what if philadelphia ceases to be philadelphia?

In his novel Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino writes about changes to the city of Maurilia:

In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old postcards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits: admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old postcards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one’s eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.

Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices’ accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.

I find myself with a funny set of wants—I want more college graduates and professionals to stay or to come to Philadelphia, to work here and contribute to the economy, and to make this a better city. Yet I also know that this very revitalization is playing an integral role in the gentrification in my neighbourhood, destroying historic black communities in West Philadelphia.

I deeply desire to see this city revitalized, to become the “next great city”—for its “soul-stirring desolation” as Jonathan Franzen put it, to be turned into soul-stirring hope and community. But when does Philadelphia cease to be Philadelphia? When does some other minor deity saunter in and takes its place and its name, while the old Philadelphia is put in a body bag and dumped into the Delaware River? In hoping for Philadelphia’s life, am I also wishing its destruction?

As Philadelphia changes, the spirit of this city will change. But I want to see the soul of Philadelphia grow out of its sighs and tears and into something wise and beautiful, with history and complexity, rather than see it squeezed out and left to die, while some other young, fashionable imposter comes to stretch its personality over these streets.*


* There’s been an interesting series in the Philadelphia Inquirer on homeless men sleeping, eating, bathing and having sex in Rittenhouse Square. I’ve blogged about this park and my appreciation for the diversity of its users. Sometimes, when I try to imagine what Philadelphia would look as a person, I picture a homeless man, dirty and filthy, staggering through the streets (I have other images too). I don’t want this homeless man shut away in a shelter far, far way—I want him to find a job, build a family and live in a home. As for the Rittenhouse Square issue, I understand the local residents’ aversion to having their local park overrun by homeless at night, and I also understand the need to provide the homeless with more permanent housing options than park benches, but something about excluding before including, hiding before healing, and ultimately separating without ever integrating, strikes me as being the wrong approach. And I hope that we do not take the same approach to the poor (of pushing them out to suburbs rather than including them in a vital way) as we try to bring new life to Philadelphia.
** On a lighter note, I think I may be breaking a significant trend with this post. Have you noticed that I will post frequently for a month, and then I will go on hiatus for the next month before resuming frequent posts again? Somehow, I’ve managed this time to only wait about two weeks before the posts resume again.

I am gentrifying my neighbourhood

It’s frightening how we find ourselves swept up in large social changes. We act, thinking that our actions are our entirely own, only to find that so many others are making the same decisions. I begin to wonder to what degree are my decisions my own (or God’s) and to what degree have I swallowed the ideas, values and assumptions prevalent in society.

I watch the rapid gentrification of my neighborhood—I knew it would happen eventually but I would not have anticipated the speed. To put it bluntly, six months ago there were not this many white people walking around. So property prices are increasing, rents are rising, and houses are being renovated. While I can say that I am part of the neighbourhood’s revitalization, I am also displacing plenty of lower income families, and representing the arrival of yuppies and hipsters.

The gentrification in many ways seems inevitable. And if Matt and I had not chosen to live where we are now, and opted to live in, well, an already gentrified area, the neighborhood would have changed anyways. But that does not take away from the fact that we are part of urban process now that is moving lower-income, underprivileged families further out to the periphery.

So what do we do when we recognize that our actions, by no evil intent, are hurting others? To what degree do we go with the flow and recognize that this may not be one of the battles that we are called to fight and that we are not responsible? (Is that resignation?) Or, how do we stand up against the river when we feel like a little pebble being tossed about in the current?

In some ways this question is a moot point for the time being, as Matt and I have already signed our lease. For the time being, we are called to love and care for our neighbors, whatever ethnic or class background they may be from. But when it comes to buying a house* (something that is on the radar for the next few years), how are we to tread? Even if we try to tread softly, our footprints seem to sink far deeper than we would ever want them to.


