Adventures of Urban Life

http://hiphop-life.blogspot.com/2006/05/hip-hop-jewelry-wtf.html

As i searched for blogs on urban life i came across this blog that describes the type of jewelry that hip hop artist wear. I found this blog interesting because it touched on some important points tat i have people dont usually think about. For example, that some of the chains that rappers and hip hop artists wear have nothing to do with their image. For example, the blogger states that a sailor chain or a steering-wheel ornaments have nothing to do with the hip-hop style.

http://www.earth-photography.com/Blog/Archive.html

This blog was unique because its a picture blog. in this blog, the blogger takes pictures of what he thinks urban life is in London. His pictures are well organized. The blogger uses different techniques to show different effects in each picture. i related this blog to our class because he explores his city much like what we did in class. The blogger also shows the different parts of his city and what he likes about London.

http://blog.compassion.com/urban-poor-mexico/

THis blog has a lot of information on the life of the poor in Mexico. I found this blog to have a large impact on me because i have been to Mexico several times and even though i have been exposed to some of the things described in this blog, there was a lot of information that was new to me. In this blog the author states that the main difference between "an urban and suburban area is in the communication and roads that provide all the supplies and raw materials needed for life." i found this interesting because this definiton differs from our definiton of urban life.

Sidewalk by Mitvhell Duneier

Take a walk down any busy street in New York city. Chances are that you came across street vendors. There are a lot of street vendors in the streets of New York, but most New Yorkers never stop to think where these people come from, what is their story, where do they live. Mitchell Duneier’s book Sidewalk explores these questions and many more. Duneier did research for many years on street vendors, he focused on the street vendors that are located on 6^th avenue (Avenue of the Americas.) To do so he spent years observing and talking to street vendors. In his book Sidewalk, Duneier explores the following themes: survival, social class, race, and issues of poverty.

In his researched Duneier learned that most of the people that dedicate their life to sell on the streets of New York are drug users. However, Duneier did come across one individual that was well know on the streets for his knowledge on the books he sold. Some people went to him for advice. His name is Hakim, he was a black figure in the corporate world, and because of his color felt that he didn’t belong. He dedicated to selling books on the sidewalk because he felt that he had a better connection with people on the sidewalks than with people on the corporate world. Hakim was an interesting character because unlike other street vendors he has a place to stay, and lives a ‘normal’ life. When Duneier asked Hakim a question regarding a book written by Jane Jacobs, Hakim replied with a very sophisticated and intellectual answer. Unlike Hakim, most of the street vendors are homeless and sleep on the streets. The reason why some of these guys sleep on the street is because they want to reserve a vending spot, to save money, and others even said that they felt safe because some of the street vendors were their friends, and they could stay watch while they slept.

Street vendors are public figures because people get used to seeing them in their street, buy books from them and eventually get to know them as a result, people get a feel of safety and comfort. The common misconception of street vendors is that they are drug users and are up to no good. But as Duneier discovered most street vendors have dignity and respect for people because they find a way of making money that does not require them to commit crimes. Duneier disagrees with the government’s point of view in dealing with street vendors. Duneier felt this way because the law makers that try to remove street vendors form the street have never actually talked to street vendors to ask them why they are selling on the streets instead of holding a ‘normal’ job. The government only sees them as the undesirables of the streets.

According to Hayden, “A good neighborhood is usually defined in terms of conventional shopping, school and perhaps public transit, rather than additional social services for the working parent, such as day care or evening clinics.” However I think that a good neighborhood that offers conventional shopping, schools, public transit and social services for the working class. My neighborhood of New Rochelle in Westchester County offers all of these things. As I walk down main st. I noticed a lot of 24 hr Laundromats. I noticed three in a ten-block radius. This 24 hr service is essential for a neighborhood because some parents work late hours or are restricted as to what time they can go do their laundry. Another thing I noticed were signs for day cares. I noticed four daycares in this same ten block radius. I was curious and entered one to ask for prices and hours of operation. Inside a lady that looked around her mid 40’s was carrying a baby around 9 months old greeted me. I asked her what was the ratio of adults to children and she answered that there was about five children per adult. I found this number to be high but their price was rational. They said that they were flexible and would adjust to the parents work hours. That they evaluate each child and the parents income and based on that is how they come up with the price.

