Session 5 - November 10

[Elizabeth Rosales]

I was also wondering why Hong Kong reverting to Chinese rule wasn't talked about more. It seemed like it was just a minor, seamless transition. Perhaps it relates to the person that wrote the article or whomever was the intended audience, that they were being careful not to insult anyone, inadvertently. I was in Hong Kong in 1988, before it reverted back to Chinese rule, so I was curious.

[Jennifer Lee]

I enjoyed all you comments.  I agree that a shushrittio is delicious and a portable way to enjoy sushi 😀

The foreign Disney parks are always interesting to visit.  You get to see a lens of how Americans think foreigners view America. Similar to how Chinatowns don't exist in China. Paris Disnelyland has this odd fascisnation with cowboys and 50's Americana, while Tokyo Disney had a surprisingly global representation.  

[Elizabeth Rosales]

I was thinking about the homeless issue, as well. I noticed that they meticulously described the homeless population as middle-aged men, who were neat and clean and only slept and then left for work the next day. That is very different from LA. My brother is very often one of them. He had (probably has) a drug problem and chose not to finish going through rehab and wanted to live on the streets of LA. In and out of friends homes, but sometimes just on a bench. I think our homeless problem is largely due to drug and alcohol problems. That is much harder to fix. Believe me. I offered my brother my guest room if he would get clean and get a job. He wanted none of it. His mind is a mess. This is true for many homeless across the nation. He came here from the Minneapolis area where the drug problems are just as bad. There is no simple fix for LA. There is no simple fix for drug addicts.

[Thomas Pineda]

An exact spot in San Francisco, right across from the Ferry Building, is a concrete park filled with stairs, ledges and gigantic fountain. It offers space for a ice skating rink in winter and is at a huge intersection at the end of Market Street where it meets the Embarcadero. This whole architectural concrete plaza was a mecca and playground for skaters. It even ended up in a Tony Hawk video game when those first came out. Around early 2000, a lot of the ledges had gotten capped and parts removed, more security guards chased away skaters. But I remember how this place was an amazing spot to skate and was a large part of the 'informal' skate culture in the Bay Area, something it probably wasn't originally intended to be.

[Thomas Pineda]

Being able to take part in the daily rituals or unique festivals of a place you are visiting are always special experiences. I suppose as teachers, we have the benefit of longer vacations, and I’ve been fortunate enough to stay in places long enough where you can develop your daily routine throughout the week, visiting the same shops, markets and parks to view and take part of that flux of life. Or our trip could be changed and planned around a local festival that happened to be occurring that week, such as the Gion Matsuri or a fireworks festival- where we could take part in the surrounding markets and peripheral events. I think a big part of all of these travel experiences had to also do with food and that seems to be like an explicit way to experience a city, more viscerally than taking in its external veneer. A lot of the most memorable experiences were around those informal markets or street vendors. Like I remember visiting the Taipei 101 each time I visited, but I will keep going back to have this one particular type of pepper pork bun I’ve only found in the night markets there.

[Denis Vovchenko]

The material for today is very much connected to our discussion of Western imperialist influences last week. Jeffrey Hou made an interesting point that while home-grown “informal urbanism” in East Asia is regulated out of existence, Western-style food trucks are allowed to thrive (p. 195).

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

One of Vin’s images in the first video rang a couple of bells with me – there was a lady riding a bike with a trailer loaded with folded cardboard. In our small town, there is no city-wide recycling so I take our recyclables including folded cardboard to a recycling station once a month or so. I also remembered Charles Dickens’ novels where the urban poor lived in such slums constantly rummaging the streets for usable middle class trash. If I am not mistaken, the junkman who ran such an old-clothes store in “Oliver Twist” was also secretly dealing in stolen stuff and forcing the orphans to bring not just usable rags but also rich men’s wallets and watches. So with that in mind, I am not too surprised that Western and later Asian governments increasingly monitored such areas that Vin romanticized. As Vin said, the challenge is to save heritage areas while cleaning them up. The middle ground is surely hard to find but I would rather visit the Whitechapel district in its present form with Jack the Ripper tours than the same spot in its original colorful organic shape of the late 1800s. That kind of comparison should grab students’ attention since much of Dickens’ is something familiar as part of popular culture (not to speak of Jack the Ripper movies etc). What do you think?

