UConn URBN 2000 - September 3 Slides (7 pages)

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Bijou Bridgeport Redevelopment project in downtown Bridgeport Detroit s Creative Potential Richard Florida talking about the hopes for Detroit becoming a creative hub A Tribute to Ruins Irks Detroit Artist Camilo Jose Vergara suggests turning downtown Detroit into a theme park of industrial ruins Take the case of urban poverty Scholars and citizens don t agree on its causes nature or cure It follows that people of good will may not agree on how to attack poverty If for instance a mayor sees the root problem as a lack of money she may fight for government funds Or mayors may offer incentives to multinational corporations to settle in their jurisdictions arguing that these businesses will provide jobs and a bigger tax base for the community But if mayors define poverty as being rooted in the unequal distribution of existing resources they will pursue very different policies ones aimed at changing institutional structures and redistributing wealth If citizens believe that poverty and despair are products of a government sponsored ghetto culture they will try to protest In sum there is no one right way to define an urban or suburban issue However how people define a problem determines how they try to solve it Or ignore it Phillips xxiii xxiv Acquaintance with the City subjective understanding Firsthand experience with the city qualitative research observation Usually associated with sociology and anthropology Relies on nuance rich detail specificity Often relies on the senses what the observer sees hears feels Can also draw from cultural representations films we ve watched news media etc Knowledge about the city objective understanding Abstract thought based in logic rather than intuition Linear rational often drawing from quantitative methods Statistics data driven mapping economic models The Uncertainty Principle We can t eliminate ourselves from what we observe and we can t observe reality without changing it Therefore everyone must have a point of view and strictly