diversity: “Private Universities Bring New Growth, but Gentrification Can Sideline Existing Residents”
Helen Fang in Forbes: “Universities Are Increasingly Asking Private Developers To Build Their Student Housing”
Murray Bookchin wrote that “Every revolutionary project is an educational project.” – Dan Chodorkoff
“The Role of Education” by Dan Chodorkoff from Social Ecology and the Right to the City: Towards Ecological and Democratic Cities. Edited by Federico Venturini, Emet Değirmenci, Inés Morales. Published in 2019 by Black Rose Books.
Unschooling: A Wikipedia Explainer
Unschooling: A Survey of Families and Unschooled Adults by Peter Gray.
They Live (1988). Featuring Roddy Piper, Keith David and Meg Foster. Directed by John Carpenter.
Slavoj Žižek on “They Live” – From The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012). Directed by Sophie Fiennes.
Cory Doctorow in Boingboing: “Library Socialism: A Utopian Vision of a Sustainable, Luxuriant Future of Circulating Abundance”
SRSLY WRONG’S Podcast Trilogy On “Library Socialism”:
Episode #189: “Library Socialism & Usufruct”
Episode #196: “Library Socialism & The Irreducible Minimum”
Episode #200: “Library Socialism & Complementarity”
Usufruct: A Wikipedia Definition
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 035: Library Socialism & The Golden Square
Vice on YouTube: “The Fight for California's Fresh Water: America's Water Crisis”
David Biello in Scientific American: “How Biodiversity Keeps Earth Alive”
Jacob Ostfeld in Harvard Political Review: “The Case for Sortition in America”
Against Elections by David Van Reybrouck. Published in 2018 by Seven Stories Press.
Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance by John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright. Published in 2019 by Verso Books.
The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy by Murray Bookchin. Edited by Debbie Bookchin and Blair Taylor, with a Preface by Ursula K. Le Guin. Published in 2015 by Verso Books.
Margaret Atwood in The Guardian: “The Road To Ustopia”
Anti-Anti-Utopia: Kim Stanley Robinson in Commune: “Dystopias Now”
“The Future We Deserve” by Debbie Bookchin from Fearless Cities: A Guide To The Global Municipalist Movement. Published in 2018 in the New Internationalist.
Democratic Confederalism: A Wikipedia Exploration
Make Rojava Green Again by the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, with a forward by Debbie Bookchin. Published in 2018 by Dog Section Press.