Lost Lots First Report Draft

“To explore how physical space is necessary to allow for political struggle and without it is no place for struggle. Public space is not only as Lefebvre, would have it, a representation of space - space designed by planners and engineers, and ordered for consumption. Nor is it merely a representational of space - space of every life, save, made and remade through ordinary, often mundane spatial practice.”
Don Mitchell “The Right to the City” 

Area of Investigation

“Be sure to settle the figure of the town so as the streets hereafter may be uniform down to the water from the country bounds... This may be ordered when I come, only let the house built be in a line, or upon a line, as much as may be...”
William Penn circa 1682 [in his use of the grid as the typical organization for Philadelphia parcels] 

Area of Encasement

Ariel and Street View

Different boundaries have been defined by several agencies and many residents would not necessarily place themselves in Fairhill, other names include Hartshranft, West Fairhill, and simply North Philly.

“Is there some spatial structure or set of structures which will maximize equity and efficiency in the urban system or, at least, maximize our ability to control the powerful hidden mecha- nisms which bring about redistribution? This is both a norma- tive and a positive question for it suggests that we can explain current distributional effects by looking at existing spatial structures and also devise spatial structures to achieve a given distributional goal.”

David Harvey , 1973, Social Injustice and the City 

Lost Lots

Lost Lots is based in premise that the physical space of the city, its organization and quality, can be a mechanism of integration--claiming places. The open, public spaces of the city both reinforce and promote existing and new social agreements: where meetings between different people take place, where identities emerge, where a sense of belonging is fostered. But how are these spaces defined? 

Proposed Parcels

American Street [Between York & Dauphin]

- By Ariel Vázquez
Contact him at lostlots@claimingplaceslab.org