Assignments

Assignments Overview

Journals

Each student is required to keep a journal throughout the semester, submitted in weekly installments. The journal is a place to record observations of individual sites and reflections on readings, lectures, and class discussions. It also serves as a source of ideas and written material for the more formal assignments. Although the writing may be more informal than a polished paper, it should be clear and coherent, without errors of grammar or spelling. Length may vary, but each entry should be at least 250 words.

Each journal must address the required reading and apply it to understanding and explaining phenomena observed on your own site: Aspects of the site’s urban form that inspired you to select it; natural processes taking place there; changes over time; traces and trends.

From time to time during the semester, we will discuss the role of journals and writing as a form of inquiry.

Start the journal right away. The first journal is due by class 2.

Note: Journals represent 20% of your final grade.

Project Assignment: Investigating a Site in the Past or Present Neighborhoods of MIT

The city itself provides a text richer than any other you will read this semester. Using old maps, prints, and photographs, but primarily your own eyes and mind, you will have the opportunity to apply the knowledge gained in the course to “reading” a site of your choosing. This semester-long project will be due in four parts; the assignments vary in length from two to eight pages, a total of approximately twenty-six pages. One of the assignments must be revised and resubmitted.

The assignments should be posted to your website. For a more detailed description of each assignment, click on the titles below.

Assignment 1: Select A Site

Describe your site and reflect on why it interests you. What questions does the place raise for which you hope to find answers this semester? The text should be about 600 words (approximately two typed pages), accompanied by a map that identifies the boundaries of the site.

Assignment 2: Your Site and Natural Processes

Find evidence on your site of its environmental history and ongoing natural processes. The objective of this assignment is to discover how natural processes shape cities over time. The text should be equivalent to about 2400 words (approximately eight typed pages double-spaced), accompanied by illustrations.

Assignment 3: Your Site Through Time

Trace changes over time on your site by comparing its character at several points in time, using different types of sources. What changes do you find? How would you characterize them? Are the changes gradual or do they seem to happen suddenly? Do changes within a time period seem related? How about from one time to another? Can you find patterns in the changes? What might explain the changes you found? Were they merely an outcome of actions by individuals or do they reflect broader forces (social, cultural, political, economic, or natural processes and conditions at local, regional, national, or global scales; policies; events; technological changes)? The text should be equivalent to about 2400 words (approximately eight typed pages), accompanied by illustrations.

Assignment 4: Artifacts, Layers, Traces, and Trends

Walking around your site, what clues can you find to past, current, and potential future uses and residents? What different kinds of traces can you find and what period and population of the site’s history do they belong to? What do they reveal about the past and the present? The objective of this assignment is to give an appreciation for how past owners, functions, events, and ways of life leave traces and to give experience in “reading” the site by learning to recognize these traces and work out the puzzles of their significance. The text should be equivalent to about 2400 words (approximately eight typed pages), accompanied by illustrations.

Assignment Revision (PDF)

Choose an essay to revise. You will probably want to revise an essay that you can see needs obvious improvement. The assignment revision is a requirement of CI-H courses.

Resources

Grading Criteria (PDF)

Citation Guide (PDF)

Project Assignment 1: Select A Site

In 2016, MIT will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of its move from Boston’s Back Bay to the current location in Cambridge. To honor that occasion, this year the class will focus on MIT’s former and current neighborhoods, so you should select a site within the designated boundaries in Cambridge or the Back Bay. The site should be between four and eight blocks. Ideally, it should include more than one type of land use. And it should be a place that intrigues you. Reflect on why it interests you, why you are drawn to it. What questions does the place raise, for which you hope to find answers this semester?

Generally, the more diversity your site has, the more interesting its development over time is likely to be. This is not a hard and fast rule. If you pick a site in downtown Boston, for example, the uses may be all commercial, but the development over time will still be very interesting.

A land use means a type of use, for example residential (single family homes, apartments), commercial (stores, offices, movie theaters), industrial, institutional (schools, hospitals, churches, post office), recreation (park, playground, golf course). Two different land uses could mean two different kinds of the same use (single family homes and apartments) or it could mean two different kinds of use altogether (residential and commercial).

Boundary Maps for reference:

MIT Neighborhood, 1866–1916 (PDF - 4.5MB)

MIT Neighborhood, 1916-present (PDF - 4MB)

Where do you start?

The first step in this assignment is very distinct: Find a place that intrigues you and raises questions that interest you. In effect, you are choosing your primary text for your written and graphic work, and it should sustain analysis over the course of the semester. This is a central element of the assignment because of what it asks you to do once you get to the site.

