by hand

Living

“I am very happy to see so many flowers here and that is why I want to remind you that flowers, by themselves, have no power whatsoever, other than the power of men and women who protect them and take care of them against aggression and destruction.” (Herbert Marcuse, 1968)

“Let a thousand flowers blossom, a thousand machines of struggle and life” (Guattari and Negri, 2010:93)

….When we see a flower, it sees us too, they say. So, I’ve been seen by countless flowers in the past, and they must have seen me as a really grotesque creature. I wonder how I appear to the birds and insects and rocks……..” (Seitaro Kuroda, 1995 – c.f. The world looks at me just as I look at it – Merleau-Ponty )

All cities constitute an antithesis to the land (Bookchin, 1974:6; Zerzan, 2008a). That is not a problem. But the death of the soil[1] is the beginning of the destruction of the social organism (Bookchin, 1974:6, 13). The result of approaching nature as a hostile other is the machine, while the result of learning to discipline ourselves to coexist with the deepest discernable patterns of natural order is the garden (Carse, 1986:118). Only civilization as a healthy social organism can create gardens (Groening, G.D. 2007; McKay, 2011). As an element of rounded (Bookchin, 1974:27) urbanization gardens reflect the chance to act in one’s own responsibility and to have options of choice, to be able to have an intellectual exchange free from fear of imprisonment or loss of life. Gardens as elements of an urbanizing world indicate progress on the long and arduous path to civilized (see Bauman, liquid modernity) conditions of life (Groening, G.D. 2007) and it is here in the ground that the creativity which produces lasting works can strike new roots (Heidegger[2]). For dense, congested cities to be viable (alive), then, small, miniature, dormant and dead spaces need to be considered as valid and malleable terrain. But the complex challenges copresent with utilizing this topography demand high levels of creative, functional and economic improvisation (Rahmann and Jonas, 2009; Jonas, 2008). The creative response of urban DIY gardening in Tokyo that forms the hybrid POTSCAPE is the essence of intelligent human(e) agency, com­munity, continuity, coherence and complexity (see Jonas, 2007; Salingaros et al., 2010:58) in the city. This is the story of everyday, organic urbanism in which people alter their own neighborhoods in both surprising and mundane ways[3] – and evidence of care for place | attachment to place is immediately apparent (Jonas, 2007; Lynch, 1984:163; Cacciari, 1980:8 – a garden is not a utopian design but a real place).

[1] E.G. also, the “earth” – the “material elements (e.g. pigments, marble, musical notes) out of which the work is fashioned” (Richardson, 1963:406 quoted in Verbeek, 2005:86).

[2] quoted in Verbeek (2005:59).

[3] Words from discussion of urban agriculture in the US (Nairn and Vitiello 2009/10: 7).