MattK's blog

I didn’t realize that there was so much involved in creating a sense of place.  It’s so easy for us to pass through spaces and remain unaware of the way that they work on us.  I’m not so ignorant of that anymore.  Looking back on my earlier posts, I see that what I value in a space and a place hasn’t changed, but now I value more.  I consider more than the way it looks or many other superficial assessments.  Because really, there is so much more to a space—it’s chi, if it’s authentic, and many other qualities.  I noticed myself paying attention to these ideas as I searched for an apartment with my roommate for next semester.  I realize that I enter places now and immediately assess their quality.  I find myself upset in bad places and drawn to good ones.  In way, this course has made me more critical of where I am and more appreciative of those spaces. 

I notice that many of posts are concerned with qualities of space and place that aren’t inherent in the design or implementation of it.  I return often to Tuan and Jackson’s ideas that what actually happens in the space lends to its character.  I think these ideas resonate strongly with me because I feel the strongest connections to places that hold some sort of meaning—usually because of the people there or a significant event that happened there.  Of course, I do find myself in awe of places for their aesthetic qualities and the feelings that design and use bring out in me.)  This realization has shown me that this course has helped me to realize that the qualities of spaces and places are complex things. 

Some places are defined not by the design of their space or by their aesthetic qualities, but by the people that frequent them and events that occur there.  Their sense of place is fluid and changes depending on a range of factors—they don’t claim a historical significance or famous design that imbues them with personality.  The attributes that make them significant are mutable and don’t register in the same way with everyone who encounters the place.  Lit Lounge, a seedy dive bar on Second Avenue and Fifth Street in the East Village, is an example of a site that derives its sense of place from the unpredictable nature of its patrons and the fun (or lack thereof) to be found on any particular night.     
 
When I think back to my freshman year at NYU, I immediately remember the many nights I spent at Lit, and I’ve come to realize that this place encapsulates that time in my life perfectly.  My memories of this other time—one that now seems so far away—inhabit Lit and transform it from just-another-bar to something of a relic of past time in my life.  I understand the incongruity in declaring that Lit is place where I had many great times and had many great memories, yet acknowledging that nothing inherent about Lit is the cause for my affection. 
 
Here, the people shape the place.  I always went to Lit with a group of great friends late at night during freshman and (first semester) sophomore years.  Whenever there was doubt about what we should do or where we should go, the quandary was always resolved with someone exclaiming “Lit!” and the issue was settled.  We never needed an excuse to venture to Lit the way those other bars or clubs did, and we were just as comfortable there on Tuesday as we were on Saturday.  As is the case with most nightlife spots, patrons moved on to other locations and the spark that made Lit great seemed to die as my friends and regulars moved on to other spots and DJs changed—two crucial aspects in creating Lit’s sense of place.


 
Lit was opened in 2002 by a four of artists as a means of financing the Fuse Gallery that sits in a back room of the space.  The space earned its namesake from the fire that destroyed the building and forced the previous owners to vacate.  When asked about how Lit was founded, owner Erik Foss said in The New York Times, "A few years ago our art wasn't being accepted by mainstream galleries in Chelsea and our music wasn't being supported by record labels, so the idea was to open a place where we could all hang out and do our thing and really build a community" (http://www.litloungenyc.com/nytimesjune9.html). 
 
For a while, social life seemed to revolve around Lit.  It’s a two floor space: one enters on street level and is met with a seating area, a long bar, banquets, bathrooms, and a back room.  A set of precariously steep stairs led to the downstairs space, which features a stage, alcove, another bar, a backroom, and more bathrooms. The stairs divide the space and create a transition between upstairs and downstairs, and they both defy and uphold Sorkin’s observations about stairs.  This steep single-run of metal steps are not a social space—they’re hidden behind a wall—to a first time visitor, it would be easy to miss them.  But they serve a critical function in dividing the space and creating distinct feelings.  The 2,000 square foot upstairs is slightly more sedate than the 1,500 square foot downstairs.  While by no means boring, patrons upstairs are generally more sober than those downstairs, look more composed dancing, and have a better understanding of what’s going on.  Once a partier descends the stairs he/she enters a smoky subterranean lair (for a while, management overlooked people smoking in the back room), that was packed full of uninhibited partiers every night of the week.  Nothing seemed off limits downstairs.  And I think management knew this, as they served drinks in plastic cups downstairs as opposed to the glass ones upstairs.
 
Sounds of electronic, house, new wave, and the frequent 80s or 90s guilty-pleasure rise above the din of excited voices.  This place is dirty, grungy, hot, smoky, and populated by a varied crowd.  New York Magazine embarrassingly writes that Lit is the clubhouse of the “‘skankoisie’ and is populated by ‘scenesters’ and ‘scruffy Strokes lookalikes’ who swap gravy with low-banged vagrant-chic girls dolled up in the jolie-laide look of heroine Karen O” (http://nymag.com/listings/bar/lit_lounge/). While the description is laughable and oddly self-aware, I do agree that it accurately describes the partiers at Lit.  In spite of this description, Lit never felt image conscious. It excelled as a place because it felt “authentic” as Sorkin describes.  There was no pretense, image didn’t seem to matter, and it never felt as if I were participating in “drama that someone else created” for me (Sorkin 176).  The Village Voice writes, “There's something about the place that makes it seem like it's always been there, like a neighborhood bar that just grew out of the cement” (http://www.villagevoice.com/locations/lit-lounge-153025/).  It was authentic; I think Sorkin would approve.   
 
