February 9, 2013

Journal Entry #1

Upon completing my first Economics class at MIT last spring, I was very disappointed, to say the least. I had hoped to get out of it a deeper yet practical understanding of incentives, business principles, and the underlying forces of economy on a micro scale; instead, I extracted equations from word problems and solved for countless first derivatives.

I switched my HASS Concentration from Economics to Urban Studies, not really knowing anything about Urban Studies and Planning. The department website was pretty, the three courses requirement was minimal, and the subject selection seemed interesting.

Oh and I’ve lived in cities my entire life, so I guess I should at least attempt to understand them a little better.

I was born and raised in Guangzhou, the third largest city in China, as well as a city with over 2000 years of history. The sharp contrast between the extreme modernism in one district and the traditional lifestyle in another fascinated me. On the other hand, I don’t think I was ever able to really comprehend the conflicting sceneries within a mere several blocks of each other. More than just the buildings, Guangzhou as a city in some ways provides a snapshot of recent Chinese history – the unparalleled economic development, the new wealth, the shift in culture.

Then there is Boston, the oldest city in America. Its history traces further than the country itself. The Freedom Trail maps a brief and selective piece of pre Revolutionary War colonial America and the glorious days when Boston was considered the obnoxious city by Great Britain.

This past January, I briefly lived in San Francisco, CA, and absolutely loved the city. I still have yet to figure out what it was about SF that I loved so much, other than the beautiful 65 degree sunny winter weather in contrast to Boston’s blizzards (Hey there, Nemo).

I loved taking photographs of city landscapes, pedestrians, street performers, festivals and events. I’m hoping after taking Once and Future City, I would be able to understand cities beyond its “characteristics” as summarized by various tour companies and websites, to gain the ability to read any city I go to, and to be a better photographer the next time I travel.

February 16, 2013

Journal Entry #2

This week, we started thinking about our potential site and looking at some sample sites in different cities and speculating the different factors that shaped and cities and make them into what they are today.

I really enjoyed the lectures this past week. The examples in class were fascinating and introduced me to a new way of seeing a city. I’m used to experiencing a city as a tourist and a resident. Since I don’t have a car, I walk the city, take public transportation (ofte times underground) when I need to get from point A to point B. I view the city from the height of exactly 5 feet 4 inches off the ground, looking up at the street sighs and banners, looking down at the pedestrian walkway, and looking around at the people, stores, and signages around me.

What I have not done, is to see a city, really stare at the city, from an aerial view. I have lived in the Boston area for the past 5 years, and since MIT, I’ve lived less than 20 minutes away from downtown. Yet, Boston looked so incredibly strange from above.

I’ve never seen the way the Charles River wraps around the city, how it gets wider and thinner at different turns, and the major role it plays in the transportation landscape of Boston. I’ve never seen the bridges and how they extend and turn into major roads in the city and then major business areas.

I loved it when we zoomed into the city, at each level one can see different patterns in the city, from the holistic view of land vs water, to the different levels of vegetation, to the major streets and intersection, to each individual building and their usage in detail. It really gives you perspective of what the city is like and how it might have evolved.

For my site, I’m debating between the Leather District, the Financial District, Back Bay, and maybe somewhere in Cambridge just because that’s closer. I guess I have to make up my mind soon.

February 23, 2013

Journal Entry #3

It is decided! The Financial District it is.

Over the summer of 2012 (feels like so long ago), I worked as an Android Programmer intern at a Boston startup called Quickable, which is a mobile marketplace and platform management system for online selling. The company was located at 192 South Street in the Leather District. Since I lived in the Back Bay, I often took the MBTA to South Station, then walk around 5 minutes to work.

Being from a metropolitan in China, Boston has always felt a bit too small and too residential of a city. You can probably imagine how excited I was when I saw the Financial District for the first time, then. The skyscrapers might seem cold, calculative, and unnatural to many people; but they reminded me of home.

As I walked around the Financial District, I was amazed by how everything seems to revolve around the finance and insurance industry. All the stores and restaurants seemed to be tailored for the exact demographic in the industry - namely, middle-aged, well-dressed, upper-middle-class, predominantly-white, predominantly male.

The first paper (as you probably know) is about natural processes. Having taken a quick walk around my site, I have to admit, this is going to be challenging. The phrase that first came to mind when I was trying to describe my site is none other than “concrete jungle.” The Financial District barely has anything natural left in it, with all the buildings and roads and parking garages in the basements of buildings.

I’m thinking about approaching it from the angle of natural landscape disappearing and being replaced by commercialization, unless the little segment of the Greenway has good stories to tell.

March 2, 2013

Journal Entry #4

To be honest, I didn't think I could actually write 8 page (before adding images) on the natural processes in Financial District, mostly because there are so few natural things on the site.

