Please write two 5-paragraphed essays on either of these 3 topics:
1. Based on these passages, please compare Whitmans and Baudelaires understanding of and relation to the urban crowd. What do these passages convey about the experience of urban life? What kind of people and crowd is each writing about? Are their understandings fundamentally similar or substantially different?
Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refreshd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refreshd
Charles Baudelaire
The spectator is a prince w ho everywhere rejoices in his incognito.
2. To what extent were city planners in New York inspired by planners in Paris? Should we think of New Yorks 19th century planning as imitative of or a reaction against the failures of Haussmannization? Consider at least three of the following: the Washington Square Arch, Columbias or NYUs campuses, Grand Army Plaza, Central Park, and the development of the grid system.
3. How did working people and the poor respond to efforts by elites to reshape urban space in Paris and New York? Be sure to address three of the following: barricades, Hogites, Chinatown, Paris Commune, Five Points, and Parisian boulevards. Did efforts to shape urban space from the bottom up or challenge elite plans meaningfully shape urban space in 19th century Paris and New York? In what ways?
There is no need for any outside sources, just facts and pure knowledge.