Prepare a written community history of your “home” town. The use of “locator” maps is strongly encouraged. Seek to address the following questions, as appropriate:
1) What natural geographic factors influenced the choice of location or site for the original settlement? If your home town was an outgrowth of another, larger adjacent city or town (for example, if your home is a “suburb”), when was it founded? Officially incorporated or chartered? Does it possess any major centers of employment, to which others commute for work from other places?
2) Can you discover which ethnic or cultural groups were predominant in the original settlement? If settled by immigrants from other places, where were they from? Clues may exist in last names in local telephone directories, in the names of streets or very old local churches/synagogues/mosques/temples or other religious or voluntary associations (some of which may have adjacent burial grounds). You may need to contact the local historical society, in the US often a county association.
3) When the place was settled, in what occupations were most people engaged? What were the major factors influencing how these occupational categories changed or evolved over time?
4) Identify and describe the oldest building(s) in your home town. If you cannot date the oldest building, can you identify the section of the city or town containing the oldest buildings? Using a “field guide” to architecture, determine if the buildings fit an identifiable architectural form of expression (whether “vernacular” or “high” style). If you live in a suburb where virtually ALL the buildings are new, you are still responsible for identifying style characteristics. The instructor may be able to provide supplemental resources for “typing” the style categories.
5) What is the most significant public space (place) in your home town? What are its spatial characteristics (shape, dimensions, etc.)? How is the space bounded or defined? In other words, when you’re there, how is it that you know you’re there?
NEED TO WRITE: 5 PAGES SINGLE SPACES WITH 11 FONT SIZE, All these page counts do not include the Bibliography, which may be any number of pages, depending upon how much research you have done and how many sources you have consulted.
