Japan: the psychology of recovery

Japan´s evacuees. NYTimes

A few days ago, my son asked me if it was crazy to go back to the place where one belonged, after a catastrophe. I told him everybody comes back, the feeling for own´s territory is so strong, it´s part of our lives. Without territoriality, we feel like nothing.

I was not mistaken in my answer, let´s read some excerpts from the great article by Benedict Carey:

¨JAPAN is in the middle of a catastrophe that transcends any talk of trauma and resilience, the easy language of armchair psychology. There is no reintegrating with friends and social networks now scattered or lost in the sea; there is no easy rebuilding of communities washed away, swallowed by the earth or bathed in radiation from ruptured nuclear plants.

Few can doubt that the country will eventually repair itself; that’s what people do, none more so than the Japanese. But some scientists say that recovering from this disaster will be even more complicated.

In dozens of studies around the world, researchers have tracked survivors’ behavior after disasters, including oil spills, civil wars, hurricanes and nuclear reactor meltdowns, as well as combined natural-technological crises, like what’s happening in Japan. One clear trend stands out: Mental distress tends to linger longer after man-made disasters, like an oil spill or radiation leak, than after purely natural ones, like a hurricane.(...) many people in Japan have begun to doubt the official version of events. “The mistrust of the government and Tepco was already there before the crisis,” said Susumu Hirakawa, a psychologist at Taisho University in Tokyo, referring to the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the leaking nuclear plant. “Now people are even angrier because of the inaccurate information they’re getting.” (...)

Japanese psychologists say, is that many of their countrymen will attempt to manage their anger, grief and anxiety alone. In the older generations especially, people tend to be very reluctant to admit to mental and emotional problems, even to friends; they’re far more likely to describe physical symptoms, like headaches or fatigue, that arise from underlying depression or anxiety.

Not that medicine can repair the deepest losses. The quake, tsunami and radiation have destroyed or defiled what may be the islands’ most precious commodity, land, dealing a psychological blow that for many will be existentially disorienting.

Helping each other in Japan. NYTimes

Iwate prefecture. NYTimes

Milk not delivered. NYTimes

Prayers in Japan. NYTimes

“In rural communities especially, there’s a very strong feeling that the land belongs to you and you belong to it,” said Kai Erikson, a sociologist at Yale who studied mining towns of the Buffalo Creek hollow in West Virginia, where more than a dozen towns were destroyed and at least 118 people killed when a dam burst in 1972, unleashing a wall of water as high as 30 feet that swept down the hollow. “And if you lose that, you’re not just dislocated physically, but you start to lose a sense of who you are.”

Rikuzentakata, Japan. NYTimes

A shelter in Japan. NYTimes

Read the full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/weekinreview/20psyche.html?ref=asia

What is ¨ethnoburb¨?

Whoever has lived in California long enough, will associate immediately some cities to ethnic groups, I´m not only talking about population, but food, advertising and so on. Sometimes I feel in Santa Ana like being in Mexico, or Westminster like being in Vietnam.... Here is an excerpt from the article by Timothy Egan, at The New York Times: ¨The rise of ethnoburbs¨:

The new narrative comes from the ethnoburbs, a term coined in a 2009 book by Arizona State University professor Wei Li to describe entire cities dominated by a nonwhite ethnic group. They are suburban in look, but urban in political, culinary and educational values, attracting immigrants with advanced degrees and ready business skills.

Monterey Park, just to the south of here, is considered the first suburban Chinatown. And with 61,571 people, it’s much more than a “town.” Now there are eight Asian-dominated ethnoburbs sprawling through a 25-mile stretch of the San Gabriel Valley. Here, you’ll find one of the largest Buddhist temples in the hemisphere, and a string of Boba drink shops, often called the Starbucks of the valley. (Boba is a drink flavored with small tapioca balls.)

Ethnoburbs are not limited to California. Bellevue, Washington, long dismissed by Seattle residents across the lake as a series of white bread cul-de-sacs and high-end malls, is now Washington State’s most diverse big city, primarily because Asians make up 27 percent of its 122,363 residents. Quincy, Mass., is going through a renaissance, driven in part by the 22 percent who are of Asian descent.

