Gjøvik - Mjøslandets Sodoma

Just came back from Venice today, where we could breath the truth of "A Pattern Language" for five wonderful days. Both the most walkable and beautiful city on Earth. I'm sure there's a connection between walkability and beauty! -PermaLiv

Foto: "The Burning of Sodom (formerly "The Destruction of Sodom")", av Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.

-Wikimedia.

At the international Walk21 conference this week in Vancouver, British Columbia, an eminent authority on streets boiled the walkability of cities down to the number of street intersections per square mile.

Venice has 1,725 intersections per square mile. “It’s very complex, it’s very messy, and people walk,” said Allan Jacobs, urban design consultant, former San Francisco planning director, and author of Great Streets.

Brasilia, near the opposite end of the spectrum, “has 92 intersections, and you don’t walk there,” The Vancouver Sun reported Jacobs as saying. “Irvine, California is the classic automobile city. It has just 15 intersections, the lowest I’ve ever counted.”

Other places that are good for pedestrians, Jacobs said, include the Market Street area of San Francisco (300 intersections per square mile), Tokyo (988), Savannah, Georgia (538), Portland, Oregon (341), and Paris (281).

The most complex and messy street patterns provide the most walkable and enjoyable experiences for both visitors and residents, according to Jacobs.”

– ‘Messy’ street patterns boost walking

Se også:

- Let Christopher Alexander design your life

Underlig er det å være tilbake fra verdens vakreste og mest gangbare by, Venezia, til Skreia og Gjøvik. Trist er det samtidig å vite at Skreia endte opp som Irvine i California, og ikke som Venezia, hvilket var mine intensjoner som totscaner. Totiban vant kampen om Skreia, dessverre. Derfor må vi for framtida istedenfor anvende store summer og slippe ut betydelige mengder CO2, for å få livsnødvendig urbant påfyll.

Men nå skal det bli spennende å se hva som skjer med Gjøvik etter høstens valg? Krefter arbeider for en bevaring av Hovdetoppen og mot kulturhus på Huntonstranda. Er det fremdeles håp om at Gjøvik ikke ender opp som et innlandshavets Sodoma?

Vi var også en tur innom Milano, som har blitt stygt skamfert av den nye bydelen City Life, som selvsagt er bydød og en kopi av Dubai. Heller ikke landskapet mellom Venezia og Milano kan sammenlignes med landskapet mellom Roma og Firenze, da man her finner et sørgelig industrialisert landskap, som minner meg om hva mjøslandskapet er i ferd med å forvandles til. Siste bidrag er Kapphøgda Næringshage, et øyensår som blir synlig over store deler av kulturlandskapet rundt Mjøsa, sammen med overgreps-fallosen til Arthur Buchardt innerst i Furnesfjorden.

Selv ikke de Lombardiske Alper i bakgrunnen kunne lindre smerten over dette nye industrilandskapet, på samme vis som heller ikke Totenåsen Skyline kan fjerne sorgen over de mange overgrepene mot mjøslandskapet.

Morsomt var det allikevel å være med på 500-års jubileet til Leonardo Da Vinci! Som i likhet med meg og Sigmund Kvaløy Sætreng var et elvemenneske og en naturelsker. Tror det kommer en storfilm om Da Vinci til jul? For "Nattverden" var det over tre måneders ventetid, så det ble med Sala delle Asse og noen sluser konstruert av geniet. Derfor, skal man til Milano bør man reservere et besøk til Santa Maria delle Grazie god tid i forvegen.

***

Etter å ha tenkt på saken i natt, har jeg kommet til at jeg ikke vil møte på "allmøtet" tirsdag, da settingen og redigeringen her er satt. Man har disse maktmenneskene som med effektive virkemidler vil presentere voldtekten av Hovdetoppen som progressivt, med stor profesjonalitet og masse penger i ryggen, så skal liksom noen ynkelige empater etterpå få ta ordet, hvor de forteller om hvor mye Hovdetoppen betydde for dem, til narsopatenes store forlystelse, da de elsker å se empater ydmyket.

Men vi skal ta dem vi! Sakte men sikkert skal vi dra denne byen ned i søla, på samme vis som de dro Hovdetoppen ned i søla, hvor narsopatenes by skal bli en ynkelig skammens by, til skrekk og advarsel for hele verden.

Innalndshavets Sodoma!

-Wikimedia.

