The Future of Public Art in Five Phases – Next City

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the-future-of-public-art-in-five-phases

One notable feature of the post-2008 world was that economic austerity policies, once sadistically directed at Third World countries as part of their debt crises, came to be applied to the economies of the debt-ridden First World itself. It may be worth noting, then, that cultivating local tourist attractions, packaging local traditions, and selling handicrafts has long been the preferred development advice for Third World countries that lack industries competitive with more sophisticated foreign rivals.

If economic growth continues to be captured by the wealthiest layer of society, then the cities or regions that will continue to grow will be the ones that manage to transform themselves to cater to this layer. Yet because the spoils of this economy are so unevenly shared, and concentrated in a minority, growth must almost by definition be uneven and experienced by a minority of locations. It cannot be that metropolitan hubs like New York will suck up larger quantities of this attention at the same time that second- and third-tier cities all simultaneously transform themselves into vital sites of cultural tourism.

Architects Ask: Where Are the Spaces for Teen Girls? – Next City

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/architects-ask-where-are-the-spaces-for-teen-girls

The firm asked the girls to create scale models to represent a public space for girls. “The place chosen was a location that the girls knew very well, yet very seldom used,” the firm writes. The girls came up with places with “strong character concerning colour and form, places for sitting together face to face, protected from weather and wind, to see without necessary be seen, a sense of intimacy without being constrictive; and most of all, to be able to leave an imprint on their city.”

Review: The Authoritarian Populism of “Incredibles 2”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/review-the-authoritarian-populism-of-incredibles-2/amp

Finally someone else who finds Pixar movies disturbing.

“Incredibles 2” invokes a political world in nonpolitical ways; it’s a vision of apolitical, quasi-unanimously acclaimed virtues that are assured by the supreme powers of innate and doubt-free strongmen and strongwomen who intervene only in emergencies. It’s a nostalgic vision of total power of a local minimum that echoes sickeningly with the nostalgic pathologies of the current day, nowhere more than in Win’s enthusiastic declaration of his plan to “make superheroes legal again.” In such moments, “Incredibles 2” stakes an unintended claim to being the most terrifying movie of the season.