My Blog

Dubai is a city and province in the UAE(United Arab Emirates) that has experienced an enormous boom in wealth and tourism within the last 20-30 years. By analyzing each aspect of this geographical location using the 5 themes of this class I hope to gain a deeper understanding of how this "City of Gold" sprung out of the ground from almost nothing and came to be. Below I have embedded a map containing information that I found useful during my research. Throughout this post I'll ask you(the reader) to change layers in this map in order to isolate the information that I will be currently referencing. **Deactivate all layers except "Functional Regions."** To get the big picture of what Dubai really is, first you have to understand that it is more than a city. Dubai is one of the 7 "Emirates" that make up the United Arab Emirates. Dubai is known as the most wealthy of the 7 Emirates, but most would say that Abu Dhabi has the most power of the 7 Emirat...

I took a trip today to the area known in New Orleans as "Little Vietnam." I'd like to preface this post by saying that after I returned, I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to a coworker of mine(Quynh) that was born and raised in the Versailles apartment complex, in order to get a better picture of life in Little Vietnam. One of the first things that I noticed as I entered the area was that the architecture was not as Oriental as I had expected. Most of the architecture looked no different that other parts of the city, except for some signs above stores written in Vietnamese and similar things. I didn't go inside any buildings there, but Quynh told me later that this is the case most of the time regarding the exteriors of buildings. The interiors are much more ethnic I was told. This points to the idea that most of these buildings were probably not built by the Vietnamese upon immigration, but were simply repurposed to fit the tastes of the immigrants. I wen...

This map is what I will be using today when I travel to Little Vietnam in New Orleans. Using this map, I hope to see the areas that were affected by Hurricane Katrina and also the ones that have rebuilt even stronger from the great loss. While the area might not be an incredibly wealthy one, I hope to learn a little of the character and work ethic of the average person that lives in Little Vietnam. I will also try and get an accurate view of how the locations of levees surrounding the area have affected/will affect flooding patterns. I will also be paying attention to architecture as a main point.