My student Xiaolu Xu, a native of Shanghai, writes:

Historic architectural preservation is a major concern worldwide. Every city has its own distinguished history and character, its uniqueness as a place. Protecting a city's built environment is extremely critical in keeping the city's spirit. Neighborhoods, architecture, and landmarks provide a material nexus that effectively conveys historical narrative and sustains a city's spirit.

Shanghai, a city of more than 700 years of history since it was built in the Yuan Dynasty, is regarded as the key to know the modern and the contemporary China. It was the place that Chinese feudal society was first demolished and the foundations of capitalism was first laid; it was the place that Chinese Communist Party was born; it was also the cradle for modern Chinese culture, commerce and industry. In the 1930s, Shanghai, the "Paris of the East," was the 5^th largest city in the world, and the biggest cosmopolis in China. The rich and diverse historical and cultural backgrounds made Shanghai the center of modern Chinese architecture, with an idiosyncratic character molded by the various nations and cultures.

The cross-cultural historic architectural heritage of Shanghai, however, has always been facing tremendous preservation challenges—especially the western-influenced architectural features that symbolize Shanghai's cosmopolitan colonial past, the Shikumen houses that reflect most of the local community culture, and the traditional Chinese architecture that were mostly built in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Between the 1950s and 1990s, there was a neglect of architectural preservation. The Cultural Revolution once opposed all western influence as well as traditional heritage. China's reform and opening up in the past 20 years has created a colossal construction boom in the city. Since the mid-1990s, a rapid real estate development has torn down much of the old community housing in the center of the city. As the paragon of China's modernity, Shanghai's original built environment has suffered seriously from the momentous urban transformation.

In collaborating with Prof. Peter Cannavò, my summer research is on the challenge of architectural preservation amid Shanghai's rapid modernization, with a focus on addressing the importance of preserving historic architecture, landmarks, and neighborhoods from large-scale urban transformation and investigating the current solutions and difficulties. I hope the case study of Shanghai, the dragonhead of China's modernization as well as one of the fastest-changing places in the world, will raise people's awareness of this problem and be valuable to emerging cities that are facing problems similar to Shanghai's. 

Picture courtesy of Yu Zhi Wen.

The following was posted by Xiaolu Xu, one of my students and a native of Shanghai, who is studying development and historic preservation in her home city this summer; I included an image of a hutong neighborhood from the New York Times article that she cited:

With the advent of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the world is paying more attention to not only the impressive economic achievements of China, but also every facet of the city, such as the disappearance of historical architecture that once helped in defining the culture of the city. 

A recent New York Times article on this topic can be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/arts/design/27ouro.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin.

City planners have long tried to remedy “white flight” (the migration of traditionally white members of the professional and business-owning classes to the suburbs) by creating cityscapes that attract and accommodate discriminating dwellers. While such planning and development can certainly offer benefits like reduced crime or better transportation options, it also raises important concerns about identity, preference and displacement.  With my Levitt Research grant, I decided to look into these issues as they affect two neighborhood’s in the Nation’s capital city, Shaw and Anacostia.



Shaw began as a bustling community of newly-freed African-Americans in the last half of the 19^th century. By the 1920s, the neighborhood had more than 300 black-owned businesses, including a bank and a luxury hotel. Home to Howard University and the jazz halls that made Duke Ellington famous, the neighborhood had a thriving cultural and intellectual scene as well.

However, desegregation meant the opening of doors for the neighborhood’s black professionals and many of them migrated to the suburbs. Race riots in 1968 were the final draw for many neighborhood businesses and the crime rates increased dramatically.

When city planners tried to improve the neighborhood, they met with neighborhood elites. The resulting plan that made the neighborhood more attractive to new professionals and other members of the upper-classes, but it failed to include any sort of protection for longtime residents of less means. Today, the neighborhood is full of newly-arrived, and often white, professionals and the once-vibrant culture of the old neighborhood is quickly fading as rents rise and residents age.

