| Instructor: Dr. Jeff Webb |
Reflecting on "Which Wild Beast? Simmel and Corbusier on the Modern City"
By Tang Weng Hong
What motivated me to write my paper? Firstly, I found Le Corbusier's City
of Tomorrow to be fascinating, even though I suspect that many people might
find it rebarbative. Secondly, although Simmel's analysis of life in the metropolis
was perspicacious, I did not think that it was totally correct. I wanted to
show that if Simmel's analysis were correct, it would seem that the City of
Tomorrow would turn out to be a nightmare. But then I tried to show that Simmel's
analysis was not obviously correct and hence, the City of Tomorrow might not
turn out to be a nightmare after all.
The paper took me three drafts to complete. I remember that I had to rewrite
the paragraphs summarizing Simmel's analysis of metropolitan life over and over
again until I was finally satisfied with them. The problem was that Simmel's
article was not particularly easy to read, and even less easy to summarize.
Since I only had four pages to write my essay, and to try to come up with as
succinct a summary as possible, I had to include only what was absolutely essential.
This means that I really had to understand what Simmel was writing about, which
I did not, even when I was writing my penultimate draft. I was left with no
other choice but to stop writing, and go read Simmel's article one or two more
times before starting on my final draft.
The peer review, as well as the conference, helped tremendously in solving
some of the problems I encountered in the course of writing my paper. For example,
I was unable to see what was bad or lacking in my initial summary of Simmel's
analysis of metropolitan life. It was during the peer review that the shortcomings
of my summary were pointed out to me. Somehow, the peer reviews and the conferences
also helped me learn to adopt a more critical approach towards my own writing.
This proved to be extremely beneficial in other courses, in which I have to
write term papers but do not have the luxury of peer review sessions and conferences!
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