Have a close look at Le Corbusier’s drawing of the Radiant City above. How would you characterize his vision of the ideal city? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the layout you see here?
Category: status
Map Exercise: The maps above are three ways of looking at New Orleans. What happens when you superimpose maps of race/ethnicity, elevation, and flooding? What other information would you want in order to draw some conclusions about the “social ecology” of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina casualties?
Image inquiry: how do these two photographs capture Klinenberg’s point about the social ecology of Chicago’s neighbourhoods? What kinds of evidence can we draw from these images?
Note his use of the term “social ecology”. What does he mean by this? How might the concept of social ecology be useful for thinking about the un-natural history of natural disasters?
Can or should this dependence on consumption and growth continue? Are there other ways to measure and envision prosperity, quality of life, and happiness? Is a new paradigm on the horizon, one that will reflect a new energy regime, new ways of eating, and new cultural values?
What sort of broader contexts do we need in order to understand what’s going on in this article? Who is behind the crackdown on piggeries? Who gains and who loses with the passage of sanitary laws that forbid pig-keeping the city? Think about how the following concepts interact in the article: social class, smell, health, and authority.
The photographer Edward Burtynsky has made a career of photographing the inputs and outputs of industrialized societies: production, consumption, and waste. There is an excellent film, called Manufactured Landscapes, documenting his work—if you can rent it, it’s worth watching. If not, have a look at the following selections of his photography at http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/: China (manufacturing, recycling), Ships (ship breaking, ship recycling), and Oil (extraction, transportation). Post your reactions to the 106 Wall.
Does a car and suburban lifestyle equal freedom (or a democratic right)? Is it realistic to think that citizens might sacrifice this lifestyle for the greater good? This is a chance to reflect a bit on how personal goods (self interest) relate to environmental goods (collective interest).
Vaclav Smil’s quote about US global influence and fossil fuels suggests a correspondence between the ability to harness energy and to wield global power. This seems to fit the great powers of wind energy (Spain, the Netherlands) and coal (Britain) as well. What do you think? If it holds true, who/what might be the next to turn new energy sources into global power?
Can you envision alternative scenarios to the Western pattern for China’s growth? Is there anything China can/should do to expand affluence among its people without increasing its share of global carbon emissions?