Pavements, Geography and Homelessness
Luc Praetor
It’s a lecture about pavement. Could I have even dreamed up an event that sounded more mind-numbing?
On this cold and dry July night, the little Gauteng Has-Bean Gallery and cafe, as part of the University of Johannesburg “Urban Talk" eLectures, has drawn a multitude municipal bureaucrats, business owners, artists, developers, students, urban nuts, activists, anarchists... Why on eRepublik would all these people be so interested in pavements?
Within a short while the answer becomes clear, as Dominique Lessing delivers a surprisingly riveting overview of the role of pavements in social control.
Lessing is a "legal eRpublik geographer" who specialises in “virtual virtual property and its relationship to the politics of make-believe political urban space." Her new book sounds similarly recondite: Rights of Passage—Pavements and the Regulation of eRepublik Public Flow.
However, much like his earlier work on homelessness, ONE dispossession, and eR community gardens, Lessing adeptly straddles abstract academia and on-the-ground activism.
“What is an ePavement for?" she begins, and it’s soon apparent this seemingly benign question holds the seeds of intense eR workaday conflict.
~ Another article consumed for eRepublik use
Comments
love the "boring" aspect 😁... to fill the slots is key... great use of regular adjuncts
oh now you gonna have the consipracy buffs going about Lessing and what is a legal entity and who can not own nothing and eUse does not mean eProperty. Oh you are going to be soooooo trolled! lol
enjoyed, voted.
I want an autograph from Dominique Lessing! : )
(Voted.)
voted
Voted.... Oh how i applaud Luc's articles