Anacostia on the other hand was a middle-class and mostly white neighborhood until the “white flight” phenomenon occurred. The influx of relatively low-income African-Americans changed the neighborhood dramatically and relatively quickly. However, racial tensions being what they were, this dramatic change made it hard for the neighborhood institutions to keep up. The lack of institutional support structures (e.g. strong schools) and the abundance of pre-existing poverty resulted in high crime and scarce (licit) commercial activity.

In the past two decades, city leaders have argued for a major-league soccer stadium, a light-rail system, and a riverfront development in Anacostia. They also recently opened a nearby baseball stadium and trumpeted it’s potential benefits for the neighborhood. But it remains to be seen whether many of these projects will be realized and, even if they are, whether or not they will benefit area residents.

For my project, I’m looking at history, theory, current events and even just talking to affected people in an attempt to figure out how various factors determine the transformation of these places. I hope that if we can identify and understand the dynamics at work in these neighborhoods, we will be better able to develop structures of governance for them that hold in balance the values of the founding and preservation processes. 

Graphic is used courtesy of the District Chronicles.

City planners have long tried to remedy “white flight” (the migration of traditionally white members of the professional and business-owning classes to the suburbs) by creating cityscapes that attract and accommodate discriminating dwellers. While such planning and development can certainly offer benefits like reduced crime or better transportation options, it also raises important concerns about identity, preference and displacement.  With my Levitt Research grant, I decided to look into these issues as they affect two neighborhood’s in the Nation’s capital city, Shaw and Anacostia.

Shaw began as a bustling community of newly-freed African-Americans in the last half of the 19^th century. By the 1920s, the neighborhood had more than 300 black-owned businesses, including a bank and a luxury hotel. Home to Howard University and the jazz halls that made Duke Ellington famous, the neighborhood had a thriving cultural and intellectual scene as well.

However, desegregation meant the opening of doors for the neighborhood’s black professionals and many of them migrated to the suburbs. Race riots in 1968 were the final draw for many neighborhood businesses and the crime rates increased dramatically.

When city planners tried to improve the neighborhood, they met with neighborhood elites. The resulting plan that made the neighborhood more attractive to new professionals and other members of the upper-classes, but it failed to include any sort of protection for longtime residents of less means. Today, the neighborhood is full of newly-arrived, and often white, professionals and the once-vibrant culture of the old neighborhood is quickly fading as rents rise and residents age.

Anacostia on the other hand was a middle-class and mostly white neighborhood until the “white flight” phenomenon occurred. The influx of relatively low-income African-Americans changed the neighborhood dramatically and relatively quickly. However, racial tensions being what they were, this dramatic change made it hard for the neighborhood institutions to keep up. The lack of institutional support structures (e.g. strong schools) and the abundance of pre-existing poverty resulted in high crime and scarce (licit) commercial activity.

In the past two decades, city leaders have argued for a major-league soccer stadium, a light-rail system, and a riverfront development in Anacostia. They also recently opened a nearby baseball stadium and trumpeted it’s potential benefits for the neighborhood. But it remains to be seen whether many of these projects will be realized and, even if they are, whether or not they will benefit area residents.

For my project, I’m looking at history, theory, current events and even just talking to affected people in an attempt to figure out how various factors determine the transformation of these places. I hope that if we can identify and understand the dynamics at work in these neighborhoods, we will be better able to develop structures of governance for them that hold in balance the values of the founding and preservation processes.
 

In the tension between environmental founding and preservation, one can often, and quite paradoxically, expect to find conservatives advocating sweeping change—such as the logging of centuries-old forests—and liberals advocating maintenance of the status quo or even the restoration of a bygone standard. But do the selection of the relatively-Green Senator John McCain and the recent musings of Newt Gingrich on climate change suggest this paradox will soon be turned on its head?

Although Republican nominee advocates increased nuclear power, a cap-and-trade approach to climate change, and the creation of a $300 million dollar prize to advance electric car technology, it’s too soon to claim a major realignment in American conservatism. After all, Republicans are still calling to end the ban on off-shore drilling and supporting a gas-tax holiday.