Ja, kjære empatiske venner, det går galt med Hovdetoppen nå, den har falt i narsopatenes hender. Til tirsdag skal det være allmøte for å presentere boligprosjektet i solhellinga, selvsagt skal dette opp først, da byggeindustrien klør i profitt-fingrene. Heldigvis ble jeg hentet ut av Mjøslandets Sodoma før nedhøvlingen av Hovdetoppen, lik Lot, slik at jeg slapp nedverdigelsen ved å flykte. Alle andre empater som er igjen i byen, flykt først som sist, la narsopatene, de flygende apene og sekundærsykopatene få denne byen, vi kan ikke stoppe dem. Se deg ikke tilbake, lik Lots hustru, for da mister du din sjel.

Men en ting kan jeg love, Gjøvik skal gå over i folkeminnet lik Sodoma ved Dødehavet, en skammens avskyelige by til evig tid!

Hva kan du gjøre? Advar dine venner mot denne byen. Ikke send din sønn eller datter hit for å studere. Selv skal jeg bli Mjøslandets fotograf. Men ikke Gjøviks fotograf. Fordi denne byen har gravd sin egen grav.

Sam Vaknin, verdens mest intelligente narsissist, har avdekket at narsissisme er den nye verdensreligionen.

Utvilsomt søker kjøpesenter-byen Gjøvik å bli det nye Mekka for vår nye verdensreligionen, hvor Hovdetoppen spiller samme rolle for narsissistene, som tempelhøyden i Jerusalem gjør det for jøder og muslimer.

Empater, foren eder. Det er ingen tvil om at narsopatene har gått til krig mot oss, for å utrydde alle empater og den siste rest av empati, i vår verden.

Gjøvik må være vårt fremste angrepsmål, narsopatenes hellige by!

***

Nei, nå gir jeg aldeles opp. Så på forsida av Oppland Arbeiderblad at flertallet av Gjøviks befolkning ønsker nytt kulturhus på Huntonstranda. I Hamar bygger de dette etter Strandgata, stygt som få, men i det minste tilbaketrukket fra stranda. I sin tid valgte kloke politikere å bygge Fjellhallen inn i Hovdetoppen, for å spare Huntonstranda. Men nå har de blitt riv, ruskende gale, og velger å bygge ned både Huntonstranda og Hovdetoppen, eller Mjøsparken og villmarkstoppen.

Ja, i det seinere har jeg hatt lyst til å ta et opphold i Tolfa, men får heller ta en tur til Hamar og høre hvordan det går med skyskraperen på Tjuvholmen? Skal man flytte er det viktig å bygge seg opp et nytt nettverk før man blir for gammel. Kanskje kan vi finne et tilbaketrukket sted på Toten, avsondret fra moderniteten, da både Lena, Skreia og Kapp har falt? Men dette skal mye til, så det blir nok Hamar, selv om boligprisene der er det tredoble av her. For min del er det bare å gå inn i Hamar fotoklubb, så vil jeg nok straks få en drøss med foto-venner, da jeg begynner å bli en habil fotograf. Og kona har et søskenbarn der, med to døtre på mine døtres alder, som leker godt sammen.

Ja, vi satser på Hamar nå. Men skulle noen ha et egnet sted på Toten, og de ser verdien av mitt virke med å dokumentere det gamle Toten, er det bare å ta kontakt.

Avslutter med de kloke ord av Arnulf Sunde, som i likhet med meg må være Gjøviks eneste rettferdige, og håper han også ble berget fra denne byen?

Det planlegges en helt ny bydel på Mjøsstranda, mens eksisterende sentrum dør, jfr. innspill fra Gaute Hansen og Petter Børde. Hovdetoppen / Hovdeskogen, byens siste opprinnelige grønne lunge, vil bli rasert gjennom aggressiv utbygging – hvis den blir realisert som planlagt.

- Gå for full freding av Hovdetoppen / Hovdeskogen! Alle byer, som lykkes med å gjøre byer attraktive, verner om slike områder. Å slippe til hogstmaskiner i Gjøviks siste urskog vil ødelegge området totalt. Jeg ferdes MYE i Hovdeskogen, og det er ikke nødvendig med den type hogst det legges opp til. Det er et enormt nettverk av stier i Hovdeskogen, og området, som allerede er snauhogd sør ved Hunnshovde, har «stengt av» utgangen til minst tre slike stier. Planene som foreligger for videre «utvikling» av området - flere hundre boliger og et hotell med 200 rom - vil fullføre den totale raseringen.