I absolutely loved the field trip on Monday! First of all, it was just so nice to be able to get off campus in the middle of the day and walk around Cambridge. It's funny how you think you've been in this area for so long that you must know it by heart, but in reality, you really don't know much beyond the obvious. I've never noticed trees bending the steel fens and forcing its way into the yard, nor have I really noticed how salt indicates traces of water. The class site is no more than 20 minute walking distance from the MIT campus, yet I never expected to see it in the same way we did on Monday.

When I went to visit my own site to observe its natural processes, I was able to see things that would have been unnoticeable before. The way the street plants grow and stand against the wind. The lack of sun amongst the skyscrapers. The way snow melts on the ground. The way pedestrian sidewalks break. Though I wasn't really making any conclusions on my trip, I begin the question why things are the way they are and how it all came to be.

I am truly looking forward to the next assignment, when I can explore the human history behind my site. I am ready to be surprised.

March 9, 2013

Journal Entry #5

The case study of Philadelphia was amazing.

I loved that lecture and wish there were more lectures like this, where we get to see examples of the analytical skills we’ve learned in class so far being applied to the real world. It was also just fascinating for me to see how different places in Philly developed and how the current neighborhoods evolved from their historical selves.

One of the most shocking things to me is the increased racial gap and income over time. It seems to natural now to think of a city as being divided by rich neighborhoods vs poor ones, and often times, white neighborhoods vs black vs asian.

Yet it is common to believe that our society is moving towards egalitarianism. I’ve always thought that we’ve been eliminating social inequalities over time, that the poor and the ethnic minorities are being exposed to opportunities previously available exclusively to the upper class. How can that be true, then, given that de facto segregation has become more of a problem than before?

I eagerly texted my high school best friend Matthew after class to tell him that we studied Philly in my urban studies class. He goes to University of Pennsylvania and I’ve always meant to take a trip there and visit him and my other friends from high school.

As I’m finalizing my spring break plans, Pennsylvania is a very tempting option. Not only would I get to visit all my friends, I could also just see the city we’ve studied in class, and maybe even visit a couple of the sites in the slides!

Prof Spirn, I know you said that image copyright is an issue, but is it possible to make the slides available on Stellar? I believe you can set them to “Restricted Access” which would display a message telling students in the class that they cannot share it?

March 16, 2013

Journal Entry #6

This week has been insanely busy for me, with a seemingly never ending series of problem sets, class projects, personal side projects, etc.

I really like the class workshops. As a Course 6 at MIT, I’m so used to giant lecture halls of ~200 people, where the professor lectures at you; whether you follow the concepts at all is a whole different stories. Class participation is encouraged, but only if the professor asks a question or if you have a pressing question that is of relevance to the majority of the class.

Workshops allow classes to be centered on the students. My group and I studied in detail each of the maps from different time periods in the attempt to answer the questions on the sheet provided. Amazingly, we were able to uncover details that were previously unknown to us. We saw the trend from undeveloped to residential to industrial. We saw the growth of the Polaroid factory and how it took over entire blocks of land. Who would have known that there were so many stories to be told, a mere 20 minute walk from where I have lived for the past 2 years?

Where did you find all the maps? I didn’t even know such detailed maps existed from so long ago, before the existence of Google Maps! I can’t imagine how much effort it must take the insurance and mapping companies to produce them, sifting through government records of every building in every block and possibly making field visits.

Unbelieveable. I am so spoiled by technology.

March 23, 2013

Journal Entry #7

This is the last week before Spring Break. My friends and I have finally decided where we are going to go and bought our tickets to Montreal, PQ. Pretty excited!

With Prof. Spirn gone, we’ve been mostly just going to the architectural studio and researching maps on our laptops. I have to say, I miss the lectures a bit. Looking for ancient and detailed maps online is a pretty frustrating task. Some of them are oriented strangely (what happened to the convention of north being on top of the map?), others are blurry and poorly digitized, or cost $150 to download and print.

Fortunately, with help from Michael and Phillip, I was able to find Sanborn maps from different time periods of my site. It’s rather annoying how they divided the map into different wards. As a computer science major, this process is simply so tedious that I just wish I could rewrite the whole UMI website hosting the sanborn maps to make it easier to navigate and discover.

We’ve also been looking at the maps and answering questions on them the same way we worked on our class sites. Though it’s a bit more different because how the maps are broken into wards and the fact that I can only read them on the computer, I can still clearly see some big trends in my area, including how it developed into an industrial region, and then getting taken over by banks and insurance companies.

The maps before and after 1872 were completely different; and I realized this was because of the Great Fire that very year. It’s crazy to imagine that one fire could wipe out the entire downtown area in Boston. Also, as a consequence of that fire, all the buildings that were built had the label “A.F.A.” on it.

