It’s long, but the longer,
the more helpful. I will have again one or two longer essays and a larger
number of small essays. Some of the questions for the longer essay might be
culled from the questions listed below each reading.
1) Who was Robert Moses? What did he rule over?
2) Name at least three things for which Robert Moses is
known for.
3) Who is Moloch? (Check out your Old Testament or go directly
to brittanica.com) and what does he represent here?
4) What was the significance of Moses turning a heap of
ashes into beautiful
5) Why were many of the Parkways he created an urban
aesthetics inaccessible for most middle class and poorer New Yorkers? What was
necessary to be able to appreciate this aesthetics? What is the “space-time
feeling of our time?”
6) What did Robert Moses mean when he said: “When you
operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack you way with a meat ax?”
7) For what did Robert Moses become so famous in the
1930s?
8) What were the costs of the Cross Bronx Expressway, not
so much in dollars as in human tragedy?
9) How did it tie into the larger vision that Robert
Moses had?
10)Who was Le Corbusier, and what significance did he have
for Robert Moses?
11)What is the modernism and urbanism Robert Moses
represents? How is it influenced by Le Corbusier? Consider the two quotes below
for your answer?
Corbusier …
“
Berman: “Here in the
12)How did Moses finance his huge projects?
13)How was he able to become more powerful than the mayor
of
14)What was the relationship of Moses’ construction
projects with the New Deal?
15)Look at Ginsberg’s poem of Moloch: what does Moloch
represent? Look at Berman’s article, who does he say Moloch represents? How are
Ginzburg’s and Berman’s images of Moloch connected?
Marshall Berman: A Shout in the Street
1.
What does the
shout in the street represent?
2.
What is its
relevance to Jane Jacobs?
3.
What kind of life
was sacrificed to the modernity envisioned by Moses and LeCorbusier?
If you want to explore some
more material about the video, click the link. Many of the issues discussed in
the video came directly from Berman, so there is considerable overlap
Paul Davidoff: Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning
1.
Briefly describe
Davidoff’s approach to planning and decisionmaking in
cities!
2.
What is the role
of a Planning Commission in most cities?
3.
What does
Davidoff demand in its place? And how would this lead to greater social
justice?
John Forester: Planning in the Face of Conflict
1.
Briefly describe
Forester’s analysis of the role of the urban planner! Who and what does he deal
with?
2.
What are the
dilemmas a planner faces when dealing with various stake holders?
3.
Name two
strategies a planner can use to mediate
these dilemmas
4. How do both
differ from Robert Moses’ meat ax and his “public authorities”?
1. What are the points of
intersection between Jane Jacobs' article on safety and Mitch Duneier's street vendors?
2. What was Jane Jacob's political
background to the book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"?
What did Jane Jacobs criticize?
3. Where does she stand on
suburbanization?
4. What and who keeps city
streets safe, according to Jane Jacobs?
5. What are the three main characteristics
of safe sidewalks?
6. What does she suggest to
create around the clock sidewalk safety? Can you visualize places in cities
where this happens successfully?
7. Who owns the street? Who
should own the street?
8. Do you agree with Jane
Jacob's glorification of the sidewalk as an asset to cities?
1. According to the authors,
what does a “broken window” signal to residents? How do “broken windows” become
a metaphor?
2. What or who can become a
“broken window”? Central question. Relates to many different readings discussed in
class.
Part One: The Informal Life of the Sidewalk
1.
What is a public
character? Why does Hakim refer to himself as “a public character”? What is
meant with the expression “eyes on the street?”
2.
Describe the
socio-economic and ethnic/racial make up of both the
3.
What role did the
author play?
4.
In what ways do
the individual life stories told defy common stereotypes about the homeless?
5.
Describe the
economic activities of the “book vendors”, the “magazine vendors”, the “men
with no accounts”. How does their economic niche work, how do they depend on
others?
1.
Habitat Urban
Ecology, Robert Park:
2.
Ethnography
3.
What are the
sources of homelessness of the men described in this book?
4.
Habitat - what
made Penn Station a "sustainable habitat," and how did it cease to be
a "sustaining habitat?"
5.
What was the role
of Local Law 33 to make
6.
Informal Economy/
Informal Sector vs. Formal Economy or Formal Sector
7.
Jane Jacobs and
1. Jane Jacobs "eyes upon the street" as
informal social control - does Mitch Duneier agree
with her?
2. What is the "Broken Windows" theory of
George Kelling and James Q. Wilson?
3. What influence did it have on city politics in NYC and
on cities nationwide?
4. Why do the men sleep in the street rather than go to
the White House to sleep?
5. Is it to sustain a drug addiction?
6. How do the men regard their own homelessness?
7.
"Once homeless,
always homeless". How can this quote be
interpreted, particularly in light of the fact that several of the men Duneier describes have moved into apartments after having
been homeless.
8. Where do the men go to the bathroom?
9. How do the men "harass women?"
10. Book and magazine vendors are sometimes accused of
selling stolen matter. What does Hakim reply to that,
and what does Mitch Duneier find out about his
answer?
11. Street vendors are often considered deviant. To what
extent are they?
12. Reviewing Mitch Duneier's
assessment of whether the street vendors' "eyes upon the street"
contribute to informal social control and streetwalk safety,
do you think he agrees with Jane Jacobs' theory?
