Objective
In class we’ve been discussing the Gaian revolution of the mid 2020s and its impact on urban and semi-urban spaces. Thinking about your hometown, speak about the differences you can observe between how it looks now and how it was at the time of the revolution. Where possible, make use of eyewitness accounts from survivors of the revolution to illustrate your points.
[8 credits]
Jakarta Al Zabur, 14 yrs
Before the rev this place was all high rises, towers in concrete and glass and steel. The oldest parts of it don’t changed much I guess. No one builds in those materials now, no-one has the dirt. The streets between those dark towers feels dangerous, even if they’s so empty that they’s really not. You gets a feeling of trapped, the towers is all still there but kinda crumbledown, like skeletons, with folks only really living in the ground floors. In the power crisis it warn’t worth pumping water to the upper floors, and the elevators didn’t work. Plus, they warn’t designed or built for the climate, and once you couldn’t ventilate them they came death traps. Least that’s what Nonna tells me.
Nonna warn’t raised here. They a vacuee from the lower countries, got out in ‘27 when they was 19. From a city called Amsterdam, whole place flooded pretty quick, the rev mighta stopped the worst of the effects but it was too late for that place. Entire country underwater by the thirties. I members when I was bout 6, there was a big discussion about whether to try pump it out, reclaim it, but folks voted no, more value developing it other ways. Biggest shellfish farm on Gaia now, but Nonna won’t eat no shrimp no how, just tears up at the mention. Speaks in a lost tongue about the lost buildings of they’s home.
Our compound is about halfway between the towers and the wild land. The dark towers is mostly one end of the city – like the city grew out of the old bit but then went its own way. I guess that’s maybe nitially cos the highways and railroad tracks that intersected the old parts was in the way. You can’t dig ‘em easy to lay a foundation. And no one wants to live near crumbling buildings. Gradually folks looted the glass that warn’t broken, stripped out all the wood on count of a numbargo on cutting new timber. Even the wiring was stripped; Nonna says folks built generators right from early on, couldn’t wean themselves off the power. Course, that changed when they hads to, when the power was prioritised for healthcare and agriculture, and the collectrans. Power’s all clean now, the generators is either molished or standing quiet, you’d get fined a whole bunch of dirt for even firing one up. But you still gotta use the power sparing. No one has endless dirt to keep lights burning.
Our holding was built in the 60s, and it’s pretty typical. Sustainable timber, two rooms and a kitchen upground, and three bedrooms downalow. They built them like that to keep cool in the hot times mid-century, and it kinda caught on. Much easier to maintain living temperature than if it’s all upground. Some glazed windows, some’s screens of woven leaves. Depends. Nonna sleeps in the larger bedroom, along of me. There’s a room for the twins, and then one for Ma. Sometimes Papa sleeps here too, but mostly they’s over at the men’s house, at the other end of the compound, aways from the family holdings. The newer holdings has more rooms, more windows, indoor plumbing. The twins keeps on at Ma to move, but they says it just costs more dirt to run them new ones, and sides, they growed up here in hotter times, when desertification was real bad, so it better be good enough for us. They says we should be grateful.
Hardly no one goes to the old districk no more. Even the collectrans stops short, doesn’t cross the old railroad, since it was rerouted a couple years ago to save power. No point running the collectrans somewhere no one wants to go. But we’s been exploring it, my gang and me. We sneaks out during devotions hour, cycles through the underpass and looks round. We started off just running crazy all over, but now we got a system, we takes one block at a time, one tower at a time. We’s making a map and a report on each one. It can be pretty scary though – we’s seen basements that’s crumbled in so you can’t get in; we’s hiked up thirty forty staircases to top floors and seen vaporated basins of swim pools, habited now by agaves and purslane and sidr tree saplings thriving on the recent rainfall. Feral cats living off flocks of laughing doves. We’s seen whole bandoned showrooms for fossil fuel cars, ankle deep in dessicated cockroaches. Shenz wanted to gather them up reckoned they’d pep up a risotto but all the meat in them was rotted out, they was just shells. The cars too was just shells, on count of the committees had a scheme in the mid-thirties to strip and reuse as much components as possible. Saving on new mineral exploitation and the power it woulda took.