This year, you must choose a site that is either in the neighborhood of MIT’s original location in Boston’s Back Bay or in the neighborhood of MIT’s current location. Your site must be within the boundaries designated on the enclosed maps.

What is this assignment asking for?

This assignment is asking you to “close read” your site. Close reading is what it sounds like: Reading a text closely. It’s a frequent form of writing in the arts and humanities. If you’ve ever analyzed a poem, a piece of music, or a historical document, you’ve done this before. Close readings pay attention to details and specifics in the text in order to explain why it is constructed the way it is, or what it might “mean.” The need for careful specificity is the reason why this paper should be about 2–2.5 pages in length (600 words).

Why must the site be 4–8 blocks in size?

A site that contains more than four square blocks (i.e. two blocks on a side) and at most eight blocks should provide enough variety and scope for your explorations in close reading without overwhelming you with detail. If the site is too small, you may not find enough to write about. If the site is larger than eight blocks, there may be far too much to see and absorb in the attention to detail entailed in close reading.

Should this paper have a thesis? If so, what would a good thesis look like?

One of the key elements of close reading is selection. You have good reasons for choosing your particular site, so use those reasons to animate this paper. Use these reasons to justify your choice. The site you choose and where you draw its boundaries is your topic, the text you will analyze and explain. A good choice will generate a set of interesting questions, which will provide a purpose and framework for your observations.

Read Grady Clay’s “How to Read a City”. Consider his writing as a possible “how to” or guide to asking the right kinds of questions about your site. Keep in mind that you’ll have ideas about how to look from reading Clay before and as you choose your site, and again, once you have chosen it.

What does it mean to be intrigued by a site and to ask questions of the site?

While you might be accustomed to the idea of reading a set of data, or a literary text, or a historical document, in this assignment you are reading a physical place. Whether numbers, music, or architecture, texts can all present puzzles: They are not as they seem after closer scrutiny, details on consideration are anomalous, what seems at first singular or monolithic is actually made of layers or is heterogeneous. These kinds of elements of any text surface after multiple readings. Consider visiting your site several times, at different times of day. As you’ve been doing in class, you will want to ask yourself about:

The visible land uses in the site
The sense of pattern in the place, as you experience it
The sense of pattern in the place from aerial views (Google or other photographs)
Details which are common on the site, or are anomalies

How do I collect evidence for this assignment?

It might help to think of yourself as making field notes and consider the role of the camera and the notebook to make initial observations the way you would annotate a printed text.

In class, we’ve already seen the benefit of photographs. Consider photographing the elements of the site that intrigue you, so that you have detailed material to write from.
Walk your site, and find a place to sit and watch what happens there. What you don’t see is as important as what you do see. Take notes—make journal entries—on both.
Consider different ways of taking notes: It can sometimes be helpful to write lists, sets of questions and answers or theories, or to write longer, narrative descriptions.
Make note of the vantage points from where you see what you see so you can use that information later to orient the reader (“walking west” “standing in front of Trinity Church”)

How do I organize my observations?

Can you organize your observations around certain questions about the site? Do some observations raise questions and others answer them?
What patterns, details, surprises do you find? What is there? What isn’t there?
Re-read Grady Clay, this time looking for the way his ideas apply to your site. Consider if a particular concept or way of reading helps you make sense of the details you’ve accumulated

Where does all of this go in my paper?

For this paper, you will want to present the following information:

Description of and justification for your site: Where is your site? What are its boundaries, and why did you choose those boundaries? What elements of the site make it a compelling site to study? The answer to these questions will form the thesis of your paper, so you’ll want to set it up early.
What are the land uses of your site and why are they significant? Be specific here, noting street intersections, detailed descriptions of buildings and land use.
Observe and describe the key compelling aspects of the site: In this part of the paper you will need to filter, select, or curate the qualities and details that you’ve observed so far in order to explain why your site is significant and worth studying. You will need to group or organize what you’ve observed and focus your writing on what excites your curiosity about the site. What is significant about these details? Be specific here, in terms of anchoring your observations to specific streets, buildings, patterns, or contrasts.
Use terms and insights from Grady Clay to help you frame what is revealing and significant about your site.

Final Preparation

600 words in length
Double-spaced in 12-point font
Include a map of the location of your site with the boundaries marked. Remember to cite fully the source of the map.
Remember to cite the required reading in your paper.
Post your text and map on your Once and Future City website.

Project Assignment 2: Your Site and Natural Processes

View video page

This is the second part of a four-part, semester-long project. The first part consisted of finding a site. Now the task is to find evidence on your site of its environmental history and ongoing natural processes. The objective, through the examination of your site and its context, is to explore how natural processes shape cities.