It was not the place to see and be seen.  I liked it because it was unpretentious and I never felt anyone looking at me, and I think that’s what attracted a lot of people to it.  Patrons were able to be as rowdy and debauched as they pleased till the early hours of the morning.  People simply didn’t care about anything except for the fun they were having.  There is an unspoken camaraderie at these spots—they’re popular because, as Tuan writes, people enjoy “the sheer pleasure of swimming in a sea of their own kind” (Tuan 63).  Lit’s sense of place was found in the attitudes, actions, and hopes for the night of the hundreds of plaid-wearing revelers.




Jackson’s observations about the landscape during wartime can be extrapolated to explain what gives Lit its sense of place.  The environment/space becomes a setting or a stage for what is taking place (Jackson 133).  The terrain organizes and directs action, but it is what men do that matters in wartime, writes Jackson (Jackson 135).  And the space at Lit works in a similar way; it encourages people to act in a certain way and lets them know just how far they can let loose, but the space itself doesn’t confer the sense of place—it is what people do there that does: how far they’re willing to go, how sweaty they’re willing to get, what music the DJ plays, and more.  The space at Lit works in the same way as the landscape in wartime, because, frankly, a night at Lit was akin to a war with your own body.  I realize that this sense of place can be found elsewhere in the city and it’s not specific to Lit.  The point is that this feeling could have happened at any other similar spots, but it happened at Lit because of the people I was with and the chance alignment of many factors during my freshman year.  In many ways the scene at Lit was like that of a battlefield in that what people did there mattered more than the organization and realities of the space.


 
Little distinguishes Lit from similar dives like Home Sweet Home or Don Hills, but my repeated visits led me to develop a connection to the place.  As Tuan writes, “what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value” (Tuan 6). Tuan explains, “Place can acquire deep meaning for the adult through the steady accretion of sentiment over the years” (Tuan 33). This is exactly the case with Lit.  As Sorkin writes, personal history imbues certain places with deep, personal meaning.  I doubt most would feel the same way that I do about Lit, but for me, I hold a strong personal connection. 
 
This past weekend I returned to Lit for the first time in over a semester to attend an event held there.  As I descended the familiar two small steps into the main bar area, I was overcome by familiar emotions and memories of a time that now seems long gone.  I know I’m only 21 and have my entire life in front of me, but the carefree attitude that reigned during my nights at Lit throughout freshman year seems like a distant memory.  I was struck by the way in which this place perfectly encapsulates a distinct period in my life.  I now have the LSAT to worry about, I must find a job, and the real world beckons.  Of course I can have fun, but the hedonism that found refuge in Lit is on an indefinite vacation.  Lit possessed an abstract, almost-indescribable, sense of place found not in the realities of the space but in the things that happened in that space and who inhabited that space that begged my friends and me to return.

When Sorkin recounts his walk across Canal Street (a street that he describes as a “seam” in the city—a fitting description, I believe) he wrestles with the implications of the walk/do not walk sign and the nature of jaywalking.  I read the following passage about crossing Canal Street and initially had a strong reaction.  Sorkin writes, “Although the crosswalk defines the shortest distance between the points of departure and arrival, the crossing is made challenging be the extremely short timing of the traffic signal, which for years was on a 4-second “walk” cycle.  This meant that unless one was already standing on the curb at the moment the light changed, it was culturally impossible to get across before the light turned red” (156).  When I first read this, I said out loud, “So?!”  Then I realized that as New Yorkers, we’re conditioned to ignore these signs and proceed as we please.  I ignore these signals, and I notice that others do too—it’s unconscious for us—but expectations differ across the world. 
 
There’s a reason why laws are enforced in some cities.  Consider that in 1997, there were 277 pedestrian fatalities in NYC, one of the highest years on record.  It seems harmless to walk across Broadway when late for class, but consider that even today fatalities number around 190 per year.  Additionally, enforcing adherence and respect of seemingly silly laws breeds compliance with more significant ones; this was the logic employed by Mayor Giuliani in his efforts to improve the city.  He even initiated a jaywalking crackdown in 1998—fines were raised and pedestrian barriers were stationed at intersections to control the flow of foot traffic—that was met with much criticism.  Giuliani announced, “''I grew up in New York, I understand New York, and there's a certain tradition in New York of not paying attention to traffic signs, both the drivers and the pedestrians,'' Mr. Giuliani said. ''That puts people's lives in jeopardy. It may be cute. But sometimes being cute is being irresponsible.''  It makes sense that people (and law enforcement) living in New York City reacted with incredulity.  Sorkin concedes, “New Yorkers tend to regard crossing against the light as a God-given right, not simply because our impatience but because it also ramifies with our sense of the freedom of the city” (156/7).
 
Imagine a New York without consequence-free jaywalking.  I can’t.  The character of the city would be altered.  New York is a pedestrian oasis, and there is nowhere else where pedestrians claim more advantages than drivers.  As Mitchell Moss, director of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University, says, “The ecology of New York is based on ignoring arbitrary rules.”  It’s that brazen spirit that contributes to New York City’s distinctive sense of place.


Check out these “Rules for Jaywalking”:
 
http://sauntering.blogspot.com/2007/09/simple-rules-for-jaywalking-in.html
 
Works Cited:
 
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/13/nyregion/with-higher-fines-giuliani-hopes-to-hobble-jaywalkers.html
 
http://www.transalt.org/files/newsroom/media/1999/990409nytimes.html

In his chapter on the block, Sorkin discusses the evolution of the city block and the implications of this kind of organization on city life.  He writes, “The block, in its legibility and dimension, is a crucial enabling constituent and, in most cities, the basic organ of the neighborhood, itself the bedrock of the organization of the city as a whole.  Not surprisingly, much political and social organization is based on the block” (92).  In New York, our lives are organized according to the grid, which determines the nature of our neighborhoods, our walks, and our surroundings.  Think about the way that certain blocks give a definite feeling to an area, think about the way that different streets mark a division between different places in the city, and think about the very discernable character of specific streets and/or blocks.
 
