Citadin's blog

One thing I have always wondered about New York City, and recently come to think about in more detail while being in this class, is media play into the identity of the city and how it influences its residents as opposed tot the residents influencing the media.
 
Even as someone who was born a raised in New York, I have always had a mixed view of the city, mainly composed of my own personal experiences and the widely accepted and perpetuated cultural representations of the city. I often found that these two elements specifically played off of each other and influenced each other. The stories and the plot lines from television shows and movies came from the experiences and observations of the writers, directors and producers of the films as they lived their lives and registered observations about everyday life in New York and the things that came to define that. The shows and films were widely watched and discussed (though obviously not exclusively) by New Yorkers who incorporated the experiences of watching the media themselves into their collection of experiences.
 
Shows like Friends, Seinfeld, Sex and the City, Will & Grace, Law & Order, to name a few, all took place in New York (though most were obviously never filmed here) and centered around certain quintessentially “New York” issues. When looking to movies, the list is too long to even select any specific one to discuss. I will say though that Woody Allen movies were at one time considered to be quintessentially “New York” films and I remember my parents (and myself later on in life) referencing them as oracles of the New York condition.
 
One of the things that really drew many New Yorkers to these media was the fact that most of the experiences and opinions that played out in these shows and movies were very indicative of real, every-day New York life. It was fun for New Yorkers to see the “isms” that they observed exposed and made fun of or addressed and idolized in a public manner. For non-New Yorkers, these media were ways to relate to New Yorkers and understand about their lifestyles. Either way, the media were considered to me relatively representative of certain New York lifestyles.
 
It almost becomes a chicken and egg question: what came first the identity of the experience? Did having it happen to a particular writer make it part of the identity of NYC life, or did writing about it and having it play out in a film make it known and therefore induce others to make it happen in real life and therefore part of the New York identity?
 
I see it as life imitating art, imitating life. We experience things every day, but it is only when those experiences become widely recognized and associated with the circumstances that they become part of the identity. The media representation of New York and the New Yorker perspective will always be intermingled and interdependent because not only has media become the vehicle for so many forms of communication and come to define our understanding of the world, but it also has the greatest ability to entertain and inform when it is focused on relevant truths.
For New York especially, to establish a comprehensive identity of the city with respect to the media and the people who live it and breath it every day,  both elements will have to continually look to and borrow from each to maintain and progress New York’s Identity.

One thing I have always loved about New York City is that even though there are many “well-known” neighborhoods, there are also many small enclaves the remain tucked within the larger neighborhoods that often exist independently and relatively unknown to the rest of the bustling city. While rare above 14th street, this phenomenon does still exist. My favorite example is Sutton Place.
 
I was first introduced to Sutton Place when I was 13 years old. My father’s best friend, who later became a second mother to me, has a Sutton Place apartment in a classic Candela building that seems to encompass everything wonderful about this small neighborhood in one much smaller place. As I began to visit her more and more frequently, I was introduced to all the various elements and ways to experience this exclusive enclave.


 
Sutton Place itself encompasses a small area of luxury apartment buildings and townhouses from just east of First Avenue over to the East River, between 53rd and 59th Street. None of the East-to-West streets go through the neighborhood, due to the River boundary, and Sutton Place itself is not a true North-to-South avenue as there is a building, 450 East 53rd Street, which forces Sutton Place South traffic to turn West onto East 53rd street, forming an “L” and forcing traffic immediately out of the neighborhood. The “proper” area includes Sutton Place (the avenue from 59th Street, south of the Queensboro Bridge, to 57th Street), Sutton Place South (the same avenue as you pass south of 57th street down to 53rd street), Sutton Square (a cul-de-sac of private townhouses that open onto a tiny public park space), and Riverview Terrace (a gated side street off of which several other private townhouses lie, including one owned by the former owner of New York Magazine). At the north end, 59th street serves as the peek of a steep hill that runs almost directly under the Queensboro Bridge so it almost shields the small area from view on York Avenue.
 
As no cars or pedestrians would ever need to pass through Sutton Place, very little traffic ever really enters the neighborhood unless it is intending to stay. Furthermore, Sutton Place itself is entirely residential, precluding any sense of commercial interest or attraction. Because of its almost “dead-end” location, the area is afforded a sense of anonymity within the city, protected from the congestion and noise so prevalent in the rest of the city and hidden from the general public. The cars and pedestrians of First Avenue to the West and York Avenue to the North neglect the area for its sense of unimportance to the rest of the city. Unless you live there or are visiting someone who does, there is really no reason to go there. This is why, until I became close with one resident, I had never been there or even heard of it.

                          
Sutton Place was originally part of a series of disconnected strips of Avenue A until Effingham B. Sutton decided to construct a series of brownstone buildings in the small strip between 57th and 58th street in 1875. Once the City Board of Aldermen approved the petition to change the name from "Avenue A" to "Sutton Place", covering the blocks between 57th and 60th Streets it became its own segregated neighborhood. In the 1920’s, the neighborhood began to gain prominence when certain wealthy New Yorkers moved into the neighborhood. Wealthy socialites, such Anne Harriman Vanderbilt and Anne Morgan, built townhouses on the eastern side of the street, overlooking the East River and called the neighborhood home. Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, C. Z. Guest, Peter Lawford & Partricia Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis, Freddy Mercury, Michael Jackson, Bill Blass, Bobby Short, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe & Arthur Miller, and other prominent figures moved into the enclave over the next century and today’s residents include The Heinz Family, I.M. Pei, Mario Cuomo, Kenneth Cole, Sigourney Weaver, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The storied past of fabled residents is essential to the sense of place created here. One of the most significant elements that make Sutton Place such a special place is the architecture that has been left there over the years. One of the most important New York architects, and my personal favorite, Rosario Candela designed and built five impressive residential buildings on Sutton Place and Sutton Place South, that each speak to both the quintessential city splendor afforded by thoughtfully and emotionally designed buildings and the appreciation of residents who turn them into spectacular abodes. 1 Sutton Place South, 4 Sutton Place South, 14 Sutton Place South, 25 Sutton Place, and 30 Sutton Place are all uniquely Candela and uniquely Sutton Place at the same time. The Buildings are tall enough to create a sense of boundary that excludes the rest of the city yet at the same time short enough to give a pedestrian on the street a sense of being in a small, quaint neighborhood.
 
Personally, I love the feeling of being secluded. My favorite places, not only in New York but also in the world, are places that have a sense of cozy, segregated isolation; the feeling of being alone in a place surrounded by emptiness. I know this sounds strange and almost morbid, but in a city where there is always so much going on and so many people around, those places where one can feel calm, seclusion and peace with one’s thoughts are places that should be cherished. Perhaps growing up in New York I developed this sense of natural desire for places of isolation due to the frequent inability find any. My favorite representation of this can be seen in Woody Allen’s Manhattan, where he and Diane Keaton walk to the still extant public space on the edge of Sutton Place and sit on a bench, looking over the East River and out at the Queensboro Bridge. While I had always somehow known of that black-and-white image, it wasn’t until four or five years after having spent many days and nights in Sutton Place that I actually saw this scene in the film and confirmed that it was a perfect way to show the sense of comfort and importance I had come to feel for the enclave.


