On Victoria Island, which is next to Lagos, Nigeria, a brand-new coastal city called Eko Atlantic is being constructed. It serves as a hub for investors looking to profit from the rich development boom caused by high demand as well as a point of entry into the continent’s rising markets.The Eko Atlantic City was inaugurated in 2016 by Akinwumi Ambode, the governor of Lagos State at the time.
The modern city is expected to be the size of Manhattan’s skyscraper district, standing on 10 million square meters of land that has been reclaimed from the ocean and shielded by an 8.5-kilometer sea wall. It has cutting-edge urban planning, its own power generation, clean water, cutting-edge telecommunications, open roadways, and tree-lined streets. It is self-sufficient and sustainable.
The project’s developers and city planners, South Energyx Nigeria Limited, provided private funding for it. Although the coastal city is portrayed as a new and exciting initiative that will bolster the economic trajectory of the Lagos Island region, there seems to be a lot of contention surrounding the environmental effects that the construction is causing the local area
The location of Eko Atlantic City is situated on land reclaimed from erosion near the coast of Lagos. In order to protect the reclaimed land from flooding due to ocean surges, a coastal revetment known locally as the Great Wall of Lagos was constructed in 2009
The Great wall is constructed primarily of rock and faced with concrete accropode armor. Since its initial installation, the wall has successfully kept major floods from affecting the ongoing construction of Eko Atlantic.
However, nearby locals blame the dredging construction process for the increased frequency of sea surges and soil erosion within the area. They claim that the sand stock is insufficient for construction and the dredging increases the energy of waves while the sea walls divert its impact towards the east.
In trying to explain how the great wall in Eko Atlantic will worsen the situation for neighboring areas, Dr. Alan Blumberg mentioned that because of the storm an approaching surge will come up to the wall, and it will move left or right of the wall, searching for weakness or a low spot.
Lagos’ susceptibility to rising sea levels only seems to have drastic effects for poorer communities than wealthier parts. Just a few miles from the glitzy Eko Atlantic construction are low income communities like Magodo that are continually ravaged by the disastrous environmental effects of rising sea levels.
The government has no future plans of helping low-income communities divert the effects of sea surges away from their homes and businesses. Citizens are left to essentially fend for themselves as the ocean ravages their sources of livelihood, leaving many both homeless and jobless.
The stark contrast between Eko Atlantic and the reality of what many Nigerians face is very polarizing. One one hand, Eko Atlantic is seen to be this beacon of economic prosperity to Lagos. The businesses and jobs the construction promises to provide will aid in boosting the overall economy of the state. However, the resources that are pumped daily to ensure the economic success of Lagos comes at a major disadvantage to their surrounding neighbors.
While we would all like to believe that we came to college for academics, all college students know that we came for partying and, despite the heartbreaks, the relationships. After a year of not having a say in who you live with, sophomore year at Hamilton promises the opportunity to live with your partner (if you were lucky enough to find one).
Living together as a college couple, as Petnuch expresses, can be the worst decision ever. However, calling it a “bad move” outright is a harsh criticism; even so, this does not completely dismiss the argument that it could be the worst idea. As a college couple expresses, “Sam talked about cohabitation as involving a level commitment that he could hardly imagine in his current relationship: “We’d be sharing everything… the same space all the time. I’m definitely not ready for that and I’m 100, well 99% sure she’s not ready for that” (Jamison and Ganong 2010, 551). I do not wish to sound pessimistic, especially as a romantic, but few people discuss the difficulties of college cohabitation. Questions arise: Who does the place-making? What are the boundaries in a dorm, and how are they enforced?
With home-making being traditionally a gendered notion that typically women do (Young 1997), it necessitates a conversation over who is responsible for things, like garbage and spiders. Many people’s first taste of independence from parental homemaking occurs when they attend college. Therefore, not only is it difficult to learn to take care of one’s own space, but it is especially difficult to do so in Hamilton’s, unfortunate, small dorms.
With little research done to analyze college couples cohabiting in dorms together, this article touches on the main issues. Using the article’s scenario as an example, the two partners have opposing lifestyles, and while the article jokingly assumes gender stereotypes, it emphasizes that students come from diverse backgrounds. And with that, comes partners coming with different understandings of the dynamics of boundaries.
While the couple has divided the space in half, this is ridiculous because it is impractical to not have the inevitable intrusion on personal space. According to the article, conversations about when these boundaries are crossed did not take place, and thus these boundaries are not enforced.
While this may be an exaggerated case, other couples have chosen a different path for cohabitation. “As a comfortable and facilitative alternative for riskier commitments like permanently living together, most college couples who live apart spend anything from three nights to seven nights a week together in order to build a lasting relationship” (Jamison and Ganong 2010, 553). Instead, many students prefer to live in separate dorms. But how is this living separation enforced? Even if each student lives separately, how can each student find a “home” in the space of the others, thereby intersecting place-making and separate spaces?
