Jim and Chicken’s discussion of a borg2 (although when I last checked, their Web site was down) really points to the fundamental issue facing Burning Man. No, it’s not art or the lack thereof. It’s size--as many people have pointed out here and elsewhere well before me. But the borg part-deaux concept of a city within a city, has extraordinary merit if you put aside the showmanship and silliness of “the bet.” But I am all for an autonomous zone. (Wow, III! Good to see you.)
At 35,000+ people Burning Man’s population has outgrown its ability to function as a satisfying cultural setting. Here I need to stop and give credit to “The Pattern Language” by Christopher Alexander, et. al. [Memo to Larry: You need to pull your copy down off the shelf and re-read it. Now.] In the authors’ ideal expression of the city, subculture boundaries are essential. Burning Man would fit their definition of a “heterogeneous” city, which “seems rich,” but actually “dampens all significant variety.”
More preferable, is a “mosaic of subcultures,” each with readily identifiable boundaries—this is what the Burning Man villages would be if they were not gobbled up in the chaos of the BRC streets. In the early days, before the officially approved grid, Burning Man camps tended toward this more organic form, I am told; the grid was in place when I first rolled in in 1997.
- <I>The Mosaic of Subcultures
In a city made of large number of subcultures relatively small in size, each occupying an identifiable place and separated from other subcultures by a boundary of nonresidential land, new ways of life can develop. People can choose the kind of sub-culture they wish to live in, and can experience many ways of life different from their own. Since each environment fosters mutual support and a strong sense of shared values, individuals can grow.</I>
Importantly, the authors identify a population of 7,000 as the <u>maximum</u> size of a residential subculture. While this figure is described in terms of local governance, they point out that Sophocles wrote that life would be unbearable were it not for the freedom to initiate action in a small community.
Preserving the “magic of the city” is a monumental task, and it takes more than assuring the continued placement of mind-blowing art. Urban sprawl takes away the joy of a city except for those lucky enough to live close to the cultural centers, read, center camp, the esplanade, some of the keyhole villages. The problem “can only be solved by decentralizing the core to form a multitude of smaller cores, each devoted to some special way of life, so that, even though decentralized, each one is still intense and still a center for the region as a whole.”
Possible implications:
Some of the existing villages become the core of new residential subcultures; newcomers--and veterans who may want to camp somewhere new--are able to find space around the several cores, unlike what happens in the current model where late-week arrivals end up farther and farther out in the undifferentiated suburbs.
Space for art and common land are laid out as “fingers” between different parts of Black Rock City.
As Chicken put it in another context, reinvigorating Black City by adjusting its settlement patterns would help put more woo-hoo in its hoo-hah. Art cannot do it alone.
In good faith,
BHA
please don't flame me, I am trying to help
