cathyintheurbanworld - Tumblr blog

[cathyintheurbanworld]

Before this class, I don’t think I realized how important spaces, what’s in a space, and how a space is constructed were. And that’s basically what cities are: giant spaces with identities tied to what they contain and contribute, and sometimes how they were created. I was actually used to thinking entirely separate from spaces and cities, and thinking about the politics of groups and their direct relationships with each other, and what kind of access to what all of them had. With that framework, the only significance that cities had to me were how in the P of POET(S), population, particularly population demographics and diversity, and the political implications of that. But industry and technology are such driving factors of the types of people a city attracts. So it’s really hard for me to tell what I think the future of cities is, besides hopefully acting accordingly to how diverse they’re becoming.

By the way, “diversity” is such a buzz word, I was skeptical each time someone said it in the “Urban Future with a Purpose” video. The stock videos they had of diverse friend groups and co-workers didn’t seem realistic to me. It’s ideal, but it’s not easily attainable to have that level of integration. I mean, none of the visions for future cities are easily attainable, but I think it’s rather flat to view diversity as simply racial diversity. 

The question, “What is an American city?” is a little funny to me because I’m currently taking a class called “What is a teenager?” and as much as the answer felt a little plain and simple before taking the class, I quickly realized that the question is more complex than “an age group.” (Fun fact: our first reading was co-written by Michael Katz, “Youth and Early Industrialization in a Canadian City”) It’s a complex question that a lot of moving parts and perspectives; the closest we got was someone that could be treated or pointed out as both an adult and a child, depending on the situation, since society loves to treat a teenager like an adult when they’re acting immaturely and like a child when they want to be more mature. I wonder if we can say the same with American cities, if it’s really all a matter of perspective and how to navigate that.

[cathyintheurbanworld]

Our discussion on urbanization and the hukou system also introduced me to other social systems in China, like the Social Credit system. It all reminds me a little about the caste system in India, or at least when I heard about the Hukou system, I was afraid that it could be as oppressive as India’s caste system, which basically controlled social mobility.

It is interesting to have a system based on urban vs. rural, but I suppose that land ownership has always been a large indicator of wealth or financial security because of production and industry. So it’s interesting to see that the motivation to free up land for redevelopment and to bolster the economy by promoting urbanization and urban hukou.

Also, hearing about “left-behind children” in China doesn’t surprise me. As a frequent watcher of the occasional Korean or Chinese Dramas, I originally that it related more to the academic prospects of children and parents deciding whether investing in private or higher education would be worth it, since spots in top universities were scarce and the competition and rigor for them is intense enough to be considered an investment that has to be worth it. It sounds harsh, but from the culture I’ve seen depicted in K- and C-Dramas as well as from my sister’s time teaching English in Chiayi, Taiwan, there’s a lot of academic rigor in those East Asian countries. Although the definition is wrong, it does live in the realm of access or attainment to educational resources.

To me, education is usually an overrated aspect of discussing social mobility, since in the US access and opportunity to quality education varies so much in early and higher education, but I feel like it's underrated aspect in this discussion of how hukou is valued. Depending on how much education and status associated with it is valued, to deny public schooling to children of migrant workers not only makes it difficult to be socially mobile, but also creates more problems in parents leaving their children behind because of the unbalance opportunities.

[cathyintheurbanworld]

Our class discussion about COVID and cities was mainly surrounded by the future of work, how commuting for work, work spaces in cities, and the social aspect of work producing innovation and creativity. I’m not surprised that work and labor dictate how we view the direction of cities.

I think I was surprised by the lack of conversation about the increased attention on employee rights and benefits spurred by COVID. For some people, the stimulus checks gave more and more people the opportunity to leave jobs that weren’t paying enough or weren’t providing sufficient benefits. A lot of people may have heard it as people being lazy now that they had money they could fall back on. I suppose this is a trend in blue collar and service work more than it is in white color work, though.

The mention of how in-person social interaction increases creativity and cross-team collaboration reminded me of a conversation I had in a separate class about how different disciplines view capitalism. All of the people in my class were majoring in English or in the humanities, so we were low-key in awe after hearing how in the beginner econ classes, the notion that NOW is the best time for creativity and innovation because of capitalism, which I bet is true for a portion of the population. It all really is about perspective, to focus on the widening wage gap or on how much richer some people are becoming.

