Exit Does Not Exist
Another aspect to the installation was the idea of people and places which don't officially exist. As Jason explained, real estate prices may be really high right immediately next to the freeway (for stores, I guess... who wants to live right next to a freeway, what with the lights and noise and everything?), but at the freeway itself - on or under the freeway, it falls to zero. A gap, a lacuna in the graph. The hobos who live there likewise are not officially counted on the census... maybe they don't pay taxes, maybe they don't receive welfare or social security. I'm not really sure how all this works.
In these places, these no man's land places, under the freeways, the world is upside down. Thus, the shopping carts.
One thing I did quite like about the carts - though at first glance they seemed superfluous, or, that is to say, extra and separate, with separate themes and ideas from the rest of the installation, once it was explained, they actually really kind of work. It all goes back to suburbanization, and the way our lives are centered around transportation.
In the cities, you don't need huge shopping carts. You can't even fit huge shopping carts down the aisles in your tiny Midtown Manhattan grocery, and even if you could, do you have an SUV you're going to load up with all those groceries? Where is your SUV parked? Where are you going to store so many groceries in your tiny Midtown Manhattan studio apartment?
No. Cities are organized around the scale of people - not around the scale of trucks and SUVs. We have sidewalks, not freeways, and little shopping baskets to buy just enough to last a few days, or a week, just enough to be able to carry back home, by foot, or by subway.
This is where suburbanization comes in. The expansion of the size of the spaces we live in leads to a more impersonal lifestyle. We cut ourselves off from human interaction, spending so much time in our cars, where we interact less, are less connected, than the pedestrians walking on the sidewalks, even if they're not actively interacting. We put up barriers around ourselves, and devote sooo much space to parking and to driving, less and less space to human space - to living space.
And it goes on....
Exit Does Not Exist
Another aspect to the installation was the idea of people and places which don't officially exist. As Jason explained, real estate prices may be really high right immediately next to the freeway (for stores, I guess... who wants to live right next to a freeway, what with the lights and noise and everything?), but at the freeway itself - on or under the freeway, it falls to zero. A gap, a lacuna in the graph. The hobos who live there likewise are not officially counted on the census... maybe they don't pay taxes, maybe they don't receive welfare or social security. I'm not really sure how all this works.
In these places, these no man's land places, under the freeways, the world is upside down. Thus, the shopping carts.
One thing I did quite like about the carts - though at first glance they seemed superfluous, or, that is to say, extra and separate, with separate themes and ideas from the rest of the installation, once it was explained, they actually really kind of work. It all goes back to suburbanization, and the way our lives are centered around transportation.
In the cities, you don't need huge shopping carts. You can't even fit huge shopping carts down the aisles in your tiny Midtown Manhattan grocery, and even if you could, do you have an SUV you're going to load up with all those groceries? Where is your SUV parked? Where are you going to store so many groceries in your tiny Midtown Manhattan studio apartment?
No. Cities are organized around the scale of people - not around the scale of trucks and SUVs. We have sidewalks, not freeways, and little shopping baskets to buy just enough to last a few days, or a week, just enough to be able to carry back home, by foot, or by subway.
This is where suburbanization comes in. The expansion of the size of the spaces we live in leads to a more impersonal lifestyle. We cut ourselves off from human interaction, spending so much time in our cars, where we interact less, are less connected, than the pedestrians walking on the sidewalks, even if they're not actively interacting. We put up barriers around ourselves, and devote sooo much space to parking and to driving, less and less space to human space - to living space.
And it goes on....