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Are gated communities really safe? Is the Pritzker Prize worth the fuss?
The Zimmerman trial and the Pritzker Prize
Dan Rottenberg
Catching up on two news stories:
Two questions about the George Zimmerman murder case, now in the trial stage:
1.Zimmerman admits that he fatally shot the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin but claims he did so in self-defense. Zimmerman is often described as the coordinator of his local volunteer neighborhood watch program in Sanford, Florida. But since when do neighborhood watch volunteers carry guns?
When I walked a Town Watch route in Center City Philadelphia some 20 years ago, we volunteers were specifically instructed not to carry guns or any other weapon. We were to function as the "eyes and ears" of the police, reporting any suspicious activity to the local precinct via walkie-talkie and, later, cell phone. We were not to engage suspicious characters in any way— that was to be left to the professionals. Even eye contact was discouraged.
Of course our mere presence exerted a powerful deterrent to drug dealers and prostitutes, who, upon seeing our light-blue T-shirts, caps and whistles, took the path of least resistance and headed elsewhere. This is the theory of "Quaker witness," whereby you influence other people's behavior simply by observing them. What is the theory in Zimmerman's neighborhood?
The "'gated community' fallacy
2. The housing complex where the fatal shooting took place is routinely described as a "gated community." My question: Why is a neighborhood watch program— not to mention guns— necessary in a gated community? Isn't the whole point of a gated community to make entrance so difficult that, once inside, everyone can relax and stop worrying?
I think I know the answer to this question: Gated communities don't really make their residents feel more secure. On the contrary, they enhance everyone's paranoia, because you never can know what anger may be building up among the excluded folks beyond the gate. That anger may be nonexistent, but how can you be sure when you're cowering behind your gate, with only your imagination to inform you as to what's happening on the other side?
Ask anyone who lives along the border between, say, India and Pakistan, or Israel and Palestine: Good fences don't make good neighbors. If further proof were needed, the Zimmerman case provides it.
* * *
Sexism and the Pritzker Prize
As architects, Robert Venturi and his wife/partner Denise Scott Brown did everything together. But he alone received the esteemed Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 1991. This year, as Patrick Hazard recounted in BSR, a petition from Harvard Design School architects urged the Pritzker Prize committee to elevate Scott-Brown to equal status with her husband. (For Patrick's account, click here.)
Recently the Pritzker Committee formally declined to grant the petitioners' request. Lord Peter Palumbo, the committee's chair, explained that Pritzker juries change each year, so the current jury couldn't change the judgment of its prior peers. "That said," Palumbo added, "we should like to thank you for calling directly to our attention a more general problem of underplaying a woman's role in the creative process. Where this occurs, we must, and we do, take such matters into account."
Sally Field's rejoinder
Well, yes. But I would fault both sides for taking the Pritzker Prize too seriously.
All prizes ultimately are popularity polls or publicity gimmicks. Anyone capable of filling out an award application will win one sooner or later. But winning a Pritzker or a Pulitzer or gaining admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame doesn't make you a better architect, journalist or ballplayer; it's just a recognition that a group of fallible human beings think well of you. As Sally Field exclaimed upon winning the Academy Award for Best Actress: "You like me!"
Yes, the Pritzker Prize is worth $100,000. But Venturi and Scott-Brown have already received that money. So the Pritzker Prize, at least so far, is not so much a tribute to great architects as a reflection on the profession's sexism and the Pritzker's archaic notions about how architects work. Is the approval of such an organization really a feather in an architect's hat?♦
To read responses, click here.
Two questions about the George Zimmerman murder case, now in the trial stage:
1.Zimmerman admits that he fatally shot the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin but claims he did so in self-defense. Zimmerman is often described as the coordinator of his local volunteer neighborhood watch program in Sanford, Florida. But since when do neighborhood watch volunteers carry guns?
When I walked a Town Watch route in Center City Philadelphia some 20 years ago, we volunteers were specifically instructed not to carry guns or any other weapon. We were to function as the "eyes and ears" of the police, reporting any suspicious activity to the local precinct via walkie-talkie and, later, cell phone. We were not to engage suspicious characters in any way— that was to be left to the professionals. Even eye contact was discouraged.
Of course our mere presence exerted a powerful deterrent to drug dealers and prostitutes, who, upon seeing our light-blue T-shirts, caps and whistles, took the path of least resistance and headed elsewhere. This is the theory of "Quaker witness," whereby you influence other people's behavior simply by observing them. What is the theory in Zimmerman's neighborhood?
The "'gated community' fallacy
2. The housing complex where the fatal shooting took place is routinely described as a "gated community." My question: Why is a neighborhood watch program— not to mention guns— necessary in a gated community? Isn't the whole point of a gated community to make entrance so difficult that, once inside, everyone can relax and stop worrying?
I think I know the answer to this question: Gated communities don't really make their residents feel more secure. On the contrary, they enhance everyone's paranoia, because you never can know what anger may be building up among the excluded folks beyond the gate. That anger may be nonexistent, but how can you be sure when you're cowering behind your gate, with only your imagination to inform you as to what's happening on the other side?
Ask anyone who lives along the border between, say, India and Pakistan, or Israel and Palestine: Good fences don't make good neighbors. If further proof were needed, the Zimmerman case provides it.
* * *
Sexism and the Pritzker Prize
As architects, Robert Venturi and his wife/partner Denise Scott Brown did everything together. But he alone received the esteemed Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 1991. This year, as Patrick Hazard recounted in BSR, a petition from Harvard Design School architects urged the Pritzker Prize committee to elevate Scott-Brown to equal status with her husband. (For Patrick's account, click here.)
Recently the Pritzker Committee formally declined to grant the petitioners' request. Lord Peter Palumbo, the committee's chair, explained that Pritzker juries change each year, so the current jury couldn't change the judgment of its prior peers. "That said," Palumbo added, "we should like to thank you for calling directly to our attention a more general problem of underplaying a woman's role in the creative process. Where this occurs, we must, and we do, take such matters into account."
Sally Field's rejoinder
Well, yes. But I would fault both sides for taking the Pritzker Prize too seriously.
All prizes ultimately are popularity polls or publicity gimmicks. Anyone capable of filling out an award application will win one sooner or later. But winning a Pritzker or a Pulitzer or gaining admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame doesn't make you a better architect, journalist or ballplayer; it's just a recognition that a group of fallible human beings think well of you. As Sally Field exclaimed upon winning the Academy Award for Best Actress: "You like me!"
Yes, the Pritzker Prize is worth $100,000. But Venturi and Scott-Brown have already received that money. So the Pritzker Prize, at least so far, is not so much a tribute to great architects as a reflection on the profession's sexism and the Pritzker's archaic notions about how architects work. Is the approval of such an organization really a feather in an architect's hat?♦
To read responses, click here.
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