The experience of a city often entails the blurring of private and public spheres. Anybody who has spent considerable time walking city streets has likely witnessed something that belonged in the former. Much of the appeal of the city is its density and diversity of life as experienced in its public spaces, in the bustle of the streets, the rush of the subway, the vendors on the sidewalks and the crowding of cultural landmarks. I am interested in exploring a different element of the city through housing research – the home, the private realm of the city, as impacted by the dynamics of the pervasive public realm.

Homes are often conceptualized as havens, places of escape separate from their surroundings. This takes on particular significance in cities – intense, often anxiety-provoking places with statistically high rates of crime. City housing is not a haven for everyone, as Dolores Hayden points out in her description of tenement life in New York City. [1] Homes can be “arenas of conflict…political territories.” The experiential quality of these homes depends on a multitude of factors, often sharply and explicitly delineated by distinctive neighborhoods. Socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality and age all play into an area’s “essential character,” and its “cultural landscape.” Cities are often sliced into bounded, politicized regions, resulting in a multiplicity of experiences of the same place.

Hayden references urban planner Kevin Lynch’s mental maps as “striking images of inequality of access.” The notion of maps as tools for “[raising] political consciousness” is an exciting model for our housing research within Portland. I am fascinated by the diverse network of pathways and trajectories within cities, and maps have much to tell us about social, political and economic dynamics.

I grew up half an hour from New York City in Maplewood, NJ. I take the train to the lovely Pennsylvania Station at least once a week, and I have developed my own mental map. Despite the general consensus on surrounding suburbs, my hometown has connections to New York City deeper than those of proximity. A 2014 TimeOut article suggests trading Jackson Heights, Queens for Maplewood: “NYC’s cultural and ethnic diversity isn’t always easy to find elsewhere, but it’s well entrenched in this burb, with a 40 percent nonwhite population and active gay and artistic communities.” [2] While my upbringing has made me feel connected to and comfortable in New York, my experiences do not typically extend past the public realm. The visceral experience of having a home in a city, of being entrenched in the politics of housing, has remained a curiosity. I am excited to explore these dynamics in Portland.

[1] Hayden, Dolores. 1997. “Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and Politics of Space.” In The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, 14-43. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

[2] Winograd, Jeremy. “The Coolest Places in New Jersey for New Yorkers.” Time Out New York. June 4, 2014. http://www.timeout.com/newyork/things-to-do/the-coolest-places-in-new-jersey-for-new-yorkers.

Before I would visit a city, I would always study its map, try to identify the places on my itinerary, and note the spacial references that will help me navigate the new city. Maps have always appealed to me— I would stare at them for a long time, tracing roads and thruways, wondering which dots they connect, and thinking about how the current road system have supported (or hindered) the growth of a city.  And thus, the lines on the maps—the roads— have played a significant role in my mental visualizations of the city. In my mind, I have always defined a city’s sophistication in terms of the density of its roads network— cities tend to have very dense road networks to transport the vast amount of population to its destination, while smaller towns and villages (non-cities) have simpler road networks. I am very excited to have the opportunity to study a city and its transportation infrastructure.

The Hayden reading really made me think more deeply into the issue of space, specifically the “politics of a space”— social demographics, emotional attachments, and its character. These are some very important topics that are not readily seen on common visual representations of cities, such as Google Maps,  but nonetheless important. Thinking about the “politics of spaces” in relation with the transportation infrastructure of a city, I realize their connections are very much intricate. On one hand, transportation systems foster the creations and shaping of new spaces, through making spaces accessible that were once not; however, on the other hand, certain links (such as 12-lane highways) can also act as iron wall that separates spaces that were once connected, creating rifts that are unproductive to the development of the city as a whole.

Thinking about my proposed topic in the relationship of transportation infrastructure vis-à-vis urban spaces, I realize the cities I have been living in have always been influenced by this issue— from how satellite towns emerged with the construction of new roads, to how the existence of a circular beltway bolstered a geographical notion of “inner city” that influenced real estate prices.  I feel similar patterns can be seen in Portland, Maine, as several Portland residents I talked to all raised the importance of I-295, as they referred to Portland Downtown as “everything that is inside I-295.”

Peter Nauffts

I’m drawn, for mostly personal reasons, to the housing research group. My childhood (and still current) home is a rather small, rent-stabilized apartment in New York City (on the Upper West Side). Who lives in a neighborhood—and who can afford to live in a neighborhood—seems as clear a way to elucidate socioeconomic patterns of exclusion and inclusion as any. Housing prices dictate so many of our expectations for a neighborhood, from quality of education to safety, as well as the kinds of public spaces and infrastructure that the area provides. This is something I perhaps took for granted as a child growing up in New York.

