Urban Bohemian Chapter Summary

546 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essays on poverty in rural america

Intro RR10
This book starts off by taking a journey through urban bohemian neighborhoods and working its way down to the small towns. Throughout the book, the author states that he will show us readers how Americans functioned during the 21st century. Many of us follow the basic patterns and conform to the norms of the societies around us. Whether you know it or not, these patterns recur quite often. For example, “ 39 percent of 11-12 year olds say chinese food is their favorite food, while only 9 percent say American food is”. The suburbs that we are taking a journey through are being affected greatly by the circumstances they’re facing. The mass increase and steady decline of city numbers are fluctuating. The individuals are either staying …show more content…

The author states that “ the car’s got huge, the houses got huge, as did the fry containers at McDonald’s”. He also describes the suburbs as “ The land of the gargantuoids”. When I think of the suburbs, I think of a residential area near the city where families are raised. In fact, the author states that “ married couples with children make up only 27 % of suburban household”. The economy, social life, and technological advances have played a key role in the advancement of our societies. Later on in the Introduction, the question we are asking is why certain trends occur in one area, but not in other areas of the world? I have not determined the reasoning based off what I have read so far, but hope to discover later on in the passage. Towards the end of this introduction, the author states the goals he intends to accomplish throughout this book. First, he will try to accurately depict what it’s like to be in today’s middle and upper class. Next, he will strive to explain the motives behind why Americans do what they do. Lastly, Brooks will answer the question; “ Are we as shallow as we look”? Chapter Three is titled “ Americans: Bimbos of the World”. Bimbo is a slang term for an attractive but unintelligent female and originally used in the U.S. in the

Show More
Related

  • Chicago’s Cabrini-Green Housing Project

    1551 Words  | 4 Pages

    Phillips, E. Barbara. City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

    Read More

  • How Did World War II Transform American Society and Government?

    1276 Words  | 3 Pages

    Most of the suburbs were built as small communities with strip malls. This meant that all families had to have at least one car if not two for a second job. Families with a two-income household had it much easier than those with one. This caused an explosion of the middle ...

    Read More

  • Materialism in The Dharma Bums and Goodbye, Columbus

    1377 Words  | 3 Pages

    Several works we have read thus far have criticized the prosperity of American suburbia. Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, and an excerpt from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem "A Coney Island of the Mind" all pass judgement on the denizens of the middle-class and the materialism in which they surround themselves. However, each work does not make the same analysis, as the stories are told from different viewpoints.

    Read More

  • The Heartland And The Rural Youth Exodus Analysis

    1069 Words  | 3 Pages

    All the drastic changes that the world has been through, and Carr and Kefalas show that in their writing. These changes at some time made the current town, were they live, a thriving and prosperous place. People would move from their towns to these prospering communities to seek out the benefits that were offered. Many of those small towns are slowly fading into the background because of the modern world changes that big and upcoming cities that offering. These changes are creating new jobs and environments for the youth that are looking for change in the small towns that once were big and thriving, are now filled with the older generation that don’t want to make the change. They are looking to keep things consistent with the life they have been living; some changes in their eyes are not good, they are just creating problems. In Carr and Kefalas’s article they write about living in a small town called Ellis in Iowa. Carr and Kefalas talked to an employee working at a new factory in Ellis, “A machine operator living in Ellis complains about the strugglers facing old-fashion workers who find themselves trapped in a newfangled economy” (33). People living in small towns are unlikely to adapt to new changes, but are having to because of companies starting new factories in their community. This new technology is bound to change the life of older generation parents, whether they choose to stay in their small town lifestyle or move to

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Heartland And The Rural Youth

    1437 Words  | 3 Pages

    Now, a normal sized town contains fast-food joints, supermarkets, malls, and superstores, but a small town lacks that appeal. The small-town could be the most beautiful landscape known to man, but lack the necessary luxuries in life that a typical American would benefit from. Carr and Kefalas make this statement that emphasizes the town’s lack of appeal, “Indeed the most conspicuous aspects of the towns landscape may be the very things that are missing; malls, subdivisions, traffic and young people” (26). The authors clearly state that they realize that towns, such as the Heartland, are hurting because of the towns’ lack of modernization. For all intents and purposes, the town’s lack of being visually pleasing is driving away probable citizens, not only the native youth, and possible future employee’s away from a possible internship with the town. The citizens with a practice or business hurt from the towns inability to grow up and change along with the rest of the world, yet the town doesn’t realize what bringing in other businesses could potentially do for their small town. Creating more businesses such as malls, superstores and supermarkets would not only drive business up the roof, but it’ll also bring in revenue and draw the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Joel Schumacher's 'Falling Down'

    1041 Words  | 3 Pages

    Schumacher uses various interaction to demonstrate the decline of American society in the early 80’s and 90’s, specifically regarding the poverty filled neighbourhoods surrounding Los

