utra questions

8/3/2019 UTRA Questions

1/13

WEEK ONE: SETTING THE THEORETICAL STAGE

Discussing the meanings of public and private in the realm of sociability,Weintraub illuminates the idea of the public as a place where private individualspaths cross often without common purpose.

Habermas condition for public interactions that they occur without coercion is one that contemporary social thinkers might find impossible to satisfy.Does the notion that individuals might be constantly coerced by structural factorspose a serious problem fo r Habermas idea of the public sphere, or is the absence of explicit and active coercion enough? A similar discussion can be had about thepublic spheres being open in principle to all citizens with regards to subtlepractices of exclusion.

What cont inuous threads did you find in Webers The City ? Don Martindalecalled it the closest weve come to a systematic theory of the city. Is the city that

Weber studies even the same type of thing as Simmels metropolis? If not, whats thedifference?

Webe r writes, Often the existence of a market rests upon the concessionsand guarantees of protection by a lord of [sic] prince (25). Habermas describes thearrangement preceding the bourgeois public sphere: Ongoing state activity(permanent administration, standing army) had its counterpart in the permanent relationships that had developed in the meantime with the stock market and thepress, through traffic of goods and news (400). Certainly, they are describingdifferent historical moments, but what generalities hold true in both Habermas andWebers descriptions? How might Webers work ground Habermas history inspatial practice?


2/13

WEEK TWO: HAUSSMANNIZATION AND THE NEW CITY

As he concludes The Political Economy of Public Space, David Harvey writes:It is the relational connectivity between public, quasi-public and private spaces whichcounts when it comes to politics in the public sphere . Is it a similar sort of connectivity

that counts when it comes to transforming a citys wa y of life in the sense that Clark discusses? For what aspects of urban experience might Harveys relational connectivity not count, or count less?

Harvey is perhaps disturbingly uncritical as he parrots Baudelaire and Zolas portrayals of women, even updating that portrayal by noting that women appreciated thetransformations bringing about a more controlled public sphere in New York. How doesgender play into the reading of the politics of public space or the moral judgments madeon practices of control?

Clark declares, rather imperiously, on page seven, In capitalist society, economic

representations are the matrix around which all others are organized. What does he seemto mean by economic representations? Often, materialist historians will tre at theeconomic as the only thing that isnt a representation.

Also in his introduction, Clark discusses flatness and, after discussing variousinterpretations, concludes, flatness in its heydey was these various meanings andvaluations; they were its substance, they were what it was seen as. How does histreatment of flatness relate to his treatment of Haussmannization?

Clark sees very different social worlds in, on the one hand, La Musique auxTuileries (plate V) and Le Ballon (65), and, on the other, Pont de lEurope (74) and Placede la Concorde (75). Do you buy it? Is one of the major differences simply how many

people are in each pair of paintings, or can we go along with Clark and say that there arecrowds in the earlier paintings because crowds were still meaningful as disorganizedsocial practice but there arent crowds in the later pair because social life had changed insuch a way as to be represented appropriately only as disconnected spectators?

Clark claims that the feeling of old Paris disappearing and new Paris springing upis best understood as a fantasy, yet he has spent much of his chapter describing thetransformations of this period. What exactly would he relegate to the realm of fantasy?

Clark and Harvey both argue that the remaking of space was about securing theEmpire by securing the well being of production and exchange. How does this picture of the states role compare to that described by Habermas in last weeks reading?

Discussing Haussmannization seems to include an obligatory clarification that theBarons motives were political, economic, military, and aesthetic. In modern projects of this scale, is it possible for the motives not to be so multifaceted that is, can we imaginea modern urban reshaping that ignores any of those categories?


3/13

WEEK THREE: PUBLIC LIFE IN THE MODERN CITY OF CONSUMPTION

Should the common perspective disseminated by the fait divers be thought of ascontrol? Does the fact that they are often largely fictional have any bearing on thematter? At what point, if any, does communication become brainwashing?

