<nettime> There is no third world, ergo no 3rd world city/cities

["Jamil Brownson" <jambroman@gmail.com>]

metropolis, urbanity, city, irrespective of language/terminology, the last resort
of the non/overly analytical mind ... get it straight, #rd world was a 1950's
construct for non-aligned newly independent former colonial territories, emerging
into state systems independent from the colonial powers who constructed their
political boundaries, hence their territorial identities ,,,, which keeps us in
permanant wars over boundaries that divide nations and lump together historically
hostile antagonists ...

as no socialist block of states remains, perhaps no socialist states remain
either, there goes the 2nd world, hence any need for 3rd world as a term, and if
you follow hardt & negri we are all part of Empire, something like morpheus'
description of the matrix ...

geographers once fouled the nest with courses on 3rd world cities, and some
buttered t heir bread quite nicely publishing & lecturing on the topic as it
melted under their feet, or to use the rubric, "all that's solid melts into air"

having written and lectured extensively on why there is not, nor ever was such a
beast as a 3rd world city, other than an artificial academic construct carrying
its own essentialist baggage, i won't reinvent wheels here ... carving them out of
stone like some postmod fred flintstone is just too boringly labourious ....

cut to the quick without naming names ... there is another hype that emerged and
has risen into prominance based on shoddy field work, (windshield surveys?) in
istanbul ... painting a black-white picuture of elite gated communities next to
flavelas (gecicondu) ...ok, a few points touch out of 1= 6 million points ...
(unofficial pop of istanbul) but for teh vastmajroity of istanbuli, like i was for
some years, live in mid-high rise cement towers ... ubiquitous lower middle class
blocks, as anonymous as any soviet block blocks .. packed into cites (pronounced
seetees) & aside from size of apartments or quality of building materials and
construction, no different from the uppr middle classes living in much more
expensive versions of the same thing .. property axiom, location, location,
location ... matters in terms of status & cost ...

so, don't mix apples w/ oranges either inside of the fruit basket (istanbul, for
example) or writ large as an essentialist 3rd world city ...

modern urban is just that & unless you live in a $ million san francisco
victorian, we all live in cement ... some with more steel & glass than others ...
but homeless are just that whether in sanfranciso or lagos, squatters or slum
dwellers ... so too, villages are just that unless gentrified, & stepping in shit
is a daily reality, albeit more odiferous that the same shit in the city which
tends to be psychological ...


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