The field trip, class discussion, online videos, and required readings will be helpful in identifying and thinking about how natural processes have shaped and continue to shape your site; by now, you should have read Close-Up: How to Read the American City and should finish reading The Granite Garden.

Start your investigation by locating your site on early maps of Boston, such as those shown in lectures (several of these are depicted in John Reps, The Making of Urban America; many can be found in other books, such as Alex Krieger, Mapping Boston). Do these maps depict any natural features on your site itself? These may include rivers or streams, ponds, hills and valleys. If so, did these features (or the absence of them) influence the settlement of your site? Examine your site’s location in relation to the natural features of Boston as a whole. Do you think this context influenced the development of your site?

Take a walk through your site looking for signs of its pre-urban landscape: Topography, for example, or water features. Look also for signs of ongoing natural processes of air, earth, water, and life (for example, light and wind; water flow and erosion; plant growth and animal movements). How do these relate to some of the larger environmental issues discussed in lectures and The Granite Garden? Make a map of your site with field notes of your observations.

Describe what you have found. The paper should be about 2400 words (approximately eight pages, typed double-spaced), accompanied by illustrations. Look for patterns. Include a copy of the map you used to discuss the environmental context of your site (don’t forget to indicate the boundaries of your site and to cite the source of the map!).

Successful papers are well organized, cite specific examples to make each point, put examples in context, and are illustrated. In organizing your paper, focus on the features you found and the broader issues they raise. Go beyond mere description. Choose your examples carefully and discuss their significance.

The paper is due on class 9.

What is this assignment asking for?

This second assignment is asking you to “close read” your site, both on maps and in the place itself. Keep in mind that this paper requires two sorts of observational research, so give yourself time to observe, both by reading maps and at the site itself.

Here are the specifics:

Find evidence on your site of its environmental history and ongoing natural processes by closely observing the site itself and by examining the site on maps, such as those in Krieger, Mapping Boston. Look for maps dating back as early as possible to fully understand the site’s development over time as they relate to the natural environment.
You will need to do both map research and site observations to write this paper.
Use the reading presented in Sprin, The Granite Garden, as well as in-class discussions and the field trip to understand the concepts and approaches for reading natural processes and the marks they have left on your site. Your essay should explain how these concepts help to explain (and / or perhaps confound or complicate) your observations and mapped data.
You should make a map of your site with field notes of your observations; use symbols to illustrate significant features. Use the map as an aid in writing; you may also integrate the map into your paper.
Your paper should include a copy of the historical map(s) you used to discuss the environmental context of your site (make sure to keep track of the source of your map and cite that source fully and properly).

Preparation

It might help to think of the work you do before writing the paper as pre-writing, where observing, reading, and researching all lay your foundation.

Use your journal to make initial field observations and try out some of your ideas. Be prepared to puzzle about or be surprised by what you might find.

Thinking about the assembly of the paper in steps might be helpful; here’s a menu of options to try:

Begin by locating your site on historical maps, such as those in Krieger, Mapping Boston. How do the maps depict natural features on your site? These may include rivers or streams, ponds, hills and valleys. Did these features (or the absence of them) influence the settlement of your site? Examine your site’s location in relation to the natural features of Boston as a whole. How do you think this context influenced the development of your site?
Locate your site on the U.S. Geological Survey Topographic Map of 1954 (PDF - 18 MB). The topographic contours are shown as brown lines, where each line represents a 10-foot change in elevation. Note the topography of your site and its relationship to the topography of the surrounding area.
Visit your site several times and observe the natural processes there. Get oriented to the direction of the wind, light and shadow on your site. Look for patterns of air flow, water flow, and erosion; plant grown and animal movements. Contemplate the topography: What are the physical contours of the site? Is it on a hill or in a valley, sloping or relatively level? Look for patterns, and also look for absences as well as presences. How do these relate to some of the larger environmental issues discussed in class and in The Granite Garden? Record and describe what you have found. Use both field note descriptions and photography and / or diagrams. Compare your observations to map renderings of the site. Consider not only how natural processes have shaped your site directly, but also how human activities and urban design have responded to certain environmental features of the site.
Review your reading notes, class notes, and journal entries: What elements of these three sources of information (maps, fieldwork, and required reading) are applicable to your site and your questions of it? Look for concepts in the reading and lectures that help you decode or read your site. Explore these in your journal entries.

Starting to Write

Writing Guide for Assignment 2: Refining and Combining Observations (PDF)

You will need three kinds of material to write your paper:

Your insights and observations, captured in notes, photographs, and diagrams, from site visits and from the maps. Prioritize and organize them. Which seem most significant? Which are explained or complicated by the concepts discussed in class and in The Granite Garden?
Concepts drawn from the required reading, specifically the natural processes and phenomena presented in The Granite Garden and in class, which help to explain or raise further questions about your site and site maps.
Notes on how your observations and hypotheses relate to larger issues of urban design and planning, in Boston and elsewhere, as discussed in class and in the required reading.