Ok, ok, brainwashing is too strong a word. The point is that people like Clark look back on history and see how people were controlled, or at least how their behaviorappears to have been determined b y forces connected to capitalists profit motive .Commercial media and capitalist propaganda might look the same in the archive.Does the question of popular culture just boil down to relativism and ideology?

Hahn and Clark both talk about the involvement of the state in regulating,respectively, boulevard advertising and popular entertainment. How does the statemediate between the public and the popular? In nineteenth-century Paris, the statewas both less democratic and more worried about being overthrown; does this

mean that the role of the state in Hahn and Clarks stories sheds little light on thecontemporary state, or are there still essential similarities?

Hahn mentions Eugne Atget , a photographer who away from the GrandBoulevards depicted the working class but without types and other pre-existingstructure and classification (141). Does the faithful representation of everyday lifeoutside of the bourgeoisie require a departure from the practice of renderingcoherent that characterizes the mass press? If theres a problem with the popularlydisseminated perspective, is it in the content (its the wrong perspective) or in theform (any legible and unified perspective is problematic)?

Schwartz sees popular culture as constructing the collective through a sense of shared citizenship, while Clark sees it as preventing collectivity by emphasizingstyle and superficial individual differentiation. Is there an actual tension betweenthese positions, or can they coexist with some clarification of definitions?

Clark parallels the rise of popular culture with a connected rise of anxieties about and conspicuousness of prostitution. What is in play in this connection for Clark?What sort of connection remains when his story is read alongside this weeks otheraccounts?


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WEEK FOUR: REPRESENTING MODERNITY IN BAUDELAIRE AND BENJAMIN

Is poetry as self-sufficient for Baudelaire as Lefebvre makes it out to be? At times (in Crowds for example), Baudelaire refers to the privileged position of the

poets experience, and the subjectivism underlying the prose poems shows littleconfidence that poetic experience can be adequately communicated andrepresented in poetry. If poetry is insufficient, what should we make of Benjaminsindictment of the Baudelairea n flneur as already seeking a buyer? Does the fact that Baudelaire was a commercial failure in his own time matter here?

Baudelaires theory of modern art provides a model that remains powerful inunderstanding contemporary artistic practice. Would we better understandcontemporary artistic production by joining Baudelaires aesthetic theory with asociology of the art worlds institutions of consumption and distribution, or is thisalready implicit within the Baudelairean doctrine of formal novelty?

In Paris Spleen, the public as a whole is often treated with a dismissivecertainty it is tasteless, untrustworthy, and cruel while individuals are frequentlynot what they seem. Do you agree with this judgment? In which poems, experiences,or literary techniques do these collide?

Despite Baudelaires ambivalence (and, frequently, disgust) towardsmodernity, our twentieth century observers make him the champion of it. Shouldwe understand this more in terms of the nature of modernity - a lesson about theattitudes pervading modern reflexivity and selfhood - or in terms of the nature of Marxist history, as a lesson about its tendency to collapse historical conditions andhistorical events into an indistinguishable unity?

How might the ideas of phantasmagoria and recurrence be connected?

Benjamin and Lefebvre stress the modern as the world where representationdisplaces all else. How does this appear in the prose poems? Can Baudelaire fairly besaid to accept or reject this aspect of modernity?

The prose poem The Rope is dedicated to Manet, the principle painter of Clarks book. How might Clarks ideas of how Manet treats class enter into a readingof The Rope? What can be said, with or without Clark, about the boy in The Ropeand the nature of class transformation?


5/13

WEEK 5: THE URBAN INDUSTRIAL ORDER

Le Corbusier, in "The Pack-Donkey's Way," claims that the city with only capillaries andno arteries is doomed to death. In what ways does Farrell argue the inverse? What is therelation of the city of capillaries to the city of arteries?

How can we compare Wirths sociological definition of the city and Le Corbusiersplan? In what ways is this destructively reductive to the work of each?

Farrells characters inhabit a different worl d than the academic settings of LeCorbusier and the Chicago School. What is there to be made of their different perspectives on institutions?

The legacies of Le Corbusier and the Chicago School have been invested, to varyingdegrees, with the power of the public, through their effects on planning, policy, andthe norms and standards of their disciplines. Does our study of them illuminate

consequences of the professionalization of public power?

