Introduction
My city need something
We need it real bad
I’m tired of yellow tape
So tired of teddy bears
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I swear my city need a better way.
And I don't think there's nothing left to say
I wrote this song
Cuz I know just how it feels
To lose somebody you love
And that's real
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I swear we need something but I don’t know what it is . . .
-“My City Need Something” by PnB Rock
Throughout my teenage years in Philadelphia during the 1980s, and even up until I became a teacher at Thomas Edison High School, Hunting Park always had a reputation as a dangerous place, even to neighborhood folk and those who frequented the avenue through it. There had been muggings and murders, and it was rumored to be especially infested with drug dealers once the Crack epidemic hit. However, a few short years ago in 2009, professional baseball player Ryan Howard and tennis pioneer Billie Jean King decided, along with a host of community partners, that it was worth a $20 million investment. So even while all of the 11th grade students at nearby Thomas Edison may not know exactly what they want when they see the open green space eight blocks from the school, and probably had no input on its revitalization, it seems as though every one of them will enjoy the 87-acre public park for some reason.
Nonetheless, Hunting Park’s history is a small segment of the larger 500-acre agricultural estate named “Stenton” belonging to William Penn’s secretary James Logan. Bequeathed to Logan as a reward for his service, and subsequently to Logan’s son, the land has been redesigned, sold off in part, transformed, and otherwise changed many, many times over its over 225-year history. Today the park attempts to be more than just a thoroughfare from one neighborhood to another, instead it is a space my students play in and use for other forms of recreation, along with countless neighbors in Juniata Park neighborhood who have a stake in maintaining it. Can a park as integrated with Philadelphia’s complex historical roots adapt to an evolving political climate with economic constraints, a transitioning population, immediate needs and new concerns, and remain just as hospitable to the community for whom its recent renovations claim a benefit? I think it can, like many public parks in Philadelphia’s system of green spaces, but we have to ask each and every time what decisions were made to change the park and by whom? In remodeling Hunting park this time, as well as in past renovations, the benefits can be plentiful, but where the public is concerned, and in particular, public funds, there always seems to be some controversy. In Hunting Park we can see a parallel between larger issues of public use with decision making and consensus building that challenge students of the process to ask important questions about society and how we can learn to live together through the sometimes complicated realm of democracy that is still being worked out on a local and even a grand scale.
The public history project in this curriculum unit will allow students a structure within which to explore crucial questions in the development of the built environment so that they may serve as tomorrow’s leaders and decision-makers when it comes to public policy and citizen-engagement. We will learn to participate with the development of this park as public historians in order to share in its stewardship as well as in its enjoyment, using the language of Public Historians to express the process of doing so articulately and succinctly through a close reading of political, social, and environmental studies, and culminating in an art and poetry performance project that addresses aspects of the results of our research and close readings.
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