Day 1 Clarification Questions (Members: )
Questions
Day 1 Discussion Questions (Members: )
Andrew Durand: How does the mythology of deterritorialization buttress gentrification? What historical loss constitutes this myth in the first place?
Nick Hochfeld: On the commodification of space: if neighborhoods objectively benefit from gentrification (benefit in the capitalist sense of the word), could gentrification be considered necessary for the growth (consider J. K. Gibson-Graham’s analysis of the word) and prosperity of these areas?
Follow up: when considering the similarities between gentrification and international aid organizations and the “white savior mentality” of upper class Americans, what criticisms come to light when discussing international aid organizations through this lens? If they objectively benefit a region, how do they compare to the improvement methods of gentrification?
Follow up: Why do we jump to help in international crises (Nepal earthquake, Kony 2012, Syrian conflict, ISIS), but lack the same enthusiasm when it comes to aiding our own homeless? Why does it take the death of Americans (Mike Brown, Eric Garner) for the middle class to pay attention to the plight of the lower?
Sarah Edwards: At the end of Chapter 1, Smith ties the gentrification of local communities to larger global processes by arguing that the “new global wars of the New American world order” have come back to the “cities of the East” (26-27). How does Smith’s interpretation of capitalist enterprise operate within this “New American world order?”
Blake Ladenburg
How does globalization fuel gentrification? Consider this question not only in cities where gentrification processes are already occurring, but also in locations where gentrification has yet to start.
Logan Miller
The new mythos that has propelled people to the inner city in order to 'tame' it is seemingly damaging as if it follows the same trajectory as the pioneers who set out to the west then the consequences for the people already living there would be disastrous, will this come about in the same way?
Jenny Gruenberg:
How has the rhetorical framing of land developers as "urban pioneers" masked as well as legitimated their true intentions and goals?
How does the concept of the "frontier" act as a mode of dehumanization?
Andy Monserud
How does gentrification demonstrate the fluidity of class, especially when we consider that artists, a bourgeois group, are ultimately pushed out by the very yuppies they draw in?
Quinn Lincoln:
Does the natural advancement of society lead to increased trends of gentrification?
Emma Dulaney:
Sorry in advance for the long discussion question..I happened to be working in Walla Walla this summer during the "Gentlemen of the Roads" concert- and a lot of what occurred during that time in Walla Walla is identical to the type of gentrification described in the "New Urban Frontier." Weeks leading up to the concert, Walla Walla hired people called "Town Ambassadors" to walk around Main Street and remove the homeless, particularly in the empty lot on Main Street the homeless tend to occupy. When the actual concert occurred, Main Street was shut down so only people with wrist bands could enter (obviously by this time the homeless had been completely kicked out.) The man I was working for at the time is a veteran who owned a struggling locally-owned business. He was openly pro the removal of the homeless since the overall goal of the concert for him was to profit as much as possibly and promote future tourism in Walla Walla. What are your thoughts on this? Particularly in regards to a passage on page 17 which states, "notice that the poor, abandoned, and homeless of the neighborhood were already invisible without the frosted window" (17). Are the homeless of Walla Walla already invisible to us?
Sam Jacobson
In her Installation speech, President Murray told her audience that “we would be well-served by continuing to think of ourselves as on the frontier, the frontier of liberal education.” In the context of our reading for today, would we be “well-served” to think of ourselves in this way?
Ione Fullerton
How do people feel about viewing gentrification as violence, specifically institutionalized and legitimized violence? How can gentrification be re-conceptualized as violence, instead of merely a "PC buzzword" (as I so often hear it referred to)? Are people even comfortable with describing the frontier expansion of the Wild West as violence..?
Nathan Gruenberg Barthes’ defines myth as “constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things" (11). This applies to gentrification since it has only been cast in a positive light (e.g. wild west), and the negative aspects have been blatantly excluded. In what other ways have our hegemonic conceptions been mythified, and does this apply to our entire capitalist structure as a whole (maybe think about J.K. Gibson Graham in answering this question as well)? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Day 2 Text Mapping (Members: )
Map
Day 2 Discussion Mapping (Members: )
Map
Day 2 Clarification Questions (Members: )
Questions
Day 2 Discussion Questions (Members: )
Valentina: In Chapter Two: Is Gentrification a Dirty Word?, how is new class discourse suggested through a post modernist lens of “a new political grammar” that places a focus on “us” and changes the usual subject? And in how does addressing the audience as “we, the middle class authors” on page 42 ultimately “restore agency to the middle class?”
