Where are we? Blogging about place

Taris as a physical representation of class [fixed]

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:27:00 -0400

One of my favorite things about the Star Wars extended universe are all of the extra planets that have been written into existence. Amongst all of the forest moons, oceanic sprawls and desert planets, the one that stands out the most to me is the Urban Sprawl that is Taris. Taris is a planet that is entirely consumed by one, humongous, city. What is most interesting about Taris is that the city is constructed in 4 levels, each of which is designated for a different socioeconomic class. Just as we call classes upper, middle and lower, the city is split into three levels bearing these names.

The first section of the city, going physically from the top down, is the Upper-City. This section of the city is for elite humans, it enjoys the most fresh air and sunlight as there are few buildings that tower over it and it is relatively uncongested. In the Star Wars universe, aliens occupy the role that ethnic minorities do in our society today, needless to say, there are no aliens living in the uppercity.

The next section of the city is the middle-city, this section is slightly lower down than the upper city but still sees relative amounts of sunlight and breathable clean air. This section is highly congested and has an extremely high population density as it is populated by the working class. There is much traffic and most people live in one of the millions of standardized apartment buildings. Aliens are more commonly seen on this level, but they are actively discriminated against and struggle everyday just to stay on their feet.

The next level down is the lower-city, while the two levels above it are policed by a rather strong military presence, the lower-city is generally lawless. It is run by rival gangs who compete in swoop bike races, which is a modified Star Wars version of drag racing. The lower-city is extremely dangerous and many people work hard in the hopes of being able to move to the middle-city, although opportunities are very limited. If one wishes to survive here, he or she is forced to engage in illegal activities, legal work is few and far between. It is very common here to see aliens and humans living side-by-side with very low levels of discrimination as can be evidenced by the thriving cantinas and multi-species gangs. The lower-city sees no natural light, and is located completely underground.

Finally, comes the most interesting part of Taris: The Undercity. The Undercity is located far underneath the massive city above, and lies amongst the cities gigantic foundation. It is made up of small encampments that are surrounded by what is seemingly an endless black void. The Undercity was initially conceived as a play where Taris would abandon its most horrendous members of society who committed egregious crimes, that plan has long been abandoned however. The people that live in the undercity now are the descendents of the people who were initially cast out of society, they are referred to as the “outcasts.” Their tiny towns resemble what would today be thought of as a horrible slum and the people that live there grow up knowing that they will never be allowed to leave. They make their livings by scavenging through the sewers of Taris and begging for food and money from people who come down from the city above on excavations. The undercity can only be accessed by a long elevator that is policed by the Tarisian military. If one was to transplant an outcast into the world above, he or she would have no knowledge of any of the going-ons, technologies or the customs of above, it is a truly pitiful existence.

Whoever came up with the concept for Taris must have meant to create a striking social commentary, and they succeeded. Anybody who would like to experience Taris first hand should get their hands on a copy of the videogame Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic… man that’s a great game.

Taris as a physical representation of class

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:26:00 -0400

I just typed a whole entry and then it sent me back to the login in screen and dissappeared... was that supposed to happen?

Residential Segregation, Racial Identity Construction, and Place

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 02:56:00 -0400

I thought I would address a topic that we talk about a good deal in one of my other classes: residential segregation. We have all seen those maps illustrating such segregation. What's hidden within the maps is the variation (or lack thereof) between impoverished blacks and the black middle-class. The gains of the black middle-class in terms of income and educational attainment are undermined by their increased proximity to concentrated poverty relative to their white counterparts. As with most racial issues, the explanation is historical. The lingering effects of de jure segregation, such as intergenerational wealth inequality, mean that middle-class individuals are unable to utilize the same resources in housing as similarly situated whites. Further, recent studies suggest that racial steering practices (in which realtors withhold houses from certain interested parties) continue to affect the black middle-class disproportionately.