Another important element of my neighborhood is the hospital. New Rochelle Medical Center is about 3 blocks away from my house. The Hospital has an Emergency room that is open 24 hours. Even though there are no evening clinics in my neighborhood the Emergency Room gives most of the people in my neighborhood some comfort in knowing that if there are any emergencies the hospital is at a walking distance. My neighborhood has a lot of mom and popshops. In the ten block in walked through, there is also a train station, and 35 bus stops. These busses travel through out New Rochelle, others go to nearby towns like White Plains, Yonkers, and the Bronx.

New Rochelle is home to four elementary schools: Columbus Elementary, Jefferson Elementary, Trinity Elementary, and Davis Elementary. Two Middle schools: Issac E. Young Middle School, and Albert Leonard Middle School. And one High school, New Rochlle High School or better know as “The High.” These schools are filled with after school programs that make sure students stay out of trouble, and get them involved in the community. Some of these programs include cleaning the high school lake, which is littered with trash from students that attend IONA College. The schools also have a lot of sports. The sports are important because they keep students of the streets where they can possible get involved with drugs and crime. Having good after school programs and a wide variety of sports available for students is important because it reduces crimes, and improves the quality of people that live in the community.

The adventures of Urban life is a blog created by five students who's main goal is to explore urban life in New York City. We all come from different neighborhoods in the city and have our own perception on what is urban and how we view city life. Through this blog, we aim to share with our readers what we learn from visiting different spots throughout the city and discussing the elements that make that place unique or why it functions a certain way. As we blog one may note that several people are quoted to back up our observations in a more scholarly fashion while still maintaining the casual feel of a blog. We hope that this blog will inspires our readers to think about the dynamics of living in an urban environment and actually go our and see what their city has to offer, they might be surprised at what they'll find.

The trip to Freshkills Park has help me become more aware of our environment. It was the first time for me to know about the dumping of garbage in this area back then. Having the image of people living in this area, I could see that many has suffer from this because of the horrid same it gives off. However this park has a major change since back then because now it has become a place for recreation and activities. It will take almost another twenty to thirty years for the whole Freshkills Park to be finish into a nice looking park. To make this good looking park took many process in making it. All these will turn out to be good. But what worries me the most is the garbage they are now sending to South Carolina. Now those people living there would smell the horrid smell and also may have health problems because of all those bacteria. Burning it will be a problem, throwing it to the ocean will be a major problem which will bring more risk to the environment. What ways will be the safest way, even to now, we still can't think of a way to dump our garbage where we can have a safe environment. Every way we are doing it right now are causing problems so we must raise awareness to people about the garbage dumping. Overall the whole trip was pretty fun. I love the ride from the Ferry because it reminds me of old memories. When we were AT Freshkills, it help me learn that we should spread the awareness of garbage dumping to everyone and help them learn how damaging it could be to us. Not only this but it will help us keep our environment clean from these garbage.
Charles Kan

The blogs below are related to urban life In United States and other countries:
http://www.urbanlifeblog.com/
In this blog itself has many topics, but what interested me the most was the Melrose community garden project which was a project that will turn a lot to a beautiful garden. For this success they will need the votes from students and others. This blog basically tells us about how they reshape their community and how to make it clean. All this can be related to us because in New york, most of the park are kept clean and also their is progress in making our environment better.

http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.com/category/civics-and-urban-life/
This blog tells us about the urban life in Brooklyn, New York. In the blog it mention many things for the environment. Such thing were Recycling, Reshaping The Community, and The weather itself. I like this blog because not only in talks about urban life but it also talks about things that happen in the surrounding area. Also it gives us places where we can take yoga classes. All these are related to us because the blogs itself, all of them are connected to a place.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/7790/Urban-Life-is-Bad-for-Brains
For this blog, I found it really interesting. It is because it talks how urban life will make our mind dull and bored. They have research that many patients in hospital get better when they can see trees from their window and also women who lives in public housing are able to focus better when their apartment has a scenery with grass in it. However, I find this false because of all these year living in the urban area, I will never get bored of it because there are so many interesting and exciting things to do and see.

