Return to Geography Course Pages
| Instructors: Professor Paul Groth email: pgroth@berkeley.edu office phone: 642-0955 office: 597 McCone Hall office hours: |
Class Location: 135 McCone Class Time: Tu 3:30-6 Course control number: 36472 Units: 1 |
|
|
Course Description: The visual and spatial artifacts of cities—their buildings, lots, streets, signs, front yards, even graffiti—provide very useful clues to past and present meanings, social identities, political struggles, and economic realities within America. These visual aspects of cities are not random; they often fit into repeating patterns and processes. Thus, learning to see the cities of the Bay Area can provide basic tools for understanding any American city built after 1850. We will travel by foot and BART to explore parts of Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco with six field trips, usually with two hours of discussion and lecture on site, and a half hour for travel back to campus. Course requirements include brief readings and participating in on-site discussions (or classroom discussions in the event of heavy rain). This seminar will meet for the first eight weeks of the semester, beginning Tuesday, August 30, 2005, and ending October 18, 2005. |
| Faculty Bio: Paul Groth is a Professor in geography, architecture, and American studies. His overarching interests and publications are in cultural landscape studies—that is, the history, form, and meaning of ordinary built environments, particularly in the United States. He has studied urban buildings and districts in dozens of cities, and is currently at work on a book connecting changes in American workplaces, public recreation, and homes. |
| Course Details Required Reading:One xeroxed article or book chapter will be required for each week. These readings will explore various genres of local literature or interpretation of local sites. The xeroxed reader will be available at Copy Central, 2560 Bancroft Way, for about $20 to $25. |
| Grading: Pass/Not Pass basis |
| Be alert to changing “start” locations: Note that after the first two weeks, we typically will convene at the base of the escalator in the Downtown Berkeley BART station, at Shattuck and Center streets. |
| Attendance: The main point of a field course is first-hand site experience—on-site lectures and discussions that help the instructor as well as students learn how to see and analyze buildings and urban space. Hence, your attendance must be full-time. The only exceptions are days when you are certifiably ill or have a certified family emergency. More than two unexcused absences will likely result in a NP grade. Field trips, like vacations, are usually a lot of fun; unlike vacations, they require alertness. At all sites (as in all good seminars) you will be expected to have done the preliminary reading, and to be curious, pay attention, ask questions, and raise speculations. |
| Contacting Paul Groth: Office: 597 McCone Hall, Fifth Floor E-mail: pgroth@berkeley.edu (typically, I read E-mail only in the evenings, and only at home.) Office phone: 510-642-0955 Home phone: 415-695-1544. Message machine takes brief message. |
| What to do in case of rain: In the event of showers or light rain, the field trip proceeds as planned. Wear good rain gear, waterproof footwear if you’ve got it, and something with a hood; bring an umbrella. In the event of pouring rain, we will meet in the classroom. For rain-day meetings in the classroom, bring your course reader, as the articles there may be the basis for our discussion, along with the one lecture-style class that we may have in the course (on repeating processes of cultural landscape formation). |
| Note: The following schedule is from Fall 2005 - an updated schedule will be online during the first week or second week of classes. | ||
| Week/Date | Plan for the day | |
|
1. Aug. 30
|
Introductions. People in the course—the instructor and the students—and the perspectives that they might bring to the group. What we hope to learn, and how. For last half hour, a quick look at two campus buildings: Wurster Hall and the new Jean Hargraves Music Library. Mechanical detail: Collect signed waiver of liability forms. Reading: Allan B. Jacobs, “Starting to Look,” ch. 1, Looking at Cities (1985) See also, in appendix to the reader: Paul Groth, lecture manuscript, “Repeating Processes of Landscape Formation,” from course reader, Environmental Design C169A and C169B, American Cultural Landscapes. |
|
|
STREETCAR SUBURBS FOR THE MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASS
|
||
|
2. Sept. 6
|
The North Campus area as an introduction to American forms of urban settlement. Meet at classroom. From there, we will walk north of campus along Euclid Avenue and then west into the neighborhood, looking at the effects of (and learning some basic vocabulary for) plats, plots, lots, blocks, streetcar connections, and elements of buildings. Sanborn Maps as site resources; seeing change over time in vernacular commercial structures. How landscapes record different resident groups over time (from the merchants who built along Euclid to waves of student groups) as well as a 1920s fire in the area. Processes: connection, first settlement, cyclical periods of new investment, remodeling and revising. Reading: Grady Clay, “Crossing the American Grain with Vesalius, Geddes, and Jackson: The Cross-Section as a Learning Tool,” in Chris Wilson and Paul Groth, eds., Everyday America (2003) |
|
|
3. Sept. 13
|
The Berkeley Hills: personal and social identities in “signature” architecture. Meet at classroom. We will walk further up Euclid Avenue for a cross-section of a surprisingly high-style residential district. Influences of the turn-of-the-century Arts and Crafts movement in what the geographer Richard Walker calls the “upper class bohemia” of the Berkeley Hills, compared to idealist experiments of Rose Walk, Greenwood Commons and Maybeck-Land on Buena Vista Way. Processes: the inertia of nature; inertia of existing cultural resources; reinforcement of individual and social identities; household investments. Reading: David Gebhard, “Life in the Dollhouse” in Bay Area Houses, Sally Woodbridge, ed. (rev ed., 1988) |
|
|
INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION AND BLUE COLLAR HOUSING AREAS
|
||
|
4. Sept. 20
|