Structuring Your Paper

Your paper should have a thesis. Your thesis will directly answer the central question of this assignment: How have natural processes shaped your site? What broader issues about how cities are shaped are raised by your findings? Your thesis should aim to explore the implications and significance of your findings.
Provide specific evidence, in the form of examples, to support your thesis.
Explain, support, and develop your thesis by applying concepts from The Granite Garden and from class. It’s important that the concepts and ideas you draw from the reading illuminate your site and are chosen with a purpose. Before you start to write, you will have decided what concepts help you read your site and why (perhaps a journal entry).
Organize your paper so that it explains your thesis and your significant findings in a logical and readable sequence of paragraphs. You could consider tracing from the present back in time or beginning with your earliest map and tracing the site’s features forward. Much depends on the particular qualities of your site.
Consider using chronology to help organize your paper. To do this you’ll need to read and analyze historic maps in light of the site’s current conditions. The historical conditions may help establish the foundational environmental characteristics of the site and may then give you a series of threads to trace through to your current site observations.
Consider organizing your paper around what has changed and what has stayed the same in your site, in terms of its natural environment (such as changes to topography or hydrology), or what environmental change has triggered the most human / developmental change to your site.
Consider using subheadings to help organize your draft, and potentially keep them for the paper and website presentation of your work. Subheadings help you when you are writing to be clear about what you are describing and arguing; in the final work it helps the reader follow your line of interpretation.

Project Assignment 3: Your Site Over Time

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Framing Your Paper (PDF - 1.1MB)

This is the third part of a four-part, semester-long project. The first part consisted of finding a site; the second, to find evidence of its environmental history and ongoing natural processes. Now the task is to trace changes on your site over time by comparing its character at several points in time, using maps. You may find different kinds of changes: Land use, density of settlement, additions to buildings, ownership, transportation. The types of sources you will find helpful are historical maps, especially nineteenth and twentieth-century atlases, and may also include plans, prints, and photographs. The paper is due on class 17.

Start your investigation by locating your site on maps in several atlases of different dates. Include at least four different time periods in addition to the present, including at least one from the nineteenth century. By comparing your site at different times, you are likely to find that changes between some dates are more significant than others. Record the changes you think are important or interesting. You may want to modify your site slightly by shifting it a block or so to include interesting material that you have found or to make the site a bit larger or smaller. The site you end up with should contain four to eight blocks.

What changes do you find? How would you characterize them? Are the changes gradual or do they seem to happen suddenly? Do changes within a time period seem related? How about from one time to another? Can you find patterns in the changes? What might explain the changes you found? Were they merely an outcome of actions by individuals or do they reflect broader forces (social, cultural, political, economic, or natural processes and conditions at local, regional, national, or global scales; policies; events; technological changes)? Review Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier for material to test, substantiate, or revise your hunches.

Describe what you have found, the causes you have identified, and your reasoning. The text should be equivalent to about 2400 words, accompanied by illustrations (don’t forget to cite the source of each illustration!). Focus on what seems most significant and interesting; look for patterns. Don’t try to cover everything. This is an assignment that could occupy you for an entire semester. The objective of the assignment is to give you a sense of how cities change over time, to prompt you to question why, and to search for answers.

Successful papers are well organized, cite specific examples to make each point, put examples in context, make reference to required texts, and are illustrated. In organizing your paper, focus on the patterns of change you found and the important issues they raise; consider using subheadings to highlight your key points. Choose your examples carefully. They should be specific and significant, illustrative of the patterns of change you found. Illustrations (copies of maps, prints, photographs) should be apt and clearly linked to your reasoning; quality is important, not quantity. Include a map identifying the boundaries of your site.

Start on this assignment right away and bring historical maps of your site to class workshops. The assignment requires finding your site on old maps before you can even begin to puzzle out the changes and their possible causes. Some maps are online, but you may want to augment those with other maps. Map collections often have their own hours and may not always be open when the rest of the library is. Leave yourself plenty of time.

It is important to include copies of the illustrations used to analyze the changes on your site. If you use the atlases on microfilm, copies are easily made. If you use bound atlases, which may not be reproduced on a copy machine, you may need to make drawn copies or photograph them.

