We’re likely to be a little behind given my day out sick. Rather than rush us through Chapter 6, originally assigned for last Thursday (which I described as the most difficult chapter in the readings of last week) I’m going to delay it unitil Tusday of this week., and give it the time it deserves.
Chapter 6. The Uses of City Neighborhoods (Repeat from last Thursday)
This chapter may be the most difficult of all in this assignment. This is not Jacobs’ fault, particularly, but the fault of our own preconceptions about neighborhoods and what it means to be someone’s neighbor. We’re going to have to move to different sorts of definitions here. Jacobs wants us to understand three levels of “neighborhood,” all of which have to function simultaneously if a city is to function well. If this is the case, simple geography can’t be the entire definer of neighborhood or neighborliness.
This rather dingy picture doesn't do justice to the vibrancy of the Back of the Yards district in Chicago, featured in Jacobs' chapter 6. Clicking on it will bring you to the brochure of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council one of the grass roots organizations which Jane Jacobs lauds as vital to arresting decay in the city. Forty years after her book was published the Council remains active and vital, even as the ethnic mix continues to change.
For Tuesday, September 15
For Thursday, September 17
I’ll introduce some tools I haven’t introduced until now: tools which will help in your research for visual materials on the interenet. Among them, Flickr and Panoramio and Youtube...two of these integrate with Google Earth.
I’m hoping we’ll be able to finalize the city investigation groups this week, and the get a very good start on determining which cities we’re going to investigate. Unless I’m hearing loud noises protesting, I’m going to suggest we set the limit to eight cities. This would mean five groups of four and three groups of five. Before this date, either Thursday thd 8th or Tuesday the fifteenth, I’ll hold some time at the end of a class session to talk with those who might be interested in taking on a leadership role in their groups. Today I hope we can have the goup memberships determined and also have begun a short list of American Cities from which the final eight will be chosen.
To prepare for this class, I'd like to have you do a little treasure hunting by using the web programs I included on last week's syllabus, and by investigating the three areas I'm linking at the left. These programs can be used together to give a visual image of an area which might enforce one or another of Jane Jacob's Points. Here,s a little example to show what I mean.
is an inner city park just south of of downtown minneapolis fairly recently, its border was impinged upon by an interstate highway system, separating it from severl cultural institutions, among them the Walker Art Center.
The Map Above came from Google Maps. The garden house to the right I located at Panoramio, which is linked to Google Maps. Below is the Minnealpolis Skline, seen from Loring Park, I found the photo onFlickr.
Finally, one can use the little orange man at Google Maps to exploor the vicinity of the park and notice what there may be to notice about the environment.
So, what I'd like to have you do by Thursday,
is find a good sidewalk,, or a bad sidewalk, or a good neighborhood park, or a bad neighborhood park, of a good neighborhood, or a bad neighborhood, as defined by Jacob's philosophy---anyplace in the United States. Look it over, find some images of it, and add them to your Journal.
If you have a laptop computer, bring it with you to class--promising, of course, that you will use it for stuff which deals with what we're actually doing.