The character of these blocks is defined by the layout of the grid and the organization of the streets.  The strictly rectangular, equal sized blocks in Midtown make it hard to discern 38th street from 56th street, for example, but the oddly organized blocks of the Village and Downtown give every block a distinct sense of place. 
 
Imagine a walk through the city.  As Sorkin writes, “the walk takes on a narrative quality,” in that the experience is distinct for every individual, speaks to something personal about that person, and no route is ever the same (80).  It is because on every walk, “Each of us brings a private map along and revises it every time we step out the door.  These maps have consequences not just for our feelings about the city but for our literal ability to negotiate it” (84).  The way we conceive of our routes, our relationship to the grid and to streets, and our place in this city, determines the route we take, how much of it we observe, and how we relate to others along the way. 
 
Sorkin writes about walking: “Walking, considered as something more than simple movement from place to place, puts one in mind of previous walkers” (80).  Walking, though an individual activity, is dependent upon the choices of others and reveals a lot about how you relate to others.  Do you chose your routes based on who and what you’ll encounter, or rather, what you’d prefer not to encounter?  Also, one must acknowledge that the route he/she walks was chosen specifically by someone at some time before and was walked by someone else—there is history imbued in every path and every route someone chooses to walk through the city.  
 

I see Jane Jacob’s legacy at work today.  The struggle surrounding the Lower Manhattan Expressway remind me of a similar conflict back home in Maryland—the Intercounty Connector.  As far back as the 1960s, lawmakers and planners proposed the construction of an east/west “outer Beltway” linking Montgomery and Prince George’s county and I-270 to Route 1.  As it stood, there were no major east/west arteries and smaller roads and short distances of north/south roads were overly burdened with traffic.  As the area rapidly expanded, the problem continued to grow.  The logical solution was the desperately needed ICC. 
 
Residents however, objected to the plans on many grounds—environmental ones, location, and many others.  Construction would disrupt untouched areas but would also require Montgomery County to claim a lot of property through the use of eminent domain—these seizures were unavoidable.  Understandably the pro-environmental interests and communities to be affected mobilized and launched effective protest campaigns.  They fought so hard that they effectively delayed the project for forty years.  Plans were derailed at the behest of environmentalists in the late-1970s, again in the early-1990s, and by potentially affected county residents over the entire course of the debate. Even when nothing was being done, plans for the ICC were still alive, and to anti-ICCers that was too much.  They attempted to keep the debate simmering in their favor even when it looked like the project was dead. 
 
Maryland Governor Glendenning even declared the ICC “dead” in 2003.  However, the new Republican governor, Ehrlich, (first for Maryland in decades) campaigned on a pro-ICC platform and reignited interest and development.  In 2006, President Bush took particular interest in the project and expedited federal funding.  With the President’s involvement, the fate of the project was sealed.  The ICC officially opened a few months ago.  Imagine if the President had intervened in the planning process of the Lower Manhattan Expressway—could Jane Jacobs’ resistance have stopped the momentum of the project?
 
The history of the ICC shows a government and planners who were willing to work with community members to design a roadway that met needs but didn’t impact the community in a harmful way.  Montgomery County planners took excruciating steps to please community members, including using dogs to sniff out Eastern Maryland Box Turtles and relocate them to safer habits.  Additionally, planners proposed building small tunnels under the roadway so that frogs and other amphibians could safely cross the road.  Exhaustive measures were undertaken to prevent run-off and erosion.  Delaying progress even further was the discovery of a Native American site dating back to the Stone Age.  Those interested in historical preservation insisted that extra steps were taken to protect other historical sites that could be found. 
 
The ICC was not designed and planned as most other roads are—this stretch was painstakingly researched, planned, strategized, and every environmental consequence surveyed and impact theorized.  An observer cannot help but see the contrast in the development of the ICC and the planning of many of Moses’ projects.  He met little resistance and was concerned with the ultimate result of his vision—planners in Maryland took great care to address the needs of civilians.
 
Jane Jacob’s story is a testament to the powers of community activism and a cautionary tale to those who are disaffected and take no interest in the fates of their communities.  I wonder if the Maryland government would have been as patient and receptive to dissenters’ concerns if Jane Jacobs had not shown community activists to be a formidable force.   I wonder if and how protestors learned techniques from Jacobs?  Regardless, Jacobs proved herself to be a formidable force and a hero to those who oppose authority.
 
 
 

Pollan gets metaphorical in chapter six and reflects on roofs.  He traces the evolution of roof design through ages and styles and raises evocative ideas about the universal nature of certain spaces that we create.  Concurrently, he questions the symbolic power of these spaces and wonders how they shape our relationships to spaces. 
 
Pollan writes, “One of the aims of modern architecture was to rid the sprawling many-gabled Victorian house of its many ghosts, all the historical encumbrances and psychological baggage that kept us from stepping out into the cleansing light and fresh air of the new century” (183).  It seems that modern roof design, along with many elements of the style, was a direct rejection of Victorian style, but Pollan expands upon that idea by proposing a subconscious motivation for the rejection of attics and similar spaces like basements.  He writes of them, “For there is where the ghosts of our past reside: the bric-a-brac and mementos that a lifetime collects: the love letters, photographs, and memories that clutter an attic and threaten to bear us back in time” (184).  The implications of this idea are vast—I can see that the desire to start fresh, to reject the dehumanizing events of the prior decades, was so strong that it permeated many aspects of life.  
 
The idea that the attic or the basement holds history for so many is a testament to its impact as a space.  Pollan writes that these spaces possess an “irrational symbolic power” (184) and mean the same thing to homeowners all over.  The significance of the purposes and contents of these spaces speaks to the universal experiences of home life, memories, and interactions with history. 
 
