As I walked through Philadelphia doing my very best to find examples of Globalization, I found myself overwhelmed. Examples of globalization were practically everywhere. Every street corner had a different flavor to it. It's almost as if you can sense a shift in culture as you walk. And for every shift, there were plenty of pictures to be taken. That said, sometimes it was hard to take pictures that had a different feel to them. It almost always felt like the real photo you were taking was an odd juxtaposition, not a true mix of cultures. That said, I particularly liked the photo inside of the Perelman building's chapel, because that was a more true mix of cultures. Islam, Judaism and Christianity all coming together in the same room to remember that we are all humans, and while medicine can do many things it's important to hold onto faith.
There is no doubt in my mind that globalization is prevalent in Philadelphia. How prevalent, well that is up for debate. Philadelphia certainly has it's fair share of evidence showing globalization, but how true might this be in Pittsburgh  which breathes (or used to) American steel and sheer production, leaving very little to be imported. Chances are Philadelphia takes in a bit more foreign culture, but when you compare it to a place like New Orleans, there's no question that New Orleans has more evidence of globalization.
With all that said and done, I learned that globalization can be where you least expect it. Just because your house was made with American materials doesn't necessarily mean it's an American house. Architecture borrows a huge amount across the world. Just because you bought a GM car doesn't mean that the raw materials weren't harvested else where or even assembled else where. Examples of society trying to hide globalization are almost as prevalent as society trying to showcase globalization.

You can read more about my explorations and analysis of globalization in Philadelphia here.

A fantastic choose-your-own-adventure game, where you play as a small society trying not to die out completely. Have fun!

(Lauf, if you want a reflection, just e-mail me some questions later.)

​For the forth quarter I decided to do an option that was not actually on the list, I added a point to Jared Diamond's five point framework (to make it a six point framework). My point was the impact of the government on collapse was never mentioned in any of the chapters and it should have been. So I went in and researched all of the chapters that I thought an explanation of the government at the time would be helpful to completely understanding the collapse of that society. I chose Rwanda, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and China. The most challenging aspect of this project was fully understanding the economic state of the country as well as what type of government was in place and understanding the dynamics. I was also interested in the history of the government and what they are currently doing in their own country and in the global community. Another difficult part for me was analyzing what I had found and making it relevant to the book and the work that Jared Diamond was doing. If I were to do this again I would also analyze one of my countries from the benchmark last quarter like Mali, because as soon as I turned in the benchmark a coup took over the country. 
Here is the link to my final website product. 

The most challenging part of this photo essay assignment was actually finding photos that clearly expressed the affects of globalization in Philadelphia for 10 different topics. I could find things here and there are language and trade, but I had to get a little bit creative to come up with 10 different things to show. Also, for some reason it was challenging for me to find statistical data on different facts on Philadelphia that I thought I would be able to get easily like the demographics of tourism or the largest oil companies in the city. I was able to make due, though. 

In order to go out and collect my images, I made a notepad on my iPhone with just some general ideas and then set out on foot. One afternoon, I essentially walked home. Using my ideas to guide what neighborhoods and streets to walk through, I just took pictures as I saw fit. If I saw something that I could possibly use, I took a picture of it. After I got home, I then walked more through just my neighborhood of Northern Liberties for pictures. I must have gathered at least 90 photos, which I left sifted through and divided into categories. I then used those pictures and showed them to classmates and my teacher to double check their globalization-ness. The top pictures won the chance to be in the actual project. There were two pictures that made the cut that I would call my favorites: the picture of St. Augustine's and the picture of a mural in my neighborhood. Both of these I felt fell more on the original side compared to my other pictures of foreign cars, banks, and restaurants. I attended St. Augustine's church since I was small and even was an alter server for 4 years, yet I never knew the affect the church had on the Filipino community or the affect that community had on the church. I have also been involved in the Mural Arts program since I was young because of my father's job as an artist. I have personally met many of the international artists in the program and watched several murals comes to life. I now see these murals every day in both Northern Liberties and other parts of the city. 

Luckily, I was able to come up with enough pictures for my project, but it was a challenge to find pictures that actually showed globalization in Philadelphia. There are countless things I could have taken a picture of and then explained how they related to globalization, but the trick of this project was clearly showing globalization in the pictures themselves. That was indeed hard for topics other than like trade and economy. Philadelphia, just like many big cities in America, have been affected largely by international imports and exports, but finding obvious sources of globalization other than that is hard. New York City may have been less than a challenge since it is has more obvious communities occupied by only certain groups of people than Philadelphia, but I can see a person doing this project in other large cities having similar problems as me. 

I definitely learned more about the functions of Philadelphia and what make this city was it is. I never knew all that stuff about the church I always considered to be "my church." I also just never paid attention to the smaller things like the Chinese stores down the street or the Spanish translations on advertisements and such. Globalization is everywhere and affects everyone. This is what this project has taught me.

