Mobile Markets

More Bike adaptations

Kind of reminds me of your market stalls - http://www.bow-wow.jp/profile/2003/WhiteLimousine/index.html

And for the ultimate Occupy experience, how about the bicycle caravan:

Found here:  http://popupcity.net/

The People's Bank - Schedule of accommodation

This is the first draft of the Schedule of Accommodation. The total area is just over 1200 sq m, so  I need to decide if that is going to be enough building for the Synergies project.

The People's Bank [synopsis update]

“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.” (Marx, Engels, 1848)

The project is the culmination of an investigation into protest as a construct of the urban environment, based in Birmingham’s southern gateway.  The Urban Synergies project envisions a scenario set in 2030, in which the Occupy Movement (originating from Occupy Wall Street) has established a permanent presence - a shadow city (Neuwirth, 2005) - in Birmingham, in its quest for social, economic and political reform.

The Occupy Movement has traditionally been given the label ‘anti-capitalist’. However, whilst the majority of the movement’s protests takes on a somewhat socialist spirit, the issues against which the movement campaigns are actually diverse and wide ranging, and it is recognised that “we will need [money], but [its methods of exchange] have to be revolutionarily transformed” (Harvey, 2009) so that it does not continue to act as “an instrument of oppression” (Lechevalier, J. quoted in Dana, C.A, 1896).

Founded in Marxist and Anarchist theories of dialectical materialism (philosophy of motion and change) (Trotsky, 1939), labour value and mutualism (Dana, C.A, 1896), and Guattari’s Three Ecologies (2000, p.41), the project explores the role of the bank in a post-capitalist society. It is based on Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s ‘Bank of the People’ and the aims of the Alternative Banking Group.

In the same way the bank’s economics challenges capitalist banking methods and motives, the architecture of this new bank challenges the traditional typology of the bank, helping to strengthen the ABG’s core principles, namely that it is:

• Accessible to all equally
• Democratically run
• Robust
• Transparent
• Moral
• Environmentally sustainable.

1. Dana, C. A. (1896) Proudhon and his "Bank of the People" Benj. J. Tucker: New York
2. Guattari, F. (2000) The Three Ecologies, Continuum Publishing: London
3. Harvey, D. (2009) Their crisis, our challenge Available: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Their-crisis-our-challenge [accessed 27th February]
4. Marx, K. Engels, F. (1848) Manifesto of the Communist Party
5. Neuwirth, R. (2005) Shadow Cities, Routledge: London
6. Trotsky, L (1939) The ABC of Materialist Dialectics

An old snap

Picture from night markets in Damascus, Syria.

Renewable source of energy for night lighting?

Field Journal- Informal Markets In Europe

I have recently been reading a particular text that is very relevant to the study into informal markets as a hub for political discourse and occupation of public space. Some of the poignant quotes from the texts are extracted below.

Informal markets generate sites of counter-globalisation based on a deterritorialisation of cultures.

A striking facet of the many contradictions produced by the global economic system is the resurgence of markets as prime sites of struggle relating to questions of governance and self-governance. Markets have turned into a stage upon which battles over existing societal order and alternative forms of organisation are smouldering.  

The underbelly of the liberalised capital market performs a shadow play, whose relation to the homogenising force of globalisation, is most of all characterised by a paradoxical production of micro sites of cultural heterogeneity. 

Source: http://www.field-journal.org 

Amalgamation of informal market stalls