Sarah Edwards: While Smith discusses the differing conceptions of gentrification throughout Chapter two, he also notes that “gentrification became a hallmark of the emerging ‘global city’” as participation in the global market increased amidst key economic and political shifts (37). How is the conception of the “global city” problematic for those seeking to oppose gentrification? Does increasing globalization uphold or undermine specific anti-gentrification projects?
Emma Dulaney: How does The Real Estate Board of New York benefit from confusing the meaning of "gentrification" to the public sphere via their ad? The ad states, "To one person, it means improved housing. To another, it means unaffordable housing," (29). Does this, including the multiple other definitions of "gentrification" presented in this book, put gentrification in danger of becoming an ideograph (a term too laden with conflicting meanings and "emotionally loaded" to have significance)? What would this mean for future discourse on gentrification?
Logan Miller: Smith discusses how the word 'gentrification' became a dirty word in the 1980s, and then describes how the city and many influential figures attempted to gentrify the word itself by trying to remove the negative connotations attached to it. Is it still a so-called 'dirty word' today?
Jenny Gruenberg: As an extension of Logan's question above, I wanted to point us to the specific quote by Smith that states, "With its 1985 ad, the Real Estate Board, having failed to sink the word, now sought to redefine it, give it a new, less emotional charge, gentrifying the word itself" (31). How have words used by those who are sympathetic with and/or in favor of gentrification such as "neighborhood recycling," "upgrading," "renaissance," "modernization," "renewal," "innovation," and the concept of "family," worked to mask the true meaning and lived reality of gentrification for working class people whose home are being violently taken from them? Has the reality of gentrification been unmasked since more people have become aware of this rhetorical framework and, if so, how?
Andy Monserud: On page 78, Smith notes a "chicken-or-egg" problem regarding wages, urban development and rents. How do debates around such development projects (Smith uses transportation infrastructure as an example) frame this question, especially re: (de)valorization of property/capital?
Quinn Lincoln: Smith says that "Gentrification is thereby part of the social agenda of a larger restructuring of the economy" (86). Is this restructuring overall beneficial for society?
Nick Hochfeld: Having read several texts on colonialism for other classes: what parallels and similar rhetoric can we find between colonialism and gentrification? How has the control of space and deposession of entire populations evolved?
Nate Olson: Where do all the dispossessed go? That is to say, when gentrification occurs and rents are raised because of the "urban renewal" described by The Real Estate Board Ad (30), where do all the people who used to inhabit the space end up?
Andrew Durand: What ideological assumptions are an implicit part of Smith's history of "gentrification." What powers skewed its initial meaning away from Baudelaire's poem?
Sam Jacobson: Some authors claim that the rise of Neoliberalism as an ideology was created as a way for the system to overcome its own contradictions. It has been said that neoliberalism was a logical, at the time reasonable, response to certain conditions that society was facing, similar to FDR’s New Deal Policies. If gentrification is thought of as “part of the social agenda of a larger restructuring of the economy,” then what are the pressures that the social agenda is responding to and how do we begin to go about combatting them so as to alter the system without creating other unforeseen problems (86)?
Nathan Gruenberg: Smith, speaking to how economic crisis both necessitates and provides the opportunity for a fundamental restructuring of social and economic space, references Sanders, and states, “it makes sense to reassess the traditional liberal view that the 1950s state-subsidized urban renewal schemes in the US were a failure. Regardless of how socially destructive urban renewal was—and it was socially destructive—it was actually very successful economically in laying the foundation for the phase of redevelopment, rehabilitation, land use conversion and, ultimately, private-market gentrification that would follow” (Sanders via Smith 83-84). This prompts me to bring up GIbson-Graham yet again, and ask what is more important to consider, societal gain, or economic profit? Again, it seems as though our pro-economic ideologies (which could be achieved through gentrification) seem to blind us to the possible gains of healthy, societal interactions, and solely focus on profit in the economic sense.