13. "Duneier questions
whether this philosophy [of "broken windows"], which was originally
presented only in a physical context, can be extended to explain social
deterioration; that is, whether there is any validity to the idea of
"persons as 'broken windows'" (p.159). What are the limits of this
analogy?
1. What is the "visually seductive, privatized
public culture" Sharon Zukin is warning us
about?
2. Do you see parallels in Zukin's
characterization of the modern city as being shaped by economic/political
powers to impress with the ancient cities discussed earlier?
3. What does Zukin mean with
the "symbolic economy"? (one way to make
this easier to comprehend is to understand it as an economy of symbols, not actual
things or tangible items. So when designer jeans are sold for mega bucks, it is
not the jeans themselves whose value is reflected on the label, but the idea
the label represents. Ergo – other symbolic economies)
4. What does she mean with "the cacophony of demands
for justice is translated into a coherent demand for jeans?" (p. 134)
5. What does she mean with "developing the city's
symbolic economy involves recycling workers, sorting people into housing
markets, luring investment, and negotiating political claims for public goods
and ethnic promotion." (134)
6. What is the "public culture" she is writing
about?
7. How and why has Bryant Park become
privatized?
8.
How do BID's (Business
Improvement Districts) counteract public space as democratic space? Compare to Guiliani's statement: "BIDs
are one of the true success stories in the city. It's a tailor-made form of
local government." (139) What is the irony in
Giuliani’s statement, a democratically elected mayor?
9. Do you agree with her tenets that public space should
entail public stewardship and open access?
10. "The groups that have inherited the city have a
claim on its central symbolic spaces...... that confirm identity by offering
visual testimony to a group's presence in history." (Zukin
141) Where does that leave spontaneous expressions of identity/culture/etc.
such as graffiti?
11. Would Jane Jacobs have liked Bryant Park?
12. Whose
culture does a city represent? To whom does the city belong? What are the
rights of the homeless to a space, to economic activity -- and representation -- in the city?
13. What do park rules state? How do these underscore the
point Zukin is making?
Mike Davis: Fortress
1.
Why does he
entitle this article “Fortress LA”? Who or what is fortified?
2.
Identify the
various surveillance and security apparatuses (such as “armed response”) and how
do these determine the social relations and social inequalities in the
3.
What does he mean
when he talks about the brutalization of inner city neighborhoods?
4.
What does
Soja: Taking
5.
How does Soja undertake to describe this postmodern, apparently decentered, fragmented urban space? What angle does he use
to describe the built environment? Where does he draw the boundaries of LA?
What does the perimeter of these boundaries demarcate? And how do these “industries”
challenge the notion of
6.
What kinds of
urban institutions does he see in the center? To what extent are these similar
to a panopticon, to a central locus of power and
surveillance?
In the spatial and economic relationships between immigrants and non
immigrants, how can one describe it as a dual city?
1)
What is the
number of foreign-born New Yorkers in 1999? In what period was it even higher?
2) Compare the immigration in
3) How and to what extent do
ethnic communities foster and provide easier opportunities for new immigrants?
a. Describe transnational
networks
b. Kin-migration
c. Ethnic enclaves (f.ex.
d. Describe examples of high
ethnic self-employment
e. What places of employment
have immigrants found, in a rapidly restructuring economy in NYC, that produced
on one level “high-end” jobs, such as business
services, law, banking, consulting etc. and on another “low-end” jobs, such as
domestic service, hotels, restaurants, car washing services, etc.?
f. What are the largest ethnic
groups among NYC immigrants in the last 10 years?
g. Describe immigrant
settlement patterns. Are immigrants living primarily in ethnically homogenous
or rather in multi-ethnic neighborhoods?
h. What are the political
advantages, cultural, and economic advantages of high ethnic concentration?
i.
How have immigrants affected
j. Describe the differences in
human capital and employment niches of the major immigrant groups
Immigration and Globalization (Foner
“New Immigrants in
1.
What is the
significance of
2.
How do immigrants
from
3.
How have
Dominicans managed to gain political representation in
4.
What makes an
immigrant community “transnational”? (Kwong, Pessar and Graham, Foner)
5.
Name two
characteristics of the new immigrants / immigration laws since 1965? (Foner)
6.
What are critical
factors that influence migration patterns and settlement.
Name three!
7.
Saskia Sassen, in her article “The
Impact of the New Technologies and Globalization on Cities” questions the
notion of “rich” countries and “rich” cities. Why?
Domosh/Seager: The City
1. How have spaces, (urban vs rural, suburban vs city)
become gendered over the course of history?
Dolores Hayden
1. To what extent do the
suburbs represent a highly gendered spatial form? What was the underlying
family norm behind this spatial arrangement?
2. How has the composition and
structure of families changed since then?
3. Why have the suburbs,
according to Dolores Hayden, become a space highly problematic for most
residents?
4. What problems does she
identify as critical in creating living environments not user-friendly for
women and their particular conditions and demands?
5. What does Dolores Hayden
suggest instead?
The Big Questions:
1. Think about how each of the
themes discussed in class provides a different lens through which to see the
question of cities and social justice, its problems and possibilities.
2. How do built environments
manipulate or create social relations? How do social relations of power,
gender, race, class, etc shape the built environment?