Looking up the legend, I found that that A.F.A. stands for automatic fire alarm. Ha. I wonder why.

March 30, 2013

Journal Entry #8

I love montreal.

Wow, what an amazing city. My friends and I spent 4 days there this Spring Break (feels shorter than it actually is), and it was such an incredible experience.

The city is fairly historic. We wandered during the day all over the city, from the more touristic regions like Old Montreal, to the local restaurants and bars where McGill students hang out and spend their evenings. We got to meet a lot of amazing people, most of them McGill students (we were staying with a friend who is a Junior there).

It also amazed me how nice everyone is in Montreal. I guess what they say about Canadians is true after all! People are so eager to help, when we (read: stupid American tourists) got completely lost and confused because everything is in French. I had imagined Canada to be much more similar to the United States, but the fact that Quebec’s official language is French definitely made our trip much more of an adventure. Not knowing the names of the bus stops made it a very risky thing every time we took public transit.

We also got to climb up to Mount Royal, the mountain Montreal is named after. It was a good 15 minute hike and we got there around sunset. The view of the city as it started to light up after dark was stunning from up top. Even though we were all freezing (who would have known that Canada is colder than Boston?), we had so much fun and stayed there till it was completely dark.

On our last day, we went to the Casino in the city, second largest in North America. I loved the extreme modern architecture, giving it a futuristic spirit. The inside of a casino was essentially a maze of slot machine and poker tables. We were completely disoriented. Everything there, from the flashy lights to the loud and exciting music, encourages you to gamble and take risks.

I lost $50 on the blackjack table (I thought MIT students were supposed to be good at that?) and won $30 at the 25-cent slot machine my friend John and I decided to stick to after the tragedy at the blackjack table. So I guess we didn’t do that bad after all.

I’m going to miss that city.

April 6, 2013

Journal Entry #9

That was a pretty long paper I just wrote on the my site’s transformation through history. I had, brilliantly, forgotten to take notes when we analyzed the maps a while ago (read: before spring break) and I had to reanalyze all the maps and find the trends again. That was fun.

I decided to approach the essay from the angle of transportation, and explored how the train station, the automobile revolution, and the greenway had each shaped the Financial District in their own ways. It was a really fun essay to write because the connection between transportation and economy was the exact reason I decided to choose the Financial District as my site for this class. I hope you enjoy reading my essay as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Unfortunately, though, this week was also one of my hell weeks, and I didn’t get to really work on the essay until later on in the week. I submitted it a couple of minutes before the deadline. As a result, I barely got to proofread it. As soon as I emailed the essay, I realized that I had made the mistake of forgetting to fix my citations and sources. Note to self: next time I’m writing an essay, don’t leave something till the end.

I had been doing a lot of writing this week, mostly outside of classes. I’m currently working on an outfit recommendation engine startup and we are applying to a lot of accelerators (basically, they give you a sum of money and a couple of months of mentorship in exchange for equity). Most of these accelerators require long response to questions like “What’s your market? What problem are you solving? What’s your solution? What makes you unique?” etc etc. And that can get pretty exhausting.

All in all, I’m glad the week is over.

April 13, 2013

Journal Entry #10

This week has been pretty relaxing for me. WIth the long weekend so close in sight, it was also quite a struggle to focus on school work, to be honest.

The class site visit was one of the coolest things. I think I just love field trips. In fact, that might be one of the things I miss most about high school, you know, other than all my high school friends and the fact that school was so easy back then.

Anyway, I thought the field trip was awesome, especially looking at how the area has developed into an half industrial half residential region, the rise and fall of the Polaroid corporation, and the massive amount of construction that is currently taking place in the region.

One thing that I hadn’t expected to see was how influential MIT really is. I mean, sure, MIT is a world-renowned university and all of that. But I guess I’ve just always thought that the MIT bubble ends at the boundary of the main campus. I hadn’t anticipated to see how the presence of MIT has influenced its immediate surroundings, from the tech industry to the up-and-coming bio tech industry.

Standing at street corners and trying to identify the oldest existing structure was fun. So was speculating what a building’s function was in a past life. Even when I thought there were no historical traces left, there were always the streets. I’m so used to the notion that everything in Cambridge branches from Mass Ave, that it was mind blowing to see that Main Street was, in fact, the main street once upon a time. That explains the namesake, doesn’t it?

I almost wish my site was as rich as Cambridge. Or maybe it’s because I was not as observant the last time I visited my site. But it seemed like there were mostly just skyscrapers one next to another, whereas Cambridge is much more fun and interesting and multi-layered.

