A detailed chronicling of before, during and after my study abroad experience in Amsterdam and Switzerland.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

test podcast

library podcast

Monday, May 15, 2006

Domain Analysis Method

For my site of domain analysis, I chose to focus on the UW Waterfront Activities Center. I started with the semantic relationship of strict inclusion of the form X is a kind of Y. I began with the analytic term casual participant, in which I meant all those that looked to have a goal of relaxation or the intention to utilize the WAC's facilities. Using this semantic relationship, I came up with some included terms, such as children, parents, college students, pets.

Using the cover term "problem" as described in the Spradley reading, I came up with another set of included terms. This was a similar situation to the doctor's office, because in both situations, there were sparse resources with a lot of people waiting to use them. In the doctor's office, the sparse resource is the doctors, where the WAC had sparse resources due to many more people wanting to use canoes than they had available. The result of both situations is a lot of people sitting around waiting. So this problem of waiting is one of the included terms.

Coping with the heat also seemed to be a problem. This was manifested in people migrating from sunny areas to shaded areas, people removing articles of clothing, and people applying sunblock. Also because the wait was so long, hunger seemed to be a problem for people as they would leave and come back with food.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Montlake Cut

Our group chose to do our urban studies method assignment on the Montlake Cut. I was a little aprehensive when I first arrived at the site, and I wasn't really sure how to start. To make it look like I was actually doing something, I began taking pictures from up on the bridge, but I felt like the pictures I was taking had no focus or relevancy. Then a really huge yaght began making its way towards the bridge, so I hurried down the stairs to the lower level to try and take some pictures of it. As the boat passed, I longboarded down the sidewalk following it taking more pictures.


By this time I had gotten pretty tired, and decided to sit down on a bench to rest. I sat there and began looking at some of the notes from last wednesday's lecture to get some ideas of where to start. Colin arrived shortly after, and it was at this point that I actually began exploring some research methods that I think have some definite potential. We sat on that bench for a good 25 minutes looking at the area around us trying to make sense of it. The brainstorming started out a little slow, but slowly we started to build momentum and really began to explore the intentions that went into designing this unique area.

We then decided that it would then be helpful to look at everything from a different perspective, so we walked up the stairs to the bridge. Looking down on the Montlake Cut a second time was much more enlightening having analyzed it from below. There were a lot of valuable insights that I think we gained from switching perspectives. Here is a short video clip of the Montlake Cut from the bridge (this video is also available by subscribing to my videopodcast).


I only spent an hour taking in this urban setting, but it really got me excited about what I will be able to accomplish in Amsterdam when I have much more time to explore these methods more fully.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Looking at Cities

Reading this detailed guide to analyzing cities immeadiately made me begin thinking about the city I live in. It is interesting to look at the udistrict in particular for its types of housing and how they indicate a change in living trends. I'm not really sure how old a lot of the houses are in the u-district, but I do know that the house I am currently renting is about 97 years old. I would imagine that many of the other houses aren' much more than 50 years older than that. At the time they were built, the owners must have been very affluent based on the size and building materials for a lot of the houses. What were originally large single family homes have now been converted into multi unit dwellings. The article indicated that this could be because the u-district has in the course of the last 100 years become a less desirable place to live. I think that the reason for this is more based on the necessity of smaller more compartmentalized student housing. Although this seems somewhat obvious, it is still interesting to think about the different possibilities.

The other part that I found interesting is how the public transportation system is reflection of how people view the importance of downtown. The fact that we use buses rather than subways means that our downtown is less important and central for many people when compared to cities that do have subways. I do definitely get this feeling in Seattle. The actual downtown area is very small, with a much more distributed network of centrality with smaller econmic centers such as bellevue, wallingford, and freemont spread out, rather than focused in the downtown area.

Some questions after reading this are:
1) how would you describe downtown seattle using the methods of anaylsis that are described in this article?
2) how would you describe the u-district in the context of this article?

Monday, May 01, 2006

Chandan Reddy's Talk

I would have to agree with Colin that Chandan Reddy's talk last Wednesday brought a lot of clarity to topics we have been talking about. It really made me excited about approaching my research from a humanist perspective. In class, I took in a lot of information, but being able to listen to the discussion again, really allowed me to analyze what he was saying and give me a better understanding of his major points.

As the assignment requested, I have come up with two different questions:

Question that leads to a nonverifiable story
Why is Amsterdam’s progressive culture that is fixated on transformation at the same time so focused on conservation?

Question that leads to a verifiable story
In what ways have the people of Amsterdam striven to conserve the museum like qualities of their city?

The most readily apparent aspect that these two questions have in common is that they are both approaching the same basic topic of Amsterdam's conservation of their historic city. I would venture to guess that if the questions didn't have the verifiable/nonverifiable titles above them, the casual reader wouldn't perceive a difference in what these two questions are asking.

The question that leads to a nonverifiable story approaches the topic from the humanist point of view that is more focused on defamiliarization than finding an actual answer. With this mindset, the significance of the question is in what is meant by asking it. This is in stark contrast with the second question whose significance lies in the answer which comes in the form of a verifiable story.

The stories that are produced by these questions will be read differently depending on the intellectuals who read them. The first story will lend itself to being more of a philosophical discussion, that will be told without the intention of finding an actual answer. Furthermore, the story will contain more questions along the way that further explore why the original question was asked in the first place. A social scientist, such as a historian, would probably not find this to be a very useful discourse. Instead, the social scientist would much prefer the structure of the story produced by the second question. Although not necessarily true, this story can be verified through various means, and is actually answering the question.

The nonverifialbe story will follow the transgression concept metaphor of transformation. The story from the first question will probably be told through the perspective of an object of transgression that represents the relationship that is being explored. Through investigating this object of transgression, I think I can begin exploring the core aspects of my research.