Module 3:
Community, Identity, and Space

I.    What is "community?"

1. community
2. communal
3. neighbor/neighboring
4. kinship
5. face-to-face communications
6. primary versus secondary groups
7. individuality
8. anomie
• Read this about The Bystander
9. alienation
10. ritual versus secular
11. America the "melting pot" or America the "stewpot"

 

 

From Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, appearing on Broadway in 1908, comes this famous line:

America is "the great Melting Pot, where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming!...The real American has not yet arrived.
His is only in the Crucible.  I tell you -- he will be the fusion of all races, the coming superman."
 

What does this mean?




12. the "browning of America"

II.    Theories Regarding the Rural-Urban Shift

1. Gemeinschaft

 
1. spatial characteristics
2. economic characteristics
3. social & cultural characteristics
4. political characteristics

 
2. Gesellschaft

 
1. spatial characteristics
2. economic characteristics
3. social & cultural characteristics
4. political characteristics

What is a technoburb?

B. Louis Wirth  (1897-1952)

1. Wrote "Urbanism as a Way of Life" (1938)

1. The importance of size + density + heterogeneity

1. Early Streetcar Suburbs
2. Electric Streetcar Suburb Era
3. The Automobile Suburb
4. Alice in Wonderland
5. Life at the Edge

 

III.        What is Your Identity?  Who are YOU?

A.    Is it true that "you are where you live"?

B.    How do you define yourself?  Check out Who Am I?

C.    So you say you're "an American"?  So did these people.
 

IV.    Do You Count?

• first census taken in 1790:  3.9 million Americans
• last census taken in 1990: 250 million Americans (results of 2000 census not in yet)

C.    Marital Status/Sexual Identity and the Census

D.    Check out the Long Form of the 2000 Census.  Are you counted?

V.    What is a minority?

a group of people "singled out from the others in society in which they live for differential and unequal
treatment and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination."

• minority
• subculture
• subcommunity

• "real ethnicity" versys "symbolic ethnicity"

E.    "Global identities" versus the "Pull of lesser loyalties" -- what does this mean?

F.    Click here to see a map of active hate groups in the U.S., 1999

• List of 1999 Hate Incidents in the US
• List of Active Hate Groups in the U.S. in 1999

VI.    The Connection between Identity, Community, and Space

• What is proxemics?
• The power of persuasion:  to inspire or frighten (see these WWII posters; architecture can relay the same message)
• Take a tour of some urban scenes and evaluate them as yourself and as your "persona"
• Comparisons of Housing Density, according to Metro
• Visual Preference Survey Photos (1)
• Visual Preference Survey Photos (traffic calming)
• Cities/Buildings Database (the easiest way to use this site is to go to the "old site")

Additional Reading on this Unit:

• Read about  the Internet Community
• Get insight into ethnic enclaves by reading "The Present/Future of Little Italies" by Jerry Krase (Brooklyn College)
• See what Joel Garreau has to say about Edge Cities in this November 1999 Washington Post piece.
• See Richard Rodriguez's piece on "The Browning of America"
• Read this series on "The Myth of the Melting Pot" in the Washington Post on-line