In Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 plan of Rome, the outlines of buildings are hatched in order to highlight the planar density of the city. While these hatched boundaries represent spatial adjacencies, they are also a record of social proximity. While the erection of one building next to another necessarily results in a spatial conversation, it also results in the social contract that is being a neighbor. And just as there are good and bad spatial compositions, there are also good and bad neighbors.

By international standards, and as evidenced by its Nolli plan, the inner city Toronto neighborhood of Cabbagetown, where I grew up, is relatively sparse. Existing at an urban edge, next to a winding river valley and interspersed with parks, the houses while in close proximity often maintain spatial independence. This spatial estrangement is reconciled in part by a harsh winter climate, and the legal requirement for homeowners to remove snow and leaves from the sidewalks adjacent to their homes, which in ideal circumstances results in cooperation across boundaries.

This, sadly, is not always the norm. After any large snowfall, our family would don our heaviest winter gear, arm ourselves with shovels, and plow a path connecting the sidewalks in front of our house with those of our neighbors, expecting that the favor would some day be returned. Our neighbor, returning home one evening after a particularly brutal blizzard while we were still in the process of clearing her sidewalk, squeezed past us and paused at the top of her front stoop only long enough to mutter “I owe you an apple pie”, before slamming the door in our faces. Needless to say, we never received the apple pie, nor did she ever express any further words of gratitude, but to this day we continue to clear her walk, making sure to maintain at least our end of the social contract.

“Here comes the story of a Hurricane…”

-Bob Dylan, “Hurricane”

I have had a lot of neighbors in my time. When I was born, my family lived next door to a kind-hearted, sometimes drag queen, who would visit our place regularly (dressed as a “man”) bringing me gifts. My mother, a sheltered newcomer to the West, would peer into his apartment through the glass panes of the front door, amazed to see sequined dresses strewn across the floor. Subsequently, we lived next to a very friendly, tall lady who scared me one Sunday when after a nice brunch together, she slipped away from the table, re-emerging in the garden dressed like the Easter Bunny. I was forced to to endure a terrifying ride in the backseat of my parents’ car, with said out-scaled rabbit, which delivered us to an egg hunt at my pre-school. With another change of residence, came a lovely elderly couple who, most significantly, debunked a popular South Asian myth which dictates that one must eat rice for dinner. They also quashed the notion that married people slept in the same bed, opting instead for two twin beds separated by a side table à la Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Following an international move, came a long string of suburban neighbors that I would classify as mostly unremarkable. Upon moving to the city, for a time, I lived next door to a well-known concert pianist whom I recognized from his regular appearances on television. His home had a sophisticated modernist-inspired interior that could not contain his music, which was forever spilling out onto the street.

The most famous, however, and not to mention the most uniquely stylish, of all my neighbors was Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. His clothes, his car, the objects in his world, were all so well chosen. His house, a beautiful old dwelling… more

E. Sean Bailey

Erandi de Silva

2011 has been a year of global unrest; Civil war in Libya, revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, riots in the UK and protests on Wall Street. While the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt played out in the major civic squares of Sana’a and Cairo, in America and the UK there has been no logical point of focus for protests, as the source of outrage has been difficult to pin down (while the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan initiated the London riots, the madness that ensued reflected a more systemic social malaise). This lack of appropriate symbolic geographies has left protesters in these cities to wander. Rioters in London descended on local high streets, cannibalistically looting their own communities. In New York, “Occupy Wall Street” protesters have spun a web around the city, tracing the infrastructure of streets and subways to symbolically disparate points, including corporate skyscrapers in Jersey City, the civic plaza of City Hall, the federal courthouses of Foley Square, the consumer hub that is Union Square and the academic front lawn of Washington Square Park. They have even attempted to cross the Brooklyn Bridge into the ideologically neutral outer boroughs.

The one place the protestors cannot seem to be found is Wall Street (Zuccotti Park is located a couple of blocks to the North). On a recent lunchtime visit, the street was abandoned except for rows of temporary metal barriers lining each side and a handful of police officers… more

Wall Street, as part of the urban grid, has divisive origins. Its name, derived from the Dutch “Waalstraat”, is believed to be a reference to an earthen wall bounding the northern edge of the original New Amsterdam settlement. It is presumed to have been erected in order to limit access to the English colonizers and Native Americans. Nowadays, the site has expanded beyond being simply a street into an embodiment of the idea of American finance, extending into numerous realms, including that of lifestyle.

In Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street, the materialistic influence of this site manifests itself in an apartment on the Upper East Side as the impressionable stock broker Buddy Fox (played by a young Charlie Sheen) steps closer towards emulating the gaudy postmodern style of his mentor Gordan Gekko (Michael Douglas). Guided by his aspirational designer girlfriend (Daryl Hannah) faux marble walls, trompe l’oeil scenery, fake brickwork and an excessive use of gold and silver leaf line his million dollar apartment. As a misguided indicator of “success” that separates Fox from his blue collar roots, his ostentatious private dwelling is a critical accoutrement, necessary for establishing his identity as an up-and-comer in the business. While Wall Street once sought to keep out invaders, its influence has begun to infiltrate the spaces around it, like the urban grid which seemingly expands in every direction, for better or for worse, Wall Street’s reach is limitless.

E. Sean Bailey

Erandi de Silva