 
Waldie talks about the sense of planning that went into the design and development of Lakewood and the positive and negative responses this evokes in him. Like Lakewood, Sutton Place was in a sense designed. It was not laid out over sprawling acres of perfectly plotted streets and zones, yet it went through a similar, if not drastically smaller process.  The Plots were Effingham Sutton started to build his brownstones was only the beginning. After the series of townhouses were constructed on the Eastern part of the avenue, planning took on more purpose, and then when Candela got to work, the purpose and function of the tiny enclave began to solidify. Most importantly and similarly to Waldie’s Lakewood, there is a sense of storied past. Talking to a resident of the street, you get the sense of being part of a legacy that reaches back over a century. Even though my particular friend has only lived on Sutton Place for around twenty years, the knowledge of the heritage and the connection to the people seems to indicate a much longer history. You get the sense that even though you are hearing about famous film stars, American aristocrats, and corporate heiresses, that you are also hearing about everyday, quirky people and that even though one would expect tales of their lives to be hush-hush and generally unknown to public, that most people who live in the neighborhood are “in the know”. Like Lakewood, even though the world of the wealthy and elite has opened up in the city and there are increasingly more and more places for them to gather and lay down roots, most of the people who are from this tiny area, choose to stay. The sense of interlocking heritages and shared qualities of living are prevalent in the area and speak to the “subdivisional” quality that Sutton Place encompasses.
 
Thinking about the architecture in Sutton Place makes me wonder if those landowners of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in the area we now know as Sutton Place encountered similar internal dilemmas regarding the importance of architects in building structures to those of Pollin in building his writer’s hut, if the buildings we see today would even exist, if Candela would even have had a chance to contribute to the landscape, and if the sense of place that we know now could ever have been achieved.



Pollin and Charlie’s relationship as any owner and an architect was riddled with periods of both blind trust and blatant disagreement and it begs the question of the importance of architects in the creation of place. If you look at One Sutton Place South, perhaps the most famous piece of architecture on Sutton Place and one of Rosario Candela’s most well known designs, the importance of architecture cannot be questioned. Commissioned by Henry Phipps in 1925 and completed in 1926, the building was initially a family residence for Henry Phipps and his four children, whose families grew with their newfound mates within the building at One Sutton Place South. Candela created several multi-level homes within the building, each encompassing East and West views and often intertwining. For example the top floor of one apartment would be at the same level of the bottom floor for another apartment, and vice versa. The penthouse originally occupied by Amy Phipps and her husband Frederick Guest, was unusually designed and featured rap-around terraces, parlors, libraries, maids’ quarters, service elevators, passenger elevators, service vestibules, pantries, wash closets, utility halls and every molding, window-pane, brass fixture and iron balustrade needed to outfit a true luxury apartment. Phipps had a vision of what he wanted in a building, but only through the genius of an architect who lives, breathes, and most importantly dreams in fanciful and superfluous details and designs can create it. As Pollin often criticized Charlie for, many details are inconsequential and sometimes confusingly unnecessary, yet to create a true masterpiece of place, perfectly suited and complementary to specific location, an architect is absolutely needed.


 
Sorkin talks a lot about wasted public space in his novel and when reflecting upon it I feel he would probably not care too much for certain elements of Sutton Place. On the eastern side of One Sutton Place South, there sits a plot of green park that has recently become contested as public space, even though it has long been privately obliged to the residents of the fabled building. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation has since 1939 apparently leased the park space (that is constructed over the FDR Drive) to the building after taking possession of the land it sits on top of for public roads, and the validity of the current lease has come into question. Apparently the lease has been expired since 1990 and was never renewed properly. While the tiny plot of land just to north of the building, at the end of 57th street, is technically a public area, the park has been private and its sense of exclusivity has become a serious threat to the sense of place felt by residents. Sorkin maligns the privacy of much of New York’s green spaces and champions the idea of increasing the amount of space available for public use. Where I see the value in this argument, when looking at Sutton Place, it is important to understand the impacts that many private public spaces (I know it seems like an oxymoron) have on the smaller communities that often exist around them. No different that Gramercy Park, this space serves as a meeting and socializing place for members of a small community. Opening it up to the public would make it a much more widely used space and have a chain reaction on the sense of place for the entire area.


 
As discussed before, Sutton Place enjoys much of its identity as a result of the fact that there is no important or sensible reason for anyone to travel to the area unless they are visiting someone who lives there or live there themselves. Creating a massive (in comparison to many public parks in New York) public space that overlooks a body of water, is mostly green, and is set amongst well-manicured curbs and beautiful architecture, will only invite hoards of people to the place. With increased traffic and a change in the utility of the space, the whole sense of placidity and exclusiveness will change in the place and the preserved sense of historical provenance will slowly dissipate. What Sorkin often does, and what Sutton Place reveals, is that even though he looks to the preservation of local areas he is often putting the betterment of the city as whole ahead of the benefit to the individual, smaller community within the bigger community. It is not worth forsaking Sutton Place to better Manhattan or event the Upper East Side as a larger community.
 
In reflecting on Flint’s writings, I cannot help but wonder what would have happened to Sutton Place if Robert Moses had achieved something similar to what he attempted to do with Washington Square Park and the subsequent impact on the neighborhood. What sticks out for me most is Moses’ idea to run Fifth Avenue through the park, creating an uninterrupted pathway from North to South through the center of the public space. The effects that Jacobs and others feared (and ultimately hindered the fruition of the plans), would be very similar to Sutton Place. As explained earlier, Sutton Place itself is the six-block stretch south of York Avenue at 59th Street to 53rd Street. The road itself ends at 53rd street and thus precludes any through traffic or sense of utility. Even the FDR ramp at 53rd Street, lets cars off the drive and immediately thrusts them onto 53rd Street and immediately out of Sutton Place. 440 E 53rd Street blocks all traffic that could conceivably travel south, parallel to the FDR, to 49th street near the Beckman Tower. Giving it a sense of enclosure, it gives it a sense of community. What Moses wanted to do with many of his projects, but especially as related to Washington Square Park, was to subdue the area change the sense of unique identity in favor for a sense of greater purpose to the overall city and its overarching goals. While the buildings themselves were in a sense “planned”, the natural structure of the road and the “dead-end” nature was not planned. It was discovered and nurtured, but not terribly altered. Much like Washington Square Park as told by Flint, if it were to be conformed and molded to a specific plan and vision, it would completely change the essence of the neighborhood and its impact on the residents.
 
Overall Sutton Place is a tiny, somewhat unknown enclave steeped in heritage and still relatively hidden from the gentrification and sense of chaos that seems to have engulfed most of the rest of Manhattan. Due largely to its strictly residential zoning and the fact that it is a dead-end neighborhood, Sutton Place has been able to remain relatively the same as it was not only founded but also intended. Its sense of place comes from a mixture of the people who have and who currently live there, the architecture that paints the picture of the neighborhood and houses and facilitates the lifestyles of the residents, the unique physical positioning within the greater city, and the feelings of calm, exclusive isolation that rarely present themselves in a place so fraught with activity and people who “never sleep”.

Much of Michael Sorkin’s stories, descriptions and opinions talk about a Manhattan that plays on the sense of neighborhood and emotional attachment of its inhabitants. His own walk from the Village to TriBeCa is marred with feelings of belonging and great care for the various places he passes day in and day out over a long period of time. He speaks to a city of people invested in various elements and places whose “sense of citizenship and belonging” guides their existence. For me I have always taken a different approach and frankly taken solace in knowing that many others are the same way.
 
Don’t jump down my throat, I don’t mean to imply that people should disrespect the city and run around acting rude and cavalier towards one another and comport themselves with complete disregard for the city itself, but I have always enjoy the sense of anonymity and displacement one can feel in the city. I have always loved being on those derelict parts that seem to have fallen into complete oblivion, as if no person dared even run quickly down the sidewalk, if not merely to get to the other side.
 
