Tag Archives: blogging

Blogging for next week, and looking ahead to our first site visit on 2/14

Leave a reply

Today we recorded our observations of the classroom and library, learned about blind contour drawing and one-point perspective, and sketched interior spaces in the City Tech library. We also reviewed the site report template. Become very familiar with it in advance of our first site visit, next Thursday, February 14. We will depart from our usual classroom promptly at 2:30 so please be on time. Bring your phone (charged and ready to take photos), a sketchbook or notebook and pens/pencils to document, take notes, and sketch.

For next Thursday, February 14, please read the essay Due North by Garnette Cadogan and post a 100-word reflection. Cadogan writes of his observations walking between two boroughs and his serendipitous encounters with others as a New York City pedestrian. The next time you walk from one place to another, even if it is simply between transit and your home consider these questions: What city walking experiences do you have in common with the writer? What in your experience is different from what he wrote about? What do you think of the power of serendipity to “expose our commonalities,” as he puts it?

Blog Post #1: People’s Right to the City

Leave a reply

Yes, people should have a right to the city because they are the ones who inhabit it. They pay taxes that help the city develop, vote for the city’s representatives, and are responsible for the city’s culture.

Longtime residents and businesses have a right to remain where they live because of the reasons mentioned above. The documentary “My Brooklyn”, explores this by looking at gentrification in Downtown Brooklyn and how it caused the community to lose homes and businesses due to increasing property values and collusion between developers and government officials. The message of the documentary consists of the following; raise awareness to plans that could impact the neighborhood, make sure everyone involved is heard, and carefully examine developments unfolding in the community (Dean 2015).

The way local governments, urban planners, and other decision-makers can ensure these rights are maintained is by creating a government office that can accurately represent the community’s residency needs, create laws that protect tenants and housing rights, and not collude with an entity that wishes to undermine said rights. This sort of protection took place in the documentary “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City”, where Robert Moses, a public official, sparred with Jane Jacobs’ philosophy on urban development. Moses had a desire to remove “cancerous” parts of New York City and build large infrastructures in its place. Jane Jacobs, a woman who examined the neighborhood by living in it, disagreed with Moses and argued that the inhabitants of the city should have a say on what gets built in their community (Kenny 2017). Jacobs was maintaining the people’s rights by showing how Moses’ projects would affect the city negatively, creating a network of support, and rallying with residents until the projects were canceled.

Works Cited

Dean, Allison Lirish. My Brooklyn Study Guide. 2015. https://mybrooklynmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/MYB-StudyGuideFINAL.pdf

Kenny, Glenn. “Review: Jacobs and Moses Star in ‘Citizen Jane: Battle for the City’.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Apr. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/movies/citizen-jane-battle-for-the-city-review.html.

Blogging assignment for next Tuesday, February 5

2 Replies

Today we discussed My Brooklyn and viewed the film Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, considering the questions How did Jane Jacobs see the city differently than the trained architects and planners? and How would you assess Robert Moses’s projects? All good or all bad or a bit of both? On Tuesday, we will continue our discussion and view the film The Human Scale.
We reviewed how to blog on the OpenLab. For our next meeting, on Tuesday, February 5, please write one 100-word (minimum) blog post in response to this prompt:

Do people have a right to the city? Do longtime residents and businesses have a right to remain where they are?  If so, how should local governments, urban planners, and other decision-makers ensure these rights are maintained?*

Remember, blog posts are due by the start of class for which they are assigned.

*adapted from My Brooklyn Study Guide, 2015