BLOGS
Harley's Blog Posts:
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10/30/2017- We have only been going this project for a few weeks now and I would say all is going well so far. This project requires us to work as a group and research a neighborhood in Richmond, and the neighborhood we have been assigned is Bellevue. After being assigned our neighborhood we decided to split the work for the project evenly among our group members, and the section that I was assigned to do was the interview section. This section required me to have one on one interviews with Bellevue residents in order to gain first hand information on what its like living in that neighbor hood. So far I have interviewed two residents of and I have a few more interviews lined up for later this week. But, the two people have I have interviewed so far are Blair, and Jessica. Both Blair and Jessica have been very helpful during this whole process and have really given me true scenes of what it’s like to live in Bellevue. So, all and all my personal part of the project is going very well and I am anticipating that my part will be fully completed in another week. Another thing I want to highlight in this blog post is how great my group is. I feel that we have a wonderful group filled with intelligent, hard working. Not only that but our group is very diverse and that makes it very helpful when analyzing a neighborhood, because we are able to look at it in many different points of view.
-Harley Taylor
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Jennifer Ahmad Blog Post
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11/9/17
During this experience I have been able to peel the layers of the onion of Bellevue. I am in charge of the demographics for the neighborhood, and being able to do this research has really shown the true character inside this neighborhood. I was pretty shocked at how much information is already provided online for the demographics for this neighborhood. It is nice to know that Richmond as a city is already doing this research to see how diverse the city is within its neighborhoods. Most of my research was done through statistical neighborhood data websites and I found the home value information through Zillow. During my research I have been able to see the sex, gender, race, income and age for Bellevue for far into my research. There are an average of people in their mid 20's and late 30's that make most of Bellevue. This shows that there are a lot of young families living in this area, which I feel is mainly for the sense of belonging within this close neighborhood and the better schooling system offered. It seems that there are some small shops and restaurants that consist inside the neighborhood. The houses have a very unique charm to them and I find that to be something valuable to this community. There is a sense of art and belonging that comes with this neighborhood that you can see through the images another teammate took, and I am really excited to learn more about the history and meaning behind some of these buildings once the timeline section is complete. The schools offered are one public and one private school. Although I am still conducting more research for this neighborhood and I am excited to see what other information I can uncover to really define what makes Bellevue, Bellevue. My team is working really well together and we are able to bring diverse thinking to this project and I feel that will reflect on the final evaluation.
11/19/17- As of today I have finished all of my interviews, and have placed them on the website. The interviews have been very informative on what its like to live in the wonderful neighborhood of Bellevue. Not only did I learn a lot about Bellevue from these individuals but some of them also had a lot of information to offer about the planning world… And since Urban Planning is my major I really enjoyed having the opportunity to “pick their brain.” So, I guess you could say that my interview section came out well and I’m very pleased with it. Now, as far as the over all project I would say that is coming along well also. We are not done yet.. but we are slowly making more and more progress each day, and I could see the project being completely finished in about another week or so. As you can see I really don’t have anything negative to say about this group, or this project in general. I honestly do feel that this project is one of the most exciting, fun, and informative group projects I have ever done, and I say this because it gave me the opportunity to really dig in and research a neighborhood I have never even thought of within my home city. Not only have a gain knowledge about Bellevue but I will gain even more once I get to see all of the other neighborhoods that my class mates researched. Hopefully after hearing all of my classmates research ill be an all around more knowledgeable Richmond citizen.
-Harley Taylor
12/4/17
As the time comes towards the end of this project I have a lot to consider when it comes to learning about Richmond and the Bellevue neighborhood. Doing my research for demographics I found information on the medium home value, medium income, education status, and race and ethnicity. In addition I found some statistics that have to do with the crime rate in Bellevue. The actual research part was pretty simple and easy to find the information needed. Thankfully there are several resources available to help aid in this material. I chose to include images and screen shots in my section so the viewers can have a better visual understanding of the statistics provided. I also wanted to break up the website and not make the page full of text. Viewers to the webpage will remember charts and numbers better. The Education part was the most informative section that I could find, but I feel that this section is most important to the neighborhood itself. There were some interesting facts about the private and public schools and how overall the children in Bellevue do better in their academics than most of Richmond. I originally thought that Bellevue was more so about families and private school students but it turns out there are more public school students and households without children in Bellevue. This experience was a good one so far and I am glad I was able to learn a lot about this neighborhood, but also get a glimpse of the City as a whole and how Bellevue helps create part of it.
