Page 12 RAIN May/June 1984 ACCESS: Urban Neighborhoods i ■. Street Signs Chicago; Neighborhood and Other Illusions ofBig City Life, by Charles Bowden and Lew Kreinberg, 1981,198 pp, $7.95 from: Chicago Review Press 820 North Franklin Chicago, IL 60610 Street Signs Chicago is a book you could give to your Uncle Bernie or your mom, and they'd enjoy reading it and find it hard to put down—quite an accomplishment for a book that holds up a mirror to the past so we can comprehend the present with sobriety. Studs Terkel said, "This book has the eloquence of a fine hot-to-the-touch novel." Every anecdote in this book is enlightening as well as entertaining. Centering on Chicago's history and present from an immigrant, working- class perspective, it takes the view of the underdog, and thus preaches without being prissy. It comes off as a gutsy exploration of what the truth of an American city is and what being an American city resident is. It talks about the myth of big-city neighborhoods and the reality of our mobility and commitment to self and upward mobility above commitment to place and community. The authors clearly outline how we got ourselves into this predicament called big-city life—without getting us depressed in the process. Better yet, they hint at a future we can live with, while poking fun at purveyors of Clivus Multrum toilets. —Carolyn McKay Carolyn McKay is a student ifhuman studies at Marylhurst College in Portland. City as Classroom; Understanding Language and Media, by Marshall McLuhan, Kathryn Hutchon, and Eric McLuhan, 1977,184 pp., inquire for price from: The Book Society of Canada Ltd. Box 200 Agincourt, Ontario MIS 3B6 Canada "To what extent has the community taken over the function of schools?" This question, among others in the book's introduction, begins the writers' unveiling of the community as learning center. The terms figure and ground, first described by Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin in 1915, are used throughout the book to visually define parts of a situation. Eigure is that which we consciously note, and ground is everything else. It is through the interaction of these two elements that we perceive our surroundings. Once we've mastered these analytical tools and have fine-tuned our perception, we notice that the set changes depending on whether the figure is the furniture and the ground is the backdrop, or vice versa. The subject and its circumstances are mutually dependent—they define each other. The authors ask provocative questions that encourage us to analyze language and media. Exercises follow to provide practice in perception training: figure and ground exchange roles or are eliminated so that we can study their effects on a particular medium. These exercises often appear voluminous and time- and equipment-intensive, and therefore serve best as guidelines for which you can devise your own abridged versions. The final set of exercises asks us to imagine life without telephones, automobiles, or money. Plastic money has all but replaced paper money; why not use the barter system to replace credit? This analysis is written to challenge students—-who have been raised on Walkman, Pac-Man, and "Wow, man!"— to examine their world; but if you need the morning paper to make it through breakfast, read this book! —Penny Fearon Penny Fearon, a former RAIN intern, is traveling in the South Seas. New City-States, by David Morris, 1982, 76 pp., $6.95 from: Institute for Local Self-Reliance 171718th Street, NW Washington, DC 20009 New City-States is a companion to Morris' Self-Reliant Cities. It is jam-packed with examples, models, and statistics, and it is probably the best political analysis since Neighborhood Power. It is, in fact, the next logical step—from neighborhood empowerment to city or urban empowerment. In a few easy-to-read pages, Morris has pulled together the basis for discussing one of the most difficult questions facing radical-agrarian-decentralist and centralist-conservative alike; how to live with cities, those immense social and physical systems that we have created with only partial attention to working details. Anyone interested in the role cities can play in forming reasonable public policy should read this book. —SJ S' 1 4^
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