Jake's blog

What does the word “home” really mean?  Is it physical? An idea? Can it be created or destroyed?  Yi-Fu Tuan delves deep into the connotation of “home” in Chapter 11 of his book Sense and Place titled “Attachment to Homeland.  He declares, “home is at the center of an astronomically determined spatial system.  A vertical axis, linking heaven to the underworld, passes through it.  The stars are perceived to move around one’s abode; home is the focal point of a cosmic structure.   Such a conception of place ought to give it supreme value; to abandon it would be hard to imagine”(Tuan 149).  Thus it is an idea far more complex than a house someone lives in.  He continues, “cosmic views can be adjusted to suit new circumstances.  With the destruction of one ‘center of the world,’ another can be built next to it, or in another location altogether, and it in turn becomes the ‘center of the world’”(Tuan 150).  While answering the question if a home can be created or destroyed, Tuan also shows how the home can have a nomadic quality.  If a home can be created virtually anywhere, what aspects go into curating a sense of home in a space?
 
Moving to New York last year I have had a lot of trouble trying to create a sense of home away from home.  While I felt like living in a dorm was the main reason for this, I have discovered the physical perimeters of a place are not the only attributes that go into a sense of home.  If physical location is not of very much importance, what is?  Tuan declares a sense of home is “an archive of fond memories and splendid achievements that inspired the present; place is permanent and hence reassuring to man, who sees frailty in himself and chance and flux everywhere”(Tuan 154).  Therefore home must aim at possessing these qualities.  Living in a dorm last year, I did not even attempt to make my space feel like home.  I bought everything for my dorm at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and random posters from a website.  I never was happy living in my freshman dorm because I didn’t put any effort into it.  Although this year I still live in a dorm, I have approached living in it totally differently.  Through framed pictures, collectibles from my childhood, and an American Flag given to me by my grandfather, I have achieved a sense of home by adding personal character to the place.  I believe a home should be a representation or encompass ones personality, something I have now learned and achieved.  

Everyone experiences the sense of “crowding” at some point during their lives.  Interacting and living with others is a primitive skill that humans learn from the earliest beginnings of development.  People live in society, thus crowding is unavoidable.  What constitutes this notion of crowding? How does crowding affect our sense of place?  Yi-Fu Tuan declares “to be in the company of human beings – even with one other person – has the effect of curtailing space and its threat of openness “(Tuan 59) in his book Space and Place.  He continues, “we may say of a forest that it is crowded with trees and of a room that is crowded with knick-knacks.  But primarily people crowd us; people rather than things are likely to restrict our freedom and deprive us of space”(Tuan 59).  Thus human interaction directly affects a sense of place even more than the physical objects in a space.  
 
Tuan utilizes the Eskimo and the New Yorker to exemplify how people perceive “crowdedness” differently.  While these two examples view crowdedness on two very different plateaus as “a sense of crowding can appear under highly varied conditions and at different scales”(Tuan 60), everyone will be faced with working or living closely with others during their lifetime.  Tuan describes the relationship between the Eskimo and the New Yorker: “Eskimos hunt in small groups over the broad open spaces of the Arctic coast.  Urban crowding and stress, as in the crush of humanity during rush hours, are wholly alien to Eskimo experience, yet Eskimos are no strangers to crowding and stress.  They experience crowding at the tragic level of starvation in times of scarcity”(Tuan 66).  Crowdedness is a universal experience relatable to all.
 
I can relate to the different perceptions of crowdedness as mine have changed since moving to New York.  While living in a suburb of Washington DC, I associated “crowds” with the Beltway during rush-hour or the local mall on a Saturday afternoon; always negative a negative connotation involving an over abundance of people getting in my way from making it from point A to point B.  Now living in New York City, my feeling of crowdedness has changed.  While many people would say Times Square and crowdedness would be synonyms, I would not.  Yes there are throngs of people milling about the area, but they did not effect my commute to the office building I work at on Times Square.  Because I learned how to avoid and overlook these crowds of people, they did not personally change my sense of place.  The only times I feel “crowded” now is when I feel my personal space is violated (on a packed subway train or elevator).  I cant avoid these situations thus feeling crowded.  Because I am constantly hurled into experiences with my personal space violated, I have noticed a desire to be alone, even scheduling time out of my busy day to fulfill this need.  Tuan declares, “privacy and solitude are necessary for sustained reflection and a hard look at self”(Tuan 65); a notion to remember and seek out to deal especially with the crowds of New York City.     

Looking back on my first post, it amazes me how my analytical approach to perceiving a “good place” has changed since the beginning of the semester.  While the theme of the experience of the place has been present throughout the semester, through our readings I have learned the countless aspects that go into creating a true sense of place.  From discovering the importance of a building’s site from Michael Pollan in his book A Place of My Own to the connotation of “The Stoop” in Michael Sorkin’s Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, my sense of place has broadened and become more intricate by taking this class.
 
