Author Archives: David Mandil

Critique of Michael Katz’s “What is an American City?”

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Personally, I did not like the writing of Katz regarding “What is an American City?” for at least three reasons. These reasons are his credibility, his style of writing and the topic of which he was discussing. The last reason might seem a little unfair but that’s the honest truth.

 

The first problem I had with this reading by Katz is his credibility as a writer. Now I do not doubt his credentials or anything like that, truthfully I don’t care if he has a PhD or something like that because you don’t need a degree to be intelligent. However, I doubt whether or not I can believe what he’s writing as a valid opinion. The reason for this is because in the very first paragraph he straight out praises Jane Jacobs to know end. He goes out on a limb to say she deserves to be “patron saint of Urban Studies”. This to me implies that he thinks way too much of her work to in my opinion to present us with a fair explanation of what an American city is.

 

The second big problem I had with this reading is his writing style. After he claimed that Jacobs deserves to be crowned patron saint of urban studies he goes on to talk about how much she appreciates Jacobs’s work. However, I feel it would’ve been more effective to write away talk about Jacobs’s work instead of your own personal opinions. In other words I feel that as Katz was writing this he was doing it in a way, which included himself far too much. I feel like his writing would’ve been better had he not brought himself into the discussion too much and it would’ve been better if he distanced himself a bit.

 

Lastly, is the topic for which he was discussing. This is an unfair thing to say because in a way it’s kind of hypocritical to be calling him out on being biased in his writing when I’m being biased by saying I didn’t like his work when in fact it was just the topic that I didn’t like. The topic of urbanism per se, or defining a city is rather boring to me and I feel like as I was reading it I just kind of trudged through it barely able to absorb most of it. So, I feel that although it might be a bit bias I didn’t like the reading just because the topic seemed rather boring to me to an extent.

 

Finally, although it might be a little hypocritical on my part for being biased I have to say that I just didn’t like the reading too much. Mainly I didn’t like the reading because I wasn’t sure if he was so believable because of his interest in Jacobs and because of his writing style where he included himself too much in the writing. So, that being said if it was another topic I might’ve been able to get passed my initial problems with the reading, I feel the only reason I was such a critic is because I didn’t like the topic he was writing about.

Here is New York, response to White

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I’m going to start off by saying that I don’t usually completely agree or disagree with something. However, in the case of ‘Here is New York’ I was able to agree with most of what White said. There were five main points in the writing that I agreed with and they are the division of New York, the analogy of New York as a poem, calling New york a city within a city, the difficulty of how New York functions and the fact that it was called the capital of the world.

The first thing mentioned that I agree with is the division of New York amongst the different kind of ‘New Yorkers’. But, I wouldn’t exactly use the same words that were used in the passage. The passage said, “There are roughly three New Yorks.” (Page 25) Rather, I would’ve said that there are three different perspectives by which New York is seen in the eyes of its inhabitants. I agree with the way he describes the distinctions though, that there is the native who basically grew up with New York so they feel it will be omnipresent. Then there is the commuter who was described as locust which is a good metaphor because they use the resources of the city and leave. Lastly, the third type of New Yorker is one that is described of coming as if out of a greater calling or following their heart and these descriptions although sounded a little cliche really fit the stereotype of New York.

One other part of the passage which really stuck out to me was on page 31 where it pretty much said that it is a wonder that New York functions at all. The example given by the passage was that, “Every time the residents brush their teeth millions of gallons of water must be drawn from the Catskills and the hills of Westchester.” I feel the reason this stuck out to me so much is because I don’t think I ever truly thought about how much water is being used in one moment at New York and it was astounding to me to actually picture millions of people trying to draw water all at the same time. When I actually pictured it I realized the truth behind the passage and how difficult it actually it is for the city to function.

Furthermore I agree with the part of the passage that called New York a city within a city and neighborhoods within neighborhoods. In fact I feel like this also ties into what was mentioned earlier about New York being a type of poem where life is compressed into one small Island. Back to the neighborhood point however, although life in New York is not like life in rural areas where one speaks to their neighbors in an ‘over the fence’ type manner neighbors are different where the whole building is your neighbor and even the people you go see on your way to work also become your neighbors. The example given in the passage was his friend moved two blocks away from her “old neighborhood” (two blocks away) and her grocer was happy she still went to that grocery shop. Similarly a friendly neighbor would be happy to their old neighbor who had just moved away.

Lastly, my favorite point brought up in the passage was how New York is on way of “becoming the capital of the world”. I don’t just agree to this statement because I’m from New York. I also agree because of the attributes New York has. One important attribute New York has is the money. New York is a city where a lot of money is handled at all times of the day given places like Wall Street/the New York Stock Exchange. Furthermore, another way New York is becoming capital of the world is because of the reason given in the passage, in other words the UN. New York hosts the United Nations which hosts diplomats from all if not most of the countries in the world, which shows it has significance in the Global scale and not just the United States.

So, although I don’t always fully agree with passages, in this case I truly have to say that I agree with most of the points in the passage and it was very well written and presented.