To Dwell Is to Garden

One of the more welcome changes in Boston's urban landscape has been the recent transformation of abandoned lots in to flourishing community gardens. In To Dwell Is to Garden, a distinguished scholar and a veteran photographer join forces to provide a history and a celebration of these urban oases and of the people who have made them possible. Sam Bass Warner, Jr., traces the origins of Boston's urban community gardens back to the English allotment gardens created to keep country folk from starving during the first great wave of urbanization. Warner suggests that today's urban community gardens owe their existence not to philanthropy or patriotism but to an activist impulse stemming from the civil rights movement, which emphasized self-help, local autonomy, and personal dignity to combat the problems of urban decay. The spirit of today's urban community gardens is captured in Hansi Durlach's compelling photographs of those individuals, young and old, who have worked together to clear the rubble and till the soil. From China and Chile, from Italy and Arkansas, from the suburbs and from next door, their comments, recorded by Durlach, linger in the mind and in the heart. Originally pubished by Northeastern University Press in 1987. With a new foreword by Jill Eshelman

Jane Jacob\u27s Moral Explorations

This essay reviews Jane Jacobs’s three major books: The Death and Life of Great American Cities,Cities and the Wealth of Nations, and The Nature of Economies. It traces her development of a hierarchy of places from neighborhoods to city regions to nations and the earth. All her places are defined by their predominant social activities, not by geographical boundaries. The themes of diversity, experimentation, adaptability, and democracy inform all her writings and form the basis of her moral analysis. Jacobs’s methods are contrasted to those of Lewis Mumford and the similarities of their moral concerns noted. Her latest book, a review of the basic hypotheses of ecology, successfully presents the idea that through self-correction, differentiation, and diversification, humans and their fellow organisms can best find sustainability

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment: Exploring Fundamental Symmetries of the Universe

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early Universe, the dynamics of the supernova bursts that produced the heavy elements necessary for life and whether protons eventually decay --- these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our Universe, its current state and its eventual fate. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) represents an extensively developed plan for a world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions. LBNE is conceived around three central components: (1) a new, high-intensity neutrino source generated from a megawatt-class proton accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, (2) a near neutrino detector just downstream of the source, and (3) a massive liquid argon time-projection chamber deployed as a far detector deep underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. This facility, located at the site of the former Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota, is approximately 1,300 km from the neutrino source at Fermilab -- a distance (baseline) that delivers optimal sensitivity to neutrino charge-parity symmetry violation and mass ordering effects. This ambitious yet cost-effective design incorporates scalability and flexibility and can accommodate a variety of upgrades and contributions. With its exceptional combination of experimental configuration, technical capabilities, and potential for transformative discoveries, LBNE promises to be a vital facility for the field of particle physics worldwide, providing physicists from around the globe with opportunities to collaborate in a twenty to thirty year program of exciting science. In this document we provide a comprehensive overview of LBNE's scientific objectives, its place in the landscape of neutrino physics worldwide, the technologies it will incorporate and the capabilities it will possess.Comment: Major update of previous version. This is the reference document for LBNE science program and current status. Chapters 1, 3, and 9 provide a comprehensive overview of LBNE's scientific objectives, its place in the landscape of neutrino physics worldwide, the technologies it will incorporate and the capabilities it will possess. 288 pages, 116 figure

The mirage of the metropolis: city imaging in the age of digital chorography

Even as cities evolved geographically, the basis of city imaging (as codified by Kevin Lynch) remained relatively stable for over half a century. More recently, digitally driven transformations in urban life challenge the continued relevance of established city-imaging paradigms. Although digital navigation and mapping devices are readily at hand to neutralize any disorienting predicaments, the ability to image cognitively the wider urban environment remains integral to the construction of a meaningful sense of place. Towards the objective of reconciling city imaging with the place-making challenges of the contemporary metropolis, this paper explores the potential for innovating modes of urban mapping and representation. Specifically, the digital re-envisioning of the historical mapping practice of ‘chorography’ is positioned within Fredric Jameson’s challenge for a new aesthetic of cognitive mapping that enables the situational representation of the individual within the vaster totality. In doing so, the paper contributes to the wider adaptation of urban discourse to digitally propelled shifts in urban life

Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900

page, railroad trackage, 1870-190