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.

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.

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

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

I'm graduating from Hamilton in less than two weeks.  One of the weirdest aspects of this thought is that Hamilton will go on without me.  I know that sounds excessively self-centered, but it's really bizarre to realize that a place that has affected me so much, is little affected by me in return.  I suppose it makes logical sense that as I grow up and move on, so will Hamilton, accomodating new theatre developments and renovating the dark side.  There are so many elements of my Hamilton years that I will sincerely miss, but the physical space if Hamilton is something that is so concrete and dear to my heart.  When I returned from abroad the dark side was under construction.  The memories I have of lying out in the McEwen quad and crossing the street between KJ and Martin's way are of the past before I even leave Hamilton.  The library was completely reorganized.  If Hamilton underwent these transformations while I was right here, then I can't even imagine the level of change that Hamilton will undergo after I graduate.  Of course the original buildings on the light side will be maintained because it is in their construction that Hamilton is able to preserve the essence of an elitist, collegiate institute.  However, I will greatly miss every other part of Hamilton that will not be the same when I return as an alumni. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/us/politics/14cnd-campaign.html?hp

In yesterday's West Virginia primary Hillary Clinton had a sweeping victory over Barack Obama. While this may not have had a substantial affect on the final outcome of the race, it speaks volumes about West Virginia as a place. In the NY Times article, the author implies that inherent racism within the state was the main reason for the results, "Mr. Obama’s advisers downplayed the West Virginia loss, describing the state as demographically unfriendly territory — the primary electorate was 95 percent white; 70 percent did not attend college." While this may or may not be the actual case, it is interesting notion as it relates to the concepts of place. Why did race become such a factor in this primary election but in other historically racist areas of the country it did not?

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/7/13125/01135

Grist.org posted an interesting video (Click on photo or link above) about an environmental justice—or, as they say, “food justice”—group in West Oakland called People’s Grocery. The group seeks “creative solutions to the health, environmental and economic challenges our community faces every day,” focusing on organic agriculture as a means of reclaiming food culture and reconnecting to community and place. The People’s Grocery is a place-based movement, “building an independent food system and a local economy grounded in community partnerships and a local knowledge-base.” The group provides fresh, organic foods to residents, education about local and organic agriculture, as well as community development programs.

I recently read Vandana Shiva’s Stolen Harvest for another course, and since I have been thinking a lot about food, culture, and place. I find the People’s Grocery particularly interesting from this perspective because it strives to combat the homogenization of food systems that alienates people from the culture and community bound up in a place. Cuisine, it seems to me, is a tangible expression of culture and place that is universal, at least in the sense that every cultural tradition has a cuisine and everyone must eat. The People’s Grocery, and they are by no means alone, recognize that by providing local, affordable, organic food to West Oakland residents, they can help empower residents to connect with one another and to the practice of place.

 People’s Grocery website : http://www.peoplesgrocery.org/mission.html

John a. powell effectively argues that concentrated poverty and sprawl are regional issues that can only be handled on a regional basis.  One problem that hinders regionalization is a common view that sprawl is an issue at the edge of the metro region, having little impact on the problems of the inner city.  I see sprawl as a “distancing” of understanding between the suburbanite and the urban dweller.  This semester I participated in an inner-city service learning project at the Donovan Middle School in Utica.  I found that this school, which serves the urban poor, is much different from the suburban middle school I attended, which stressed academic studies in preparation for college.  In addition to providing basic education, Donovan has become a social services support system for this group.  Nearly all of the students receive a free or reduced-price lunch.  A large room inside the school, called the Wellness Center, provides a safe place where students can come to eat their lunches away from the social pressures of the cafeteria (including bullying) and to play games or talk with counselors and Hamilton students.  For example, Donovan students who are refugees from Somalia use the Center because they were being disrespected by other students during lunch.  At the Center, there is a rack of slightly-used t’shirts and long-sleeve shirts, which is maintained by the staff there.  Students can “exchange” their old clothes for the items on the rack.  And a batch of sneakers that serves the same purpose is on the floor.  Donovan’s after-school program, the Advantage Program, provides disadvantaged children with a variety of classes and discussion groups, including a Pregnancy Prevention class for the girls and Alcohol Awareness and Planned Parenthood programs for the boys.  I don’t think that many suburbanites are aware of the special problems that are trying to be addressed in urban schools like Donovan.  If they did, a regional approach might find greater acceptance.