Public Space and Play Habits

Jake’s comment a couple weeks ago about the awareness of public space and the following show-and-tell if you will about our childhood play habits really struck a chord with me. I grew up near a small Midwestern town where the population consisted of roughly 1500 people and whose main claim to fame was that the city bank was robbed by Jesse James in 1871. There was no public space - I mean, technically there was but it wasn’t the same public space that you would find in a big city. There were a couple town parks and playgrounds, but it was pretty unusual to have hoards of families and kids using the same play areas at the same time. So even though those areas were open to everybody, you usually ended up with the playground all to yourself. You never really had to worry about the other kids - all of the swings and monkey bars were fair game, and you could take as much time as you wanted on the balance beam without some obnoxious boy trying to get you to fall off. Sharing the playground was inevitable, even in a town that small, but I would just go to the opposite side of the playground and then it was almost like I had the playground to myself again. When my family moved out to Oregon, I became a lot more aware of what it was like to share a playground in the way that it was meant to be shared - with lots of kids. This isn’t to say that I had never been on the playground with more than five kids. After all, what is recess? But there is something different about being on the playground with the kids from school and playing with complete strangers. With the playground in Corydon, it was a really fluid space (there were more resources/play apparatuses than kids) so movement wasn’t hindered. With the playground in Medford, parts of it contained fluid spaces (for a di
fferent reason) while other areas were very controlled. Sometimes you had to just go with the flow of traffic so as not to get in the way because there were so many kids, or sometimes kids would be very aggressive about what they viewed as their area of the playground. This would affect the rest of the kids using the playground because the ratio of play apparatuses to kids has diminished and it hampers the use of the space. All of this is to say that my idea of public space when I was lived in Corydon was that other people may or may not show up, but until they did it was my private area. Public space only became ‘public space all of the time’ when I moved to Medford. Also when my family moved, there was a decrease in my unsupervised play time. My sisters and I were always watched or had some kind of supervision whenever we were in public areas in Corydon and in Medford, but we lived on a farm in Iowa and I had unlimited amounts of unsupervised play. I don’t even think I told my parents I was going outside most of the time. Our swing set and Playskool house were within eyesight of the house, but a lot of times my sisters and I would go out on ‘adventures’ in the nearby woods which weren’t so visible. It’s a little funny how my home was where I had the most opportunities to get into trouble or get lost, but it was also the place where I had the least amount of supervision. Maybe my parents had more control over the situation than I knew of, but to my eight-year old self my parents could have gone into town to run errands without me knowing (in fact, I think that might have happened once or twice).

How the Crash will Reshape America

Here are a few interesting links on the relationship between the economic crash and urban/suburban development:

--Article by urban theorist Richard Florida

--Interview with Richard Florida

--Interactive map of creative activity, income, and population in different cities.

recent steelworker news!

NEW: Jobs march draws thousands in Granite City

JOHN SWISTAK JR. PHOTO Union members and other workers marched Tuesday in Granite City to support the federal stimulus plan.
By Scott Cousins
Tuesday, February 10, 2009 3:51 PM CST

A line of more than 5,500 laid-off steelworkers from Granite City, auto workers from Decatur and Fenton, Mo., and their supporters stretched out for more than eight blocks along a mile-long route as part of a “Put America Back To Work” march Tuesday morning in Granite City.

article:
http://suburbanjournals.stltoday.com/articles/2009/02/10/madison/special_feature/doc4991c6986962c267997966.txt

Baca's "Great Wall"

Here's a link to images of Judy Baca's "Great Wall" (mentioned on page 185 of Avila)...also another possible blog topic.

Blog suggestions

Thanks to Maia for being the brave first blogger.

I'm writing to offer a few suggestions if you are having trouble getting started.

1) We did a blog in my Race in Popular Culture course last semester which worked well. The students did short posts every other week, so we'd like your posts to be slightly longer (~250-500 words) and more analytical. However, this site will give you a sense of the tone...on the blog we're more interested in your ideas than in polished academic prose.