Basic Requirements

Compare your site at four different time periods (including at least three, detailed atlases) plus one from the present, at least one of which must be from the nineteenth century. You may adjust the boundaries of your site, but keep the size to 4–8 blocks, 10 blocks at most. Delineate your site boundaries on all maps.
Describe and analyze specific changes on your site during the periods of the maps examined. Your paper must include a copy of the historical maps you used to track the changes on your site.
Refer to the required reading to test, substantiate, or revise your hypotheses about the changes you observed on your site since its initial settlement and how, why and when they occurred. Your essay should explain how the concepts presented in the reading help to explain (and / or perhaps confound or complicate) your observations of mapped data.
Cite all sources, including maps, fully and properly. Abide by principles of fair use for images.

What Is This Assignment Asking You to Do (and Not to Do)?

This assignment is asking you to use historical maps as a primary source of evidence for determining how, when, and why your site has changed over time. It requires “close reading” of those maps, using your own eyes and mind, in order to identify, analyze, and explain patterns of change that are observable on the maps. It further asks you to use the required reading, Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier, to help explain your findings.

Note: This assignment does not ask you to describe the history of your site using secondary sources (e.g. texts on the history of Boston or Cambridge). Do not conduct secondary research at the expense of close observation of the maps themselves.

Start by Finding the Maps!

Maps, atlases, and surveys have been produced throughout the histories of American cities. Produced for various purposes, the offer invaluable information about a place. Fire-insurance Atlases, such as those produced by Bromley, Sanborn, and Hopkins, catalog the buildings and businesses that existed at a particular time and often show where the city may expand.

You will need to do considerable map research to write this paper. Maps, particularly nineteenth- and twentieth-century fire insurance atlases will be the basis for your observations about how and why your site has changed over time. Look for maps dating back as early as possible to fully understand the site’s development over time. Refer to maps at a larger scale, such as those in Krieger, Mapping Boston, in order to put your site in context.

Assemble your maps as soon as possible. They are the primary source for all your observations, so you cannot truly begin this assignment without them. Use the Map Guide (PDF) to begin your map research and for references to further resources. Use your journal to make initial observations of the maps and to try out some of your ideas. Be prepared to puzzle about or be surprised by what you find.

Tips for Using Fire Insurance Maps to Discover How Your Site Changed Over Time

Focus on the detailed fire-insurance maps (Hopkins from the 1870s, Bromleys, and Sanborns from the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries). Let them be your visual guide to your site’s history.

Gather more fire-insurance maps than you might need (more than the required four plus the present) in order to get a comprehensive overview of how your site has changed over time, then focus on the ones that reveal the most about the character of changes on your site.

Most maps have a legend. Find the legend in order to identify the significance of colors, symbols, or abbreviations. Consult the Guide to Sanborn Abbreviations (PDF).

Start with the earliest detailed map that you can find (Hopkins or Bromley may be the earliest nineteenth-century maps). Identify patterns of streets, types of buildings and land uses, ownership, size of properties, and transportation.

Is there a predominant land use on your site (e.g. residential, commercial, industrial, institutional) or are the uses evenly mixed?
Color land uses on the map as a way to help you identify patterns and anomalies and to ask and answer questions of the map. Use standard colors for the various land uses:
- Single-family residential: Yellow
- Multi-family residential: Orange or brown
- Commercial: Red
- Institutional: Blue
- Industry: Purple
- Transportation and utilities: Grey
- Parks and recreation: Green
Are the different land uses unrelated or related, and if so, how?
If there are residences, are they occupied by a single owner or are they rental apartments? Do the names of owners suggest that they belong to a particular ethnic group?
Is there a pattern of ownership (many different owners, one or more owners of multiple properties; corporate or institutional ownership)?
Are the sizes of properties similar or quite different?
Browse the timelines on the class website and start reading Kenneth Jackson’s book, Crabgrass Frontier. This will give you ideas as you make observations on the maps.

After observing the earliest detailed map of your site that you can find, proceed to the next map, chronologically, and repeat the process, asking the same questions. Have there been changes? If so, what are they?

Compare maps of successive periods to identify changes and to determine which periods of the site’s development were most significant (during which period the initial settlement took place or when important changes happened). In comparing maps of different periods, use multiple approaches to discover patterns of change over time.

Trace changes in streets.
Look for changes in property boundaries and size of parcels to help decode how land use and social use changes from map to map.
Look for changing land use: Residential to commercial, industrial to commercial, or from one type of commercial use to another. Has the predominant land use on your site (residential, commercial, industrial, institutional) changed?
Look for how / when space is filled or emptied, when buildings appear, disappear, or are replaced.
Look at names as reflective of change: Look at labels, such as names of owners, of churches, cemeteries, and commercial or institutional buildings on your site.
Look for continuity: Few or no changes can also be significant. Why might part of the site stay the same over time? Does land use stay the same but demographics shift (look for names of churches, schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.)?