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

Jeffrey Hou’s piece illustrated the East Asian cases of “insurgent planning” as a popular counterweight to neoliberal governance worldwide (202). I think “subversive” planning is more appropriate. I love the concept but as a historian I expected in “INSURGENT URBANISM” something like barricades of the Paris Commune of 1870-71 or of the Moscow Uprising of 1905. Vin’s videos for tonight and Jeffrey Hou’s article on temporal urbanism for some reason don’t have a political dimension. Is there such urban revolutionary landscape mythology in East Asia?

Hou’s example of Tokyo’s business district serving as homeless shelter at nights reminded me of “Occupy Wallstreet” camps in many US cities and more recently of BLM protesters who occupied Seattle. Walking through one of them I thought they looked like a squatter settlement. Has something like “Occupy Wallstreet” been tried in contemporary East Asia with its recent socioeconomic crises going back to 1997? (P. 208 Tokyo (daily) “Protected from the elements, the covered space at the West Exit of the Shinjuku Station has also served as a refuge for the city’s homeless population whose number grew during the 1990s after the burst of the bubble economy.”)

Speaking of protests, did the example of humane and ecofriendly urban change come about as a result of social protest (Cheonggyeocheon River revitalization in Seoul etc)? Vin seems to imply that we should promote that kind of urban future not as groups of activists but as individuals contributing to a global shift of sensibilities, right?

 

 

[Betsy Telle]

Thank you for sharing this idea. I hadn't thought about this connection to my Science class. I love the idea of students comparing ecosystems to their own neighborhoods, especially the symbiotic relationships in both.

[Betsy Telle]

I loved learning about the Cheonggyecheon River Restoration. I think that my students would really love learning about it as well. I think that it could be an inspiration for Los Angeles and what we can do with the River here. It would be nice to have the students study what they did in Korea and come up with ideas on what we could do and be inspired to be part of the clean up and restoration work being done in Los Angeles.

[Jennifer Lee]

I'm so sorry to hear about your brother that must be so difficult and frustrating. I also think that a lot of homeless people are suffering from addiction or mental health issues.  It is such a bigger problem than not having somewhere to live, although affordable housing in LA is a huge problem in iteself. I also thought the discription of the Japanese homeless men was interesting and also very Japanese. I can't recall ever seeing a homeless person either of the times I have been there, but maybe I didn't realize that they were homeless since they keep up their appearance. I'm curious where these men spend their days. 

[Jennifer Lee]

That's a great idea. Students would really be inspired to create a project about the future of their own environment.  I bet a lot of them don't even realize that the concrete mess we have now used to be a river. 

I also really enjoyed seeing the restoration of the river.  I was curious if they got rid of the river like in LA or if they built the freeway above it?   

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

This is a really interesting idea also related to Economics. I don't teach Econ per se, but if I did it would interesting to connect these ideas.

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

I am so sorry also. I don't know how you help people who aren't ready to be helped, but I do know it's so important to have compassion and understand that while some people make a choice, it's often just in the moment or influenced by so many other factors. I try to teach my children to never judge homeless people (or anyone else, actually) because we never know what their real situation is.  Is it Atticus Finch who said "You never really know a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes"?

But I think Dr. Bharne had an interesting point on this also, that some people just need a home, while others need really a lot of a very different kind of help, and this is very true.  I've had students who are technically homeless but sleeping in a home with people they are related to, others in shelters, and sometimes in cars.  Everyone's situation is so different, and if cities are ever to be able to help them, we all have to understand the issues from the start.  But first there has to be the will to listen and the will to make change.

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

Hi Betsy, if you teach elementary there are some nice books on river restorations. "A River Ran Wild" by Lynne Cherry comes to mind.  This could be a cool project, even community action- writing letters to local politicians and/or speaking at City Council meetings... 

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