Another reoccurring theme that is present throughout several of my blog posts is gentrification, specifically in Soho.  In one of my posts I highlight Kunstler’s notion of a loss of community in his book Geography of Nowhere.  I applied his declaration that “we have become accustomed to living in places where nothing relates to anything else, where disorder, unconsciousness, and the absence of respect reign unchecked”(185) to the corporatization of Soho.  I returned to this notion of the gentrification of Soho when discussing Sorkin’s claim that “gentrification suppresses reciprocity by its narrowed scripting of formal and social behavior, by turning neighborhoods into Disneylands or Colonial Williamsburgs, where residents become cast members and the rituals of everyday life become spectacle or food consumption”(145).  The ones that seem to be responsible for these ever increasing problems is the government and its relationship with the largest business conglomerations that are monopolizing the market place, an issue that has been prevalent in several of my other courses this semester as well.  In my Social and Cultural Analysis class as well as The Culture Industries, we have discussed how the close yet unspoken of ties between the government and the largest of conglomerates shapes our culture and world we live in today.  I believe many of our readings and assignments especially on the construction of public spaces directly relates to this as well.
 
I thoroughly enjoyed A Sense of Place mostly because it acquainted me with the city I live in and I realized, no almost nothing about.  This course has provided me a better connection and a deeper understanding of the place where I live and has allowed me to develop a sense of home that I had lacked.  All I could have wished for is that I took this class earlier in my college education.  While studying abroad in Paris next semester I hope to find a similar course in which a sense of place can be contemplated and analyzed even further from my notion of home. 

(Photo by me) 

While reading the last chapter of Michael Sorkin’s Twenty Minutes in Manhattan I could not help to think of the recently built Standard Hotel.  Opening in late 2008, The Standard, New York, the fourth of André Balazs’ Standard hotels collection, has become a fixture of New York architecture and lifestyle.  The hotel is located in the heart of New York’s Meatpacking District.  Once the home of over 250 slaughterhouses and packing plants as well as a center of drug dealing and prostitution in the 1980’s, the Meatpacking District is now renowned for its stylish restaurants, clubs, and shops.  In 2004 New York Magazine declared the area "New York’s most fashionable neighborhood".  Thus the Meatpacking District has been one of the most quickly gentrified areas in Manhattan.  A New York Times article described the Meatpacking District only a few months before September 11, 2001 as: “the sidewalks run with rivulets of greasy blood, and prostitutes pick their way around discarded chunks of fat”.  In 2011 however, “the writer would have to replace blood with ‘hair gel’, prostitutes with ‘bouncers’, and chunks of fat with ‘Eastern European models’.”  The Standard is one of the newest, and most extreme results of this gentrification.

                                              
  
Like the Trump Soho mentioned in Sorkin’s book, The 265 feet tall Standard makes a brash impression in the low-slung skyline of the Meatpacking District and makes no apologies.  New York Magazine describes “The King Standard” as “a delicate colossus - a big, brawny exhibitionist with a surprisingly sensitive touch”.   The two concrete framed glass-curtain slabs of the main structure of the hotel hovers 60 feet above the newly renovated High Line Park raised by concrete stilts.  From street level however, The Standard seems more unassuming.  The integration of The Standard Grill and Beirgarten at street level offers an affected replica of the “old-time grittiness” of the Meatpacking District that can be seen throughout the rest of the neighborhood (a feeling similar to Walt Disney’s stylized “authenticity” seen at Epcot theme park).  The hotel’s location and height provides each of the 337 guestrooms with panoramic views of the Hudson River and Manhattan’s cityscape allowing its residence a sense of “particular privilege”(DesignHotels). 

                                               
 
Designed by Todd Schliemann of the New York firm Polshek Partnership Architects for André Balazs, the Le Corbusier-style glass-slab Standard recalls iconic New York glass structures such as the United Nations and the Lever House.  “The design spans—and expands on—a century of modern architecture”(Tyrnauer). “If you had to look at this project from an urban-planning perspective,” says Balazs, “it gets more modern, in terms of building type and décor, the higher you get. The ground floor relates to early in the last century, the time of the High Line. The hotel floors, in the tower, are midcentury—I was looking at Eero Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, and Arne Jacobsen, who had designed an amazing hotel in Stockholm in the 50s.”  The top floor of the Standard, featuring a club and roof deck, pays homage to the famous 1960s and 70s interior designer Warren Platner, a protégé of Saarinen’s. All inspiration from a bygone era.  
 
The Standard’s design was completely determined by its relationship with the High Line Park.  Cutting directly through Balazs’s building site, the High Line presented a serious obstacle.  Standing 30 feet in the air, the High Line Park has been built on an 80-year-old elevated freight railroad running down New York City’s lower West Side.  The Park redesigned by architecture firm Diller Scofidio and Renfro is an aerial greenway that is considered one of the most innovative urban-renewal projects of our time.  The Standard’s Andre Balazs declares, “we had to be sensitive to this new landmark, it tramples through our site, but it also defines it. That said, we wanted to not be overly shy or reverent toward it. Whatever we put up there would have to jump the train tracks.”

                                              
 
The High Line’s close relationship with the entirely glass-paneled Standard has caused quite the controversy however.  Hotel guests failing to close the curtains of their floor-to-ceiling windows can be easily seen from the High Line below: a problem specifically troubling to families strolling the park not looking for a peep show.  While the Standard won an award from the Municipal Arts Society of New York for the best new building construction in 2009, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has called the hotel's window design "unacceptable." 
 