Well, just as Hughes (Hughes 2019) presents the concept of guesting, this study found that for a couple who had “plans to move in together in the future, they maintained a physical (moving between homes) and mental (behaving as a guest) separation between their residences” (Jamison and Ganong 2010, 548). For many, the separation of spaces provides the “comfort of knowing that you can go back [to your own home” (Jamison and Ganong 2010, 551).
College is a new adventure with the unknown territory, and dating life adds to that. When it comes to feeling safe, whether you are sharing a dorm or moving from dorm to dorm, the decision to live together is not an easy one. Just a word of advice: The walls at Hamilton are very thin, so please respect your fellow neighbor–Boundaries 🙂
Sources:
Hughes, Bethany. 2019. “Guesting on Indigenous Land: Plimoth Plantation, Land Acknowledgment, and Decolonial Praxis.” Theatre Topics 29 (1): E-32; 23. doi:10.1353/tt.2019.0013.
Jamison, Tyler B., and Lawrence Ganong. 2011. “‘‘We’re Not Living Together:’’ Stayover Relationships among College-Educated Emerging Adults.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 28 (4): 536-557. doi:10.1177/0265407510384897.
Young, Iris Marion. “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme.” In Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy, 134–64. Princeton University Press, 1997. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv131bvqj.11.
It may come as a surprise to some, but we have just recently passed the 10 year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy making landfall in NYC. When Hurricane Sandy first hit New York it wrecked devastation across its coastline and showed dangerous implications for future natural disasters of that kind. However, looking at the current state of NYC, what has the city done to possible prepare or arm its citizens in defense against another possible disaster like this? The answer is unfortunately quite grim as we see a rise in natural disasters and rising water levels on coastlines around the world.
Though Breezy Point suffered devastating flooding and an electrical fire during Sandy, homes in the neighborhood are still selling for millions.Credit…Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
In the years after recovery from Sandy we see many more people still moving towards houses closer to the coastline as well as high rates of climate change denial despite NYC being known as a hub of liberalism (NY Times). As more houses and apartment complexes are being built on the city’s coastline, the largest difference we see between 10 years ago and now is the installation of more flood resistance to housing like “[placing] mechanicals higher up, often on the roof rather than in basements, where they might be gutted in the next ruinous storm” (NY Times). Although it is good that there is some progress towards protection against future flooding, this is only for newer houses as there is now mandate for these protections for older housing.
The most interesting development with all of this is how there is actually some resistance to creating protection against future hurricanes by residents in the area. This year one of the steps that the city was finally taking to create future protections against rising water levels is the creation of coastal barriers that would hopefully stop future flooding. This included the creation of new jetties across the Rockaway coastline to hopefully break incoming high tides, but much of this construction was met with animosity rather than the expected reaction of relief towards protection for future events. Apparently although these jetties and coastal barriers would stop flooding for a while, it would not be a permanent solution as “New York City facing up to 9.5 feet of sea level rise by the end of this century…. Many of these projects have a design life of just 50 years — and will address just a few feet of rising seawater” (Gothamist). Also in the creation of these non-permanent solutions, there would be an intense environmental impact as well with hundreds of trees being marked to be chopped down to create these barriers. On top of that the proposed construction for the barriers are said to cost up to 50 million dollars.
Source NY Times
All of this ultimately begs the question of why do people consistently continue to seek out waterfront houses for up to millions of dollars in worth despite the incessant risks that come from rising water levels and future storms? The answer is pretty simple, people frankly like living by the water too much. As seen in examples in cities like Syracuse proximity to water of any kind seems to increase the value of property in one way or another. Even the simple installation of water features in areas adds the perceived effect of calmness and relaxation. Take the KJ atrium in Hamilton College. Although many students who have access to the Kirner-Johnson building on a daily basis do not even pay much attention to the water feature anymore, it has a lasting affect in the opinion of many on the focus and increase of value of the location as a whole.
It seems that a lot of people do not fear flooding like seen in Sandy, but also see such flooding as an opportunity to tear down old houses for new ones. According to the NY Times in only around 3 years after Sandy many houses were rebuilt with values up to 1.5 million dollars (NY Times). Here the main crux of the problem can be seen which is that climate change is not cared about by some because it only affects the people who cannot afford to rebuild. Climate change has in some part become partly involved in gentrification as people on the more wealthy side are able to take up old houses that are destroyed by the storms and raising their value, pushing those that cannot afford them out.
In the end there does not seem to be a permanent solution that would stop an event like Sandy happening again, and despite this it does not seem like people will stop raising the value of housing on the coast and aiming to live there. New York City itself will most likely survive another event like Sandy, but not without possibly even more losses than Sandy caused. Even after more events like Sandy, there will still be an increase in the coastline value as wealthy people will buy up the space of old destroyed homes to create bigger and more expensive housing in their place and the cycle will go on and on.
Sources:
Barnard, Anne. “A $52 Billion Proposal Aims to Protect New York Harbor from Storm Surges.” The New York Times. The New York Times, September 27, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/nyregion/storm-project-new-york-harbor-flooding.html#:~:text=Land%2Dbased%20barriers%2C%20elevated%20promenades,construction%20would%20start%20in%202030.