Porter's Blog Post
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10/29/17
Upon entering this assignment, I have a lot of unanswered questions about the Bellevue neighborhood. I am excited to work with the group that I am in to help bring this neighborhood to the light for others who would like to move here. I have only been in Richmond since I started attending VCU so this also gives me the perfect opportunity to discover more of the urban environment of our city. I am an environmental studies major so usually I am focused on the natural side of our city’s development so this is a exciting way for me to step out of my comfort zone, and expand my knowledge to a new field . Having this chance to explore a neighborhood like Bellevue is very exciting, and I hope that the work our group presents creates a long lasting valued impression of the Bellevue neighborhood among residents and non-residents alike. My hopes for this project are to put this community out there so that the culture and name expands to something bigger than what they have been. I believe Bellevue has the potential to leave a bigger footprint similar to that of the Carytown neighborhood. I hope that through our research that others can be persuaded to show interest in this neighborhood. Bellevue has a lot of history involved since its conception I have yet to delve deep into this history; however, I believe that as we continue to dig deeper into Bellevue we will continue to find more and more surprises about this community.
-Porter Anderson
12/1/17
After exploring the Bellevue neighborhood in depth, I have discovered that this neighborhood has a resilient culture. As a community Bellevue seems to tie together. I saw people stop while walking their dogs or even going to get coffee. Many even stopped to give me complements or ask how I was doing. There is a certain element of this community that I cannot put a finger on I believe it comes from the overall friendly nature of this neighborhood. The population consists of mostly young families and elderly residents. On top of that the housing options throughout the community are very pristine. I was not expecting to see such well developed housing options. Many of the houses seem to be fairly high revenue developments, but the median income does not depict this. Another surprise came when I found the business side of the neighborhood. Bellevue is full of small businesses ranging from coffee shops to electrician and auto-mechanic work. These businesses seem to be off the grid from the typical consumer outside of the neighborhood. Bellevue’s downfall is that most of the school options are private schools in the neighborhood. So commute to work and public school options will most likely require private transportation. After going through the area I realized the neighborhood is fairly closed off from the rest of Richmond and other neighborhoods. Judging from the intercommunal connection it seems they like that aspect of their neighborhood while at the same time they are very welcoming of outside shoppers, visitors, and potential homeowners. Overall the Bellevue community seems to be a fairly prosperous, secluded, and opportunistic neighborhood.
-Porter Anderson
Melissa's Blog Posts
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11/ 21/2017- There are many parts to this project, including photos, digital media, interviewing people from the neighborhood, and blogging. Bellevue seems to be a tighter-knit community. They also seem to be content in their neighborhood and community. Digging through the digital media, including videos, blogs, stories, and social media, there’s a lot of positive in this neighborhood. My assigned part is digital media. This includes finding stories about the neighborhood from different news sources, the Bellevue website, neighborhood blog, contacts such as council members, and people who are head of the neighborhood, and so on. Knowing that this neighborhood even has what looks like a very organized website, has me thinking they’re pretty well off. I know not all neighborhoods have websites, or don’t have the resources to do so, and make the community so organized with people in charge of different aspects, and have activities and events for everyone. I’m happy about the neighborhood we’ve been assigned. I like to see well-off communities that engage everyone in it, and are as organized as they seem. It’s obvious they’ve put much planning into Bellevue, just taking a look at their website, but also seeing the head of the community contacts, blogs, events, and more. At a first glance, I think I’d trust Bellevue, and I’d feel pretty safe. If I had kids, I imagine I’d feel my kids would be safe living there, also. One of my favorite parts of this project and website, is going to be the photos captured in the neighborhood. I love having visuals.
11/ 28/2017 -This project had a lot of parts to it. Different people in the group were assigned to each section. We had photos, maps, interviews, digital media, etc. I was assigned digital media. I enjoyed the digital media part. It was similar to research for me, and I already enjoy research, being a psychology major. I also enjoyed going through their facebook page for the whole neighborhood. Seeing the photos they have from events in that community show that they are an organized, tight-knit neighborhood, who likes to be around each other, and participate in activities together. Also, seeing that, and their website, I would trust living there, and I think I’d be safe, there would be things to do, and I’d be comfortable there. Having these thoughts about this neighborhood, I think that’s ideal for a community, and people who are looking to live there. For people new to the area, I’d suggest looking for a home in this community. In the digital media section of the website, I also included the Zillow website(Zillow.com). This site shows homes for sale and rent. It had some homes in Bellevue, so I think people would want to see that on our website, if they’re curious what the homes are like. I personally wanted to include that, because I’ve liked looking through websites such as that one, myself, at houses in different places, states, etc. because I get curious what different communities are like. Overall, this project has been good. It’s a lot of work creating a website, but it’ll be neat to see the end result.