The Oakland waterfront: industrial workplaces becoming high-income residential blocks. Meet at Downtown Berkeley BART station. Take BART to the 13th Street City Center station in Oakland. We will walk through Oakland’s Chinatown, then south along Broadway, under I-880, and through the produce district to the original ferry terminal and port area of Oakland. Examining the inter-relationships of water and rail links, industry, and workers’ housing. 1910s canneries and factories and the gentrification of the area with new loft apartment buildings. Return via Lake Merritt BART station at Oak and 8th streets. Processes: capital accumulation.; local and distant circulation of capital; immigration and migration; sparking of innovations. Reading: Eric Avila, “The Folklore of the Freeway: Space, Culture, and Identity in Postwar Los Angeles,” Aula 2 (2001): 30-45. |
|
|
5. Sept. 27
|
West Oakland: a quintessential workers’ cottage district. Meet at Downtown Berkeley BART station. Take BART to the West Oakland station. Blue collar neighborhood responses to skilled and unskilled work opportunities. Workers’ cottages and “emergence” houses (that’s emergence into the lower middle class). Traditional leisure--churches, clubs, upstairs meeting halls and emergence of the East Bay jazz scene—compared to new leisure of wet squishy grass and other middle-class notions. Processes: remodeling and revising; day-to-day maintenance and care; household investments; migration and immigration (once again). Reading: Paul Groth, “Workers’ Cottage and Minimal Bungalow Districts in Oakland and Berkeley, California, 1870-1945” Urban Morphology 8,2 (April 2004). |
|
|
THE CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT
|
||
|
6. Oct. 4
|
San Francisco’s financial district and capital circulation. Meet at Downtown Berkeley BART station. Take BART to the Montgomery Street BART station in San Francisco. Evolution since 1906 of the “office building half” of the American Central Business District (CBD) . Office buildings, urban renewal and new scales of multinational capital circulation and investment. Social stratification of work roles in the CBD. Specialization and separation (the hallmarks of modernity) versus a revived interest in mixed uses. Processes: cyclical periods of investment and development; local and distant circulation of capital. Post-trip option: dinner in the Embarcadero Center, part of the 1970s “city center of the future.” Reading: Peter Booth Wiley, “Urban Ambitions,” ch. 4 in Wiley, National Trust Guide to San Francisco (2003). |
|
|
7. Oct. 11
|
San Francisco’s Union Square and Chinatown. Meet at Berkeley BART station. Proceed to Powell Street BART station in San Francisco. The “retail” half of the Central Business District (CBD). American retail and department store districts; the spatial histories of racial segregation of Asian Americans, tensions between identity preservation and acculturation, and tourism (San Francisco’s number one industry) in Chinatown and Manilatown. Hotels as permanent housing. Processes: household investments (the consumption sphere of the economy); migration and immigration; cyclical periods of development; reinforcement of individual and social identities. Post trip option: dinner in Chinatown after the trip. Reading: Christopher L. Yip, “Association, Residence, and Shop: An Appropriation of Commercial Blocks in North American Chinatowns,” in Gender Class and Shelter (1995) |
|
|
8. Oct. 18
|
Conclusions. What have we learned? General models of the American city, and how the specific Bay examples we have seen fit those models, or are different from them. Discussion of how the course could be improved, and formal course evaluations. Due: Students’ short (2 to 4 page) essay on their experiences in the class. |
|
|
|
||
|
NOTES ABOUT THE ONE SHORT WRITING ASSIGNMENT
|
||
| For the last day of class, please write a short essay (2 to 4 pages, double-spaced, about 500 to 1,000 words) about your experience in the course. Your essay should have a title. Be sure your name is on the first page. Roses and onions. To start out, in a few paragraphs describe your favorites—roses--and least favorites—onions--explaining (a) your favorite site visited in the course, and why it was your favorite; (b) your favorite reading, and why it was your favorite reading. Then add (c) your least favorite site, and explain why it was your least favorite, and (d) your least favorite reading, and why it was your least favorite. What did you learn? Next, in a few paragraphs, write about what you feel to be the most important thing (idea, skill, place type, you name it) that you learned in the seminar. Finally, what would you have liked to have learned, but did not? Or, what did you think that you would learn, but didn’t? Some of these issues are the same things that will be asked, more informally, in the official evaluation form for the course, but this short essay will help you review the whole seminar, and also focus your thoughts. |
||
|
SOME REFERENCE BOOKS YOU MAY WANT TO CONSULT
|
||
| How to Read American Cities, in General Grady Clay, Close-Up: How to Read the American City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980; first published in 1973) Allan B. Jacobs, Looking at Cities (Cambridge: Harvard U Press, 1985) out of print, ca. $40 used James Vance, Jr., Geography and Urban Evolution in the San Francisco Bay Area (monograph, 1964: city of realms model of urbanization). Chris Wilson and Paul Groth, Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies after J. B. Jackson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) Alex Marshall, How Cities Work (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000) Oakland and San Francisco: Some Starting Points Peter Booth Wiley, National Trust Guide to San Francisco (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), $19.95 Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) $16.95 Paul Groth, AC 15: Oakland as a Cross Section of America’s Urban Cultural Landscapes (Xeroxed course reader, in the ENV library, 1994 revised ed.) Often available under ED C169 at Copy Central. Sally Woodbridge, John M. Woodbridge, and Chuck Byrne, San Francisco Architecture (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992) David Gebhard, Eric Sandweiss, and Robert Winter, Architecture in San Francisco and Northern California (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1985) Sources for Learning How to Identify (and infer construction dates) for Basic Architectural Styles John J.-G. Blumenson, Identifying American Architecture: A Pictorial Guide to Styles and Terms, 1600-1945 (Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History, 1977; several later editions available) Marcus Whiffen, American Architecture Since 1780: A Guide to the Styles (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1969) Helaine Caplan Prentice, “The Architectural Style of Your Oakland House,” ch. 2 in Prentice, Rehab Right: How to Rehabilitate Your Oakland House Without Sacrificing Architectural Assets (Oakland, California: City of Oakland Planning Department, 1978): 7-34. |
||