April 20, 2013

Journal Entry #11

What an insane week. From the Boston Marathon bombing, to the shooting and killing of one of the most beloved MIT police officers, to the city-wide lockdown and the eventual capture of the very last suspect, this week seemed like it had come right out of a poorly made action/drama film. I didn’t know it was possible to get so many emails from MIT Alert in such a short span of time.

I visited my site on Wednesday, in between the Marathon and the Lockdown. Armed soldiers stood at every MBTA entrance and at all the popular downtown areas. I didn’t realize how “tense” the city of Boston has become until actually leaving the MIT bubble and seeing soldiers on active duty everywhere in the city.

I digress.

The site visit was probably my favorite thus far. I wandered around the site, holding the stack of maps in one hand and my camera in another. Pretty quickly, I’ve realized that half of my maps are beginning to seem irrelevant, namely, the half that was dated before late 1800s. It took me a good 5 minutes to reach the “Eureka!” moment of “Oh, right. The Great Boston Fire of 1872. Of course.” The second half of my trip became a lot more efficient after this realization, with much fewer maps, I was able to actually better observe the city and the traces that were left behind.

After taking photos of pretty much everything that look old and everything that are textile or industry related, I was satisfied with the photo evidence I’ve gathered (after all, I can always supplement what I have with Google Street View). I then walked 5 minutes north of my site to Chinatown, one of my favorite places in all of Boston.

Discovery of the week: the best boba tea place in Chinatown isn’t any of the dedicated cafes, but Xinh Xinh Pho Restaurant. I got the Durian Boba and the signature beef pho. Best. Lunch. Ever.

I was writing the assignment 4 essay on Thursday night, when campus entered a state of emergency with the shooting near Stata. Needless to say, it was quite a distraction and I ended up staying up till 5AM with others in my living group, refreshing news sites and watching live reports on TV.

I hope to reschedule my writing adivsor meeting soon so I can get feedback on my essay from Louise and Michael.

April 27, 2013

Journal Entry #12

I’ve been in San Francisco/Mountain View this weekend for a 10-minute long interview with Y Combinator, one of the most prestigious startup accelerators in the world. We unfortunately did not get accepted into the program, which essentially means I won’t be dropping out of MIT to work on my startup.

I had lived in San Francisco this past IAP, and frankly, given that I am a Computer Science major interested in entrepreneurship, I will most likely spend a significant proportion of my life in the city or at least in the Bay Area.

The weather this weekend was disappointing to say the least. San Francisco in January was absolutely fabulous and so much better than Boston. SF in May? Not so much. It was windy and foggy and we had to buy cheap sweaters just to keep ourselves warm.

Haven taken 11.016 though, I noticed a lot more things now that I was completely oblivious to back in January. For example, I saw streets with names like “Water Street” and “Ocean View Avenue” and I instantly thought of their historical proximity to the ocean, even though they are are nowadays several hundred feet away from the harbor.

The contrast between SF and Boston also became more apparent. Not to mention the difference in culture, the natural environments of the two cities are almost polar opposites of each other. Boston, for the most part, is very flat, especially after the landfill projects which took out the few mountains that used to be in the city. San Francisco, on the other hand, has almost no flat land (with the exception of Market Street and its immediate surroundings - which I supposed contributed to Market St’s prominence). Some roads easily take you up a 30 degree climb; let me tell you, walking up a 30 degree angle is nothing less than an intense workout.

Nonetheless, SF is and will be one of my favorite cities in the world and I’m so excited to move there after college.

May 4, 2013

Journal Entry #13

This week has been relatively relaxing. I was able to refocus on all the school work that I had neglected last week in favor of preparing for that potentially life changing YC interview. It’s been a lot of coding day and night in order to make this website: http://startmartapp.herokuapp.com/.

The presentations in class so far have been really good and I hope I can match them. I have yet to start writing my presentation yet, mostly because I’ve been preoccupied with figuring out how to rewrite my essay 2 (site through history) and how to connect all these essays to deliver a coherent presentation about my site.

Financial District tells many stories; it is difficult to pick out exactly what stories are most fascinating and thus should be told. My three essays seemingly describe very different aspects of the Financial District. The first is about the lack of natural processes, the second about the role of transportation in the economic development, and the third about the changing industries and the Financial District’s adaptability.

Other than chaining events chronologically, I’m having a hard time connecting these essays. Five minutes aren’t a lot of time at all. I feel like I could go on and talk about my site for hours.

During my visits in the Financial District, I’ve always been heavily influenced by simply the vibe that it gives. That’s not quite something I’ve discussed in my papers, but it’s nonetheless significant. The area has an atmosphere of professionalism and metropolitan life style to the point of cold elitism. Every neighborhood has its own personality, and the Financial District certainly has the personality of a prep school graduate. How can I weave that into my presentation, if that’s even possible?