Let us build a city within our city, a city beneath our feet.
Our cities are not ours, they are built for us by people who are not us. They contain us but they do not represent us. There is little space for the behaviors that we wish to see or experiment with: the mutual aid, integration, spontaneity, creativity, abundance, symbiosis, freedom from work, that we might wish to see, we were ever given a chance to forge our own streets.
We wish to celebrate the glimpses of communalism and shared space that we see in other places, made coherent under our feet — the lemonade stand, the garage sale, chalking the pavement, jump rope, families gathering to eat on the street. Imagine if these were all gifted. Free stores, free lemonade. Free hair salons. Community serves restaurants set up in street facing garages.
If only we had more public space untouched by bureaucracy. If only we could offer some of our private space to public use without risking our perceived safety. (How many times have you wished you could offer unhoused people showers and a sandwich, but have not because you didn’t want to be left in the position of having to tend to them and ensure that they leave?)
Real estate is precious and we are pressured to rent out every spare bit of space out to make ends meet.
The last bastion of the free space, the unseen square foot, might be the humble garage.
In a city where communal space is commodified, rare and expensive, gifting your garage space to the commons by day, creates space for new modes of being, a return to older communal behaviors and community.
The history of the garage as site of unexpected ‘innovation’
The conversion, addition and creation of the garage was catalysed by the passing of the 1916 Federal Road Act and the 1921 Federal Highway Act. There are 82 million homes with a garage in the US. As cities have become harder and harder for driving, and as transportation has improved, the garage has seen a more varied set of uses, from storage, to the man cave, and perhaps more interestingly have been the site of music innovation in the form of the garage band, and of garage music, and the birth of many a start up claiming word changing innovation. Apple was born out of a garage located at 2066 Crist Dr. in Los Altos, California. Planet Labs, a garage in Cupertino. Amazon, Disney, Google. All these gestated in the California garage.
ref. https://visual.ly/history-garage
What is it about the garage?
The garage — a holding pen, between the safety of your home and the open community. Placed on street level, residential parts of the city are pocked with garage doors that are lie halfway between the house and the street. Half way between the public and private sphere. A space that can be private and open at the click of a button. On demand semi public space. Ultimately flexible, minimal bureaucracy, most freedom to explore different ways of being together.
A call to arms
Here we suggest, that the garage can also comprise a halfway house, between private space and common.
What will you dream up together? Imagine the garages on any given street, with cars removed and parked on the street for the day, as a community kitchen, a BYO cocktail bar, a creche, a reading room, speakers corner, a cuddle nook. A place for children to play. A clothing swap. Who will you meet, what aid and unexpected relations might the garage city avail to you? A village of your own making right under the city. It’s time to bring the best bits of black rock city home and leave the inaccessibility and unaffordability in the desert.
In a world obsessed with antisocial behavior, leverage your street garage for prosocial behavior. As a gateway to all sorts of lost behaviors and interactions, connections to the tribe you haven’t yet encountered.
No zoning or permission is required for use of your garage as a community center. Let this serve as a reminder, a protective mechanism such these spaces are not commercialized, but can only be used for the creation of a city of commons, the peoples’ city, right beneath our very feet.
Let a rich exploration of post-capitalism be born out of the the humble garage.