Sorkin talks about his walk to TriBeCa and passing by many streets and places that I associate and interact with very differently. Sorkin touches upon a sense of reciprocity that he finds in the city and in the people. When he talks about the stoop and his friend Jane who seems to know the most inconsequential details about her neighborhood and interact with people who might otherwise pas her by, it makes me so uncomfortable. Personally I like the idea of floating through the city like a ghost. It’s probably to morbid “New Yorkerness” inside me, but I prefer the parts of the city that are left sort of forgotten about and not in pristine, maintained condition.


 
Sorkin’s talk about rooftop gardens reminded me of the High Line Park in the Meatpacking District. Personally, while I see the benefits of having more rooftop spaces (I enjoyed the one I had in TriBeCa as a child) I fear they would become more like the highline, and less like rooftop gardens I grew up with in Sorkin’s world. The Highline has a very “put-together” feeling to it, the wood boards are still perfectly aligned, the greenery maintained, and the features someone tourist-like (the telescopes for example). The rooftop gardens I always enjoyed were places of exclusive retreat. Not in the sense that no one could go to these places, but in the fact that they were not “designed” so much as fell into place. There was no purpose for society, just purpose for whatever activity was going to take place there, at the moment. It’s the same with the meatpacking district and what it is becoming: its places are all becoming design to be utilized in a specific way, with a specific design in mind. In this sense Sorkin and I share similar ideals, his distaste of gentrification on Hudson Street for example.
 
Personally, I like to make the city my own, do what I want to do in a space and not feel the pressure of the design of it imposing its expectations upon me, but most importantly, I like the feeling of being hidden amongst chaos. This is the distinction for me from Sorkin’s view, where he would rather be part of a homely town-like city. Sorkin would rather engage with chaos and think of ways to create a city more interactive than blend in and be isolated from it. I see value in the neighborhood aspect of areas within the city, and do have fond memories of certain “small-town” elements growing up in TriBeCa, but I’m of the mind that would rather appreciate it from a distance – it’s nice that those neighborhood interactions exist, but I’d rather not be a part of them. I suppose Sorkin is right in the sense that they need to exist as part Manhattan, I just don’t share the same proclivity for participation as he does.

In his discussion of Washington Square Park’ and Jane Jacob’s ascension to political activism, Flint reveals many elements of the park that speak to the power of place and how it can impact the residents and society as a whole. Many people see NYU as a negative contributor to Washington Square Park’s vernacular landscape, yet I feel that many of the great things about Washington Square park still exist, if only in different ways.
 
Flint writes, “the incubation of one of the world’s greatest cities occurred within a walk of this park” (Flint 64). He gives the park a primordial power, showing its ability to spring forth all the elements of social change, cosmopolitan culture and urbane living that would come to define New York. What I love about his descriptions of it is the way in which he implies the park’s ability to transform not just the physical place around it, but the emotional, intellectual and psychological atmosphere as well. He describes it as “a matter of public health and sanity” (Flint 64) that it be allowed to take hold of the minds and imaginations of those living around it, near it, and simply passing through.
 
The way in which Flint describes the urban infrastructure as being that of an emotional and mental one, as much as it is physical and utilitarian is very similar to how I often view the city. I have always viewed New York in this manner, and frankly it is more so the essence of the city than any “bridge or expressway” (Flint 64) or building could be. The power that certain places have to evoke thought, emotion, outcry, etc. speaks to what makes the city so important to it’s residents and the people that they become, unlike any others in the world (of course, as a New Yorker, I’m biased).
 
The way that Washington Square Park served as a milestone and stepping stone for cultural and societal contributions such as the Met, the New York Times and NYU gives credence to its power and importance; Ironically, in giving a push up to so many other power forces within the city, many see it as having been transformed into a commercial symbol for the village as a tourist attraction and NYU as a global university.
 
No one can question the immortal nature of the park – after all it is still standing in all 10 acres today, though somewhat face-lifted. The arch remains tall and white as ever, the fountain (though subtly displaced) retains its ability to sprout joy and energy in the summer months, the pathways and green plots stamp out patterns of movement from East to West; however, the park’s social impact and ambition have evolved and changed. Organizations no longer take root and expand elsewhere, protests rarely grace the pavements, and social movements have sprouted less and less from it’s incubatory fountain. As Flint addresses, New York University has continued to move “ahead relentlessly with plans for massive new campus buildings that line the square” (Flint 71).  While many see this as a suffocating constriction on the Park, possibly reminiscent of Moses’ plans for ultimate dereliction, I see it as a modern form of what has always been present. As the clear focal point and center of NYU, Washington Square Park serves as a platform for NYU life. A stage upon which its students can and do take part in engaging activities, academic discourse, and bohemian, West Village life. While it has become somewhat commoditized to the outsider, to entice them to send their young, eager children, it has not entirely lost the essence of its foundation.  It serves a similar purpose in a new way. It serves as a modern day incubator for the young, academically driven, socially conscious, and stubbornly curious minds to interact with each other and the interrupting city life. It concentrates the liberal arts, performance arts, social and lab science, communications and professional teachings, and business developing minds of its students in a type of porous crucible. All the youthful and igniting energy that paved the foundation of the park, takes hold in a concentration of student activity that is not only of spawning out into the rest of the city and the world, but also festering and influencing the countless people who come from outside and enter into the world, for seconds, minutes, hours, days or even years.
 
Where as Moses’s plans would have undoubtedly altered and destroyed the face of Washington Square Park as we knew it, NYU’s seemingly dominant residence is actually fostering similar social, political, and academic environment, in its own, modern way.
 

Over the past readings, posts, and discussions, we have addressed several different types of places, each with their own strengths and weaknesses depending on the lenses through which one views a place. The concept of Modernist Architecture specifically, as discussed by Kunstler always left me wanting.  Kunstler talks about modern architecture lacking charm. The quant appeal of classic architecture seemed to be lacking in modern architecture according to Kunstler, and he’s not necessarily wrong. But As the son of a modern designer and architect, I wonder why modern would be, as Kunstler would say, not worth caring about. I have always seen value in a place where the thought that went into the design and construction added just as much value to something, no mater what the period or style. As we have seen in Pollan’s work, both written and physical, modern architecture can and often does have much thought put into the planning, design and execution.
 
In “The Roof,” Pollan talks to the origins of the roof and how the modern day roof “can often tell us something about our time” (177). He goes into the “amount of technological effort” (177) required in designed and constructing a roof and how “architecture stood at the leading edge of technology” (177). The roof itself encompassed the very ingenuity, creativity, and engineering that could be attributed to architecture in general. In this sense, when one takes the time, as a Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe did, to examine and consider the technologies and engineering advances of the time to create thoughtful and never-before-conceived building styles, he imparts a sense of place into that structure. We see it with Pollan as well.
 
The countless sketches Pollan references and re-examines over and over again, often to the dismay of his dauntless architect, and the details that he examines serve to create a sense of emotional attachment that will sure linger forever in the place created by his one-room project. He talks about building the house and modern architecture as a whole as a “therapeutic program” (183) for both the builder/conceiver and the occupant. Pollan quotes Le Corbusier’s musings about eradicating dead concepts, which Kunstler would argue are the elements of charm, and shows the power of a modernist place to create fresh, new places that take in account the needs and moods present in current society. In this sense of more appropriately addressing a more “modern” man’s needs, Modern architecture is more utilitarian and emotionally fitting. For one could argue, appreciation for the past is important, but fixation on it is unhealthy. As Pollan reveals, focusing on the now, with reference, as he does throughout the book, to the past is the better distinction to make. Ultimately modern architecture utilizes materials in more efficient and conscious way, without hiding elements behind “softening façade[s]”.
 
