Ellis Island Bridge Proposal

The passage starts off explaining the past of Ellis Island and how it was used to document all in coming immigrants. In fact 40% of U.S. citizens can be traced back to Ellis Island. The Island began with an open door policy but later involved a series of tests.

A bridge was built connecting Ellis Island to New Jersey's Liberty State Park. The bridge was meant to be used by personnel reconstructing Ellis Island. The bridge was off limits to the public but the public wanted access. Although there was no bridge connecting Ellis Island to New York, New York and New Jersey share "custody" of Ellis Island. New York is most recognized for Ellis Island and the Statue of liberty since it is a great tourist attraction in NY.

The people of New Jersey wanted access to the bridge to promote tourism but others argue the the experience of arriving by boat would be ruined. The meaning of this work is to find out the opinion of those who are affected most by the bridge. They created a list of constituency groups in which the interviewees had some sort of "expersise", meaning they are interested in the well being of the park since they are around it

Rethinking Urban parks 1-18

     This chapter was about how urban parks play an important role in creating diversity among the urban people. The way to create a successfully intergrated park is to provide easy access like a train near by and it should welcome all those who wish to enter rather than favoring one culture or group more than the other. Sometime parks are redesigned to create a attraction for tourists or to try and keep an unfavorable group of people in a park. Low also discussed the fear of the "other" that emerged post 9/11. Culture diversity is threatened by this fear that exists among Americans. There is a trend of people moving to rural areas to escape the roaring number of immigrants in urban community. This trend is also a result of the fear of the "other".  Parks play a special role in trying to maintain social diversity which is essential in urban life.
      I think this chapter was very interesting because I never realized how important park are even though I use them all the time in the summer. Now when I see a park I see it differently. I can see that certain ethnic groups are concentrated in certain parks and not many parks have this ideal integration.