Still, it’s quite possible that conservationist and conservative interests could converge. Recent events like the rising costs of food and transportation and the Kelo ruling have brought together unlikely bedfellows in recent months. As environmental crises rise to the forefront of public consciousness, as they have this summer, I think it is possible for Republicans to make a case for conservationist action as an extension of conservative politics.

A strong case can be made intellectually, as these selections from major conservative thinkers indicate:

Hamilton College's student-run Community Farm Garden, which is being tended this summer by undergrads Chris Sullivan and Andrew Pape, is now offering its first harvest for sale.  The

On the establishment of the garden, see http://www.hamilton.edu/news/more_news/display.cfm?ID=12967 .

This effort, by the students at the liberal arts college in Clinton, New York, is part of a growing movement toward local agriculture that has also caught on on college campuses across the nation.

The Community Garden's first harvest is ready for sale!

Lettuce Varieties! Minuet Cabbage!
Swiss Chard! Kale! Collard Greens!

Come to the Community Garden Thursday (6/26) between 4PM and 7PM for pick your own OR freshly harvested, organically grown produce.
 
The community garden is located behind the Ferguson parking lot, across the street from Admissions and past the dorms.  If this time doesn't work for you and you would like to stop by, shoot us an e-mail or come by and we'll work it out!
-Chris and Andrew

The suburban ideal that arose in the twentieth century has in large part been dependent on the automobile and, by extension, affordable gas.  The recent hike in gas prices may be doing what decades of criticism of the social and ecological costs of suburban sprawl may have failed to do: end, or at least slow, the tide of suburban sprawl that has been devouring our open space, contributing to climate change, and ruining our cities.  See the article in yesterday's New York Times, "Fuel Prices Shift Math for Life in Far Suburbs," by Peter S. Goodman: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/business/25exurbs.html?ex=1215057600&en=56789d1b23fed0f4&ei=5070&emc=eta1 .

On Thursday the California Supreme Court overturned a ban on same-sex marriage, paving the way for California to become only the second state in the United States to extend full martial rights to gay and lesbian couples. Of course, far more states have altogether outlawed same-sex marriage than have permitted it. The argument against same-sex marriage centers on the notion that marriage as an institution explicitly pertains to the union of a man and a woman. But if this is true, who makes such a determination, and why have so many other countries (Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Israel, South Africa, etc.) legalized same-sex marriage? The larger issue with bans on same-sex marriage is that they are inconsistent with the United States' alleged commitment to freedom and equality. The United States might proclaim itself the "Land of the Free," but civil rights issues have dogged it for its entire existence, from suffrage rights for women and minorities, to Jim Crow and the long-term establishment discrimination endured by Blacks, and now to same-sex marriage. Social outlooks and customs undoubtedly play a significant role in shaping the character of a place, but can the U.S. really pride itself on the principles of freedom and equality and yet render decisions on particular civil rights issues that seemingly conflict with these principles?

The New York Times ran an interesting article today on how same-sex marriage and racial justice have found common ground. Click here to view the full story.

The environmental tension between sustainability and place is illustrated in the Cape Wind Energy proposal for Nantucket Sound. Proposed in 2001, the porject has yet to be permitted, even with heightened public awareness to environmental issues and greenwashing by the project developer. Opinions aside, I found it quite amazing that over 40,000 comments were submitted to Federal Government regarding the project. If anything, this long and drawn out process has been as democratic as it could be.

Read the Article

The Phantom on the Menu: Chatham Cod

The New York Times recent ran an article on the misrepresentation of food items on the menu's of upscale New York restaurants. In question is the origin of where codfish is caught. While menu's adverstise white flakey filets as "Chatham Day Boat Cod," the origin of the fish is likely Gloucester or New Bedford, especially during the months that Cod is not harvested by Chatham's fishing fleet. It is interesting how the idea of aparticular place can affect how consumers percieve the value of a fish. While the fish that is served is fresh, it seems that the public values something about the community of Chatham more than the fish. I'd be surprised if someone could actually tell the difference of what port the fish came through. Do certain characteristics of community make you more or less likely to purchase a particular product, all else being equal?