Metropolis, Public Sphere, & Definitions

Alright, let me explain… No there is too much, let me sum up.

There are many concepts in this book that I would like to explore further. The “metropolis,” the Chicago “Public Sphere,” and how Fleming defines public, common places, and community.

Metropolis
First, the “metropolis” basically is my personal community environment. I live in Dewitt, work and go to school in East Lansing, shop at Meijer on Lake Lansing, shop at Walmart in Saint Johns, board my horses in Portland, go to church in Westphalia, and visit friends in Okemos. I am the Great Lansing Area. 

Though all of these places are vastly different in their economic status and demographic makeup not to mention the obvious difference in location, I still consider them all to be a part of my community or rather I am a part of each of these communities. Am I wrong? If I am right, then am I any less a community member in each place since I belong to other communities? Or am I only a community member in the area where I perform my civic duties? Am I making any sense at all?

As Fleming defines it, a metropolis is “any geographical area comprising a large population nucleus… together with all adjacent communities.” All this time I thought that a metropolis had to be New York or Chicago. Nope. I think the Greater Lansing Area qualifies.

Chicago Public Sphere
“Nearly 100 percent of murders in Chicago public housing project occurred in public common spaces” “To be ‘in public’ in a place like this, in other words, is to be at risk for one’s life” (Fleming)

This fact is astonishing to me, yet I didn’t doubt its truth. The ghetto does in fact “silence its inhabitants.” Yet so often you will hear people say “why don’t they just help themselves?” or “why don’t they just move” referring to ways in which these people could “better their lives” when in fact the culture and community created in these areas isn’t like the ones others are familiar with. We created the mess and now blame them for it.


Definitions
Community “the compact face-to-face social group based on likeness, affinity, and proximity—what we often call ‘community’”

I have issues with the “face-to-face” part of this definition, perhaps because I have grown up with access to the internet and I feel like I have established community-like connections there on forums and such. And I feel that if these forums or virtual spaces function like a community can’t we just call it a community? If the shoe fits, where it. Yes, once upon a time it could be argued that community was “face-to-face” and based on proximity, but the world is shrinking and changing at an alarming rate and perhaps our ideas on community and connection should change with it.

“Common places” can link us to one another and the earth, but where we remain free and unique as individuals (Fleming) “where people can come together to discuss and negotiate their difference, where their freedom and equality can be enacted without either alienation and amalgamation.”

Do these places really exist? Besides in a classroom?

“Public” Coming together of persons (Fleming)

That’s it? So, the internet is public? I wish some people on facebook would realize that 