Pollan elaborates further in “Windows” about “81” (225) and how the 8’ 1” measurements bothered him on many levels. He develops further attachment to the home in wanting for the utilities used in the construction not only to be economically and environmentally efficient, but also make sense. The added 1" was essentially a waste to him, even though the architect deemed it necessary. Pollan spends pages talking about the measurement that would “offend every fiber in the body of any self-respecting carpenter” (227) and how the extra inch needed to be rationalized in order for him to continue; in other words, he needed to believe in ti to allow his attachment and sense of place to grow. Since Pollan takes such a vested interest not only in the final product but also in the every-detail that goes into the construction of the house, he shows how the sense of place can develop and establish the validity of such a modern place in the entire time it takes to complete a project.
 
My point is that Pollan’s attachment and interest in the construction of his house shows that modern architecture can still retain meaning, importance, and ultimately “placeness”. The relationship is different yes, but Kunstler paints his picture with too broad a brush. Some modern architecture is garbage, yet so is some ancient architecture. When one’s personal views on style and aesthetic integrity are mirrored in modern architecture, value is created there and a care exists for it; essentially a sense of place is created for that person. s

I find Pollan’s discussion of site very interesting as someone who has often walked and driven around his “comfort zones” and wondered half the time what it would be like to live in some places, and other times what people were thinking when they built homes. Pollan talks about the view from a place and the view of a place, each with its own importance to picking the site. I wonder what he would think of the cluster of homes that lie packed as close as sardines in a can along Dune Rd. in Westhampton, NY.
 
Having many friends who live in the western parts of the Hamptons, my family and I would always drive west from our home to visit them along the more scenic route of Dune Road. To give those who re not familiar with it an idea of the setting, Dune Road is a narrow, practically sea-level, two-lane road that splits a narrow peninsula into two sides, one on the dunes of the Atlantic Ocean, and one in the marshes of the various bays that make up much of Westhampton.  At some points, the peninsula is so narrow, that driving in your car you can through from ocean on one side to the bay and homes in the distant waterfront to the north. With such confided, yet valuable (Waterfront is gold in the Hamptons) space, land and the homes that rest upon them become quite sought after.
 
With space limited, many builders seeking to capitalize on the coveted location have taken to literally squeezing homes into the crevices that once separated the original homes. Most of the homes that originally graced Dune Road were already so close together, as my father would say “you can see your neighbor peeing in the bathroom from your kitchen”, so the new phenomenon of placing even less space between each abode seemed bizarre and frankly stupid. Pollan touches on the way in which site affects many of the physical structures of the homes that take root upon them, referencing “scale and skin and fenestration, the way it met the ground and the pitch of the roof” (Pollan 31). You can see it in the way windows sprout out at random angles from some of these homes where they would otherwise serve as looking glasses into the fishbowls of their neighbors, or the way in which the roof of a building seemed to curve a bizarre angle is if to say “no, this is the Remsen’s House”.
 
Pollan touches on a point that speaks to the way in which we often see sites and homes built today: solely from the perspective of the inhabitant, looking out. We become so focused on the view from our homes that we forget the view of our homes, our site, from an outside perspective. This must is clearly the case with this paper doll phenomenon that seems to be occurring all over America, not just in Westhampton. You see chains of literally cookie-cutter images spread out long distances, touching hands the whole way. I wonder if people put more of the kind of thought that Pollan did into choosing appropriate site for his home, for the right reasons, if we could problems like these, of paper-doll houses? 

1
I remember growing up on the darkest street in TriBeCa. It was not dark in its architecture, its inhabitants, or the activities that took place there. It did not receive a lot of light. The buildings were a few stories taller than neighboring streets. The street itself was not terribly wide. I used to shiver in the summer months when the shade would encompass me.

2 
I lived at 55 Walker Street in a building that used to be a textile factory. The entire street had a very utilitarian feel. There was a small textile shop underneath our building. There was an entire textile building still left across the street. My parents said when they moved in, there were even more shop-fronts and buildings devoted to textile distribution. I remember seeing reams of fabric hanging in dusty windows, the buildings always dark and empty.
 
3
I used to always walk west down Walker Street when leaving our loft. We rarely went east, except when we needed the convenience of a bank or drug store. On one side of our street, we were bordered by Broadway, on the other side, by Church Street. On Broadway you found lots of small shops that carried many unimportant objects and household products. There were no recognizable store names, except for the bank of the far corner.
 
4
I used to walk with my nanny west towards the nursery. My father and I would go there on weekends. It always seemed like the perfect scenery to pass by on my way to school. There was always something going on there, even in the winter. My father said it had been there for as long as he can remember. Now it has become the site of a thriving luxury hotel.
 
5
Walking towards the heart of TriBeCa, I preferred to take a route down White Street. My nanny would always let me drag her here. My friend Jake lived on White street and the best bakery in TriBeCa was on the corner of White and West Broadway.  My friend Lucca lived above the Bakery. Her parents owned it.
 
6
I always wanted to veer in the direction of Greenwich St., where my favorite park was nestled safely across one street from my play school and later on from my elementary school. My mother made sure I “never [went] past Greenwich St.” – there were too many people over there.  My second birthday party was at a gazebo in the park . The white iron of the gazebo twisted and turned in crazy ways – if you weren’t careful you could get your fingers stuck in it. I returned to the park at the age of 19 and was disappointed at how small it had become. I remember spending hours getting lost there when I was much younger.
 
7
There used to be a parking lot next to my building. We would sometimes park our car there. The lot was entirely outside, and I remember it growing vertically as a child. The owners installed these huge blue car elevators that lifted cars on top of each other. As more people began to move into the neighborhood, these elevators got higher and higher. When I returned to my old building several years after leaving, I looked for the parking lot that was not found. The foundation had become a brand new, modern building of luxury apartments.
 
8
On Church Street there was usually nightlife. There was a fancy restaurant on the corner of Church and Walker that I could only go to if I “behaved”. Literally on the south corner of the same block was a topless bar. In my pre-school years I didn’t quite understand the concept; however, I still referred to it by the neon light descriptions that paraded across my eye-line on my ways home after dark. I can still see the yellow and green “Go, Go, Go, Go Girls” flashing. I think today it is a Vegan restaurant.
 
9
As the 1990’s drew closer and closer to the new millennium, so did the neighborhood towards gentrification. Warehouses became lofts, lots became hotels, and bars became clubs. Some people stayed to ride the wave, others like my family left in search of greener pastures. 

Many different people have described Scottsdale in many different ways. One might infer from such an inconsistent barrage of positive and negative diatribes that Scottsdale is a place without true identity. I would argue based on my own brief residence there that in many senses of the word, this is in fact true. Much of the Scottsdale landscape, as one sees it today, has developed in the past 10 years alone. It sits as an upscale suburb just east of Phoenix, but what defines Scottsdale the most is that much of its land was once a series of large ranches that have today been overcome and developed into series upon series of suburban “neighborhoods” and “communities” separated along endless roads scattered with malls. It has evolved from the downtown (which still exists to an extent) of local shops with artisan crafts and authentic southwest cuisine into a sprawl of strip malls, mega-malls, golf-course resorts and gated cookie-cutter-adobe-and-stucco-home communities.
 
