T2016F

We'll do the first day sort of stuff. It's been a long time since I've had two one-day weeks in a row. After today, I won't see you again until the 8th, next Monday being Labor Day. I hope to get some things accomplished:

We'll introduce ourselves to each other, tell each other a bit about our interests, where we're from, and what we consider our home town today, and how we prefer to have our names pronounced--the usual sort of thing.

I'll go over some of the things on the home page. Talk a little about the books for the course, and how we plan to use them. We may work in more than one book simultaneously. I'll publish next week's work to the website by Thursday, so you will have an idea of what's going on. This is likely to be the shortest week's work this semester.

Some of our work may be done individually, some of it in groups of four or less. I am going to let you participate in choosing the city's which will serve as examples for the concepts we'll pick up in our reading. Looking at the home page, You'll see the books I've chosen for the semester, and a bit about why I've chosen them. I want to think about lifestyle, what we gain, and what we lose by living in cities. No two cities are exactly alike.

One thing, too: we may say we "live in" a city, but what we really mean is that we live in a part of a city. I've lived in Bristol since the fall of 1972 and at my current address since 1991. As small as Bristol is, there are streets upon which I've never walked. Imagine that. They could be on the moon for as much as I know about them. I suspect that the same is true for many of you in your home environments.

Next week's reading assignment will be in Witold Rybczynski's book City Life. You'll find it on the page for next week. In the meantime, you can prowl around a bit in some of these cities which we may include in our work during the semester. Can you guess where you are by what you see?