Another approach to exploring change is to use reverse chronology. Are there elements of your current site you are curious about and want to track back in time? For example: Start with a specific land use or feature of your site and ask, “How did that get that way?” This may be an anomaly or interesting feature that you drew attention to in the first assignment.

Finding Explanations for the Changes You Observed

Use the succession of maps to help create a chronology of changes and patterns of change. Identify types of change to help pose hypotheses about change over time.

What might explain the patterns of changes that you found? Were the changes the result of idiosyncratic decisions by individual property owners? Were the changes peculiar to your site or were they examples of local or national trends? Do they reflect broader forces, such as technological innovation in power, transportation, or communication? Do they reflect local, regional, or national policy and / or economic conditions? Do they reflect cultural changes, such as changes in fashion and ways of living?

Consult Crabgrass Frontier for ideas about how to explain the changes you found at particular times and how and why they were significant.

Formulate questions that remain unanswered. There will be an opportunity in class to try to find answers.

Starting to Write

You will need four kinds of material to write your paper:

The maps themselves. Annotate the maps to point to significant features. Use the maps as an aid in writing; you should also integrate the maps into your paper.
Your insights and observations, captured in notes and maps that you have annotated. Prioritize and organize the changes you have observed. Which seem most significant? Which are explained or complicated by the concepts discussed in class and in Crabgrass Frontier and events documented on the timelines?
Concepts drawn from the required reading, specifically the social, economic, political, and cultural history presented in Crabgrass Frontier and in class, which help to explain or raise further questions about your site and the maps that depict it at different points in time.
Notes on how your observations and hypotheses relate to larger issues of urban design, planning, and policy, in Boston and elsewhere, as discussed in class and in the required reading.
Review your reading notes, class notes, and journal entries: What elements of these three sources of information are applicable to your site and your questions of it? Look for concepts in the reading and lectures that help you decode or read your site. Explore these in your journal entries.

Structuring Your Paper

Your paper should have a thesis. Your thesis will directly answer the central question of this assignment: How have social, political, and economic processes shaped your site? What broader issues about how cities are shaped are raised by your findings? Your thesis should aim to explore the implications and significance of your findings.
Provide specific evidence, in the form of examples, to support your thesis.
Explain, support, and develop your thesis by applying concepts from Crabgrass Frontier and from class. It’s important that the concepts and ideas you draw from the reading illuminate your site and are chosen with a purpose. Before you start to write, you will have decided what concepts help you read your site and why (perhaps in a journal entry).
Organize your paper so that it explains your thesis and your significant findings in a logical and readable sequence of paragraphs. You could consider tracing from the present back in time or beginning with your earliest map and tracing the site’s features forward. Much depends on the particular qualities of your site.
Consider using chronology to help organize your paper. To do this you’ll need to understand and analyze historical periods, which will help establish the context for important changes on your site.
Consider organizing your paper around what has changed and what has stayed the same in your site, in terms of its build environment (such as changes to streets, property boundaries, buildings, and land use) and ownership (as depicted on maps), or which changes have had a catalytic effect (i.e. triggered much subsequent developmental change to your site).
Consider using subheadings to help organize your draft, and potentially keep them for the paper and website presentation of your work. Subheadings whelp you when you are writing to be clear about what you are describing and arguing; in the final work it helps the reader follow your line of interpretation.

Project Assignment 4: Artifacts, Layers, Traces, and Trends

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Guide to Architectural Styles (PDF - 3.0MB)

This is the fourth assignment in a four-part, semester-long project. The task of the third assignment was to trace changes on your site over time using old maps, plans, prints, and photographs. Now the objective is to find traces of these changes present in the current environment and to interpret their significance. Many of you were attracted to your site because of some anomalous features that puzzled you and made you wonder why they were there and what had caused them to be. This is an opportunity to explore some answers to such puzzles.

Take a walk through your site looking for clues to the past and to what the future may hold. You will find it helpful to refer to the old maps you analyzed for the third assignment (and old prints and photographs if you have them). Walk through the site several times, once for each period for which you have a map, and compare the site today with what it was like at the time depicted on the map. This will be easier than trying to compare three or four maps from different time periods all at once. Look also for traces of past populations. Make notes on what you see. What different kinds of traces can you find and what period of the site’s history do they belong to? Do they relate to one another in any way? Describe the traces you think are most important or interesting. What do they reveal about the past and the present? Why did they survive? Are they still fulfilling some original purpose? Do they reveal anything about the present and / or future? What additional clues can you find in the present that hint at potential trends for the future?

