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The American city
Most of the people say that the American city if full of not
quite
remembered films,televisiondramas,music and advertising
images.Some of the people imagine it like this but others
imagine it like
attractive and threatening aspect.
The city is constructed like a text
,unfolding,challenging,confusing, thrilling and threatening all
at thesame time.The problem of reading the city can be traced back
to
foundation of America.John Winthrop spoke about his vision of a
new
community.He said that the city-story would be watched by
the
world,with no good or bad in it.Reverend Josiah said in Our
Country
that The city is the nerve center of our It is the city where
wealth is
massed; and here are the tangible evidences ofit piled many
stories high.
Here the sway of Mammon is widest, and hisworship the most
constant
and eager. Here are luxuries gathered
everything that dazzles the eye, or tempts the appetite; here is
the mostextravagant expenditure. Here also, is the congestion of
wealth the
severesthere in sharp contrast, are the ennui of surfeit and
the
desperation of starvation Here is heaped the social dynamite;
her
roughs, gamblers, thieves, robbers, lawless and desperate
men
readyto
raise riots for the purpose of destruction and plunder; here
gather
foreigners and wage-workersespecially susceptible to
socialist
For example , in New York , the landmarks are high up in the
clouds.This suggests the citys mystery , it shines up.In
American life ,
there are desires,dreames,places of possibility,success and
threat.The
American city is a created text in which people say their
designs about
the world,theirdesires,offering freedom.
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Trachtenbergs city ismodern place where the possibilities of
technology,planning, industrialisation and commerce come
together in a
single environment which thrust together people, ideas and
opportunities
in a particular mix of productive kinds of strangeness and
distance
(Walder 1990:166).
Between 1870-1900 Chicago`s population has increased 5
times and New York toppet 3.4 million and when 11 million
imigrants
arrived in the U.S.Ajournalists like Jacob Riis and Stephen
Crane bgean
to question how much the people will pay for this expansion.They
wrote
about the peoples life with details.
For Dreiser the city is : It is like a chemical reagent. One day
of it, like
one drop of the other, will so affect and discolor the views,
the aims, thedesires of the mind, that it will thereafter remain
forever dyedlike
opium to the untried body. A craving is set updreams
unfilled
gnawing, luring, idle phantoms which
beckon and lead. These writing are for the idea of the city out
of
control.
High social groups want to the best for the citizens,for the
imigrants.Taylor says that It must be tall, every inch of it
tall. The force
and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and the pride of
exaltation
must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing,
rising in
sheer exultation from bottom to top it is a unit without a
single
dissenting line.
Like Dreiser too,Hoppers attention is given by the sites of
popular culture in the city to the
restaurants,movietheatres,shops,movie-
houses and to the everyday work.
Rap music is what expresses the best the city and it is an
urban musical form.In every rap music appears the city
life,the
environment.If the city is an imagined place that we all create
for
ourselves in the very acts of existing within it, then it is
perhaps this
changing
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nature which is its strength, being what Ihab Hassan called
variousness
itselfinscribedin steel and stone (Jaye and Watts 1981:109:
our
emphasis).