Scottsdale has been described as “a desert version of Miami's South Beach,” “Most Livable City,” “hippest and most happening,” and "The West's most western town". Does it’s design and the language it evokes really live up to these accolades?
 
The layout of the city is divided into four main sections, each with its own distinct contribution to the cityscape. While each part has its own name, Scottsdale is ultimately distinguished, by its residents, by the major roadways and/or shopping malls scattered about the terrain. As a former resident, I can honestly affirm that when developing a sense of direction in this suburb, one always refers to meeting places, houses, schools, etc. by their proximity to major shopping enclaves or roadway intersections (sometimes mall names and intersections become one conglomerate point on a map, important because of the shops that exist there and the mergence of such important roadways). JB Jackson’s vernacular landscape starts to take form when dissecting how much of the landscape shapes the culture and mentality of the people who live there and continue to change it.
 
When directing someone to a new or unknown restaurant, one immediately terms a restaurant as “near Kierland” (the upscale shopping mall in North Scottsdale) or “in Fashion Square”(the upscale fashion mega-center on the outskirts of Downtown Scottsdale) or “by Tatum and Shea” (the intersection of two major streets). While there are those eclectic, South-Beach-esc hotspots, “cowboy” shops and “native American” craft emporiums, and resort hotels with “happening” nightlife, for most of the residents of Scottsdale, life is defined, not by the tourist-packaged commodities that bring outsiders to Scottsdale, but rather the endless array of commoditized shops and restaurants that appear like mirages at random intervals on the endless desert tarmacs that make up the Scottsdale landscape.
 
Jackson touches upon the sense of chaos, variety of activities and purposes that make up the vernacular landscape. In Scottsdale we see this in the various malls that line the six-lane highways that plow through the ranch-farm residential communities. The malls always seem to have a bit of everything – you can pick up a new dog bed for rover, rent a video, grab a smoothie, book a tanning session, and, of course, fill up your tank all in the same complex. Ironically, you will undoubtedly move your car around the same massive parking lot from point A to B to C in order to get all the things you need. This sense of chaos and variety certainly lends itself to the vernacular landscape.
 
Jackson’s points on Vernacular Architecture also come into play with reference to the mall culture. In this same mall, the Pets-Mart, the Safeway, the “Tammy’s Tanning” and the Blockbuster all share the same, visually distinct yet “locale-appropriate” architecture. There’s an element of “desert” life and color: turquoise, yellow, deep red, purple, and of course tan all blend together in a way unique from the mall down the road to give this mall a sense of identity yet ultimate conformity to the overall vernacular landscape. It has its own sense of place in the activities that take place there, yet it ultimately adheres to the local customs and styles that define the desert landscape.
 
What ultimately defines Scottsdale more than mall, is the icon the makes it all possible (and I can feel Kunstler begin to cringe): the automobile. Aside from the fact that there is literally a town-sized strip of about 2 miles full of car dealerships, or “showrooms” as people like to glorify them, the entire town has evolved in design to focus solely around conducting one’s day in one’s car. As a New Yorker, I felt extremely uncomfortable with the way in which the car had come to define not only the landscape of Scottsdale, but also the cultural values of its citizens. Kunstler’s distaste for what cars have done to the American landscape and suburban sprawl is painstakingly clear in Scottsdale. 
 
I remember in my first week of “living” there, passing by several rows of homes that I, in my east-coast mindset, would consider to be typical American domiciles, and seeing such obscure ornaments decorating the front driveways and pavements. The idea that one would own a car that costs, to be fair, maybe one tenth or even in extreme cases, one fifth of the price of one’s home seems a bit overindulgent and stupid; however, all over Scottsdale, I recall endless lines of driveways to homes valued (based on my knowledge of the Scottsdale real estate market) anywhere from $350k to $650k with $45k to $95k cars (that means more than one) parked out front. It seemed like such a bizarre phenomenon at first, until I began to see this plague run rampant everywhere I went – no matter what the neighborhood. It was no wonder the “luxury” automobile emporiums were labeled as successful “showrooms” – it appeared nearly everyone in town was frequenting them in droves. Furthermore, as I began to get acclimated to the “sun valley” lifestyle, I realized why so much investment was placed in such a traditionally solvent form of capital. It was because people spent so much of their time in their cars!


 
As I began to really become “rooted” in Scottsdale, I found myself falling into the auto-trap. The suburban auto wonderland of Scottsdale forces you into a state of dependency on your car. No single community has a local anything, except maybe a gas station. As Kunstler would point out, these real-estate towns don’t have a sense of town at all. There was no sense of public space, local grocery or market in any of the hundreds of communities that made up the valley; they were all separated from main strips, lined with all the major malls and resorts where people colonized to grab everything they needed before ultimately driving onto the next one. Even the houses whose property lines touched upon the main drag where one could conceivably be within a stone’s throw of a drug store or pizzeria were sectioned off like prisons, precluding any resident who may have been curious about walking to grab some milk or a slice from even attempting such a ridiculous journey. Kunstler has pointed out how these constructs make people who do walk the streets look like fools, yet they are actually engaging in more real-community behavior by joining with the landscape and not separating oneself in an automobile. In fact, when driving up any main roadway (because they are almost always a minimum of four to six lanes), one is always practically boxed in by stucco or adobe walls that break only to expose one to an approaching mall or gas station. People sometimes spend hours driving around from stop to stop (in some cases never having to leave their cars) on these roller coasters of modern “convenience”.
 
With the focus of the infrastructure on either keeping you in a car or keeping you in a mall, there is a constant sense of encasement in Scottsdale.  Despite the fact that one is in an open “desert,” one never really feels like it until driving the endless baron freeways that make up the Scottsdale highway system. At every social gathering place (the malls) there is sense of constructed community that awaits you. There are several main malls that cater to the Scottsdale residents; each mall has its own name, socio-economically based store and restaurant offerings, and some form entertainment attraction (usually a movie theater) that gives it its own sense of identity, yet ultimately attaching it to the basic definition of place in Scottsdale.


 
In a sense, each mall is like its own isolated town; however, it assumes only the more commercial sense if the word. Kunstler points to this as one of the main consequences of the automobile problem. Even though we do gather at the occasional mall, we ultimately remain isolated not only in being in our cars between malls, but also in being in malls that are so far removed from other areas like homes or public parks. Where someone in the North East might spend a day in Southampton or an afternoon in Greenwich, people in Scottsdale often spend large blocks of time at a specific mall. Now this is of course indicative of problematic activities that many Americans partake of, but in Scottsdale it has come to define the very existence of the people. Teens, Families, retired couples will literally spend hours at a mall; after all, they are designed and operate like small cities. Many of them in Scottsdale have multiple levels, numerous “anchor” stores with countless departments, food courts and well-known (franchised) restaurants, mega-plex, multi-cinema movie theaters, a selection of either high-end and low-end boutiques, and of course the freedom to enjoy these things in a controlled, air-conditioned environment. It’s so easy and so convenient, it’s all in one place, if there’s no parking one can always “valet it” – of course everyone hangs out there. However “mixed-use” the mall has become in terms of the plethora of products one can find there, it is ultimately “used” for one same purpose: shopping. The restaurants and theaters are designed mainly to keep you at the mall spending money, without feeling the need to leave. Images of Kunstler’s Disney World criticisms come to mind. In this sense they are ultimately designed for one, single use. And this Kunstler explains is a major downfall in American urban sprawl.


