In Ruben Castaneda‘s S Street Rising, Shaw is described as “a vibrant cultural center” (50). I wanted to explore what Castaneda meant by this, so I set out into Washington to research the area myself. He was right. It is a cultural center and it is quite vibrant. But I feel there’s more to […]
Cultural
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, but You Can See it on the Wall
When I step out of the Shaw-Howard U Metro Station in Washington, D.C., I come across a cafe called Uprising Muffin. At first, I chose to ignore the cafe embedded inside a tall glass building. I wanted to understand the culture of Shaw that I felt was being overrun due to gentrification. I believed it […]
Design and a Post-Gender Society
Suzanne Tick, in her “His & Hers: Designing for a Post-Gender Society,” the central argument is that modern-day designers must use their craft to promote acceptance and change in society. Before stating her claim, Tick refers to the breakdown of traditional concepts of femininity and masculinity defining societal norms. The path her article follows […]
The Complexities of Urban Transformation
1. Exhibit Freeman, Lance. There Goes the Hood : Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up. Temple University Press, 2011. ebrary, http://site.ebrary.com/lib/alltitles/docDetail.action?docID=10392350. In Lance Freeman’s book titled There Goes the Hood : Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up, the central argument is that there is no one view of gentrification any more valid than another. […]
The Fundamentals
David Fleming, in the afterword of his book titled The City of Rhetoric, argues that if we wish to see any advancement in American society, we must no longer neglect the important relationship between a given space and socioeconomic trends. This chapter is unique in the sense that he begins by providing historical and […]