It is interesting and important to note the many similarities between The Standard and the Trump Soho, also recently completed in 2010.  Sorkin’s depiction of the Trump Soho seems to directly apply to the Standard as well: “the architecture is completely bland, another glass box.  Because of its size however, it whimsically rescales the entire neighborhood, permanently marring the low roof-scape that stretches downtown and culminates in the lower Manhattan skyline.  On the sky its an awful scar.  As urbanism, it’s vandalism”(Sorkin 211).  Sorkin continues, “like the nation as a whole, New York lacks an adequate industrial policy, and the Trump Soho –as its eponymous neighborhood next door—represents the transformation of an “obsolete” industrial neighborhood into something more congenial to the current market.  This transformation reproduces, at the scale of the city, something that is going on globally, a kind of special segregation –or zoning – of continental reach: New York’s industrial neighborhoods are now in China or Mexico”(Sorkin 213).  Is this sudden trend of hotels and businesses with overly confident architecture significantly responsible for the un-industrialization of cities?  Has the public pressured the construction of such buildings or are developers of these hotels now “symbols of an urbanism of pure extraction that has little interest beyond the bottom line”(Sorkin 214) to blame?

                                    
 
While the Standard is praised as being the hub of the prodigious New York art, fashion, and media worlds, a Studio 54 of our time of sorts, what makes it the iconic New York landmark it quickly has become?  I personally like the connotation of the Standard but why?  Is it the architecture? Interior design? The ambiance of the people gathering there?  It’s the experience the space provides and caters to.  With that being said, I disagree that the “a big new building can fit neatly in a historic neighborhood—not by donning antique-y cornices, but by interpreting the spirit of a place”(Davidson). Although the Standard could achieve the same success without sticking out like a concrete sore thumb, why would future developers alter a formula that proved to be lucrative?  Thus it will take true innovators to prove that the new construction of buildings can find success without destroying the original sense of place completely and to end the never-ending cycle of architecture monstrosities such as the Standard and Trump Soho being built.  Without this change “what is sacrificed locally is not simply blue-collar employment but a vital idea of what constitutes a city, an idea that includes notions of self-sufficiency and diversity.  One of the things that can make a city great is the spectacle of equity, a sense of a ‘right to the city’ that combines access to both its places and possibilities.  We rely on public space and public policy to lay out a framework for this freedom”(Sorkin 215).

Works Cited:

Davidson, Justin. "A Delicate Colossus." New York Magazine Jan 25, 2009 ShareThis: n. pag. Web. 2 May 2011.
 
Sorkin, Michael . Twenty Minutes in Manhattan . London: Reaktion Books, 2009. Print.
 
"THE STANDARD, NEW YORK." Designhotels.com . N.p., n.d. Web. 2 May 2011. <http://www.designhotels.com/hotels/americas/usa/new_york_city/the_standard_new_york>.
 
Tyrnaeur, Matt. "Hop on the High Line." Vanity Fair February 2009: n. pag. Web. 2 May 2011.

Image Sources:

http://www.psfk.com/2009/08/pics-standard-hotel-nyc.html/the-standard-new-york-exterior_thomas-loof

http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.showprojectbigimages&img=4&pro_id=11013

http://duclephotography.com/tag/film/

http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=11013

http://nyc-architecture.com/?p=90

Sorkin utilizes SoHo as an example of inner-city regeneration and gentrification.  He claims, “gentrification suppresses reciprocity by its narrowed scripting of formal and social behavior, by turning neighborhoods into Disneylands or Colonial Williamsburgs, where residents become cast members and the rituals of everyday life become spectacle or food consumption”(145).  While I believe Sorkin’s views are somewhat harsh there is something to be said about the notion of over gentrification.  Once the haven of artists during the hard economic times, SoHo has become a tourist destination rivaling Times Square.  Broadway between East Houston and Canal for instance has become a outdoor promenade lined with the chain shops and restaurants of any generic mall in the America.  This over gentrification resulting in the loss of the areas rich history and character has been coined “The SoHo Effect” and has been observed in several cities around the United States.  It is probably the most and easiest referenced example of gentrification gone bad. 
 
Sorkin believes “as the enterprise of the city is increasingly transformed into the production of high-end lifestyles, citizens are forced ever deeper inside the system in order to participate in public life, which ceases to be a matter of right or election and becomes simply another commodity”(146).  You have to be able to pay to be a part of the public.  Does gentrification have to result in this however?  Are low-income neighborhoods or Disneyland tourist destinations the only two options? Or can a balance be found?
 
In the ever increasingly popular area of Park Slope Brooklyn for instance, the Fifth Avenue Committee has established an anti-displacement zone and will try to prevent evictions of low-income people living in this area.  Through political action, Park Slope has been able to draw new residents and businesses and create an improved inviting community while not forcing out the less affluent.  These zones alone won’t stop gentrification from happening but government intervention seems to have to exist for a balance to be attained. While there may not be hope for such areas as SoHo, the West Village, and Chelsea, through reinforced rent regulations areas like Harlem and Park Slope still have a chance to have a balance.  Gentrification can exist on a less extreme level than Sorkin’s example of SoHo.  It can be used to improve and make areas safer while still protecting its original residents.  Jane Jacobs’ idea of “integrated diversity” can still be attained.

