Marketplace Madness
On a Friday afternoon I traveled with two others from my English class to a rather ordinary patch of farmland next to Highway 101 and adjacent to the Promenade. From out of the car window we looked at a seemingly endless field of cabbages, bordered at least an acre thick with black dirt. It looked strange that the busy Promenade abruptly ended at this sea of dirt. To the left we could see cars streaking by on the highway. The field had a tilled appearance, yet it looked as if nobody had been working on it for a while. Weeds grew sporadically on the black dirt. The sight of it told of half hearted farming efforts and neglect. We decided that one pass of this field would yield all that it had to give visually. However, the controversy surrounding it takes much research to understand. This field is the proposed site of the San Luis Marketplace, a shopping center bigger than any single building project in the history of San Luis Obispo.
Spurred on by curiosity, I researched the field in the hopes that I could learn more about it than what I saw at first glance. The field contains Salinas Soils, the most productive kind of soil found in the county. Salinas Soils are alluvial, containing nutrients and minerals washed down from the hillsides by rainwater. The fertility of the soil makes it a very productive field for growing, yielding crops many times a year. The dark black color of the soil indicates how fertile it is. This made me think of something that my girlfriend’s mom said. She works at the El Dorado County Agricultural Department, and she came down here a few weeks ago. When she passed by the Dalidio field she exclaimed “Wow! Look how black the dirt is!”
The owner of the property, a farmer named Ernie Dalidio, struck a deal in 1992 with developer Bill Bird to build a forty-acre shopping centre on the property. Proponents of the marketplace argue that the shopping centre will generate an enormous amount of sales tax that the city can use to support the community.
The tone of Whitewashed Adobe delivers an ethnic and cultural history of Los Angeles. The author, William Deverell, indicates “Los Angeles has been the city of the future for a long time.” The book takes a revealing and harsh look at prejudice, political power and control in the early vision of 19th century Los Angeles and its surrounding communities. Deverell’s main interest is the economically, culturally and politically powerful Anglos and their view of ethnicity and race that enabled them to distance themselves from the Mexican people. Whitewashed Adobe’s six chapters illuminate how these men “appropriated, absorbed, and occasionally obliterated” Mexican sites and history in going forth with their vision for Los Angeles.
A journal article’s goal is to inform the reader of a subject, but it also attempts to conjure a response or thought of any kind. “Housing, Baseball, and Creeping Socialism The Battle of Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles, 1949-1959” by Thomas S. Hines causes a reaction from the start by failing to include an abstract to aid the reader. Had I not had a background in Chavez Ravine, this would be a crucial negligence. Once the essay begins, Hines delves straight into Chavez Ravine, the architects behind the housing project there, and the socialist controversy that doomed the project, provoking a number of responses from me ranging from frustration to sympathy.
Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA is the TED Talk video selected for this reaction paper and the talk tells us how one man was resourceful enough to take what he called "home of the drive-thru and the drive-by" and a "food desert" and build food gardens for all to share and be changed by. On stage, Ron Finley is clearly a man with a sense of humor and knack for keeping his message real. For example, when city planners attempted to rebrand South Central Los Angeles to South Los Angeles, he simply went through his slides with photos of the neighborhood again, calling it South Los Angeles with liquor stores, fast food, and vacant lots. A great ice breaker for the audience that let us know that he knew that more than a simple name change was needed to fix what’s wrong with his food desert.
Chavez Ravine was a self-sufficient and tight-knit community, a rare example of small town life within a large urban metropolis, but no matter how much the inhabitants loved thei...
Historically, Chicago has been and always will be a city of change both industrially and agriculturally to the metropolis we know and revere today with skyscrapers and culture abound. In order for the city to become the industrial hub, changes were made to the natural landscapes to accommodate business and residency. Steel became the staple good, and green spaces were demolished during the expansion of industry in the Calumet region by the masses in the creation of steel for railroad tracks and structural steel for commercial buildings. For geographical ambiance, The Calumet region of Chicago is consisted of the following neighborhoods: Burnside, Calumet Heights, East Side, Hegewisch, and Pullman, South Chicago, and South Deering. In this essay, I focus primarily on Pullman. It was unknown, or unsought of rather, how these implications would lead to issues of both economic and environmental injustice.
Enticingly, the Spanish homesteaders came to this land with a passionate objective to develop the land and extract its natural resources for their profit. To this day, the Spanish's activities on this land has brought success and has propagated California to be the leading role in the advancement of new technologies and the creation of motion pictures. Notwithstanding of having this recognition, people seldom discuss on the origin of the land. When the Spanish came, the Indian are the occupants of the area; governing the land and surviving through the natural resources. As history is portrayed by the victor, the destiny of the right proprietor of the land has dependably been untold. Their once serene time has ceased to proceed as the Spanish
Most Angelinos know that Dodger Stadium was once Chavez Ravine, a quiet and independent hillside neighborhood. Most would also agree that Dodger Stadium is an appropriate progression for an area known and designated as a slum. However, what most citizens do not realize is the designation of Chavez Ravine as a slum served merely as a cover-up for the city's own agenda of modernization through the vehicle of politics. The Community's identity as a quiet hillside neighborhood was ultimately shattered in the wake of the 1949 Housing Act under modern urban planning and the larger realm of politics during an era of intense anti-communist sentiment. This paper will argue that those aforementioned themes as the reason f...