Park motivates his work by mentioning the desire to read the newspaperintelligently, while Burgess motivates it by referring to institutions need forforecasting. What consequences do these different approaches seem to have foreach work?

Burgess puts social problems and best families in scare quotes, and W irth usesphrases like fairly objective and at least in our culture. What is the effect of theseways of hedging? Does the acknowledgment of the possibility of uncertaintymanifest itself more substantively in either mans work?

In Farrells Street Scene, the old man is denied the right to sit down and die inpublic. What are the suggestions with regard to the control of the public realm andthe dark contradictions or peculiarities of the publics concern for its members? Canthe man even be said to be a part of the public?

To the confused terms of the urban and the modern, we might add, based on thisweeks readings, the American. What does American come to mean in thesereadings?


6/13

WEEK 6: THE SOCIAL ORDER OF THE SLUM

How does the sphere of public morality that Suttles studies relate to the publicsphere outlined by Habermas? What are the differences in functions? Inmechanisms of organization?

Suttles describes the people who American society regards with suspicion andcaution as, typically, poor people from a low -status minority group unable tomanage very well their public relations (5). Whats worth noting in thisstatement? What is the function of framing the issue in passive, descriptive, orobjective terms? How does this relate to the notion of rigorous social scientificpractice? What does he mean by public relations?

What is the role of the interior of the home as Suttles sees it? How is it presented inMaud Martha, and how does that presentation change as Maud Martha ages?

Maud Marthas life is punctuated by a encounters with white institutions: indirectly,as she waits to see how her father fares in seeking to extend his mortgage; with herhusband, as they go to a white cinema; on her own, as she is employed as a whitefamilys housekeeper. How does the arc of Maud Marthas maturing relate with herencounters with white institutions? How does this relate to her changingconceptions and valuations of a race-class spectrum?

Though Suttles sees the slum as a place of moral otherness with a logic internal toitself, Maud Marthas obstacles among her peers seem largely to come from theirimporting Suttles public standards. Does Maud Martha herself become a victim of the same construction of Otherness implicit in Suttles analysis?

Discussing popular culture and the dissemination of common consumer values,Vanessa Schwartz described the consolidation of the public through urbanciti zenship. How is this supported or undermined in this weeks readings? Theapplicability of each discussion to the other is limited by the distance between thehistorical contexts; how should we qualify the interactions between representationsin these two settings? Can we make meaningful connections between them at all?

Suttles pivots to his field notes to relate more vulgar anecdotes. Why do you think he does this? What does this do to his presentation of his subjects?

To what extent does Louis Wirths s ociological definition of the city correspond tothe representations of city life in either Suttles or Brooks texts? In what settingsand for which people is it most accurate?


7/13

CITIES IN MIND PAPER 1

Weve encountered descriptions of pre -modern urban life (Weber and Clark on thequartier ), descriptions of modern urban life (Simmel and Wirth), and descriptions of the change from pre-modern to modern without specific focus on the urban

(Habermas). How, if it all, can we pull apart the modern and the urban? Consider thehistorical context and distinct disciplinary stances of the writers you draw from tokeep track of both their arguments and their arguments settings.

Visuality has a prominent role in accounts and theories of nineteenth century Paris.In what ways does visuality have a similar or different role in the twentieth centuryliterature, social science, and architectural work weve encountered? Consider textsfocusing on both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to demonstrate whateveraspects of break or continuity you find most compelling.

We have encountered representations of the public realm varying in both whats

being represented (boulevards, caf-concerts, scenes in early and mid-centuryChicago) and in the nature of the representations (historical distance, ideologicalposition, literary, scientific). Consider any two or three of these representations andrelate them to comment on the public realm and how it is represented.

The urban experience of self is addressed both by theorists and by literary writers.Comment on how that experience differs between settings or how the experience isthe object of contradictory representations. Feel free to use passages from the morerecent historical texts that themselves bring in literary works as evidence, though indoing so you should deal with both authors.


