NODES: Nomadic Design and Education System

The conflicts that emerge via the expanding influence of global capitalism on local economies and social hierarchies can be observed on many different scales. The products of imbalance and excess are the new artifacts of a culture that is increasingly out-of-balance. We are interested in examining how new forms of inequity are manifested in a place that is fully engaged in a tourism-based economic boom. It is our ambition to provoke an exchange between the touristic consumers, who have colonized the Quintana Roo region of Mexico, and the local and migrant workers, who have become displaced by those forces of development upon which they depend for their livelihood. We seek to initiate a type of activism that would merge a design-sensibility with a unique local economy in order to generate social awareness of the crisis between rapid urban change and the social sustainability of the urban poor. We propose to introduce a discussion of possible solutions to urban problems by injecting ourselves into the public space which is shared by tourists and working class alike. Through the reappropriation of utility tricycles that are currently used as vehicles for informal self-employment in the street markets, we seek to introduce NODES (Nomadic Design and Education System) into the network of everyday life between the working class and the tourists they serve. These mobile units will serve to disseminate information and knowledge about sustainable alternatives to the current development trends that are dominating the future of urban space and the ecology of Quintana Roo.

Volume Editors
David Covo & Gabriel Mérigo Basurto

ISBN
0-935502-57-2