this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Solarpunk Urbanism
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A community to discuss solarpunk and other new and alternative urbanisms that seek to break away from our currently ecologically destructive urbanisms.
- Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City — In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.
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This is a cool idea.
I think we need to take it one step further and have these dying malls turned into affordable housing for homeless people.
While you don't want to start a slum, or shuffle homeless people to be 'less visible' you could have these malls have services to support them. For instance, addictions counseling.
Something as simple as a safe place to sleep, and access to regular food and water can really help people get back on their feet.
These malls are often hard to reach by anything other than a car, thus if you don't have a thriving community within its not going to be very attractive even for homeless people that usually still try to find jobs or otherwise partake in social life.
I could imagine old malls being used as elderly care homes though.
I think if you convert the parking lot into farmers markets and gardens and parks, and swap meets, they people might not need to leave much.
That's another good use.
While I read the text in the link that mentions the access issue, I don't agree. My city is notoriously inaccessible to anything but cars, but this doesn't stop homeless from congregating wherever is suitable to them (often green spaces). I think a 'if you build it they will come' approach would probably work.