[cathyintheurbanworld]

I’m going to be honest, some of the conversations in our movie/documentary groups on Monday didn’t sit right with me afterwards and I really wish I came more prepared to defend my views on why gentrification is bad. At the same time, I didn’t think that would be an opinion that needed defending, but I guess at a place like Penn, where a lot of students don’t spend a lot of time in displaced and struggling communities that continue to stay that way because of social structures that harm them more than they support. Looking back, I would’ve talked about what actually causes crime outside of proximity between the “bad neighborhood” and Penn that a person in our group relied his judgements on. Or how Penn's expanding presence in West Philly is detrimental for everyone. As much as I agree that gentrification shouldn't always be seen as a villain narrative, that doesn't make it an anti-hero either.

In that class period, neighborhoods like Kensington (in juxtaposition to Fishtown) and Point Breeze were brought up. It always interesting to me to hear non-Philly natives talk about them as visitors since I went to middle school in Kensington and walked to the park on Tioga pretty regularly, and my grandparents live in Point Breeze. As much as I like the attention given to Point Breeze in the conversation, it felt somewhat voyeuristic for someone to talk about it and the residents there and emphasizing the conditions there to glorify their point. Communities don’t want to think of their homes as decrepit and unlivable; they don’t want to be known from that lens.

This weekend, I'm planning on completing a landscape assignment for my intro to photography class by traveling around the city and taking pictures with "gentrification" as my theme. Initially, I thought it was going to take me a while to find varied places around the city, but after some thought, I realized that I know and have been raised around plenty of places affected by gentrification. The Hơa Bình Plaza on Washington and the surrounding area, Kensington and Fishtown, Spring Garden and Broad near CCP, and, of course, Penn. It may not seem like it's happening in the eyes of college students who are only here for 4 years, but when I return to these places that I grew up around, it's startling.

[cathyintheurbanworld]

I really enjoyed the readings for this week, not only since I’ve read other works but Zhou and Portes before for other sociology and Asian American studies courses, but as “sociologist-in-training” mostly interested in the immigrant and second-generation identity and experience. So I’ve certainly spent a lot of time reading about ethnic enclaves like Chinatowns and Little Saigons, as well as trying to keep up with the happenings and events of the ones in Philly. An aspect of ethnic enclaves to consider is how surrounding (White) communities and the government react to their heavy presence: Do they keep that racial or ethic group in that neighborhood and discourage moving out? Does that enclave become a place of tourism and commerce? Do they try to push people out and gentrify the area instead?

I suppose this is similar to our week with Du Bois, in discussing gentrification and redlining in West Philly, but I wonder how much the economic differences contribute to the prevention of these problems and if there was considering of the communities that were there before immigrants resettled there.

I also think of the idea or phrasing of the “majority minority” interesting. It really treats ethnic minority groups as a solidary collective, which we aren’t. It not only gives the false belief that minorities have a distinct anti-White agenda, but it also homogenizes our identities and ideologies. I mean, a large group will only threatening if they’re cooperating, but I know there’s a lot of divide within the BIPOC community. I think it would be amazing if there wasn’t racism and prejudice between communities of color, but there is and it’s a problem, so implying that racial minority groups are a collective can be damaging.

[cathyintheurbanworld]

I’d never thought about how gender affected urban planning until this week’s readings and videos. Yes, women definitely play a part in what makes a community a community for others and themselves, but how do you make a space feminist?

During the example of bathrooms and providing more spacious bathrooms for women compared to men, I tried to think about other ways to implement this in a grander scale, since some of the examples listed seems more to the affect of greater consideration for necessity and productivity than gender and remembered gender-neutral bathrooms. Namely, the bathrooms on the first floor of McNeil and Houston. The openness to all-genders also heightens privacy and cleanliness that I think it also appreciated by everyone. I wonder what other concepts can be resolved by attempting to remove social constructs that act barriers.

I suppose removing gender, since the gender binary is a prevalent social constrict, as a factor is reductive to the point, though.

In Spain’s piece, she talked about the addition of public baths, playgrounds, libraries, and other social and service spaces that mostly women and children belong or subscribe to. I know that social constructs are constructs for a reason, that although they aren’t real or with a hard science background, the social belief that they are real have real social and political implications. But I still hate the how Spain’s piece reinforces the notion that childcare, eldercare, and housework is the women or mothers’ sole responsibility. It’s a great to have urban planning prioritize these communities and services, but even more than the fact that they benefit women who do have certain responsibilities, everyone would.

