Those of you who know me know that I am a Psychology major, so naturally I enjoyed the beginning of Root Shock. Mental health is something that I think should be taken just as seriously as physical health, and it certainly is nice to read about it related to public health as a whole. While the mental health aspect of the reading is something that I am familiar with, I am not as directly familiar with root shock. Fortunately, I (or any of my loved ones) have never been uprooted or forced to leave home. However like any other traumatic event, I could only imagine how incredibly difficult it must be.

With that being said, I couldn’t help but think of the victims of Hurricane Sandy as I read. After the storm, my cheerleading team went to Gerritsen Beach to help out and I can’t even begin to describe what I saw. There were boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations, memories, pictures – you name it – lined up on street corners waiting to be picked up by the garbage trucks. As we walked up and down the blocks, I distinctly remember asking one woman if there was anything we could do for her. She turned around, shook her head, and replied with a heavy heart, “We can’t stay here.” That was the moment that I truly realized how horrible the situation was for them – both physically and emotionally.

When a person hears about home uplifting, he/she would be inclined to think of the financial burdens and the troubles the house-owner would have to go to purchase a new house. Nobody would really think about the emotional trauma uprooting causes these house-owners. For many people who have been uprooted, the house they have been staying was much more than a house: it was a family heirloom that was handed over from generation to generation. This emotional trauma leads to an unhealthy mental state, which will adversely affect public health. This book discusses the deleterious repercussions of uprooting houses and warns that it is high time “root shock” comes to a halt.

When I hear the term public health, I think of diseases, prevention of sickness, and health of the public. And that’s the trend that we saw while reading The Ghost Map. But apparently it is not only physical health that must be factored in to this field. It is deeper than that. Public health is not only about physical health, but it is also about mental health. As we see in the book, there are plenty of examples of root shock, but it never occurred to me until this book that public health also encompasses the mental health and the mental well-being of the public.

My only question now is, how do public health officials accommodate for mental health issues?

When learning about what root shock is, I thought it was interesting how “the restored geography is not enough to repair the many injuries to the mazeway” (14).  Then I thought about how attached I was to things when I was little.  When my parents threw out our old microwave and replaced it with a new one, and when they replaced our windows, I was really upset and I didn’t know what to do with myself.  I was probably overreacting, but I can imagine that that’s how the people who experienced root shock must have felt.  I didn’t think it would be such a big deal when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, but then I thought about how upset I was when the sunflowers I grew got too big and then disappeared one day.  I felt betrayed when I found out my mother gave them away and then they were eaten.

I thought it was interesting how poorer, industrial neighborhoods occupied the center of the cities, while the wealthier, more residential neighborhoods.  It reminded me of the chapters of Nancy Foner’s book I had to read in Seminar 2 about how people of every race were trying to follow the White people, in terms of living space.  Whites, on the other hand, were trying to move away from everyone else, and everyone was trying to move away from the Blacks.  This also reminded me of the articles I had to read about how Prospect Park was divided.  The article said that on the pretty west side of the park, there are mostly American-born, white people, and half of them own their own homes.   Most people had earned at least a bachelor’s degree, and more than half of them make more than $60,000 a year. On the east side, nearly half of them were born outside of the United States and make under $30,000 a year.

When reading the first three chapters, I immediately thought of the term “root shock” as a form of gentrification of a wider scale. I remember taking a road trip with my parents back to Cincinnati, Ohio in order to see our old neighbors and friends. I was surprised to see that many of them moved away, but when I visited my godmother, I was told that it was because the mall nearby closed down its most important stores. Macys, JC Penny, and the theater section of the mall closed and what remained was an empty “For Rent” sign at their former locations within the mall. I also realized that the elementary school I attended closed because of depopulation and a newer school was built in the more populated area in the county where I used to live.

It is also a little important to look at the four major options that Mindy Fullilove brings up on page 65 on what American cities could do to open up housing for blacks. As a believer of racial integration, my idealistic side supports her first idea, allowing open housing. However, if such an event occurs, it doesn’t fix the underlying problem of economic inequality. If open housing were to exist in all communities, a diverse gentrified population would form, followed by an equally diverse population of a lower class taking hold in a community. While I do agree with the advantages and disadvantages for her second option, allowing wealthier whites to live in suburbs, I ultimately disagree with the option because if every wealthy individual leaves an area, that area filled with economically and socially disadvantaged individuals would be labeled with a stigma and will eventually become a slum. For the third option of building housing projects in existing black communities, it varies depending on the community that the housing project is built in. If the community was thriving and there was some sort of life, it could be done. However, building a housing project in a dangerous area would not be the best idea. Finally, for the fourth option, leaving everything the way it is, I fully support her idea that it is disastrous because an increasing population without increased housing would eventually push many individuals into homelessness.

The beginning chapters of Root Shock were in a sense very revealing. The author opened the novel by relating her, in a sense, epiphany of the term root shock. Dr. Fullilove goes on to discuss the effects of urban sprawl and urban renewal. She mainly focuses on root shock, and cites Ebbets Field as an example of root- shock. Afterwards, she focuses on discussing the effects of root- shock in areas like Paris during the Haussman era, and in the United States during the McCarthy era.

I really never thought about urban renewal and sprawl in the terms Dr. Fullilove analysis presented them to be. One can’t help but associate urbanization with progress and development. At the same time, you don’t usually think about all the destruction urbanization can cause. I mean for the buildings to be built, other ones had to be destroyed. Concurrently, many people’s lives were ruined and changed forever. In a sense, the first few chapters really opened my eyes to the whole scope of urbanization. It can really be viewed as a double- edged sword. You can draw a parallel to the manifest destiny. One associates the manifest destiny with America’s prosperity and development, at the same time it caused the destruction of Indian reservations.

I wanted to ask if you think that urban renewal brings more harm than good (vice-versa)?