Where are we? Blogging about place - Welcome message

thoughts

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:50:00 -0400

I was thinking about our conversation on how to re-build the World Trade Centers in the context of these articles about New Orleans. While these are both really tragic disasters, we are privileged in the United States that have the opportunity to consider how to re-build them. The United States very rarely fields attacks on our soil and when we do it is very rightly a national crisis. I am curious how other places are re-built when they have been the site of war and catastrophic violence. Is there as much dialogue about the importance of memorializing a place? Or whose responsibility it is to re-build (the owner or the state)? It seems to be that in other places where the violence is more widespread and all consuming rebuilding would be a makeshift process. I think this relates to the processes of climate change that are affect different parts of the world very differently. Who are we to tell people to re-locate because of a phenomenon that we are primarily responsible for?

Founding and Preservation

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:01:00 -0400

I'll offer a shameless plug for my own book about place: The Working Landscape: Founding, Preservation, and the Politics of Place (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007). Here's an image pasted from the Barnes & Noble website:

Blogging About Place

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:42:00 -0400

So, do you really know where you are? We often take our landscape for granted and never really understand it. My name is Peter F. Cannavo. I'm a professor of Government at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. I'm teaching a course entitled "The Politics and Theory of Place and Space." We're working to understand the concept and practice of place and how place involves two elements, founding (change, creation, development, etc.) and preservation in dynamic tension and interdependence. We'll be posting entries over the next few months ...