Well to the east of San Gabriel is the urban laboratory of Riverside County, the fastest growing in California, expanding by 41.7 percent in the last decade to 2.2 million people. In Riverside, where Home Depots are seeded throughout the land, whites are now a minority, at 36 percent of the population, and Latinos, with 45.5 percent, are the largest ethnic group.

Riverside County is a Latino version of Li’s smaller Asian ethnoburbs. Forget the stereotypes emanating from small-minded places like the Phoenix statehouse or any right-wing talk-radio station: In Riverside County, more than one in five businesses is Latino-owned, and median family income is well above the national average.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/rise-of-the-ethnoburbs/?src=me&ref=homepage

Read the book review:

http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/cart/shopcore/?db_name=uhpress&page=shop/flypage&product_id=5743&category_id=b3e6237d1b1b3b8594488ed1c40d0dfb&PHPSESSID=4fcf14d114ca9d3bb0cc1f1a22c05777

Thoughts on Japan´s nuclear power

Fukushima emergency, 2011. From wikipedia.org

Image from Dudley´s article

¨I hadn’t been previously aware of the extent to which Japan had invested in nuclear power: 55 reactors in 17 sites providing about a third of the nation’s electricity. When we think of the Japanese cityscape, throbbing with neon lights in every direction, it is sobering – and now, even sickening – to think of what the cost of such extravagence may turn out to be.

While beautiful, these displays entailed lethal risks that hardly crossed our minds. Yet, had a regime of greater conservation, renewables and efforts to reduce light pollution been a part of that country’s energy policy for decades, would it really have been necessary to to build 55 reactors? Would there even be reactors burning now at Fukushima?

I realize this is being highly speculative. And I certainly don’t mean to single out Japan for being uniquely profligate with its energy consumption. My own Canada clearly stands out shamefully in this regard, with our citizens ranking among the greatest per capita energy users in the world.

But Fukushima -- like the Deepwater Horizon blowout before it -- shows that our energy policy debates need to include the potential for global catastrophe in the balance sheets. Is maintaining our energy consumption as it presently stands really worth running such terrible and terrifying risks? Is all of the future to pay for our ability to run the lights all night long and power our "vampire" appliances?¨

Michael Dudley. From his article Fukushima, Earth Hour and Sacrifice

http://www.planetizen.com/node/48541

Selection of pictures. Diario La Nación

Projections on the Sidney Opera House

Coliseum. Italy´s 150o Anniversary

Washing clothes in Bangladesh

March 19th 2011, the full moon in Madrid

La gigantesca araña de Bourgeois ya habita en el barrio de La Boca

La obra Maman fue instalada en la explanada de Proa con una grúa.  / Foto Miguel Acevedo Riú

Las buenas noticias, tomadas del artículo de Silvia Premat para La Nación:

A la típica postal de La Boca que incluye puentes, barcos y edificios multicolores, se sumó desde ayer una araña gigante. De bronce, mármol y acero inoxidable, nueve metros de alto y diez de ancho, la obra capital de Louise Bourgeois que se expuso en los museos Guggenheim de Nueva York y de Bilbao y en la Tate Gallery de Londres, llegó a Buenos Aires.

Hasta el 19 de junio, Maman , la araña con la que la artista francesa fallecida el año pasado quiso homenajear a su madre -"ella era una gran tejedora"-, permanecerá en la explanada de la Fundación Proa como prólogo de la primera muestra individual de Bourgeois en América latina. "Louise Bourgeois: el retorno de lo reprimido", se denomina la exhibición de unas 75 obras que muestran la incidencia del psicoanálisis en la vida de la escultora, que se volcó al arte luego de la muerte de su madre y fue marcada a fuego por la infidelidad de su padre.

