Study Guide

 

You do not need to answer these questions for your essays. Instead, use them as a self-quiz to see if you know the answer. If not, you might want to reread some of the sections. T

Friedrich Engels: "The Great Towns" (1845)

  1. What public health violations (according to today's standards) does Engels describe in 19th Century Manchester, a thriving industrialized city in England?
  2. How were social classes arranged spatially?
  3. If such conditions would or did exist today, what institutions are in place to remedy them?

DuBois: The Negro Problems of Philadelphia (1899)

  1. Describe the social diversity within the black community of segregated Philadelphia at the turn of the century.
  2. What does he see as causes limiting t African-American's chances of success?
  3. How do you think it compares to highly segregated African-American communities in Watts are Harlem today?

Gans, Herbert: "Levittown and America" (1967)

  1. Levittowns, named after their developer Levitt, are one of the first and quintessential suburbs in the US. One was built near NY City, another in Pennsylvania, and a similar one near LA was Lakewood. Does Gans join the chorus of those who condemn the suburbia of Levittown?
  2. When was Levittown built and for whom? What are the socio-demographic characteristics (age, class, racial background, family status...) of Levittowners?
  3. How do these characteristics of the Levittown population affect Levittowners' political behavior?
  4. According to Gans, how representative are Levittowners in their life style and life philosophies of the US population generally?
  5. How does Gans justify the narrowmindedness and conformity of the Levittowners?
  6. Overall, does his defense of suburban community from 1967 still ring true today? Do suburbs still have these characteristics?

Sam Bass Warner, Jr. "The Megalopolis: 1920-" (1972)

  1. Why does he call L.A. a city of "the last half century?" (note publication of this article)
  2. What industries made LA grow so quickly? (oil, agriculture - irrigation, aircraft and aerospace and war industry)
  3. To what extent does LA differ from other cities? ( large scale development, lots of space, single family housing, spatial freedom, potential for greater racial inclusivity, deliberate federal programs for defense)
  4. How did the closing down of the interurban lines after WWII affect the LA downtown area?
  5. How has the federal government invested in LA development?
  6. What does the author see as the advantages of the role in urban planning?
  7. Do you think his optimism about the "Free" way is still shared in the LA freeway gridlock today?
  8. How does he assess the problems of urban sprawl/waste of land and related social and environmental problems?

Robert Fishman "Beyond Suburbia: The Rise of the Technoburb" (1987)

  1. What are the characteristics of the Technoburb? How is it different from the (inner) city and how different from the suburb?
  2. What made its supposed emergence possible?
  3. What are its shortcomings?
  4. Can you visualize a "technoburb"?
  5. Do you agree that his concept of technoburb is in fact a new form of urbanity?

 

 

Mike Davis: Ecology of Fear, Chapter 1: "The Dialectic of Ordinary Disaster"

1.     What do natural disasters have to do with cities and social justice?

  1. What type of landscape is the California landscape? What are the characteristics of this landscape? What is the role of "natural disasters" of this climate in the changes of landscapes?
  2. What is the difference between Anglo-Americans and Spanish colonizers’ understanding of the California landscape?
  3. What is the difference between the theory of uniformitarian landscapes in contrast to catastrophic landscapes?
  4. What does the environmental record of the last 2000 yrs reveal about the California Climate in relation to droughts?
  5. Why does he compare it to biblical descriptions?
  6. Instead of asking “Why so many recent disasters?” why does Mike Davis say we should ask “Why so few”?
  7. What type of infrastructure has caused the LA river to swell so dangerously during rainy season?
  8. What is the seismic debt LA has to pay back at some point?
  9. When were the last major earthquakes in California? Are earthquakes predictable today in Los Angeles?
  10. What does Mike Davis mean with "hazard zoning?"
  11. What is the danger of buildings built with precast concrete?
  12. Why have buildings not been retrofitted after the last, Northridge Earthquake in 1994?
  13. What have been the consequences of the Northridge Earthquake in terms of Urban Redevelopment after the LA riots in 1992? Has disaster relief helped everyone equally?
  14. How was the federal disaster relief paid to Los Angeles after Northridge ultimately financed?
  15. Which long term planning strategies does Mike Davis suggest for Los Angeles?