During the late 1700’s, the United States was no longer a possession of Britain, instead it was a market for industrial goods and the world’s major source for tobacco, cotton, and other agricultural products. A labor revolution started to occur in the United States throughout the early 1800’s. There was a shift from an agricultural economy to an industrial market system. After the War of 1812, the domestic marketplace changed due to the strong pressure of social and economic forces. Major innovations in transportation allowed the movement of information, people, and merchandise. Textile mills and factories became an important base for jobs, especially for women. There was also widespread economic growth during this time period (Roark, 260). The market revolution brought about economic growth through new modes of transportation, an abundance of natural resources, factory production, and banking and legal practices.
When Spaniards colonized California, they invaded the native Indians with foreign worldviews, weapons, and diseases. The distinct regional culture that resulted from this union in turn found itself invaded by Anglo-Americans with their peculiar social, legal, and economic ideals. Claiming that differences among these cultures could not be reconciled, Douglas Monroy traces the historical interaction among them in Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Beginning with the missions and ending in the late 1800s, he employs relations of production and labor demands as a framework to explain the domination of some groups and the decay of others and concludes with the notion that ?California would have been, and would be today, a different place indeed if people had done more of their own work.?(276) While this supposition may be true, its economic determinism undermines other important factors on which he eloquently elaborates, such as religion and law. Ironically, in his description of native Californian culture, Monroy becomes victim of the same creation of the ?other? for which he chastises Spanish and Anglo cultures. His unconvincing arguments about Indian life and his reductive adherence to labor analysis ultimately detract from his work; however, he successfully provokes the reader to explore the complexities and contradictions of a particular historical era.
Having attained all that he desires from the knowledge of man, Marlowe’s character Faustus turns to the only remaining school of thought that he feels he must master which is the art of necromancy. In his pursuits, he manages to summon the devil Mephistopheles, arch demon of hell, and strikes a deal to trade his immortal soul with Lucifer in exchange for being granted an infinite amount of power and knowledge that extends even beyond the limits of human understanding. However in the process of negotiating the terms of his pact, it becomes clear that Faust is in a constant state of uncertainty in terms of whether he should repent and forsake the arrangement or simply go through with it. This underlying theme of internal struggle is introduced very early and reappears in later acts with the appearance of established binaries that suggest a theme of division not only among the character of John Faustus, but within the written text as a whole. This suggests that Faustus is meant to serve as a symbol for the divided nature of man and the consequences of failing to negotiate the struggles that are a result of the divided self.
The Old Man first begs Faustus to stop his sinning followed with him saying that his soul is still “amiable” or good natured (v.i 40). He then guarantees Faustus that what he is telling him is said in “tender love and pity of thy future misery.” (v.i 47-48). Faustus then makes the decision to “torment… that based an aged man that durst dissuade me from thy Lucifer.” (v.i 80-81). The way Faustus decides to treat this man displays his acceptance with being able to afflict pain on the elderly. His actions take the place of being true evil. Doctor Faustus’ actions throughout the tragedy are of his own choices and not of predestination.
This soliloquy shows that Faustus is eager to learn magic, which reflects on how people during the Renaissance were interested in science and nonreligious aspects instead of God.
There have been many significant movements throughout urban planning history which have influenced the way that planning theory is shaped and thought. Combined Modernist and Neoliberal planning theories have influenced the erection of a vast amount of planning project that have left an imprint on the way that urban planning is practiced today. In this paper, I will begin by describing the components of modernist and neoliberal planning practices. Then, I will outline a brief history of the project and explain how the Los Angeles South Central Farm was influenced by both modernist and neoliberal planning theories. Lastly, I will analyze this project through two different critical perspectives, neo-Marxism and critical race planning. These critical perspectives will enable us to understand the planning practices that were implemented in this project and will helps us explain the planning theories achievements and failures in this case study.
Dr. Faustus, written by Christopher, is the story of a man that represents the common human dissatisfaction with being human. He sells his soul to the devil for what he believes to be limitless power, with full logical knowledge as to the consequences of such a transaction. He knows the stakes of his gamble with the devil. His extensive education and his cultural environment had certainly alerted him as to the dangers associated with Lucifer. Although aware of the consequences of such a pact, he is blinded by three things that bring about his ultimate demise. His greed to know all, his pride that made him believe he was better than man, and his denial that in the end he would bring his own downfall upon himself. If Faustus had not been these things he would not have brought an end to himself.
In Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus, Faustus faces harsh consequences at the end of the play. Faustus is damned for all eternity. It is quite difficult to put your fingers on rather his fate is a tragedy or justice served for all his sins. I want to say his fate was a tragedy because his fate changed into tragedy once he sold his soul for twenty-four years of knowledge and power. I wouldn't say it's a tragedy if he was a bad person and a sinner from the beginning. But I feel sympathy for Doctor Faustus and also sort of feel the connection between him and human being. Therefore, I think his fate was tragic and a pitiful death.