8/13

WEEK SEVEN: SUBURBANIZATION, METROPOLITANIZATION

Gans and Riesman seem a bit less confident about their work than earlier ChicagoSchool sociologists. Is there a real difference, though, or are Gans and Riesman just making obligatory gestures towards uncertainty and then pressing on? How is

confidence related to dogmatic method?

How does culture enter the sociological discussion in Gans and Riesman? In what ways do the discussions of culture lessen their separations from their objects of study?

Gans work is often taken as a strong argument against thinking of spatial conditionsas determining factors of social life, yet the discussion of Levittown in his first chapter shows that Levittown wasnt really that weird of a place. Would the story bedifferent if he had spent a few years in, say, Corbusiers tower cities? What are thekey differences between Levittown and the Corbusian city? Levittown and a housing

project?

In his recommendations in Levittown and America, Gans suggests that futuredevelopments should be varied in their unifying themes quasi -rural for people todo a little farming, small communities for people who want self -government. What do you think of these proposals? How do these compare to more recent gatedcommunities?

Riesman presents the additive principle proposing more as the default solution toa problem as characteristically American. A couple weeks ago we saw how theAmerican (as in the adjective or concept) was taken as the embodiment of themodern. How might we relate these concepts? What is the difference betweenRiesmans and Le Corbusiers concepts of the American?

Riesm an describes a dual economy, one half high -wage, professional/managerial,and suburban, the other half low-wage, industrial, and urban. If we take some of thecritiques of the suburbs that Gans rejects in Urbanism and Suburban as Ways of Life and apply them to the high-wage economy rather than the suburb, are theymore meaningful? More sound?

Gans notes the imaginative folklore that surrounds the suburbs. The work of histhat weve read seems to be motivated by an attempt to pull apart the suburbs as anobject in the mid-century cultural imaginary and the suburbs as a real place withreal traits. Is he missing the point? To what extent is suburbanization sort of likeHaussmannization (or even flatness) in Clarks history of nineteenth -centuryParis?


9/13

WEEK 8: NEW AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES ON CHANGED AMERICAN CITIES

Marshall Berman finds himself, despite his nostalgia, less enamored with hisold neighborhood than Jane Jacobs seems to be with hers. Toward the end of his

essay, he criticizes Jacobs as having a view of urban life that does not hold true inthe rest of the city. To what extent are Jane Jacobs recommendations simplyinstructions on creating the feel of a specific place (Greenwich Village)?

Jacobs clearly loves urban life, and yet sh e writes: Somehow when the fairbecame part of the city, it did not work like a fair (25). How might Jacobsdifferentiate between the city and the urban? How does this relate to theconception of the city in T.J. Clarks discussion of Haussmann and t he uniting of theurban mass into an organized totality?

Jacobs, like the Garden City disciples she criticizes, leaves out a key aspect of

Howards vision. For Howard, the land is the only eternal wealth, all technologicalwealth becoming eventually outdated, and so the creation of the Garden City is away of allowing the people to secure their most valuable asset. Might there be a wayto ensure that the people are not denied the land without using the principles of sorting out that Jacobs criticizes?

Discussing the assimilation of children via adult supervision of sidewalks,Jacobs claims that parents do this supervision in the course of carrying on their other pursuits, and yet she also claims This has nothing to do with income. Towhat extent is Jacobs vision limited by class?

Didion closes Many Mansions with reference to inadmissible questions of taste, and ultimately of class. How does class play into her experience of the twomansions? What does she suggest about the nature of the relationship between ademocratic state and issues of class?

How does the Caltrans Diamond Lane project relate to the Bronx Expresswayproject? Didion presents freeway driving as an essential part of the Los Angelesexperience; how does this complicate our notions of the experience of place?


10/13

WEEK 9: SPATIAL THEORY

Lefebvre connects capitalist space to the organization not only of socialforms in material existence but also to the form of representation, describing it as alogical space of units that are equivalent, interchangeable (233 -234). How does

this relate to Foucaults space of sites (which he declares to be contemporary but provides no history of)?