Bellafante, Ginia. “Why Is New York Still Building on the Waterfront?” The New York Times. The New York Times, October 28, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/nyregion/waterfront-building-hurricane-sandy.html?searchResultPosition=3.
Kensinger, Nathan, and Verónica Del Valle. “Coastal Barriers Finally Begin to Rise around NYC – but Can They Stop the next Hurricane Sandy?” Gothamist, October 29, 2022. https://gothamist.com/news/coastal-barriers-finally-begin-rise-nyc-can-they-stop-the-next-hurricane-sandy.
The Shoganji temple is a 5-10 minute walk from the seaside village of Saganoseki. Saganoseki is a peaceful village famous for its fishing and rice fields. The area is surrounded by scenic mountainsides which feature numerous osen hot springs. The Shoganji temple has deep ties to the local community and hosts guests from all over the world. The temple is based on facilitating silence and solitude for those residing at Shoganji. I wanted to highlight my experience of staying at the Shoganji temple in the fall of 2020 and how ‘Samu’ is a practice that holds the establishment together.
Jiho Kongo runs the Shoganji temple, a monk with extensive knowledge of Rinzai Buddhism. Jiho conducted his training at Japan’s strictest monastery, Shogen-Ji, in the Gifu Prefecture. He traveled to several monasteries and learned from many other Zen masters. Jiho led the morning and evening meditations and explained the principles of Buddhism during mealtimes.
A typical day at the Shoganji temple started at 5 am when Jiho Kongo would yell to wake me up. I would walk to a meditation hall and enter a 30-minute morning chanting routine. A 2-hour silent meditation followed the morning chanting. After the morning meditation, we were given 30 minutes for tea and water before heading to the temple’s garden. The garden was full of weeds which I spent the first half of my stay uprooting for roughly 2 hours a day. It was hard to judge precisely how much time was spent on each activity as there was only one clock at the temple. After working in the garden, it was time for the first meal of the day, typically around 1 pm. This would end the 17-hour fasting period. After lunch, Jiho instructed us to help by cleaning and tending to the temple. Some days, this meant building a fire to burn the trash or sweep the temple grounds. Helping out around the temple was referred to as “Samu.” Samu is a slow, quiet, and meditative activity and part of the monastic life in Japan. After lunch, I walked around the nearby town or went to the local hot springs. The afternoon is uneventful, and the day ends with dinner and an evening meditation session before sleeping at 8 pm.
(Photos I took from my time at the temple:)
Staying at the temple was unlike any other experience I have ever had. Growing up in New York City, I was accustomed to constant noise and simulation. I became accustomed to falling asleep to sirens and other people’s voices on the street. On my first night at the temple, I reflected on the differences, and it was unsettling to live without the background noise.
It is interesting to see how the temple and the land around it are maintained and how it acts as a place for religious congregations. The land helps one reach a higher level of spirituality. The practice of ‘Samu’ is a silent and slow practice to maintain the grounds, making the action a meditative practice. Most of the work done at the temple is gardening, plowing the field, burning trash, or sweeping; none are unique to this temple, but the added silence and slow movement heighten the experience. Samu is understood to be essential for the daily workings of monasteries. Small activities, usually seen as everyday household chores, are carried out in the spirit of generosity, a core value of Buddhism. The idea is that participants dedicate themselves to whatever task they are assigned in a peaceful and mindful manner. The mindful approach to these activities allows participants to get more out of the activity and create a stronger impact on the temple by helping the effort to maintain the religious site.
‘Samu’ was a foreign concept to me when I first arrived, but as I continued to practice it, I accepted the importance of the practice. The culture of generosity allows monasteries to maintain themselves for others to experience. I saw ‘Samu’ as the action of preserving an experience and a place for future visitors.
The Shoganji temple and the nearby temples boast a long history that span back to the 700s. Emperor Genmei founded the shrines in the area in the 6th year of Wado, which was the year 713. The red dot is where the Shoganji temple is located.
Sources:
西岡神宮について: 安産祈願ができる神社をお探しなら熊本県宇土市の西岡神宮へお越し下さい。. 西岡神宮について | 安産祈願の神社なら熊本県宇土市の西岡神宮. (n.d.). Retrieved November 10, 2022, from http://www.nishioka-jinguu.net/shrine.php
Orientation. Shōganji Zen Retreat. (2019, May 6). Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://zenretreat.com/orientation/
Practicing Samu. Practicing samu | Zen Meditation. (n.d.). Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://meditation-zen.org/en/meditation-samu
Over the past few years, billions of dollars have been invested in a growing sector of agriculture called “Controlled Environment Agriculture” (CEA). Broadly, CEA includes farming models such as vertical farming, aquaponics, or other forms of indoor greenhouse-style farms. Oftentimes CEA is perceived to be the future of agriculture, with cheap produce due to relatively stable yields with little water use compared to other traditional farming models. CEA also often allows farmers to grow foods closer to consumers, reducing food miles (the distance it takes for food to reach consumer’s tables) which in turn greatly reduces the environmental impact farming can have. As the amount of arable land in the world decreases and our population only continues to increase, something has to be done so we can feed our future generations. As much as environmentalists would love to point at CEA for the solution to this problem, the ever so popular CEA comes with some hard truths.
