We are all at the center again as Time’s person of the yearedemocracy
Time’s Person of the year is a tradition that dates back to 1927. It used to be individual mavericks who left their mark on history. Yet twice in recent years Time magazine named as person of the year a collective of individuals that influence bottom up their landscape out of different levels of civic indignation.
We are all at the center again as time’s person of the yearedemocracy
Time’s Person of the year is a tradition that dates back to 1927. It used to be individual mavericks who left their mark on history. Yet twice in recent years Time magazine named as person of the year a collective of individuals that influence bottom up their landscape out of different levels of civic indignation.
We are all at the center again as Time’s person of the yearedemocracy
Time’s Person of the year is a tradition that dates back to 1927. It used to be individual mavericks who left their mark on history. Yet twice in recent years Time magazine named as person of the year a collective of individuals that influence bottom up their landscape out of different levels of civic indignation.
We are all at the center again as time’s person of the yearedemocracy
Time’s Person of the year is a tradition that dates back to 1927. It used to be individual mavericks who left their mark on history. Yet twice in recent years Time magazine named as person of the year a collective of individuals that influence bottom up their landscape out of different levels of civic indignation.
Tips for better summer photos using Calgary's historic and colourful Inglewood neighbourhood as a backdrop. The photos were all taken by participants of the July 24, 2010 World Wide Photowalk
Tips for better summer photos using Calgary's historic and colourful Inglewood neighbourhood as a backdrop. The photos were all taken by participants of the July 24, 2010 World Wide Photowalk
Streetcar Suburbs The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870 –1.docxaryan532920
Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870 –1900
By Sam B Warner, Jr.
Harvard University Press and The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1962
Chapter 1 and Chapter 2
THE CITY of Boston is old and full of monuments to the past. To visitors it often appears a dowdy
repository for some of the nation's early memories. But to those who know it better the city's life has
always been one of ceaseless change. The visitor who stops at Paul Revere's house seldom realizes
that within thirty years the society that had produced so many revolutionaries was dead. And the
local resident who stands before William Lloyd Garrison's well-known statue seldom recognizes that
the generation of Bostonians who erected this statue could not bring forth such an uncompromising
radical. Boston, like the various societies that made it, has been ever changing, ever in transition.
The differences that mark the successive eras have come from the shifting of emphasis from one set
of problems to another from politics to business, from foreign trade to manufacture, from prosperity
to depression.
No period in Boston's history was more dynamic than the prosperous years of the second half of
the nineteenth century. One of the most enduring of the many transformations of this era was the
rearrangement of the physical form of the city itself. In fifty years it changed from a merchant city of
two hundred thousand inhabitants to an industrial metropolis of over a million. In 1850 Boston was a
tightly packed seaport; by 1900 it sprawled over a ten-mile radius and contained thirty-one cities and
towns. The growth of the city brought other major changes. The old settlement of 1850 became by
1900 the principal zone of work-the industrial, commercial, and communications center of the
metropolitan region. At the same time the tenements and old dwellings of the area came to house the
lower-income half of the population. Beyond the inner concentrated section there grew an equally
novel environment, the enormous outer ring of new commuters' houses.
Boston in 1900 was very much a city divided. With the exception of the expensive houses of the
Back Bay, it was an inner city of work and low income housing, and an outer city of middle- and
upper-income residences. The wide extent of settlement in the outer residential zone was made
possible by the elaboration of the new street railway transportation system, and a parallel extension
of city services. Here the course of building reflected the movement of successive waves of people
out from the center of the city. Here the new houses and neighborhoods demonstrated the economic
progress of half of Boston's families and their aspirations for a satisfactory home environment.
With these changes in scale and plan many of the familiar modem problems of city life began to
emerge: the bedroom town; the inundation of country villages by commuters; the sudden withdrawal
of whole segments of an old neighbor ...
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h irt y y e a rs ago, the mayor of Chicago was un-
seated by a snowstorm. A blizzard in January of 1979
dumped some 20 inches on the ground, causing,
among other problems, a curtailment of transit ser-
vice. The few available trains coming downtown from
the northwest side filled up with middle-class white riders near
the far end of the line, leaving no room for poorer people try-
ing to board on inner-city platforms. African Americans and
Hispanics blamed this on Mayor Michael Bilandic, and he lost
the Democratic primary to Jane Byrne a few weeks later.
Today, this could never happen. Not because of climate
change, or because the Chicago Transit Authority now runs
flawlessly. It couldn’t happen because the trains would fill up
with minorities and immigrants on the outskirts of the city,
and the passengers left stranded at the inner-city stations
would be members of the affluent professional class.