The problems of knowledge plaguing empiricism may not apply to thesetheorists, yet we certainly cant simply take their word as fact. What might beguiding principles for evaluating work at this level of abstraction?

Many of Lefebvres critiques could be supported by anecdotes and argumentsfrom Jane Jacobs. What would be their points of agreement or contention?

For Lefebvre, the city is the site of the State, and the centralization of

decision-making there is a key step in the colonization and homogenization of thesurrounding nation. Does this reading seem compelling in light of our history of theWestern city in the 120 years before Lefebvre?

Production implies a spatial and temporal ordering of the related operationscomposed and implemented by some abstracting intelligence. As Lefebvre notes theconcentration of decision-making and the spread of a homogenous order, might wethink of all of a nation- state as engaged in one big production? If the operationswithin this production involve multiple people, are the relations betweenoperations the same as the social relations of production? How might other socialrelations come into being?

Discuss the relationships among ideology, spatial order, and social relations.

The emergence of the dominance of vision appears again in Lefebvre. What role does vision serve in the dissemination of a homogenized ideology of special andsocial order? How does this role compare to Benjamins treatment of it as heprovides the history of the nineteenth-century as phantasmagoria?

In Reflections on the Politics of Space, Lefebvre claims, there is no theorywithout utop ia (178). Foucault presents utopia as a placeless place and describesthe utopia of the mirror. Taken together, how do these illuminate an idea of thenature of theory? Contrast this with Lefebvres assertion that positivism is theabsence of thought.

For Lefebvre and Foucault, spaces of difference are points of resistance, andyet earlier descriptions of modernity (Benjamin especially) pointed to the constant appearance of difference as the basis of the modern order. Whats the difference?


11/13

WEEK 10: EXPERIENCING THE POSTMODERN CITY

Harvey repeatedly uses the phrase sea change to frame his argument. The phrase is Shakespeares, coming from a song in The Tempest:

"Full fathom five thy father lies,Of his bones are coral made,Those are pearls that were his eyes,

Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-change,into something rich and strange,Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,Ding-dong.Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell."

How does Harvey see the relationship between modernity and postmodernity then?How does this compare to his assertion about 1848, the beginning of modernity?

Harvey asserts that postmodernism ought to be looked at as mimetic of thesocial, economic, and political practice in society, advocating Marxs theory of superstructure. However, that theory originally localizes ideological production to a

particular class, as when Marx connects the ruling ideas to the ruling class, not to societyas a whole. Is it a problem for Harvey to assert this connection with society when hisevidence comes largely from the cultural and intellectual avant-garde? Are theconnections he makes to daily life sufficient to justify the scope of his claims? Does aconsideration of Raban resolve or exacerbate these issues?

What are the differences between Baudelaires and Rabans subjectivism? Howare their encounters with those outside of their class different? What are the differences intheir self-criticisms?

How does Rabans Moroccan birdcage compare to Baudelaires rope (in TheRope)? What are the different attitudes of each author towards the objects, and whatsentiments or social realities are the objects supposed to represent?

As Raban presents patterns (structures) of taste and style, he shows how hisfellow urbanites identities are more like performances. On the other hand, the idea of thesoft city suggests urban experience as itself the product of individual agency, the citymade in the image of the self. Does he resolve the tension between these ideas? Howdoes postmodernism negotiate between subjectivity and style?

Benjamin writes: In the person of the flaneur , the intelligentsia becomesacquainted with the marketplace thi nking merely to look around, but in fact it isalready seeking a buyer. What does this mean for Raban, the freelance writer for whomSoft City is his first work? What does this mean for the intellectual and cultural avant-garde whom Harvey examines in his account of postmodernism?

Harvey writes: Architecture and urban design have therefore been presented withnew and more wide-ranging opportunities to diversify spatial form than in the immediate

postwar period (75 -76). In light of Gans insights in The Levittowners, should we expectthis range of architecture and urban design opportunities to matter?WEEK 11: POSTMODERN SPATIAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL PATTERNS


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Did the trends that David Harvey noted in Time -space compression and the postmodern condition remind you of Lefebvre? Which of his observations can be seenas more specific forecasts of processes that Lefebvre described at a high level of abstraction? Does this mean that Lefebvre was right, or is it simply in the nature of

difficult theoretical texts to be, like horoscopes or prophesies, understood in terms of whatever actually turns up?

