In Talmudic discourse, public domains and private domains are distinct legal entities, each with its own set of rules. The rabbis therefore grapple with how to define certain spaces that don’t neatly fit into either category, possessing characteristics of both types of domain. Union Square might well be the sort […]
Category Student Posts
Private ownership of public spaces has become an increasingly prominent phenomenon in NYC, although there are mixed feelings about its use. One instance I found which outlines one of the issues associated with it is the Occupy Wall Street protest. In an article outlining the Occupy Wall Street protest in […]
Union Square to me has always been a public space to me that has been seemingly inclusive and welcoming to the people of New York City. After reading Zukin’s work, I cannot see the famed space the same. Although nothing can take away its historic importance to the very fabric […]
In this weeks reading, “Union Square and the Paradox of Public Space,” Sharon Zukin writes quite a bit on the different groups that control public spaces like Union Square and similarly the WTC. She mentions that after 9/11, there was a dissonance in the steps that were to be taken […]
Sharon Zukin unlike other urban sociologists doesn’t focus on ethnographically analyzing communities, immigrants and settlement patterns, moreover she is concerned with the role of the state and targeting how urban space is produced deliberately from capital necessity. Similarly, to Richard Florida and the “Creative Class”, Zukin coined the term and concept […]
Max Rivlin-Nadler, an investigative journalist, writes an article discussing the effects Business Improvement Directs have on a community specifically the social groups they exclude and the small business they hurt. He explains the devastating loss the government took on the bases of not being able to meet public expectations in […]
Sharon Zukin, author of Naked City, was interviewed about her book (http://www.citsee.eu/interview/naked-city-authenticity-and-urban-citizenship-interview-sharon-zukin). In the interview she was asked about the term authenticity, specifically “What do you mean by ‘authenticity’ in this urban context?” She responds “I chose very deliberately to use the word ‘authenticity’ to talk about changes in New […]
I fear the day that parks, which are the epitome of public space, come to mean “safe” in the way that suburban shopping malls are viewed as safe – because of their sterility and exclusion of certain social classes. […]
Formation: Why and Where Volcanoes form when magma from the Earth’s upper mantle erupt outward, growing bigger with each eruption. This happens because of the Earth having tectonic plates, which converge or diverge at certain locations. We can compare this to New York’s real estate industry. Real estate in New […]
As I sat around the table with a group of college students, I was asked what I was majoring in. I responded that I was majoring in math education. Immediately I was asked why I would want to do a job that makes so little money? If I am good […]
The current symbiosis between American cities and American commerce, namely, the idea of a city as a “growth machine”, is severely disturbed. In his 1976 essay, sociologist, Harvey Molotch wrote, “The political and economic essence of virtually any given locality, in the present American context is growth. A common interest […]
In New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate, Agnotti discusses how the finance, insurance, and real estate industries greatly contributed to the landscape of New York City we see today and how FIRE affected community planning. Agnotti mentions how big FIRE players contributed to the dislocation of […]