Thanks for using two of my photographs in this part 2 of 3 review of the Derek Hyra (@DerekHyra) book “Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City.” by @AlexBaca, for @CityObs.
My review of the book along with photographs of the neighborhood is here (Thoughts and photos from the gilded ghetto | Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City, by Derek Hyra)
I appreciate the scholarship which has added a lot to my understanding of the situation written about in Hyra’s book. Baca makes an interesting point about the limitations of Hyra’s ethnographic approach:
Cappuccino City doesn’t consider a control group, selection bias, or comparative analysis. Hyra does not examine other neighborhoods within D.C. or outside of it, much less ask long-term residents in neighborhoods other than Shaw how they view change. If he had, he may have found that in some places, there are few “oldtimers” left behind to interrogate: Very poor neighborhoods that don’t rebound, or “gentrify,” are much more common than gentrifying neighborhoods, and essentially hemorrhage residents.
The piece links out to another series of blog posts about the book on the blog Truxton is In Shaw (@TruxtonTwit): Problems with the Derek Hyra Book: Part II WTF is Going On? – Truxton Is In Shaw.
In the above blog post, the author writes “I’m not sure who is reading this blog anymore anyway.”
I’m reading it.
It’s incredible to live in a place and time where whole books are written about the neighborhood you live in, and the associated commentary helps you/me understand what it takes to build a society where everyone has what they need.
I’ll post on Part 3 separately – there’s a photo in that piece that’s attributed to me, however, I don’t think it’s mine (I could be wrong, though).
In any event, thanks to Alex and City Observatory for allowing a snap of a shutter to bring me more knowledge about what I was seeing through the lens, and pointing out what I am not seeing. This is a heat map of the photographs I uploaded to Flickr in 2017. My goal in 2018 is to expand the area of heat.
The City Observatory is a study of modern-day cities and urban development practices.
Source: Challenging the Cappuccino City: Part 2: The limits of ethnography | City Observatory