A Region Unto Itself?

As an aside: I was in Boston over Thanksgiving, where I've never been before, and spent a good deal of my time just wandering around trying not to get lost. Concerning our previous discussions about "living room" businesses - armchairs in chain venues such as Border's and Starbucks - I witnessed the viciously cyclical nature of independent bookstores and coffeeshops against corporate copies while exploring the city. Cambridge is replete with bookstores, but, when I went to several local independent retailers, I noticed the lack of chairs and tables, and the uncomfortable situation of being a bookstore's lone patron; I wasn't encouraged to sit and loiter, but to buy and get out, which, I realized, is a direct product of bigger bookstores. Smaller, independent stores need business to operate, and therefore economically can't allow for reading without buying. Likewise, independent coffeeshops accost their customers to purchase something, whereas Starbucks doesn't depend on your business - although it's depressing, I think these examples show the inevitably, if not the benefit, of globalization.

Cannavo concedes that "there is no formula" (235) for determining whether natural boundaries

have precedence over social boundaries in defining a region, the first, and probably hardest, step towards regionalism. Regionalism is not a simple solution solely for this fact - determing every individual region's boundaries seems, and may be, impossible. The Hudson Valley provides an expecially difficult example, as evidenced by the wide variety of perspectives and economic diversity we've discussed and studied in this class. As illustrated in the photo above, these two neighboring homes in Newburgh embody the identity crisis of the Hudson Valley. Even if the river itself was logically used as the definitive boundary of the region, as this course would suggest, the surrounding areas are nearly schizophrenic in their diversity - historically, geographically, economically, and so on. Cannavo almost dismisses the challenges presented in the Hudson Valley in the brief section "Reconciling the Particular and the Universal." Parochialism already seems rampant in parts of the Hudson Valley, as the St. Lawrence Cement issue (well-to-do WASPy enivronmentalists versus working class minorities) implies.

Fortunately, the Hudson Valley does have its river; the environment of the region itself therefore has more potential to engage residents, either in collaboration or debate. Tulsa and the surrounding counties have very little environmental issues in common, since Tulsa is an urban environment and the outlying regions swiftly become farms. The Hudson Valley, however, can at least unite over the shared river. The Hudson Valley is, therefore, an established region; it's a very simple start and a basic beginning, but it is, at least, a beginning.