An article (Karyn R. Lacy - "black spaces, black places: strategic assimilation and identity construction in middle-class suburbia") that was recently assigned for class highlights the role of an understudied factor in the persistence of residential segregation: racial identity construction. Lacy examines two groups of the black middle-class. One group lives in a majority black neighborhood while the other lives in a majority white neighborhood. The biggest difference between the groups is their emphasis upon racially-distinct places. Parents that choose to live in the majority black neighborhood feel that they can better shield their children from the effects of subtle discrimination, as well as demonstrate the value of a black racial identiy. For these individuals, a racially homogenous neighborhood is seen as the best way to maintain group membership. The middle-class blacks living within the majority white neighborhood feel that they can maintain and express their identity through participation in racially homogenous organizations and clubs. For them, the benefits of participation in majority white institutions are worth the risk of discriminatory interaction. To summarize, Lacy's finding suggests that continued residential segregation results (at least given the historical boundary setting of de jure segregation) in part from a willingness to construct racial identity through residence in racially-distinct places.

OWS and the Occupation of Place

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:24:00 -0400

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been one of the more intriguing stories to take place since the fall. An interesting part of this movement is its use of place and space. The encampment at Zucotti Park in the Wall Street section of New York City provided a central location for people to gather at the heart of the problem: Wall Street. With tents, sleeping bags and a large concentration of people, Zucotti Park resembled a refugee camp. Make no mistake, though, even though they had temporarily left their homes, the 99% were able to enjoy many of the comforts of home including, free wi-fi Internet, a library, and a five-star soup kitchen that turned out organic chicken and spaghetti Bolognese one night. Many of the cities neediest 99%, the homeless, began showing up in the camps primarily for the food, only to be kicked out by the protestors. This creates a place that the bookends of society – the wealthy and the poor – are shunned from.

The police have a noticeable presence at a lot of the bigger Occupy locations and often clash with the protestors. Earlier this week, these two groups had a confrontation at McPherson Square in D.C. This was sparked by protestors’ refusal to dismantle a wooden structure they had set up without a permit. This is very interesting because it brings up and important development with place and space. Often symbolized by objects that represented movement, or a fleeting nature – tents, sleeping bags, tarps, etc. – the Occupy movement is now attempting to create more permanent structures. These Occupy camps have become incredibly important because they are as important as the people in them. Like the bigger cities around them, these camps have their own character and a unique sense of place, one founded more on an idea than anything else. It will be interesting to see what new structures pop up and what clues they offer to regarding the direction of this movement.

A Different Kind of Local Food Movement: how buying groceries in Paris creates a sense of place

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:27:00 -0400

In a world where the food system has become consolidated, industrialized, and globalized, Mark Lapping described how this creates “an acute loss of a sense of the local.” He describes several alternative agro-food models (AAFMs) that have been successful in the United States. I want to focus on how typical food shopping in France can contribute to some similar benefits.

I studied abroad in Paris last fall, where I lived downtown with my host mother. Paris is known for many of its open-air famers markets, one of my personal favorite places to go on Sunday mornings. But even in situations when Parisians aren’t buying directly from the farmer, the considerable smaller percentage of consolidation that in the U.S., definitely adds a community aspect to doing the groceries.

Large supermarket chains, known as hypermarchés, do exist in France, just as they do here. However, from my experience they’re not used to the same degree. Artisanal culture is still thriving in France, and it is not uncommon for the family shopper to visit several local shops or markets each week to get different food products, instead of going to the supermarket. To get your bread, you go to la boulangerie, but for your sweeter pastries you go to la pâtisserie. La fromagerie is for cheese, la rôtisserie is for chicken, la charcuterie is for pork, and la boucherie is your typical butcher. Finally there is l’épicerie, small general stores that sell produce and dry goods. What’s even more interesting than the collection of small shops, is the fact that many didn’t even have distinct names. The name of my host mother’s favorite bakery was simply la boulangerie. However the fact that a different person or family owns each small shop helps establish them as places that get incorporated to the community.