Jeg kunne utdypet mye rundt galskapen i prosjektet vedr. Hovdetoppen / Hovdeskogen. Jeg vet ikke om de folkevalgte fysisk har beveget seg i området som nå står i fare for å bli totalt endret og virkelig satt seg inn i konsekvensene og verdiene som byen vil miste hvis dette prosjektet blir realisert. Undertegnede inviterer herved formannskapet til en tur «På gjengrodde stier» og ikke så gjengrodde stier. Ta bare kontakt!

- Byavvikling

Det er narsopatene som tar over verden nå. Det er de som hogg ned Hovdetoppen, hvor denne skal være narsissismens nye kultsted, lik tempelhøyden i Jerusalem. Og dette midt i Prøysens rike. Da finnes intet håp!

Relatert

Tree Too for Hovdetoppen!

Siste kapittel i Gjøviks byhistorie

Hovdetoppens fall

Ta människors upplevelser av sin livsmiljö på allvar

Hans Børli: Hold sinnet ditt mjukt

Broderfolk i krig

Igjen er det krig mellom israelere og palestinere. Men når noen snakker om rasistiske overgrep fra jødenes side er de fullstendig på viddene. Jøder og palestinere er broderfolk, genetisk ligger de like nært hverandre som nordmenn og dansker. Utvilsomt flyter det mye jødisk blod i palestinernes årer, kanskje er palestinerne til og med mer rendyrkede jøder enn israelerne selv, genetisk sett?

Palestinsk kvinne og hennes datter. Kanskje er de bedre genetiske representanter for urjøden enn dagens israelere?

"Many Palestinians and Jews are actually genetically related. Of course not all of them, but many are related as modern Palestinians are a mixture of ancient Israelis, Greco-Roman and Arab colonisers." - Ali kazmi

Så vi har her å gjøre med en kulturkrig og en kamp om begrensede ressurser på et lite landområde, som stort sett er ørken. Men tenk om disse to broderfolkene kunne funnet ut av det med hverandre, kanskje til og med i en felles stat.

Jøder og palestinere er av de genetisk mest like folkeslagene i hele Midtøsten, vi har å gjøre med to broderfolk. Illustrasjonen er fra boka Det biologiske mennesket, s. 234

- Hvorfor er det så vanskelig for israelere og palestinere å dele landet?

Så følger et utdrag fra John Michael Greer, hvor han ser på Israels muligheter for overlevelse i et historisk persepktiv. Teksten er hentet fra essayet "In the Twilight of Empires":

To explain that answer, I’d like to tell a story.  Once upon a time—isn’t that how stories are supposed to begin?—there was a group of people who believed that their god had promised them a particular corner of the Middle East, and decided to take him up on the offer. It so happened that conditions just then were propitious for their project.  The cultural politics of the major Western powers of the time favored it, and not merely in an abstract sense:  money and weapons could be had for the attempt, and a great deal more could be made available if the project succeeded in establishing a foothold.

Even more crucial was the state of the Middle East at that time.  The history of that region has a regular rhythm of systole and diastole that can be traced back very nearly to the earliest clay-tablet records: periods of centralization, in which a single major Middle Eastern power dominates as large a fraction of the world as the current transport technology will allow, alternate with periods of disintegration, in which the region fragments and turns into a chessboard on which powers from outside the region play their own power games.  At the time we’re discussing, the Middle East was in one of its diastole phases, fractured into small quarrelling states, and the sudden seizure of a strategically important part of the region drew only a local and ineffective response.

So a new state came into being, surrounded by hostile neighbors, and a great deal of the shrill self-justifying rhetoric already described came from both sides of the new frontiers. Several of the major Western powers supported the new state with significant financial and military aid; of at least equal importance, members of the religious community responsible for creating the new state, who remained back in those same Western nations, engaged in vigorous fundraising efforts to support the new state, and equally vigorous political efforts to get existing governmental support maintained or increased. The resources thus made available to the new state gave it a substantial military edge against its hostile neighbors, and its existence became enough of a fait accompli that some of its neighbors backed away from a wholly confrontational stance.

