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.