READINGS

Michael Holleran, “Filling the Providence Cove: Image in the Evolution of Urban Form” in Rhode Island History 48, no. 3 (August 1990). Link to article.   

Vittoria di Palma, Chapter 1 “Wasteland” in Wasteland: A History, (Yale University Press, 2014). Link to book. 

PROMPT

Vittoria Di Palma describes the shifting use and multiple meanings of the term “wasteland.” In the first part of your response, summarize these different meanings (e.g. as wilderness, as a descriptor of uselessness, as the commons). In the second half of your response, apply this discussion to the evolution and transformation of Providence’s Great Salt Cove. How do you think the concept of “wasteland” operated historically to shape people’s perceptions of the Cove and its physical form?