When I read about the mysteries and secrets of an attic I immediately thought of The Picture of Dorian Gray.  It’s the perfect Victorian novel in that it touches on many of themes and taboos that defined an age, but it is also a great example of the secrets that certain spaces can hold.  I remember stories from my childhood about monsters in the basement or aliens in the attic.  I’m reminded of stories of children exploring in their grandmother’s attic and playing dress up or of children rummaging through boxes in basements and discovering photos of unknown relatives or boxes of grandma's old china with odd patterns.  I think back to my own childhood and the mysteries of my attic.  I never ventured into the attic alone because I was afraid of what lurked up there.  My attic was (and still is) a great repository of memories and cherished artifacts from an earlier time.  I could browse through old family photos, revisit childhood toys, and even experiment with my dad’s tools.  These sites are spaces of self-making, of redefinition, and of time standing still.  We must know who we were in order to know who we will become.  This idea is echoed by Pollan when he writes “People cannot dream in a geometric cube…” (184).  Attics (or more specifically, spaces to store memories) are necessary to encapsulate the past and help us look to the future by allowing us to realize fully who we are. 
 
I’m left thinking about the idea of the leaky roof—something to which Pollan repeatedly refers to as a nuisance, whether in modern homes or those of his own construction.  Leaky roofs are inescapable.  Regardless of the style, construction method, or age of the building, leaky roofs are inescapable.  It think it speaks to nature’s ultimate triumph over the man-made.  As Pollan writes, “Rain and gravity: are these really the only facts of nature architecture has to worry about?” (204).  (in my mind, gravity is synonymous with time—which speaks to the idea of a past and a future in the spaces we construct.) 

I was intrigued by Pollan’s consultation of the ancient Chinese system of aesthetics known as feng shui when planning a site for his building.   This system is designed to maximize the experience of chi—cosmic breath—or, in a simpler sense, positive energy.  Like Pollan, my knowledge of this mystical knowledge is limited, and I approach it with skepticism.  However, as Pollan discovers, many of the places that we enjoy the most or that we feel are “good” places conform to the principles of feng shui. 
 
Pollan writes, “Human beings, like other animals, have a genetic predisposition to seek out for their habitats those landscapes that are most conducive to their well-being and survival (49).  There is an observable innate drive to exist somewhere that “feels” right.  There are biological factors that come into play—desire for shelter, need of food and water—that inform site selection; moreover there are abstract, almost spiritual, qualities that draw us to sites that seem unexplainable.  They don’t have to be, though, if explained through feng shui.  I thought feng shui was limited to furniture arrangement, but it is used to structure entire buildings, site plans, and could be used to structure cities.   
 
Pollan writes, “A good site will have a dragon to its east and a tiger to its west, and face south, which the Chinese regard as the most beneficent of the cardinal points.  Stripped of animal metaphors, the practical import of this principle is that people should build among hills, on ground neither too high nor too low, on a site that is open to the south and has higher ground to its north…” (45).  This makes sense: energy is able to flow from the high ground to the north, drift and gather in the hills around your site, and then move out through the opening to the south on its way. 
 
Still, I struggle to reconcile the belief that middle ground among hills is best—I’ve always been taught that the high ground is the most defensible and safest.  I understand how it helps the flow of chi, but when the enemy holds the high ground above your site, he holds a tactical advantage that no amount of hokey energy will overcome.  Then again, maybe those who formulated feng shui didn’t concern themselves with militaristic pursuits? 
 
Nevertheless, the flow of chi (really just a combination of energy, light, wind, etc) is assisted by the principles of feng shui, which lends a special quality to a space.  Pollan recognizes that “…certain spots proclaimed themselves more loudly to me as places already—the landscape seemed to radiate out from them…” (39).  I think this has a lot to do with positive chi of a space, assisted by feng shui, which plays a much larger role in creating “placeness” than we realize. 

Image:
“In Feng Shui, a map called a Baguais used to maximize the chi or energy of a given environment. The map divides a room into nine squares of equal size, with each grid corresponding to a specific "gift" in life, such as health, love, and knowledge. The various schools of thought in Feng Shui all use the bagua in one form or another. The bagua, generally an octagon or square divided into nine areas, which are sometimes referred to as "guas", is superimposed over a floor plan of the building, room or property.”
http://www.crystalinks.com/feng_shui.html

My town was founded in the 1700s by Quakers who desired arable land on which to grow tobacco and corn.  They named their town after the small freshwater spring nearby.  The original meetinghouse, general store, post office, and bank remain and are still operational.   It’s fifteen minutes outside of Washington, DC, but it’s much easier to tell people that I’m from DC.  My hometown isn't like most of the rest of Maryland.
 
My neighborhood (I use that term loosely because I don’t live in a defined development) is composed of three long, winding streets that each connect to one common street, along which sit boarding stables and fenced-in fields for horses.  This common street is the one outlet from my neighborhood to the main road.  Across the main road sits a large private school with many fields, shaker-style buildings, ponds, trails, and playgrounds.  I would often bike or jog around my neighborhood and then continue across the street at the school for a change of scene and terrain.  During the summer I picnic on the dock at the largest pond.  I learned to drive and parallel park at the school.   For some inexplicable reason, I went to a different school about twenty minutes away by car. 
 
Today the spring from which my town gets its namesake lies in the middle of cornfield surrounded by housing developments.  To reach it, one must park his car by the meetinghouse, just off Route 108, and walk about a mile along a fence-lined gravel road.  The spring is cordoned off by a hastily built fence and features a small plaque commemorating the location.  There’s also a grassy field and a thicket of trees under which visitors sit and picnic. 
 
