Inside America: To Do

Introduction

I posed a challenging reflective essay for Part I of Inside America but indicated that I would work with you on it in class. Here it is.

To orient ourselves, consider two elements explained in the introductory chapter of Community and the Politics of Place by Daniel Kemmis, both from eminent German philosophers, and a third I referenced in our first class:

Hannah Arendt makes us sensitive to those things we have in common, the classical Roman res publicum. She argues that without a table, or common terrain to bond us together, our dialog becomes a weird, disembodied séance. The common ground of territory thus unites us and permits us to share the same concrete reference.
Georg Hegel's insight into America as a civil society: only when the frontier is closed and escape into a new land precluded can America be transformed into a civil society. Hegel, one not known to shy away from generalization, indicated that until that point, America's role in shaping world history could not be understood.
Martin Heidegger deconstructed the Platonistic foundations of Western thought, that transcendent ideas are the objects of true knowledge. Instead, he grounded his philosophy firmly on Being itself as a concrete presence. By reconstructing our specific worlds around objective common ground, which he called regions, we might overcome the vague subjectivism that confuses and obfuscates.

The common theme asks us to refrain from projecting our abstract notions upon the concrete world, or regions, until we have discovered the territory itself, thus giving primacy to the concrete world and not our potentially disembodied impressions. We will move to such a context.

The French geographer Jean Gottman invented the term Megalopolis to depict the sprawling conurbation between Boston and Washington. This varied terrain contains many Edge Cities as well as pockets of inner-city joblessness such as Newark and the South Bronx. The Garreau and the Wilson articles provide relevant contrasts --- think about these differences. Put the concentric zone maps provided from Mike Davis's The Ecology of Fear into that context.

Next, turn to Living With the Future in Mind: The 1999 Sustainable State Project Report by New Jersey Future. Notice the complete absence of a map of New Jersey or any other concrete depiction. The varied topics claim to be indicators of desirable, meaning sustainable and just, abstract systems. Presumably the boundaries of the system are defined by being within the state of New Jersey.

Inside America:
Toward Sustainability

IA Home, Syllabus, Schedule, Bulletin Board

Introduction

Sustaining Megalopolis

Inside America: Toward Sustainability

IA Home, Syllabus, Schedule, Bulletin Board

Introduction

Sustaining Megalopolis

Inside America:
Toward Sustainability