Map
Day 1 Discussion Mapping (Members: )
Map
Day 1 Clarification Questions (Members: )
Questions
Day 1 Discussion Questions (Members: )
Andrew Durand: How does the mythology of deterritorialization buttress gentrification? What historical loss constitutes this myth in the first place?
Nick Hochfeld:
On the commodification of space: if neighborhoods objectively benefit from gentrification (benefit in the capitalist sense of the word), could gentrification be considered necessary for the growth (consider J. K. Gibson-Graham’s analysis of the word) and prosperity of these areas?
Follow up: when considering the similarities between gentrification and international aid organizations and the “white savior mentality” of upper class Americans, what criticisms come to light when discussing international aid organizations through this lens? If they objectively benefit a region, how do they compare to the improvement methods of gentrification?
Follow up: Why do we jump to help in international crises (Nepal earthquake, Kony 2012, Syrian conflict, ISIS), but lack the same enthusiasm when it comes to aiding our own homeless? Why does it take the death of Americans (Mike Brown, Eric Garner) for the middle class to pay attention to the plight of the lower?
-This photo might prompt some discussion:
http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Needs+our+help_eb6b99_4788796.jpg
Sarah Edwards:
At the end of Chapter 1, Smith ties the gentrification of local communities to larger global processes by arguing that the “new global wars of the New American world order” have come back to the “cities of the East” (26-27). How does Smith’s interpretation of capitalist enterprise operate within this “New American world order?”
Blake Ladenburg
How does globalization fuel gentrification? Consider this question not only in cities where gentrification processes are already occurring, but also in locations where gentrification has yet to start.
Logan Miller
The new mythos that has propelled people to the inner city in order to 'tame' it is seemingly damaging as if it follows the same trajectory as the pioneers who set out to the west then the consequences for the people already living there would be disastrous, will this come about in the same way?
Jenny Gruenberg:
How has the rhetorical framing of land developers as "urban pioneers" masked as well as legitimated their true intentions and goals?
How does the concept of the "frontier" act as a mode of dehumanization?
Andy Monserud
How does gentrification demonstrate the fluidity of class, especially when we consider that artists, a bourgeois group, are ultimately pushed out by the very yuppies they draw in?
Quinn Lincoln:
Does the natural advancement of society lead to increased trends of gentrification?
Emma Dulaney:
Sorry in advance for the long discussion question..I happened to be working in Walla Walla this summer during the "Gentlemen of the Roads" concert- and a lot of what occurred during that time in Walla Walla is identical to the type of gentrification described in the "New Urban Frontier." Weeks leading up to the concert, Walla Walla hired people called "Town Ambassadors" to walk around Main Street and remove the homeless, particularly in the empty lot on Main Street the homeless tend to occupy. When the actual concert occurred, Main Street was shut down so only people with wrist bands could enter (obviously by this time the homeless had been completely kicked out.) The man I was working for at the time is a veteran who owned a struggling locally-owned business. He was openly pro the removal of the homeless since the overall goal of the concert for him was to profit as much as possibly and promote future tourism in Walla Walla. What are your thoughts on this? Particularly in regards to a passage on page 17 which states, "notice that the poor, abandoned, and homeless of the neighborhood were already invisible without the frosted window" (17). Are the homeless of Walla Walla already invisible to us?
Sam Jacobson
In her Installation speech, President Murray told her audience that “we would be well-served by continuing to think of ourselves as on the frontier, the frontier of liberal education.” In the context of our reading for today, would we be “well-served” to think of ourselves in this way?
Ione Fullerton
How do people feel about viewing gentrification as violence, specifically institutionalized and legitimized violence? How can gentrification be re-conceptualized as violence, instead of merely a "PC buzzword" (as I so often hear it referred to)? Are people even comfortable with describing the frontier expansion of the Wild West as violence..?
Nathan Gruenberg
Barthes’ defines myth as “constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things" (11). This applies to gentrification since it has only been cast in a positive light (e.g. wild west), and the negative aspects have been blatantly excluded. In what other ways have our hegemonic conceptions been mythified, and does this apply to our entire capitalist structure as a whole (maybe think about J.K. Gibson Graham in answering this question as well)?