This style of shopping further enhances the sense of community because repeat patrons are able to create relationships with the small business owners. My host mother would often refer the shop owners by name, and there was a sense of trust between her and her vendors. She counted on them for quality and better service. This kind of shopping may seem to be more time consuming, but the density of small shops means one never has to go farther than a couple blocks. So though it takes more effort than Americans are used to, it is definitely a more personal and social experience. I think that this helps to construct a stronger sense of place in each neighborhood.

As a temporary French citizen, I found this kind of local neighborhood shopping influenced my practice of place. Although I wasn’t there for long enough to create as strong relationships with the vendors, I became a regular at a few small shops in the area, and came to trust the quality there. So while the city is already divided into 20 neighborhoods (arrondissements), my neighborhood was definitely defined in respect to these small shops more that the fact that I lived in the 5^th arrondissement. Instead of shopping at a huge Hannaford’s, that I had to drive to, in Paris, shopping for food in a more local, connected setting contributed to creating my concept of neighborhood, and my ability experience the culture.

What is the internet?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 04:14:00 -0400

Several hours ago, I read an advertisement that said: "The internet is the best place to buy an engagement ring." I paused. Are there simply no other linguistic alternative for this advertiser to tell people to buy things on the internet, or is the internet perhaps a place? This is weird, right? Even as I attempt to talk about the internet I can't avoid prepositional phrases like "on the internet," or "from the internet." Let's not forget about the term "cyberspace," either. It may be hard to think of the internet as a place, but it's equally difficult to nail it down as something concretely not a place.

Consider: We used to shop in stores, now we shop on the internet. We used to get our mail from at the end of the driveway, now we get it on the internet. We used to play games in physical spaces with physical people, now competitors together occupy some sort of virtual common visual space and interact, despite being a million miles apart. Regardless of how you personally consider the internet, it's impossible to deny that we talk about it as if it were a place.

Maybe it's possible to think of the internet as the very antithesis of place, but don't we feel the same kinds of familiarity with web locations that we do with places, as Professor Cannavo defines in his book? We navigate through them and even become upset when they are changed. What's more is that the internet as a virtual place is growing and, as Charlie Stross points out, permeating the physical world and blurring lines between what is virtual and what is actual:

Welcome to a world where the internet has turned inside-out; instead of being something you visit inside a box with a coloured screen, it’s draped all over the landscape around you, invisible until you put on a pair of glasses or pick up your always-on mobile phone. A phone which is to today’s iPhone as a modern laptop is to an original Apple II; a device which always knows where you are, where your possessions are, and without which you are — literally — lost and forgetful.

The Hamilton Admissions Office was recently applauded for printing a minimalist admissions poster that had only the name of the college and a quick response code. Anyone without a smart phone was left high and dry by this poster, but it's being hailed as progressive and forward thinking.

So what to make of this? Are the two polarities of place--the real and the virtual--becoming one? What does this mean for our sense of relationship with the physical landscape? I can't help but wonder where we will be in ten years.

A lot of the inspiration from this post came from here.

Parking Lots Can be Places!

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:02:00 -0400

My town made a place out of a parking lot. In many of the class conversations and the class readings parking lots are portrayed as the ideal representation of abstract space. They meet the qualifications of space as laid out in The Working Landscape by Peter Cannavò. Parking lots are quantifiable and repetitive with neat lines laid out in perfect rows. It is assumed that parking lots have no history and no character of their own. But in my expierience I have seen something different. I think that in class we have sometimes focused too much on the role of the physical features of a place in creating community and meaning. In my town it was the community that made what could have been seen as an empty meaningless space into one of the most recognizable and appreciated places in the whole town. This space consists of three parking lots in a large shopping center. Surrounding the parking lots are a few stores that are townie favorites, a Starbucks, a tex-mex restaurant called Baja, and a Blockbuster. Two of the three of these stores are chain stores but to us they didn’t feel homogenous and placeless. They were the stores where our friends worked and hung out; it was our Starbucks and our Blockbuster. But the parking lots were so much more than the stores that surrounded them. The youth of my neighborhood founded the parking lots and named them “town.”