2) Zandy e-mailed about a documentary about Mario Rocha, a falsely convicted latino from Los Angeles gained his freedom after 10 years in prison. The film, Mario's story, will be on Showtime March 5th. I'm not sure how many of you have access to Showtime on campus, but if you have a chance to see it this would be a good topic for your March post.

3) On the subject of film, there is a documentary film called The Garden showing Friday, March 6th at 7:30 p.m. in the Broad Performance Space (Pitzer). Here's a brief description: "The Garden follows the plight of the farmers, from the tilled soil of this urban farm to the polished marble of City Hall. Mostly immigrants from Latin America , from countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand answers: Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value? Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the LA City Council? Why has it never been made public? And the powers-that-be have the same response: “The garden is wonderful, but there is nothing more we can do.” If everyone told you nothing more could be done, would you give up?" We'll mention the film again in class, but this would also be a great subject for your March post.

4) If you are still struggling to think of something to write about, you might consider:
a) The impact of the housing crash/recession on communities of color, especially those in LA/SoCal. Here is an article on Colorlines on this topic.
b) If you are from LA, San Diego, or Sacramento, spend some time on the T-Races site we discussed in class on Tuesday. If your not, you could do a quick search on the history of the FHA/redlining in your hometown.
c) Check out YouTube! Do you have more to say about Trader Horn or Tarzan? Have you seen other films on LA that relate to what we've been reading about? There are several clips from the "Disneyland" TV show that aired in the 1950s while the park was being contructed (Avila talks about them in his chapter on Disneyland). You could watch one of these clips and build on Maia's post.

Your post doesn't need to make reference to our readings, so be creative. We are really most interested in hearing what people want to write/talk about.

Disneyland and Freeways

I was surprised by how often Disneyland was mentioned in a chapter focusing on the development of the freeways in Los Angeles. (Avila Chapter 6) He ends the chapter talking about how Disneyland can be seen as an escape from the rush of the city, but earlier comparisons make me realize just how representative Disneyland can be of this time period. Perhaps because Disneyland is something very real that I can connect to, it helps to being Los Angeles in this time more to life for me. In my opinion, when one goes to Disneyland, Tomorrowland is perhaps the least thrilling area in the park. If I’m not mistaken it is ironically one of the oldest areas of the park, that has not been renovated much since its construction. As a result, when you enter you are greeted with the “innovations of the future”… of the sixties: cars and rockets. As a child, I was not too thrilled with Autopia: I was driven around a mini road in a mini car. Hadn’t this been how I’d arrived at the park in the first place? Now I can see how exciting this ride might have been to the tourist of the fifties or sixties, especially if they came from outside the city and didn’t have much experience with the freeways, which were new and exciting! Walt Disney was very smart to play off of peoples’ fascination in his park. He was also insightful in his choice of location: right off the highway (p203). How convenient to just drive off the freeway and be in the “Happiest Place on Earth.” I was surprised also by how connected Disneyland and especially Autopia was to automobile consumerism. It seems that the idea was to get children used to and liking cars even before they were old enough to actually drive, but planting seeds for future consumers. I wonder whether Walt Disney thought of these implications of his Tomorrowland and what he might have gained from it. Further connecting these two ideas is the concept of the freeway originally being an escape from society. (Also tying back to Disneyland ironically being an escape from the freeways. ) Originally, the freeways were seen as liberating, giving many people a sense of freedom. They could now leave their homes and neighborhoods for any reason they wanted whether it be work or pleasure. This translated into driving on the freeways as an escape from everyday life, a vacation one might say. Disney incorporated this idea into the Autopia attraction, letting passengers go for a leisurely tour of the track. Additionally, the highway builders took a tip from Disneyland and tried to remove all of the “unwanted” sights (p 213). There were walls along the freeways to hide parts of town that would be considered unsightly.
This insight into Disneyland makes me wonder about what other social comments out forms of entertainment and vacation might reveal. I’m sure Disneyland has even more to offer, in terms of idea about the time that it was created, which of course were totally lost on my eleven-year-old self.

Welcome!

This is the course blog for AMST 103 Intro to American Cultures at Scripps College Spring 2009.