-Melissa Gray
10/25/17 – Today I visited Bellevue for the first time and I spent my time wandering around taking photos. It is a really nice neighborhood. You can tell there’s a strong community – the streets are spotless, lawns are groomed and there’s a Free Little Library where neighbors exchange good reads. I thought that the houses were all unique and neat. All of them looked like they have been maintained quite well through the decades. The first time walking around to be frank I noticed that the commercial block on MacArthur wasn’t very busy – there weren’t a lot of pedestrians. I was there around 3pm on a week day though so most consumers were probably busy at work. Further up on MacArthur I noticed some construction happening on the street. It looked like the workers were lying electric lines or utility pipes underneath the road. I enjoyed seeing the Halloween decorations on many houses, especially the web over one of the home’s walkways in the gallery. I got to enjoy a cup of coffee inside of Stir Crazy – and it felt good to support the local business. After that I walked up the rest of that little commercial strip and took some photographs for the website. It honestly felt a little uncomfortable taking pictures of peoples’ homes in the neighborhood though. I know I would be weirded out if I looked out my window to see somebody photographing my house. It was all good though, I had a good time taking pictures of the street and the businesses, and I don’t think anyone saw me photographing their house. I was thinking while walking on some of the purely residential streets that Bellevue would be a great place to raise a family – there’s plenty of room in the yards for kids and it feels very safe.
12/4/17 – I returned to Bellevue today with one rather last minute mission – I never found the famous arch during my first visit to the neighborhood. With some quick googling I found the intersection that it’s at and made my way there with ease. I parked my car on Hermitage and photographed the Arch. I got a few really nice pictures with some orange leaves in the background for the website. I’m glad it was sunny out today so I could get a crisp image of the Arch, which is an icon for the neighborhood. Afterwards, I drove down Pope Ave for the first time and took some pictures of the houses on it, which happen to be the largest, and in my opinion, the nicest houses in the whole neighborhood. Some of them look very old, and all of them have flavor and character. If I could afford to move to Bellevue I would hope to find a home on Pope Ave. However, there’s also a variety of size among the homes in the neighborhood. It’s great to see the sprinklings of apartments and rented homes in the neighborhood that make it a little bit more accessible to people who typically couldn’t afford to purchase a home in Bellevue. As far as progress on the project, everything at this point is looking really good. The website is coming together nicely and looks quite professional. I think the arrangement is well done and it is informative and easy to navigate. Everyone is doing their part well and I think I can speak for us all when I say we’ve learned a lot and had a good time with this project.
Brandon's Blog Posts
11/22/17 - I see that most of my group already had a lot of their work posted on this website. I had a lot going so I was trying to make time for this project while balancing other classes. Me being from Alexandria I had no clue what Bellevue was. I had never been to Richmond nor had I really thought about the fact that I would be in this city. When I started my search on Bellevue I started to really learn about some of the aspects of this city. Researching Bellevue also helped me learn about the other parts of this city. There are a lot of interesting parts of this city. I've seen many beautiful places like Belle Isle and the Arthur Ashe statue. My assignment for this project was to find out the timeline of Bellevue's history. I have been finding out the steps the area has taken to become the Bellevue it is today.In searching Ive found that there are a lot of things that have assisted this area this area. With all good comes bad and that has been true for this are as well. There have been a good share of good times as well as downfalls. This are has advanced a lot since its beginning. Its amazing to see how far its come and all of the improvements over time. I have some more research to do to add to my timeline but I think that this is going well so far!
-Ebz B
Ebz's Blog Posts
12/1/17- Once again my schedule is getting tighter and tighter. Our project is due on Tuesday and i'm basically done with the timeline aspect. All I have to do is add it to the website. I enjoyed this project a lot. I enjoyed it most because I got to learn about a city and area i'm not too familiar with. It was very exciting to see all that has happened in Bellevue. I was very interested in the old news article that was on the Bellevue website. It made me think about what the area must have been like at a time like 1920. At first I didn't really care for Bellevue since I didn't really know about it. Once I started researching my interest for Bellevue slowly became greater. Learning about the way Bellevue was macadamized is very fascinating. I thought that I might have got my part of this project done over the break but that didn't end up happening. The website is coming along very well. Since Harley was in charge of the website, she found a very nice platform to create the website named WIX. It divides each of or work up very well and displays it very nicely. I am happy with the way the website is looking and I cant wait for us to present on Tuesday. I feel that based on the production of our group and the way the website is turning out our presentation should go great. Ive taken a lot away from this project.
-Ebz B