In a paper published in 2020, Dr. Charles Nicholson of Cornell University found that the majority of CEA food production is currently more expensive and has a larger environmental footprint than outdoor organic farming alternatives. (Nicholson, 2020)
Nicholson studied the costs of leafy greens from different types of farm models: traditional outdoor chemical farming (under a dollar/pound), outdoor organic farming (just over a dollar/pound), glass greenhouse models (~2 dollars/pound), and vertical farming (over 2 dollars/pound). All proved to have high environmental footprints, except some forms of outdoor organic farming. (Nicholson, 2020) Recently, a New York Times opinion piece penned in June ‘22 indicated a similar reality. Most CEA models are resulting in food that costs more and uses too much energy. (Alexander, 2022)
When conducting environmental, economic, and ethical analysis on different farming models, a sensible question to ask, especially in the case of CEA is: “what if all food was grown like this?” From Nicholson’s research it seems as though the unfortunate answer is that our food would cost more, come with a high environmental footprint, and still be using some fertilizers. As for the future of agriculture one thing is clear: we need the opposite. We need food that costs less, grown in a carbon-smart manner with few chemical inputs, and that is healthier to consume with maximum nutritional value.
Those that support CEA models point out that even though CEA still relies on synthetic fertilizers, the reduction CEA makes in water use, and in food miles makes it worth pursuing to solve our problem of the decrease in arable land. But has there been success stories of CEA with low environmental footprints, from organic growing methods? Enter a new business and upcoming major player in New York State Agtech, Agbotic Inc. In Sackets Harbor, New York lay a series of greenhouses situated just a hundred yards from Lake Ontario. Agbotic’s greenhouses use precision robotics and data analyses to grow organic crops without chemical inputs.
Aerial photo of the Agbotic farm in Sackets Harbor, NY https://www.agbotic.com/smartfarm
The distributed, organic, and regenerative farming model used at Agbotic additionally actively stores and captures carbon. The Rodale Institute, a leading institute in soil science and organic farming, indicates that all of our planet’s anthropogenic carbon dioxide could be stored in organic soil. (Moyer, 2022) Additionally, a recent study in The Innovation Journal indicated that farm and forest carbon storage are among the most immediate and capable pathways to achieve carbon neutrality (Wang, 2021), something Germany is currently seriously pursuing through “carbon farming” projects. (Apunn, 2022) Perhaps the agriculture industry and the globe isn’t running out of arable land, maybe we’re just misallocating the resource. Instead of treating our farms as carbon sinks, we’re pumping Haber-Bosch nitrogen into our soils which diminishes soil biology and actually reduces carbon storage. We’re looking for expensive, elaborate carbon trapping solutions when maybe the solution is right under our feet.
According to Agbotic’s website, the New York Green Bank reported that Agbotic can offset up to 5300 tons of carbon dioxide per year all the while growing organic crops inside and out. Agbotic achieves this even with production costs that are lower than other greenhouse models. Some of their crop prices even compete with outdoor farming. (Globe Newswire, 2022)
With the current problems facing the world of CEA, the work being done at Agbotic seems to be a clear success story. A combination of organic soil farming, with the implementation of a controlled environment, Agbotic is saving the environment in a cost effective way that’s beneficial for both the company and the consumer. Agbotic is an exception in the sector that should now use their model as an example for years to come.
Nicholson, C. F., Harbick, K., Gómez, M. I., & Mattson, N. S. (2020). An economic and environmental comparison of conventional and controlled environment agriculture (CEA) supply chains for leaf lettuce to US cities. Food Supply Chains in Cities, 33–68. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34065-0_2
Wang, F., Harindintwali, J. D., Yuan, Z., Wang, M., Wang, F., Li, S., . . . Chen, J. M. (2021). Technologies and perspectives for achieving carbon neutrality. The Innovation, 2(4), 100180. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100180
The land that the United States, Canada, and Oceania call their nations was once the different territories of thousands of indigenous groups who had their rights and livelihoods stolen from them. In many institutions and communities, there is rarely any acknowledgment of the people who tended the land before the colonizers and a lack of respect for those who believed they belonged to the land and therefore the land belonged to them. The indigenous presence was slowly wiped out and soon forgotten, only left with city names of settler towns.
Culture Club / Getty; mikroman6 / Getty; The Atlantic
In recent years, there has been a rise of events such as conferences, gatherings, concerts, and festivals, opening with a person reading a statement acknowledging the land they are on to the indigenous group that exists and existed on those territories. An indigenous land acknowledgment takes form in either a written and/or formal statement that “recognizes the past, present, and future of a particular location to understand our own place within the relationship” (Native Governance Center). For generations, indigenous people have been practicing acknowledgments but the implementation in western societies has been focused on colonization (Kaur). It is meant to highlight the European colonization and pay respects to the indigenous people who lived there before.
