11.S944 (Un)Dead Geographies: The Afterlife of Failed Urban Plans

Transcription

1 DUSP SA+ P Spring S944 (Un)Dead Geographies: The Afterlife of Failed Urban Plans Instructor: Karilyn Crockett (kmcrock@mit.edu) Office Hours: Wed 5-6pm and Thurs 9-10am, m, sign- up on door or for appointment. Class: Wednesdays 2-5pm, Rm Course Description & Objectives: One of the limits of classical theories of the metropolis holds that the most revelatory facts of modern metropolitan life lie on the surface, in the ephemeral and the visible (shop front, shop windows, café terraces, street cars, automobiles), in the display of the commodity with or without its authentic veil. The privileging of surfaces and visuality can conceal the ubiquity of the metropolitan form one of the characteristic features of a metropolis is the underneath. Achille & Mbembe, Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (2008). Women and men may be broken and scattered, but they remember and think about the reasons why. They answer their own questions and always the truth and love will make them decide. Simon J. Ortiz, From Sand Creek (1981). Physical landscapes provide evidence of successful and failed development plans, but only the learned eyed sees beyond the material culture of the street. Death offers a way to conceptualize the unseen, underground, the underneath, the liminal space between what we know and what is actual. Linking social theory, geography and planning history, this course asks: How can critical observers of the built environment begin to access the collection of meanings that script the movement, stasis and location of everyday users. In other words, how do we move beyond official maps, plans and histories to consider contested meanings of place as they are lived, exchanged and created. Through weekly examinations of first person documentary accounts including ethnography, historical fiction, autobiography, film and novels, students will analyze the social, political and geographic impact of various land development strategies in the U.S. and beyond. Displacement defines a major theme of this course students will examine: 1) How does this happen? 2) What have been subsequent local responses? and 3) What are the lasting consequences? This course aims to provide students with an interdisciplinary framework for identifying and describing the social impact of place- based change and to advance understanding of urban planning informed by resident- authored analysis. 1

2 Course Requirements: The course work includes one short essay ( words), class presentations, weekly engagement posts and a twelve- to fifteen- page research paper. Student presentations (10-15 minutes) will precede most class discussions and will gather and analyze relevant primary source documents focused on the week s assigned reading material. Grading: Short essay (15%) Class Presentations (25%) Written posts & Class Discussion (30%) Final Paper (30%) Books Recommended for Purchase (on reserve at Rotch Library): Simon Ortiz, From Sand Creek: Rising in the Heart Which is Our America (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1981). Kathryn Dudley, Debt & Dispossession: Farm Loss in America s Heartland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Amitov Gosh, In An Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler s Tale (New York: Random House, 1994). Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997). Phillip Earenfight, ed. A Kiowa s Odyssey: Sketchbook from Fort Marion (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007). Kathleen Stewart, A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in an Other America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). or Phaswane Mpe, Welcome to Our Hillbrow (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2001). Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Additional assigned readings and resources can be downloaded from the course website: Course Plan Week 1: February 5 Examining the meaning and politics of place. How to read culture? Dolores Hayden, Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of Space, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), Laura Pulido, Race and Political Activism ; Differential Racialization in Southern California & The Politicization of the Third World Left, Black, Brown, Yellow & 2

3 Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), Abdoumaliq Simone, People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg, Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), Simon Ortiz, From Sand Creek (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1981). Jules David Prown, Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method, Material Life America, , ed. Robert Blair St. George (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), Part I. Rethinking urbanization and its failures Week 2: February 12 Cities in Revolt Stephen Graham & Simon Marvin, Constructing the Modern Networked City, , Splintering Urbanism (London: Routledge, 2001), Kerner Commission Report, What Happened? & Why Did It Happen?, ; Watts, Detroit, Newark. Wattstax (1973) dir. Mel Stuart Stephen Graham & Simon Marvin, The Collapse of the Integrated Ideal, Splintering Urbanism (London: Routledge, 2001), Luis Valdez, Zoot Suit, Zoot Suit & Other Plays (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1992). Dolores Hayden, Epilogue: Los Angels after April 29, 1992, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), Linda Gordon & Gary Y. Okihiro, eds, Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006). Week 3: February 19 Space, Race, Land and Renewal Martin Anderson, Introduction: Renewal By Government Decree, The Consequences, Urban Renewal and the Constitution, The Federal Bulldozer, (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1967), 1-14; 52-72; Brown v Board of Education Oral Arguments (1952) by Hayes & Nabrit; Marshall & Davis. [note reference on Japanese American internment and Native American reservations] 3