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Day 2 Text Mapping (Members: )
Map
Day 2 Discussion Mapping (Members: )
Map
Day 2 Clarification Questions (Members: )
Questions
Day 2 Discussion Questions (Members: )
Valentina: In Chapter Two: Is Gentrification a Dirty Word?, how is new class discourse suggested through a post modernist lens of “a new political grammar” that places a focus on “us” and changes the usual subject? And in how does addressing the audience as “we, the middle class authors” on page 42 ultimately “restore agency to the middle class?”
Sarah Edwards: While Smith discusses the differing conceptions of gentrification throughout Chapter two, he also notes that “gentrification became a hallmark of the emerging ‘global city’” as participation in the global market increased amidst key economic and political shifts (37). How is the conception of the “global city” problematic for those seeking to oppose gentrification? Does increasing globalization uphold or undermine specific anti-gentrification projects?
Emma Dulaney: How does The Real Estate Board of New York benefit from confusing the meaning of "gentrification" to the public sphere via their ad? The ad states, "To one person, it means improved housing. To another, it means unaffordable housing," (29). Does this, including the multiple other definitions of "gentrification" presented in this book, put gentrification in danger of becoming an ideograph (a term too laden with conflicting meanings and "emotionally loaded" to have significance)? What would this mean for future discourse on gentrification?
Logan Miller: Smith discusses how the word 'gentrification' became a dirty word in the 1980s, and then describes how the city and many influential figures attempted to gentrify the word itself by trying to remove the negative connotations attached to it. Is it still a so-called 'dirty word' today?
Jenny Gruenberg: As an extension of Logan's question above, I wanted to point us to the specific quote by Smith that states, "With its 1985 ad, the Real Estate Board, having failed to sink the word, now sought to redefine it, give it a new, less emotional charge, gentrifying the word itself" (31). How have words used by those who are sympathetic with and/or in favor of gentrification such as "neighborhood recycling," "upgrading," "renaissance," "modernization," "renewal," "innovation," and the concept of "family," worked to mask the true meaning and lived reality of gentrification for working class people whose home are being violently taken from them? Has the reality of gentrification been unmasked since more people have become aware of this rhetorical framework and, if so, how?
Andy Monserud: On page 78, Smith notes a "chicken-or-egg" problem regarding wages, urban development and rents. How do debates around such development projects (Smith uses transportation infrastructure as an example) frame this question, especially re: (de)valorization of property/capital?
Quinn Lincoln: Smith says that "Gentrification is thereby part of the social agenda of a larger restructuring of the economy" (86). Is this restructuring overall beneficial for society?
Nick Hochfeld: Having read several texts on colonialism for other classes: what parallels and similar rhetoric can we find between colonialism and gentrification? How has the control of space and deposession of entire populations evolved?
Nate Olson: Where do all the dispossessed go? That is to say, when gentrification occurs and rents are raised because of the "urban renewal" described by The Real Estate Board Ad (30), where do all the people who used to inhabit the space end up?
Andrew Durand: What ideological assumptions are an implicit part of Smith's history of "gentrification." What powers skewed its initial meaning away from Baudelaire's poem?
Sam Jacobson: Some authors claim that the rise of Neoliberalism as an ideology was created as a way for the system to overcome its own contradictions. It has been said that neoliberalism was a logical, at the time reasonable, response to certain conditions that society was facing, similar to FDR’s New Deal Policies. If gentrification is thought of as “part of the social agenda of a larger restructuring of the economy,” then what are the pressures that the social agenda is responding to and how do we begin to go about combatting them so as to alter the system without creating other unforeseen problems (86)?
Nathan Gruenberg: Smith, speaking to how economic crisis both necessitates and provides the opportunity for a fundamental restructuring of social and economic space, references Sanders, and states, “it makes sense to reassess the traditional liberal view that the 1950s state-subsidized urban renewal schemes in the US were a failure. Regardless of how socially destructive urban renewal was—and it was socially destructive—it was actually very successful economically in laying the foundation for the phase of redevelopment, rehabilitation, land use conversion and, ultimately, private-market gentrification that would follow” (Sanders via Smith 83-84). This prompts me to bring up GIbson-Graham yet again, and ask what is more important to consider, societal gain, or economic profit? Again, it seems as though our pro-economic ideologies (which could be achieved through gentrification) seem to blind us to the possible gains of healthy, societal interactions, and solely focus on profit in the economic sense.