But when non-indigenous people’s acknowledgments begin to intersect with self-absolution and moral obligation, it relieves the speaker and audience from understanding and respecting the words they are sharing. Many critics highlight that land acknowledgments are too simplistic and fall as empty gestures (St. James). Michael Lambert, associate professor of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, believes that many land acknowledgment states do not properly focus on the forcible removal of indigenous societies from their lands (Kaur). They also fail to recognize the trauma land removal results in.
In 2021, Microsoft began an annual conference in the headquarters outside of Seattle with an acknowledgment that noted that the indigenous tribes were still present on the land but did not make any attempt to connect them to the past or the present (Wood). The statement was made in a superficial fashion, to appease the settler community without actually addressing the lack of indigenous presence.
Even with the negative follow-through of land acknowledgments, there are organizations and communities that are able to successfully address the indigenous groups that they are standing on. The biggest example is Northwestern University, which addresses the original three indigenous groups that the institution is situated on while also highlighting their importance to the community (Northwestern). The University highlights the indigenous community but also includes indigenous art and language within its land acknowledgment, going further than many other acknowledgments being produced today.
For acknowledgments to be impactful and meaningful, Joanelle Romero, the founder, and CEO of Red Nation Celebration Institute believes that the indigenous groups that are attributed in the land acknowledgments should be the authors as well (Wood). She agrees that land acknowledgments can be often well-intentioned but questions what happens next after acknowledgment: reconciliation or getting land back (Wood). With the lack of prospect of either of those ever happening, thoughtless and ill-written land acknowledgments do nothing more but fulfill the guilt and moral obligation of settler societies.
To improve the practice of land acknowledgments as they continue to become more popularized, there are a few rules that promote respect for indigenous land and groups. The first is to specify the relationships between the event and the people, the second is to avoid self-congratulation, and the third is the call for restitution and giving back to the communities if they are going to be acknowledged (Wood). Though they can make indigenous people feel more welcome in some settings, land acknowledgments from settler communities can act as empty words.
“A Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgment.” Native Governance Center, 22 Oct. 2019, https://nativegov.org/news/a-guide-to-indigenous-land-acknowledgment/.
Kaur, Harmeet. “Land Acknowledgments Are Often an Empty Gesture, Some Indigenous People Say.” CNN, Cable News Network, 22 Nov. 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/22/us/native-americans-land-acknowledgments-cec/index.html.
“Land Acknowledgment: Native American and Indigenous Initiatives – Northwestern University.” Land Acknowledgment: Native American and Indigenous Initiatives – Northwestern University, https://www.northwestern.edu/native-american-and-indigenous-peoples/about/Land%20Acknowledgement.html.
St. James, Emily. “The Rise of Land Acknowledgments – and Their Limitations.” Vox, Vox, 18 July 2022, https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23200329/land-acknowledgments-indigenous-landback.
Wood, Graeme. “’Land Acknowledgments’ Are Just Moral Exhibitionism.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 3 Dec. 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/against-land-acknowledgements-native-american/620820/.
In George A. Romero’s 1978 film, Dawn of the Dead, four humans take refuge from a zombie apocalypse in, of all places, a mall. Abandoned, the mall in Dawn of the Dead leaves an eerie impression: this breeding ground for excessive consumerism is haunting when not filled with an excessive number of consumers. But the mall, like the zombies it protects against, is a forceful image in the film, lurching forward and hanging on long past its expiration. More than four decades later, the mall has died and been revived and died again countless times. Like the walking dead, malls are becoming increasingly lifeless, decrepit, and thoughtless, but still continue to push forward. If zombies cannot be killed because they are already dead, malls must not be able to die because they, too, have already concluded their useful life and moved into limbo.
From George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (via https://medium.com/@RuthlessJohn65/dawn-of-the-dead-when-theres-no-more-room-in-hell-the-dead-will-walk-the-mall-c613c0f14e3a)
Four decades on from the release of Dawn of the Dead, the film’s images of a lifeless and empty mall found analogs in the opening shots for the American Dream mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey. A three million square foot complex, complete with thirty-three thousand parking spaces to fill up all that floor space up, the American Dream is a mall-that-isn’t-really-a-mall. There is retail, yes, but there is also (perhaps more notably) entertainment galore by way of an ice-skating rink, indoor ski slope, water park, and more, just to name three of the most notable attractions. A consumer does not go to American Dream just to shop, but rather for a day filled with experiences money-can-buy. It is no surprise that malls have been on their way out. 2007 was the first year in more than half a century no new malls were built in the United States. Marking the beginning of the end, malls have since largely become an anachronism in America. The American Dream, then, is a cultural oddity.
The American Dream Mall (via http://www.lifebetweenweekends.com/2020/09/american-dream-mall-photos/)
The complex, located in the Meadowlands of New Jersey, stands in the shadow of New York City (the culture and consumer capital for the country), Newark Liberty International Airport (one of the nation’s busiest transit hubs), major power generating stations, and MetLife Stadium which hosts cultural events for the metropolitan area. In a very real way, the American Dream mall lies at the crossroads of American consumerism and culture. Its existence is a protest against the mall’s decline, and an active effort to keep in-person consumerism alive. The versatility of the space speaks to the demands of the modern consumer: no longer are material goods enough, experiences are now valued, too. American Dream throws everything at the wall in hopes something will stick. Knowing consumers no longer want just one thing, the challenge has become providing everything. American Dream is just on instance of developers concentrating shopping, experiences, and more into large complexes that leaves everything a consumer could want at their fingertips.