“Town” is much more then a space. It is the place to be on a Friday or a Saturday night. It is a meeting place where you can be sure to run into many different groups of people that you know. Now that I am in college, “town” has become a place to go if I want to see someone I haven’t seen since high school. People park their cars and stand in multiple circles throughout the parking lot. They roam from circle to circle for the chance to run into someone they know. “Town” is a distinctive place that requires its own social rules, activities, and name. It was the community of high school kids that created it, not of the politicians that created the zoning laws, or of the CEOs who decided to place chain stores in the strip mall surrounding it. It was my community that created a place out of a parking lot.

america's saddest and happiest cities

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:15:00 -0400

http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2011/12/01/americas-saddest-cities/?tsp=1#1971-5

Privately Owned Public Space (POPS)

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:43:00 -0400

All of the news about Zuccotti Park because of Occupy Wall Street has gotten me thinking about Privately Owned Public Space (POPS). In 1961, a zoning incentive program was created in New York City. It encouraged private developers to create public spaces in or around their buildings in exchange for being allowed to make buildings taller than the zoning of an area would otherwise allow. Since the launch of the program, more than 3.5 million square feet of public space have been created (albeit with varying levels of success). Zuccotti Park, a POPS created in 1968, is currently owned and maintained by Brookfield Properties. The fact it is a POPS means that it does not close at night like most public parks, which is part of why it was chosen by Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Without getting into the politics of the protest (and whether it was legal, or right or wrong for the park to be cleared two weeks ago for cleaning), this has made me think about the unique ownership of POPS. While the owners of POPS do technically own the spaces and are responsible for maintaining them, they do not have the same rights that private property owners do. Likewise, the people who use POPS do not have any ownership over them, but are allowed to use them in ways that they could not use private property. So who has the more meaningful ownership of the space? Who gets to define the terms of the space—the people who build it or the people who chose to use it?

It can really go either way, but here, I think the Occupy Wall Street protesters demonstrate that it’s the latter. The owners can design a space and hope that the public will use it as planned. However, unless an activity is illegal, the owners have no actual say in how the public uses the space. The public can re-found the space as something completely different than what the owners planned and make it their own.

Building Invasion Movement

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:54:00 -0400

Over the summer I had read an article in the New York Times about the “building invasion movement” in Venezuela. Its an interesting example of refounding through the pioneer efforts of squatters.

In the 1990s, wealthy horse breeder, David Brillembourg, built the Centro Financiero Confinanzas in the city of Caracas. The 45-story skyscraper was intended to stand as a symbol of Venezuela’s “entrepreneurial mettle.” Due to the banking crisis of 1994 the building was never completed. The crisis also resulted in a housing shortage which forced squatters to move into empty buildings throughout the city, including the Centro Financiero Confinanzas, now nicknamed the Tower of David.

Today, over 2,500 squatters have made their homes within the Tower of David. The building lacks basic amenities and in most areas even walls. However, current inhabitants have created living spaces within the building’s skeleton and even improved living standards by rigging electricity and running water as high as the 27^th floor. Despite the treacherous conditions, the squatters live rather safely. They have organized themselves. There is a building coordinator, sentries to guard the entrances, and no gangs.

The Tower of David now symbolizes something different than before. It currently stands as a reminder of the ruin faced by Caracas, “once one of Latin America’s most developed cities.” What had been founded as a planned commercial building to exhibit the strength of the city had recently been refounded by displaced Venezuelans for unplanned, unintended purposes. However, as one squatter relates, “There’s opportunity in this tower.” Many see the building’s new purpose as hopeful.