* We can’t really afford a house in the wealthier sections of the city. Do we buy a house in this already gentrifying area and continue to contribute to this inevitable process? Or, do we buy a house in a predominantly black lower-income neighborhood and risk setting off gentrification there, because our very presence will change the way that the neighborhood is viewed? (And I question the latter option critically—it can easily be done with a sense of pride and self-righteousness, instead of faith, love, and a specific calling).

book reviews second quarter 2008

Married life has certainly ushered in different rhythm of life. I was hoping that with no wedding to plan anymore, I’d have more time to read, but other things (of the nature of arts and crafts, cooking and household chores) have filled that space. That being said, I am quite glad that wedding and honeymoon planning is done and over with—everything except photos and thank you notes that is. And I’m hoping to continue to make more time to read over the next little while, especially as I may be taking a class at Penn this fall, and may no longer have the luxury of reading whatever I feel like reading.

In any case, of late, I’ve been digging my elbows deep in sociology and urban studies non-fiction (prompted perhaps by Planet of the Slums and Bowling Alone), but I think I may spend the summer months with a bit more fiction. Next on the list: The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and perhaps C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. Reviews are also posted on Goodreads.com.

Fiction

*** The Watchmen (Alan Moore)
Heralded as one of the best graphic novels ever, The Watchmen is a very intense and dark story of the lives of former costumed vigilantes (superheroes without superpowers). It begins with the investigation into the mysterious murder of one of them. It’s extremely well-written and well-told, but requires quite a bit of thought and attention to follow along. I won’t say too much, but I will say that the Watchmen defies the genre, by being an anti-superhero story.

** Straight Man (Richard Russo)
This book recounts a week in the life of a professor of English in Railton, Pennsylvania. It is focused on the drama of his department, the university (facing extreme budget cuts), and his family. The book is meant to be humorous, and succeeds most of the time, though sometimes the events end up being a bit absurd. It was decently/mildly entertaining to read, especially as it mocks academic culture. Summed up, the book is about: “Only after we’ve done a thing do we know what we’ll do, and by then whatever we’ve done has already begun to sever itself from clear significance, at least for the doer.” It’s nothing life changing but if you’re looking for a light, quick, funny read, and you have a soft spot for the university, this might work out well.

*** Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson)
This is a beautifully written novel about two sisters coping with the death (apparent suicide) of their mother in the small town of Fingerbone. The prose reads like poetry and the quiet, somber, dreamy reflections on life and death weave their way into the narrative. However, that very reverie-like prose made it difficult to connect more deeply with the characters—they seemed like beautiful ghostly abstractions rather than real flesh and blood individuals (but I suspect that may be the author’s intentions). In any case, it was enjoyable to read, and perhaps can be very inspiring to an aspiring writer.

Non-Fiction

*** Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Robert Putnam)
This book summarizes substantial amounts of empirical studies on American community, which is broadly defined to include civic engagement, participation in different interest groups, church attendance, philanthropic giving, volunteering, or simply hanging out with friends. After Putnam clearly demonstrates the decline of American community since the 1950s, he spends a good portion of time investigating the various factors that may have caused it, including suburban sprawl, television, less free time, generational change etc… He spends the last few chapters on a hopeful note, mentioning the spurt in community involvement after the growing injustices of the late 1800s.
Though he didn’t leave me entirely convinced, Putnam posits a series of societal changes that could have substantial impact on community involvement, ones that are very well in the realm of possibility. Putnam does spend quite a bit of time detailing methodology, but overall the book is not technically bogged down. My favourite chapter was probably the one detailing the detrimental effects of television.

*** The Sabbath (Abraham Heschel)
Heschel is a Jewish theologian and this short book is his reflection on the role of Sabbath in Jewish religious life. The Sabbath is a day of holiness, a palace of time, a way to commune with God. While I found most of this book less applicable to me as a Christian (though it did help me start to understand better Jewish culture), the first two chapters and the last one are absolutely phenomenal. In these chapters, Heschel reflects on society’s tendency to devalue time, which it cannot so easily control, in order to acquire more of space, that which seems so much easier to possess.

**** Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality (Pauline Chen)
This is a beautifully written book by a surgeon. Chen recounts her training and her practice as a doctor, narrating the ways in which she and her fellow medical students or doctors confronted or avoided confronting death. While Chen touches upon policy-oriented issues, such as the need for palliative care, better M & M conferences, better medical training, her book reads best as a memoir of her own personal and emotional struggles. I found most moving Chen’s narrations of how she responded to a husband or a wife dying to a chronic disease, while his or her partner watched and waited. Chen writes both vividly and compassionately. This book touched me more personally than most, perhaps as I have been reflecting more on how hard it would be to lose my husband (or for him to lose me) after the recent death to cancer of a church member with a husband and young children.

**** The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jane Jacobs)
Written in the 1960’s, Jane Jacobs revolutionized the way we viewed and studied the city. She summarizes her approach in her final chapter—cities are not to be studied as objects of simplicity (e.g. simple relationships, more open space = better neighborhoods), nor objects of disorganized complexity (e.g. statistical approaches), but are to be treated as a living organism—incredibly complex yet organized and interrelated. She advocates the “microscopic” approach to looking at the city—digging in very deeply, instead of relying on high flying theories. She concludes that the success of a city is not dependent on any single component (e.g. open space, broken windows, etc…), but on a complex interaction of various factors, which she outlines in her book.
However, for most of the book though, Jacobs rarely talks to high-brow metaphor, but remains incredibly practical, concrete, realistic and easy to understand. She relies heavily on examples from Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. She focuses on several elements that in combined, including mixed and diverse uses (e.g. commercial and residential areas mixed together), shorter blocks, ideal density and lack of large borderlands/abandoned spaces (which can be parks!), and diversity. Her book was long to read, but definitely provided me with a new framework with which to observe and understand the city.

***** Sociological Imagination (C. Wright Mills)
The first 100 pages of this book were really hard to get through, and even after that, the book was very dense and took quite a bit of effort to understand. All that being said, this has been one of the most thought-provoking and academically-inspiring books I have read in the past year. Mills was a prominent sociologist of the earlier half of the twentieth century (if I’m not mistaken, he coined the phrases “WASP” and “white collar”).
In this book, Mills criticizes the two dominant methods of studying sociology (grand theory and abstracted empiricism), and then goes on to delineate the sociological imagination—a way of studying society that factors in historical, political and individual factors, that does not get too lofty with grandiose theories and abstractions nor too mired in the numbers and statistics of abstracted empiricism. He then writes about the need for the sociological imagination in today’s society, in relation to our reason and freedom, our democracy and politics. The appendix provides some guidance on how to conduct such research. Though Mill had a few touches of elitism to him, it was so refreshing to read someone who had a vision for social sciences (and for the academy) that mandates relevance to society at large and the individual.
To summarize his stance on the subject: “Our public life now often rests upon such official definitions, as well as upon myths and lies and crackbrained notions. When many politics- debated and undebated – are based on inadequate and misleading definitions of reality, then those who are out to define reality more adequately are bound to be upsetting influences. … Such is the role of mind, of study, of intellect, of reason, of ideas: to define reality adequately and in a publicly relevant way. The educational and the political role of social science in a democracy is to help cultivate and sustain public and individuals that are able to develop, to live with, and to act upon adequate definitions of personal and social realities.”

Rating scale
* didn’t like it
** it was ok
*** liked it
**** really liked it
***** it was amazing

simulated intelligence

American universities have done a decent job of churning out smart, technically astute and relatively capable individuals, but it is questionable whether they have taught us knowledge of true value-- how to understand our privilege and place in society. We’re taught to perform well on SATs and AP exams, which soon become MCATs, grad school applications and interviewing, but we’re not necessarily taught how to question the assumptions of our society, or to understand from a critical point of view, our role in the world. We’re taught how to succeed well in the system, but not taught how to question or change the system.

