[Sdpg] Slide Show And Talk with Mark Lakeman of City Repair Portland in Southern CA Dec 2-9 2004

Wed Nov 17 08:27:26 PST 2004

Slide Show And Talk with Mark Lakeman of City Repair Portland in Southern 
CA Dec 2-9 2004
Join visionary architect Mark Lakeman as he inspires and guides the grid 
structure of a typical American city into a vital social commons with 
Portland's City Repair Project (www.cityrepair.org). Now a national 
movement, City Repair is about cities, towns, grids and the intersections 
where our lives can converge. Multidisciplinary, City Repair combines 
architecture, urban planning, anthropology, community development, public 
art, permaculture and ecological design in projects that transform public 
space.

Dec 2 Thursday Noon City Repair, A Street Corner Revolution slide show and 
talk with Mark Lakeman $5 Faulkner Gallery Downtown Library Santa 
Barbara  a professional presentation for County,City employees, 
politicians, builders and architects

Dec 2 Thursday 7pm City Repair, A Street Corner Revolution slide show and 
talk with Mark Lakeman $5 Faulkner Gallery Downtown Library contact Santa 
Barbara Permaculture Network sbpcnet at silcom.com, www.sbpermaculture.org 
805-962-2571
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Dec. 3, Fri 7:30 pm: "The Village Lives," a slide show and talk with Mark 
Lakeman of Portland's City Repair $10 (sliding scale ok). Reservations 
recommended 213/738-1254 or <crsp at igc.org> LA Eco-Village  www.ic.org/laev/.

Dec. 4, Sat.10 am - 4:30 pm. "Redesigning our Intersection," a design 
workshop with Mark Lakeman. $100 - $50 sliding scale. Reservations required 
213/738-1254 or <crsp at igc.org>.www.ic.org/laev/.

Dec. 5 , Sun. 10 am - 4:30 pm. "Intersection Repair in L.A. Eco-Village." 
Wear old clothes and shoes. We'll be building some of the projects we 
designed on Sat. 12/5. $100 - $50 sliding scale. Reservations required 
213/738-1254 or <crsp at igc.org>.
LA Eco-Village 117 Bimini Place Los Angeles CA 90004

.Dec. 6, Slide Show & Talk, MTA, One Gateway Plaza (where Cesar Chavez and
Vignes meet in downtown LA, noon, no charge, bring a brown bag lunch. 
213/738-1254 or <crsp at igc.org>.www.ic.org/laev/.

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Dec 7 , Tues 5pm Dinner with Mark Lakeman
Farmer and Cook Farmer and the Cook Restaurant 39 El Roblar Drive, Meiners 
Oaks, CA (near Ojai)
www.farmerandcook.com
Please RSVP 805-640-9608

Dec 7 Tues 7pm A Street Corner Revolution slide show and talk with Mark 
Lakeman, donation $5
Help of Ojai, Little House , Kent Hall 111 West Santa Anna St (next to Ojai 
City Hall )
Turn  off Hwy 150  onto Blanche St Ca between Bank of America and Star Market
Contact Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, sbpcnet at silcom.com 
www.sbpermaculture.org 805-962-2571,
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Dec 9 Thursday 7pm City Repair, A Street Corner Revolution slide show and 
talk with Mark Lakeman, donation $5
SLO Public Library 995 Palm Street
Contact Elaina Geltner at QuietStar Center for Transformation, 783-2662 or 
elaina at quietstar.com. " and Tara Burke 995-2904

Cosponsors L.A. Eco-Village, Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, Hopedance 
Magazine, The Sustainability Project, The
Community Environmental Center, Los Angeles Permaculture Guild, South Coast 
Permaculture Guild,www.GreenHomesForSale.com, Ojai Permaculture Guild, 
Sustainable Building Council SLO,Central Coast Permaculture Guild 
,QuietStar Center for Transformation

CHECK  Santa Barbara Permaculture Network www.sbpermaculture.org Main 
Organizer for Mark's Tour

ARTICLE IN HOPEDANCE MAGAZINE NOV/DEC 2004 www.hopedance.org

City Repair
Location, Location, Location The Intersection of Paradigm Change
Mark Lakeman

