Reading Questions
These questions are all due Monday, April 21. Please get volunteers from your groups for review. Peer Reviews are due in class on Wednesday, April 29.
Commercial Landscapes.
1) Goss and Crawford both discuss the role of nostalgia in the design of shopping malls. Summarize their viewpoint about what the role of nostalgia is in consumer culture, and provide examples of this constructed nostalgia from the design of malls, houses or other buildings you know, or from other (non-design) realms of consumer culture, or from the design of malls, houses or other buildings. Discuss how this strategy of creating nostalgia is successful, when American are so very different and have different personal experiences.
2) Staeheli and Mitchell argue that in attempting to replace the traditional town square, mall designers have attempted to duplicate traditional forms of “community,” but not the “public.” Describe their argument. If this is true, judge whether this creation of communal, but not public, space represents a loss to society, or whether American society has found other outlets for the public.
Geographies of Fear
1) Mike Davis and Day et. al. both describe examples of “defensive,” but they give very different interpretations. Describe these interpretations, and explain and justify what should be the proper role, if any, for defense in urban design.
Rebellion in the City:
In these articles, we have various examples of people using designed spaces in ways other than intended. Place these writings alongside other writing this semester that lamented the loss of “truly public” space, or that argued for approaches to design with the goal of influencing behavior (such as consumer or criminal) behavior. Discuss the relationship between designed spaces and human experiences. Can experience be controlled through design? To what extent? If experiences can not be completely controlled by design, what should the purpose of design be?