I am particularly interested in the dimension of time as it relates to housing. How fast is a neighborhood gentrifying can be seen in many places, but housing seems as good as any a barometer. I have watched my neighborhood change rather dramatically over my 21 years of existence. Broadway is now mostly an arbitrary (and excessive) collection of banks, Verizon stores, Starbucks’, and banks. Is this simply the natural life (or decay) of a city—the mark of progress? Is stasis an option?

I take from the Dolores Hayden the interesting if brief discussion of Henri Lefebvre’s notion of economic production and social reproduction and space.[1] There is always a powerful nostalgia, or so it seems, in my parents voices among many others when they talk about the way the neighborhood used to be. Yet Lefebvre makes me wonder if in fact we have in all these spaces what we deserve: banks for wealthy people to conveniently withdraw and spend money, Starbucks’ for the type of service or more abstract labor that the denizens of this neighborhood engage in.

As far as smart cities go, I have to admit that I have never considered smart technology’s applicability to housing. I admit, too, I don’t own an iPhone—but still, I think it would be fascinating to consider smart technology in relation to this problem. Perhaps its applicability is not so well suited to an app, as a public space project might be. It does seem to be well-suited to mapping, however. I would be fascinated to watch, over time, the sort of tidal rise in housing prices as it consumes a city, spreading outwards slowly but surely. And less directly related, I am sure there would be a strong correlation between housing price and the demand for more high-tech security—Rio style—that Townsend speaks of.[2]

[1] Hayden, Dolores. 1997. “Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and Politics of Space.” In The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, 18-19. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

[2] Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia [Anthony Townsend]. 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1evCV6_e8Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player

This semester I am interested in focusing my research on infrastructure. More specifically in regards to infrastructure, information and the control of technology for the public are fascinating to me. As a society, we are constantly changing our behavior based off the exponential growth of technology. The evolution of smart cities is a prime example of how information and the control of technology for the public are beginning to dictate choices that are made in our lives. Infrastructure is the foundation and basic physical core, and organization of structures we need for our society to operate and develop.

While the Dolores Hayden reading did not affect my choice in choosing to want to look further into infrastructure, the scholarly work did challenge the way that I see and talk about cities. One of the biggest I took away was the idea of space. As space is produced, it is constantly changing. But with this change we get place. With place comes the association the personality, and social history of a given place. Hayden writes: “social relations are intertwined with spatial perception”(16). Thus, the power and reality of place is that is forms our view of the world around us. Memories come together in complex ways, and how people see the world politically, socially and economically begin to become intertwined. All of these ideas enhance our imagination and allow us to constantly improve our dream about what cities should look like and represent.

Throughout my life I have been fortunate to travel to many cities around the world. It has been exciting to explore very “developed” cities like Hong Kong, Berlin, and Budapest to more “up and coming cities” such as: Addis Ababa and Libreville. During my last visit in Addis Ababa in 2012, something that I found to be interesting was the influx of Asian businessmen. Specifically they were coming from China and Singapore. In China and to many countries around the world, Addis Ababa is the next Paris or London. Investors are buying land up at an insane rate. At first, I did not really see what many people saw in the city. It’s lack of any remote form of infrastructure, especially its IT platform, in this day and age is astonishing. However after spending a month there and then returning that following summer, I now get it. Around 80% of the population lives in or very close to the city, while the remaining 20% are either members of nomadic tribes or live in rural areas. Slowly but exponentially, the city is growing in scale and with advancement in functions. Their system, which is primarily government owned and run, is moving towards becoming more optimized and efficient. Investors are coming in and looking to lay down a solid foundation. The space is ready to be occupied and ready to not just be land, but a place. After coming back from visiting Addis Ababa or when I am off of Skype with my parents, I am consistently amazed to see and hear about so much progress in infrastructure in such little time.

Urban population has been growing at an almost exponential rate during the past decades. According to the statistics provided by the World Health Organization, the urban population in 2014 represented 54% of the total global population, a great increase from 34% in 1960, and according to approximations it is expected to grow by another 1.84% per year between 2015 and 2020.

The vast influx of people into the cities has made urban planning a much harder job. Larger urban population results in the increased amount of architecturally unfit buildings that are built in a rush to accommodate the increasing number of people, cars and an extended demand for infrastructure which often results in the reduction and/or diminishment of the public space.

