week 9

A good steak house is always in an old building because it has had the time to develop its character with the people that resides in the same area as the building. Jacobs suggests that the success of the city lies in the people that dwell there; it’s diversity. Cities are a meeting point for all kinds of different communities and businesses. You can see this everywhere you go in my town. You’ll see Indian people at a Greek café, and white people at a local Indian restaurant. This diversity we often see in big cities, the peaceful kind, is heavily prominent in the atmosphere of the high school I graduated from. You’ll see the ESL students, Special Education students, and the rest of the student body all constantly interacting with each other. The majority help and befriend students in need, despite things like communication barriers and/or cultural differences. (151)

With the map I create, I want to emphasize the proximity of all of the things available to those that live in my area. While it’s not the most funded town, it truly has the perfect balance of everything a person may need, and you don’t even need your car to get to these places in most cases. To do this, I plan on creating a map that indicates the exact amount of distance between each place. I think my major focuses will be public spaces (parks/recreational centers), restaurants, schools, grocery stores, gas stations, and bus stops. Even though there is much more available to someone who lives here, I think these cover every place you would NEED to go to on a weekly or even daily basis. There is also the possibility of me creating a map that shows the diversity of the area, but with the weather getting colder and the pandemic getting worse, I don’t think I would have the opportunity to really talk to the people I normally would see when walking around my area. (177)