http://www.streetsblog.org/
This blog talks about the street and highways of New York City. Basically this blog spreads out awareness that the street and highways are dangerous and that all of them needs to be fix in order to prevent any more accidents. One of them that caught my attention was Fixing the Ditch: Planning a Less Awful BQE Trench because it tells us how traffic jam at the BQE will cause damages to our lungs and health. Another interesting thing that attract my attention was the map they drew showing how much area it is causing damages too. Another Article was CB 6 votes conditionally for East side SBS, Endorse Better Bike Lane. The article didn't catch my attention but the map they drew which was very similar to the Map we drew for the Public/Private Activity,also in the map it show where the bike lane which will be indicated and in creating this, it will give the bikers a place to ride in the street without cars beeping them or giving them another trouble .

http://ny.curbed.com
This blogs tells us about different places where we can get our food or eat it. It will vary to different nationality food, things going on with the restaurants, and events that are happening in the surrounding stores. What interested me the most was that even though it a blog it feels like its a newspaper because it will tell you about robbery that happened in a certain restaurant and also street fights. Another thing the blog tells us about are buildings and the development of it. I saw many topics on areas that are under construction and how many of the buildings are getting taken down causing some to lose their work or some being homeless.
Charles Kan

Charles Kan

"Always Running" written by Luis J. Rodriguez talks about when he was a child, who just recently came from Mexico, experienced a hard life and racism In addition, the book itself will further explain his memories about being a street gang member and how desperately he went through with his life. Not only that but, his first interactions with other Latino kids in Los Angeles went through pretty much a bad influence because of their Mexican and American identity.
Racism is a factor throughout the book. Such things were when Rano, Luis older brother, was getting chases by neighborhood kids who would fool around with him or they will jumped him. Once a boy, threw a rock at him which gave him a cut in his forehead, leaving a scar that Rano has to this day. (Rodriguez 21)Another one was when a neighbor kid smash a metal bucket over Rano head causing the skin of his skull to be slit which then cause a whole amount of blood loss. After this incident, his mother will go to the kid's mother to confront her. However, the white lady would say "All I know is your boy picked that bucket and hit himself over the head." (Rodriguez 21) Basically, it is saying that color people would do anything stupid and that white people are educated and would not do anything that stupid. All these racism that Luis was telling us can be related to when Arizona put up a law on immigration in the pass week. From what I am seeing I feel like this is an act of racism. It's like it came out from the blue. A rule that they put up such as the failure to carry an immigration documents/paperwork would be consider as a crime and this will give the police 100% power to detain anyone that is suspected of being in the country illegally. This is too absurd and is an act of racism. All these are related to Always Running because Luis, his family and many Mexicans has face Racism from all the white people they see or approach.
Life was pretty hard for Luis and his family. They went through hard times, surviving day by day, looking for shelter and food. All these stuff happening will influence the kids to do bad things, however all these will change later on for Rano and Luis. While they were a child, both were consider bad, but the worse was when Rano who torture his own little brother When they grew older, Luis will be the one going to the bad side and Rano will be the one changing to the good one. At the age of 13, Luis has a tattoo, sexually involved, and was into drugs. In addition, Luis was involved in a gang and even worse, he try to shoot a white man down but lucky he hit the fence or he will be in serious trouble. On the other hand, Rano was 16 years old, suddenly got help by a teacher called Mrs. Snelling who help him skipped grades to make up for the time he got held back. He also has gotten trophies in track and field, gymnastic and as well in karate. later on he will go to high school and was a good kid beside him being a Mexican person.
Last but not least, "Always Running' is about a relationship between his memory of himself and his inability to support his family shows that his role as a man has become tougher and harder to be. Also, social challenge will affect his ways of being a man. Having a hard time will affect and damage his life, but he will then write this book so his own son will not follow in his footsteps.