But, as stated above, the mall has outlived its usefulness. Jump the shark attempts to revive the in-person shopping experience, like the construction of American Dream, have been total failures. Through the lens of 2022, malls were just a fad, albeit a long lasting one. The allure of the mall now is not the convenience and ease of shopping (which will never come close to ordering anything at any time to your home from the comfort of your home), but rather the nostalgia they produce. Consumers return to spaces like American Dream to reproduce the heyday of the mall. There are no signs the mall is making a comeback, and so these trips are not genuine emersions, but rather an exercise in history. Visitors to American Dream and its counterparts across the country are performing an old form of consumerism and reliving the way things used to be.
In these ways, the mall will never really die. But they will never really come back to life, either. The mall is stuck, like a zombie, between the states of life and death, its fate always uncertain. In the wake of online ordering, consumers will continue to make trips to malls for the (not so) novel experience of shopping in stores. But these trips will remain the exceptions that prove online shopping’s rule over modern day consumerism.
The American Dream complex, as seen from above (via https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/22/timeline-of-new-jerseys-american-dream-megamall-and-how-it-got-built.html)
American Dream itself is an interesting case study in this zombie-like fugue-state of the mall. Conceived in 1996, the idea passed through many hands until ground was finally broken under the name Xanadu in 2004. By 2009, money had gone dry in the wake of the financial crisis, and the complex lay dormant. Successive rounds of construction followed, as tenants began to commit to and then give up a piece of the three million square foot pie. By 2019, plans began to solidify, the exterior got a face lift, and the complex opened with lukewarm occupancy, and even cooler consumer interest. The project has died and come back to life and died again alongside American consumerism, the plan for the mall shifting with prevailing trends in the retail market. When American Dream was first conceived, malls were in their prime, and retailers and financial firms that have since met their end leading up to and in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis could never have predicated the end times in 1996.
The name of the complex is an interesting choice. Tagged American Dream, the mall is really an outsized image of the American reality. A confluence of poor planning, poor government regulation, corporate stubbornness, and greed all around, this mall is bloated and out of place. The dream the complex’s title refers to seems to be one of the past: the golden era of the mall and in-person consumerism. With the mall on decline, these spaces increasingly exist in the cultural imagination, with sites like these as the locations to play out these historical fantasies. Much like a dream, then, American Dream is real in theory, but not in practice. The structure’s struggle to live and die and live again makes this three million square foot monstrosity a recapitulation of prevailing cultural trends. It is a site on which we can project anxieties for the future, replay nostalgia of the past, and everything in between. Then, American Dream is like the zombie’s depicted in Dawn of the Dead, neither living, nor dead, constantly stuck in tension, its fate forever unknown.
Bibliography:
In addition to personal experience growing up near American Dream and hearing about its progress, I drew from the following sources:
I was fortunate enough to experience a month in Gustavus during the summer of 2022 while conducting a Levitt Summer Research project. The following is drawn from my research paper and personal experiences and truncated into a blog post.
The town of Gustavus in Alaska is a special place. With only about 500 permanent residents, it is off the roadmap and nestled in the wilderness of Southeast Alaska. The town is carved out of Glacier Bay National Park, among the Tongass National Forest, and along the Icy Strait waterway. Getting to Gustavus is far from easy, entailing traveling by six-hour ferry from Juneau or a small (and very expensive) plane. Most visitors to the National Park come by cruise ship, never actually stepping foot in the town itself, which technically serves as the gateway (“History and Geography – Gustavus Alaska : Gustavus.com” 2015).
The geologic history of Gustavus contributes to its unique character. Less than 200 years ago, the region was still covered in ice and glaciers, which formed the landscape as they rapidly retreated. Gustavus lays on a flat outwash plain, while the rest of the National Park is an ecosystem of temperate rainforests, mountains, waterways, and glaciers. This new and intact (relatively untouched) ecosystem that is continuously developing is a huge attraction for ecologists, biologists, and wilderness lovers. It isn’t often one gets to see an ecosystem evolve from ice just over the last 200 years with minimal exploitative or extractive human development. A lot of the people I met in Gustavus came to the town originally working for the National Park Service but fell in love with the place and decided to stay permanently.
The residents of Gustavus exemplify a special bond with the place– a concept that can be encompassed as place attachment. Place attachment is the emotional connection and affinity one has towards a certain place formed through physical and social interactions. It occurs as an accumulation of the physical environment, the people, and the relationships that one experiences within a space (Amundsen 2015, 260). A large part of place attachment for many residents was drawn from the physical environment, namely, the wilderness. It is not only the beautiful mountains on the horizon and glaciers in the park, but the direct integration of the town and surrounding environment. Interviewees discussed the family of bears living in their backyard, the ability to tap into the abundant resources through fishing and hunting, and the privilege to grow food and forage. Being so removed from mainstream society and surrounded by protected wilderness seemed to foster a special attachment to the physical environment as wild and natural. The relationships and people within Gustavus certainly contribute to residents’ sense of unique place attachment as well. The small size and remoteness of the town entail a necessarily close-knit community, where everyone knows everyone. Residents are deeply involved in the community by necessity– whether that looks like working on getting supplies in, weathering the harsh winters, or sharing resources. Living in Gustavus takes intention, one doesn’t usually end up there and decide to stay there all by accident.
