“Behind the Gates:" By Mousumi Haider

For the book assignment, I decided to read the “Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America” by Setha Low. The Center theme of the book is that, searching for community. Another theme is of the good is, safety of children. Setha Low took long time to write this book. She was actually living in “Gate Community”, so she can be a member of gate community. To write this book, Setha Low was being ethnography. Ethnography is a qualitative research method often used in the social sciences, particularly in anthropology and in sociology. It is often employed gathering empirical data on human societies and cultures. For data collection of gate community, Setha Low participated in gate community for observation, interviews and questionnaires.
“Two electronically controlled gates block the entrance: one marked “residents” next to the guardhouse, and the other “visitors.” On the visitors side is a sign instructing drivers that the gates close automatically to allow the passage of only one car at a time.”(Page 27) This remained me a time, when I visited one of my father’s friend’s house. He lives in Long Island, NYC. When we arrived there, the security guard won’t let us go. We had to call my father’s friend and then the security guard let us go inside the gate. I thought what are these people scare off? What they have inside the gate to hide from other? It’s true that, most of the people want security in their daily lives. But does living in close gate make it secure?
My favorite part of the book is the chapter 5: “Protecting the Children and Safety for All.” Reading first couple of lines gave me a huge smile on my face. The little kid “Alexandra”, who also wanted to be interviewed. Anyhow, the main point of the chapter was that sometimes people are scare to let children out. Especially in Gate Community, the adults hardly let the children out even to play. People from Gate Community thinks outside of the gate are threats of crime, violence, kidnapping and strangers that scare the member of the community.
This book is related to our class because it talks about the community, people, environment and society. In our Urban class, we also try to figure out people and their society. At first, I didn’t want to read this book. I wanted to read “Sidewalk” but somehow I end up reading the “Behind the Gate”. Honestly, I enjoyed reading the book, it was really very interesting.

Activity 9, Matt Blank

In the search for Urban Blogs, a few stood out to me.

Before I even searched though, I thought about tProxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0

word itself, "blog". What a weird word. I suppose it comes from the word "log" but what is the "B" for? I looked for this information on the internet, and found that it's short for "Web log". Apparently "Wlog" and "Elog" don't have the same ring to it. Now that we put that behind us, my search for other urban blogs of interest.

The first one was http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/, a blog by the NY Times about business and the Economics of Everyday life. This is a fascinating topic to me because it is always relevant. No matter who you are, and what you do, economics are relevant to you.

Then I saw this site, http://www.nycbloggers.com/
This site has the ambitious job of organizing blogs in the city. It currently has over 6000 blogs attached to it. I tried to submit our blog but the site broke. Whoops!

The next one I went to is a friend of mine's blog, http://newyorknightsonline.com/
This blog focuses on the Business and Culture of New York Nightlife. The author recently published a book about the same topic.

This next one was not a blog about Urban life but had a topic about it which I felt deserved honorable mention.
http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/7790/Urban-Life-is-Bad-for-Brains
That is the specific link to the article.

Then I was drawn to this blog,
http://midwesternerinnyc.blogspot.com/
Because I felt it had an interesting outsiders perspective, but mostly because I saw the thing about Jimmy Fallon.

Activity 10 by Mousumi Haider

For activity 10, we were supposed to go for class field trip, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to join my class.  Therefore, I am inquiring about Environmental Justices. Environmental justice refers to an equitable spatial distribution of burdens and benefits to groups such as racial minorities, residents of economically disadvantaged area. To get more information about Environmental Justice, I called some Environmental Justice organization.
The first organization I contacted was “WEACT for Environmental Justice”. This organization has two offices. One office is located in Harlem, NY and another office is located in Bronx, NY. It was very hard for me to walk in the office, so I called them. I got the number form the website. http://www.weact.org/. Their contact numbers are also listed on their website. I talked to Evelyn Joseph, she is office manager. She said, right now the organization is working on West Harlem. They want to turn the abandoned 135th Street Marine Transfer in the Hudson River into a community. The next organization I called was CHEJ, Child Proofing Our Communities, Green Flag Schools. Their contact number is (703) 237-2249. http://www.chej.org/ I talked to “Kim” and she is membership Manager. She said, the main goal of the organization is to prevent harm in the community. The next organization I wanted to contact was “El Puente” http://www.nyceja.org. But I didn’t find a real person to talk to. Anyhow, El Puente is a community human rights institution that promotes leadership for peace and justice through the engagement of member in the arts, education, scientific research, wellness and environmental action.