In second grade we hiked to the spring in September.  The corn was ripe and we picked some and snuck it home.  That night my mom microwaved a husk in a brown paper bag and made popcorn.  We both agreed that it was the best popcorn we’d ever eaten. 
 
During high school, I volunteered at a community museum and learned about the town’s history.  I learned that Quaker abolitionists used to house runaway slaves in secret rooms and compartments in their homes.  They developed a code of sorts to communicate that their homes were safe spaces.  Some homeowners would hang a quilt on a clothesline at night or place a single candle in the highest window to signal that their home was a safe haven.  Hungry and shoeless Confederate forces retreating from Gettysburg raided the general store in 1863.  Surprisingly, some prominent Quakers took up arms against the soldiers and exchanged fire around the general store.  I don’t remember the exact outcome of the scuffle.
 
My next-door neighbor and I were best friends almost from birth.  Her home sat on a large hill overlooking the rest of the neighborhood.  From her deck I could see the back of my home and could look through the windows to determine in what room my parents were and what they were doing.  I was able to see if they were still in the kitchen eating dinner, if they were upstairs getting ready for the next day, or downstairs watching television or reading in the living room.  My friend moved to another state when I was 13 and I hadn’t returned to her house since.  This past fall, while the neighbors who moved into her old home were away on vacation, my parents cat sat for them and I volunteered to feed the cat one night.  I was able to return to the deck and look across the long yard into my home.  I saw that my dad was watching television in the living room.  This event was very meaningful for me.
 
Quakers named their houses.  Some names include: Tanglewood, Brooke Manor, Woodlawn, Elmhurst, Cherry Grove, Della Brooke, and Norwood.  The majority of these large estates are still standing.  These homes had integrity and were built to house generations.  They boast extensive porches, manicured grounds, and stately trees.  Most of these homes are now sites of historical preservation and can be visited on historic house tours.    
 
As I child I had trouble distinguishing people and places.  I believed that the tall, thin short-haired blonde woman who lived at the end of the street in the formidable house behind a wrought iron and masonry fence was Princess Diana.   I thought my mom’s jogging companion was Madonna because they were both fond of kimonos and had dark hair at the time.  I thought the large Mormon Temple that towers over the Beltway was Disney World.  I believed that the expansive garden behind my neighbor’s house was the actual Secret Garden.  The world seemed a lot smaller and much less bewildering back then. 
 
My neighborhood is surrounded by stables and horse farms.  Two large boarding stables sit within the confines of the neighborhood.  When I was younger I’d stand on the fence and feed the horses veggies and sugar cubes.   I was convinced that they would bite my fingers off.  Even though I frequently visited the horses, I winced in fear every time one ate from my hand.  
 
My backyard ends abruptly at a deep creek and is adjacent to a large wooded area.  Behind the woods (a distance of about a half-mile) sits the public middle school and high school.  Sometimes cheering and music from the marching band can be heard from over the woods when the high school holds football games.  Hearing these sounds through the woods tells me that winter is near. 
 
My mom and I used to ride bikes around the neighborhood and at the campus across the large road.  We’d bike as soon as it was warm and we’d do so until it became too cold.  As I got older we ventured off-road to the trails surrounding my neighborhood.  One year, it was warm enough to bike on Christmas.  That year was extra-memorable.  

Extrapolating Tuan’s, Jackson’s, and Kunstler’s ideas into a reasoned critique of NYU’s Bobst Library is a challenging endeavor.  It’s easy to dismiss this space as cold or garish, and it’s even easier to avoid it completely.  Bobst is a study in contrasts—it’s a compromise between aesthetically pleasing and demoralizingly post-modern, public and private, and functional and wasteful.
 
Bobst’s imposing 1960s red edifice towers over Washington Square Park and looks like Big Brother’s headquarters.  Its design eschews the trend of civic-focused architecture and instead valorizes a cold, utilitarian aesthetic. Upon my approach I feel small under the might of knowledge (and university bureaucracy) contained therein.  Once inside, I look up to floor after floor of catwalks of harsh metal railings and Plexiglas screens.  These screens are visual reminders of the sometimes-hard realities of city living and college life.  In order to progress further, into the actual atrium lobby, I must pass through identification controlled turnstiles.  This immediately establishes a divide between those who are privileged to enter and those who are not.  It’s not a truly public space, but for members of the NYU community, it is.  Once inside the lobby, I enter one of the few public, open spaces at NYU.  It’s a communal space, but oddly, it’s not used as one.  Rarely do people remain seated on the benches for an extended time, rarely do they eat on the benches, and no one ever sits cross-legged on the floor in groups; this space is for temporary uses—specifically to pass through while headed somewhere else.  That reality is unfortunate because NYU lacks those types of communal meeting spaces.
 
Bobst suffers from another lost use because it’s home to individual, unsocial activities.  Researching, studying, and reading aren’t usually group activities, and most students who enter plan to work alone.  For this reason, it’s frowned upon to talk on most floors and any spaces other than desks and carrels are transitory spaces and not occupied.  The library would make an ideal civic space for the NYU community, but oddly, it isn’t used for this purpose at all.  NYU President Sexton’s office is located on the top floor of the library, many students and faculty pass through this space daily, and the large lobby is able to accommodate many people, both of which make it ideal for these civic functions. 
 
Moreover, there exists a sort-of trophy room/hall of presidents to the right of the lobby that attempts to pay homage to NYU’s history; it fails in its intended purpose because there’s an utter lack of identity afforded to that space. It’s a dark, dusty, moldy catchall for seemingly unwanted portraits and busts.  It exists as an afterthought to the lobby and fails to tell a story, like a similar exhibit in a real museum would.
 