From the article The Disadvantages of an Elite Education quoted in my previous post:

The world that produced John Kerry and George Bush is indeed giving us our next generation of leaders. The kid who’s loading up on AP courses junior year or editing three campus publications while double-majoring, the kid whom everyone wants at their college or law school but no one wants in their classroom, the kid who doesn’t have a minute to breathe, let alone think, will soon be running a corporation or an institution or a government. She will have many achievements but little experience, great success but no vision. The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have.

Not that this is anything new, famous sociologist C. Wright Mills writes of bureaucratization and the lack of big picture understanding amongst many intelligent individuals, many decades before we see its vivid instantiation in the swanky bars and clubs of New York City:

Great and rational organizations- in brief, bureaucracies- have indeed increased, but the substantive reason of the individual at large has not. Caught in the limited milieux of their everyday lives, ordinary men often cannot reason about the great structures- rational and irrational – of which their milieux are subordinate parts. Accordingly, they often carry out series of apparently rational actions without any ideas of the ends they serve, and there is the increasing suspicion that those at the top as well- like Tolstoy’s generals- only pretend they know. The growth of such organizations, within an increasing division of labor, sets up more and more spheres of life, work, and leisure in which reasoning is difficult or impossible. The soldier, for example, ‘carries out an entire series of functionally rational actions accurately without having any idea as to the ultimate end of this action’ (Mannheim, Man and Society) or the function of each act within the whole. Even Men of technically supreme intelligence may efficiently perform their assigned work and yet not know that it is to result in the first atom bomb.

Ortega Y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses also projected a hint of it back in the 1930s. He was referring to the masses (and Europe), but I think the description, quoted from the article At the Forest’s Edge by Anthony Daniels can apply quite well to many of today’s recent graduates of elite universities:

The picture Ortega draws of the mass man is not an attractive or flattering one, but Ortega is not a snob who simply excoriates the appalling habits and tastes of those below him in the social scale. For him, mass man is the man who has no transcendent purpose in life, who lives in an eternal present moment which he wants to make pleasurable in a gross and sensual way, who thinks that ever-increasing consumption is the end of life, who goes from distraction to distraction, who is prey to absurd fashions, who never thinks deeply and who, above all, has a venomous dislike of any other way of living but his own, which he instinctively feels as a reproach. He will not recognize his betters; he is perfectly satisfied to be as he is.

Mass man accepts no fundamental limits on his own life. Any limits that he may encounter are purely technical, to be removed by future advance. He believes that life is and ought to be a kind of existential supermarket, that an infinitude of choices is always before him, in which no choice restricts or ought ever to restrict what is possible in the future. Life for mass man is not a biography, but a series of moments, each unconnected with the next, and all deprived of larger meaning or purpose.

Mass man does not have to be poor or stupid. He can be both highly paid and highly intelligent, in a narrow way, and he can also be very highly educated, or at least trained; indeed, as knowledge accumulates, and as it becomes more and more difficult for anyone to master more than the very smallest portion of human knowledge, so connected thought (of the kind of which mass man is incapable) becomes rarer and rarer. Mankind collectively knows more than ever before, says Ortega, but cultivated men grow fewer.


* I do not write this as someone who is better than and above all of this, nor do I write this as someone who claims to possess “true intelligence.” I have been frustrated with my college education at an elite institution, because it left me with a bunch of interesting questions, cocktail conversation topics, and scattered technical expertise, but no real knowledge. As a fairly recent college graduate and a Christian who is called to see the world as God sees it, I am fumbling about trying to gain some true knowledge and vision (and dare I say, wisdom?)

simulated opportunity (golden handcuffs)

on elite education, prestigious jobs and privilege

I just made a visit up to Manhattan this past weekend, and quickly find myself ushered back into the contradictory world of long work hours coupled with late nights out consisting of $50 dinners, multiple cab rides, and bar hopping.

