Not So Long Ago

 

The image above has been circulating online this year. If someone can tell me the original source, I would love to add a citation. I could spend the rest of this week commenting on it, because it relates to so much of what is wrong in the United States today. I will, in fact, no doubt be editing this post. 

But for now I am using it to refer to one of the many ways in which the "get over it" response to racial injustice is wrong: the practice of redlining. I have heard the term for many years, but learned only recently that maps were published with actual red lines on them. The importance of this practice is included in a PowerPoint file posted by Shane Wiegand for the Landmark Society.

More specifically, a digital atlas of such maps has been published as Mapping Inequality by the University of Richmond. This is a very important resource that details the practice and allows users to see how specific urban neighborhoods were characterized for the purpose of lending authorities during the 1930s. It is impossible to suppose that such stark definitions of desirable and undesirable neighborhoods could be without consequence today.

Angola's Singer, Sprinter ... and Geographer

 

Bonga Kueda: His beard is no simple matter

Harry Graham's 2018 interview with Angolan musician Bonga Kueda is a half hour very well spent. It is an engaging conversation with an artist whose life traces the arc of modern Angolan history. He describes his journey from music to running and back to music, all while telling Angola's colonial and post-colonial story. 

He mentions three major genres of Angolan music, and it might be difficult to know what he is saying if these are unfamiliar; a friend who has worked in Angola shared the correct spellings: Kuduro, Kizomba, and Semba. This is not the same as Brazilian Samba, though the latter may have been derived from Semba.

The stories of independence in Angola, Cabo Verde, and other Lusophone nations are intertwined with the 1975 fall of Salazar in Portugal itself. These events are much more recent than many of our contemporaries seem to think; it is almost too soon to talk about post-colonialism.

The conversation is presented for an English-speaking audience, but Bantu, Portuguese, and French are heard in the background throughout. Despite the deep pain Portugal has caused for his country, the main interview takes place by phone from a barber shop in Lisbon.

I add the label "geographer" to his story even though it is not cited in the interview. Growing up in colonial schools, Bonga had to learn the rivers of Portugal, but his own country was not part of the curriculum. At a young age, he taught himself the geography of his own country and took "Bonga" as a way of rejecting the name given him at birth as the subject of an empire. It is therefore quite ironic that he conducts the interview quite in the seat of that empire.

Lagniappe

When looking for the music of Bonga online, I found a recording of Sodade that he made with Cabo Verde's national treasure Cesária Evora.

Shifting Wheels

 

Biking in Chicago (a city I now visit regularly)
Image: David Schaper, NPR

As people start to move about a little more -- perhaps too much more -- many of us are doing so differently than we did before. Until a vaccine is found -- and taken widely -- transportation patterns are shifting. In a brief radio piece, Journalist David Schaper explores the shifting patterns that are already noticeable. He then discusses which of these patterns might become permanent, and the degree to which some of the changes fit with long-term goals of city planners.

I will be sharing this story with students in my urban geography and global thinking courses. Those who wish to explore the topic further might also enjoy the free CitiesX course I am taking online at Harvard.

Brockton Honors

In the Fall 2020 semester, I will be teaching a First-Year Seminar entitled Discovering Brockton, which I first offered under the title Geography of Brockton in 2008, when the First-Year Seminar requirement at Bridgewater State University was new. To date, I have taught the course five or six times, most recently as a Commonwealth Honors course.

GEOG 199: Whether a student is a life-long resident or a newcomer to the area, this provides a deep introduction both to the City of Brockton and the academic discipline of geography. The city’s rich heritage of innovation and its many layers of cultural identity are the background for examining challenges ranging from water supply to economic development. The course meets only once per week so that students have the opportunity to visit – in a university vehicle – the city’s people, cultural landscape, and key institutions through direct visits. Students are responsible for significant writing and research between weekly class meetings, so that each meeting can maximize time in the City of Champions.  

Each student in the class will explore the boundary between the City of Brockton and
one of the eight towns it borders. Contrasts between cities and towns - whether tangible
or intangible - are hugely important to understanding the
 geographies of Massachusetts.

The Bridge: years ago, a young person I met at a conference helped me to find a metaphor for my teaching that has proven helpful ever since. (I have tried in vain to find her again to express my thanks, but it has not been possible; that is another story.) Rather than mastering content that I deliver to students, I endeavor to connect them to ideas and to other people from whom they (and I) can learn. This course has been a perfect example -- I do have some insights and theoretical perspectives to share directly, and also some places I can take students where they can develop some of their own ideas. But in this course, I am often just that bridge (or chauffeur) connecting them to some real expertise. Quite a few people have helped with this course in the past, and I will be calling on some of them -- and some new connections -- this year.