I would like to be a part of Public Space research group, because I’d like to examine how infrastructure is affecting public spaces in cities, and what kind of work is being done to prevent this interference. Public spaces are an important part of the city. They contribute greatly to forming communities in busy city environments. I came across Project for Public Spaces yesterday. It is a pretty interesting organization that helps people create and maintain public spaces that build stronger communities. You can see some of the projects they have done here.

Guy Debord’s “Theory of the Dérive and Definitions” has significantly influenced my topic choice. I really liked the idea of a dérive which is not possible if the streets are not suited for pedestrians. It is impossible to “to drop relations … and other usual motives for movement and action, and … be drawn by the attractions of the terrain” if one risks getting hit by a car in a busy city street with narrow sidewalks. The importance of public spaces like parks will increase even more as cities become smarter and covered with sensors, because these spaces will become destination points who will want to take a break from constant tracking.

I grew up in the middle of the city myself and have always felt the lack of public spaces around my neighborhood. This is another reason why I want to study the relationship between public spaces and infrastructure; I want to learn how infrastructure can be better integrated into the city so that public spaces are left untouched.

For our research projects, I would like to study infrastructure of cities and the technological developments that make up smart infrastructure. I believe that technology has become such a crucial part of modern society (primarily in thoroughly developed regions of the world) and that it will continue to be an integral part of our lives for years to come. Studying the expansion of smart infrastructure and its fluid place in our society seems to be very cutting edge research; we are at such a point of concentrated change and progress that being able to track or follow that change is essential. In cities such as NYC, things such as the iPhone have revolutionized the ways in which residents interact with their surroundings. For example, apps like Seamless allow residents to order food from hundreds of restaurants to be delivered to their apartments. Rather than flip through physical menus or even browse online menus and then make a phone call to order, users can simply press a few buttons and access a massive database of restaurants willing to deliver to their apartments. Being able to look at the ways in which smartphone applications have transformed the way people interact with their cities over a relatively short period of time is just one example of how technology is redefining the ways in which we interact with everything around us.

The idea of looking at social history through the context of urban spaces (as explained in the Hayden reading) made me think about the pros and cons of technology development in cities {1}. Preserving cities’ histories may seem like an easy task through technology, but aspects of cities could hypothetically be lost when parts of cities are demolished to build new “smarter” neighborhoods. As Anthony Townsend said, taking a “meat axe” to cities to rework them does sound harsh and often unnecessary, as it destroys any space that previously existed {2}. To me, being able to look at the development of technology in cities and smarter infrastructure while still taking into account repercussions that this development could have seems to be a critical factor to consider. Finding a balance between future development and history seems to be an important part of protecting spaces.

Having lived in a suburb of NYC almost all my life, I have been very fortunate to grow up in a way such that I was introduced to NYC at a very young age and have always had the city and everything it has to offer easily accessible to me. I attended a private school in the Bronx from grades 7-12, so I had many friends that lived all over the city. Over the years, I have loved making trips into the city. When I was younger, I used to take the Metro-North train into Manhattan to go to work with my dad; now that I am older, I either take the train in to visit friends or drive (depending on where my final destination is). Because I do not truly qualify as a New Yorker, I think I have an unusual appreciation for NYC. I am capable of looking at the city from the eyes of a resident, walking the streets quickly, never stopping to talk to strangers, but I can also look at the city as an outsider, looking at the ways in which the cityscape has changed over the years. I have also traveled to many cities all over the world and have always been fascinated by the different ways cities are set up, even down to the way that citizens most commonly travel from place to place. Between public space, housing, and infrastructure, I think that looking at infrastructure would allow me to look at how cities and their defining characteristics and history influence not only how the cities are arranged but also the kinds of technological change that are most feasible and helpful to their residents.

{1} Hayden, Dolores. “Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of Space.” In The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995. 14-43.

{2} Townsend, Anthony. “Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1evCV6_e8Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed September 11, 2014).

One thing that I would like to explore over the course of the semester is both how politics drive the types of infrastructure within a city and the reverse. One of the topics Hayden touched on with collective mapping was how different groups understand their cities as governed by their abilities to move around them. Her example was Los Angeles where public transportation is a huge problem.[1] I feel like the political causes of public transportation are generally more examined than their consequences.

My hometown Nashville is experiencing something of a boom right now and is struggling with the expansion. One area of particular conflict is around public transport, and I wonder what the effects will be on the city if we do and do not invest in the expensive and elaborate infrastructure that seems more necessary each year. I would be very interested to look at the different possible directions the city could go.