Continúe leyendo:

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1358634-la-gigantesca-arana-de-bourgeois-ya-habita-en-el-barrio-de-la-boca?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=titulares&utm_campaign=NLCult

Interview with Jaime Lerner. His bright solutions for Curitiba, Brazil

Favela. From socialnojornalismo.com.br

I´ve selected a couple of questions and answers regarding the environmental clean up work and portable streets, but the full interview is a ¨must read¨:

Jaime Lerner

¨Beginning in 1971, Jaime Lerner was elected Mayor of Curitiba, re-elected two more times, and then served as Governor of Paraná, Brazil. Lerner has won a number of major awards for his transportation, design, and environmental work, including the United Nations Environment Award; the Prince Claus Award, given by the Netherlands; and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, given by the University of Virginia. In 2002, Lerner was elected president of the International Union of Architects.

Fisherman onshore collecting garbage. Image credit: Jaime Lerner Associated Architects

When you were mayor of Curitiba, you devised a number of low-cost solutions that turned your city into a model green community where people also have incomes 60 percent higher than the Brazilian average. What kind of investments did you make in green space? What do you see as the relationship between livability and sustainability?

If you want creativity, cut one zero from your budget. If you want sustainability, cut two zeroes from your budget. And if you want solidarity, assume your identity and respect others’ diversity. There are three main issues that are becoming important, not only for your city, but for the whole of mankind. These relate to three key issues in cities: mobility, sustainability, and tolerance (or social diversity).

On infrastructure, there’s always the assumption that the government has to provide public transport. Every time we try to create a solution, we have to have a good equation of co-responsibility with the public. That means it’s not a question of money and it’s not a question of skill; it’s how do we organize your equation of co-responsibility?

For example, when I was governor we had to work hard to avoid reduce pollution in our bays. Of course, it’s very expensive to do environmental clean-up work and we didn’t have the money. Another region had taken out a huge loan from the World Bank, about $800 million. For us though, the question wasn’t about money; the question was about mentality. We didn’t have that money so we started to clean our bays through an agreement with fishermen. If the fisherman catches a fish, it belongs to him. If he catches garbage, we bought the garbage. If the day was not good for fishing, the fishermen went to fish garbage. The more garbage they catch, the cleaner the bays became. The cleaner the bay is, more fish they would have. It that’s kind of win-win solution we need. We need to work with low-cost solutions. And, of course, in public transport, we also organized a good equation of co-responsibility with the public.

You were also known for innovations in the delivery of city services. One program to clean up dirty, narrow streets that were inaccessible to trash collectors gave residents bags of groceries or transit passes in return for their garbage. You decentralized garbage collection. How well did this program work? Have other cities taken up this approach?

It’s been working for more than 20 years in Curitiba. In many cities, there are places where it’s difficult to provide trucks access to collect garbage. In many cities, if the slums are on the hills or deep in valleys, they’re difficult to access. In these places, people are throwing away their garbage and polluting the streams. Their children are playing in polluted areas. In 1989, we started a program where we said, Okay, we’re going to buy your garbage as long as you put your garbage in a bag, and bring it to the trucks, where it’s more accessible. In two or three months, all these areas were clean, and these very low-income people had an additional source of income.

We also started a public education programs on the separation of garbage because we realized that we could transform one problem if we separated garbage in every household. We started teaching every child in every schools. Children taught their parents. Since then, Curitiba had the highest rate of separation of garbage in the world for more than 20 years. Around 60 or 70 percent of families are separating their garbage at home.

Portable Streets. Image credit: Jaime Lerner Associated Architects

At the street level, you’ve been experimenting with portable streets, which you say can enable vendors to set up easily anywhere, creating informal and spontaneous market street life. Why do we need this infrastructure?

Some places in some cities have become decayed. There’s no life. When that happens, it’s very difficult to bring back life because people don’t want to live in a place like that. However, the moment we bring street life, people will want to live there again. That’s why we designed the portable streets. On a Friday night, we can deliver a portable street and remove it Monday morning. We can put a whole street life in front of a university or any place, bringing street life back.

Read the full interview at The Dirt:

http://dirt.asla.org/2011/03/07/interview-with-jaime-lerner/

If We Want To. An exhibition on the role of the forest in a sustainable future. Sweden

Sweden forest. From annaknos.com

Welcome to the VIP-viewing and inauguration of "If We Want To" at 5 pm on Friday, March 18 in the Skellefteå town hall. The travelling exhibition If We Want To is produced by Virserum Art Museum.