Michael Sorkin explores the social functions of “The Stoop” in his book Twenty Minutes in Manhattan.  He declares the raised stoop, “a fine, filtering, intermediate space, modulating the transition from the public life of the street to the private life of the building”(67).  The everyday repeated process of buzzing, finding keys, holding doors, makes the stoop the hub of interaction between neighbors, the meeting place of acquaintances, and a resting stop for passerbies.  Sorkin states the other function of the stoop as a space of spectatorship; “a street lined with stoops is a kind of lateral stadium, ideal for viewing the passing parade”(67).  This activity ensures the smooth operation of a neighborhood making sure nothing out of the ordinary occurs.  The stoop is a unique social spot because it is “neither the public sidewalk nor the private yard but something in-between”(69).

After reading Sorkin’s analysis of the stoop I realized the unique social interactions the stoop catalyzed in my own life.  Living in a duplex in the West Village this past summer, I met my neighbors, mailman, and the surrounding shopkeepers all while entering or leaving from my stoop.  I quickly learned from the fellow occupants of my building that Dave, an elderly homeless man, had enjoyed reading books on our stoop for many years and that I shouldn’t be bothered by it.  Patrons of the ice cream stand on the corner however, were not welcome to use the stoop and that I should direct them to a bench on the sidewalk several yards down.  This inclusion and exclusion of the stoop gave it personality and gave me a subconscious sense of ownership and comfort.  The two-step up stoop allowed me to have a different perspective of space as well.  Walking up the two steps I was no longer part of the city street but now an observer.  I was able to have an objective view now that I was no longer physically on the level of the street.

Living in NYU’s Gramercy Green dormitory this year has made me realize how much I miss the sense of a stoop.  The street level access of the building prohibits almost any form of social interaction to go on outside of the building.  The immediate outside of the building is strictly used for an entrance or exit out of the building.  Smokers scatter awkwardly around the building, as there is no designated place for them to perch.  I feel the building thus lacks a sense of character and community because of the design of its entranceway. 

In chapter three of Wrestling with Moses Anthony Flint depicts writer and community activist Jane Jacobs battle with Park Commissioner Robert Moses to save Washington Square Park from urban renewal. Stemming from the New Deal, Moses planned to totally redesign the park as well extend Fifth Avenue straight through the Park “essentially wiping out sections of the old, cluttered neighborhood and putting in new modern construction and wider streets”(64). As an outraged resident of Greenwich Village, Jacobs wrote a letter to the New York City mayor and the Manhattan borough president declaring:

“It is very discouraging to do our best to make the city habitable, and then to learn that the city itself is thinking up schemes to make it uninhabitable. I have learned of the alternate plan of Washington Square Park Committee to close the park to all vehicular traffic. Now that is the plan that the city officials, if they believe in New York as a decent place to live and not just to rush through, should be for”(65).

Through her “Parks are for People” campaign Jacobs was able to destroy Moses’ plan of building a highway through the park by raising awareness of how important parks are for social interaction and how they really work. While “[this] achievement was infectious as neighborhoods across the city found a new voice in development, public works projects, and especially parks”(88) and Jane Jacobs will forever go down in history as the one who saved the park, is this “new sense of ownership over public space”(88) still felt today?

Less than five years ago for instance the New York City Department of Parks and Recreations began construction on a $16 millions project to redesign the park to much public contention. Although many believed realigning the central fountain with the arch and lining the entire park with an uniform iron fence would cause the park to loose its informality and character resulting in countless lawsuits, the project pushed ahead and was completed in May of 2009. Since then almost half of the eastern part of the Park has been closed due to the second phase of reconstruction promising repaved sidewalks, restored landscaping, and more fences to be added in hopes of a “safer” park.

Since I moved to Greenwich Village almost two years ago the Park in its entirety has not been opened once. While I enjoyed reading on the ledge of the fountain or walking through the plaza as a short cut I am not able to grasp the personality of the park I hoped or once could have. Flourishing in the 1960’s as a hub to the emerging counterculture by the likes of Bob Dylan and Robert Mapplethorpe, the recent “improvements” to Washington Square Park have formalized and taken the character out of the “unplanned and organic public space” Jane Jacobs fought to preserve. 

I spent last 4th of July at my friend’s house in Malibu.  Located oceanfront in Malibu Colony, the house allows direct access to the beach and provides breathtaking views of the ocean and the horizon.  The shingled cottage was built to take full advantage of the oceanfront view.  The kitchen and living room open up to the back patio with elevated levels for optimal views of the ocean; even the Jacuzzi is “oceanfront”.  From the patio you can look up to the giant window of the master bedroom.  You can see a California king four-poster bed facing the ocean, there seems to be no obstruction between the bed and the ocean.  Beyond the patio there is a deck that leads to the ocean.  At first glimpse I thought I could jump directly from the deck into the ocean but with further investigation bubbles of mist clinged onto a glass partition as every wave came crashing in.  I was amazed by the picturesque view from every room of the house.  Living in Malibu seemed ideal.
 