[cathyintheurbanworld]

I don’t think gentrification, the reasons why neighborhoods get gentrified, or the consequences of it are new topics, especially at Penn, where we endearingly call Penn’s relationship with West Philly, Penntrification.

But being from Philly, I’ve also been able to see firsthand more examples of gentrification in Philly. Such as real estate company, Streamline, still trying to push out Vietnamese shopping center started by the refugee and immigrant population, at Hơa Bình Plaza in South Philly. Or just how Fishtown, a neighborhood in North Philly that I’ve seen grow whiter and “hipper” from my middle school in Kensington.

It’s kind of been weird for me to hear a lot about how the then-school I attended was in a bad neighborhood and a lot of people knocking on the neighborhood, the El, or the drug use in the area, and blaming the people. Not to say that those aren’t problems, but as someone who had to walk past all of that to get on the train to go home, it’s always came from a place of judgement at Penn. Honestly, the biggest problem that I faced at that time was my school and how racist the teachers who weren’t from the neighborhood were. Another example of how racial inequality contributes to systematic inequality.

But back to gentrification and Sampson’s piece, he concludes that citizen action is key to fighting against systemic racism and inequality including public policy that contributes to pushing poorer communities out of their space. Saving Hơa Bình Plaza in South Philly is a continuing campaign of a few community organizations centered on Southeast Asian social justice. It’s hard to really say how viable they’ve been doing citizen action, especially on their own since they had to underling a lot about zoning laws in order to effectively fight against bigger corporations.

As hopeful as it us, we can’t always assume that good, moral will will save the day.

[cathyintheurbanworld]

Earlier this week, one of my classmates presented their research data on drag culture and gender expression after spending the summer conducting ethnographic research in gay bars in New York. Their main findings were about the differences between traditional and experimental drag, often times drawing a distinct line where they were practiced, in Hell’s Kitchen vs. Brooklyn.

Although Hell’s Kitchen is known as one of the gayborhoods in New York, likely due to the popularization and capitalization of gay and drag culture, owing to increased tolerance of the queer community and popular media like RuPaul’s Drag Race, their has been a pull of non-queer folk and tourists towards traditionally gay bars and queer spaces. At the same time, the findings suggests that capitalism and the commodification of queer culture has pushed younger queer folk out.

On the other hand, there seems to be a push for the queer community to more diverse and, I guess, non-traditionally queer spaces, as the queer culture evolves and no longer needs to be so confined.

This push and pull reminds me of Fischer’s Subcultural Theory. It feels complementary and contradictory how the LGBT+ community and queer culture has evolved, at least in New York City. There’s a lot of community that spaces like gayborhoods have created, but as the general necessity, seemingly, decreases and other identities intersect with each other, creating need for more specific safe and brave spaces.

[cathyintheurbanworld]

Revisiting the SEA Market

I’ve recently found myself in green and garden spaces in Philly, often started by minority communities hoping to find reestablish their roots with gardening and ethnic foods.

Last week, I finally went to FDR park to check out the Southeast Asian Market since they relaunched last year, with the support of the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia. I’ve been attending the SEA food market in FDR since I was little with my parents, so long that they refer to it as “Spectrum,” after the arena that was part of the Sports Complex not far from FDR that closed a decade ago. Besides going to buy food from the vendors (and practicing some Viet), I wanted to see how their community garden was doing.

I spent my summer working in VietLead’s summer youth program and I had especially learned a lot from being in and helping lead our garden rotation. Other than teaching the youth  how to garden, we also rooted our lessons in restorative practices with land and mutual aid in our communities. We held our lessons in our community garden, in the back of a high school in South Philly and run by members of the community who helped start it. I hold a deeper appreciation for land, food, and where they come from.

Last week, when we discussed efforts of community members taking restorative action and back spaces that once, in a way, belonged to them, reminded me of efforts of the SEA community in Philly. But until this class, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about the connection between those efforts and urbanization and the urban process under capitalism, as much as I connected them to reestablishing roots after resettlement. 

In John Logan and Harvey Molotch’s “The City as a Growth Machine,” they discuss social phenomena of places as commodities, a place of shared values. The SEA market isn’t really a place of commerce as much as it’s a place of found community and sanctuary that the Lao and Khmer communities began, before expanding to other SEA communities. There are so many elements of the market, including establishing their legality and place within FDR, that establish it was a commodity, a place of cultural values for me and others in the SEA community.