Blog 1

The term "community" holds a couple of different viewpoints for me. When I think of the word community the first few phrases that come to me are unity, togetherness and connection to select a few. Community by the definition that I've always held in my mind is a group of people where one can be themselves and are accepted regardless of race, religion or ethnicity. I belong to plenty of communities in which I am minority but regardless of that I consider it home. The word "community" doesn't just pertain to a physical location but also community that can be a virtual space. I hadn't really considered visual community  until I actually sat back and began to realize that through social media there are plenty of communities that I am involved in. 

Gentrification is a term that I had never heard of before taking an American Studies class and I never noticed just how much of it I've surrounded myself in. The term gentrification to me means an upsurge in the amount of people who lived in a specific area at a specific time but that displaced. During the displacement, new people moved in which causes a clash between long time members of the community and new members of the community. When thinking about gentrification I play around the scenario of a new couple moving into a suburban neighborhood where all the neighbors know each other but the new couple stands out. That scenario is how I see gentrification in action.

Station North in of itself seems to be an interesting place. I'm excited to see what it has to offer but the one thing I'm really looking forward to knowing is why the physical boundaries of Station North are set up the way that they are. When looking at the map, the boundaries aren't exactly a particular shape, more like lines that cut through different streets in the city. For my project pertaining to Station North I'm looking into hearing the different voices of people who live in that area, whether they've been living there for years or maybe a couple of months. Along with that I'm thinking into taking pictures and capturing their essence of the place as to grab a emotional outlook into Station North. In that way I can grab their voices along with a more physical representation.