FALL 2020: I am offering this course fully online, because required social-distancing standards cannot reasonably be met. This means that the popular van rides in and around the city will not be possible. I will be recording some of the walking and "windshield survey" mini-tours on my own, realizing that they will not be quite the same. Likewise, I am asking some of the people with whom I normally would arrange for in-person meetings to provide connections in other ways, whether it be Zoom meetings, pre-recorded presentations, or reference to online materials about their organizations or projects.

The class is scheduled 1:50 to 4:30 on Wednesdays. I will use some of that time for my own presentations. To provide for breaks and to simplify the scheduling of guests, I will endeavor to have guest speakers at 2:00 and 3:00, for up to 50 minutes. Some group guests might occupy both slots on a given day.

It is in fact for these potential collaborators that I created this blog post, by way of providing context for the favors I am asking of them.

Lagniappe

A brief note about the FYS and SYS series of courses: FYS Geography of Brockton was one of a small group of pilot courses before the requirement as finalized. Before teaching the course, I even joined several Bridgewater State College (as we were known then) colleagues at a conference in Tucson organized by the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience. I also piloted the Secret Life of Coffee as a Second-Year seminar the following year, and have taught about 20 sections of that course.

Students enrolled at Bridgewater State University during their first or second year (by credit count, not calendar) are required to take First- and Second-Year Seminars, respectively. Our advising program specifies the exceptions for students arriving with transfer credits, but for most students, these courses are integral to our Core Curriculum. The seminars allow students to practice writing or speaking skills in the context of a particular topic that is of special interest to the faculty member who is leading the course. 

Discovering Our Own Neighborhoods

Atlas Obscura is always a trove of geographic insight; the geographically curious can spend hours perusing the online or print version.

A recent contribution by journalist Lauren Vespoli offers even more to the geographically curious (including hints as to how and why we should all be geographically curious). In How to Dig Into the History of Your City, Town, or Neighborhood, she describes how she has used newly-found down time to explore her own surround -- and to engage friends to do the same. This is very creative online bonding! As she makes clear throughout the piece, the history comes in many forms and so do the processes of discovery.

Geographic discovery involves inquiry about
the ordinary in our midst.

She describes several tools that are familiar to me as a professional geographer -- such as Sanborn maps -- and other fascinating tools I had never heard of. I am most excited about using the Archipedia, which has well over 100 listings in each of two cities I teach as honors colloquia -- New Orleans and Detroit. Sadly, none of the fascinating buildings of Brockton (about which I teach an honors seminar) are this database, but I have other resources for exploring that city formerly known as North Bridgewater.

Among the tools Vespoli introduces is another I learned about from a fellow geographer just recently. Mapping Inequality is an impressive online collection of the maps used by the Federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation to guide mortgage rate-setting. In the guise of managing institutional financial risk, these maps also imposed or reinforced geographic patterns of racial discrimination through the practice of redlining. For many communities across the United States, researchers can discover whether their own neighborhoods fell inside or outside of those red lines.

I will also use this in my course Environmental Regulations, because this kind of research -- while enjoyable in its own right -- is potentially quite useful in some of the detailed work necessary to protect us from environmental contamination. Because pollutants from the past can be just as dangerous as chemicals currently in use, searching for possible relict sources of pollution is an excellent application of geographic skills.

Somerville Success

As part of the CitiesX course I am taking online, I very much enjoyed this 2018 with Joe Curtatone, the mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts.



I learned some interesting things about a city near Boston I have visited only a few times, and I recommend the discussion for anybody who is trying to imagine improving how their own communities work.

The mayor's approach to leadership is also refreshing -- it involves long-term, deep listening. His discussion with Professor Ed Glaeser is short on details, but he references another talk that provides some more specific examples of how Somerville has succeeded. That talk was easy to find -- city planner George Proakis addressing a TEDx Somerville event in 2014.

Proakis starts with a fascinating primer on the origins of urban zoning in the United States before turning to a discussion of the process Somerville pursued in changing its zoning code that year. Spoiler alert: both talks include a gem that should be obvious, but sadly is not: if we plan our cities for cars, we are going to get cars. We cannot plan for cars and hope for walkability!



Bonus: Proakis mentions Artisans Asylum as an example of an enterprise that would be difficult to categorize under traditional zoning rules. It is the first makerspace I heard of, and traditional zoning struggles with whether to call these education spaces or manufacturing spaces. I learned of Artisans Asylum when my son had an internship there -- in teaching the tenants how to use the equipment, he developed skills that have been very useful to him as an artist.

I have not gotten to them in the course yet, but at least three other videos relate to Somerville: Happiness Survey, Green Line, Gentrification.

Lagniappe

One of the ways to tell that Somerville is succeeding is that it has an extraordinary array of coffee shops -- a friend who used to live there has introduced me to a couple of them. I look forward to visiting again after the plague, to see how coffee fits into the Assembly Square area in particular.