Walking around Portland today raised even more questions about the accessibility of services. It is something that I have never considered before. The idea that the major departments would be inaccessible to the people who need them seems obvious now, but the needs of people who have no other means are difficult to accommodate. As we talked about the soup kitchen, bad neighborhoods are often intentionally chosen. Being both the cause of people living in one area and then depriving them the ability to reach the services seems unethical, but they tend to be completely unorganized, socially and politically. Infrastructure and especially transportation infrastructure seems like one of the places where the people who use a service most are also those who have the least control over it.

[1]Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History 27.

I would like to take part on the infrastructure research group. After the Portland field trip, I noticed how much of Portland’s infrastructure was due to the industries generating the most revenue at different times. Every industry created different social structures within the economy, and are present in the organization of Portland. The working class placement within a city is unique, interesting, and influential to the overall quality of life. What is surprising though, is the way those areas have changed over time and reasons why it changed. How could one area be a community for the working class and then become a real estate worth easily over half a million?

The Hayden reading pointed out how our cities have been segregated throughout time and the effects in the urban landscape.  I grew up with a mix of ethnic social normalities that represented the different cultures within my area. Here, one can analyze the power struggle within the design and construction of cities. This can be seen from where I grew up, Las Vegas, and see the areas that are demographically separated. The inner city around the strip is heavily populated with the hospitality workers that work in the major casinos. Compared to the outer areas tend to be resided by professionals in gated communities.

The Townsend lecture was interesting to me, because of the questions that arose from it. For example, “Control and ownership, Who is controlling the infrastructure of our new cities? Who is owning that new information? Is this a form of digital enhanced public services or is this a form of privatization?” Leana Khan, a corporate consolidator, points out Chicago went through a technological advancement in the late 19th century. This is the kind of relationship that interests me in a city.

One of the commentators in the Townsend lecture, Greta Byrum, stated that “Friction makes the city a vibrant place”. In Portland, Maine, identities you wouldn’t see normally see walking around are expressed on the streets at First Friday. Space Gallery brings alternative arts events, bringing about friction against our identities with creation and conversation. Congress Square Park held public World Cup viewings as a Jamaican food stand operated in the background, and standing in the background there is man dressed in black and spikes, standing right next to a group of people with Bibles in their hands.

Another commentator asked the question, “What is a city?”.  The city is a conglomerate of people, and together it is a body — it has its heart, its extremities, its circulation systems. The buildings would be cold and the streets would be empty veins without human presence.

But anywhere you go there are fences in between groups of people. There is chain mail protecting “us” from “them”, which this erects invisible, yet stronger walls within their minds.  I was once at an urban farm collective called the Mitten in West Philadelphia for a basement concert. The inhabitants of this venue were out in their fenced yard-garden, grilling burgers for the musicians playing that night. The street entrance to the garden displayed a sign announcing garden hours open to all neighborhood children on certain evenings. As I sat in that yard, a group of black children stood on the other side of the fence, pining loudly for a hamburger (although they were probably grilling veggie burgers). They were ignored. I wondered what I would have done had I been the one grilling. One of the children dropped his hand sanitizer on the soil bed within the fence, and he cried out “My hand sanitizer!”. Someone picked it up and handed it through the fence. I was uncomfortable sitting there. What were they thinking of us in that space? How was I supposed to react? Was it ameliorated by the fact there was a sign on the gate?

What unnerves me about urban growth is the decay of human connectivity. I have felt mystified by Philadelphia and I have also felt disillusionment, for having left the city feeling empty-hearted. But I am not from the city. The connection I sought on my visits was satisfied when I conversed with strangers, where people are brought together by a common love for the music, when a man in Portland made hot chocolate on a camp stove for people passing by. Public space is meant to challenge that inevitable separation and disconnection. The Mitten was a welcoming space on a certain evening, and on another it was private. Space varies with time, but a public space like a park tends not to move. I’m interested in these spaces because I believe that nature is the most undiscriminating public space we have; it is only when the green is surrounded by condensed grey that we pay closer attention to who inhabits the park and what happens within those confines. Townsend brought up a point that especially resonated with me: that urban developments should focus on making us more human and should encourage social cohesion. I think this is one of the most central ideas for urban planners and citizens to keep in mind. Public spaces and what is organized within them have the power to dissolve the perception of “stranger” and make people more compassionate about their neighbors. After having visited Preble Street today, I think it is even more important for “positive friction” to be happening. It allows for people to understand each other, instead of feeling threatened by differences and individual struggles until they are overwhelmed into a cognizant ignorance.