 
The idea of an economic drain from the community is also inherent in the mall community. When every mall houses predominantly corporate institutions and subsidiaries, most of the economy leaves the community. It becomes a desert of economic prosperity (which ironically is starting to happen in Scottsdale).
 
Yi Fu Tuan’s ideas on place in relation to space speak to one of the reasons why, at least for me, the experience of living in Scottsdale renders such a distinct and emotional reaction. Tuan defines “space” as an empty horizon with a sense of freedom, and he defines “place” as a defined, limited “pause” within the larger space that evokes a sense of feeling and familiarity once you get to know it. This idea resonates in Scottsdale and is part of what makes my experience there so potent. The endless rows of adobe and ranch style homes of one “section” and the incessant row-houses of cream and tan stucco and Spanish-roof houses of another section create an indefinite sense of emptiness and open space. Most of the homes look the same in particular “communities” and therefore shed the community of any individual senses of identity, rendering the group as a whole part of a collective glob of space that seems lost in the desert of Arizona. Within that empty space are these “pauses” that developers have constructed into malls. Following Tuan’s argument about space, one becomes familiar with the specific places that occur on the map of the overall space.
 
Because everything in-between one’s home becomes just another blur of desert architecture, the malls offer the only sense of specific rigidity and therefore come to in large part define the experience of living there. What it feels like to live in Scottsdale is to ask what it feels like to hang out in its malls. Some malls are indoors and some are completely outdoors: they have perfectly manicured and precisely laid-out plots of palm trees and cactuses that seem to lead the way between the distinct, branded architecture of the southwest cityscape as it intersects the individual branding of the clothing boutiques, home décor megastores, media emporiums, and franchise king restaurants. Tuan’s ideas about perception being intentional are evident in these designs. Weather indoor or outdoor, the branding that goes on at every mall is designed to leave an impression of unique consumer delight – having everything one needs to satisfy the commercial urges of the moment while leaving no element of comfort, convenience, or commerce out of the picture. You see yourself as part of the constructed world that you have supplanted yourself into. Whatever the mall you decided to stop at, you are going to be part of that world for the time being. As many of the malls have similar elements, they also have distinct ones. Certain malls have exclusive stores and they become synonymous with the place. One feels more at home in Fashion Square than at Gainey Village – one develops a sense of place for each mall, and by aggregation Scottsdale as a whole. One associates a sense of place with the known, as Tuan points out, so one finds his place in Scottsdale at those malls where the most identifiable and pleasing shops, restaurants, etc. can be found. In further Tuan respect, one becomes essentially unconscious of the relationship with the place and a sense of unconscious necessity forms. One stops at certain malls all the time, that “place” has the ability to feed an unconscious hunger within.


 
Perhaps Tuan’s notion of Alienation plays into why the malls in Scottsdale tend to be so stagnated and far apart from each other. He informs us that sometimes a sense of place requires a sense of alienation from place to establish a sense of rootedness and experience. It certainly does make one feel a part of a distinct place, knowing that the next mall is a good 20 minute drive away. You feel cut off from other places that don’t serve the same needs for you and therefore develop a greater attachment to the place you are at that moment.
 
Scottsdale as a place sets its identity due mainly to its obsession with the car and all the suburban luxuries that affords urban developers. With all the beauty of the Southwest landscape that Scottsdale could and once did offer, and the sense of a western town that gave it its position on the map in the first place, Scottsdale’s sense of place has evolved towards an auto-mall society. There are many ways one can look at its design and the culture that has sprung from it; however, one cannot dispute that if not for the endless roadways and the ability to traverse them so easily and quickly, as a city it would hardly survive. Its sense of place therefore develops a vernacular of endless pauses of isolation and superficial experiences.

Kunstler’s “Capitals of Unreality” speaks a lot to the importance of substance, inherent both in the physical structure and design and the overall meaning and purpose of a place. He maligns those “collective fantasy” (217) places “packaged for sale as a commodity” (217) for their intrinsic void of a sense of importance and “aura of dread’ (217) that serves only a “temporary escape from the crisis” (217) of one’s life.
 
Kunstler’s descriptions and reactions to Disney World and Atlantic City seem to echo in individual ways in the city of Las Vegas.  Las Vegas seems to take the worst of both worlds and combine them to create its own identity as the “capital of unreality” (217). 
 
The main purpose of Las Vegas has become the pursuit of making money, both for visitors and resident businesses. What Kunstler attributes to Atlantic City in its ambition and folly is equally attributed to Las Vegas. Where Atlantic City may be a Notre Dame for gamblers, Las Vegas serves as a Vatican for those members of the “religion based on the idea that it is possible to get something for nothing” (232). What sets Vegas above Atlantic City is the caliber of worshipers who flock to it and by association elevate its status as the ultimate adult playground with its “wicked promises of endless fun” (231). Where you get more welfare hangers-on and suburban troglodytes who seek the sustenance of cheap drinks and spine-tingling slot machine bells in Atlantic City, you get more shipping-tycoons and captains of industry seeking an oasis respite from the endless international odysseys of their Cessna Citations and Falcon 7X’s.  As Kunstler puts it, Vegas may be “out in the middle of nowhere” (233), but its visitors tend to “stick around for a few nights” (233) more, mainly due to the more polished nature and brighter sense of promise it preaches.
 
What Disney does for the children who line its hollow streets and adorn hats of its countless idols, Vegas does for its patrons, in its own way. It creates a sense of belonging and unity in terms all adults identify with: money. Kunstler talks about a fantasy place having its own currency:
 
“you can trade your U.S. currency for Disney Dollars ‘ good for dining and merchandise’ all over the Magic Kingdom and its dependencies. This supposedly enhances the illusion of being in a special land” (218)
 
Kunstler’s not wrong here. What Disney perfects, and what Vegas adopts, is this sense of branding the identity of the “place” with the sense of belonging and promised happiness intrinsic in the establishment.  There are no “Vegas Dollars” but there are “chips” for each respective casino and they carry a value that can be acquired with any currency and exchanged in countless ways for fun activities.
 
Poker, Blackjack, Roulette, Craps – there are many signature games, wrapped in the identity of Vegas, that serve to welcome you to the club. One must exchange outside money for inside money to participate, and when one is successful, her acquires more inside money that can be used for further fun. It’s a system of revolving good times that constantly keeps visitors feeling a yearning to remain.
 
Kunstler also talks about the physical elements of Disney World and how they help transport visitors to a “Magic Kingdom”. The “false fronts” (220), as he calls them, are designed to “add to [the] charm” of the place and create a sense of “feel and fit of things” (221). What a child sees in the towering pink palace and adorned, life-sized teacups of the Magic Kingdom, an adult sees in the Olympic-sized “Greek” swimming pools and gilded “Forum” shopping arcades of Caesar’s Palace.

Vegas is a place of over 30 individual, mini Disney Worlds. The Venetian, Caesar’s Palace, The MGM Grand, The Wynn, The Luxor, Treasure Island, New York-New York, The Paris Hotel, just to name a few; each using the same cookie-cutter techniques of branding and idealizing to attract reality exiles and keep them in a world of fantasy.
 
The Luxor is its own little slice of Egypt, complete with a sphinx and obelisk to complement the obtrusive Black Pyramid that serves as the main hotel unit. A visitor can be photographed with “Egyptians” in authentic looking garb on “realistic” looking backgrounds. Depending on where one finds himself, he may forget altogether that, while he is in the desert, there is no Nile river nearby, only a man-made half-pipe transporting the city’s sewage from the streets to water treatment facilities outside the Strip.