In the past three decades, Chicago has undergone changes
that are routinely described as gentrification, but are in fact
more complicated and more profound than the process that
term suggests. A better description would be “demographic
inversion.” Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a tra-
ditional European city—Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth
century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the
newcomers are living on the outskirts. The people who live
near the center—some of them black or Hispanic but most of
them white—are those who can afford to do so.
Developments like this rarely occur in one city at a time,
and indeed demographic inversion is taking place, albeit more
slowly than in Chicago, in metropolitan areas throughout the
country. The national press has paid very little attention to it.
While we have been focusing on Baghdad and Kabul, our own
cities have been changing right in front of us.
Atlanta, for example, is shifting from an overwhelmingly
black to what is likely to soon be a minority-black city. This
is happening in part because the white middle class is moving
inside the city borders, but more so because blacks are mov-
ing out. Between 1990 and 2006, according to research by Wil-
liam Frey of the Brookings Institution, the white population of
Atlanta has increased from roughly 30 percent to 35 percent
while the black population has declined from 67 percent to 55
percent. In this decade alone, two of Atlanta’s huge suburban
counties, Clayton and DeKalb, have acquired substantial black
majorities, and immigrants arriving from foreign countries are
settling primarily there or in similar outlying areas, not within
the city itself. The numbers for Washington, D.C. are similar.
Race is not always the critical issue, or even .
2. Clough Article Mike Clough wrote an article that was titled “A Merger That Puts New York on Top”. He explains that New York has had groups of companies joining together and this allows New York to have more power. The merger he talks about is between the company America Online and Time Warner. These are the leading Internet company and the leading media-entertainment company in the whole world. If New York continues to have creative citizens who work hard for a better future, then New York will continue to be on top of her rivals: Southern California, the Bay Area, and Redmond, Washington.
3. Joel kotkin’s articles Kotkin, in his article titled “World Capitals for the Future” implies that the world is having an urban globalization going on. Places like Moscow and Shanghai were once cheap and low places, now they are bustling with people and huge high-rises. They are more expensive cities than ever to be in. In “Rome vs. Gotham” Kotkin writes about the explosion of government amid a decline in the private sector.
4. America compared: Gridded lives This article by Kate Brown talks about the similarities of Billings, Montana and Karaganda, Kazakhstan. She shows that even though the settlers to move into Billings were not forced out of their homes, it was still the same abuse as those who really were physically forced out of their homes in Kazakhstan. She shows how both settlements were built in a rectangular shape and how both settlements were built with a railroad at the center of the city. She shows that if America is not careful, we too can become abusive just like the Soviet countries during the Cold War. These are pictures of Kazakhstan (top) and Montana (bottom).
5. The great transatlantic migrations This article by Nugent from the book America Compared demonstrates the magnitude of foreigners who came from Europe between 1870 and 1914. Tons of people came mainly from Europe during this time and a lot went to South American and Canada. But most went to the United States. I like how the newcomers would meet up with their friends and relatives and would make little ethnic areas of their own culture within cities and communities. All these people were starving or very poor, so they came for jobs above all else.
6. The city in the land of the dollar In WitoldRybcynski’s article in the book America Compared, he demonstrates how cities in the United States have a distinctive look. We have cities that are shaped by rapid growth, the predominance of business rather than government, the cultural ideal of the private house, and the relentless rush of the car. The new Chicago boasted a telephone system, electric streetcars, and steel-framed skyscrapers to the newcomers in the early 1870s. Chicago was even tried to be built over like the great European capitols, but in reality, Chicago has a unique personality of its own.
7. Foreign policy: global cities The cities of the 21st century will be the source of where our government and societal bases are. Cities are believed to be the next step in civilization and globalization. Huge cities all around the world will be maintaining certain cultures within themselves and will proceed to influence their culture in surrounding communities. Population growth all around the world has influenced foreign policy among the nations.
8. Foreign Policy continued: Global cities Cities are emerging with huge population growths from areas such as the Middle East and urbanized centers in China. In our new culture of globalization, cities will be allowing their countries to interact with one another freely. New policies in currencies have been established throughout the world to promote more spending and to expand globalization.
9. Foreign policy continued: suburbs Suburbs are also growing throughout the world, and they are growing especially within the United States. Huge cities will be the main areas of international commerce and negotiation. People will use all the technological advances that are available to them to connect themselves to other people and possible clients. Joel Kotkin believes that little suburbs will be emerging throughout America and will be creating history for us among their own communities.