A discussion of place and place attachment is incomplete without a critical understanding of the historical settling of the area and who is included and left out of the narrative. Gustavus is in the ancestral homeland of the Tlingit indigenous people, who still reside in the region, primarily in the close town (by boat) of Hoonah. The settling of Gustavus by John Muir-inspired homesteaders in the 1800s expropriated land from the Tlingit people, and the founding of Glacier Bay National Park prevented the indigenous community from accessing the land they lived and fished on for time immemorial (Dauenhauer and Dauenhauer 1994). The history of homesteading in the region certainly bleeds through to the present, as many residents discussed their affinity for self-sufficiency and ability to practice other homesteading skills.
What does it mean to be attached to a place one can only access because others no longer can? How do we reckon place attachment with colonialism? These questions, among so many others, should be raised and explored concerning concepts of place attachments.
References
Amundsen, Helene. 2015. “Place attachment as a driver of adaptation in coastal communities in Northern Norway.” Local Environment 20 (3): 257-276. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2013.838751.
Dauenhauer, Nora M., and Richard Dauenhauer, eds. 1994. Haa Kusteeyí, Our Culture: Tlingit Life Stories. Vol. 3. N.p.: Sealaska Heritage Foundation.
Syracuse, New York, has been named as the new site for Micron Technology’s $100 billion computer chip plant (Weiner). Micron Technology is considered the industry leader in the development of memory chips and reported $8.7 billion in profits in the 2022 fiscal year. The new plant marks the largest single private investment in New York history. It also means the the creation of up to 9,000 jobs over the next 20 years (Weiner). The project is additionally expected to bring 40,000 supply-chain and construction jobs to the Syracuse area and New York state (Weiner). According to Governor Hochul and Senator Schumer, Micron’s placement in Central New York will be transformative for the area, boosting the economy over the next two decades and making it one of the major centers of high-end chip manufacturing in the United States (Weiner). This news signals a huge win for Syracuse, a former rust-belt city which, like many old industrial centers, has struggled amidst globalization.
As a result of an influx of jobs from the Micron plant, the region will need to build enough housing to accommodate the tens of thousands of new residents expected to move to the area (Moriarty & Knauss). County officials are expecting a building boom of apartments and single family homes, especially in Clay and other northern suburbs. In the town of Clay, where the plant will be built, usually 50 to 100 homes are built each year in the town (Moriarty & Knauss). With the impending increase of residents, homes built each year in the town are likely to increase to 500 to 600 (Moriarty & Knauss). The town of Clay will not be the only municipality to see an increase in residents and housing demand, with estimates suggesting an increase of 125,000 in the county population over the next 20 years (Moriarty & Knauss). This represents growth of more than 25% in its population which is currently 478,000 (Moriarty & Knauss). Officials are also predicting the city of Syracuse itself will see an influx of residents (Moriarty & Knauss). While the inundation of families moving to the greater Syracuse region will certainly revive the struggling area, the question remains where all the housing will get built.
This graphic shows estimates of potential residential growth in Onondaga County as a result of the Micron plant. Red represents multifamily housing and yellow represents single-family homes.
Furthermore, Micron salaries are relatively high, averaging around $100,000 per year (Moriarty & Knauss). Therefore, the new housing being built will likely be more upscale and expensive. Additionally, if the demand for housing fueled by Micron exceeds what the market can provide, rents will increase in the region. Typical rents in the Syracuse area have grown faster than those in New York City over the last two years, increasing over 26% since July of 2020 (Tampone). This is higher than the national rent growth average of 24% over the last two years (Tampone). Close to half of all renters in the Syracuse metropolitan area already spend more than 30% of their income on rent (Moriarty & Knauss). As a result, there are growing concerns that there will be a lack of affordable housing and that individuals will be pushed out of their homes as they are unable to afford continually rising rents. Rising rents will be the toughest on low income residents who already struggle to pay for housing. In order to combat this problem, county officials are working with builders to ensure a wide variety of new housing options, including affordable units (Moriarty & Knauss). Micron and the state will also fund a $500 million community benefits program which would help create opportunities for people in underserved communities in Syracuse, though further details have yet to be specified (Weiner).
As of 2022, there are 71,634 bars in the United States (IBISWorld). Only 24 of them are lesbian bars (Lesbian Bar Project).
