In the article, “Urban landscapes as public history,” Dolores Hayden proposes different perspectives on gender and race to broaden the practice of public history. Hayden outlines the elements of social history of urban space to connect people’s lives and livelihoods to the urban landscape as it changes over time. She then explains how communities and professionals can tap the power of historic urban landscapes to nurture public memory. She believes that teaching historians, artists, architects and planners to work together with the people and communities who occupy certain places is key to recover aspects of public memory, specifically those involving women and ethnic minorities. This provides a sense of shared authority among those that have political power to preserve urban landscapes. I agree with Hayden that the construction of community-based public history should be with the focus of the place/location. There needs to be emphasis on recognizing the place of African Americans, women, and immigrants in building and contributing to the city’s political and economic issues.
Location is key to determine not just the market value of a home, but also plays an important factor that determines the good life and many people’s access to it in the metropolitan. In short, place and neighborhood matters. Access to decent housing, safe neighborhoods, good schools, and other benefits is largely influenced by the community in which one resides in. Individual initiative, intelligence, and experience are obviously important, but understanding the opportunity structure in the United States today requires connecting it to individual characteristics and location. Kubrin and Squire in the article, “Privileged places” explain how race and location structure urban areas, communities, and policies. They believe that “privilege cannot be understood outside the context of place.” They believe a central feature of place that can change the opportunity structure of urban communities is the role of race. Racial composition of neighborhoods has long been at the center of public policy and private practice in the creation and destruction of communities and in determining access to the elements of the “good life.” I agree with the author’s viewpoints that place and race continue to be the defining characteristics of the opportunity structure in metropolitan areas. This eventually leads to people of the same race and of the same financial status to reside in similar neighborhoods, often leading to segregation. Many associate race, ethnicity, and economic background to where one lives, often this leads to rejection for a job or even loan for housing. Disentangling the impact of these two forces is difficult, but where one lives and one’s racial background are both social issues that significantly shape the privileges and opportunities that other people may enjoy. Both articles connect with our class discussion about the major problems such as social inequality and economic inequality and the roots of these problems in which each problem leads to the other.
Questions: How can we address this problem in which race and the location one resides in is not what shapes the different opportunities available? Is there a possible alternative approach in which people can have the same opportunities as other people regardless of the location they reside in?
