interesting things I saw today

A stretch hummer limo with an open moon roof packed with young teenagers cruising paseo de la reforma.
One of the numerous poor people selling pirated MP3 CDs on the metro, this grungy young guy, backpack stereo blasting northern corridas, gets the attention of an old woman. He hands her one of the CDs and she gives him a ten peso coin. He puts the coin back in her withered hands and continues on. I don’t know if he did it from charity or to gain sympathy for the charitable act, or a mixture of both, but I was touched, as I often am, by the high levels of charity and compassion I see here in Mexico City.

I am tempted to theorize that poorer cities, especially those in developing countries, have inhabitants who are more compassionate to one another. This is not to say that everyone is an angel, there is more interpersonal brutality as well, but it seems as though these cities function largely based on interpersonal relationships and social networks, necessarily extending to strangers. Developed western cities with well-functioning bureaucratic and urban systems and generally high standards can afford to prioritize comfort and convenience to a certain extent. You can look the Starbucks up on your iPhone, and there’s always plenty of parking.

In the developing world, you have to ask for directions, and get tips about where its safe to park, or which areas are dangerous, or if you can bribe your way out of a parking ticket. The visitor is dependent upon the passer by, and the passer by releases this information because he knows he also will need the aid and knowledge of strangers to navigate the city.

It’s almost a kind of urban social contract- it allows an exchange of knowledge and ability to close the gaps in the official system, without which, the entire system of the city comes to a screeching halt.

Perhaps compassion is the wrong word, it’s a greater and more active understanding of how reliant the people of the city are on each other. When the lights go out in the city, do you know and can you rely on your neighbor? I worry about the US in this regard- and it is the utmost of folly to say, oh the grid will never fail. Resilient cities are those whose systems are not purely mechanical. Governments will fail, infrastructure will fail, disease, famine, drought, and war will come as they have throughout human history. Society underpins the City- the soft network is the real infrastructure holding the city together.

I guess that’s also why I find all the TV shows about post-apocalyptic American life so disturbing. The scenario for these shows is something happens to the physical structure of life in the cities and society collapses. There is an implicit understanding of civilization as contingent on a physical basis rather than on a social one. It’s an understanding of cities as a collection of buildings with people in them and the accompanying systems to maintain their well being. With this mentality, if the city stops ‘functioning’ in the mechanistic sense, then it’s the end of the city, i.e. the end of society, i.e. time to stock up on guns and ammo, every man for himself, motherfucker.

Cities are like streets and US dollars. No one thinks to blink at the idea of entrusting strangers with their lives and lives of their children. Every day, people place their trust in ten thousand other people not to speed and hit them or swerve into their lane from the opposite direction. How is it that we don’t trust a hundred pre-screened air travelers with a box cutter, but we are all totally fine with 10,000 people in control of multi-ton vehicles moving at high speed in our direction?

Similarly, there is nothing that backs the dollar. There’s no gold, no silver, no wagon wheels or salt or shells. It’s a currency, one of the strongest in the world, based purely on trust and agreement between people that it has value. The built environment is the paper to the currency of the city.