Katherine Pimentel
Freshkills Park

Freshkills started off as untouched land with natural water and then due to human activity became a large garbage dump. Now it is coming full circle again and going back to the way it was before or possibly even better. Over the past decade Americans have become increasingly worried about the ecosystem and the state of the earth in general. We have taken the earth and natural land for granted and now that we see the repercussions of our actions we hope that it is not to late to make a change. Such is the case with Freshkills, an enormous and expensive project is taking place in Staten Island to transform the huge landfill into a fully functioning park for humans and wildlife.
According to New York Magazine’s article Wall-E Park the architect of the park Corner, has a unique vision for Freshkills “The most complicated part of the design is the idea that it is designed to change. Large parks will always exceed singular narratives,” Corner wrote in a recent essay. “They are larger than the designer’s will for authorship. He added, The trick is to design a large park framework that is sufficiently robust to lend structure and identity while also having sufficient pliancy and ‘give’ to adapt to changing demands and ecologies over time”(qtd by Corner, 7). The park should be able to be useful so that we do not have a large park sitting there that no one wants to use or care to maintain it because then that would be just as bad as the dump that it was. It needs to be able to change with the needs of the time just like it was able to change now that going green is so important.
When I visited the park I was impressed at all of the work that was done. The park looked so clean and picturesque that one would never think there were mounds with tons of garbage beneath those green hills. According to the tour guide there would be plenty of activities do at the park such as kayaking which I think is great because we do not get much of that in a city where much off the large land is used for development. I also like that much attention is being given to make sure that the park is as safe as can be and only the best materials and soils are being used. It is also good to know that the city is able to make money off of the natural gas that the land excretes which shows that the park is able to “give back” in more ways than I thought. The tour of Freshkills was an educational experience and I am curious to see the final product a few years from now.

Katherine Pimentel
New Yorkers are used to seeing panhandlers and sidewalk vendors all over the city. It is something they are accustomed to and just think of it as part of city life. Most peoples perceptions of these people who are primarily men is that they are homeless and use the money they make for drugs. They are the lowest of the social ladder in New York City, and deemed as the “undesirables” of the neighborhood. Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk offers an in depth analysis of the individuals who work on the city streets, more specifically those on Greenwich and Avenue of the Americas. In order to do his research for his book, Mitchell took on an ethnographic approach. He submersed himself in side walk life and interviewed the men who sell books on the side walk as well as the people who come in contact with them on a regular basis.
The first character whom Duneier introduces us to is Hakim. Hakim is a middle aged black man who sells books on the sidewalk. He has customers from all walks of life that enjoy talking to him about books and others who seek his knowledge and experience as a source of guidance in their own lives. Hakim is an interesting figure because he comes from the corporate world, however, because of his race he did not feel he belonged there and chose to do something that would connect him with more people like him. He saw that selling “black books” on the street was a means to reach to other blacks. Hakim is knowledgeable of all of the books he sells and the classics that people normally look for, unlike many of the other men he has his own place to live and is not on any type of drug. “People like me are the eyes and ears of the street, he explained, echoing Jane Jacobs again. Yes I could take those flowers and sell them for a few hundred dollars. But that deliveryman sees me here every day. I’m as dependable as any store owner”(17). Hakim sees himself as a public figure like the one Jacobs speaks about. People like him who are out all day help keep the streets safe because they help out when help is needed and take action if something is not right. Those who share the sidewalk on a daily basis form relationships with these public figures, thus creating a sense of community even though they are all technically strangers.
Duneier notes that there are so many men working on the streets as vendors because the prisons have failed to help ex-convicts transition into society in the proper way. They are thus unable to find decent jobs and can not find ways to provide shelter for themselves. What these men do should be somewhat plausible instead of deviant because they have to find ways to survive on their own instead of hurting others to get the things they need. “You got to be versatile when you in the streets. You got to find a way to make money without putting a pistol in your hand or going around busting somebody up the head, or snatching some woman’s pocketbook”(qtd by Leo, 84). The conversation with Leo shows that there is still a level of dignity and respect that they men have despite the fact that they are homeless. They still like to know that they earned their own money and that they are not harming anyone in the process, to these men life on the streets is all about survival.
Some of the major themes discussed in class that appear in the book is the idea of Jane Jacobs public figure, because these men are after all out side at all times and come into contact with the public weather they want to or not. There is also the idea of the undesirable and how they use public space. The police and many of the people who live in the Village would like to see the homeless men go away, but at the end of the day they are in a public space and can make use of that space to accommodate their needs. Another point that Jacobs made that I noticed in the book was the idea of a good neighborhood being useful,people should have a purpose or a need to be out in the streets. the men on sixth avenue work, sleep, eat and socialize on these streets, the ultimate example of "using" the neighborhood.

