City Life : Writing Assignment

Otherness and the Sociological Analysis of Urban Space

Urban sociologists such as Lewis Mumford, James Conlon and Jane Jacobs argue that spatial features are instrumental in influencing daily activities and practices as well as our ways of being with others in the world.

Throughout history, urban spaces in particular have facilitated a social dynamic in which people are stimulated and enriched by the ongoing encounter with people of different backgrounds and experiences.

Part I

Describe a situation in which you experienced what James Conlon refers to as an "encounter with Otherness." When did you come across something or someone that seemed ‘strange' to you, and how did that then disrupt your ‘taken-for-granted' relation to the world? Describe the situation and its challenge to your normal framework of thinking and acting.

Conlon suggests that good urban form can offer the opportunity to "confront radical difference," so as you reflect on and articulate your experience with difference, you should also describe how the spatial environs you were in at the time participated in your experience of ‘the Other'.

Part II

The objective in Part II is to consider how urban design makes possible Conlon's ‘opportunity for philosophy', allowing individuals the chance to become aware of their particularity in the context of the larger, variegated social landscape. Here you will analyze a place where you are usually surrounded by diverse strangers. Choose one of the following to analyze:

• an airport or bus station

• a children's playground

• a club or a performance venue

• a dog park

As with the first assignment, it is expected that you will take time to direct observe this space (in your paper you should state where and when the observation took place).

Your objective here is twofold: first, you want to think about how that space, through its design, brings specific differences together and sets up expectations for and relations between them.

Consider what those differences are, and how we ‘see' them, as well as how differences are asked to interact within this space. (Difference can be represented in many ways: different bodies, different ages, differences in race, class or gender, difference in status or roles, etc.)

You are also, as with the first assignment, working out how this space sets up parameters for thinking and acting for the different groups who are here. Remember the question, ‘if you did not know what this space was, how would it ‘tell' you?' In terms of the social difference that you see here, how does the space show which groups it is for?

How does it position those groups in relation to each other? Does it set up role expectations equally, or are hierarchies created? Are their differences equally valued? Does the space set up a sense of one as normal, and one as Other?

That is, consider how an urban space is not simply a container of difference, but is an active agent in the construction of difference.