Reading Pollan’s chapter “Windows” in his book A Place of My Own brought me back to last 4th of July and made me reexamine oceanfront living and architecture.  Pollan utilizes his parents’ beach house when expressing his views on windows.  He states, “what I remember about our glass wall and its big view was that the ocean view was best appreciated from the couch, as if you were watching a movie—which the proportions, or “aspect ratio,” of the picture window closely approximated”(254).  While “a smaller or squarer window [of the past]; seems to invite us to step up to it and peak out, glimpse what lies beyond the frame on either side”(254), “but a big window, and especially a big horizontal window, offers no more or different information when your nose is pressed against it than it does from a distance, so why get up”(254)?
 
This modern aspect of windows, seen throughout the houses that line the Malibu coast, made me realize how they affect the interaction of people.  On the 4th of July for instance, the moms were all inside the living room looking out on the dads on the deck smoking cigars looking out on us on the beach.  While we each had the same visual view more or less, the experience of the viewership was totally different for each group of us.  While the glass windows and wall partition provided a seamless view from house to water, it divided the interaction between the two points.  Pollan comments on this notion, “the picture window turns the stuff of nature into a landscape, the very idea of which implies separation and observation and passivity—nature as a spectator sport(255)”.  I remember my friend’s mom commenting that their bedroom didn’t need a TV because it had the ocean as its substitute.  This directly proves Pollan’s point.  Putting “nature up on a pedestal, as the picture window does, is to hold it at arm’s length, regard it as an aesthetic object –a ‘picture’”(255).  How really different is that view from their California king than from my extra long twin in New York City watching The Endless Summer?    

Michael Pollan seeks to find a “true” site for the location of a building in the second chapter of his book, A Place of My Own.  He declares, “Settling on the site of a new building is a momentous act, at least if you stop to think about it.  That not everybody does is obvious from all those buildings that crouch like strangers on their own land, looking out of place or simply oblivious.  Yet it may be that you can think too much about site selection.  Because deciding on the right place to build is also uncannily simple, a process in which the advice of the senses and intuition is often your most reliable guide”(Pollan 30)”.  The site of a building must be carefully picked as “wherever I put my building, it would stay, more or less forever”(Pollan 30).  Throughout the chapter he explores different theories from Thoreau to feng shui to formulate the importance and meaning of the sense of place while picking the location of building.
 
Searching through history, Pollan deduces, “if the scientific perspective is correct, and there is some biological basis for our landscape preferences, we should probably not be too surprised that cultures as different from one another as Ming Dynasty China and Augustan England would have developed vocabularies that find so many similar things to praise in a landscape: Both may be articulating the same deep attractions”(Pollan 51)”.  Therefore there is no one answer or reason Pollan has found, but a trifecta.   Pollan declares, ““yet what confirmed me in my choice finally was no one test, but the very fact that all three perspectives – science and art and mysticism – had evidently occurred: this uncanny, almost mystical alignment of theories and metaphors”(51).
 
While Pollan is able to give a formula for an acceptable sense of place, how is the construction of a building applied to it?  Wouldn’t a building destroy the original sense of place Pollan has found though the three factors he alludes to?  He focuses on “hunting for a patch of sacred ground on which to build, and an authority – or, in my case, three authorities – to consecrate it”(Pollan 51), but then does not delve into how building would change a sense of place.  Pollan states, “space is in fact discontinuous, that place is sometimes found and not made”(Pollan 52).  Doesn’t this notion contradict his previous notion that “wherever I put my building, it would stay, more or less forever”(Pollan 30)?  While Pollan successfully analyzes what goes into finding a site with an authentic sense of place, I wish he then were able to continue by describing how his buildings could successfully be incorporated into a site without ruining this sense.

1
I grew up in McLean, Virginia went to school in Bethesda, Maryland but it’s easier to just say I’m from DC.
 
2
My suburb is home to the CIA, many diplomats and congressmen but the most well kept secret is that they give away unlimited free bags of M&Ms in the Mars corporate offices.
 
3
There were two playgrounds I went to when I was younger:  the “Monster” park and the “Boo-Boo” park.  The monster park had scary drawings of aliens sketched into the equipment.  I called the other “boo-boo” because when I was three I fell and scraped both knees there.  My mother, in attempt to prevent the fall, pulled my arm out of the socket and had to take me to the emergency room.  I still haven’t forgiven her.
 
4
Evans Mill Farm was once a communal space for Mclean residence, then a restaurant, and is now a residential community.  I don’t think it was ever a farm. 
 
5
The house I grew up in was a 19th century colonial.  It was haunted.  Not creaky floor haunted, ghost haunted.  When my dad would go out of town my mom and I would have to stay in hotels because of them.  The ghosts liked my dad.
 
6
My hometown was named after John Roll McLean, the former owner and publisher of The Washington Post.  It was founded in 1910, when the communities of Lewinsville and Langley merged together.  The CIA is still referred to as being in Langley but it’s actually McLean.
 
