In this first week of Environmental Studies 220, we quickly reviewed the entirety of 160, covered information on the four types of questions, and set up these brand new sites. To refresh our memories of 160, we created mind maps in class on the essential points of the intro course, including the points of departure between “Classical” and “Contemporary” environmental thought, the various ideological frameworks which can guide environmental thought and discourse, and the concept of object analysis. The second half of this week centered on the different types of questions one might ask in environmental studies: descriptive (what?), explanatory (why?), evaluative (so what?), and instrumental (what to do?). We examined current event articles with an eye for the broader environmental topics they dealt with, and then broke into groups along these topic lines to edit the ENVSPedia wiki of our topics. I was part of the group on the Urban and Built Environment, and I found our discussion on the topic fruitful. It was helpful to see exactly what the question categories meant, and we additionally engaged quite a bit on the topic and article itself through the course of the exercise.
A common thread running through many of the questions, as well as the reading “The Urban Imperative: Toward Shared Prosperity” was a notion that urban growth creates serious problems (like pollution, poverty, inequality, congestion, sprawl, and, in some contexts, unsanitary conditions) which can only be solved or mitigated by more active involvement in the development of cities. Our questions largely focused on the identification of these faults, and a probing into what can be done. I saw many reflections of Jane Jacobs’ work throughout Glaeser and Ghani’s article; their theory about cities spilling over knowledge, encouraging specialization, speeding the flow of ideas, and nurturing entrepreneurship mirrors Jacobs’ concept of “import-replacing”—a process she notes as central in Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Likewise, both Jacobs and Glaeser et al. display no nostalgia for the rural economies of the past; Jacobs began Cities and the Wealth of Nations by pointing out the crushing poverty of rural, subsidence life, and Glaeser and Ghani conclude that “there is no future in rural poverty—the path to prosperity inevitably runs through cities.”