Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social and Cultural Effects of Remaking Urban Environments

博士论文研究：重塑城市环境的社会和文化影响

• 批准号: 1425679
• 负责人: Catherine Fennell
• 金额: $ 0.27万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2016-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1425679&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Social; Cultural

The Cultural Anthropology Program supports research on the socio-cultural drivers and consequences of changing patterns and processes of urbanization. Urban blight, which frequently follows deindustrialization, is one such process. Some United States cities, such as those in the rust belt, have experienced urban blight as a follow-up to factory closings, unemployment, and population decline. Similar problems are being faced by post-industrial cities elsewhere in the world, too. Thus the world can be our laboratory for evaluating potential solutions to the problems posed by urban decay. Germany's approach to its post-industrial cities is particularly interesting, possibly even unique among Western nations. Their plans combine new nationwide energy policies with residential consolidation, demolition, and renewal in blighted cities. To understand the new programs and how they affect residents, Columbia University doctoral student Samantha M. Fox, advised by Dr. Catherine Fennell, will undertake research in one such city, Eisenhüttenstadt, located near the border between eastern Germany and Poland. This is an especially apt site because this city was founded in 1950 as a worker's utopia and steel manufacturing hub. Today, the city's population is much reduced and its obsolete urban infrastructure is being transformed and pushed towards green energy. The researcher will collect data with multiple social science research methods including archival research in city and national archives, interviews and focus groups with residents and planners, attendance at meetings in planned neighborhoods, and participant observation in people's daily lives. The researcher will focus on how changes in infrastructure and the built environment affect residents' lives and their imaginations of future possibilities, and how those understandings may or may not diverge from what planners past and present intended.

文化人类学项目支持对社会文化驱动因素和变化的模式和城市化进程的后果的研究。经常伴随去工业化而来的城市衰败就是这样一个过程。一些美国城市，比如那些位于“铁锈地带”的城市，由于工厂关闭、失业和人口减少而经历了城市衰败。世界其他地方的后工业城市也面临着类似的问题。因此，世界可以成为我们评估城市衰败问题潜在解决方案的实验室。德国处理后工业城市的方式特别有趣，甚至可能在西方国家中是独一无二的。他们的计划将新的全国能源政策与衰败城市的住宅整合、拆除和重建结合起来。为了了解这些新项目及其对居民的影响，哥伦比亚大学博士生萨曼莎·m·福克斯（Samantha M. Fox）将在凯瑟琳·芬内尔（Catherine Fennell）博士的建议下，在德国东部和波兰边境附近的艾森森<s:1>滕施塔特（eisenenhttenstadt）进行研究。这是一个特别合适的地点，因为这座城市建于1950年，是一个工人的乌托邦和钢铁制造中心。如今，这座城市的人口大大减少，陈旧的城市基础设施正在改造，并向绿色能源发展。研究人员将通过多种社会科学研究方法收集数据，包括城市和国家档案馆的档案研究，与居民和规划者的访谈和焦点小组，参加规划社区的会议，以及参与观察人们的日常生活。研究人员将关注基础设施和建筑环境的变化如何影响居民的生活和他们对未来可能性的想象，以及这些理解如何可能或可能不会偏离过去和现在的规划者的意图。