7
Tysons Central 7 station is expected to open as part of the first phase of the Silver Line to Wiehle Avenue in 2013. Controversy ensued over whether to build the Metro in a tunnel or on an elevated viaduct through Tysons Corner. It was eventually decided that the majority of the line would be built above ground, but the station will be built partially below ground in order to send trains through a short tunnel connecting the line's Route 7 and Route 123-paralleling sections.
 
8
In October of 2002 the Washington sniper attacks took place for three weeks in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC. Ten people were killed and three others critically injured in various locations throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia.  On the first day of the attacks my school locked us all in the auditorium over night.  We watched the Star Wars Trilogy three times.
9
My suburb is the quintessential suburb of today.  McDonald’s and 7/11s scattered seamlessly with the mom and pop movie rental store and clothing boutiques.  The Blockbuster closed down two years ago but the family owned joint remains.  Its makes me feel happy every time I think about it.
 
10
The Washington Monument, Mount Vernon Estate, Iwo Jima Memorial, U.S Air Force Memorial, Manassas National Battlefield Park, National Marine Corps Museum, and Claude Moore Colonial Farms are all must sees when visiting the Washington DC area.  I’ve done none of them.  

(Photo taken by me from the Virginia side of the Potomac River)

I swipe my card three or four times until the turnstile finally registers and allows me to go.  A mass is swarming around the doors that just opened as people squeeze to get on and off – typical for this time of day.  I get of four stops later and walk down the long corridor until I reach the end; I’m at my dorm room.
 
A Dépêche Mode trucker hat donned deer head greets me enthusiastically upon entering my dorm “suite”.  The windowless living room slash kitchen seems intimate yet functionless.  There is a camouflage portable chair sitting under the mounted deer.  A quintessential dormitory style multi-level desk surfaces a stack of meticulously layered magazines, books, and DVDs while also functioning as a display for an encased Missoni Pellegrino bottle hugs the left wall.  The refrigerator, dishwasher, sink, and stove squeeze against the right wall as a plastic table with orange and lime green chairs awkwardly squat in the center of the room.  A wood island cutting board on the far wall juxtaposes the plastic however.  Wine, knife block, and salt lamp signify its purpose.  Three doors lead off of this main room: the right the bedroom I share with my roommate the left the bedroom shared by my suitemates and the one opposite to that the bathroom.  Walking into the right door a warm glow emits from a peace sign lamp made out of aluminum and Christmas tree lights. A shag rug softens the feel of the hardwood floors.  The whiff of candles of many shapes, sizes, and scents linger in the air.  The senses live throughout the room.  The left and right side of the room represent its inhabits uniquely yet compliment one another.  An old American Flag, posters, and a checkerboard of photos hang from my side while a surfboard, world map, and wetsuit represents his.  Clothes are logistically jammed into the small closet and chest of drawers to maximize space.  Most visitors are surprised to see how much detail we have put into the place we live.  While most students view a dormitory as just that, a temporary space, I view it as a home.                    
 
How can a home be created in a place so different then where you are born and raised? What aspects go into making a place a home without family or a real sense of community? Why is a sense of home important to your emotional well-being? How can one be fulfilled without this fundamental sense? How does one achieve a sense of home in a forced space?   These questions have gradually been raised and evolved in my head since arriving in New York City two Augusts ago to attend NYU.  While the notion of a dormitory room as a home was not primarily apparent, through my almost two years of experience living in the dorms I have come to learn it is essential for healthy and successful living.  Before one is able to conceptualize and mold a dorm into a home however, the perception of home must be discussed.
 
While great authors through time have prominently declared, “home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration”(Charles Dickens) and “he is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home”(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), a true definition of what a home is can be hard to come by.  What is a home? Can it be created or destroyed?  Is it a physical place or an abstract idea totally unique to each person?  The answers to these questions seem daunting but the authors we have so far examined in Sense of Place strive to answer them.
 
Yi-Fu Taun’s declares in his book Space and Place, “home is the focal point of a cosmic structure”(149).  While it seems “such a conception of place ought to give supreme value; to abandon it would be hard to imagine”(149), “with destruction of one ‘center of the world,’ another can be built next to it, or in another location altogether, and it in turn becomes the ‘center of the world’”(150).  Thus it is possible to recreate an authentic sense of home several times in different locations throughout life.  While it may be hard to conceive a home away from your birthplace, “cosmic views can be adjusted to suit new circumstances.”(150)
 
I struggled with this concept living in my dorm last year.  I viewed the 10 x 10 foot room as a place I slept and did homework, nothing else.  I made no effort to personalize the room in anyway except a few family photos that just made me feel an even greater lack of a sense of home.  I didn’t bother having friends over and spent most of my time outsider in public spaces.  Although this was distracting, I never felt like I was “living” in New York, I was still an outsider.  I did not have the essential balance of estate and range as mentioned by Tuan.  While he declares the range, the orbit around the home, is essential for survival, the estate, “the traditionally recognized home or dreaming place of a patrilineal descent groups and its adherents”(157)” establishes the necessary sense of emotion through its social and ceremonial ties.  Because I was not experiencing the simple traditions of home, I was not able to discover a sense of identity personally or in the surrounding community.
     