Desiree Caro
The Book There Goes The Hood, by Lance Freeman, reviews the ongoing gentrification in two primarily African American neighborhoods: Harlem and Clinton Hills. The author argues that the responses recorded by other literary works of the neighborhood residents undergoing gentrification are not necessarily accurate. The usual claims made about gentrified neighborhoods are that the residents are optimistic and receptive of the changes being made. While Freeman does really contend these statements, he adds that residents are not as excited as they have previously been portrayed. There are many aspects to the effects of gentrification on a neighborhood such as access to resources, affordable housing, displacement, social conflict, and disinvestment. Freeman realizes there are both positive and negative sides to the issue of gentrification and that there is a definite motive behind gentrification of certain neighborhoods.
Race and class play a major role within this book because both of the areas discussed are well known African American neighborhoods. The connotation behind gentrification of certain areas is that something is not right within these neighborhoods and they need to be “fixed” in order to fit in with social norms. Gentrification causes social conflict between indigenous inhabitants of the neighborhood and the new-comers. Gentrified neighborhoods usually attract new white people into areas where minority cultures and customs have been in place for decades before. New comers may feel that some of the customs of African Americans or other minority groups are a sign of disorganization. For example, groupings on street corners, loud talking or music, and street vendors are native to areas like Harlem and Clinton Hills; however, to outsiders this can be seen as a nuisance or a sign of uncivilized behavior. These issues can change the social pattern of an entire area for the future.
While Freeman realizes there can be some positive aspects of gentrification such as accessibility to more resources like supermarkets, clothing stores, and drug stores, it’s a big price to pay. An important point made by Freeman in this book is that it does not matter how wonderful gentrification makes a neighborhood if the original inhabitants cannot afford to live there. This point proves that gentrification is not based on the needs of the original neighborhood but rather on the needs of the economy and the capitalist society.
This book had very strong ties to themes we have discussed in class. Gentrification has huge effect on urban areas, from how space is distributed to displacement of people and families. I feel that this book is a great representation of how the population of Harlem and Clinton Hills actually feel about the situation. It does not promote only one side of the story, but realizes that people are torn the situation. It confronts the idea that people are either for gentrification or against it and shows that a lot of residents of these neighborhoods have mixed feelings. Either way, gentrification has a huge impact on society on social, geographical, and economical levels and many people are affected by it daily.

Desiree Caro
The trip to Freshkills part was a nice break from normal everyday activities for me. I actually really enjoyed all aspects of it, from the ride on the ferry to standing on top of the mounds that used to be thousands of tons of garbage. I really feel that Freshkills park is an innovative way to recycle the land. With over 2000 acres, the park is huge and has endless potential to meet the needs of the surrounding community. In addition to the large amount of space the previous landfill offers, the renovations that have been made to the area also help to create fossil fuels for the borough.
The history of Freshkills is interesting in itself. Its amazing to think that something that was seen as so detrimental to an area is now providing a healthy space for recreation and activities in the future. I thought it was interesting how many levels of planning go into making a park. This park especially had to undergo many processes in order to get approval for the renovations and design. The park needed to make sure that none of the garbage that was initially on site would affect any of its visitors or neighbors. in order to do that there was an extensive system put into place in order to prevent any waste from harming people as well as turn the waste into something good.
Other aspects that the team has to think about is accessibility, needs of the community, and the environment. all of these points need to be addressed and approved by outside resources who may be funding projects of helping to build structures. all in all i think that Fresh Kills park is an amazing story that should be shared and learned from. it helps to gather awareness about where our garbage is going and how to make changes for the community and environment.