Related Pieces
Piece Description
In the center of San Francisco, there is a plaza with no benches and a fountain with a fence around. It’s a place that most people cross the street to avoid. How does this happen? Why does a public space fail? Is it just the homelessness and the drug addicts and dealers? Or is there something more to the story, something deeper? Is there a point where good intentions and idealism become so removed from reality, they actually border on negligence? UN Plaza was a great mystery to me. I had often reported from failing neighborhoods and I was no longer shocked by daily encounters with degradation in such a beautiful city. What surprised me was the prominence of the display: not hidden in the crack alleys of the Tenderloin, but at the intersection of Market Street, San Francisco’s most important street, and the Civic Center, just outside the Mayor’s window. In the constant flux of city life, we can sometimes forget that places, not just people, have memories, and forgetting that leads to tragedy. Featured on Transom.org. For more information and conversation, visit The Biography of 100,000 Square Feet on Transom.
6 Comments
|
Review of Biography of 100,000 Square FeetThis is truly great work. There were hundreds of places where the author could have taken short cuts, emerged with easy epiphanies. he avoided them all, and he's given city dwellers everywhere a really important text for refelecting on how planning gets done. And there is a wildly revealing moment when he's interviewing the landscape architect behind this mess--you hear the voice of undemocratic "expertise" ring out in all its unguarded clarity. A bravura piece of urban reporting and political thinking, jsut the right length. |
|
Review of Biography of 100,000 Square FeetA well crafted piece that takes a couple of listenings-to to get everything from it. Sometimes I had a little difficulty understanding the circumstances surrounding and implications of all of the different viewpoints expressed. I felt a little left up in the air about what's happened to the people that used to congregate in UN Plaza. They've been pushed on, but where to? How has the removal of the benches and the fencing-in of the fountain effected the people for-whom this space was the most useful? Well united by contemplative soundscapes, this piece has the feel of the abandoned open-space that is its subject matter. Sometimes the wind blows quickly and sometimes, it's still, but it all amounts to emptiness in the end. Though I've never seen the plaza, I feel very acquainted with it having listened to this piece. |
Broadcast History
First broadcast on May 15, 2004 on Invisible Ink on KALW 91.7 Fm in San Francisco.
www.invisibleinkradio.org
www.kalw.org
Timing and Cues
29:30
Musical Works
I do apologize, there are simply too many to list.
Related Website
Of 9 purchasers of this piece...
- 5 also bought:
The Wire Episode 1: Hallo, Hallo (00:52:54) - 5 also bought:
The Wire Episode 2: The Change of the Sound (00:52:55) - 5 also bought:
The Wire Episode 3: Going Electric (00:52:55) - 5 also bought:
The Wire Episode 4: Good Vibrations (00:52:54) - 5 also bought:
The Wire Episode 5: The Sound Around (00:52:54)
R. Tyler Mack
Posted on March 29, 2005 at 04:19 PM | Permalink
Review of Biography of 100,000 Square Feet
For his Masters thesis Mr. Temchine studied the "failed" UN PLaza in San Francisco and the effect it has had on the space it was designed for, over the years. Though Mr. Temchine acknowledges that city planners hated the plaza before it was installed, he does not allow them to be correct. Instead, he focuses on the plaza's place in the city's heart and minds, its effect on the homeless problem of SF, and the philosophy of city design. He also touches on the hopeless attempts to revive the plaza speckled with remarks from the many personalities involved. Very interesting, even to a non-SF resident.