Home From Nowhere By James Kunstler

In Larry Lankton’s text, “Beyond the Boundaries” we gradually enter an unknown world that is frightening yet filled with immense beauty for miles. Due to the copper mining industry, a gradual increase of working class men and their families start to migrate to the unknown world with unsteady emotion, yet hope for a prosperous new life. In “Beyond the Boundaries”, Lankton takes us on a journey on how the “world below” transformed the upper peninsula into a functional and accepted new part of the world.

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohns quote highlights the basis of Debra Oswald’s play Gary’s house, and also Miroshav Holubs poem The Door. This essay will explore the notion that change causes people to shift their thinking and actions after significant catalysts. Gary’s House illustrates many of the issues and predicaments confronted by the characters and how their alteration in behaviour can have a beneficial outcome for them or others around them. The concept of "The Door" is based on the idea of taking risks and embracing change. The poet uses persuasive techniques to encourage and provoke the audience to take action.

In Robert Bruegmann article “How Sprawl Got a Bad Name,” he is the odd man out and is for sprawling. One of his reasons throughout is that all the architectures plan for preventing the problem has failed. Bruegmann shows his argument that the economy has these set of expectations for today’s society. The citizens are not really thinking realistically when it comes to those modern expectations. He backs up his point by stating a big crisis of traffic in Los Angeles and how it is not the congestion it is that the programs sit in place are outdated. One of the more convincing reasons of why Bruegmann is supporting sprawl is “that growing numbers of people have discovered that it is the surest way to obtain the rich, satisfying

Viewing the complex matter of gentrification succinctly, it helps to uncover how multifaceted it is; in that gentrification involves the oppression, marginalization, displacement of vulnerable populations, particularly, the poor, and the black who are often already negatively impacted by the effects of classism, and racism. Gentrification threatens to erode the communities and livelihood maintained by these set of people because their displacement becomes a precondition for the total transformation of the area.

The world has been evolving as quickly as the population has grown. As the years progressed, the habitual lifestyle has transformed from spread out house and land living to city and suburban occupation. Along with the living style, cities have progressed from just roads and buildings to multifunctional spaces with copious possibilities. Federation Square in the ‘heart of the city’ is an example of how a space in the city vastly contributes to the visual culture of Melbourne. Times Square in New York also displays how what was previously an intersection of roads, has been transformed into a visual landmark. Melbourne city had always lacked a functional public space ever since its birth.

Gentrification is characterized as a struggle of power through the process of neighborhood change taking place in three stages; entry, exit, and restoration. Gentrification is driven by private developers, landlords, businesses, and corporations, and supported by the government through policies. (Hang) The “rehabilitation” of depressed urban areas leads to the inevitable exile of it’s lifelong residents. As wealthy interest in less affluent neighborhoods increases, it causes a sociocultural change to occur in those communities. These changes send a shock wave of economic effects. The average income increases and the average family size decreases. The economic eviction of lower income families will result because of increased rent, property

This past year I have read many books, and while it is hard to pick a favorite, I would have to say “All the Light We Cannot See,” by Anthony Doerr is the one I enjoyed the most. When reading the synopsis of this novel, I never imagined that I would feel so connected to a book where one of the main characters is blind and the other is a brilliant, young German orphan who was chosen to attend a brutal military academy under Hitler's power because of his intuitive engineering skills. There are so many different aspects of the book that are lived out in separate moments and in different countries, but collectively find a way to unite in the end. The thing that impressed me the most about the book was that I could have never predicted the outcome.

“San Francisco is a microcosm for what is happening not only in the US, but all over the world. It is places that increasingly desirable to live in that are becoming gated communities. I’m worried about a city that is becoming uniformly wealthy, out of reach and out of touch.”- Robert Reich

It has always been human nature to live in small concentrated cities because of the opportunity, the services that are provided, and the cultural diversity, however negative aspects do arise when people are closely compacted, such as poverty, pollution, overcrowding, and even violence (“Urban” np). Residential segregation can also come from diverse cities caused by Urbanization, i.e. Chinatown in New York City (Beall, et al. 7). Some cities have tried to limit the amount of cars used for transportation and fund many sorts of different modes of transportation, and the large amounts of transportation may make it difficult for people to switch to a different mode, although a taxi or bus may still get stuck in traffic thereby limiting the contributing

James Cone postulated that “to be black is to be a human in a condition of social oppression involving the affirming in which the oppressor regarded as degrading”. In addition to this, cone argued that society has misinterpreted the meaning of black due to the fact that society is a institution ran by ‘white’ people. Blackness is not “criminality” in fact “black is … beautiful; oppressors have made it ugly.” James Cone defines the oppressor to be ‘white’, he argues that the oppressors are homogenous as they impose their beliefs on ‘black’ people. For example attending the opera in James Cones perspective is seen as a ‘white’ agenda. Furthermore, ‘white’ people are those who force ‘black’

Many neighborhoods in America are composed of people predominately of the same social class and race. When there is an increase of middle-class or wealthier people moving into deteriorating areas, it often creates a process of renewal and rebuilding that displaces the poorer residents. This is called gentrification. When someone moves into a house and increases the curbside appeal it makes the neighborhood more desirable. In turn, it raises the overall cost of real estate within the community, which author Daniel Hertz argues it results in “people can't move to the neighborhoods to which they'd like to move, and are stuck in places with worse schools, more crime, and inferior access to jobs and amenities like grocery stores”. Hertz’s insight on gentrification is that people who are more financially secure benefits from the improvement and raised value of a neighborhood while those who are struggling are increasingly limited in the options they have to move into safer and connected neighborhoods.

and chases out the poor, minority, and closes the gate to most people to move into unless you are a lover of technology. As Soja states in the prologue, “The outcome of this socially and spatially discriminatory process was unjust, favoring the wealthier and multicar-owning population” (Soja, X).

Los Angeles was the first product off the assembly line of American urban planning. Turned on in the late 19th century, the city-making machine was fueled by an immense immigration of people who sought to create a new type of city out of the previously quaint pueblo. They also strove to craft the first major city developed primarily by Americans and outside of European archetypes. As a result, Los Angles is not only incredibly diverse, but also nearly impossible to define. Since it is a product of the American machine, understanding the community of Los Angeles becomes vital to understanding the United States. But to fully comprehend the present Los Angeles, one must look at the process that created it. Specifically, Los Angeles was

In today’s society, it may seem that gentrification can eliminate poverty and increase neighborhood opportunities. Low-income residents and property owners will be the first to be altered by gentrification. In an email to the editor at the Atlantic, Freeman, the director of the Urban Planning program at Columbia states “ Gentrification brings new amenities and services that benefit not only the newcomers but long term residents too. Full service

Designing a city from scratch is a remarkable thought experiment but ultimately fails at implementation because we always approach it from the perspective of “how can we create a new city that solves problems of existing cities.” It’s less a process driven by design and more by critique. Urban living has paved its way into modern society, yet the vision for a city has changed over time. Large settlements need planning to grow; yet differences in minds is what leads to the modifications of a city, in return makes a city so unique. Alterations in opinions are what thrives urban life, still these differences are what skews the view of how others see a city compared to myself. They say the eye of the beholder deems beauty; this could explain