Reading the highly, highly recommended Sense of the City over morning coffee a few months back, I came across a passage about a typology of space devised by a Canadian Angeleno geographer named Steven Flusty.
Flusty had identified a range of “characteristics…introduced into urban spaces to make them repellent to the public,” and he gave each of the five situations he listed particularly evocative names:
- stealthy spaces “cannot be found”
- slippery spaces “cannot be reached”
- crusty spaces “cannot be accessed”
- prickly spaces “cannot be occupied comfortably”
- jittery spaces “cannot be utilized unobserved”
This taxonomy of urban form is one I think we all intuitively recognize, but it’s important that Flusty has gone ahead and given it such precision, such vivid specificity. (It has applications beyond the spatial, too: see, for example, this uncompromising specimen of prickly packaging, Bangkok-style, provided by Jan Chipchase.)
If you want a preview of my upcoming Cooper Union talk, consider the ways in which the presence of ambient informatics in the urban environment can enhance its stealthy, slippery, crusty, prickly and jittery qualities – or militate against them.
Ok, now I’ve got to read Sense of the City. Any chance you’ll be touring your Coooper Union talk to San Francisco? You should be here for this:
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/bldgblog-chronicle-books-present.html
And… I thought you might find this interesting – WE LOVE TO BUILD™ illustrates what a “slippery” space might look like:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/19772579@N00/264272600/
Hah. I came here to post something whiny about not getting to see this talk, but Ryan has the better approach. Come HERE and give the talk!
Heh. OK then!
Imagine that I’m posting something whiny here about not getting to see this and that I choose to ignore the problems of touring this talk all the way to Australia.
Go on! Come to Australia!
LOL. I give you my usual answer: find me a venue and somebody willing to fly Nurri and I down there, and I’m in!
Negotiating Dominance and Submission Through Industrial Design
I’ve argued before that every object engages users in a kind of unspoken dialogue. The product’s look and feel is a message that the user decodes according to culture and memory. Then the exchange of meaning reverses: the user signals intention by…
Many thanks for the kind notice, and moreso for the new directions. One correction, though — I’m not a Canadian geographer, but an Angeleno one. Just in the midst of exploring expatriotism right now, is all.
Duly noted, Steven, and thanks for stopping by. As you can see, I’m a great admirer of your work. : . )
[...] might call them, have, a temporal viscosity, as Fassin Taak might say, that could range from foggy pea-soup to sticky treacle. I like the fact that the intersections, the crossing of streams, as [...]
[...] we transform our urban spaces, we’re starting to see spaces that are “stealthy, slippery, crusty, prickly and jittery“. Here Adam is borrowing terminology from Steven Flusty at USC. Stealthy spaces can’t [...]
[...] we transform our urban spaces, we’re starting to see spaces that are “stealthy, slippery, crusty, prickly and jittery“. Here Adam is borrowing terminology from Steven Flusty at USC. Stealthy spaces can’t be found; [...]
[...] Adam Greenfield / On Steven Flusty’s Stealthy, Slippery, Crusty, Prickly and Jittery Spaces [...]