Good evening, beloved! It’s time to share some more of #myfavoritethings – this time, Clifford Harper’s legendary “Visions,” circa 1975. These detailed, carefully considered illustrations depict what typical British spatial arrangements — terraced housing, allotments, council estates, etc. – might look like after they’d been reclaimed by autonomist collectives, in some not too distant future, and turned over to participatory decisionmaking and renewable energy. They continue to inspire even now.
If I had to identify the actual moment I began thinking about the ideas that would eventually become the book I’m now trying to finish, it was when I first laid eyes on these drawings, in a flat above the ATM on Belvedere Street in the Upoer Haight, in early 1991. I wrote some about Harper’s “Visions” here: https://speedbird.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/antecedents-of-the-minimum-viable-utopia-cliff-harpers-visions-series/ Enjoy!