Bremm Doris - Sustainability and the city: urban poetics and politics

Sustainability and the City

Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Series Editor

Douglas A. Vakoch , California Institute of Integral Studies , USA

Advisory Board:

Bruce Allen, Seisen University, Japan; Hannes Bergthaller, National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan; Zlia Bora, Federal University of Paraba, Brazil; Izabel Brando, Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil; Byron Caminero-Santangelo, University of Kansas, USA; Simo Farias Almeida, Federal University of Roraima, Brazil; George Handley, Brigham Young University, USA; Isabel Hoving, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Idom Thomas Inyabri, University of Calabar, Nigeria; Serenella Iovino, University of Turin, Italy; Daniela Kato, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan; Petr Kopeck, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Serpil Oppermann, Hacettepe University, Turkey; Christian Schmitt-Kilb, University of Rostock, Germany; Heike Schwarz, University of Augsburg, Germany; Murali Sivaramakrishnan, Pondicherry University, India; Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, USA; J. Etienne Terblanche, North-West University, South Africa; Julia Tofantuk, Tallinn University, Estonia; Cheng Xiangzhan, Shandong University, China; Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg, Germany

Ecocritical Theory and Practice highlights innovative scholarship at the interface of literary/cultural studies and the environment, seeking to foster an ongoing dialogue between academics and environmental activists.

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Sustainability and the City : Urban Poetics and Politics edited by L auren Curtright and Doris Bremm

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Sustainability and the City

Urban Poetics and Politics

Edited by

Lauren Curtright and Doris Bremm

LEXINGTON BOOKS

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Copyright 2017 by Lexington Books

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ISBN 978-1-4985-3659-2 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4985-3660-8 (electronic)

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Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Lauren Curtright

Christopher Schliephake

Anirban Adhya and Philip D. Plowright

Karim Wagih Fawzi Youssef

Iuliu Ratiu

Lea Rekow

Heide Imai

Claudia Mantovan

Joseph Donica

Alexander Kleinschrodt

Lisa FitzGerald

Katarzyna Szalewska

Mehdi Kochbati

Caitlin Yocco-Locascio

Thomas Coles View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow) , 1836. Held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Cityxiv

Thomas Coles The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire , 1836. Held in the Collection of the New-York Historical Societyxv

Thomas Coles The Course of Empire: Desolation , 1836. Held in the Collection of the New-York Historical Societyxvii

Favela housing, Rio de Janeiro. Photo by the author, date unknown

Detail of Rocinha favela. Photo by the author, date unknown

Detail of the Manguinhos favela. Photo by the author, date unknown

Breaking a hole in the wall to access the space to begin work on the Rocinha Mais Verde garden in Rocinha. Photo by the author, date unknown

Groundbreaking at the Rocinha garden. Photo by the author, January 2012

Rocinha Mais Verde planting day. Photo by the author, April 2012

Rocinha Mais Verde. Photo by the author, May 2012

Building the infrastructure for the Manguinhos garden. Photo by the author, May 2013

Manguinhos garden. Photo by the author, June 2014

The changing urban landscape, seen from Yanaka. Photo by the author, 2012

Interviewees in Yanaka. Photos by the author, 2012

Shops along Hebimichi (Snake Lane) in Yanaka. Photos by the author, 2012

Ninth Ward Hurricane Katrina Memorial, New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo courtesy of David Tulloch

Ninth Ward Hurricane Katrina Memorial, New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo courtesy of David Tulloch

The Yellow House, Heidelberg Project, Detroit, Michigan. Photo by the author

An installation of shoes, Heidelberg Project, Detroit, Michigan. Photo by the author

View of the Polka Dot House, Heidelberg Project, Detroit, Michigan. Photo by the author

We thank, at Lexington Books, Douglas Vakoch for encouraging us to edit this collection, as well as Lindsey Porambo and Nick Johns for their patience and help with its production. We are grateful to Rebecca Weaver for her feedback on the introduction and to administrators who made possible the travel that benefited our international collaboration. The genesis of this collection was a panel that we co-organized at the 86th Annual Convention of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. An earlier iteration of the section on Thomas Cole and Edgar Allan Poe in the introduction was a paper that Lauren Curtright presented at the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2015. We thank the organizers, panelists, and audiences of both conferences for their insights into, and enthusiasm for, our topic. Last but not least, our gratitude goes to our friends, our families, and all of the collections contributors for their support of this project.

Lauren Curtright

On the same day as homemade bombs were detonated in New Jersey and Manhattan in September 2016, the New York Times ran an article in its Real Estate section about the shift toward verisimilitude in representations of New York City apartments. The author, Ronda Kaysen, argues that living quarters depicted in contemporary television shows set in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens reflect the reality of a generation who earned about 20 percent less in real wages in 2014 than they would have earned in 2000. These fictional apartments, Kaysen observes, contrast starkly to the plethora of fantastical urban dwellings on television screens in the 1990s, including character Carrie Bradshaws Upper East Side brownstone with its conspicuous walk-in closet in HBOs Sex and the City . Despite Kaysens attention to important issues of sustainable development, including wage stagnation, rent control, and displacement by gentrification, her article took a backseat to news of terrorism. Urban residents real or perceived vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks overshadowed, at least temporarily, Kaysens discussion of long overdue popular cultural attention to a veritable housing crisis.