ENG 2150 Blogs

Walkability – Peer Reviews

Michael B:

I enjoy how you identified that there is a connection between the experiences that a person witnessed in a neighbor and how it relates or affects the person’s view on the neighborhood. I also liked how you included a personal story, to better structure and refine your thesis. In your third paragraph, you wrote this, “I have been on the receiving end of communication both good and bad.” I didn’t understand what you were trying to convey, maybe change the word choice/structure.  Also, a sentence after that you write, “The first experience I had while walking in Manhattan occurred a few months ago.” Was it your first time walking in Manhattan or your first time experiencing a tourist walk up to you? One thing I noticed that you missed was another source besides your walks and from the readings. If you include another source, it can help fortify your thesis and help you explore more.

 

Spencer:

I liked how you start your essay and it intrigued me instantly. Your thesis is strong and is very relevant with today’s issues. It’s interesting how you used the planet as our “hood”. Using this, makes it so all of use, humans, should care because it is our home. I also immediately see that you introduce a source that’s not from what we discussed in class or your walks which helps better structure or strengthen your claim. You also break down and analyze what Rachel Carson writes about in her book which is really helpful towards your argument. Something I don’t see is you incorporating your walks into your essay. This can help you create further evidence for your essay. For example, if you’ve seen things that have been affected by global warming in your daily life. You analyze a lot of the source(s) and it really does help fortify your writing. Your essay has helped me better understand what I should do on my essay, which is to analyze my sources more in-depth.

Walkability First Draft

Since the dawn of time, walking has been an essential and integral part of everyday living for humans. Without the ability to walk, meant you lacked the skills to survive independently. Nowadays, the ability to walk isn’t used as frequently with the evolution of technology and the introduction of mass transit and vehicles. The start of focusing on structuring more modern societies and technological advances have separated our distance between walking and surviving. We, as humans have evolved from living in villages and hunting for food to living in cities and working in offices. It is evident that the evolution of our societal structure and the implementations of environmental design has affected our walkability. We now rely less on walking because there are faster and more accessible means of transportation.

 

As a society, we have stopped relying on our primal instincts and have grew into more intellectual beings. We have gone from hunters and gatherers to living in cities and taking the subway to work or school. We have grown so much and are discovering new ideas or inventions every day. According to J Michael Oakes, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota, believes that the key environment factors that affect walking are: density, street pattern or connectivity, mixed land uses or the presence of destinations, and pedestrian infrastructure and design related to the issues of comfort, safety, and interest. I also agree with Oakes’ claim that these factors do play a role in walkability.

 

The creation of mass transportation such as trains or buses have played a huge role in affecting walkability in the last couple of centuries. The idea that going to a location to another location would take couple of hours to get to can be shortened by more than half the time is amazing. Obviously, this will affect how people live their lives. For example, in New York City, mass transportation has become a daily part of living. People depend on the public transportation to get to places. Without public transit, many people would not be able to go to their job, school, or a friend’s place. Public transit has made it so much easier for people to get to places and connects the boroughs together. If I wanted to go to school from my home, it would take me approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes, but if I take the subway, it will take me 40 minutes. This does come at a price however, and not talking about the MTA fee but you miss out on looking at things. Meaning you’re stuck inside a subway train with nothing to look at besides the advertisements on the walls or the lights when you look out the window that you pass by every couple of seconds; it is very repetitive and you don’t get to see sights compared to walking. Mass transportation also affects the way people interact. As a person who resides in New York City, mass transportation, like the subway is viewed to get to a place quickly, from point A to point B. There is no need to talk to strangers and interact with them. You don’t need to make any eye contact and have an awkward moment where both of you are looking at each other. Usually to prevent this, people listen to music or sleep on their trip to their destination. There is no connection between people who are literally close to each other, in a physical sense. I sometimes see the same people daily on my way to school in the same station or subway train but never have any interactions with them. Compared to a different place that doesn’t rely on public transportation like rural areas; it is more common for people who see each other almost every day to have some form of interaction even if it’s a brief discussion or a simple hello.

 

Speaking of New York City, cities that have developed over the years can also affect the walkability. For instance, Manhattan is a grid, where the streets increase/decrease vertically and avenues ascend/descend horizontally. So, it is very easy to walk through and not get lost, because you can simply look at street signs and know the general direction you need to walk towards. Additionally, the streets of Manhattan are almost always populated, living up to the name of the city that never sleeps, and that does play a role in walkability. In “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs, she writes “To keep the city safe is a fundamental task of a city’s streets and its sidewalks.” Jacobs is trying to convey to keep the city feeling safe for its residents, the streets should have others who are there. They don’t need to be doing anything actively to protect others, they just need to be present and work like “eyes” to be mindful and that will cause the city to be safe. This is relatable with Manhattan because like mentioned above, Manhattan’s streets are usually never left alone, especially in the Lower Manhattan. People who have work, live there, or just simply walking will always be present in all times of the day. And according the Jan Jacobs, that will result in the environment being safer. From my weekly walks that I have had to do for the assignments, whenever I did walk around in Manhattan, the most obvious observations were the buildings and the amount of people walking in the streets. A large number of those people were on their way to work and were just mere afterimages. During my time in Manhattan, for high school and college, I didn’t not ever feel safe or protected; there were always people around me and I was never alone. You don’t really hear about crimes being committed in Manhattan since it’s populated with civilians and police.

