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Quote by Matthew B. Crawford

“There are many causes for the increasing concentration of wealth in a shrinking elite, but let us throw one more into the mix: the ever more aggressive appropriations of the attentional commons that we have allowed to take place. I think we need to sharpen the conceptually murky right to privacy by supplementing it with a right not to be addressed. This would apply not, of course, to those who address me face to face as individuals, but to those who never show their faces, and treat my mind as a resource to be harvested.”

Quote by Matthew B. Crawford

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Matthew B. Crawford

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“In newer countries, you often find two types of public square: one that is older, organic, chaotic, and populated; and one that is recent, planned, orderly, and deserted. The first type predates the nation-state and accretes over time to accommodate the habits and needs, mainly commercial ones, of ordinary city dwellers. Its names are maidan, souq, bazaar, market. The second is constructed according to a master plan to embody the idealized qualities of the nation, often with grandiose results. The first thrusts people together in a public space, a hive if activity. Its essence is accidental and spontaneous. The second leaves nothing to chance. It tells people that they are subservient to the state and, in a sense, irrelevant to it [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].”

OrderChaosTypesPublic Spaces
Book:City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
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“Is there a civic purpose for city squares where people are already free? Hannah Arendt described freedom not as individual free will but in terms of acting and associating with others. This kind of freedom requires public space. In What Is Freedom?, Arendt likened politics to the performing arts, for "both need a publicly organized space for their 'work,' and both depend upon others for the performance itself" [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].”

PurposeFreedomPublic Spaces
Book:City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
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