 
The Paris Hotel lays similar claims – you can be transported to the city of love.  There’s a “real” Eifel Tower and the lobby is decorated in a mixture of true Baroque and Louis XVI style. The concierge (a French word, of course) lounge is “Le Rendezvous” (for a fee) offering “breath-taking views” of the Eifel Tower and there’s even an opening planned for a “Chateau Nightclub” sure to make you feel like French Royalty, because after all, “everything’s sexier in Paris”.


 
As Kunstler would point out, these constructs  serve to “emphasize the illusion of one’s taking a journey to a strange land” (219) where happiness awaits you and the real world or decaying America is a distant memory.
 
I agree with Kunstler in that he ultimately argues that these places like this for children and the adult versions like Las Vegas have sprung up due to the “crisis of place in America” (217).  He points out the irony that society constructs places to serve as escapes from reality, when the same principals, intentions, and motives are responsible for the void of place that we so desperately seek rescue from in most of America. Kunstler points it out best in his discussion of Disney World’s “Main Street USA”. Where patrons of the park flood the facades of small town shops and enjoy the “well-proportioned streets” (220), they are ultimately drawn back to the “massive volumes of cheap merchandise” (220) that frankly guides the endless array of suburban sprawl that most of them probably fled from in the first place. In Vegas, adults seek escape and recreation in a place focused on the consumption, unrealistic acquisition, and false sense of happiness rooted in money, when most Americans already spend most of theirs in that pursuit. The only difference is they don’t have flashing lights, sounding chimes, and bejeweled performers around when they’re doing it back in “reality”.

When I visited Washington D.C. for the first time I didn’t feel as though I was in a true city, in the sense that I knew New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo to be cities. The Capital felt more like the campus of a large university. There was an overall identity and purpose, distinct buildings with distinct roles in support of the overall agenda, and a sense of power and status defined by your role within the area. Cities like New York, Paris, London, all have a myriad of industries and agendas on any given day and at any given time of year; however, in Washington there is always the same overarching system and objective: The U.S. Government and its various elements.
 
Much like a university, every building in D.C. has a sense of distinct, individual purpose. The Capital Building is where Congress meets; legislation is formed there. The building and its neighbors all function towards that goal. The White House is where the President lives and works, executive authority is utilized there, policy meetings and national decisions are made there. The Supreme Court building is where the Supreme Court meets and houses offices for the Supreme Justices: appeals are herd, precedents are set there. The Washington Monument serves as a centre-point of the campus and becomes synonymous not only with the place itself but the history and ideology of its foundation.


 
One could argue that a campus like that of NYU has a similar layout. It is permeable boundaries allow for the free flow of community members and non-community members alike through its streets, but it is clearly defined by its buildings and their roles in the overarching university agenda. The Bobst Library serves as the hearth of knowledge and power, almost equating the two. The Kimmel Center serves as the seat of student activities and congregation. There is the Silver Center to house the College of Arts and Sciences and the teaching of liberal arts. The Tisch Building to house the Stern School of Business and teach its fundamentals. The Washington Arch serves as a central point in the “Mall” of NYU and has become synonymous with the university itself and the heritage. You know where you are by what building you are near; you know what your role is by the buildings you inhabit.
 
When Kunstler describes L’Enfant’s original Washington D.C. design as providing boulevards “to provide sightlines between architectural landmarks” (32), he addresses the key role in the design of the grid. It was meant from its inception to render an orientation of The Capital through its landmarks and places of importance. Like a university, one is meant to associate certain points on the campus as more important than others, and indicative of your location in relation to the rest of the campus. One is defined within the boundaries of the buildings and the proximity to the central or “main” campus.  You are not so much east or south, but “by the Lincoln Memorial” or “by Bobst”. You are far from the campus if you are far from the National Mall or Washington Square Park.
 
This design of the campus-style grid, despite its porous nature of international roadways and cross-town routes, is very insular. It gives little consideration to the elements or places outside the definite limits or borders of the campus.  It creates such a sense of concentration of purpose and identity that it consumes every area within its boundaries and becomes a place with one vision. Unlike a more cosmopolitan city which may have elements from many cultures, industries, races, and even architectural types, Washington retains a very rigid identity through its architecture and grid which shares its design and sense of place with a university campus.

The idea of the importance of roads plays out best in New York City. Manhattan, specifically, is famous for its streets. Broadway, Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, they are roads with identities and meanings. They take on personas of their own. They define the buildings, business, residents who line and traipse their sidewalks daily.
 
The city itself is designed to grid out its endless locations as a sort of class system. Some roads are far superior to others: they command only the best architecture; house only the finest shops, businesses, restaurants, and homes. They command the highest prices to buy, rent, and lease. They are maintained much more vigorously than other streets as a way adding the their luster. There is a very distinct difference between walking up Avenue A and walking up Madison Avenue. These beacons, if you will of spatial prowess are meant very purposefully to distinguish place. As Jackson writes of historically important roads, “[c]ertain important highways were meant primarily for the exercise of sovereign authority and to maintain order”(24). I see the exact same thing is happening here in New York.
 
For the most part, the roads of stature in New York have no significant geographical or resourceful significance that would mandate certain roads be more prominent than others. For the most part, the roads existed, and one business, event, building, etc. sprang up and the prestige grew around it. But much of the prestige develops due to our nature to define places within larger spaces. Even though one could argue that Manhattan is a composite of millions of places, for each person, the list of places is different and therefore there are many spaces in New York, undefined and unimportant to us. The “[d]ifferences in spatial organization are largely a matter of how we happen to classify things and occupations and people, and separate them” (28) – in Manhattan it is very often by street.
 
If someone tells you they live on uptown on Fifth Avenue, you immediately assume so much about them. In Midtown, on the same street, the assumption could be very different. Now I don’t hold much faith in assumptions themselves, but their nature is very revealing in how we as New Yorkers view place in relation to our urban landscape. As Jackson writes about Rome, one could also write about Manhattan, that the “road system [helps] maintain [the] identity” (27) the meaning of the different parts of the city and the people and/or places in them. As Jackson suggests, “we like to put our roots down and to belong to a certain spot” (27). We belong to the roads that define us in New York, and we expect others to do the same. You are where you are. We are literally corned off, sectioned off into a category based on the place we call home (or even the place we call a more temporal place of rest). By making a conscious choice to associate with a road, sectioned off by two other boundary roads, we are consciously or subconsciously choosing to conform to the definition commonly associated with that place.
 
Jackson concludes a thought on the matter by stating:
“we run across these signs: boundaries, roads, and places of assembly. We read them at once, and we not only read them, we create them ourselves, almost without realizing that without them we could not function a members of society” (27)
As Manhattanites, we are always conscious of roads and avenues that define neighborhoods, business, and groups. We expect them to define the city each other. As functioning members of the New York society, our whole system of direction (both physical and social) would be off without the roads to define them.

I constantly contemplate the importance of “architectural spaces” in relation to a person’s sense of comfort, being, self. I myself am victim to constant fits of rearranging within my fixed constructs and spend much of my personal time reading about the architectural plans (both realized and unrealized) of the past. I find it fascinating the spaces that people construct for themselves and the interesting uses they conceive for them. Tuan talks about how “architectural form is an environment for a man” (106) and then poses the question, “how does it then influence hum feeling and consciousness?” (106) to which images of the Palais Versailles seem to fit perfectly.
 
