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10:001 or 10:003 Unit ~ Analysis and Mapping of Space and Place
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Alternative Readings for the First Day: The Peninsula Neighborhood Website. 2001. Website. Da Woods Webdesign & Development. Available: www.thepeninsulaneighborhood.com. December 5 2001. Sachdev, Gian. "Council Ok's Peninsula Loan." Daily Iowan June 27 2001: 1A. Tucker, Libby. "I.C. Considers Loan to Peninsula Project." Daily Iowan June 25 2001: 2A. Ross, Andrew. "The Price of Tradition." The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property Value in Disney's New Town. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999. 21-44. The above collection of sources is an alternative, more local set of readings for the first day of readings. I included these as a possibility because they refer to a controversy about place that is local. However, I still felt inclined to use as many readings from the textbook as possible. So I’ll leave the choice up to instructors. The Peninsula Neighborhood is a New Urbanist Development in Iowa City. The Neighborhood is being constructed currently. A huge controversy sparked about this development, mainly because the city loaned the developer the sum to begin construction. Additionally, the neighborhood as been criticized for increasing sprawl as well as having huge prices for down payments. The website provides a plethora of information about the neighborhood, the New Urbanist style, and the ‘traditional life’ this neighborhood will offer. Next, the articles from the Daily Iowan describe the development of the neighborhood and some of the problems that the developer has encountered. Finally, the Ross piece details the extraordinary cost of housing in Celebration, Disney’s New Urbanist town. This collection serves as local instantiation of a more national controversy. Students seem quite able to talk about what these ‘traditional’ towns do. They quickly reference movies like Pleasantville and The Truman Show as wistful and nostalgic. They have trouble, however, in thinking about why these places are still being built if New Urbanist places are merely nostalgic. Looking at a local neighborhood helps them think about this idea. Last semester, when I taught this unit, we were only able to look at the website for the Peninsula Neighborhood during the overview of the unit. While this is a fruitful site of rhetoric, it would now be possible to visit this neighborhood and think about why there was dissent for this development. First, the site is right next to the Elk’s golf course. Second, the development was subsidized by the city. Third, a certain level of income is required to live in this neighborhood. Students could productively open up how the rhetoric if this neighborhood attempts to cover up or ignore the controversy. These readings, and perhaps others on New Urbanism in the additional readings, might prove to be a wonderful, local alternative. Additional ReadingsHere are some sources that may prove helpful to teaching this unit. However, they are not necessary to move forward with this unit. Armada, B. J. (1998). Memorial Agon: An Interpretive Tour of the National Civil Rights Museum. Southern Communication Journal, 63(3, Spring), 235-243. Blair, C., Jeppeson, M. S., & Pucci Jr., E. (1991). Public Memorializing in Postmodernity: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial as Prototype. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 77, 263-288. Božovic, M. (1995). Jeremy Bentham: The Panopticon Writings. New York: Verso. *de Certeau, M. (1988). The Practice of Everyday Life (S. Rendall, Trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. *Deutsche, R. (1996). Tilted Arc and the Uses of Democracy, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (pp. 257-268). Cambridge: The MIT Press. Gorman, Carma R. "Reshaping and Rethinking: Recent Feminist Scholarship on Design and Designers." Design Issues 17.4 (2001): 72-89. Griswold, C. L. (1986). The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall: Philosphical Thoughts on Political Iconography. Critical Inquiry, 12, 688-719. Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death & Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House. Jencks, C. (1972). Architecture & Rhetoric. Architectural Association Quarterly, 4, 4-17. Katz, P. (1994). The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. Kron, Joan. "The Semiotics of Home Decor." Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Eds. Sonia Maasik and Jack Soloman. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997. 72-82. Norton, Anne. "The Signs of Shopping." Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Eds. Sonia Maasik and Jack Soloman. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997: 38-45. Russel, James S. "A Small-Town Design Competition Causes Big-Time Controversy." Architectural Record 185.3 (1997): 25. *Sennett, R. (1994). Flesh & Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Shaidle, Kathy. "Architecture from Cyberspace." Report / Newsmagazine (BC Edition) 29.7 (2002): 42-44. Trachtenberg, Alan. "The White City." The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age. New York: Hill & Wang, 1980: 208-34. Willis, Susan. "Disney World: Public Use/Private State." Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Eds. Sonia Maasik and Jack Soloman. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997. 83-95. *=primarily for instructors
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