You can see a ways off to the distance from the tops of the towers, as far as the mountains behind us, and the ocean in the other direction. There’s only a couple of settlements between us and the ocean, and I’ve never been there. They say water levels will start to recede soon based on the latest CO2 models, but Nonna reckons it will be a long while before new constructions is lowed in the thirty-mile coastal sclusion zone. The climate collapse might be six decades ago, but folks is still very ware of how much was lost, how many folks died. No one trusts the ocean just yet. So we can look at it from up here, but we can’t get near it. Nonna tells me of walking on beaches, but even Ma hasn’t ever sperienced that.
One day we went into a low building between the towers and found a whole network of tunnels, like some kinda old collectrans system, but downalow ground. There was even engines and everything. Long long mechanical stairs that sat silent. We didn’t explore them far, the place stank of rat piss and pollution and the funk smell of dead that comes from flooding.
I guess another new thing compared to before the rev is the compound farms. We grows most all our food there, and everyone over 12 has to work the land for part of their week, even if it’s not their main occupation. We has it pretty easy til we turns 16, we just has to clean produce or maybe harvest something, depends on the season. We can grow a whole lot more stuff now than even ten years ago, they’s bringing more and more seeds out of bank now and it makes Nonna smile to taste some of the familiar foods from their kinderhood. Course everyone uses their own holding roof for extra growing space, some even grow flowers, though you’re not supposed to, that’s what the prairies is for. Ma says we’s gotten so much smarter at irrigation since they was a kid, but it’s still a big celebration when it rains nough so the river flows deep nough to swim in. That’s when folks holds rain parties at the riverbank.
If I summarise, there’s been a whole bunch of changes since the rev. Nonna tells me stories of they’s city, but since they warn’t raised here they don’t got much to say bout how it looked in the pollution times. Nonna feels like we lives less free than what folks did before the rev, but everyday now you hears some folks grumbling that we’da been better off if the rev hadn’t of happened, that maybe we can go back to some of the ways of the past. That maybe dirt emissions warn’t so bad as everyone made out. But I dunno. I guess I mighta liked to see the towers when they was still new, and to ride on that collectrans downalow ground, but on the other hand Nonna’s stories of floods and wildfires, storms fierce nough to tear down buildings, droughts that went on for years and years, with no crops to harvest – on balance I guess I’d sooner it was like it is.
Educator feedback:
Jakarta, you have told us a lot about the past and about the buildings in the old city, but much of your information is informal or hearsay. You could have scored more credits if you had backed this up with evidence from historical sources like we’ve been working on in class. Your grade would also have been higher if you had taken more time to describe the new areas of the city, rather than assuming that this will be familiar to your audience. Try to develop your speaking style a little, in particular with regard to using a more formal tone and structuring your arguments into a clear beginning, middle and end.
Grade: C; 3 credits
Notes:
Song: Hometown, Bruce Springsteen.
- Idea sparked by the idea of witnessing immense social change in their hometown reflected in quiet (and sometimes less quiet) ways over a long period of time.
- Piece takes format of a Social History homework assignment by a 14 yr old kid in 2084, after a climate crisis in mid-2020s followed by a global revolution that averted full on climate collapse.
- By time of the piece, climate has started to recover but the crisis meant monumental change and adaptation for human societies all around the globe.
- Not revealed whether a written piece or a spoken/recorded one – tried to leave this open to reader interpretation and give space for imagining future tech solutions to creating content / homework.
- Kid doesn’t name the city, nor do they mention exactly where on the planet it is located.
- No concrete etc in new parts of city, which grew out of an existing late 20thC urban landscape of high rises, starting in the early 2030s.
- Kid talks about ‘before the rev’ but with little or no explanation. Makes assumption that audience will be familiar with their subject.
- Amended / evolved vocabulary, grammar and syntax to their speech, reflecting language evolution over a 60-year timespan.
- Kid’s name: Jakarta Al Zabur, 14 yrs.
- Talk about:
- Recycling of cars
- Older buildings
- Streets / no streets / transport
- What current homes are like, structure / arrangement?
- Family structure.
- Food etc.
- No one lives on the coast, a ban on building in coastal exclusion zone.
- Nonna (implied grandmother but never made fully clear) came from Amsterdam, was evacuated before it flooded.
- Low Countries all under water now, one of the few safe fish farms on the planet.
Jo Clark likes playing with words.