Week of January 25

Last week we looked at the communities which we consider our own. We started to get a sense of the institutions which constitute them, and looked at the widely varying types of communities which are part of the American fabric. Today we’ll start to develop a theoretical framework for understanding those differences.

The Introduction will help us frame a definition of “Suburb”. We’ll find defining suburb is more difficult than it seems at first. We’ll encounter political definitions and socioeconomic definitions, and we’ll also see that American residential patterns are very different from those of the European countries from which the founders of most American places sprung.

Chapter I will take us back to days when Suburbs were anything but desirable places to live. The name suggests this: sub-urban areas are beneath or inferior to urban ones, or at least were, from the days of Classical Rome to the early 19th century.

Chapter II will introduce two very important concepts, first, the walking city and second, the transportation revolution which radically transformed the nature of cities. Two thousand years of urban history were transformed in little more than a single generation. We still live with the promise (and problems) of that transformation.

Yup, we’re continuing with what we started last class. On Friday we looked at the communities which we consider our own. We started to get a sense of the institutions which constitute them, and looked at the widely varying types of communities which are part of the American fabric. Today we’ll start to develop a theoretical framework for understanding those differences. (Just in case you forgot what is up top at the syllabus, I’m repeating it all here. :-)

Chapter I will take us back to days when Suburbs were anything but desirable places to live. The name suggests this: sub-urban areas are beneath or inferior to urban ones, or at least were, from the days of Classical Rome to the early 19th century.

Chapter II will introduce two very important concepts, first, the walking city and second, the transportation revolution which radically transformed the nature of cities. Two thousand years of urban history were transformed in little more than a single generation. We still live with the promise (and problems) of that transformation. What I'd like to have you do for today is

Using Google Maps, find a "walking city" in the state where you live (or anywhere else if you wish). Remember that a "Walking City" is one where you can get most of the things you need for daily life within a reasonable walk from where you live.

Copy that Map into a Microsoft word Document, Use cropping tools to get just the map area you want. Place a mark where you want to live.

Create a folder named after that city in you resources, Put the Microsoft word document in the file.

Go back to google Maps, use the street finder icon (a little orange figure) and move it to the place you want to live. Copy the "share" URL, and add it to the same folder.

I'll demonstrate this in class.

Read, in Stilgoe,

Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820 - 1939

Introduction, 1- 17

Section I. "Intellectual and Practical Beginnings

"View"" 21

1. "Witch Hazel” 22 - 26

2. "Botanizing" 27 - 37

Borderlands: Origins of the American Suburb introduces a landscape over time, but a landscape that addressed curiously timeless concerns. It makes no attempt to outline the great forces, economic, technological, religious, and otherwise, that comprise the “sociology of suburbia,” but deals rather with the theater in which “suburbans” chose to live in the century after 1820. It probes and pokes at visual things, and in a time when urban form receives so much scrutiny, it focuses on a purely marginal place, “commuter country,” the borderlands, the suburbs as Americans once knew them.

Frequently when we come upon a book which is heavily illustrated we sigh with relief because it means we have less to read. We then proceed to pretty much ignore the illustrations. The illustrations in Stilgoe are very important, and we lose a lot of value if we don’t spend serious time looking at and interpreting them. Stilgoe helps us see why suburbs are important places... perhaps the most politically potent places in America today (soccer moms, SUVs, and all that). As you read him, notice that the captions to his illustrations are very important. We tend to ignore captions: Don’t! It may take you a bit to get used to this book...

Based on these chapters from section I, I’d like to have you write a short “review” of the chapters and what you expect from the rest of the book following. Consider the things which may be useful in it, and the things which be difficult. Place this in your Bridges resource folder before class.

Today most people hearing the word "City" immediately think of someplace like Boston or Chicago or New York. Places like those, including today's Providence, became possible do to ongoing revolutions in transportation. Before most of the factories closed and Bristol became a place where many commuted to work elsewhere, it would have been considered a walking. City. The area in this map would have been the the main part of town. I'm guessing that most of the class has walked in parts of Bristol, though there are plenty of places you've never seen. On the Google Streetfinder above, "walk" your way to downtown Bristol (don't get lost) but don't necessarily take the most direct way there, either. Can you find most of what you need for ordinary daily living within the map area? What's missing, perhaps?