Exploring the Urban Landscape

When I was a little kid, I remember sitting with my Aunt Judy and spending hours reading the Atlas. We would talk about all sorts of things and learn facts about all different parts of the country and the world. I would always wish that I could see all of the places that I saw in the Atlas. I spent months memorizing all of the states and capitals and later I moved to countries and capitals.

My interest did not stop here. After some time, learning about specific places was not enough to satisfy me; I wanted to know more about the people who lived in those places. I began trying to learn about demographics and I eventually became interested in sociology as well. I hope to be able to share some of my opinions as well as some of the information that I have gathered over the years. Perhaps I should start with some background on my own environment.

I grew up in the small town of Sutton, Massachusetts. I moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, a relatively small city, for college. I would say that these two areas really resemble all of New England in many ways. Worcester in particular was settled hundreds of years ago with little planning. As such, the city streets spread every which way causing traffic jams at seemingly every hour of the day. Interestingly enough, the city attempts to solve many of these traffic problems by constructing rotaries that can be fed by as many as six streets. Yet despite the relative disorganization in the city layout, there are some really interesting parts of the city. 

It seems that Worcester was built in a time before New England decided on it's now traditional style of architecture. As a result, one of the main residential sections of the city, the West Side, has a mix of Mediterranean, Tudor, Victorian and Federalist architectural styles all right next to one another. I tend to take a lot of pictures of the places that I visit, but unfortunately I do not have many pictures of Worcester that describe the phenomenon that I am describing. I will try to take some on a nice day and add them in.