Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

I sense a pattern. The nouveau riche area of Wapping, Hobart, October 2010.

I have already railed before about the gentrification of the areas of what were formally slums here in Hobart. Primarily, these areas were those that previously housed the various destitutes, waifs, beggars, prostitutes and cocktail waitresses that seem to surround working docks. When the work at the docks dry up, all that are left are the slums. Eventually – after a period of mass forgetting – those with the bread to spare force out the toothless grannies left, bulldoze the filth and shift in their high-rise apartments, underground parking and diamond-studded collar wearing Pekinese.

What I want to know is, as I suspect, this a universal phenomenon? Dear readers, have your cities experienced similar ‘urban regeneration’? How has is worked out?

Comments

Roddy said…

This is something you should ask the people from the slum areas of New Delhi. They are the most recent to suffer the fate of the working class when the Worlds wealthy want the land they once called home. Alas it was all for the advantage of the sporting elite and their Commonwealth Games pursuit.
All I see is that they relocate the working class away from the more desirable areas, and create enclaves of needy away from the inner city areas. Out of sight out of mind.
Is it for the betterment of the of the general populace? I will allow you to be the judge of that.
Personally I call these areas the slums of the future. Only time will prove me correct.

1 November 2010 at 09:48

Roddy said…

I forgot to mention that I like the symmetry and bold colour contrasts. Nice shot.

1 November 2010 at 09:55

Kris McCracken said…

Roddy, I shall ask them next time I see them.

1 November 2010 at 11:22

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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