When all these features are assessed together, the lobby (and by extension, Bobst) seems like an unfortunate misuse of space.  Civic activities find a home in Kimmel, removed from the administration and wanting space.   The activities are relegated to private rooms on upper floors or to the small landing at the top of the stairs in the lobby, both of which are unsuitable spaces for community activities.  Bobst could function similarly to a campus quad, but I assume that the quiet nature of a library renders it useless for this function.  While intense scholarly output occurs in Bobst, it is a one-dimensional kind of productivity, solely benefiting the individual.  Little is done to strengthen community and provide for an open forum in Bobst, an ideal space for such activities. 
 
Other elements of Bobst follow this theme and are painfully wasteful.  Consider the massive atrium that, while aesthetically pleasing, is empty space, devoid of any use.  The same may be said for many study carrels and tables without outlets that are a necessity with today’s prevalent use of laptops.  Additionally, the north side study rooms, which contain the highest concentration of workspaces, are double storied.  Space is wasted, and I object to the amount of energy spent on cooling, heating, and lighting these negative spaces.  However, those gigantic windows do afford the lobby and surrounding spaces with natural light, views, and a positive quality.   It is in these windows, for example, that I wrestle with contrasts of the library—the windows are both functional and wasteful. 
 
Here, the paradox of Bobst begins to emerge.  Some aspects of the library are agreeable, while others are troublesome.  Consider the color scheme, for example.  The color scheme throughout is black, white, grey, and malnourished shades of beige.  Only on floors four and five does the palette expand to include honey-toned wood laminates and softer blue grays.  Those floors boast more than an improved color scheme.  They were renovated recently and feature comfortable chairs, improved lighting, acoustic dampening materials, multi-functional workspaces, and overall improved aesthetics.  These floors contrast with the other unappealing, outdated floors throughout and further add to the contradictions of Bobst.
 
As the windows and floors four and five illustrate, it would be disingenuous to say that Bobst is a post-modern wasteland—there are pleasing elements that complicate my condemnation.  While I find fault with its misused space and ugly, outdated aesthetic, I look to other elements that help nurture its favorable sense of place. 
 
The floors all open to the atrium through floor-to-ceiling glass walls and catwalks, and there are plenty of windows along the building’ sides.  A visitor surely appreciates the study rooms on the north side, with floor to ceiling windows and views overlooking the park.  While writing this at my 9th floor desk on the west side, I can see across the atrium and through the windows on the north side.  These windows help to create a connection between people throughout the library.  Even at 1 AM, a student studying on a deserted floor need only glance across the atrium to see someone working at a study carrel on another floor or someone walking in the lobby and not feel alone.
 
The shared tables also lend a sense of community and foster working relationships with friends and unknowns. Bobst binds together a community of scholars with its public and communal spaces, but it also provides areas for solitary work.  With private carrels and study rooms, the library functions as a multi-use space for different pursuits. 
 
While studying for midterms during this past week, I worked with friends on the fifth floor in the group study area.  We were free to talk and eat, socialize with those around us, and this experience provided to me much of what NYU lacks—community and relationships with my peers.  While studying in Bobst during midterms, I felt more like an NYU student than I ever had before.  It’s easy to feel placeless at NYU.  It’s easy to disregard time spent on campus and think nothing of passing through anonymous spaces with anonymous people, never once considering the realities of the place currently inhabited. It’s conceivable to attend an entire day of classes and walk through Silver Building or the Gallatin Building and not talk to anyone.  It’s easy to return home at night absent the feeling that time was spent in a place of consequence, with a character and intent.  When I work at Bobst, however, I don’t feel that way.  Bobst reminds me that I’m in college—not simply living real life—and specifically, that I’m at NYU.    
 
I believe that Bobst highlights the distinction between space and place that Tuan explores.  While the physical space is far from perfect, and actually lamentable by Kunstler’s standards, it’s not solely the space that makes us feel—it’s a combination of the space and what happens in that space, as Jackson writes.  Tuan asserts that places are centers of felt value, and to this I can attest.  My time at Bobst and experiences working with my friends imbued this cold space with a sense of place and affords me with my own personal sense of place and belonging at NYU. 
 
Bobst isn’t a failed space as I once thought.  It’s a puzzling interaction of aesthetics, of uses, and of functionalities.  It gains a firm sense of place from the people and activities therein.  Though that sense of place may not be cultivated in the most effective manner, it is undeniable to me and I believe that it is the most powerful indicator of place and rootedness at NYU.  

Kunstler holds significant vitriol for Disney World, and as I read his scathing critique of the park, years of cherished childhood memories seemed to evaporate.  When I first read his criticism I was incredulous and wanted to interrupt him and tell him all about the great times I had; I wanted to shake him and tell him to suspend disbelief for the length of the trip, to remind him that it’s a kid-orientated destination, and to encourage him to ditch the grouchy cynic act and just appreciate the good-natured fun that the park offered. But then I browsed the Disney World website to refresh my memory and looked at old mortifying family photos, and Kunstler’s criticism began to resonate with me and I began to understand his reasoning.
 
Kunstler offers this scathing critique of the park: “Disney World is where they (families) escape to worship the nation in the abstract, a cartoon capital of a cartoon republic enshrining the falsehoods, half-truths, and delusions that prop up the squishy thing the national character has become—for instance, that we are a nation of families; that we care about our fellow citizens; that history matters, that there is a place called home” (217).  But Disney World’s aim couldn’t be more divergent from the image it advances. Disney World is a Disney Co. shopping mall with the manufactured façade of a family friendly place.  For Disney, it’s all about the bottom line and to do this it puts a new spin something to milk it for more money.  A real commitment to building something that has integrity as a place is eschewed for the almighty dollar.  That’s why each hotel is themed, why most rides are repackaged variations of themselves, and why all the merchandise is basically the same crap with a different look or different sound—it’s the assembly line concept of variation.  It creates the illusion of offering something new, when in fact you’re essentially getting the same thing every time.  I see this as symbolic of suburbia, in that each subdivision and strip mall is essentially the same thing, devoid of its own integrity, made from the same template.  
 