As you may already realize, the revolution is not
being televised. For instance, have you heard that
eight years ago, a group of neighbors in Portland,
Oregon walked into a street intersection and
transformed it into a community gathering place? They
were armed with paintbrushes and the radical awareness
that something important was missing at a very crucial
location - right outside their doors. Their action
slowed traffic, made the streets safer, and brought
isolated people together to make new friends. Soon
after initial opposition by the Dept. of
Transportation, the Portland City Council legalized
the project for all ninety-six city neighborhoods so
that an unlimited number of street intersections could
be "reclaimed" for the purpose of community
self-development. Today, we can see how this one
little neighborhood helped other communities across
the city to reclaim their intersections until other
cities heard what was going on and the whole thing
became a national movement called "The City Repair
Project".
Well, now you know-- and there's more. It's about
humanity and how we can live in possession of our own
destiny. It's about Villages, grids, and the
intersections where our lives can converge.

A Little Empire Story of Divide and Conquer
Invasive cultures are always built upon the ruins of
villages. Where before villagers gathered at the
central intersection of the village, the conquered
villagers are made to live in grids where
intersections become merely conduits of movement.
Since this story is common to everyone's family
history, no matter your ancestry, have you ever asked
yourself, "whatever happened to MY village"? Why do we
live in placeless and alienating grid cities?
Many Americans have been looking back in time order to
understand what happened such that all the work of our
ancestors has not already led to "sustainability".
Part of the answer is that our people have been
working for someone else's dream for a long time.
Communities seldom have a voice. Whose idea was it to
give up the village square, the cultural nexus? Did
anyone ever call a vote to eliminate the Village
Heart? Why, then, do Americans inhabit innumerable
neighborhoods without even one single neighborhood
public gathering place? You might say that in the
grid, we don't intersect with other "villagers"
because our intersections were designed by people we
never met to accomodate a narrow set of uses. Indeed,
the disruption of culture that relegates whole
people's to a life of struggle, and the gridded
infrastructure of their isolation, is the old story of
divide and conquer, the very story of unsustainable
culture.

Reclaiming Intersections, Transforming the Grid
The vision of City Repair is that democracy is the
very foundation of sustainability and that the village
heart is the beginning of a sustainable human habitat
where we build upon social equity, political
accessability, and ecological balance. City Repair
asks people to consider how our ability to participate
relates to the health of our democracy. In connection
to such questions, we should also ask "what good is
freedom of assembly without a place to assemble?" If
we look around and see that we have no such places,
especially in the hearts of our neighborhoods, then
City Repair says we should go into action with our
community and build it.
Before taking to the streets, the core group of
neighbors had learned that village streets used to be
an interwoven fabric of paths which led to places
where people's lives came together. When the neighbors
saw that the grid which divided their neighborhood had
long ago been designed to divide and regiment their
own ancestors, that they took to their streets with a
new vision. They knew, like so many communities,
people were not talking with their neighbors. They
knew that there were no places for neighbors lives to
intersect. Once they saw that the street intersection
could become that public meeting place, they simply
took it back.
That first "intersection repair" led to an exponential
expansion of activity which has brought together
diverse communities, political leadership and
government bureaus to create new forms and scales of
involvement. These include a fabulous series of
organizations and locally-visioned and built
ecological buildings for community gathering,
ephemeral tea houses made by and for neighborhood
residents and homeless kids, the Nation's first
socially and ecologically sustainable self-help
homeless village, many new kinds of creative public
squares, and dozens of unusual new forms for community
development. As speakers from the City Repair Project
travel throughout the United States, many communities
are realizing that the idea of building community
starts with a sense of place that must be created by
people for themselves. City Repair is a successful
model because people across the country realize that
they can create a place for themselves that is founded
upon access and justice. They see that we can all have
a habitat where everyone is included, and its heart
will be located where the paths of our lives converge.
When we have a place to gather, we create a place to
share. The revolution will not be televised; it is
being shared by people at the intersections of their
lives.