4 Mel King, Growing up in the South End ; Creating the Ghetto & Power to the People: Whose City is this?, Chain of Change (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 9-26; Writing Assignment Due: Social Location Statement Herbert Gans, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian- Americans (New York: Free Press, 1982). Kevin Lynch, The City and its Elements, The Image of the City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960). Week 4: February 26 Highway Battles Karilyn Crockett, The Massachusetts Highway Plan & Its Opponents (unpublished). Raymond A. Mohl, Race and Space in the Modern City: Interstate 95, Urban Policy in Twentieth Century America, eds. Arnold Hirsch and Raymond Mohl (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), Richard O. Baumbach, Jr. & William E. Borah, The Second Battle of New Orleans: A History of the Vieux Carré Riverfront Expressway Controversy (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1981), Neighborhood Story Project (2007), Post Storm, Coming Out the Door for the Ninth Ward, Offsite #1 Bus Ride (inbound, Harvard Square to Dudley Square) Week 5: March 5 Farmlands & Dispossession Kathryn Dudley, Debt & Dispossession: Farm Loss in America s Heartland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). J.B. Jackson, The Westward- moving House, Landscape 2:3 (Spring 1953): Part II. Mapping beyond U.S. Borders & the Atlantic Ocean Week 6: March 12 Temporal displacements Amitov Gosh, In An Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler s Tale (New York: Random House, 1994), Michel- Rolph Trouillot, North Atlantic Fictions: Global Transformations, , Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003),

5 Week 7: March 19 David Harvey, Cartographic Identities: Geographical Knowledges under Globalization, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (New York: Routledge, 2001), Patrick Chamoiseau, The Age of Cratewood , Texaco (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), Lisa Peattie, The Sewer Controversy, View from the Barrio (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968), Research Paper Proposal Due Sylvia Wynter, 1492: A New World View, Race, Discourse and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View, ed. Vera Lawrence Hyatt & Rex Nettleford (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution), Part III. Death, Enclosure & Halted Mobilities Week 8: April 2 Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). Week 9: April 9 Phillip Earenfight, ed. A Kiowa s Odyssey: Sketchbook from Fort Marion (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007). owes indians- royalties- for- land- but- cant- find- them.html?hp&_r=0 Week 10: April 16 Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Chps 5; 7; 12; Katherine McKittrick, The Last Place They Thought Of: Black Women s Geographies, Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), Week 11: April 23 Kathleen Stewart, A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in an Other America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Or Phaswane Mpe, Welcome to our Hillbrow (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2001). Part IV. Repurposing and Reclaiming the Local Environment 5

6 Week 12: April 30 Anna Tsing, Nature Loving ; This Earth, this Island Borneo & A History of Weediness, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), Arjun Appadurai, Patriotism and Its Futures & The Production of Locality, Modernity at Large (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), Week 13: May 7 Mario Luis Small, Chapters 4 & 7, Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Offsite MYTOWN youth- led tour Week 14: May 14 Final Project Presentations Writing Assignment Due: Final Paper Mapping Resources: 1. Race in America beautiful- map- race- america/6534/ 2. U.S. Immigration since 1880 (NY Times): immigration- explorer.html?_r=0 geography/migrations/new- york- times- immigration- explorer- interactive- map 3. U.S. Income Maps: 4. Mapping 2010 Census (NY Times): Additional Film Resources: Who Killed Vincent Chin (1987) dir. Christine Choy & Renee Tajima- Pena Raising Victor Vargas (2002) dir. Peter Sollett Beyond Bows & Arrows (1985) narr. M. Scott Momaday It s a Wonderful Life (1946) dir. Frank Capra Rabbit Proof Fence (2002) dir. Phillip Noyce Mission Hill & the Miracle of Boston (1978) dir. Richard Broadman 6