For the episode of our choice, I chose the one on Portland. This episode focuses on urban spaces and a sense of community, especially in Portland, Oregon. What a beautiful place, Portland!

I wanted to watch this episode because I thought it might help with our final project. Our final project focuses on the revitalization of downtown Fort Myers. My group is focusing on the riverfront. It's a very exciting project! Although, I might have also like to work on the revitalization of Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd.

I think what I took away the most from this episode is how Portland is cultivating a sense of place. We've become so surrounded in what Beaudrillard terms the "hyperreal" that we've lost a sense of culture and sense of place. We've expanded into suburbia and fallen in love with chain stores. We've become homogenized. Like Portland, Ft. Myers has its own special history that should be retained and cherished and we should be proud to live in such a community. As such, in my portion of our project, I have added a leisure center that makes use of an old riverfront building and would bring many people in the community together. It would also offer a history course on Ft. Myers, while also encouraging downtown community meetings. (They have these in Botswana --part of old tribal traditions --where people in the community can come together and voice their concerns and support one a another. It would be wonderful to make downtown Ft. Myers as friendly and beautiful a place to live and work as Portland --and to give it just as much a sense of its own place as Portland has.