Mike Davis: Ecology of Fear. Chapter 2: How Eden lost its Garden

  1. What does Davis mean with "the underproduction of Public Space"?
  2. What is the significance of the lovely Santa Clara River Valley and its citrus groves in this chapter?
  3. Compare to the documentary: NY. What was the underlying philosophy of Central Park planner Frederik Law Olmsted for New York, and what did he suggest for Los Angeles?
  4. Why did Los Angeles not follow this recommendation?
  5. Why are Angelenos so eager to have developers come and develop large scale housing units?
  6. How did the city loose much of its land and its natural resources/beauty?
  7. How did LA planners take care of the Los Angeles River? And what problems did it ultimately produce? What are the solutions Olmsted suggested?
  8. How was urban sprawl created?

Octavia Butler: Chapter 4-7

  1. What social institutions are no longer working in LA 2024?
  2. How have people's ethics changed as a result of their living conditions?
  3. What solutions does the author offer?
  4.  
  5.  

Reminder: Questions for the Homework Assignment for Week 4:

  • What social justice problems does Mike Davis raise in relation to earth quakes and floods, and the sell-out of LA's natural beauty?
  • What is Mike Davis' overall philosophy on social justice?

Reisner: The Red Nile

  1. Why did Los Angeles need water? What sources of water did it have?
  2. What was the significance of the Owens River for LA's water needs?
  3. Who was Mulholland? Which post did he hold and what did he built?
  4. Why did the city of Los Angeles need to add the San Fernando Valley?
  5. By which means was the water of the Owens River Valley acquired?
  6. What role did the newspapers play in the process?
  7. How did the Owens Valley react to the Aqueduct?
  8. Do you agree with Mulholland and his buddies, including Roosevelt, that the water served the Angelenos a lot more than it ever could have served the Owens Valley community?
  9. Did the means justify the ends in this case?
  10. Why did Mulholland end up building the San Francis Dam, and what happened to it?

 

Marshall Berman: Robert Moses – The Expressway World

1)     Who was Robert Moses? What was he known for? 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 Jones Beach?

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)Corbusier  … “New York … wounds our sense of happiness. A city can overwhelm us with its broken lines, the sky is torn by its ragged outline…. The crocketed spires of the cathedrals reflect the agony of the flesh, the poignant dreams of the spirit, hell and purgatory, and forests of pines seen through the pale light and cold mist.”

12)What is the modernism Robert Moses represents? What is the urbanism that Robert Moses represents? How is it influenced by Le Corbusier?

Berman: “Here in the Bronx, thanks to Robert Moses, the modernity of the urban boulevard was being condemned as obsolete, and blown to pieces, by the modernity of the interstate highway. Sic transit! To be modern turned out to be far more problematical, and more perilous, than I had been taught.” (295/96)

13)How did Moses finance his huge projects?

14)How was he able to become more powerful than the mayor of New York, and to some extent, more powerful than the president of the United States?

15)What was the relationship of Moses’ construction projects with the New Deal?

16)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

 

Maps of Los Angeles

Maps of New York

 

New York City Documentary, Vol 7

If you want to explore some more material about the video, click the link

 

The following are a couple of questions you might want to consider:

 