    Read More

  • Analysis Of David Brooks Our Sprawling, Sunrise Utopia

    393 Words  | 1 Pages

    In “Our Sprawling, Sunrise Utopia,” David Brooks compares how Americans used to live to how they live now. He discusses how Americans live in their own towns and have their own meeting places; these meeting places are historically different from where people have gathered in the past. Not only are their meeting places different but their homes are different and are organized differently.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of The Cash Ghetto

    726 Words  | 2 Pages

    The article begins by explaining how the cash ghetto came to be. The author explains the change in the community following a newly constructed road; the town went from a mixture of poor and middle-class homeowners, to the midde-class leaving for the suburbs and only the poor were left to live in the town; thriving dealerships, turning into used car lots and body shops; from family restaurants following the middle-class family, and leaving fast food restaurants to open. The author uses the previous examples to support his idea that the forming of the cash ghetto followed the middle-class leaving to the suburbs.

    Read More

  • Spaces of the New American West

    1088 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Western portion of the United States includes thirteen states that are home to around 80,000,000 Americans, yet it remains one of the most sparsely settled regions in the country (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). In a sense, the American West is the closest thing left to a “frontier” in the modernized United States. One can travel to Montana and become immersed in a world not dissimilar to that of their forefathers, just as easily as one could travel to California, widely considered to be the epicenter of growth and modernization in the States. With Silicon Valley and Yellowstone all in one region, there is a unique sense of space presented within the West that is unattainable from the American North, East, or South. For instance, a trip to New York City may be fairly comparable to a trip to Pittsburgh, but a trip to San Francisco as opposed to Rapid City provides an entirely different cultural experience. If the West was just a replica of the American East, Kerouac’s On the Road would have never come to be. The wide disparity among spaces in the New West is a main reason behind the effectiveness of Coupland’s Generation X. Without the spaces of the American West the comedic genius of Portlandia would be nonexistent!

    Read More

  • Privatizing the Public Sphere

    1560 Words  | 4 Pages

    The privatization and fragmentation of space in post-industrial urban America is a widespread social problem. As society becomes even more globalized as a result of technological advances, the rampant spread of a privatized public realm is ever-increasing. Public space is needed as a center in which to bring people together to share a common place. It is within public spaces that public life unfolds and without public spaces such as parks, streets, and buildings, the mixing of classes will become increasingly uncommon. Society is made up of two sectors: the private and public, and it is essential that both remain separate entities. However, through the use of fear tactics especially the threat of violent crimes, privatized settings are spreading throughout the public sphere. In this analysis, it is my intent to explore the various tactics being used to impede upon the public sphere. In doing so, I will explore the causal factors that contribute to the increased privatization of urban public life.

    Read More

  • Sidewalk by Mitchell Duneier

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book asks two questions; first, why the changes that have taken place on the sidewalk over the past 40 years have occurred? Focusing on the concentration of poverty in some areas, people movement from one place to the other and how the people working/or living on Sixth Avenue come from such neighborhoods. Second, How the sidewalk life works today? By looking at the mainly poor black men, who work as book and magazine vendors, and/or live on the sidewalk of an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The book follows the lives of several men who work as book and magazine vendors in Greenwich Village during the 1990s, where mos...

    Read More

  • Paul Clemens Punching Out Analysis

    399 Words  | 1 Pages

    His 2005 memoir, “Made in Detroit,” turned a coming-of-age story into a portrayal of a city on shipping pallets. This time around, he turns his time spent inside Budd to offer a disconcerting perspective at the declination of the American working class. It’s a retrogression, the story of a “reverse lifecycle,” Paul says. “Rather than distinguish the coming into being of a butterfly,” he says, “I wanted to capture the primal qualities exposing what was left; A chrysalis, fractured and shorn of its

    Read More

  • The American Dream Facade

    2259 Words  | 5 Pages

    From the moment William Levitt created the first official suburb in 1950, the suburban lifestyle has been viewed as practically utopian. This adopted myth has boosted suburbia into the most popular residency for Americans, housing approximately 138,231,000 or 55% of all Americans (Gillespie 4). For the average citizen, this popularity seems encouraging, assuming that the majority of our country's population is actively pursuing a lifestyle that includes a desire to work honestly and live modestly as well as to provide a stable and protected living environment for one's family. Unfortunately, things are not always as they appear. If examined closely, the popularity of America's suburbs is more disturbing than encouraging. Suburbia is actually a representation of the dehumanized characteristics that America's citizens have acquired and not a symbol of their wholesome zeal for a utopia. Using the American Dream as a facade, suburbia is simply a manufactured myth that allows Americans to disguise their diminishing family values, their hunger for socioeco...

    Read More

  • Gentrification

    1826 Words  | 4 Pages

    Zukin, Sharon. "Gentrification: Culture and Capital in the Urban Core." Annual Review of Sociology 13(1987): 129-147.

    Read More

  • Urban Planning History

    1650 Words  | 4 Pages

    Susan S. Fainstein, Scott Campbell. 2003. Readings in Urban Theory. Second Edition. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

    Read More

More about Urban Bohemian Chapter Summary

Open Document