Activity 10- Sharmaine Dais

For this activity I looked at an issue that is very pressing- Environmental Justice. According the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Environmental Justice is "as fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people--regardless of race, color, national origin or income-- with respect to development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." This is no doubt a very important issue, so I decided to investigate three Environmental Justice Organizations. The first one is Sustainable South Bronx (SSBX). SSBx "is a community organization dedicated to Environmental Justice solutions through innovative, economically sustainable projects that are informed by community needs" (http://ssbx.org/index.php?link=2#history). They identify their most pressing issue is with the industrialization of the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. The residents there do not have the same level of health and living conditions as other neighborhoods do. They have one of the most impoverished areas with a lack of jobs which effects all residents. The next organization I looked into was WE ACT. "WE ACT for Environmental Justice (West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc.) is a non-profit, community-based, environmental justice organization dedicated to building community power to fight environmental racism and improve environmental health, protection and policy in communities of color. WE ACT accomplishes this mission through community organizing, education and training, advocacy and research, and public policy development" (http://www.weact.org/Home/tabid/162/Default.aspx). The most important issue in that area is currently the Gentrification of 125th Street. Another issue is the "GO Green project." The last organization is New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYCEJA). They identified their main issue to be about how to effectively advocate in behave of resides and community organization and support. This subject of environmental justice is very important, especially if you live in the aforementioned communities. Hopefully this blog will spread awareness on this topic.

Activity 10

Activity 10
Carmen Lam

It has been a very long time since I went on a class field trip. Honestly, going on this class trip definitely bring back memories when I was in middle school. Taking the Staten Island ferry for the second time was a fun and relaxing experience, because it was a beautiful morning and I get to sit outside and feel the breeze. Once I got to Staten Island I met with the rest of the group members and we took a private bus tour with Doug to see the recreation of Freshkills park. I was very surprised to see that NYC is actually willing to support a recreation of Freshkills park in STATEN ISLAND, because I would never expect the city to invest in Staten Island landfill.
It was interesting to learn that New York City garbage is being transported/ dumped into other landfill locations.Staten Island waste is sent to DSNY's Staten Island Transfer station. That is where garbage is compacted and sealed into shipping containers and railed by a private contractor to a landfill in South Carolina. Also Bronx and Brooklyn garbage is railed to a landfill in Virginia. Last but not least, Manhattan garbage is trucked to a waste to energy plant in New Jersey. It was interesting to see that garbage is going through a cycle from place to place.I am very excited to see the recreation of Freshkills park in 30 years because, there is going to have many activities such as cross-country skiing, environmental education, Promenade and Barge Gardens, Bridle Trails, Multi-use paths, canoe and kayak launches. It is amazing to see a landfill that once was a dump and soon it will become largest park in New York City.

Activity 9

Activity 9
Carmen Lam

Today I was browsing around google and typed in the search box “urban life blogs”. A various of blogs popped up and I choose these five blogs First, http://www.urbanlifeblog.com/ provide a mix of real estate, housing, market analysis, and provide information and restaurants reviews. Second, http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyncom/category/civics-and-urban-life/, blogs about Brooklyn that brings hyper local news to brownstone Brooklyn.
Third,http://gailatlarge.com/blog/category/urban-life, takes us around the world and takes wonderful pictures and descriptions of her journey. Fourth, http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.addresszero.com/index.php?cat=1. writes about Brooklyn. The reason I choose these five blogs is because I feel like it relates to the topics of our class. By reading their blogs it makes me want to travel and explore other parts of the world. Its interesting to read about their trip and what they have learned and by sharing the pictures they have taken during the trip makes look more creative and unique.

