Essay About The Desert

The short story “The New Atlantis” paints a picture of a dystopian United States, where the government has become an overwhelming force. The people living in the States are left in a state of neglect, where harsh administration and forced ideals are the norm. Ursula K. Le Guin’s story follows Belle, a woman who leaves her memoirs to the rising oceans that are swallowing up the continent. Belle’s story records the struggle of a person’s life under the suffocating government, with her husband Simon attempting to gain political strength through his scientific vision. The themes of the story are based on “a damning critique of the direction that humanity along with science and technology have taken under capitalism” (Maxwell 15). With its heavy hand, civilization has consumed itself with conflict and consumption. By the end of the story, the United States has completely collapsed into the ocean, collapsed under the weight of its own government. The story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, also by Ursula K. Le Guin, tells the tale of an idealistic city called Omelas. Shoshana Knapp illustrates the lives of Omelas as a complex moral problem: “The basic situation . . . is the promise of mass bliss in exchange for a unique torment” (par. 5). When children become young adults in Omelas, they are shown a morbid truth about their society – the basis of Omelas’ whole existence relies on the suffering of one lonely child locked in a room. This dilemma introduces many uncomfortable

Park Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in all of New York City, home to the ultra rich, the top tier of the American upper class, the 1% (Park Avenue). Those who reside in Park Avenue not only have vast amounts of wealth, but an immense amount of influence that has turned the tables in their favor. But, if you go a couple of miles North of Park Avenue and cross the Harlem river, you arrive at the other side of Park Avenue or otherwise known as the Bronx, one of the poorest districts in all of New York (Park Avenue). Here you see the real hardships average Americans must voyage through in order to put food on the table and provide shelter for their families. 40% of the 700,000 residents who

Many of the families in Kozol’s book live in central Manhattan in drug-infested buildings, falling apart from the brick in, whereas in earlier periods of New York’s history were fine hotels. One of such buildings is the Martinique Hotel, where Kozol afforded much of his time to the families that dwelled there, as referenced in his book. Those who inhabit the Martinique Hotel are symbolically affected by New York’s renown valor in their conscious, further placing them in the class as “less-fortunate” within a city that does not afford them many opportunities. Many homeless neighborhoods find themselves victim to substandard medical and education facilities. The families, as Kozol describes were shipped by the masses to communities that already suffer from the city’s highest rates of HIV, drug addiction, pediatric asthma and psychiatric illness (Kozol 11). There is the idea, as Kozol says, that the homes that these families find themselves in are “closed systems”, “where rules of normal law and normal governance did not apply” (Kozol 8), whereas the people are detached from the rest of society, confined to the community all in itself. The families he works with are sectioned off by society because they live in poor areas and confined within a capitalistic economy, have nowhere to go. In a way, Kozol describes these areas as the capital of homeless people, surrounded by a city built for the wealthy, by

Every day, people often get themselves in positions where they are presented with appearance known to be deceptive. Based on the appearance, a false truth hides beneath an exceptional display. People, objects, and buildings are entirely taken by people’s perspectives. This is the theme that the book Tangerine illustrates. The novel Tangerine, written by Edward Bloor, is about Paul Fisher, a boy having to go through many situations where a false reality surrounds his life.

Some people believe that Detroit is comparable to a blank canvas. A place where an opportunity is lurking right around the corner. They imagine it as a deserted place, in which a businessman can create anything they dream of. However, the harsh reality is, Detroit is not a blank canvas. It has been splattered with an era of prominence, scribbled on with the invention of the automobile, and engraved with a history of racism and corruption. Although much of Detroit’s glory has been stripped away, there are still people who exist in the city’s remnants. Actual people, with actual families, actual homes, and actual lives. When outsiders talk about the city’s revival, they are often forgetting about these people, or the actual citizens of

