Traces
A Porous Fabric and Transient Set of Spaces: Dwelling in the Neighborhood
Kaiwan Mehta
This presentation focuses on the idea of an urban neighborhood as an operative network rather than a defined locality. The network is no doubt grounded in a geography, but that geography need not be bounded in a particular locality. The second proposition would be that it is a series of characters and activities (or rituals) that produce the neighborhood on a daily basis, in a sense that it is at all times invented and reinvented by the relationship of actions and characters. The neighborhood is then a cultural entity built on experience, actions, and urban characters. This understanding of the neighborhood helps us broaden our understanding of a city and its parts; where the terms »precinct« or »locality« have a tendency to become self-obsessed entities, solely bounded on their own and internal imagination, and run the risk of breaking off from the city rather than bringing it together, the neighborhood as a network of actions, experiences, and people across (and beyond) geographical location actually produces and possibly contributes to a part-whole relationship, nourishing the whole through its own survival.