As one of the chosen cities of Wooden City 2012, Skellefteå is the obvious choice to host If We Want To. The exhibition will focus on the importance of wood as well as create a dialogue on how climate friendly timber construction can contribute to a sustainable society.

When Virserum Art Museum embarked on their third major exhibition on wood and wood architecture, the issues of sustainability and the climate were impossible to ignore. There was a sense that these issues had lost focus following the COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen. Which made the issues even more pertinent. The future will look very different. But in what way? The exhibition ”If We Want To” presents the international call for an Architecture of Necessity. The exhibition is accompanied by a rich, hardbound catalogue in both Swedish and English. ”If We Want To” will now go on a tour.

SUBJECTS

1. We’re screwed. This scene describes climate change and its consequences for humanity through various fluorescent graphs and scatter diagrams.

2. The lure of the city. An installation that depicts a typical slum-dwelling.

3. At night I dream. Climate disaster creates climate refugees.

4. Kisses or growth. This scene deals with the pursuit of happiness

and wealth. The consumer hysteria that leads to a wasteful use of resources.

5. The architect’s room

6. Sustainability

7. The forest will save us

8. Sustainable countryside

9. Wood construction today

10. The world’s premier wood architecture

Information/contact:

Henrik Teleman

Director

henrik@virserumskonsthall.com

This touring exhibition will possibly go to Canada this autumn

http://www.trastad2012.se/web/In_English.aspx

CALL FOR PAPERS Modern Catholic Space Symposium — London, 9-10/12/2011/

Catholic Church of the Transfiguration. Project for Lagos, Nigeria. Image from http://www.mymodernmet.com/

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. From http://www.aboutliverpool.com/

Call for papers: MODERN CATHOLIC SPACE

Symposium dates: 9 and/or 10 December 2011

Venue: Mount Street Jesuit Centre, London

Modern architecture for the Roman Catholic Church in the twentieth century could be experimental, transgressive or progressive, comforting or shocking; sometimes it appeared within a culture of intense theoretical and theological dialogue between architects and clergy, and sometimes it challenged orthodoxy and innovated at the fringes of the Church’s complex structure. At various significant moments, modern architecture was either repressed and quenched, or welcomed and widely adopted. Architects could be concerned with the symbolic potential of modern architecture to evoke newly emphasised ideas in theology. In church architecture throughout the twentieth century, the liturgy was a central focus of development, as space and ritual were intimately connected. Monastic life was subject to modern interpretations of ancient ideals. Mission stations far from Rome might echo modern architecture’s development of a ‘critical regionalism’. Conventionally, the Second Vatican Council has been seen as a pivotal moment in the shift towards a modern form of church space, but increasingly scholarship is revealing the Council to have been only one marker of broader trends. More recently, architects have sought continuity and reattachment to the past instead of innovation.

This symposium seeks to present new research on specific manifestations of these larger historical currents. Paper proposals might address the following themes:

- Church architecture and liturgy, at any point in the twentieth century;

- The effects of patronage on architectural production;

- Catholic theology, soteriology and eschatology and architecture;

- Approaches to the past in twentieth-century Catholic architecture;

- New materials and building techniques and their effects on Catholic space;

- New spatial forms of pilgrimage, monasticism, or popular devotion;

- Symbolism and modern art in Catholic architecture;

- Politics, identity, nationality and ethnicity in Church buildings;

- Architecture and ecumenical engagement.

Keynote speaker: Prof. Richard Keickhefer, Northwestern University (tbc)

Proposals for papers of around 15-20 minutes, should be a maximum of 300 words, accompanied by a one or two page CV (to include full contact details and a list of any relevant publications or projects).

Deadline for receipt of proposals: 21 April 2011

Deadline for decision and advice on proposals: 10 June 2011

Symposium dates: 9 and/or 10 December 2011

Venue: Mount Street Jesuit Centre, London

Please send proposal and CV as a single MS Word or PDF file by email only to : catholicspace@ntu.ac.uk.