Harvey compares postmodernism to Nietzsche, who in terms of intellectualhistory would be a modernist philosopher, asserting that the transformation is really oneof attitude (from tragedy to farce) rather than one of substance. Do we approach

postmodern theory with different assumptions of relevance than with 19 th century philosophy? Is the difference more one of historical distance, or between the connotationsof theory and philosophy?

Towards the end of his essay, Michael Dear notes that while postmodernism has

caught on in geography, it has not, really, in planning practice. The explanation, for him,is clientism. How does this reinforce or inform Harveys a rgument about economiccircumstance and intellectual change?

Simmels metropolis may be thought of as the spatial and social form of modernity. Ed Soja clearly hopes for his postmetropolis to be the spatial and social formof postmodernity. Is the concept of the postmetropolis useful? Soja develops it byidentifying individual processes that characterize it, but is there any way of saying whatisnt part of the postmetropolis? Is this lack of exclusive specificity a problem or is itmerely a necessary mani festation of postmodernisms rhetoric of inclusivity?

Sojas scenes from Los Angeles describe transformations jobless, isolatedsuburbs; gated communities; riots and police tensions that are not especially promisingfor public space. What can we say about the changes to public life implied by thetransformations he describes? Are these changes best understood by fitting them into thesocial and spatial changes described as postmodernism, or do we need modifications?

Katz is clearly a postmodernist, and yet she is not guilty of the political inactivityof which Harvey harshly accuses the movement. Is this because Harvey missedsomething, or because postmodern practice evolved in the decade between these texts?Either way: how?

In Katzs analysis, the process of glocalization where local spaces are remadein response to the global nature of capital is not a spatial or historical fact but iscomposed of its own history of actors and transgressions. Can we productively see Katzanalysis as a glocalization of sorts as well?

WEEK 12: CONTEMPORARY AND CONTINUOUS CONCERNS


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Howard describes the problem of the crowding of cities and draining of the

countryside in terms of attractions. As Gans stresses in The Levittowners , Levittown isnot the product of blind authoritarianism, but is made explicitly with the goal of leadingcitizens to choose to live in Levittown. Is The Levittowners useful for imagining

Howards vision in practice? What does the comparison suggest?

Howard describes his vision as more individualistic (fuller and freer opportunity[for members of society] to do and to produce what they will) and more socialistic(well - being of the community is safeguarded collective spirit is manifested by a wideextension of the area of municip al effort) (131). How does this compare to thecontemporary visions we read this week?

Howards modernism shows in the specificity and certainty he holds towards his plan, the notion of higher and better that it embodies. How does the transition frommodernism to postmodernism appear in the contrast between Howards plan and the

contemporary ones?If we look back on descriptions of the urban throughout the semester from

Simmels to Wirths to Lefebvres Howards chapter title Social Cities app ears paradoxical. The person who it most evokes is perhaps Jane Jacobs, who, as we know,was very critical of the notion of the garden city. Do Howard and Jacobs seem morecompatible than you expected? Where exactly do they part ways?

In Howards plan, the zones of country are the publics spaces, though they departfrom the conventional sense of public space. How does Howards public space satisfyAmins demand that People have to enter into public space as rightful citizens, sure of access to the means of life, communication, and progression (23)? Does it leave outother elements that Amin calls for?

Mitchells Against Program suggests that as crucial aspects of contemporarylife are increasingly found in digital space rather than in physical space, the realms inwhich freedom is possible or limited are doubled as well. How does this inform Harveysdetermined physicalization of class struggle and social injustice? Does each argumenthave a place where it is more appropriate, or do they always belong side by side?

Lefebvre identifies a tension between equilibrium and ephemerality as centralconcerns of social/spatial orders. To what extent do the recommendations read this week affirm that dichotomy, and to what extent do they sketch out a middle ground? Do youfind the progressive pragmatism of some readings to be nave or promising?

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