 

Weekly Walks #7

 

These two picture were taken the same day and around 4 hours apart. This picture was taken Thursday, the day after another snow storm hit us. I was walking around my neighborhood, the usual route that I take, and it was pretty chilly when I went outside for during the first photo. When I come back outside again, the get groceries, I look outside and most of the snow has disappeared. That Thursday, the temperature was around 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit which is very warm considering we just had a snow storm. Things happen so randomly many times. A couple of hours ago, the ground was mostly snow and ice, now it melts and dries because of the sun and how warm it is. This kind of related with people’s lives too, sudden things can happen within a blink of an eye. Those changes can sometimes be negative, positive, or even irreplaceable. We just need to move on and accept that things will happen to us and we grow from that. I’m just happy that the snow is gone and we can finally get into spring.

Close Reading #5

“The Scythians” by Alexander Blok, is a poem about a certain ethnic group of people. Aft first, I thought this poem was about oppression and how this group in Asia and how they eventually grew from it or became too involved and started to enjoy what they were doing and that did not sit well with the Europeans. The author of this poem is describing how the group sees the Europeans for who they are and how the Europeans sees the group. I later researched what a Scythian was a found they were Eurasian nomads who inhabited the western and central Eurasian steppes from about the 9th century BC until about the 1st century BC. They were known for their distinct art and the first people to master mounted warfare which was also used by the Mongolians. I kind of saw the poem a little bit different because they were originally from Europe and moved and became nomads and eventually established and controlled a vast trade network connecting Greece, Persia, India and China.

Weekly Walk #6

This picture was taken last Wednesday when the Nor’easter came to New York. I was walking outside because I had to quickly buy loose leaf paper for school, so I went to the Walgreen that you can see in the right side of the picture. I didn’t think the weather was going to be this bad, as you can see, people had umbrella, all I was wearing were some sneakers and a jacket with a hood. Yeah, those sneakers and socks definitely got wet from all the slush mixture containing ice, water, and dirt. Snow was blowing furiously into my face and covering my glasses to the point where I had to take them off to see where I was walking. Looking back, I probably should have waited another day or been more prepared to go outside during the snow storm. This storm lasted the whole day and going a little into the night and was difficult to tread. If I recall, this picture was taken around afternoon time like around 1 or 2 ish.

Reflecting on comments

Directed to professor Ian:

I unfortunately did not get to read the feedback that you recently sent out on Black Board, but I do remember the things that you mentioned for my first draft. You made a lot of grammar and spelling check for me, like capitalizing names of places and companies, which I greatly appreciated. At the end, you wrote that I should finish off my essay with what I think the definition of home is and to go more in dept with it. I briefly did mention it in the beginning, however never got to give evidence or elaborate on it towards the end of the essay. This also gave me some inspiration to get to the word count minimum.

Weekly Walk #5

For this walk, I took a picture of the sky. I took this picture because I noticed that the clouds formed a pattern and the clouds were only this “shape” in a specific part of the sky. This was super interesting to me and as soon as I got home I looked up what this might mean because some people have studied the ways clouds form and what it can mean. What I found really interesting about this shape that the clouds created is like they are super compact and close together, yet there is so much more space they can escape to, like they’re trapped or bound within two invisible lines in the sky. When I researched the possible meanings of these clouds, one of them described these clouds to be cirrocumulus clouds, the article wrote that these clouds carry ice crystals and the water droplets that do fall from these clouds are at a very chilled state. And once these cirrocumulus clouds are spread out evenly on the sky, it means that rain will occur during 8-10 hours. I found this information so fascinating. It’s funny because there will be a snowstorm that is going to happen tomorrow, so it’s either a big coincidence or real facts. It’s so mind blowing that we can tell so much just from the ways that clouds appear on the sky. I’m inspired to keep looking around for small things that I may not notice, and they could mean so many different things.

Close Reading #4

“Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space” by Brent Staples

Right off the bat, Brent Staples talks about his first “victim” of fear due to his skin color. She was a white woman who started walking quicker and quicker until she was practically running down the street once she saw him. This was the author’s first encounter with people discriminating and racial profiling in the streets. Brent Staples in trying to make a point that racial profiling is still a big problem that occurs everyday and it is very difficult to walk around as a black man in the streets. I agree with this statement because due to past criminal history and similar cases, people correlate things like : mugging, rape, or gang violence with black males in America. That’s why the lady in the beginning and most of the people today feel and it’s unfortunate. It’s also difficult for people like Staples to be walking at night, especially since he is a night walker as stated in the writing, because your life can be in danger at any moment. He doesn’t feel safe with the security of the police or some homeowners and it’s definitely a problem in the U.S with racism and abuse of power.