20160919

Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D

Office: GHH 215

Hours: M, 12:00-1:00

T-Th 9:30-10:50 or by Appointment

Phone: (401) 254-3230

E-mail: mswanson@rwu.edu

Read, in Rybczynski,

Chapter 5. In the Land of the Dollar, pp. 110-130

Chapter 6. Civic Art, pp. 131-148

We're going to speed up our reading in Rybczynski just a bit. I'm hoping to have our cities chosen between the discussion on Thursday the 15th and whatever remains to be done concerning today's class. I'm also going get your advice on whether to go the website route or the traditional paper. If we go the traditional paper route, I'll post them all at the end of the semester so you can learn about each other's cities,

The screen shot above is from the film below, which is entitled Detroit - The Renaissance of America. The first part is going to seem very depressing--it is depressing, Detroit's population has diminished incredibly since the period following World War Two, when it experience great growth. But with new techniques for making automobiles, plus the "big three" shifting automobile construction overseas, the population is under 700,000 and it is no longer one of the nation's largest cities. As we've said before, no city stays the same across time: sometimes the changes are good, sometimes not. Suburban Detroit, or as they call it "Detroit Metro" has a population of 4,000,000 plus. The interstate highway system helped cause this, and as you can see from the video, it has also led to more segregation.

Read, in Rybczynski,

Chapter 7. High Hopes, pp. 131 - 172

Read, in Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities,

(if you have the 50th Anniversary Edition) the Introduction by Jason Epstein

Forward by Ms. Jacobs, pp. xxi - xxvii.

Rybczynski introduces you to Jane Jacobs in the chapters for this week. So I think it time to meet her for ourselves. You may remember the picture on the first page of the website, hanging out at a bar in Greenwich Village, where she lived for many years. I think you'll enjoy her approach to thinking about Urban America. Normally our thought pattern goes "life and death" of whatever we're thinking about. Note that she reverses the sequence in the title of this book. For her, actions such as those which created Cabrini Green pictured above, and other such high-rise public housing projects all over America contributed to the "death" of urban America. We'll shortly see what she things will (and to some degree has) contributed to the rebirth of the same Urban spaces. Segregation issues, however, have not yet been solved.