Author: khady Niasse

Public spaces are gathering area where people interact with different people from different backgrounds and cultures.  Seats on the sidewalks are the public space that appeals to me the most. That`s  because when you seat on the sidewalk in downtown, You experience NYC in a different way. There are many things that are happening at the same time and there are many things you can learn from just observing the actives that`s going on on the street.

In the film “My Brooklyn”, We see that the city came and gentrify downtown Brooklyn and change the area from its origin. It wasn’t fair that people who were there when nobody wanted to be there had to move or deal with the exceeding amount that they had to pay for rent. Developers saw downtown Brooklyn as a way they can profit money. Therefore, they took the advantage without thinking about the effect that it will have on the people who previously live there and the culture that downtown Brooklyn had before they gentrified it.

“Citizen Jane: Battle for The City” is a film that shows how the nature of city works and how people can stand up and save their neighborhood. Jane Jacob believed that cities was about people and not buildings. She believed that if you plan how a city should work, people will abandon it because cities work like nature. You have to let it function in its own way. Once you you change the way it functions, People will abandon it. Robert Moses and architects like Le Corbusier were the opposite of the way Jane Jacob was thinking. They destroyed communities and neighborhood without thinking about the effects. They focused so much on modernizing the cities without understanding them. and in order to work on something so that it becomes successful, You have to know how it works first.

In the film “The Human Scale”, It shows that china is following the same mistakes that the western countries did during the 20th century. They are destroying neighborhoods to build building because there populations is growing. however, that is leading to a change on how the characteristic of the neighborhood once looked. One of the thing that they said in the video is high rise buildings create less social interaction. Which is true because people who are livings in the buildings will feel like they have to stay in there apartments to feel safe.

1. I would rate my research experience as intermediate. i have done many research when i took English classes and sometimes i do research in some of my architecture classes.
2. Since i major in architectural technology, my expectations is to understand cities better and how they work.  also, the history of cities and how they developed to become what they are today.