final draft

Thus far, you have been asked to describe a significant community in your life, and to imagine what an updated version of that community might look like (for better or for worse). Now, you will focus on making an argument about the community you’ve been writing about.

Using 2-3 text sources, as well as your personal experience, your ultimate goal will be to take a stance on what a community in your life needs, or what it doesn’t need — what should be preserved, or what should be changed. You might write about a combination of these things, or even make a recommendation that doesn’t quite feel like it’s a part of these categories.

This paper should start with a specific problem you plan to address. This problem could be something in your community that you would like to see fixed or changed, but it could also be a problem with someone else’s stance on your community (or on communities in general) that you disagree with. The problem you focus on could even be about your specific community role — something you want to address about your own involvement.

This assignment is NOT asking you to simply research the municipal issues in your area and compile a series of statistics about its shortcomings. Remember you are being asked to include personal evidence as well! Consider how to tell the story of your community, and what stance you want to take on how that community will move forward. While statistics can certainly be a part of your argument, they are not the only way to support your ideas.

As you develop your argument, thinking about the opposition to your stance, and how quoted evidence could be used to reinforce that stance, can help to expand what you’ll write about. Here’s an example:

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Starting idea: I wish we had more parks. (This takes a stance, but does not identify a problem.)

Second idea: Our community is having a negative impact on local wildlife that is important to the ecosystem, and so we need green spaces. (This has a similar stance, but starts by identifying a problem.)

Third idea: Henry Grabar states in his article that “downtown spaces should be converted into new 15-minute cities,” but I think the first priority for abandoned urban spaces needs to be reforestation. This could certainly benefit a community like my neighborhood… (This stance is beginning to incorporate more textual and personal evidence.)

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As a last reminder, please know that this assignment doesn’t need to focus on physical spaces. (For example, an argument about social communities or virtual communities could incorporate or challenge ideas from L’s text.)

SOURCES:

Unit 1 course text (required)

Additional Unit 1 text, OR outside source about your community (required)

Personal evidence (required)

Additional/outside source (optional)