This low number of lesbian bars is not a new phenomenon. Lesbian bars have been in decline for years due to a number of factors. For one, the (general) rise in acceptance towards and inclusivity of LGBTQ+ people have made the bars less necessary as a gathering place than they were in the 1900s (Marloff). The increase in the use of dating apps to meet partners has also decreased the need to go to lesbian bars to meet other people (Compton, 2021a). These issues also affect gay bars in general (Branton and Compton). Gentrification has forced many lesbian bars to close since the bars are unable to pay the increased rents; for example, The Lexington Club in San Francisco’s Mission District was forced to close in 2015 after two decades since the city’s tech boom led to increased rent costs (Marloff). Also, lesbian bars suffer from the effects of gender disparities. Women, trans, and non-binary people tend to have less spending money on hand due to income disparities rooted in inequalities and discrimination (Marloff). Lastly, lesbian bars have suffered from a lack of inclusivity since they fail to offer safe spaces to other queer-identifying women and to trans and gender non-conforming people (Compton, 2021b).
The COVID pandemic has exacerbated these issues. Like with other bars and restaurants, COVID forced the bars to close. While some managed to get government loans, many others struggled to make ends meet and to earn enough money when the government allowed limited reopenings (Compton, 2021a). These problems were only made harder given that women tend to have less money to spend, as mentioned before. Overall, lesbian bars have struggled during COVID on top of declining revenues from the above factors, and many were forced to turn to GoFundMe to stay afloat (Marloff).
Henrietta Hudson Bar and Grill in New York City https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/year-pandemic-america-s-remaining-lesbian-bars-are-barely-hanging-n1262936
Lesbian bars are important places for queer women. They offer a place for queer people to engage in community building (Compton, 2021b). Building connections with other queer people is exceptionally important to create support systems—queer adults are two times as likely to live alone and four times as likely to not have kids (Petrow). It is also a safe space where queer women can act like themselves without fear of queerphobia. Gay bars can be alienating for women since some of them privilege gay male sexuality over other sexualities (Branton and Compton). Lastly, lesbian bars have historically been a place for activism, especially during the AIDS crisis (Marloff). Overall, they are an important place for queer women to make connections and be themselves without fear of opposition.
However, lesbian bars have problems that need to be addressed. As mentioned above, lesbian bars historically tended to lack inclusivity based not only on exclusion of other gender and sexuality minorities, but also exclusion by race. A common tactic in the later 1900s was carding, where lesbian bars would card only women of color to prevent them from entering (Marloff). Also, a focus on lesbians alienates women who identify with another identity, such as women who are bisexual, asexual, pansexual, or another sexuality minority. Similarly, a historical focus on cisgender lesbians alienates people who are trans, non-binary, or gender non-conforming. These exclusionary practices prevent many people, who also want a space to meet others like them and create connections, from feeling comfortable using lesbian bars and from finding a safe space.
More recently, lesbian bars have been working to address these issues by increasing inclusivity to increase business and promote community building among queer people. Some have explicitly changed their logos to create a space for all queer and trans individuals (Compton, 2021b). This change can help attract younger generations, who are often more inclusive-minded and are the majority of the bars’ customers. To address the financial problems facing lesbian bars, the Lesbian Bar Project launched to aid lesbian bars during the pandemic. They raised $118,000 to support 13 of the bars that were financially unstable in 2020 (Marloff). They also recently released a documentary on lesbian bar history, patronage, community impact, and hopes in 2021, along with raising over $150,000 more to support lesbian bars (The Lesbian Bar Project).
From the Lesbian Bar Project https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lesbian-bar-project-chronicles-decline-women-s-queer-spaces-n1269463
Lesbian bars are an important place for queer people to develop relationships and feel safe. The recent efforts to increase inclusivity of who has a right to the place helps improve the bars and opens them to a broader audience along racial, sexuality, and gender lines. This change allows a broader range of people to access the benefits of a queer space. Along with the rise in coordinated awareness and fundraising by the Lesbian Bar Project, it looks like lesbian bars are moving in the right direction by addressing both financial and social problems.
References
Bars & Nightclubs in the US – Number of Businesses 2003–2028. (2022, June 19). IBISWorld. https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-businesses/bars-nightclubs-united-states/.
Branton, S.E. & Compton, C.A. (2021). There’s No Such Thing as a Gar Bar: Co-Sexuality and the Neoliberal Branding of Queer Spaces. Management Communication Quarterly, Volume 35(1), 69-95.
Compton, J. (2021a, April 4). A year into pandemic, America’s remaining lesbian bars are barely hanging on. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/year-pandemic-america-s-remaining-lesbian-bars-are-barely-hanging-n1262936.
—. (2021b, June 3). ‘The Lesbian Bar Project’ chronicles the decline of women’s queer spaces. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lesbian-bar-project-chronicles-decline-women-s-queer-spaces-n1269463.
Marloff, S. (2021, January 21). The Rise and Fall of America’s Lesbian Bars: Only 15 nightlife spaces dedicated to queer and gay women remain in the United States. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/rise-and-fall-americas-lesbian-bars-180976801/.
Petrow, S. (2022, October 23). The anxieties of growing old when you’re LGBTQ. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/23/lgbtq-aging-worries/.
The Lesbian Bar Project. (n.d.). https://www.lesbianbarproject.com/.