Still, the state’s survival depended on three things. The first, and by far the most crucial, was the ongoing flow of support from the Western powers to pay for a military establishment far larger than the economic and natural resources of the territory in question would permit. The second was the continued fragmentation and relative weakness of the surrounding states. The third was the maintenance of internal peace within the state and of collective assent to a clear sense of priorities, so that it could respond with its full force to threats from outside instead of squandering its limited resources on civil strife or popular projects that contributed nothing to its survival.

In the long run, none of these three conditions could be met indefinitely. Shifts in cultural politics and, more importantly, in the economic stability of the Western powers of the time turned the large subsidies supporting the state into a political liability that eventually lost out in the struggle for available wealth. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the power struggles between competing statelets began to give way to a new era of centralization. Finally, the internal cohesion of the state broke down in power struggles between different factions, and too many resources had been committed to politically necessary but practically useless projects such as the support of large religious communities that did nothing but pray and study the scriptures. The arrogant certainty that the state could always overcome its enemies and that the Western powers owed it the subsidies that paid for its survival put bitter icing on an already overbaked cake, and all but guaranteed the final disaster.

Relatert lesning:

• My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, by Ari Shavit

Village Towns for the Norwegian Countryside

Henry Ford was a farmer's son and he wanted the car to be a tool for farmers. Surely, for the farmers the car was a blessing. The problem arose when the farm market was saturated, how to keep the assembly lines moving? Unfortunately, the solution was to move city people out into the farmland, away from their dirty and noisy cities, to make them dependent upon the car industry for every aspect of life.

Published at the P2P-Foundation blog on September 17, 2016.

Gamla stan in Stockholm is the closest you come to a VillageTown in Scandinavia.

One way out of this quandary would be to substitute the word “activity” for “growth.” A society of human beings can choose different activities that would produce different effects than the techno-industrial model of behavior. They can organize ten-acre farms instead of cell phone game app companies. They can do physical labor instead of watching television. They can build compact walkable towns instead of suburban wastelands (probably even out of the salvaged detritus of those wastelands). They can put on plays, concerts, sing-alongs, and puppet shows instead of Super Bowl halftime shows and Internet porn videos. They can make things of quality by hand instead of stamping out a million things guaranteed to fall apart next week. None of these alt-activities would be classifiable as “growth” in the current mode. In fact, they are consistent with the reality of contraction. And they could produce a workable and satisfying living arrangement. - James Howard Kunstler

The man who invented Public Relations (PR), Edward Bernays, was hired by General Motors for their pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. He was an Ashkenazi Jew from German speaking Europe, where the Bauhaus movement had significant influence, together with Le Corbusier. Just four years earlier Corbusier had made his prophecy, and now Bernays saw an opportunity to fulfill it:

The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work … enough for all. – Le Corbusier, 1935

Ever after this has been the ideal for people around the world, making the car industry the mightiest of industries, reshaping our planet in the image of the car. This ideal was what killed the beautiful Norwegian countryside, the Norwegian culture, my family's farm, my purpose of life and the future of my daughter!

Across the rural northeast, where I live, the countryside is littered with new houses. It was good farmland until recently. On every country road, every unpaved lane, every former cowpath, stand new houses, and each one is somebody’s version of the American Dream. Most are simple raised ranches based on tried-and-true formulas – plans conceived originally in the 1950s, not rethought since then, and sold ten thousand times over.

These housing “products” represent a triumph of mass merchandising over regional building traditions, of salesmanship over civilization. You can be sure the same houses have been built along a highway strip outside Fresno, California, as at the edge of a swamp in Pahokee, Florida, and on the blizzard-blown fringes of St. Cloud, Minnesota. They might be anywhere. The places they stand are just different versions of nowhere, because these houses exist in no specific relation to anything except the road and the power cable. Electric lighting has reduced the windows to lame gestures. Tradition comes prepackaged as screw-on aluminium shutters, vinyl clapboards, perhaps a phony cupola on the roof ridge, or a plastic pediment over the door – tribute, in sad vestiges, to a lost past from which nearly all connections have been severed. There they sit on their one- or two- or half-acre parcels of land – the scruffy lawns littered with the jetsam of a consumerist religion (broken tricycles, junk cars, torn plastic wading pools) – these dwellings of a proud and sovereign people. If the ordinary house of our time seems like a joke, remember that it expresses the spirit of our age. The question, then, is: what kind of joke represents the spirit of our age? And the answer is: a joke on ourselves. – James Howard Kunstler, “The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's (and Norway's) Man-Made Landscape”, page 166

The car industry made us addicted to cars just like the tobacco industry made us addicted to nicotine. No wonder, as both these industries hired Edward Bernays to fulfil their goals. The car industry has done to the countryside what tobacco has done to our lungs, it has become a filthy place where you cannot breath. My family's farm has become suffocated by the suburban dream, making it a wasteland where no rural life can thrive. This place was meant to be a carrier of culture and identity, a guarantor for a living landscape, now all lost to a sub-exurban nightmare!