  1. What image of city did the architectural designer Le Corbusier advocate as the modern city for the automobile? What was to be the relationship between cars, houses, streets, and people?
  2. How did Le Corbusier's idea influence Robert Moses?
  3. For a 1939 Review of Robert Moses and his work, check out this Atlantic Portrait.
  4. What were the new immigration waves of post-WWII New York?
  5. What were the characteristics of the post-industrializing economy of post-WWII? How did that change the opportunities for the arriving new immigrants as compared to previous immigrants?
  6. When Robert Moses built highways, parkways, and bridges, he essentially had a " tabula rasa" or clean slate to do so. How did that change when Robert Moses took on the Urban Renewal/Slum Clearance task of post WWII?
  7.   By what means did he extend his power base?  (Construction Coordinator, committee chair &..) He is known to have said that he liked to 'swing the meat ax'.
  8. What was Title I all about? What was it supposed to do, and what did it end up doing?
  9. What was the impact of the communities that had lived in the so-called "blighted areas"? What new structures were provided for them, if any at all? How did that relate to Le Corbusier’s vision?
  10. What are the characteristics of super blocks? How do they differ from the neighborhoods that were there before? What happened to the sidewalks, the street life, and the economic hustle and bustle?
  11. What does 'eminent domain' mean?
  12. What was Title II all about? (Remember Levittown, suburban housing tracts, federal mortgage securities for single-family housing in suburbia, for weak, but only white buyers)
  13. What were the structural changes that helped to draw resources away from the center and caused the whole 'center of gravity' to shift away from the cities? (think car, freeways, Title II, post-industrial development)
  14. When we now hear 'cleaning up' Times Square, what connotations do you think it provokes for some people?
  15. Are there any similarities between Robert Moses and Mulholland?
  16. What kinds of questions of social justice does Urban Renewal in the widest sense raise?
  17. What was Robert Moses' answer to questions of social justice?
  18. Why do you think 10s of thousands of people put up with it for so long?

 

 

Jane Jacobs: The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety

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?

Pictures of Greenwich Village - Now and Then

 

 

CR: Wilson and Kelling - Broken Windows

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”?

 

Sharon Zukin: "Whose Culture? Whose City?"

  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"?
  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)
  9. Do you agree with her tenets that public space should entail public stewardship and open access?
  10. How does the recent debate over the firefighter memorial depicting one of three being African-American reflect the problems that public institutions have but BID's don't?
  11. "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?
  12. Would Jane Jacobs have liked Bryant Park?
  13. Whose culture does a city represent? To whom does the city belong?

For your Info: Bryant Park Rules

 

Discussion of Duneier's Sidewalk: Chapter 2-4

o       Jane Jacobs and Greenwich Village: Which role did it play in Urban Renewal, and how did Greenwich Village differ from the Village today?

 

Part 2: How Sixth Avenue Became A Sustainable Habitat

1.      Habitat Urban Ecology, Robert Park: Chicago School of Urban Sociology

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 Greenwich Village a "sustainable habitat" for men?

6.     Informal Economy/ Informal Sector vs. Formal Economy or Formal Sector

 

 

 

Part Three: The Limits of Informal Social Control

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 e extended to explain social deterioration; that is, whether there is any validity to the idea of "persons as 'broken windows'" (p.159). (quoting from Meghan's Homework Essay). Discuss this statement.

 

Part Four: Regulating the People Who Work the Streets The Space Wars

Competing Legalities

1.      Who competes over the space?

2.     Who lobbied the Local Law 45 and with which arguments did they win?

3.     How did the new Law change or alter the condition of the street vendors?

4.     How did Local Law 45 change their social relations?

 

A Christmas on Sixth Avenue

5.      During Christmas, the space on the Sidewalk becomes more competitive. Who else is now competing with the book vendors for space?

6.      What did Giuliani's so called "quality of life campaign" do to "clean up the city?" Discuss this question using some of the evidence Duneier provides. For example, Ishmael's visit to the 6. Precinct to get back his belongings.

7.      Why does the police officer in the 6th Precinct repeat over and over again his speech on respect towards Ishmael? What is the significance of respect to Ishmael and the police?

8.      Why did the police tell Ishmael he had to pack up his stuff? Was he in the right or was he harassing Ishmael?

9.      Why did the police eventually leave Mitch Duneier alone? Were the police following the law?

 

Part Five: A Scene from Jane Street

10.  Why did the locals trust the Christmas Tree Vendors from Vermont so much that they would give them keys to their apartment to use the bathroom?

11.  How do locals treat the children of the Romps, and how do locals treat the grandchildren of Alice, the Filipino Vendor?

12.  Discuss the appearance of decency! To what extent are the Romps able to appear more decent than the street vendors? What do the street vendors lack that would help them to not fall into a spiral of apparent "indecency?"

13.  Are vendors "public eyes on the street" that are helping, according to Jane Jacob's theory, to avoid danger on the sidewalk? Or are they the "broken windows" that cause a place to deteriorate?

14.  Would the white women have been less offended if it would have been a white vendor making those remarks?

 

Afterword:

Should Hakim get royalties from this book?