Disney also creates a sense of displacement and confusion with their varied mini-worlds—one minute you’re in a magical kingdom, and the next you’re on an African safari, and after a short monorail ride, you find yourself at a Polynesian-themed hotel feasting on a suckling pig cooked over a fire by a few guys dressed in grass skirts.  It’s as if place and boundary don’t exist, and I wonder what Kunstler would say about the confusion that results. To me it embodies that gluttonous American aesthetic to have it all regardless of the consequences and cultural impact.
 
When I was younger I was a huge nerd and for that reason I loved EPCOT.  However, Kunstler describes it as little more than a half-assed world’s fair, which now makes sense to me.  EPCOT debases the sense of place unique to each county by condensing the rich cultural fabric of each country and distilling it into a stereotyped pavilion.  In a similar sense, the Animal Kingdom theme park does something similar to Africa—it casts a vast continent as a wild, untamed place.  Kunstler says that Main Street works the same way by presenting an outdated concept of a false reality that’s designed to resonate with the collective conscious.
 
I cringe when I think about what my parents endured in order to ensure that I had a good time…the hours spent broiling in the Florida sun in hour-long lines, the endless trips to all the different hotel’s pools, when in fact they’re all essentially the same concrete tub full of chemical water, the pleas to return because I didn’t get Donald Duck’s autograph the last time I was there.  It makes sense to me now why my mom demanded that every trip to Disney World be quickly followed with a vacation somewhere abroad, free of rides and lines and screaming children. 
 
I believe that Disney World requires a suspension of disbelief (but is this how a place should be experienced??), and this experience is in line with the same suspension of disbelief that accompanies watching a Disney movie.  Suspend those emotions boiling inside, reject the dehumanizing forces at work, and you’ll have a great time.  Think too deeply about Disney World and you’ll begin to question your cherished childhood memories.  

In chapter eight, Kunstler writes that the shopping mall grew out of the need for a public space, which had been missing from American life because of the omnipresence of the automobile.  When the automobile wrought social changes that drew families out of cities, the resulting dispersion and separation changed American habits.  People no longer encountered public spaces on their drives to/from the grocery store, for example—public space at that time existed only as roads.  Americans living in the suburbs needed public spaces that they once found in town squares, museums, and on Main Street.  For this need, they turned to centralized shopping destinations that were built in isolation, accessible only by roads.

The advent of shopping malls commercialized public space and segregated this space.  No longer could anyone walk down Main Street or enter a church—those who had no means of transport could not travel to malls and these who could not buy anything had no place in malls. Malls also marginalized independent store owners.  Mall stores are typically chain outposts with proven economic viability because the cost of rent is too high for independent, unproven stores.  In these ways, malls created and/or reaffirmed economic segregation.

Kuntsler worries about the effect of malls on the public debate, which needs a public space to exist.  Malls, which are owned by corporations, aren’t public places in a true sense—those who enter and lease there are technically guests of the mall owners. The Supreme Court has reaffirmed this view in such seminal cases as Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, which held that mall/shopping center owners are able to control and limit all the activities that take place there.  Needless to say, malls are not public spaces free from regulation. I wonder though, where will Americans turn now for public spaces—is the internet becoming the main public space and redefining our ideas about space?

Kunstler muses on the future of the shopping mall. Considering he wrote this in 1993, his predictions have become surprisingly accurate.  He writes that malls were not built to last, and that the tide of changing economic fortunes and rising gas prices could spell the end of the shopping mall.  Seems that he was correct; here’s a link to an article about the decline of the American shopping mall: http://gawker.com/#!5581346/the-neverending-death-of-the-american-mall

(The picture above is of the Mission Valley Shopping Center in San Diego.  I chose it because it represents that which Kunstler laments about the shopping mall: the ugly, imposing facade; its isolation; and its dependence on roads/cars. This aerial view really underscores the the placelessness of the american shopping mall.)

Jackson raises some interesting points about the way in which war dictates a sense of a place in his essay Landscape as Seen by the Military.   He recounts his time during WWII performing reconnaissance about the terrain and the insights he gained into the construction of the idea of landscape; through this, he realizes that what he once thought of as a space ignored, save for its use as a backdrop for fighting, did in fact have a sense of place and distinct character all its own.
 
Jackson remembers his training and experiences in the field, and it seems as if he laments the indifference with which his superiors and peers feel for the land on which they traveled, fought, and destroyed during war.  He couldn’t understand their indifference because the ground was so influential in the lives and ultimate success of his fellow soldiers. 
 
He says that most of the questions relating to terrain and landscape were a result of logistical and practical questions when he writes, “The Landscape came into being as a result of those innumerable tactical questions” (135).  Jackson realizes that this space is not defined by anything other than the requisite information to advance and beat the enemy.  He writes, “What men did (emphasis added) was what mattered, not what they thought or felt (emphasis added); what the countryside provided in the way of food and shelter was what interested him, not its beauty or its barrenness” (136).  From his elaboration, we come to understand that the landscape during wartime becomes a space defined by topographical realities, human movements and positions, and distances to targets, among other concerns.
 
Though it seems that Jackson believes space is defined by purely practical concerns, as one could call them, that is not the case.  He does recognize that there exist traits and a style that makes a space distinct and that affords it a sense of place.  Though it didn’t derive its sense of place from aesthetic features or from the sublime feelings it elicited, the landscape gained a distinct character and feel from the actions that happened on it.  Jackson realizes that landscape and space can be seen through different lenses—one doesn’t always approach it as if he’s surveying a site for an estate or critiquing a formal garden.  Sense of place may be found in unconventional ways.
 
