Next meeting

Also, the next meeting will be on Tuesday Oct. 6th. Place undecided. In the meantime, let's read the articles that Dr. C sent in his last email and also try to come up with suggestions of articles that we would all like to read.
Second also: Dr. C mentioned that the group would be a helpful place for everyone to get feedback on their own research.
Like, you know, reading papers and um... dissertation chapters. Anyone up for reading my chapter on a what happens when radical feminism accommodates itself to neoliberalism told through Science Fiction chick lit? (I like to call it an annihilation cocktail -- kinda like a cosmo but with a bigger kick).

Susan

Harstock article

On my way home from the meeting I wondered if maybe in this article while trying to re-affirm the importance of feminism she ends up making it into a trope with which to talk about class?
Opinions?

--susan

Next Meeing

Hello Urbanistas!
Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, Sept. 23 at 7pm at the Bangkok Cafe on
Speedway.

Rescapando New Orleans como modelo urbano para EE.UU.

Something breve y leve, de Andrea.

Here's a link to a semi-informative/reflective article in the NY Times about the faltering reconstruction project in New Orleans: Reflections: New Orleans and China. More than anything, I think the article forces us to reflect on how our city models have/do/will reflect our value systems as well as ideologies.

Next's Week's Meeing

We will be having our next meeting at the Trident bar on Speedway and Campbell (right next door to Buffalo Exchange) at 7pm next Tuesday. The reading is the final section of Megacities Lecture 4. Please bring readings you would like to put on the list for future weeks.
See you then!
-Lucy

Indigo Modern

Indigo Modern Townhomes are located about 1/2 block from my house, across the street from the Royal El Con apartment complex. They are pretty out of place for the neighborhood, especially considered that they are the only gated complex and that they sell for about $300,000 compared to the low-cost, run-down apartments across the street. It's urban living without all that uncomfortable exposure to the actual city.



Notice that the news report does not show any general shots of the surrounding area or mention how the developers had to strong-arm the neighborhood association to let them build those metal boxes and a huge parking lot. The style is called a 'housing cluster,' which means that parking is in the front and that there are no shared walls, but the units are very close together.

http://www.indigomodern.com/
Check out the real neighborhood by searching for 3625 E. 3rd St., Tucson, AZ and 3650 E. 3rd St., Tucson, AZ on googlemaps:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl
-Lucy

City Future: City Past (1948 or earlier, please!)

The City of Tucson is giving out cash for downtown businesses to restore their facades to pre-1948 style. The article doesn't explain exactly why the city wants to restore the buildings, but I think that's pretty obvious.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/breakingnews/96205.php

-Lucy

Half-Baked Lofts, anyone?

This article in the AZ Star reminds me a little of Sharon Zukin. Apparently, it's pretty hard to sell lofts these days:
http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/255965.php
My favorite quote: "Rather, he said, the business partners simply want to find someone with 'a lot of cash' to expedite the process.
'All the hard work is done," said LeBeau. 'All they have to do is put in a lot of money.'"
-Lucy

Thanks Lucy!
Great Idea.


Susan

Ladies Shopping for Signs

A little Mitchell, anyone? In Shopping for Signs: The Cultural Geography of the Mall, D. Mitchell says: "Suburban landscapes mix public and private spaces in particular and peculiar ways. They create a stage on which gender is performed in a never-ending production. Likewise, shopping malls use peculiar mizes of public and private to create a different sort of stage, a stage for not only the production of identity, but its consumption, too.

Yesterday on Salon.com (Broadsheet), Kate Harding examined a recent study done by a real estate developer on what landscape women want to see in malls.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/09/05/woman_friendly_mall/index.html
Harding explained that women "make 80 percent of all consumer purchases", so their input should count. She comments: "So, what do women want in a new mall? The answers include green space, nice washrooms, a variety of safe parking options, heel- and stroller-friendly walking surfaces, child play areas and an outdoor firepit.(Really?) It also turns out that women don't care how snazzy-looking the buildings are (but do care about landscaping). It "definitely wasn't about painting the buildings in pastels. It wasn't about making the buildings look feminine, it was about making the place more friendly to the women who use it," says Montesi. No! Nobody voted for a pink Pottery Barn? Get out!"

It all relates back to The Feminine Mystique for me. After World War II, the machine of capital has to figure out a way to get all of those laborers (women) out of the pool so that men returning from war will be able to get a job. This snowballs into an intentional conversion of women from intellectuals and laborers into housewives, using biological determinism to support capitalist logic. How do these women now disempowered by their exclusion from the production side of capital exercise some amount of participation? Consumption.

Friedan poses the question: "Why is it never said that the really critical function, the really important role that women serve as housewives is to buy more things for the house. In all the talk of femininity and woman's role, one forgets that the real business of America is business. But the perpetuation of the housewifery, the growth of the feminine mystique, makes sense (and dollars) when one realizes that women are the chief customers of American business" (206-7).

For more on women and consumerism, I like The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf: "And the unconscious hallucination grows ever more influential and pervasive because of what is now conscious market manipulation: powerful industries- the $33 billion a year diet industry, the $20 billion cosmetics industry, the $300 million cosmetic surgery industry, and the $7 billion pornography industry- have arisen from the capital made out of unconscious anxieties [...]" (17).

So basically what I am trying to say is that it is particularly important to examine the specific relationships between capital and gender, especially when we consider that capital shapes the physical/geographical landscape, and the physical/ corporeal landscape of the human body.
-Lucy

Week 2

This week our task is to read Part II of Megacities Lecture 4 and to think about how we would teach Part I to a class.
1702, 6pm, Tuesday night

Teoria Urbana 2008

This blog is meant to facilitate discussions on urban theory.
-Lucy