I was saddened to find so many people who disliked their high-paying, prestigious banking and consulting jobs, but could not find the momentum to leave. Why do so many intelligent and talented people feel trapped in their jobs? (It’s so easy to end up in these jobs—the process is on campus and they give you an offer fall of senior year. It takes courage to turn down a secured job offer in exchange for the unknown).*

Is it because you have already built your life around a lifestyle that requires your current salary? Is it because all your friends make a similar salary and in order to continue living the way that you do, you can’t really take a job that pays less? (Would you be able to attend all those $100 birthday dinners? Would you be able to continue paying $1500 in rent for your apartment?)

Or is it more a matter of security and prestige? A sense that this New York finance job is a good opportunity and it would be a waste to throw it away?

For those of us who hail from immigrant families, this question becomes very real, because our parents worked so hard in order to give us good opportunities in this country. And for those of us who attended costly Ivy League or private universities, our parents have provided even further for us financially. I’ve been perceived as spoiled, because I tossed out a good opportunity in the corporate world in order to take a lower paying position at a nonprofit organization. Apparently, I couldn’t tough out the long hours and tough environment of the corporate job, so I did the irresponsible thing and quit.**

Have I thrown away my privilege? Am I not spoiled and have I not appreciated the sacrifices my family has made on my behalf? I remember the frustration of being drilled by my aunt: “So why did you quit your higher paying job to take a lower paying job? Why couldn’t you have found a job in Philadelphia that paid as much as your previous one?”

I probably still have a long ways to go to truly understand, appreciate and be grateful for the sacrifices my parents have made for me, but I do not believe that I have tossed out my privilege. In fact, it is my privilege that has given the freedom to change jobs and pursue something that I love.

In the very thought-provoking article, The Disadvantages of an Elite Education, Deresiewicz writes***:

If one of the disadvantages of an elite education is the temptation it offers to mediocrity, another is the temptation it offers to security. When parents explain why they work so hard to give their children the best possible education, they invariably say it is because of the opportunities it opens up. But what of the opportunities it shuts down? An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed. We live in a society that is itself so wealthy that it can afford to provide a decent living to whole classes of people who in other countries exist (or in earlier times existed) on the brink of poverty or, at least, of indignity. You can live comfortably in the United States as a schoolteacher, or a community organizer, or a civil rights lawyer, or an artist—that is, by any reasonable definition of comfort. You have to live in an ordinary house instead of an apartment in Manhattan or a mansion in L.A.; you have to drive a Honda instead of a BMW or a Hummer; you have to vacation in Florida instead of Barbados or Paris, but what are such losses when set against the opportunity to do work you believe in, work you’re suited for, work you love, every day of your life?

Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me? So a whole universe of possibility closes, and you miss your true calling.

My parents sacrifices have afforded me a better life—one in which I have plenty and one in which I have the freedom to choose a satisfying job that will not leave me in poverty. They have brought me to a country where I don’t have to fight tooth and nail to survive. They have given me an education that puts so many resources and options at my disposal. It would have been a waste to end up trapped in a job that made me feel dead on the inside, and to end up living a life that I never wanted to live.

* Obviously, this is generalization. Some do love their jobs and stay in the field and maybe they are meant to be there, while others tough out the travel and hours in order to learn what they can and then leave after a few years to follow less traditional paths. And some have chosen to stay in the job for a few years in order to honor their parents, but then go on to do something closer to their heart. I don’t know whether these people are right or wrong, nor should I be the judge of their decisions. (I will say that I do have special respect for the latter group). I am merely speaking in defense of my own decision, and against the mentality of “Since I’ve been given this great privilege and opportunity, I guess God wants me to take it.” There is opportunity in turning down opportunity.
** There is distinction between choosing a more satisfying job vs. just being lazy and continuing to live off your parent’s income. One is responsible and the other is not.
*** In fact, I like this article so much, I think it should be required reading for anyone who has or is considering an Ivy League education.
**** For related writings on this topic, please click on “new york city” in the archive by topics section.