What are the attributes thus in creating a traditional sense of home?  Living with a friend was the first step.  Being able to communally pick the location, layout, and design of our dorm this year was liberating as the year before I had no control on where or who I lived with.  The next step in creating this sense of home was through the organic acquisition of products. James Howard Kunstler’s describes the necessity of charm in producing a sense of home in his book The Geography of Nowhere.  He defines charm as “that which makes our physical surroundings worth caring about”(168).  Kunstler claims, “we are presently suffering on a massive scale the social consequences of living in places that are not worth caring about”(168).  How is this caring achieved?  Through objects with meaning.  From the peace sign lamp, to the Missoni bottle, to the photos on my wall, every article in our dorm has a story and is now a part of me.  Instead of rushing to Bed, Bath, & Beyond to fully furnish my dorm like I did last year, naturally coming across the things I needed and wanted make me feel a whole lot happier today.
 
While I plan on moving out of the dorms this summer, I do not believe Kunstler’s claim that “our obsession with mobility, the urge to move on every few years, stands at odds with the wish to endure in a beloved place, and no place can be worthy of that kind of deep love if we are willing to abandon it on short notice for a few extra dollars”(173) destroys a sense a home.  I believe I have successfully achieved a sense of home and although it took me a while, I am confident I will be able to do it again wherever life takes me in the future.

Works Cited:
Kunstler, James Howard. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise And Decline of
America’s Man-Made Landscape. New York: Touchstone, 1993.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1977.130-148.
Print.

Kunstler examines the birth and history of the suburb in chapter four of his book The Geography of Nowhere.  There is almost no trace of this original concept of the suburb in today’s society.  The suburban ideal of the mid-nineteenth century Kunstler declares “was a safe, green, warm sheltering, live-giving realm, full of fruits, grains, flocks of sheep and fowl, its hills and valleys feminine in their voluptuousness and ability to nurture”(42) The founding architects of the suburb movement “design[s] were meant to be carried out in an embellished natural landscape that was definitely not the city, nor of the city, nor even the small town”(45).  The suburb was supposed to be an oasis away from the economical, political, and social stresses of urbanity.  The “suburbs were a refuge from the evil consequences of those innovations – from the smoke, the filth, the noise, the crowding, the human misery – built for those who benefited from the industrial activities”(51).  During the 1800s the “wild, irregular, playful and spontaneous”(48) pattern of the suburb attracted the super-rich including Thomas Edison to embrace and move to the suburbs.  The suburb was heaven on earth – Eden.
 
This “artificial way of life in an inorganic community that pretended above all other virtues to be ‘natural’”(57) however, began to fall apart as its popularity grew.  Suburbanites “consumed open land like crazy, and included almost nothing in the way of civic features – no town centers, squares artful grouping of buildings to some social purpose, and little consideration of the public realm, except conduit for vehicles”(56).  It had no soul.  The introduction of the automobile was the nail in the coffin.  Kunstler exclaims, “the automobile “made a mockery of the suburbian ideal”(57).  The suburbs we live in today have swept “away all architectural history, all romantic impulses, and to jamming all human aspiration into a plain box”(57).
 
While the suburbs of today contradict the heart of the original suburb, why do the wealthy still desire to live there?  This past weekend I visited the suburb of Washington DC I was born and raised in and was astonished to see the continual building of “McMansions” around my neighborhood.  Even in these hard economic times impacting suburban real estate drastically, these huge two to five millions dollar estates keep popping up almost overnight.  Does our society pressure the wealthy into purchasing these gigantic, economically risky, usually heinous properties?  I believe many of these people buy out of convenience.  In the remote control day in age we live in, the “entire package” these suburban communities promise are attractive.  From fitness centers, to multi-media rooms, everything imaginable has been included.  Do these perks outweigh the purgatory-like state the suburbs have become however?

James Howard Kunstler discusses the loss of community in his book Geography of Nowhere.  He declares, “[community] expresses itself physically as connectedness, as buildings actively related to one another, and to whatever public spaces exists”(186).  He blames corporate America for the destruction of his sense of community – the small town.  Although the “X and Y Corporations pay property taxes to operate their stores…and a percentage of the county sales tax they pay is returned to the village via a rather abstruse political formula,”(181) Kunstler believes “the chance for a local merchant to make a profit, to keep the profit in town,”(181) is taken away.
 
Particularly focusing on the economical and physical sense of community, he describes how the “cinder-block sheds [that] have no relation to the local architecture”(182) corporations build destruct a sense of community.  Kunstler continues, “perhaps in the future people will look back on convenience stores [like 711} with fond nostalgia, because they are the late twentieth-century successors to the old general store that sold a little bit of everything. But there is one big difference – the X and Y stores are not owned by local merchants”(181).  While I understand this notion, is it solely a problem for small towns as noted by Kunstler?  Take SoHo for example.   Once a cultural hub for the arts, SoHo has quite literally become an outside shopping mall for the masses.  With two of the biggest chain stores in America, “California-themed” Hollister and the “Americana” American Eagle welcoming people upon entering SoHo on Broadway and Houston, the area perfectly represents Kunstler’s notion that, “we have become accustomed to living in places where nothing relates to anything else, where disorder, unconsciousness, and the absence of respect reign unchecked”(185).  Not only in small towns do “the gigantism of corporate enterprise has either obliterated or mocked: an agreeable scale of human enterprise, tranquility, public safety, proximity of neighbors and markets, nearness to authentic countryside, and permanence”(185).  It is a universal phenomenon.
 
