not exactly anything

"l'îlot sans être le terrain d'une pratique spécifique qui s'identifierait à lui, entre dans un ensemble plus vaste, sans rupture, où se devéloppe las vie sociale et dont la propriété principale est d'étre urbain"

…an interest in things which isn't invasive is an ordinary way to carry on: the peephole through the building site hoarding. Making a difference - destruction dressed up as passion - is to be avoided .

unleadable

"…one essential thing (about the nation state) is that there is a direct link between government and the bottom (the citizen at the bottom) which never existed in the past old empires or pre-national states. The state only reached down that far down: down below it was left to all manner of networks and hierarchies…"

It's easy to say that reform is necessary but indifference, rather than opposition, to it, is not often discussed. The industrial city was the precursor of the modern state. The reforms which its discontents engendered have led to an all-inclusive understanding of modern society - everyman under the sun of the state. From this emerges a politics that agitates in different ways for a fully mobilised society. Right now, the commonplaces in aid of full mobilisation are about global competition.

Architecture supports a kind of indifference to whatever the current political campaign of mobilisation might be. It refers to something outside, the part of us which is unleadable and couldn't give a fig for all the talk of the global challenge.