 
(And yes, the image doesn’t show a scene from WWII, but I thought it was the best example of a picture on google that works to show the way in which troops see landscape and space, as opposed to the way I would look at it today.) 

I am drawn to Tuan’s ideas about the effects of time on place as discussed in chapter 12.  In this section I am interested in the suggestion that place transforms time, and vice versa, I am intrigued by the possibility of the past as a place in itself, and I am interested in the implications of his suggestions that time and experience affect place. 
 
Place works in interesting ways to transmute the past.  Here he uses the example of museums.  Tuan says that they present a static picture of a place in the past.  He writes, “The museum reflects a habit of mind opposed to one that perceives place to be rooted, sacred, and inviolable” (194).  The actual place of the museum further imbues the objects inside with further resonance and meaning because of the cultural significance that museums as places carry.  Moreover, the implications of time it forces the visitor to grapple with shape the “experience of experiencing” the past.  In this sense, a collective, cultural past is shaped by the place and in which it resides. 
 
Tuan suggests that the past is a place.  He writes, “Our own past consists of bits and pieces”  (187) and elaborates, “Objects anchor time.  They need not, of course, be personal possessions.  We can try to reconstruct our past with brief visits to our old neighborhood and the birthplaces of our parents” (187).  Tuan says that our memories of an older time can be found in these objects and locations—the past does in fact reside in a place.  The past is itself a place that we can visit.  It isn’t a physical space, but it’s a place full of memories, histories, people and objects that operate to create a place that contains a part of us.
 
Time affects a sense of place (186).  Feelings of rootedness strengthen as time passes, and identities are shaped by place and past.  Tuan presents an interesting complication when he writes, “Many years in one place may leave few memory traces that we can or would wish to recall; an intense experience, on the other hand, can alter our lives” (185).  It seems that time strengthens bonds to place, but experience (short and intense) may distort those feelings.  It is as if rootedness and a sense of place are dependent upon the whims of experience and emotion. 
 

When Tuan wrote about mythical space in chapter 7 I found myself listing my own examples; the most powerful one I could think of was of Orientalism—the style of thought that informed the West’s construction and imagination of the “East,” which lasted from roughly the 18th to 20th centuries.  According to Edward Said, who wrote Orientalism, it is a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient (Said 3).  It was (and to an extent, still is) the West’s way of making sense of the place to the east.  The way in which a place can be so intricately constructed and imagined by large groups of people, as Tuan describes, is intriguing, and this example in particular underlies Tuan's arguments for mythical places.
 
Said writes that the Orient was almost entirely a European invention.  It was a place of “romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” ( Said 1).  This way of thinking embedded itself in the Western cultural consciousness and inspired political action, artistic/literary output, and was instrumental in self-making and constructing a national identity.  What grew out of the British and French colonial enterprise molded entire nations’ conceptions and imaginations about faraway places—India, China, Mesopotamia, etc. 
 
Orientalising functioned as “a way of coming to terms with the Orient based on the Orient’s special place in European western experience” (Said 1).  Space and place were tremendously important in informing Western ideas about these far-off lands.  The East was slowly revealed to Westerners through accounts from traders and paintings by travelers.  Spices and luxury goods helped to construct a sensual picture of the Oriental space.  It’s remarkable that an entire people could be so informed (mis?-informed) about a place in spite of never actually setting foot there.    
 
I believe that Orientalism works on both mythical levels offered by Tuan.  It both “frames a pragmatic space by creating a fuzzy area of defective knowledge” and is the “spatial component of a world view” and “a conception of localized values (Tuan 86).  As Tuan suggested, the mythical space “attempts to answer the question of man’s place in nature” which is exactly what Orientalising affords those who subscribed to and promulgated those ideas (Tuan 88).  Orientalising explained the location, values, lives, activities, and realities of a world across a continent, out of reach for most.  And it also was a reflection of the imaginers’ values and attitudes.  It’s incredible that people unknowingly transformed a physical place into an idea, and in-turn, allowed that idea to redefine that physical space into a magical and romantic place.
 
*Quotes taken from both the Tuan assigned reading and Edward Said’s Orientalism. 

Everyone always says that a kitchen is the heart of a home and that maxim rings true in my home.  I love going home during breaks and cooking with my parents, hanging out with friends, eating family dinners in the kitchen.  It’s a good place for two reasons—for its intrinsic qualities (the layout, the aesthetic qualities, etc.) and because of the memories it holds.
 
It’s what you’d expect of a kitchen in a suburban home: stone floors, dark wood cabinets, blue/grey granite countertops, a center island, a pantry, and a breakfast nook with many windows and doors that open on to a deck.  There are thoughtful details that make cooking in the kitchen even more enjoyable.  The floor is heated so that the stone tiles aren’t cold to bare feet, the island is fitted with a butcher block slab for cutting and a marble slab for kneading/rolling dough, the counters are lit from lights installed underneath the upper cabinets, and there’s plenty of counter space for spreading out and making a mess.  Both my parents and I can cook together in the kitchen, work on our own dishes, and not bump into each other or want for space.  In these ways, the kitchen is designed well and it’s functional.
 
It’s in this setting that I feel most at home and most comfortable.  It’s the place where I have the most fun.  I remember all the time I spent in the kitchen growing up—studying at the kitchen table, making craft projects with my mom, cooking with my dad, and so many other activities. The kitchen exemplifies family and cherished memories--incidentally, the doorframe between the kitchen and pantry doubled as a height chart throughout my childhood.
 
My kitchen is a good place because it’s comfortable, aesthetically pleasing, and designed well, but mostly because it’s full of great memories and because I always have a great time when I'm there cooking or eating.