Wednesday, February 13, 2008
CUltural Geography and Shaping the American Landscape
"The villages and towns have indeed ebbed, and the city-cum-suburb continues to eat up the countryside." -Pierce Lewis. When digesting this weeks readings i was very moved by what all of these articles had to say. All of these men were and still are working on mapping these rural towns and areas that most people just drive by and do not think twice about. What most people do not think about is that the American landscape is shaped by small little towns that are spewed across this nation. Another thing that most people do not recognize is the history of the towns and how that has shaped the landscape as well. Lewis goes into how small towns luster for a while then are torn apart by bigger cities taking jobs and people. This doesn't mean that the small towns are dying , even though some of them have, it means that we need to record what is there and try and preserve what is left by documenting these places.
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5 comments:
I liked how Lewis points out that Americans don't love their cities like Europeans and that we don't have one particular city that encompasses our culture like Paris or London. Our culture really is in our small towns. We do however have strong regional culture represented in big cities such as Atlanta and Chicago. Something that you find more of in Spain or Italy than in NW Europe.
The small town is a building block, and we invest SOOO much effort in preserving them -- indeed, in the midsection of the country, they stand by themselves, and are really kind of forlorn; but they also represent a trove of values, sometimes archaic ones.
Bottom line, they're an endangered species: The question is, what's replacing them -- and how?
Hey, good stuff, but few and far between ... it's been two months since there was any action here!
Not much progress; I was hoping you'd bust one out, but will have to make do.
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