It is no secret that homelessness is quickly becoming an epidemic in the United States, but the homeless population is not one secular demographic. For every person in the US living on the street, there is a unique story of how they got there; nonetheless, that is not to say that many of these stories are without some commonalities. Along with homelessness, there is another issue plaguing American cities, but this issue is much more covert, and exists under a guise of improvements like fancy apartments and trendy restaurants. Gentrification is defined as “the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste” (Erikson); but what that definition fails to mention is the discourse it has on the

New York City has been in a constant state of change since the 1970’s. Evolving from a state of art and decrepitness to a glistening city of consumption. Yet in Jeremiah Moss’ book, Vanishing New York, the city did not “evolve” for the locals who breathed and lived in the city– the ones who made New York City the place to be, but rather for the big businesses who lure in the tourists who change the city into some kind of sister city to their middle American hometown. Moss uses the same ideas bell hooks wrote about in her “Eating the Other” essay, in that New Yorkers, the “other”, in all their artsy, queer, and ethnic ways are used to “spice up” the city, to make it a place worth coveting so that the rich and elite can sell a watered down/hollow

“Gentrification” captures class disparities and injustices created by capitalist urban land markets and policies. This in turn can cause an increasing house expense encumbrance for low-income and working-class households, and the associated personal catastrophes of displacement, removal, and homelessness, are symptoms of a set of institutional arrangements (private property rights and a free market) that support the creation of urban environments to serve the needs of capital accumulation at the expense of the social needs of home, community, family. Displacement from home and neighbourhood can be a shattering experience. At worst it leads to homelessness, at best it impairs a sense of community. Public policy should, by general agreement,

Walking down the streets, I imagine everyone’s stories; I picture them around the campfire. It is so easy to blatantly ignore the world when I only think about myself. Just as with the cottage of hope, everyone deserves a chance to create and grow. Seeing people struggle on the street makes it impossible to turn a blind eye. However, nobody has enough money or power to eradicate the midnight nation or its problems which seep into the daylight

“This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!”…

The documentary ‘Chicago City of the Century’ tells a remarkable story about a city that underwent a horrific event, the people that did not want it to perish, and the enterpenurs that helped revive the city and proved that you can change a bad situation into something good.

Let us remember those long days where every moment was a living nightmare. We left our jobs, our schools, and our possessions behind to never see them again. We remember the priests giving us our last rites before we even knew we were sick. We were cast off into a new world without a paddle and without a chance. I know people who, until those long days, had spent their entire lives in Harrisburg. They don’t live here anymore. They’re too afraid. They live in another place now, and pay another town’s taxes, and spend their money at another grocery, and see another doctor who doesn’t know them like their old doctor knew them. When I talk to them, they long for the days where they could walk into the Jacob’s Pharmacy on Green Street and say hi to Louie behind the counter and take a walk near Italian Lake and play baseball and grow up in a community rather than the stale, faceless suburbs they live in now. They have the four beds and the three kids and the two baths and the dog and nothing else. Harrisburg used to be their home – it’s now just a place they once lived. Let us remember them.

At the beginning of Chapter 20, it was discussed how 80% of Rio de Janeiro has become urbanized, yet the other 20% of citizens live in slums. This is similar to what is happening in Detroit and my family and I witnessed that first hand when we took a trip to Detroit a couple years back. While living in Downtown Detroit, I was never aware that most of the city’s area was covered in slums, until I travelled around the city. I was astonished to see street after street filled with slums and abandoned homes. In addition, I began to realize how the higher authorities in Detroit try to conceal this part of Detroit. These individuals only desire you to observe Downtown Detroit, filled with massive buildings and stadiums, even though majority of the

When living in the Mojave desert people have started to keep track of what's bringing the ecosystem down. In the Mojave desert the threats are mostly affecting the plants and animals. One of the more worrying threats is the invasive plants or otherwise known as alien plants. The invasive plants come in and destroy ecosystems while including all plants, animals, and insects. There are many different types of invasive plants in the Mojave desert, but some cause a bigger change.

travel. It was said that there are huge masses of Fremen there along with giant