1. What is the setting of this case? What are its assets? What opportunities and challenges will there be in this setting in coming years?

In much of both the academic and popular writing about Austin, one of its most frequently remarked features is the abundance of natural beauty. This is due in part to the fact that Austin is located at a nexus of different geological formations, which supply the city and its surrounding areas with rich and diverse landscapes, flora, and fauna. In fact, when Robert T. Hill—UT Austin’s first professor of Geology—first arrived at Austin, he noted that the city was a prime location for the study of geology, as there is such a great diversity of formations and deposits from a wide range of geological ages (Student Geology Society 1977).
Austin’s position at the intersection of diverse geological formations creates a rich and peculiar landscape that supports a comparably unique ecology. Indeed, many of Austin’s more charismatic species live in extremely niche habitats and can’t be found anywhere else on the planet. Historians of the city often remark on the way that this landscape and the forms of plant and animal life it supports have shaped ideas for the city’s future, particularly concerning its economic and cultural development. William Swearingen argues that it was the environmentalists’ ability to enroll the elite Austinites’ appreciation of the area’s natural beauty that gave them the political power to quell the most ecologically harmful forms of development. This unique breed of environmentalism, based in part on ensuring the elite’s desired quality of life, helped to cajole Austin’s growth machine into “build[ing] the natural into the urban rather than plowing it under the urban” (Swearingen 2010, 189).
Less panglossian histories, however, have exposed the darker side of Austin’s development. Despite the negligible mineral resources within Austin, the city’s social spatial production was ultimately financed by the rise of the Texas oil industry and the development of polluting industries elsewhere (Tretter 2016, Robbins 2003). Furthermore, even the preservation of Austin’s local nature wasn’t equally guaranteed for everyone (Walsh 2007). Austin’s city planning processes both systematically reduced local racial minorities’ access to Austin’s preserved green spaces while also choosing black and brown neighborhoods as the location of the city’s polluting industries (Busch 2017). Thus, despite Austin’s remarkable record of environmental victories and glowing inter/national reputation as a ideal place to live, its “weird” forms of life were founded on logics of settler colonialism and developed through the differential valuations and investments in land, bodies, and technologies that operated according to capitalist logics of progress and sacrifice.

Homeless shelter and support center: https://www.ocregister.com/2022/07/22/motorcycle-club-brings-hope-and-harleys-to-homeless-shelter. 

Is this center considered an asset by residents, or -- as in many places -- did they contest its presence in Santa Ana given so many other stresses there? 

Changhua Environmental Protection Union (彰化環保聯盟)

Photo gallery (台西村影像館)

Water-Worshipping Rites of the Choushui River Watershed

"Given a lot of attention in recent years is the "Taixi Village Bai Xi Wang" in Dacheng Township in Changhua County, taking place on the 16th day of the 7th lunar calendar month. Residents of Taixi Village shoulder offerings carried on poles, and in bamboo baskets to the embankment by the Choushui River, praying to the heavens, to the earth, and to the river god. So far, most village residents still hoist traditionally woven bamboo baskets for their offerings with just a handful reverting to using plastic baskets and containers. About half of the village residents still cook their own food offerings, mostly comprised of vegetarian meals, place-holder molds of the three sacrifices (pig, chicken, and fish-shaped bread loaves), fruit. Some also offer cookies or other biscuits, instant noodle packages, and canned foods for their main offerings. The ritual is carried out for about two hours, starting from 1:00 pm until 3:00 pm. At the end of the ceremony, everyone present goes down to the river-side wall of the embankment to burn joss paper money. After finishing the ceremony, the residents take their offerings back home."