First Assignment: “Find a Detroit issue and observe it over time” Purpose of this assignment: To observe your writing style and ability To have you use WSU Library resources in research To give you an appreciation for a thing Detroit has faced/done/experienced To be able to give you an early assessment grade this term The assignment: Choose a topic related to cities and urban experience. Using the Detroit Free Press article database in the Wayne State Library collections, find three to five articles from different decades about your topic. Using information from those articles see if you can track your topic – what has changed? What has stayed the same? How have things worked out? – and then spend some time in reflecting on your own thoughts about the topic. Some example topics: Sports stadiums Food (local, such as Coney Islands, or food trends, or restaurants, or grocery stores) Medical facilities/medicine/health issues. THIS IS MY CHOSEN TOPIC Education (investment, outcomes, schools, needs) Public transit Recreation Policing Entertainment (theaters, movies, authors, music) Real estate development Taxation and city needs Structure of your essay: About 4 pages, double-spaced, should do. Explain your topic and state some form of argument about it in your first paragraph. In subsequent paragraphs integrate the information you have gained from the articles you researched. In the final third of your essay, discuss your findings and their relevance to the city. Did they change or inform your opinion of the city? Did they confirm a previous guess or borrowed opinion of the city? How does the research information make you think when you contemplate the future of the city? Direct quotations from articles should be within quotation marks and cited immediately after the quote. Concepts or themes taken from the articles should be cited after the paragraph in which they are used. A works-cited page (not included in the 4 or more pages) should show correct formatting for articles accessed through an online database.