hood in decline. It devalues adjacent property. So even if New York- ers are tempted to air dry (to save on electric bills, for example), they will most likely opt to be good neighbours and use a drying machine instead. Alas, the price of living in a city with seemingly endless re- serves of water and electricity is the burden of propriety: please use a clothes dryer rather than a clothesline to dry your clothes so my prop- erty does not depreciate; please grill in your own backyard rather than on the sidewalk so I don’t smell your cooking; please play your music in your living room rather than on the street so my quiet evening at home isn’t disturbed. The affluence of New York infrastructure has instilled in New Yorkers something that currently does not and cannot exist in Bombay: a common sense of civic etiquette. It is a reminder that commodities as basic as water and electricity have the power to affect people, behaviour, and ultimately, space. Considering the impact of architectural spaces such as laundro- mats on cities like Bombay and New York begins to shed light on the possibility that seemingly naïve everyday acts such as cleaning clothes, washing dishes, or taking baths do much more than tap our collective infrastructure. They promote or sometimes impede urban vibrancy. A vibrant city is an arena for both celebration and conflict, a place that readily counteracts order and predictability with unanticipated spon- taneity. Now is a time when New York, despite — or perhaps because
of — all its resources, is in danger of becoming so bound by civic etiquette that there is less room left for New Yorkers to improvise on their streets. Conversely, if Bombay’s infrastructure doesn’t catch up to India’s charging global economy, it stands to marginalise millions of Bombayites, which could exacerbate — among other things — the city’s serious problem of shanty towns (a most extreme kind of urban improvisation). Sustainability and globalisation gurus have drilled into us the notion that we are one global village, inter-connected and networked; consuming resources in New York equates to depleting them elsewhere. But what if New Yorkers relied less on water and energy not only to slow down global warming, but also as an excuse to bring to New York some of Bombay’s penchant for spontaneous street intensity? What if the clothesline poles that stand in the back- yards of so many Brooklyn brownstones were activated with clean laundry once again, not just to help save the planet, but also to help keep Brooklynites from co-opting their borough’s air space? If the proponents of the Green movement are proven correct, then reducing the load on New York’s infrastructure might eventually have positive repercussions in other parts of the world. What is certain, however, is that it will almost immediately shift more activity from New York’s private to its public realm and help encourage a more free-spirited vigour on its streets. D
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