Describe what you have found. The paper should be about 2400 words, accompanied by illustrations (don’t forget to include links to the maps from the third assignment). Focus on what seems most significant or interesting to you. Look for patterns. Don’t try to mention every trace of the past you find or every clue to a trend. This paper brings together the sum of your knowledge and observations about your site, and it will draw on your historical, topographical, and environmental knowledge of it. The objective of this assignment is to give you an appreciation for how past owners, functions, events, and ways of life have left traces on your site and, based on this understanding, to give you the opportunity to speculate on how the site may develop in the future.

Illustrate some of the artifacts, layers, traces, and trends that you found. These illustrations may include old maps, photographs, and prints, but should also include some drawings or photographs of what you saw and found significant. Do not feel intimidated if you doubt your artistic skills. The object is to record what you see and highlight what is significant about it. The illustrations will be graded on quality of content; your grade will not be reduced for lack of artistic skill. Illustrations are another way of recording and thinking about your observations. Organize the illustrations and present them neatly. Be selective: Quality is more important than quantity. Do not use dozens of photographs, hoping a few will hit the mark.

Successful papers are well organized, cite specific examples to make each point, put examples in context, and are illustrated. In organizing your paper, focus on the artifacts, layers, traces, and trends that you found, the important issues they raise, and patterns they illustrate; consider using subheadings to highlight your key points. Choose your examples carefully. They should illustrate the issues and patterns you identified as important in your site. Illustrations should be apt and clearly linked to your reasoning. Include a map identifying the boundaries of your site. Do not forget to cite the source of each illustration.

Basic Requirements

Describe and analyze artifacts, traces, and layers (if present) from various time periods observed on your site and on historic maps. Describe and analyze signs that portend potential trends on your site.
Include photographs, drawings, and / or maps to document what you discovered. Delineate your site boundaries on all maps.
Refer to the required reading to test, substantiate, or revise your hypotheses about the significance of the artifacts, traces, layers, and trends you observed. Your essay should explain how the concepts presented in the reading help to explain your observations.
Present a thesis about the significance of the traces and trends you observed and what they reveal about your site.
Cite all sources, including maps, fully and properly.
The paper should be about 2400 words (approximately eight pages, typed double-spaced), accompanied by illustrations. This paper is due by class 21.

Orienting Yourself to the Assignment

Many of you were attracted to your site because of some anomalous features that puzzled you and made you wonder why they were there and what had caused them to be. This is an opportunity to explore some answers to such puzzles. Keep in mind that this assignment requires two sorts of reflection, the first, from what you know so far, and the second, from observing the site for visual traces of the layers of knowledge you’ve acquired about your site.

Plan for Site Visits with Maps

You’ll want to make more than one site visit: First to track the current site against each period for which you have a map; second, to revisit the site a day or two later to observe further. Start by taking a succession of walks through the site with each map of a particular time (in chronological order). Then identify places where there are interesting juxtapositions of multiple time periods and make a series of stops to compare those locations during successive periods, using the method that we employed on the field trip. In other words, plan to walk the site several times, once for each map (in order to discern layers or strata related to a particular period) and once to compare all time periods.

Keep in mind that you’re likely to encounter artifacts of individual moments in time, but also layers of artifacts or traces that might very well serve as the embodiment of or as an emblem of the changes to the site over time.

Record field notes for each site walk / map walk (and consider using your notes as the basis for your journal).

Questions to Ask

What different kinds of artifacts and traces can you find and what period of the site’s history do they belong to?
Do they relate to one another in any way?
Which artifacts and traces do you think are most important or interesting, and why? Describe them in your field notes and document with photographs.
What do you think these artifacts and traces reveal about the past and the present?
Why did they survive?
Are they still fulfilling some original purpose (or have they been entirely adapted to new uses)?
Do they reveal anything about the present and / or future?
What additional clues can you find in the present that hint at potential trends for the future?

Documenting Your Discoveries

You must gather visual evidence from the site in the form of your own photographs or drawings of visual artifacts and traces of the past that you observe on your site and noting how they relate to the history of the site and / or to its possible future.
Consider your visual evidence with a curatorial eye—be selective and make conscious choices about your illustrations (quality is more important than quantity). Consider how the visual is a vehicle for highlighting what you think are significant artifacts, traces, layers, and trends on your site. As with other papers, you’ll need to be selective, that is, curating your visual evidence so that it focuses on what is most significant about how the site reveals the clues to the past.
Consider including drawings as well as photographs and maps. Do not feel intimidated if you doubt your artistic skills. The object is to record what you see and highlight what is significant about it. The illustrations will be graded on quality of content; your grade will not be reduced for lack of artistic skill. Illustrations are another way of recording and thinking about your observations.