Activity 10, Matt Blank

For activity 10, we got to go to Freshkills Park in Staten Island.

Admittedly, at first I was not very happy about having to make time to go to a park in Staten Island. It'd been years since I was on Staten Island, let alone the ferry. Still, I signed up for the second tour, got to the Ferry Terminal and met up with another student. We braved the Ferry together. I remain very impressed with the gentleman who had so much gel in his hair that his hair did not move when he was on the bow of the boat.

When we arrived on Staten Island, we met our tour guide, who was awesome. We all gathered and met up and drove to the Park. On the way, we learned more about the park. In case you don't know, I'll give you the quick update:
For years NYC shipped all it's garbage to a landfill in Staten Island. Everyone except Robert Moses hated it, especially the people who lived near it. The garbage is literally piled 200 feet high in some places. Then they decided to capping the landfills and plant a park on top of it.
So now that you know what it is, let me first tell you that it is incredible. It was inspiring to think about how effectively and creatively all that trash was dealt with. The park itself is gorgeous and I highly recommend going. They even put a system in place to siphon out the methane from the landfill gasses to heat houses in Staten Island.

While the site won't ever be what it was, it is a very green way of dealing with the garbage we spent years accumulating there.

Sidewalk

Carmen Lam
Sidewalk

The book “Sidewalk” by Mitchell Duneier a white Jewish man that earned his Ph.D and also a sociology professor goes into the streets of New York City and try to interact with the African American street vendors personally, instead of just relying on interviews. Entering the streets of Sixth avenue, Greenwich avenue, west eighth street, and waverly place where you can find some of the street vendors. Most of the interactions between the pedestrians and the street vendor’s show signs of social solidarity, because not many pedestrians would try to engage a conversation or get to know the street vendors compared to interacting with an employee in a franchise store.
The main theme of this book is discussing about the topics on race and social status. There are many common stereotypes that I have heard about people living on the sidewalks. Most people will automatically form stereotypes like a person living on the streets is a rapist, drug users, mentally crazy, etc. This book reveals why street vendors are on the streets and what brought them onto the streets.
Most of the street vendors were from jail, drug addicts, alcoholics, homeless, etc. By starting their business as a street vendor they are earning a decent living and importantly staying away from drugs and jail time. It is interesting to see that street vendors are willing to help each other out, because the purpose of being on the streets is trying to make a living and staying out of trouble. Most of the street vendors live on the sidewalks, subways, or any nearby blocks. According to Duneier, the blocks are a place and which various survival elements can be networked together making a particularly good subsistence habitat for the street entrepreneur (162).
There are two basic reasons that street vendor choose to sleep on the sidewalks. First, anyone will sleep on the streets as a function of the complementarity of the habitat elements such as food, shelter, and an opportunity to make a living by coming together in one place. Second, anyone person may sleep on the streets because his friends are there watching tables, makes the habitat a place where he feels safe and comfortable. Street vendors uses the sidewalks as a shelter, making a living , etc. Pedestrian should not automatically assume that people living on the streets are drug dealers or drug users.
The connections that I can draw from this book to the topics we have discussed in class is about Jane Jacobs on how to be a “public character” and the idea that more people on the streets makes the street more safer, because more eyes are on the streets.“ Jacobs argument, that public characters who in her analysis are respectable figures generate a sense of predictability by acting as eyes and this generate social order by creating a set of cultural meanings and expectations that “someone cares” (158)”.
This book was very interesting in my opinion, because instead stating the obvious that the street vendors are on the streets to make a living. But to think and look at street vendors having the ability to start a drug free life and trying to survive by purchasing old products to resell instead of taking the illegal path as either taking drugs or selling drugs. From reading this book I learned that most street vendor experienced a difficult lifetime and importantly to see that they did not lose their dignity and still try to either pursue their dreams or just live day by day happily.

