Transcript GEOG 340: Day 20

Finishing Chapter 14
Housekeeping Items
Reminder about the Urban Issues Film Festival
this Friday – I will pass around the agenda.
 I would like to sign people up for their final
presentations.
 Paul Manly, who has made a number of films –
including about water – will be on campus next
Wednesday the 13th. He will be speaking in
Environmental Geology downstairs at 1:30 in
Room 107. It is open to everyone. He will also
be speaking, and showing clips from his films,
that evening at 7 in Building 200, Room 203
(auditorium).
 Today, Thanh will be presenting on gendered
spaces and I will present on most of the
remainder of the chapter.

Project Mini-Presentation Schedule (tentative)
name
date
Natasha
11/12
11/14
Melissa, Dominique
11/19
Tara, Sarah, Keltie, Emily
11/21
Doug R., Thanh, Maggie, Ashley, Tomson, Diego, Taylor
11/26
Chapter 14 (cont’d)
I won’t attempt to be comprehensive, but
picking up from Doug’s treatment of Louis
Wirth, Wirth talks about how we have to
assume numerous roles in the city –
presenting different faces at work, at
school, at home, in relationships, with
friends – and this pile-up of conflicting
“selves” can create stress and even mental
illness.
 As already mentioned, urbanites can also
become apathetic about anti-social and
‘deviant’ behaviour, possibly in part
because of fear.

Chapter 14 (cont’d)



Arguably, relationships become more fleeting in
cities, as people are often busy. They can be
casual or superficial. We also often favour
efficiency over friendliness.
But this varies from city and also varies
depending on the size of the city. Someone in
class noted that it’s quite easy to strike up a
conversation with a stranger in Nanaimo.
Even as we may become more distant from the
many we can still nurture deep, meaningful
relationships with family and friends and even
with groups with shared interests on the Internet.
These urban geographers and sociologists were
writing before the Internet and social media. What
impact do you think they are having on human
relationships?
Chapter 14 (cont’d)



Does suburbia promote social isolation or friendliness on
one’s immediate block?
What about high-rises?
One author who strongly disagreed
with Wirth was Herbert Gans, author
of Urban Villages. Gans noted that
some neighbourhoods, especially of
certain ethnic groups had the characteristics of ‘villages,’ while also suffering
overcrowding. Ironically, these were
often the areas that were being
subjected to urban renewal. Nonetheless,
they possessed a common ‘lifeworld.’
Chapter 14 (cont’d)
The book also talks about how lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and
transgendered (LGBT) people are drawn to big cities for their
greater safety and tolerance, though this has been
hard won (e.g. Stonewall riots).
 Cities, in turn, that have a higher
population of LGBTs have noted
as being more tolerant and attractive to members of the ‘creative
class.’
 Gays have even led the wave of
gentrification in some instances, as
the Castro district in San Francisco.
 While some areas have a higher gay
population (the West End), they are
never that exclusively.

Chapter 14 (cont’d)
I won’t spend a lot of time on Pierre Bordieu’s idea of
habitus (European philosophers have a way of making
things unnecessarily complicated!). A simpler term,
which probably doesn’t encompass the richness
intended would be lifestyle – i.e. it “derives from its
members’ everyday experience and operates at a
subconcious level, through commonplace daily
practices, dress codes, use of language, and patterns of
consumption…”
 Examples might include punks, bikers, gamers, bingo
fanatics, and people into bondage, etc.
 When one’s habitus is a relatively affluent residential
neighbourhood, and threats to the status quo arise, it
might at least temporarily take the form of Not In My
Back Yard (NIMBY) protests.

Chapter 14 (cont’d)

Chris capably
covered mental
maps. The book
also talks about
how we
appraise areas
– i.e. that
places are
individually and
socially
constructed to
possess
meaning, but
they often have
different
meaning for
different people.
Chapter 14 (cont’d)
See the discuss of time-space routines and think about
your own and also of the various constraints that can
mess them up.
 I take a little bit different (and more simple take) on the
structuration concept. I’m more interested in urban
structures and spaces, how they shape us, and how we
subvert them. Examples:
 Gays using parks as cruising grounds
 Skateboarders using courthouse steps and railings as
practice grounds
 People in my high school using the church pews next
door to make out and smoke pot
 Nudists carving out their own ‘free territory’ at Wreck
Beach to spend time away from social constraints.

Chapter 14 (cont’d)
While spaces and the built environment definitely constrain
us (this classroom, for example), whether streets are used
for cars or for play, people have intervened and done
unorthodox things to change how places function. For
instance, City Repair in Portland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVq0exoGySc.
 Or the redesign of Bogota, Colombia under Enrique
Peňalosa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j3FVPeTwoU.
 See also www.pps.org.