Organizing and Drafting the Paper

After you’ve done your site visits, you will need to organize your observations and evidence to focus on what you think is most significant about your site. Remember that this might be in the form of continuity or change, and that traces might be small (a cornerstone) or big (streets and buildings that have remained in place).
You’ll want to choose specific artifacts, traces, or layers that you see on the site. Keep in mind as well the dynamic of anomaly versus pattern of common features that has been a theme of the course since the start. Finally, keep an eye out for singular artifacts versus layers of artifacts from a similar period and consider the stories these layers might tell.
Once you’ve curated and selected the focus of your visual evidence, you’re ready to write your draft. A few things to keep in mind:
- Organize the paper around your visual evidence and close analysis of it. Remember to analyze your visual evidence in the body of the paper, and also to Make the captions do real intellectual work for the paper as well, by commenting on what they illustrate and by citing their sources fully.
- Start with an introduction that speaks to your topographical, environmental, and historical knowledge of the site so far and puts this last assignment in conversations with the previous ones.
- Consider using subheadings to organize the body of the paper, both as you write it, and for your reading audience.
- Be sure to cite properly—this means citing any sources you paraphrase, including class lectures, and providing full citations in your captions.

Refining Your Website

The clarity and graphic quality of presentation on your website has been given more weight as the semester has progressed. Post an image on the homepage of your website if you have not already done so.

Journals

What’s the purpose of writing a journal?

In many fields, the journal (or sketchbook, field notebook, or lab book) is an important aid both to the process of research and discovery, and to the documentation of that process and its product, the findings, in more formal papers or books.

Your journal is a place to begin puzzling out some of the ideas that you will explore further in each of four assignments: Select A Site; Natural Processes; Change Over Time; and Traces and Trends. The first step in preparing to write the journal is to read the guide for that assignment: to familiarize yourself with what the assignment is asking you to do; to figure out what kind of background information and evidence you will need to accomplish that task. You will gather that information and evidence in class discussion, in the required readings, and on field trips.

The second step is to gather that information and evidence throughout the week. Make note of the most important things that you learn in each class, information that will help you successfully complete the assignment. Approach the required reading as an exercise in gathering information that will prepare you to discover significant features on your own site, that will help you make sense out of your observations, and that will provide evidence for the argument that you will make in your paper. Make observations of your own site and record them in words, maps, diagrams, and / or photographs.

In your weekly journal, take stock of what you have learned from these disparate sources.

What needs to be in the journal?

At the very least, every journal must reflect on the required reading and its application to the assignment at hand; in other words, how does the reading help you understand the processes taking place on your own site? You may also include reflections on class discussion and workshops, class field trips, and observations made on your own site visits.

Can I include photographs or drawings or maps?

Yes, if they are directly related to the points you are exploring in your journal. You should not include all of the images that you have found or made unless they contribute to understanding what you are writing about in the journal.

How long should each journal entry be?

Length may vary, but each weekly entry should be at least 250 words.

What’s the difference between journals and the more formal written assignments?

Journals may be more experimental. They may raise doubts or questions about what you’ve observed. They may direct questions to the teaching staff. They may be written in a more conversational style than the more formal essay. However, they should be grammatical, with no typos or spelling errors.

Why do I need to submit a journal the day after I’ve completed an assignment?

This is an ideal time to step back and reflect on the assignment itself, and there’s much to be learned from the process. What was most difficult about the assignment? What was most interesting? What were the most important things you learned? What do you think the strengths of your paper were? What were its weaknesses? What, if anything, would have improved the essay? What would you like feedback on? What did you earn that you could apply to future assignments?

How are journals graded?

Journals are graded primarily on the basis of content (reflecting on the required reading, significance of observations), but meeting the minimum length in the text, without typos, is also taken into account. Failure to submit a journal will result in a grade of F for that week. Each week’s journal is graded separately; the final journal grade is the average of the grades for all weeks. Journals represent 20% of the final grade for the class.

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Course Info

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Assignments Overview

Project Assignment: Investigating a Site in the Past or Present Neighborhoods of MIT

Resources

Project Assignment 1: Select A Site

Project Assignment 2: Your Site and Natural Processes

Preparation

Starting to Write

Structuring Your Paper

Project Assignment 3: Your Site Over Time

Basic Requirements

Tips for Using Fire Insurance Maps to Discover How Your Site Changed Over Time

Finding Explanations for the Changes You Observed

Starting to Write

Structuring Your Paper

Project Assignment 4: Artifacts, Layers, Traces, and Trends

Basic Requirements

Orienting Yourself to the Assignment

Plan for Site Visits with Maps

Questions to Ask

Documenting Your Discoveries

Organizing and Drafting the Paper

Refining Your Website

Journals

Course Info

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Learning Resource Types