Urban Life blog hunt

Oceane Mercadal

Activity 9

1. http://www.urbanlifeblog.com/2009/10/welcome-to-urban-life-a-phoenix-real-estate-life-blog.html: The first blog I came across is focused on real estate in Phoenix. This blog discusses the different aspects of real estate in Phoenix. This blog is definitely not my favorite out of all the ones I found but it sure informs the reader of what is going on in the area. This blog is a little too plain and straightforward in my opinion. It sure does give information about real estate and how things are going in phoenix but I find it more like an information site than a blog where people can share thoughts and opinions, which is what I believe a good blog should be.

2. http://thisurbanlife.blogspot.com/: This blog is a mixture of the one, which posts one photograph a day and the one held by the mother describing her son’s journey through life. This blog shows random pictures of people or things that make up the urban life. My favorite pictures from this blog are the one posted on February 21st called Street Light and the one from March 7th called on the can. The first picture represents the city at night and how the streetlights can affect the perspective of the street while the second one is a simple picture of a bunny rabbit on a can of green olives. Like the other blogs I have found this one does not talk about the various uses of different parts of a city or how cities have evolved but it represents what surrounds in a particular manned. These blogs allow the ones who take a look at them to

3. http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/: This blog is very different to all of the other ones I came across. In my Urban Studies class we lately came across the subject that most of our lives where being digitalized. We mainly communicate via email or text messages. When you need to communicate with a teacher it is rare to find a time where both of you can sit down and talk so you email one another. Well this blog shows how people and their behavior can be represented through videos. What attracted me to this blog was that it managed to relate today’s modern technology with urban life planning.

4. http://www.onephotographaday.com/: This blog is by far my favorite one out of the ones I managed to find. The concept of this blog is to take a picture every day from the surrounding. The photograph for Sunday May 2nd is amazing. A group of immigrants marched in front of the white house in order to protest the Arizona law and to demand action for the federal Government. Another interesting post is the one from April 29th. A blogger was roller blading in Washington DC when he came across a group of colorful dancers called The Friends of Sironka Dance Troup performing around the White House. What was interesting about this picture was that when i first saw it, i assumed it was a group of black people who where protesting in front of the White House. I made the same assumption as Mitchell Duneier made in his book "Sidewalk". Mitchell felt uneasy studying Hakim because many of the conversations he had "heard were about so-called black books and because the people participating in them seemd to be defining themselves as a person. (p.20) The reason why I liked this blog was because any one can get involved as long as you find something interesting that you want to share with others. After all as long as something happens on the streets or anywhere in a city I personally consider it to be urban.

5. http://www.fertilegroundzine.blogspot.com/: This blog is interesting and unique at the same time. Unlike the other blogs a mother instead of several people holds this one. Her posts do not debate about global warming or other urban issues such as the use of the sidewalks in New York City. She describes certain events that are happening to her and her son as the young boy discovers the world. Urban is all around us, which is why probably anything can be related to urban life as long as it involves anything that surrounds us. In her blog this woman describes some of the important days of her son just like the one when they went to Whitton Farm. She describes how amazed the kids were to discover chickens and horses. Reading Stacey Greenberg’s blog was interesting because it is out of the ordinary and makes you realize that we cannot take what is around us for granted. We must care about our environment and protect it for the ones who will live in it after us.