Versailles as a building has undergone several renovations, redesigns, and reconfigurations to suit the countless members of the royal families and nobility who lived there in its use as the seat of the ruling class of France. During the time of Marie-Antoinette the idea of “a sense of an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside,’ of intimacy and exposure, of private life and public space” (107) is most prevalent. Tuan describes this sense today as more “vague,” which I can see in today’s time of more confided spaces and limited resources. The great thing about the opulence of the 18th century architecture in France is that it clearly defined the strong importance that the roles of “inside” and “outside” life played in the lives of the ruling class.
 
“Inside the enclosure, undisturbed by distractions from the outside, human relations and feelings can rise to a high and even uncomfortable level of warmth” (107).
 
What was true of many Palaces and even smaller Chateaux was exponentially truer of Versailles. Nobility had apartments within their homes that were separated into “inside” and “outside” areas, or “Grand” and “Petit” apartments. Unlike the grand rooms, the “petite” rooms were given far more specific roles, and more personal touches. Marie-Antoinette, her architects, and the King all paid considerable attention to the countless details that went in making every interior, private room unique and useful to the Queen’s more intimate needs.  The Grand rooms of her apartment were used for formal audiences, small plays, and dining in view of privileged nobles, whereas the smaller apartment rooms were used buy the Queen to read, choose her wardrobes, listen to music, and be with her children in private. The Queen, especially, placed a high level of importance in the separating of her public and private life, not only in time and activity, but also in places where such activity would and could occur.


 
The design and construct of the petit apartment continues to explain Taun’s ideas about spatial dimensions in relations to a person’s feelings in a space in it’s “courtyard house” design. While Marie-Antoinette enjoyed and most certainly took advantage of all of her resources, she also had strong feelings of restriction and suffocation in the grand and formal elements of chateau life. She longed for private, personal time away from court. When Tuan writes “people can be sure of where they are” (107), he most certainly describes the “consciousness of space” (108) for Marie inthe petit apartment. The smaller rooms gave her more freedom in the sense that they were fraught with informality and therefore autonomy. It wasn’t their lack of opulence, rather their size and the layout that liberated her subconscious.  The rooms “Present their blank backs to the outside world” and allow Marie-Antoinette to do the same.
 
In examining the countless details of the plan du chateau (which I have done continually over much of lifespan), we see a great deal about the way an architectural space and the context in which that space functions. For all it’s grandeur and extravagance, it’s teachings regarding Tuan’s ideas on architectural space and awareness are as simple and fundamental as possible.

According to my parents I have been lost twice in my childhood, only one instance of which I can recall myself. I used to think that the fact that my memory of the situation is broken up into segments of random places, rather than a continual story board of events and locations, was a syndrome of time passed; however, after reading Tuan’s writings in chapter four, I realize that the memory is very much similar to how the event probably played in my mind at the time.
 
When I was about six years of age, my family and I stopped off in Seattle on our way home from British Columbia for a two day visit. On the morning of our departure, my father decided to take me with him on a “stroll” through the city to reveal some interesting places he had seen on a previous journey.
 
I recall the hotel room, the lobby, the general façade of the entryway, a long hallway with several black and white historic photographs, a doorway leading to a long descending staircase, a sidewalk corner, and a coffee shop where my father insisted we stop to quench his morning caffeine fix. After waiting in the coffee shop for what felt like forever, I began to nag my father to leave. I distinctly remember saying “I want to leave” and his response being “If you want to go, then go,” so I that’s exactly what I did.
 
I slipped to the side of the bodega where my father assumed I was waiting; then I proceeded to exit the shop, destined for the hotel. I could recall various stages in the trip and convinced myself that I would find my way back, unscathed.
 
After leaving the coffee shop and crossing the first street, I began to search for the familiar objects and places that never appeared. I could not “recall a single landmark” (Tuan 26), and the coffee shop was nowhere to be seen either. After not being able to find the fixed locations in the order in which I had reversed them in my mind, I began searching merely for the end result, the destination, the hotel.
 
After entering two wrong buildings and turning to a street so bizarre I could not have been there before, I fortuitously stumbled upon the hotel (which fortunately turned out to be only two blocks away from the coffee shop where I abandoned my father). After approaching the doorman with an inquiry about “my room”, I was whisked inside and eventually reunited with my then frantic mother. In the moment, knowing I had taken on nearly disastrous challenge, I did not conceptualize exactly why my memories had failed me. The images of the individual places from the morning raced through my head, appearing like dots that I could not connect.
 
“’Separation’” is another type of evidence that hints at a child’s inability to depict, or simply indifference to, the spatial relations among objects. […] The young child is more concerned with things themselves […] than with their precise spatial relations” (Tuan 26)
 
Tuan’s descriptions of children’s difficulties in conceptualizing the relationships between different places describe my childhood conundrum perfectly. At that age, my development and understanding of places within greater space was limited to specific details inherent only in each individual point and not in how the places related to one another or how one transitioned from one to the next. As Tuan states, “going from one place to another is not [a child’s] responsibility” (Tuan 26).

At the southeast corner of Central Park there is place that gives me the greatest sense of comfort and tranquility. It is neither a secret place nor one that would be listed in a guidebook.
There is a hill, just off an eastward winding path that paves a decent into a placid pond. There are several low-hanging trees that give a sense of privacy and security when entering this almost designated area. The hill is covered in grass, trimmed so short it rests like a tufted carpet with the occasional imperfection. As one descends further down the path, the hill seems to jump up behind you, separating you from the last remaining signs of man-made concrete. The trees tower higher above you and you feel entirely surrounded on three sides by pure blackness. Your eyes are left simply with the glacial pond ahead of you, and the open canvas of the Fifth Avenue and Central Park South Skylines beaming onto you from above.
 
It is important to note that this space does not always exist. It is very much temporal with respect to both physical and emotional elements. If you were to stumble onto this very plot on a sunny afternoon in July, you would hardly be standing where I was. Only when the night is dark, the Moon is beaming bright, the air bites with a slight frost, and the sky has a glaze of white dust peering over the ornate facades of the overhanging buildings, will you will find this space. You can make out the grandiose buildings that line the southeast corner or the park only by the designs of their window lights and the overall shapes.
 
The sense of isolation you feel is as palpable as the mist that covers every surface. It is the only place to feel a sense of isolation without a sense of being lost. You don’t know exactly where you are but the familiar elements of the city still watch over you like distant lighthouses call you back to port. As long as they shine through the mist, you will be able to find your way back when you decide to return home.
 
I am not a very “nature-loving” person. Having been raised in New York City, I was much too consumed with my “urban” activities to engage in nature-related past-times. I assumed Central Park was for visitors and people who moved here from the suburbs with difficulties letting go of the natural elements. Sure I would stroll through the park now and then with friends, sorting through our daily list of inane topics of concern and obsession, but it was merely a bridge to be crossed to get from one side of the city to the other.
 
The park changed for me one night in February as I was walking my good friend back to her apartment through the park (ignoring all my mothers warnings about night-time park activity). We had let our feet take us on a casual journey to a corner of the park not yet visited. The night was cold and hazy, the lights beamed out from the distant buildings and reflected upon us through the frozen pond below. We ventured a bit further from the path, onto the grass and realized we were in a place we had never been before, we had passed the pond frequently but never like this. We looked up at the moon and silhouettes of the buildings we thought we had seen a hundred times and we felt a sense of comfort in experiencing familiar elements in a new, interesting, and beautiful way.
 
I now return on my own, in the winter, when I could use a little escape. Not too far, but just enough to feel that isolation, mixed with the comfort of knowing I’m still home.