We read in Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Sharon Zukin’s Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places of the revitalization of formerly prosperous cities through squatters who acted as the “pioneer species” or “first succession” inhabitants in particular urban locations like SoHo and Brooklyn. Taking into account that the Venezuelan government is currently at a stand-still in addressing the housing issue (they have made little effort to remove the squatters from the Tower of David, but they have also not aided those living within the building) and that many of the squatters have jobs within the city, I would be curious to see how this story plays out and if the squatters have any effect on the redevelopment of Caracas as had the squatting hipsters on the development of New York.

Information from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/world/americas/01venezuela.html?pagewanted=all

Picture from http://rssbroadcast.com/?p=34967

The Dallas Arts District: A case of radical founding

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 23:34:00 -0400

It’s pretty amazing how concepts that we discuss in class seem to pop up all over the place; I stumbled across this example of radical founding while casually “surfing the net” this afternoon. (Full article:http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/arts/a-job-frank-gehry).

The Dallas Arts District is a dramatic urban renewal project that has been in the works for over 30 years. The district now stands as a 19-block cultural arts center consisting of various museums and music halls (designed by “starchitects” such as Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, and Rem Koolhaas) where a run-down neighborhood once existed. It might sound great, but the problem is that the area lacks features of a vibrant neighborhood that Jane Jacobs noted as being so important: it’s not high density and it lacks diversity. As stated in the article, “Some locals complain that [the buildings] are clearly built for folks who drive in for a bit of culture and then drive away.”

As we’ve discussed in class, there are better and worse ways to found a place. Are the developers at fault for re-founding this derelict neighborhood as a glitzy tourist destination (that seems to be somewhat undesired by the people that live there)? Keep in mind that this top-down model has actually worked in some cities, such as the creation of DC’s Penn Quarter and the Minneapolis Mill District.

I also wonder: is the Dallas Arts District better than what existed before? Are impoverished neighborhoods somehow critical to maintain the gritty or authentic character of a city? Should they simply be eradicated, as in Dallas? What might be a better way to manage “problem” neighborhoods within a city?

The Central Chinese Television Tower ? ?Big Underpants? or ?Hemorrhoids??

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:26:00 -0400

The Central Chinese Television Tower – “Big Underpants” or “Hemorrhoids”?

Although this mostly relates to our discussion earlier in the semester about high modernism, the CCTV Tower in Beijing, China has come to mind on numerous occasions during our class presentations. It wasn’t until I did some searching online when I learned that the official name of the tower is Zhongyang dianshi tai zongbu dalou (Central Television Station General Headquarters). I had come to know the building as the da kucha’r, or “big underpants.”

The “Big Underpants” was completed in 2009 by architects Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. I remember passing by the giant building on a bus while it was under construction in 2007, thinking that it was the strangest looking building I had ever seen. It was then when a friend riding with me on the bus told me, “Oh yeah, we call it the da kucha’r. I don’t know what the actual name of it is, though.”

As this TIME blog article points out, nicknaming is very common in Chinese society. Nearly everybody has at least one nickname, if not a few, given by family, friends, and colleagues. This is also the case for iconic structures such as the National Center for the Performing Arts, which looks like a giant egg and the Olympic Stadium that resembles a bird’s nest.

Of course, the people at CCTV are unhappy with their headquarters’ nickname and have been trying to promote alternative names. One possibility was the “Wisdom Window,” but that could easily turn into yet another humorous nickname of “hemorrhoids,” which are both pronounced zhichuang.

The author of this article, Austin Ramzy, makes an interesting connection to Confucius’s famous saying about the “rectification of names.” Basically, according to the Great Sage, we should call things what they really are. The Daoists, especially Zhuangzi, might argue that coming up with terminology to distinguish between countless different things only leads to confusion.

