urban cartography: The Nine Nations of North America

JLT's post on 'Gated New Urbanist' communities got me to thinking about post modern city building. I looked up the diagram from Dear and Flusty's Postmodern Urbanism. Dr. Thomas Ott uploaded the image for a lecture he put online.

Planetizen linked an article about crime in Los Angeles and critical areas where crime has reached an insane intensity.

L.A.'s hot zones are tiny, intensely dangerous areas where nothing works, where law has broken down and mainstream institutions simply fail. Places where mail carriers and meter readers balk when the bullets fly. Where paramedics and firefighters are hesitant to enter because of the crossfire. Where police officers go in only heavily reinforced or with helicopters; in the LAPD's South Bureau there was an 80% increase in sniper fire on police in 2004, according to a report by LAPD Chief William Bratton.

This serves as an unfortunate example of street warfare in Dear and Flusty's diagram of postmodernism. Edge cities are another characteristic of this new paradigm. While I am familiar with Garreau's book I have not read it yet. Wired has an interesting 1995 piece by Garreau titled Edgier Cities. He profiles three prototypes of changes for edge cities: a K-mart-to-Condos conversion, a defunct mall turns into a university then to a mosque, and the troubles facing the future of Irvine.

Looking deeper into Garreau's body of work I discovered The Nine Nations of North America. This tears apart the arbitrary geographical boundaries of identical states undifferentiated by any meaningful standards. In his own words:

"Consider, instead, the way North America really works. It is Nine Nations. Each with its capital and distinctive web of power and influence.... These nations look different, feel different, and sound different from each other, and few of their boundaries match the political lines drawn on current maps....