Activity 9: Look For Urban by Mousumi Haider

For Activity number 9, we were told to look up other blogs about Urban Life. As I was typing “Urban Life Blogs” in google search, I wonder how many blogs I will find. To my surprise, there were many blogs about urban life. I guess, people in city are interested about urban life. The first blog I read was at http://urbangiraffe.com/. The blog is about Life, The Universe, and Wordpress development. I like the blog as it was divided by categories. Mostly, I like it because the blog talk about Wordpress. This blog actually teach you technical stuff about wordpress. The second blog that I read was at http://thisurbanlife.blogspot.com/. This blog was mostly picture and drawing. When I saw the photograph on the blog, I was amazed by it. I always wanted to take photography classes. This blog was one that was written by people in Philadelphia, PA. The next blog I looked at was http://blog.urbangrace.com/. I am not sure if this part of the urban life or not. This blog is by Erika and her blogs about her design business, Urban Grace Interiors. I really like this blog. In this blog, it gives idea about how to decorate the home. There is one entry about mother’s day, if you want help to pick a gift for your mother. The blog is her daily rambling. Looking at her blog, I felt like to start my own blog. My forth blog was at http://www.mynonurbanlife.com/. Reading the name of the blog caught my attention. We are looking for our urban life blog but this blog is about nonurban life. I thought, it will be interesting to compare. The blog is written by CJ. On April 20th, he posted a blog name “Sidewall Blowout Spectacular!”. While reading the entry, I was like, hey! That what I was doing when I had to go places for our urban class. He was looking at the people, what they are doing and observing flowers by the garden. Didn’t we do that also? Although, the name of the blog is “Mynonurbanlife”, I felt this is so urban life. The next and last blog I looked at http://undressingher.com./. This blog is about urban sexuality. Blogging about sexual experience, I thought it is very interesting. Everyone can blog about their daily life, but blogging about sexual experiences need courage.
Before reading these blogs, I never thought about writing a blog. While reading these, I felt like starting my blog. This blogs are very interesting and at time very helpful to other in some way. These blogs are just thoughts about the people who want to share their experiences.

Activity 8.2 by Mousumi Haider

If you want to talk about urban life in New York City, we have to talk about Central Park. Central park is an urban park of Manhattan in New York City. Millions of people visits Central park each day. This park is the most visited city park in United State. Group number 1 took group number to Central park for our group tour.
The central park is a public place. Anyone can walk in the park, people run in Central Park, play games, and other activities. Whyte mention about the relationship between people and street. People get happy just by seeing the park from the street. Musicians and other acts tend to set up outside of these smaller urban parks. Group number 1 took us around the Southern part of the Central park. We walked around The Mall. The Mall part of the park is located end of the southern. It is also known as Literary Walk that is populated with a series of sculptures. While walking around the Mall area, we passed sculpture of Victor Herbert, Christopher Columbus. It was amazing walk around the Central Park. After that we walked around the area where people ice state in winter. It calls the Rink. When we went there, the ice was melting because it’s almost summer time.
We also walked by the children zoo. While we didn’t go inside but just walked pass by it. As we were walking about in Central Park, we saw a movie shooting. We were trying to have a look if we knew anyone or not. Our bad luck, we just had to walk pass by. The Central Park has been appearance in many movies and television shows in past. I really enjoyed the walk in Central Park. I have been there before, but walking around for class is different.

Activity 8.1 by Mousumi Haider

Group number 2, which is us, took group number 1 to Roosevelt Island. From our group, Matt was our tour guy. He knew lot of things and background history about Roosevelt Island. The Roosevelt Island lies between the island of Manhattan to west and the borough of Queens to east. In 1818m the New York City purchases the island. The island is part of the Borough of Manhattan and New York County.

While walking around the Roosevelt Island, we passed by the Chapel of the good Shepherd. The Chapel of the Good Shepherd is an historic church located at 543 main St. on Roosevelt Island. In the beginning it was an Episcopal chapel, but right now it is the Good Shepherd Community Ecumenical Center. It is very beautiful building. Later, I look it up in google and found out that, it was designed by architect Frederick Clarke Withers.