It never occurred to me that this kind of nicknaming could be an effective means of expressing public support or protest against an act of founding, such as that of the CCTV Tower. How does this nicknaming phenomenon fit in with founding and preservation? Do we see this happening in other societies? What are the effects?

http://china.blogs.time.com/2008/11/13/naming-the-cctv-tower-or-why-big-underpants-is-better-than-hemorrhoids/

P.S.: The tower mysteriously caught on fire in 2009 during the Chinese New Year, which stirred up a great deal of controversy. There are some interesting pictures and information on this website:

http://www.chinasmack.com/2009/pictures/beijing-cctv-building-on-fire-news-censored.html

Slum in Rio - Rocinha

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:17:00 -0400

Rocinha is a slum in Rio that is extremely well-developed. There are 150,000 - 300,000 people living there and almost all buildings have water, basic sanitation, electricity, etc. - even cable television. Unforunately, Rocinha is also home to many drug dealers. Should Brazil occupy and control this slum? "The preparations to enter Rocinha, a hillside community of more than 80,000 people that has a thriving assortment of businesses and an emerging tourism trade, involved months of planning, officials said."

Today, officials entered Rocinha to assert control over the slum in preparation for the 2016 Olympics. "The authorities said the occupation was an effort at the “pacification” of the sprawling slum, or favela, and it was carried out peacefully. " (NYTimes). What will become of this slum? Will it become a city or be incorporated into Rio as a place that is under the control and guidance of the government? Will it be wiped out? What will happen to the lives of so many people who live in this slum?

“Some say it’s good; others say it’s not,” said Nilson Ferreira, 31, a doorman who lives in Vidigal, a slum near Rocinha that was also occupied on Sunday by soldiers and the police. “For me, it’s fine,” said Mr. Ferreira, who watched the police clean an area where drug traffickers had thrown oil to prevent vehicles from passing."

Many of the slums in Rio are dominated by drug dealers. It would be interesting to see how the slums (or if) they could survive with the removal of these dealers.

Here is the article that was on the front page of NYTimes.com today: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/world/americas/authorities-take-control-of-rios-largest-slum.html?_r=1&hp

Fun fact: at one point, Rocinha had a McDonalds. Globalizaiton in the slums!

Beautiful Places

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:08:00 -0400

www.buzzfeed.com/catesish/awesome-landscape-photos

I know this doesn't suffice for a blog post, but these are really awesome pictures

Thoughts on Garbage Dreams

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:53:00 -0400

After watching Garbage Dreams I was really surprised to see how passionate the zabaleen are about their profession. Not only is garbage the livelihood for the zabaleen, but the people take pride in their work and see the recycling that they do as being extremely important. As evidenced by the shots of the community meetings, the majority of the people while perhaps not always satisfied with their lot in life nonetheless care deeply for what they do and how well they do it. Mark Kramer’s Dispossessed illustrated this pride to an extent, but I think that seeing the young men in Garbage Dreams on their visit to the new landfill really drove home what it means to be zabaleen and exactly how terrible the threat of the foreign waste disposal companies are. Not only does the newer system of waste disposal essentially displace the zabaleen and push them further into poverty it also completely reverses the rate of recycling. The zabaleen recycle 80% of the garbage they collect while the foreign companies only recycle 20%. This figure alone should be reason enough for Cairo to find a different solution to the city’s garbage problems and slums. Unfortunately I think that Cairo has fallen for the myth of progress. Cairo is too preoccupied with appearing modern and implementing a Western waste disposal system that the city does not see that by “progressing” to match developed countries the it is inadvertently moving backwards in the environmental realm. Obviously there are some benefits to an organized waste disposal system, yet I think that in this case the environmental and social justice issues far outweigh any positives gained by Cairo using foreign companies to handle its garbage.

The recycling rate of the zabaleen also makes me seriously question the technology and efforts that the western world puts into recycling. 80% is extremely high, far higher than the figure that was given when the young men were abroad in Wales or the recycling efforts in the United States. I think that necessity drives the zabaleen to recycle efficiently, yet I wonder why the developed word cannot achieve the same or higher rates.