Is economic success and authentic architecture required to achieve a sense of community however?  Kunstler believes “the decay of property is the physical expression of everything the town has lost spiritually while the Americans economy “grew” and the nation devised a national lifestyle based on cars, cheap oil, and recreational shopping”(184).  While architecture can change a sense of place, I believe community does not depend on it.  Kunstler also is optimistic that the prosperity of the small town will return once again declaring, “it would have an economy and be a community”(187), I don’t believe money guarantees community either. Community is a psychological sense that can grow solely from experience. 

Nothing compares to a fall day in Central Park.  From bike rides, to concerts, to leaf fights, the park is my escape from city living.  Labeled by the Central Park Conservancy as “America's first and foremost major urban public space, as envisioned by its 19th-century designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux”, Central Park is at the center of New York’s history and culture.  It is a common meeting place for the 8.4 million New Yorkers who live here and is the most visited city park by tourists in the country.  What makes the park a landmark of the city?  How has the park continued to remain fully in tact with the real estate value of the land being over 500 billion dollars?
 
John Brinckerhoff Jackson declares in his book Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, “the American park after little more than a century, has lately fallen on evil days. We no longer love it was we did”(128).  I do not agree with Jackson.  He asks, “why have parks ignored [the] important social function: the integration of the young into the life of the community?”(129).  While I understand that I am part of a generation that considers playing Wii Sports recreation, I think this withdraw from outdoor activity has pressured parks to cater events specifically to younger generations.  New York for instance has the City Park Foundation that promotes free arts, sports, and education programs to empower the youth of the city to become more involved in the community.  During the summer I frequent Central Park for the Summer Stage series.  The park to me is viewed as a destination, an activity, an event.  The “’picturesque’ natural beauty of the composition”(128) of a park is no longer the most important, the entertainment factor is.
 
Jackson may not be referring to Central Park however.  He dismisses the belief that Olmsted was “an aristocratic Versailles estate landscaper, a notorious WASP in his social sympathies”(128) declaring, “Central Park from its first years was used by all classes”(128).  This sense of equality in the park that continues today is intriguing.  How can a park encompass the needs and wants of a city as economically and socially diverse as New York?  Is the sense created in the design of the park? Or is the park a reflection of the progressive culture of New York?
 
While Jackson hopes the park “may eventually mature and give the word a wider and more contemporary meaning: the park as a public, open-air space where we can acquire self-awareness as members of society and awareness of our private relationship to the natural environment”(130), I believe it already has.  The design enhances but is not the experience of Central Park.  The diverse functions of the park come directly from the needs and wants of its citizens.  

The three-hour train ride to the easternmost point on Long Island was not nearly as far as the distance I felt from the city.  The air didn’t smell like trash.  The time wasn’t of importance.  Montauk’s conflicting personality to New York City is what drew me to it.
 
The motel’s musty floral print comforter was not the most comfortable I had ever slept on nor were the conch fritters the best I ever had.  But my weekend there far surpassed the “Montaukian ideal” I had created in my head.  I’m not exactly sure how my friends and I chose Montauk as our destination for a weekend getaway but the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and a bumper sticker touting “Montauk – The End” were mentioned.
 
Boarding the 6am Long Island Railroad that Saturday morning, I wanted nothing more than to be back in my dorm sleeping until 4pm.  As the vision of open space, the pretention of the Hampton’s, and my hangover passed by however, the notion faded.  The heightening sense of jailbreak as we traveled east consummated as I stepped off the train.  The virgin air and site of the rail tracks disappearing into the rocks and sand at the end of the line were freeing.
 
We made our way to “the best pancake place in town” as recommended by our cab driver Junior.  The pancakes were not good.  But “Junya”, a native Montaukian from Jamaica, was.  He became our sixth comrade, leader, and gave us a personal connection to Montauk.    With overpriced surfboard rentals in hand, we spent much of the rest of the day idly on Ditch Plains Beach hoping the northwest winds would subside and that we had brought sweatshirts.  The Ditch Witch snack van provided us with iced green tea, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and the backdrop for “Montaukian ideal” photographs.  That night Junya directed us to the Surf Lodge, a recently opened hotel on the outskirts of town.  Interested in the conceptual production of hotels, I was immediately drawn to the curation and aesthetics of the Surf Lodge.  Vintage flippers adorning the wall, surf videos projected on a sceen, and a gigantic drift wood table: the hotel balances kitsch with authenticity.  Guests mimicked this sense.  Cowboys and Indians clad guests celebrated a birthday to the djing of Mike D of the Beastie Boys.  From Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” to the theme song of “Different Strokes”, each song enhanced the vibe of the Surf Lodge.                 
 
I don’t remember Montauk for its lighthouse, quaint shops, or hotels.  “Junya”, sneaking five people into a motel room, the music is Montauk to me.  It was the perfect place for me because it understood and embraced my late September melancholy.

(Photo by me)