Culture : Space

Catcalling video: public response

 

I agree with Hanna Rosin's critique of "10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman".  The video effectively makes the point that women are routinely harassed by men on the street.  However, because of poor editing choices harassment is framed as a racial issue as the majority of men featured in the video are black or Latino.  And after reading some of the YouTube comments (63K to date), some men self-identifying as white don't believe harassment on the street is a problem, because *they* don't do that!  As one commenter argued:

"Did U notice that those who "harassed" her were mostly black low-life people? I mean U should be aware that there are many different people with different cultural or other differences in attitude or manners. U can't blame all men for that. P.S. I think they were "harassing" that girl because she has a fat ass which is considered as a beauty nowadays among this group of people."

Like Rosin, I remembered the earlier video by Jessica Williams on the Daily Show, which does a great job of illustrating the extent of the problem (using a map with pins!) by featuring men, both black and white and across various socioeconomic occupations harassing a diverse group of women.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

 

On the Radar: Upcoming Documentary on Gentrification in Atlantic

Atlanta native and filmmaker King Williams is producing a documentary on gentrification in Atlanta, GA.  His kickstarter campaign was successful so keep an eye out for the upcoming film.

Desciption from the film's website:

"The Atlanta Way is an in-depth analysis of how Atlanta’s relationship with gentrification has been a byproduct of decades of clandestine backroom dealings, oblique public relations campaigns & the treatment of its growing underclass.

Focusing on investment and profit over outright defiant opposition, Atlanta positioned itself to be an outlier amongst other southern cities. This would be no more evident in its development of public housing, airport, highways, suburbs and the centennial Olympic games.

Atlanta is the first city in the US to open its doors to public housing and the first to successfully close all of its public housing as well. The Atlanta Housing Authority, utilizing a series of revolutionary as well as controversial programs aimed at curbing an even more controversial system of public housing projects."

 

 

 

Interesting Reads

Are teenagers part of the reason why malls are dying? John McDuling writing for Atlantic Cities looks at Piper Jaffray’s semi-annual study into teen behavior in American Teens Don't Hang Out at Malls Anymore.

Who is responsible for gentrification and who has the right to criticize? A.O. Scott's article, Whose Brooklyn Is It, Anyway?, looks at media representations and gentrification--specifically in Brooklyn in response to Spike Lee's well publicized rant. 

Not just blue and red or purple states--the politics of metro areas within states. Richard Florida analyzes sprawl in metro areas and the relationship to conservative politics in America's Most Sprawling Cities Are Also the Most Republican.

 

Interesting reads

Sheldon and Leonard's apartment from the Big Bang Theory

Credit: www.cbs.com

 

Bankrate.com:  What 6 TV homes would cost in real life. By Dana Dratch

Slate:  Are Artists to Blame for Gentrification? By Ben Davis

The Racial Dot Map

Source: Dustin Cable/Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia

 

Dustin Cable, a demographic researcher at the University of Virginia, created another interesting mapping project based on the 2010 Census data.  The blog and interactive map can be found here.

 

Maps: Poverty and Race in the US

 

 

 

The Urban Institute created a mapping tool that tracks poverty and racial segregation using detailed Census data for every metro area in the US from 1980-2010.  The above maps represent Washington, DC in 1980 and 2010.  The maps provide visual evidence of the effects of gentrification in the metro area, especially comparing the urban center versus the suburbs.

Google's Personal Maps

Evgeny Morozov wrote an interesting article, "My Map or Yours?," for Slate critiquing Google’s plan to personalize maps.  I agree with Morozo that there are social implications that need to be considered.

From the article:

 “Google's urbanism, on the other hand, is that of someone who is trying to get to a shopping mall in their self-driving car. It's profoundly utilitarian, even selfish in character, with little to no concern for how public space is experienced. In Google's world, public space is just something that stands between your house and the well-reviewed restaurant that you are dying to get to. Since no one formally reviews public space or mentions it in their emails, it might as well disappear from Google's highly personalized maps.”

Tree coverage and inequality in Washington, D.C.

Source: Ted Mellnik and Annie Gowen/The Washington Post.

 

The above chart from the Washington Post article "Tree canopy’s density indicates wealth of D.C. neighborhoods" attempts to illustrate a correlation between tree coverage and income in D.C.  In many ways this article states the obvious--wealthier neighborhoods tend to have more trees. The authors quote environmentalists' arguments about the benefits of trees and briefly mention real estate advantages.  However, I think this issue deserves deeper explanation.  This is an interesting research topic. Does tree coverage matter?

Post-Industrial Metro Areas

The Atlantic Cities posted "America's Most Post-Industrial Metros" listing the top 20 metro areas with populations over 1 million that score highest on the ratio of services to goods in America's continuing transition to a post-industrial economy. 

The overall ratio of services to goods for the U.S. economy is approximately 3 to 1. The post-industrial economy is most prevalent in the Northeast corridor (Boston to Washington, DC).  The Washington metro area is the highest with a ratio of 11.17. The New York metro follows with a ratio of 9.86.  Interestingly, the Miami metro area follows with a ratio of 7.75. 

The DC and NYC metro areas have a higher concentration of professionals, but I would guess that Miami has a higher ratio of service jobs in comparison to professional jobs.  It would be interesting to compare income levels with the services to goods ratio to also consider rising inequality in post-industrial metro areas.

Interesting Reads

From Atlantic Cities:

One of America's Oldest Shopping Malls Converts to Micro-Apartments

What Is It Exactly That Makes Big Cities Vote Democratic?

New York's 'Affordable Housing' Isn't Always Affordable

San Francisco Chronicle:

Gentrification no longer a dirty word

New York Times:

Born to Wait