In America, with its superabundance of cheap land, simple property laws, social mobility, mania for profit, zest for practical invention, and Bible-drunk sense of history, the yearning to escape industrialism expressed itself as a renewed search for Eden. America reinvented that paradise, described so briefly and vaguely in the book of genesis, called it Suburbia, and put it for sale. – James Howard Kunstler, “The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's (and Norway's) Man-Made Landscape”, page 37

Suburban houses are not homes, they are bunkers, and for anybody to survive in them they are depended upon a heavy infrastructure destroying the landscape.

It's a figure that ought to send chills up the spine of a reflective person because these housing starts do not represent newly minted towns, or anything describable as real or coherent communities. Rather, they represent monoculture tract developments of cookie cut bunkers on half acre lots in far-flung suburbs, or else houses plopped down in isolation along country roads in what had been cornfields, pastures, or woods. In any case, one can rest assured that they will only add to the problems of our present economy and the American (Norwegian) civilization. They will relate poorly to other things around them, they will eat up more countryside, and they will increase the public fiscal burden. – James Howard Kunstler, “The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's (and Norway's) Man-Made Landscape”, page 147

These days the suburban burden of my family's farm is taking on weight again, digging tons of plastic deep into the ground and putting a rather large pump house where the barn used to be. All in service for the subexurbanites and their miserable, pointless lives!

This cannot go on anymore! The cars should be reserved for farmers, as originally was the intention of Henry Ford. Let the countryside be rural for rural people, and the towns to be urban for urban people. Suburbanites, exurbanites and subexurbanites, go home to where you belong, in town!

Of course, we cannot store these poor people in vertical suburbs, as was the idea of Le Corbusier. We must give them real urbanism, we must give them Village Towns!

Let's face it, Plan A (automobile-based suburban sprawl) is not working anymore. We need a Plan B.

We call it VillageTown.

Read more:

7g.nz

Sighisoara, one of few walled towns still inhabited, but with cars:-/

"Nobody should have to own a car, just to participate in society." - Not Just Bikes

Poor my wife living in Øverskreien! This is extreme subexurbania, worse than Houston! No rural culture left, and no urban culture left at Skreia!

"Living in the city you have all the convenience and none of the space, living in the country, you have all of the space and none of the convenience. In the suburbs, you get neither." - Cap'n Snackbeard

Here at our ancestors ancient farm, the mill meadow Grythengen, we have neither convenience or space anymore, it's all destroyed, made into a disgusted technical cabinet, to support the disgusted lives of the subexurbanites surrounding our farm. And with this the stony river Grýta ceased to be a cultural river, and the Western Christian Civilization collapsed.

Only anomic, oikofobic zombies and the Lake Mjøsa Barbarians inhabit this glorious landscape of our brave forefathers now!!!!!

Totscana is now a placeless anti-place:-/

"I remember when in my hometown (tiny little place, about a thousand people), they tore down a historical (and I mean over one hundred years old) building that used to be a drug store and ice cream parlor, and replaced it with a gas station ...when we already had a failing gas station just down the road that they could have bought and redone. We aren't even near a damn interstate! 

Instead of allowing that century-old building to continue to exist and remain a testament to the town's history, it was instead destroyed and replaced by the most humiliating monument to American modernization that I've ever seen. As far as I know, only a brick remains from that building and I keep it in my room for keepsake. Shit sucks, man." - mrjtg12

Instead of allowing our century-old mill meadow Grythengen to continue to exist and remain a testament to our hamlets' and river's history, it was instead destroyed and replaced by some of the most humiliating monuments to American modernization that I've ever seen.

Related:

• Village towns
• Wendell Berry And The New Urbanism: Agrarian Remedies, Urban Prospects
• A Pattern Language Conference in the Sustainable Valley of Hurdal in 2017?
• Nathan Lewis: People Who are Not Directly Involved in Agriculture Should Live in Urban Places
• Why the American way of life is negotiable: the coming transport revolution
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