My benchmark is here! :)

I had a great time with this project. It was very educational and I really enjoyed going in deep with the different things that are evidence of globalization. The most challenging thing about this project was actually thinking of the different evidence of globalization. It took a while to really think of the different signs of globalization, but after that, it got relatively easy and I just splattered my thoughts into the keynote. The first thing I did for the benchmark was find out the different evidence, write about why they are evidence of globalization in Philadelphia and more, and then finally I went to take the photos of what I had chosen. Most of the pictures were relatively easy to take because they were right in the center city area like the Red Cross and the flags on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The image that is definitely my favorite is the one with Trade and clothing because it is pretty unique how I took the photo. I literally went and grabbed Daniel Mambu's shirt and took a picture of the tag while he was still wearing it, which gave some great authenticity to it and really showed the true background to how clothing is definitely an example of globalization in not only Philadelphia but all around the world. The evidence of globalization in Philadelphia is very prevalent. Surprisingly enough, most of the evidence is very common and is a clear example of the effects globalization has had on the world. As for Philadelphia in specific, I would say it is more prevalent here compared to other places because of the trends we have and the fashion trends especially. Globalization really has had a surprisingly strong effect. As for the learning aspect of the benchmark, I learned so much. I would never have really realized the true effect of globalization on the world without this benchmark because in today's world that isn't really thought of that often. I also learned that globalization isn't always a good thing, because there are many negative effects globalization has had as well. Overall on the benchmark, I enjoyed it very much and it was a fantastic learning experience.

​Here is my wordpress.

In doing this project, I feel more connected to Philadelphia. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to convey different topics of globalization in a picture. The most challenging part was finding the best shots. I also had trouble finding relevant articles that fit with the topic and Philadelphia. But the final result is very rewarding. My particular favorite is of the woman waiting for the train. It was on one of the days that I could come in late, the train was pulling up and I just photographed what I saw, it made itself. I was also nervous about how I could connect Public Transportation to globalization, but the picture inspired me to try my hardest. 

Globalization in Philly is as prevalent as it is in other big cities. This is becuase big cities are made with the same factors. In the United States, immigrants came from all over to live together. I think that the global community is very linked by globalization, making them similar on a basic level. In this benchmark, I got to apply the topics of globalization to the real-world. It was exciting to understand what I've been learning on a deeper level.

​For my quarter 4 benchmark, I choice to speak about the connection between Globalization and Philadelphia. This was a task which we were to take ten images in Philadelphia that represent the city and the relationship each photos has with globalization. This is one of the most interesting topic to take on since I can personally relate Philadelphia to one of the book that we read earlier in class called Collapse. 

Most of the photos that I took are either from places that I visited daily or the environment that I am confortable around. In my opinion, every single places and symbol in Philadelphia represent globalization in one way or another. However, there are ten photos that stood out to me and define the connection with globalization. 

In my opinion, Globalization is present everyday and everywhere. 

Click here to view the photos and the relationship of Globalization in Philadelphia 

Citations 

For my Quarter 4 benchmark, I chose to report on abandoned buildings in Philadelphia and the process of building restoration in the same. The most challenging part about this project was figuring out where I was going to find my information. I knew what I wanted to touch on in my project; I wanted to address different historic buildings and I wanted explain the process of getting an abandoned house demolished, but I didn’t know where to look for this information.  Despite my confusion,  I kept working and came across many online newspaper blog posts concerning the themes that I wanted to include in my Benchmark. When I started to look at these posts, I found this information. I also went to government websites to verify that the information that I found in the articles was true. 

I had already begun a project similar to this one my Junior year of high school when I was asked to do a project about a historic building in my neighborhood. This was when I first gained full awareness of the Old Edison across the street from my grandmother’s house. As I dug into its history, I only became more and more fascinated with this neglected building. This had to have been one of the greatest projects that I completed during my high school career, therefore, I decided to piggy back its idea in this benchmark. Moreover, I have always held a fascination towards abandoned historic houses in Philadelphia, but they never seemed to be given much attention. I also wanted to address the problem that we have with abandoned buildings and neighborhoods in general.  In my articles, I wanted to raise these issues which not many people pay attention to. Restoration and preservation of not only historic houses in Philadelphia, but also Philadelphia neighborhood houses could increase its attraction factor and build the character of communities. 

I feel like many times this issue goes disregarded because most people feel like it does not immediately affect Philadelphia communities. They think that jobs and economy are priority issues that we must handle in order to get us back on a good foot. What they fail to recognize is that all of these things are interlaced. The more houses that we fix, the more jobs we will have,  and the more income we will receive because of the increased attraction factor that our sites and homes hold. Restoration of buildings will in fact push us to fix issues that hold priority in our city. I do think that this issue will get more attention in the future because more and more people are beginning to realize that not only do abandoned buildings pose a threat to surrounding houses, but they also hurting our economy.  

Through this project I learned that there are laws that protect certain historic buildings at state level and at a national level. I also learned why abandoned houses in Philadelphia aren’t just  knocked down. There is a whole process that the Philadelphia Department of License and Registration must follow in order to give permission for the house to be destroyed. I also learned of alternative methods that we could adopt to increase house restoration in Philadelphia.

To see my articles, click here.

Overall, this was a pretty interesting benchmark and I really liked the amount of creativity we were allowed to implement into our project. The most challenging part of this project, would definitely have to be figuring out what to actually take pictures of. Although, I knew common globalization themes, finding examples of them was definitely challenging. The way I went about collecting the images was just taking my normal route to/from school with a sharp eye. I had the themes in my head and I just scanned all of the environment until I found a nice representation. My favorite image is the picture of the lime. I really like the quality of that picture, especially how the limes in the background are blurred out - it captured nice. I also like it because of the label, showing how far that little lime has traveled; it's interesting. Evidence of globalization is definitely prevalent all around Philadelphia, you just have to keep your eyes open and analyze your sights. I think the images of globalization are just as present in Philadelphia as they would be in any other large city. I think this because all of the big cities have the urban center and then the outlying rural area that gets effected along with the city. I learned a lot of information about Philadelphia; including some information about the history of Western Union and the history of global trade.