The transportation in Roosevelt Island is awesome. There is no regular bus is Roosevelt Island but the residences use the Red bus in Roosevelt Island, which call shuttle bus service. It only cost 25 cents (10 cents for senior. I thought that was very cool. The red buses picks you up from front of the F train station and take the passenger to their destination (apartments). Talking about transportation in Roosevelt Island, I should say about the Tramway Car. From F train station of Roosevelt Island, people can take Tramway Car to 59th Street & Second Avenue Station using the regular metro card.

Roosevelt Island is short of both public place and private place. It is a public place because; anyone can go there and sit around the river as long as you want. You can play music, eat, run, play, etc. Roosevelt Island is also a private place because of the apartments. When we walked around the apartment building, there was a sign “Private property”. So, I am guessing around the residential areas are private. Those places are only for the people who live there.

I loved Roosevelt Island. I go there, every chance I get but ever knew the history behind it. It was awesome tour by Matt.

Hidden Dimensions-Sharmaine Dais

For this assignment I decided to read and review the book The Hidden Dimension by Edward Hall. "The central theme of the book is social and personal space and man's perception of it" (Hall 1). The book discusses how humans use space according to time and place.
In the second chapter of the book, Hall talks about the distance regulation in animals. He says "by restricting our observations to the way animals handle space, it is possible to learn an amazing amount that is translatable to human terms (Hall 7). When it comes to freedom, Humans feel that animals are free versus humans who are imprisoned by society.
Hall also talks about the differences between eastern and western cultures. In Japanese culture, centralized spaces are positive versus in western culture it is negative (Hall 140). In Japanese culture, the fireplace (hibachi) is in the center of the room and all the family members herd together there. In western culture being in the middle or in the spot light have negative connotations. Another example of this difference is with housing. In Japanese culture walls are semi fixed. To westerners they are confinements and fixed. Japanese people often center their furniture while westerners do not. This relates to other things we have read about space and what is concerned crowding.
When it comes to the theme of public versus private spheres and behaviors, the Arab world is used to depict this. Hall talks about his experience sitting in a hotel lobby on pages 144 and 145. He says that "I seated myself in a solitary chair outside the normal stream of traffic. In such a setting most Americans follow a rule...as soon as a person stops or is seated in a public space, there balloons around him a small sphere of privacy which is considered inviolate (Hall 145). Hall explains that after he sat down, a man of Arab descent sat right next to him, although it was not crowded, which made him feel extremely uncomfortable. This shows the difference that people have when in comes to privacy. How can you expect privacy in a public setting. This was a really interesting point that Hall made.
I think the way that Hall presented his arguments, were very effective. It was a very easy read (don't be fooled by the boring look) and actually the book turned out to be very interesting.

Activity 9-Sharmaine Dais

For this Activity, I decided to look up some other blogs about Urban Life and put out the word about our blog. I "googled" "Urban Life Blogs" and what I found where a wide variety of blogs, which really surprised me. The first blog I read was at http://thisurbanlife.blogspot.com. This blog was one that was written by people in Philadelphia, PA. The blog had mostly pictures about art and drawings. The last blog posted, the author said that he would be on a trip to Guatemala so that there would not be any posts for awhile. The blog was very different. The second blog I looked at was at http://www.urbanlifeblog.com. This blog takes is written by Gene Urban and Ron Urban in Phoenix, Arizona. This blog was very different from the one I write. The blog was about real estate, housing, market analysis, news& events, and restaurant reviews. The third blog I read was http://urbanlife-firstchurch. blogspot.com. The blog was written by Kathryn Ransdell from Dallas, Texas. This is a religious blog. The last post was September 3,2008 because they moved to http://urbanlifeonline.com. The fourth blog I saw was at http://undressingher.com. The blog is about urban sexually. They have articles about unwanted pregnancy, "baby mama drama," Good sex, and "sextexting." The last blog I saw was at www.flawlesshustle.com. This blog was about hip-hop culture, videos, arts, fashion, technology, news, interviews, and new music. These blogs were very different from the one I write. Their themes are very different also. They are more of a "social networking" type of blog, meaning that the stories on the blog do not use citation. They are just thoughts that people want to talk about. Nevertheless, it was very interesting to read these blogs.